Kofi found Yaw alone at the tide line two nights later, mending a torn net that didn’t need mending, the kind of work a man does with his hands when his mind wants somewhere to hide.
“You’ve stitched that same tear three times.”
Yaw didn’t look up.
“Keeps coming loose.”
“Or you keep picking at it.”
That got him a glance, sharp and quick, the same look Yaw had worn every day since the workbench — half curiosity, half a wariness Kofi had put there himself.
Kofi crouched beside him in the wet sand, close enough that his voice wouldn’t carry past the two of them.
“I need to tell you something, and I need you to hear all of it before you decide I’ve lost my mind.”
“Too late for that. Decided two days ago.”
“Yaw.”
Something in the way Kofi said his name stopped the needle in Yaw’s hand.
He set the net down.
“The night we drove the last treenail into her hull, you said something. Quiet. Not meant for me to hear. You said we’d built something that would take more of us than it would ever carry home.”
Yaw went very still.
“I never told anyone that,” Kofi said.
“Not once. Not in sixty-seven years.”
“How do you—”
“Because I lived it. All of it. I grew old on this plantation, Yaw. I watched you die an old man yourself, twenty years before I did, and I buried you same as I buried everyone else on this row. Then I walked into the sea because I couldn’t carry what we built one more day. Something in the water sent me back. Here. Now. Twenty-three again, with sixty-seven years sitting behind my eyes that shouldn’t be there.”
“Stop.” Yaw was on his feet, backing off a step like Kofi was a fever he could outwalk.
“I’m not finished.”
“I said stop.” His voice cracked on it.
“You want me to believe you died. That the sea spit you back out a boy again. You hear how that sounds coming out your mouth?”
“I hear it.”
“Then why say it.”
“Because I need you to believe me before the month’s end, and I’d rather you call me mad tonight than watch me die not trusting you enough to try.”
Yaw stood at the water’s edge a long moment, arms crossed, jaw working.
When he finally spoke, the anger had drained away, leaving something colder underneath.
“Prove it, then. Tell me something only a dead man’s supposed to know.”
Kofi held his gaze.
“Your mother. The fever took her the winter you turned nine. Nobody on this row spoke her name after — not because they didn’t love her, because grief here gets buried the same day it’s dug. You never told a soul how angry that made you. That nobody was allowed to mourn her out loud.”
Yaw’s arms uncrossed slowly.
“Who told you that?”
“You did. Sixty-seven years from a night you haven’t lived yet, drunk on bad rum, the only time in either of our lives I ever saw you cry.”
Yaw’s jaw worked, but he didn’t argue it.
“There was a girl. Three years you loved her and never said a word. Told yourself there’d be time. Then Sterling sold her off to a cane plantation in Trelawny before you found the nerve, and you carried that like a stone in your boot the rest of your life. Never said her name out loud again after that either.”
“Stop.” It came out rough.
“I’m not saying it to hurt you.”
“I know why you’re saying it.” Yaw scrubbed a hand down his face, and when he lowered it his eyes had gone wet and furious both at once.
“Say something I can’t explain away as a lucky guess.”
“Three weeks from now, Thorne pulls you aside by the smokehouse and tells you the launch date’s moved up. He’ll say it like this — Brook’s had his fill of waiting on colonial officials. Ship sails inside the fortnight, ready or not, and if it isn’t ready, that’s your neck, not his. Word for word. I’ve heard him say it twice now.”
Yaw stared at him.
The anger drained from his face, leaving something more frightened behind.
“That’s not a guess.”
“No.”
“Sixty-seven years.”,Yaw said it slowly, like the number itself needed weighing.
“You remember all of it. Every year.”
“Enough of it to know exactly how this one ends if I let it play out the same way twice.”
Yaw picked the net back up off the sand, turned it over in his hands, as if he needed something familiar to hold onto while the rest of the world rearranged itself around him.
“Then tell me what you need,” he said, finally, “before I change my mind about believing you.”
The trouble started small, the way trouble always did before it stopped being small.
Kofi crouched at the aft hull with a caulking iron in hand and let the seam go unsealed — a hairline gap that wouldn’t matter for months at sea, bought at the cost of two extra days nobody should have noticed were missing.
He miscounted a crate of fittings on purpose, short by a dozen, and blamed the shipment from the coast when Yaw asked him about it under his breath.
Thorne found him at it on the third morning, boots stopping close enough that Kofi felt the man’s shadow before he heard him.
“You’ve gone sloppy.”
Kofi kept planing the rib in front of him, even strokes, didn’t look up.
“Tired hands, sir. Nothing more.”
“Fifteen years I’ve watched you work.” Thorne crouched, ran a thumb along the seam Kofi had left open, and found it in seconds.
“Fifteen years, and you’ve never once shorted a count or left a seam wanting. Now twice in a fortnight.” His pale eyes came up, flat and patient as a snake deciding whether to strike.
“Something troubling you, Brook?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll be watching you more closely.” Thorne stood, unhurried.
“You understand me.”
“Yes, sir.”
He walked off down the row, and Kofi set the plane down with hands that weren’t quite steady, understanding exactly what he’d bought himself — not time, but attention, the one thing he could least afford to spend.
Yaw’s turn came two nights later, and it went worse.
He slipped into the armory with a story half-built and an empty sack folded under his shirt, meaning to walk out with enough powder and shot to arm a crew for a fight neither of them had a plan for yet.
He’d gotten the second barrel’s lid half-lifted when a lantern swung around the corner, and Fitch’s voice came with it, thick with the particular alertness of a man who never slept when he was supposed to.
“What’s this?”
Yaw’s hand found the lid and eased it back down, unhurried, like he’d meant to do that all along.
“Counting stock. Thorne wants a tally before the launch.”
“Thorne send you himself?”
“Ask him.”
Fitch’s lantern swung closer, throwing hard light across Yaw’s face.
Neither of them moved for two long seconds.
“Finish quick,” Fitch said finally, unconvinced but unwilling to walk the row to check a story that thin.
“Report to me when you’re done.”
He left.
Yaw stood alone in the dark a moment longer, heart going like a drum, sack still folded and empty in his fist.
He found Kofi behind the smokehouse that same night, voice low and fast, hands not quite steady.
“That’s done. Armory’s closed to us now. Fitch’ll remember my face every time he walks that row.”
“Then we find another way.”
“There isn’t time for another way, Kofi.” Yaw’s jaw was tight.
“There are three weeks left, and every plan we build takes days, and every day we spend building it, one wrong glance takes it all away in a second.”
Kofi didn’t have an answer ready.
The old certainty he’d carried since the workbench — that sixty-seven years of memory made him safe from this story’s worst turns — had started to crack.
The whipping came on a Thursday, in front of the whole row.
They tied him to the post, and Kofi gripped the wood and made himself count, because counting was the only thing left inside him with room to move.
He’d felt this exact lash before, decades gone.
Knowing it was coming did nothing to soften it.
Nothing ever did.
Lord Sterling Brook watched from horseback, unhurried, the way he watched everything that cost him nothing.
“Let this remind the row,” he said, voice carrying easily, “that carelessness on my shipyard has a price.” His gaze drifted, idle, toward a boy no older than ten standing frozen near the quarters.
“I’ve been told there’s a buyer in Kingston looking for young hands. Perhaps I’ll send this one along, if the trouble in my yard doesn’t stop.”
Kofi’s vision went white at the edges — not from the lash, from something colder.
He said nothing.
There was nothing to say that wouldn’t cost the boy more.
They cut him loose an hour later.
Yaw got an arm under him and half-carried him back toward the quarters, the row watching in the particular silence of people who’d learned long ago that watching was the only kindness they were allowed to offer.
“We’re out of road,” Yaw said, low, once they were clear of listening ears.
“Whatever we’re building toward, we’re out of road to build it on.”
Kofi didn’t answer.
He was still counting, though the strikes had stopped a while ago now — counting days, watching the gap between the plan he remembered and the ground shifting under him grow wider than he knew how to close.
Word came the next morning, carried down the row by a boy running too fast to be delivering good news.
“Launch is moved up,” he said, breathless, stopping in front of Kofi and Yaw both.
“Lord Brook’s got officials coming from the colony — wants the ship in the water before they land, not half-finished on the stocks. Thorne’s saying inside the fortnight now. Maybe sooner.”
Yaw’s eyes cut to Kofi.
Kofi felt the compass go cold and still against his chest, the way it always seemed to when the ground moved beneath him.
Not weeks left.
Days.