PoraBora

Chapter Forty-Two

Pora pulled himself up the line, happy to think he was getting better at boarding ships in secret. The metal giant featured two hulls, each twice as tall as Maye had been, and each painted half in white, half in silvery-blue. The tips of each fin, hanging canvas over the side, were white and rounded, but to a boy who swam with a shark for much of his life, they mocked, rather than mimicked, the guise of a shark.

The night was late enough the ships only had lanterns on so that they could be seen by the others, to prevent crashes and wrecks that Pora secretly rooted for. He could make it happen, he thought, if he put out the lanterns or dropped a ship's anchor without warning. But the appeal didn't hold, because the debris and the motor wells would spill into the ocean.

Moonlight dappled through the clouds, providing cover enough, Pora hoped, that he wouldn't be spotted like the torches.

The fleet was on its way again, presumably to take Maye to a prison. They'd brought Ila'i's warriors with him, probably for the same reason. Pora had seen the older boy Hui, but he was on the hammerhead, and Pora had no reason to board the hammerhead.

Because Maye was here, on the whitetip.

Most of the warriors were sleeping, but those who were up did not have the tattoos Pora had grown used to seeing on Ila'i. It made no difference to him which were which: they were all his enemies.

He took a glance up the deck as he shimmied along it, searching for the hatch. It was near the mast, whose sail pretended at a dorsal fin and where several warriors leaned and chatted. There was no going in that way, Pora decided, because the men weren't moving, and once in a while, another came up to replace someone.

Pora made his way carefully underneath the starboard fin, relying on dock lines to keep himself above the water. He glanced back, just in case, but no lantern's light made it to him to show that he was up to no good.

Momentarily, he wished he was older, that he had their tattoo and could have an extra moment when he was seen to figure out what he could do. If he knew their language, only so much the better, because then he could distract them, or make up a story, and they could think, all is good here. He's one of us.

He was none of those things, and glad, because all of those came with breaking coral reefs and angering gods.

Slipping would be the end of it, Pora thought. Untied, he'd go over. Then he would be hardpressed to make it back to the whitetip unless they moored, even if he did manage to get himself onto another in the line. Tied was little better. Tied, he would bounce and roll his way across the hull, alerting every warrior inside while his head was dragged through the water.

No slipping, then. Barnacles closer to the sea level helped his climb to the portholes. They were all closed, but he wasn't sure he could fit through them anyway. It was possible one would be opened in the night, if he was patient, but then he noticed near the front of the ship that the windows that made the gills were open, and there was no maybe about fitting through.

The portholes didn't make peeking easy on the way, their closed glass thick and occasionally difficult to see through. One was fogged completely, and Pora was reminded that he was the only one out here, soaked in the breeze and cold under his skin.

Still, he had been colder before, on his island, when storms readied for arrival and he still had to do what he could to make sure the reefs and trees were ready.

Pora didn't peer too long in any of the portholes, for he worried someone inside would spot him. Most were dark, anyway, warriors sleeping. Pora passed by one where two men balanced at the edge of hammocks, a map with tiny pieces between them. He wiped the water for a better look, which was when he heard a squawk.