Wash by Margaret Wrinkle Read Free Book Online

his mind. Think about Pallas. Don’t think about the men on the road. Seek solace wherever he knows he’ll find it. Step inside his story. As far into the past as he can fall.
    It was Mena who taught Wash how to travel like this. How to use his mind’s eye to keep his pictures bright and strong and close. Make himself a world to live in. It was Mena at first and then later, Rufus in his forge at Thompson’s place. These two worked hand in hand to carry Wash far enough into this knowing for it to stick.
    Soon as Wash can manage to call Mena and Rufus to mind, he sees them. The darker the barn the better. Mena as lean and quiet as her own grave until she finds herself deep inside a story. Then her hands flutter lightly inside her stillness. Unless somebody else walks up and then she’s back to smooth as stone. Acting like she can’t speak English. Rufus looks so much like her they could have been siblings except he’s thicker and wider, like Wash. Gruff on top but soft underneath. Or at least he used to be.
    Wash needs to take care which memories he visits and when. Some always work while others tend to turn on him. The trick lies in remembering which ones are which, remembering to choose and then talking himself into it. Steering his mind, just like he’d been taught. It was this knowing that Mena used to make it across the water with so much of herself still in one piece.
    Soon as they put her on the ship, Mena dropped down into that trance of herself, trying to stay safe. But she dropped so far and stayed so gone that after several days, the women could not get her moving around like she needed to be. The captain thought she was sick. Saw her as fading too close to dying and wanted her thrown overboard before she infected the rest with whatever disease he decided she had.
    That one crewman had her hanging over the edge, ready to drop her, before the situation came all the way through to her. As the pain of his beefy hands gripping her skinny shoulders made its way to her from across a great distance, she slowly became aware of the weight of her own body. She felt the space between her and the water pulling down on her and realized she’d better find some way to show herself to him or he was going to let her go.
    And she did it while he was watching her. She came back from where she’d been, just like she was swimming up from deep underwater, until there she was, looking right at him from inside her own eyes. Seeing her do this unsettled him so much, he almost dropped her anyway.
    It was the way she stared at him. She was barely out of her teens and slight enough to seem younger but her eyes hooked him. Not grabbing or desperate but so focused on him it was like she bound herself to him to keep him from dropping her.
    He drew his hands, with her still in them, toward his chest. Just as the tops of her feet knocked against the outside edge of the ship’s gunwale, it caught up to her what had almost happened. She saw it all. His hands opening. The outside of the ship rising past as she fell down through the air. Water coming up at her fast.
    A shiver ran through her so strong that he did lose his grip but by the time she fell from his hands, there was no more water under her. The smooth hard deck caught her where she sprawled. She scrambled, ducked and ran, stumbling and falling, in amongst the rest of the women brought up for air, trying to look scared enough and enough like the others so that one crewman would forget what he knew he had seen.
    After that day, she opened her mouth for the food and she let the women walk her around. She wasn’t trying to do what some were trying to do. Holding their jaws clenched until the captain ordered enough teeth broken to force feed them. Mena was just trying to make it through in one piece.
    But once she had dropped inside herself like she’d been taught, it was easy to get distracted. That deep peaceful place was so quiet and soothing that she started wanting to stay there,