The Explorer's Apprentice

12: Alone

Marley Faulkner

Marley keeps walking, kind of in a daze, the heels of her shoes clacking on the deck. The heavy petticoats beneath her skirt scratch her legs and make her hot, while the flimsy silk of her blouse does little to protect her from the sea breeze, and goose bumps rise on her arms. She feels like a ghost, an empty shell, watching the smiling faces of people strolling by. Marley never dwells on the concept of psychics, but now she wonders how they could stand to go about living. Knowing the future? Knowing who is going to die, who is going to live? It isn’t knowledge for a healthy human mind. It’s dark knowledge, crouching and clinging, that won’t go away. Maybe that is why psychics are always pictured wearing thousands of necklaces, living alone in trailers and mumbling into their teacups.

They aren’t wholly sane.

You’re going to die. And you. And you. And you. 79% of you die.

The sun is warm, but her skin feels cold. ‘My’ skin… Marley laughs to herself. That’s right. My skin. Not Rose’s skin, although people here call me that. She climbs to the balcony of the captain’s cabin and looks out across the ship, beyond the people and to the sea. The hands that grip the railing look just like Marley’s hands, but they’re not. I am Rose, and Rose is me. I wrote that journal, and I take photographs, and I have an abusive fiancé, and I have a little sister named P. J. and I exist in 1912 and 1998. The locket didn’t put me in this body. I am these bodies. She isn’t entirely sure how she knows, but she does.

She is certain of it.

It’s like instinct. Like how babies know to scratch itches. No one can really explain how or why, it isn’t as if anyone ever told them, they just know.

The light sparkles endearingly on the water. It looks so inviting as the green cliffs of the Irish Isles stroll past on the right. She finds herself wishing for a camera, but not even this funny thought cheers her up. On the deck below, scrubbed faces mingle with grubby ones, sticky hands tugging at fine clothing. She isn’t afraid of this world; on the contrast, she found it interesting. But at the same time, the cruel, foreboding sense of irony ruins everything. Marley doesn’t quite understand how it all works, this sudden transformation of identity, but she does know there is no Rose out there waiting on the beach, paints in hand, to comfort her. All the world is spread out in front of me. And time goes on. But really and truly, once and for all, I now know that only I understand me. I am alone.

She sighs and leans forward, taking in the salty wind. Her heart flutters happily, perhaps for the first time since boarding. But, she admits, I still have to find the locket. No one else saw, but I did. Nobody else witnessed the brilliant light emitted from her own pocket once the locket opened on its own. No one else knows that it wasn’t just any old ordinary earthquake that sent me here. The locket brought me here, and it will take me back. It has to.  I only need to–

Marley never finishes the thought. Suddenly, there’s a shift in the pattern. A shape at first, and then a face. It triggers something in her brain, the part that contains all of Marley as she knows herself. I know that boy…

She leans over the rail, squinting against the daylight to get a better look. Yes! It’s definitely him! William Gaffney, from her chemistry class, with the big nose and slanted handwriting, walking along the deck of Titanic, in the flesh. He’d been behind stage, she vaguely remembers, calling people up to audition.  Poor guy! she thinks. The locket must have sucked him in, too! He must think he’s gone insane.