Holy Land

The Infidel sailed at a sluggish pace, with the Spectre creaking along in tow. Gingersnap sat in a hammock in the riggings, staring at the horizon to the west. Hanging from a chain linked to the collar of his jumpsuit was a pocket watch, its gold cover decorated with etchings of hummingbirds and tropical flowers. Once in a while a white speck appeared at the edge of the sky. He would take its bearing and time on a dog-eared notebook, and scratch it out if it turned out to be a bird. The radio had gone completely silent at three in the morning, and had been so ever since.

Morning Breeze was reluctant to put the Spectre’s crew to work, especially Coral Frond and Gingersnap. Graduate he was of the naval academy, he offered to teach them navigation and battle tactics, but Gingersnap was as apathetic and Coral Frond was eager. From his hammock Gingersnap could still hear the lecture clearly. Morning Breeze, with his light blue bodysuit showing through the open zipper of his jumpsuit, was speaking just loud enough to be heard. The volume was quite impressive given his condition. He had attracted a small crowd, including a lone seagull, though it was probably waiting for his sandwich to fall apart.

When he was not writing in it Gingersnap hugged the notebook tight against his chest. It was a nervous habit for which he had received much grief on his old ships, especially the cargo freighters where crushable ware had been plentiful. Winter Oat had always been lenient in this matter, and for a while Gingersnap thought he had grown out of it.

Idiot.

Morning Breeze had an inch of his sandwich left when the seagull saw its chance. He was gesturing at storm clouds on the horizon, describing the winds and waves at various distances to a storm. The sandwich stub was balanced on his hoof over the water. The seagull launched off the deck, snatched it up and rode the wind high above the deck.

The sailors erupted with laughter. Gingersnap slapped his knee, forgetting all about the notebook until slid off his heaving chest.

It landed with a loud bang four metres below. The old dried-out bindings exploded, and the wind quickly picked up the yellowing pages.

Slowly Gingersnap leaned over the side of his hammock and looked down.

Everyone was staring right at him.

The next few moments went by in a blur. He saw ponies talking to him from the deck. He could not hear them, nor could he answer. Then Morning Breeze was climbing towards him. Somepony must have alerted Hornpipe, because he was on his way to middeck.

Morning Breeze was right next to him. Gingersnap could not understand him either, but in his hissing voice he perceived a threat. He could not move as the pirate reached for him, his coat turning pure white before his eyes and taking on black stripes. But there was no scimitar in his hoof.

Hornpipe appeared moments later. Together they untied the hammock and lowered him gently to the deck. Snowsong was there to help him up. Before he regained his voice she was leading him down the steps into the mess. He felt like he was running, and the deck had been raised to several times its usual height, and the steps replaced with a tightrope. He thought he would fall for sure, but Snowsong supported him firmly with a combination of magic and her own strength.

The mess was taken up entirely by long benches along two counterbalanced tables. Mugs and pans dangled dense from the beams. Beds rose in four tiers along the hull, each one fitted with a privacy screen. Snowsong sat down beside him on the bench against the starboard side. She put one hoof over his shoulders and blocked his view of the open door the the galley. The darkness and calm soon eased him back to reality, and Gingersnap realized that he was covered in sweat.

He buried his face in his hooves. His eyes were dry and aching. He wriggled his jaw, licking his teeth to make sure that nothing had been damaged.

Snowsong was looking at him with that look. Her lips were curled, but it was not quite a smile. She was about to say that she was proud of him. That he was making progress. But Gingersnap always thought that there was a degree of embarrassment in her eyes.

It had been nearly three years since Gingersnap came out of his long stupor under Snowsong's care, yet he was not cured. Not completely. He had gone for months without incident. The memories had faded. The nightmares had stopped entirely. But he was still not normal.

"Sit here for a bit," she said. "I can stay with you. Or would you rather be alone? You can go back to your room if you want."

Gingersnap bit his tongue. What he wanted to say was completely unreasonable. It was the whining of a spoiled child. Before he knew his letters he had learned to silence that thought as soon as it formed. But the yearning never went away.

I want to go home.

"Thank you," he said instead. The smile that he gave her would not have convinced even himself. "Thank you for everything. I'm alright now."

He thought there was some reluctance in her steps as she left him. He waited a few seconds after the hatch was closed before letting out a long sigh. He felt a slight urge to cry, but he was too busy plotting his escape. Once he got back to Equestria he would run. He could easily make the jump from the deck to the pier. Nopony would be expecting that kind of desertion; it had never happened before. He would run right past Customs and the MP, and disappear into the city before anypony realized what he was doing. In a few months he could be in the Canterlot Archives. He would find a birth record. He would eventually find his house and his room just as he had left it. And his mother would be there, as beautiful and happy as she ought to be. And perhaps he had brothers and sisters too...

"Why are you here?"

Gingersnap dumped the rinse water overboard. Hornpipe had personally tied a rope to each of the wooden buckets that he was allowed to use. Somehow the gesture seemed worse than twenty lashes, but quite a bit better than fifty.

The night was clear and chilly, and a nearly full moon gave him nearly as much light as his lantern. Soon the nights would be quite uncomfortable. Gingersnap had his jumpsuit rolled down to his waist. It was not the best-looking uniform, but it was comfortable and he would surely need it to last the winter.

"I was worried about you," Coral Frond said, sitting down beside Gingersnap on the deck box. He picked up a dirty brass bowl and reached for the soap bucket, but a glare from Gingersnap made him reconsider.

"I'm fine," he said without looking at the unicorn. "It's nothing serious. You know, me and my dramatic staring."

"Come on, don't be like that," Coral Frond said, sidling closer. "After all we've been through together! You can talk to me, you know? If you have anything to say, anything, you can tell me."

Gingersnap dropped the bowl into the rinse bucket and looked at Coral Frond. He appeared exactly as he should, his face as sincere as his voice. He liked that face, despite his best efforts to be indifferent. The events of the past days had forced them together. As much as he dreaded the idea, Gingersnap knew that he had made a friend.

"Alright," he said at last, his voice barely more than a whisper. He wrinkled his nose to stop himself from crying. He couldn't remember the last time he said it out loud. He was afraid that he would hear his own voice from years and years ago. Indeed he thought he did. "I want to go home, Coral Frond."

"Why don't you..."

The rag, backed with a laborer's firm hoof, made a wet snap against the back of his head. Coral Frond flew three feet and fell face-first onto the gunwale. To his credit he did not cry out.

"I've wanted to!" Gingersnap said. He was no louder than before, but in his ears a hundred voices were yelling. "I've always wanted to! For as long as I can remember!"

He stopped abruptly when Coral Frond raised a hoof. When the unicorn turned around, Gingersnap's anger turned to guilt. His left eye was swollen, with the surrounding bruise going across the bridge of his bloodied nose. But Coral Frond did not shy away. Instead he sat down on the deck with his back against the gunwale and put a hoof over his nose.

"'eep going," he said.

Gingersnap took a few deep breaths. The short break made him calm down considerably.

"For as long as I can remember," he said slowly, looking over Coral Frond's head at the dark sea that surrounded him. "Whenever a job was close to done, I would dream of going home. I would tell myself that as soon as we made port I would take some time off and have a look around. Try to find out where I came from."

Coral Frond nodded. Gingersnap hesitated. He felt like he had already said too much, but it barely scratched the surface of what he wanted to say.

"I've been passed around so many times, Coral Frond," he said. He could feel pressure building in his sinus, yet talking was becoming easier. He closed his eyes, searching his memories for something else to say. "I don't know where I came from. It's like I just appeared on somepony's ship one day, and they decided to put me to work. Sometimes I... I remember things. Or I think I do. I can remember a town of some sort, far from the coast, and a house. There's a room on the second floor with blue walls. A foal's room. I think it was mine. I had a mother and a father. I don't know their names or what they look like, but..."

He mouthed the words, but nothing came out. Clearing his throat, he tried again.

"They loved me," he said. His face was wet with tears, but the words came so easily that he would sooner drink the briny dishwater in his bucket than stop. "That love kept me going. When times got tough, I thought of that house and that town, and my father and mother, all of it waiting for me. If I really needed to; if I really, really had to; I could go back to them. I would find them somehow, and they'd take me back.

"But every time my ship reached port I wouldn't do any of that. After a good meal I would convince myself that it wasn't so bad. I would find work on the docks, or stay as my captain's servant. I could endure it, and... wouldn't they be proud of me if I returned home rich? Wouldn't they love me even more?"

He paused to look around, but the only others on deck were two griffins on anchor watch atop the aftcastle.

"I still want to believe it, Coral Frond," he whispered breathlessly. "I want to see my mother again. I want to play in those streets, and call that lovely little town home. And if I ever lay down in that blue room, I swear I could sleep for days. But I know I'm too old for all of that. I'm not a child anymore, but everything I could do, everything that I want to do, is childish. So I have to keep this up.

"I don't know what comes next, Coral Frond. I think this is the last time. When we get back to Equestria I'll have to go somewhere. It's treason, I know, but once I get away from the coast I don't think anyone will try to hunt me down. I'm nopony important. I don't want to be passed around for the rest of my life with nothing to my name, not even the clothes on my back. But I've never been anything but a common sailor, and I don't think they'll need those once I leave the coast."

Coral Frond's hooves were covered with blood and his nose was blocked, but somehow he managed to speak.

"Is there anything I can do?"

Gingersnap stared at his friend, too embarrassed to apologize. He hadn't meant to hurt him so badly. There was no way they could pass it off as an accident. Unless...

"Yeah, one thing," he said slowly, wincing at the idea even as he voiced it. "Take that bucket and smash it over my head."

Coral Frond snorted, shooting a geyser of blood onto the deck.

"What?"

"You'll have to go to sickbay for that, and I really don't want to take the blame. Let's just pretend we were fighting, okay?"

"What?"

"You want to help me? This is the best thing you can do for me right now. Someday I'll find a way to fix myself. Until then you can help me with the little things, alright?"

Coral Frond looked over to the bucket and covered his eyes with one hoof, revealing a bloodied, mischievous smile.

"You'll have to hit me hard," Gingersnap said, squeezing his eyes shut and baring his teeth. "I'm made of sturdier stuff than you are."

They moved out of the lantern light. The anchor watch, engrossed in a game of cards, never noticed the commotion. Gingersnap grunted with each impact. The ragged edge of the bucket caught his ears more than once, and left shallow gashes on his shoulders.

"A bit more," he said more than once after reaching up to feel the damage.

He thought the bucket took it worse than he did.

They left the clean dishes out to dry on deck and went down to sickbay, both of them convincingly bloodied and bruised. They tried hard not to laugh as they recounted their tall tale of a wager over the words to a song. Even if the doctor didn't quite believe them, they were at least safe until morning. When they were finally left alone for a moment they both broke out laughing. They didn't know why.