Along its godlike arc through the sky, the moon trembled. Instead of tracing a time-honored path across the stars, its trajectory in the moments that followed would be brand new. He felt it in his heart. Perhaps the moon would move backward in the direction it came from, or straight downward to the flat horizon. ...Or toward him—somehow that seemed most likely. If the moon landed in the ocean nearby, how big of a splash would it make? (He had not yet learned the true scale of celestial bodies.) Would the resulting wave cause the boat to overturn, spilling ninety sleeping souls into the agitated water to drown?
Over several minutes spanning midnight, he watched the foreign, shimmering vibrations of that perfect white orb. A hopeful energy grew inside him until the possibility of nothing happening became unthinkable. He waited.
His last memory before sleep was of grasping in desperation for the moon to finally alter its course, but either it never did, or he missed it doing so, as he could no longer pry his weary eyes open to keep watch. In his next memory, he awoke from a far away slumber to the stars disappearing and the sky changing from black to the deepest blue of predawn. The moon was nowhere to be found.
He sat up—a respite from the snoring man whose elbow had pressed into his side for hours. He had slept wedged between the man and where the bottom of the boat sloped steeply upward, partway sheltered by a broad wooden rail. Heaving himself to a seated position on the edge, he scanned the sleeping bodies below him, packed together like dead fish. The vessel rocked, but only gently, so he stayed perched there for some time with no worry of being thrown out.
Someone else was awake. She sat up close to the bow. She was a person whom he might have called a girl, or a woman, but neither with confidence. This person turned slightly to the side, wincing, hair blowing gently off her shoulders and he noticed that she was beautiful. He also saw there was a baby growing inside her stomach. She leaned over the greased wood rail of the boat and vomited in the calm water.
It drifted by him as the boat ambled forward. He did not look at it. She turned to look at him. She seemed to look straight into his eyes, but it was still too dark to tell. He looked straight into hers. Eventually, she became disinterested in him and looked back out at the water. Or maybe she had not noticed him at all.
A trawling motor vibrated through the tung-oiled planks supporting him. Its throttle position was set in interest of economy rather than speed; the rationed supply of gasoline would be enough if they took their time and did not fight the water. He knew all this because yesterday (the first day) he had asked the person driving the boat about it. He had received begrudging answers to what seemed like perfectly sensible questions, and not without finally being scolded for his intrusiveness.
Two men had been tasked with driving the boat. He had not spoken to the other man before, but guessed he was currently at the helm since the first driver had guided the boat all day and into the evening.
He looked toward the small compartment and saw through a sheet of dirty plexiglass the grim and tired expression of the second driver. Scooting carefully along the rail, he inched back toward the compartment while avoiding several other sleepers. A gap emerged between bodies along which carefully placed steps landed him at the narrow entrance to the wooden box housing the driver.
The back of the driver's pale blue shirt was stained broadly by a smear of black grease. His (surely sore) buttocks rested atop a worn wooden stool fastened with rusting brackets to the floor. He swayed back and forth counter to the mild motions of the boat. The boy hesitated. He had not expected three others to be sharing the cramped compartment with the driver. They lined the floor at his feet; on one side lay a mother and her small child. On the opposite slept the other driver. He didn't want to disturb anyone's rest, but his curiosity won out.
"How long until Malaysia?"
The driver was startled, and not happy about it. "Go away." He hadn't bother to turn around.
"I need to know how long."
"Four days."
"How do you know?"
"I navigate."
"How much experience do you have?"
The man turned his head to the side, still not looking at him. "More than you have. Now go away."
He picked his way carefully back out to the edge of the boat. A few other people had risen from sleep. A child half his age began to cry.
In every direction, as far as he could see, there was only water. On the first day, the fading immensity of a mountain was still visible, but now he saw nothing—only clear air and flat sea all the way around in a seamless horizon. The breeze thickened with the scent of rotten algae. The hopeful white gulls which had stuck close to the boat on the first day, constantly circling and perching, were now all gone. Any food items were too precious to be left unguarded, so the scavenging birds had finally given up and headed back toward land.
The rising of just a few people here and there set off a chain reaction so that within five minutes, half the boat was standing shakily, moaning with lingering fatigue, stretching out their bone-deep soreness. It took little time for the commotion to rouse nearly everyone. A briefly silent morning turned noisy.
Less than an hour later the sun had risen just over the horizon. Already, it shone with a threatening brilliance that made everyone who faced it shield their face involuntarily. There was nothing in the sky competing against it, so it dominated. The sickening heat it generated was sure to return by midday.
But midday was still far away. A row of four decrepit gas burners assembled at the base of the wall to the driver's compartment. The space required to cook displaced some families, whose outward movement drove those already near the edge closer to it.
Just as the boy had before dawn, a few agile young passengers began perching on the outer rail. One young man lost his balance and felt backward into the water. Mercifully, the driver bothered to cut power to the engine while the teen was heaved, soaking wet, back into the boat.
A meal of wet rice and small hunks of fish was served a short time later. The boy and several other people who did not possess bowls had to wait until the mixture cooled enough to be poured directly into their cupped hands. One of the people who waited was the pregnant girl (or woman—it was still somehow unclear), but once the person holding the tin ladle noticed her condition, she was given one of the cooks' bowls and served a generous portion.
They sat down next to each other, propped against the aft wall of the compartment, and to the boy's surprise, she spoke to him.
"Are you alone?"
He only nodded. He felt shame for eating from his hands in front of her, but several others around them did the same.
"Me too," she said.
The boy swallowed his first mouthful. It tasted bland, but reminded him immediately of his hunger and he felt ravenous. "Are you going to have a baby?" he asked her.
She nodded. "If we make it to Malaysia, maybe I will have it there."
The boy didn't like that she had used the word if. "I know we will make it there."
She ate very slowly and the boy wondered if she would vomit again after the meal. She said, "I heard we don't have enough fuel to make it all the way."
This shocked him. His expression must have given it away, because she quickly said, "That might not be true. It was just something a person next to me said. Besides, there are many ships along this route. Sometimes they take people on board."
"They do?" He tried not to look hopeful. Privately, he admonished himself for having let his feelings show at all.
"Yes," she said simply. She looked up at the sky. "God willing."
He finished what clung to his hands by licking them clean. Then he waited for what felt like an appropriate amount of time to pass before asking his next question. "Are you grown up?"
"Yes," she said slowly. "Look, I am pregnant."
"I know," said the boy. "I see."
She looked at him in a strange way. "All the others your age are not alone."
The boy looked down. "No one here is my age."
She pointed toward the back of the boat. "That boy over there must be twelve, and he is with his father."
"I am ten," said the boy. And then he started to cry. There had been no warning, no time to get away or even to feel ashamed. He hardly detected the underlying sadness which had provoked it. It was a cold and uncontrollable outflowing of grief which finished as quickly as it began. She put her arm around him and pulled him close. The act perfectly replicated what his own mother would have done, and it shocked him to remember that just two days earlier, he was still with her. Already she felt separated from him by many worlds.
;-;