She hadn’t read them all, not hardly. She’d touched them, though; moved them; stacked them. She’d read the spines. She’d felt the paper. Each had a smell of its own, something suggesting the content of the unread words within. She sometimes considered sitting in the high-backed, green chair at the corner of the room, a room as set aside as any library in a television house might be, and opening one of them under the yellow light of the floor lamp. She’d consider it, but only long enough for the same thoughts to come. In the chair, she was small. Among the words, the deeds they described and their complexity, she was smaller, still. So she built things with them, instead. The books—whole in themselves, their stories aside—made fine bricks and planks and tiles for a world of things scaled to her needs and fancies. They’d formed the substance of fort walls, tables, and grandfather clocks, and, today, they’d compose the shell of her finest work, yet: a seaworthy boat of bind and page and wax.

Though the library was large enough to suit the construction, there was little hope of the finished craft making it through the house’s doors and less, yet, of making it to the shore of the lake at the edge of the property. She’d reasoned that a job of this sort demanded a dry dock and launching rails, and she’d spent much of the previous afternoon completing as much. On this day, her morning had been spent ferreting volumes to the build site by wagon. Her parents took no notice, or, rather, if they did, they paid no mind. The books, inherited along with the house were as good as hers, after all. At least, they’d reasoned long before, she’d taken an interest in something, something that kept the house quiet, the girl occupied.

There were nine-hundred-seventy-two books, in all. She’d individually selected each, first on the basis of nautical themes—a matter of luck—and second according to size. The hardbacks would make up the outer hull; the paperbacks, the inner. The wax would come from the boxes upon boxes of handmade candles she’d discovered in the basement, some months earlier, hold-overs from a time before the house had known electric light. There were other odds and ends, as well, rubber flanges and the like for the more functional aspects of ship-building.

Materials gathered, she took to assembly. It was a slow process, the success of the project demanding as much precision in placement as it did. Slow or otherwise, her progress throughout the day was impressive. She’d completed the outer hull a short time after lunch; set the rudder and the mast’s mount shortly after that. Upon coating the structural hardbacks with another layer of wax, she began the inner hull. The logistics of this leg were difficult, given her distance from the fire, but she managed, having worked out the maximum amount of melted wax she could carry without worry of premature hardening. By nightfall, the principle work was done. A night for the wax to cure, she determined, and the craft would be seaworthy—a few minor adjustments aside.

Morning arrived with its usual soft-boiled eggs and dry toast. Conversation was kept to a minimum. There were papers to read, stocks to consider, the work of servants to scrutinize and correct. She ate her meal with a chart of the lake in her mind, working out the best possible course for the boat’s maiden voyage. Close to the shore, she reasoned, would be safest. Father asked after her studies, and she reminded him that break was only half completed. Mother asked after her studies, as well, having been in another room for the initial asking. Father assured Mother that the girl was seeing to her responsibilities.

The sun was high by the time the boat was ready for launch. Even with the rails she’d made, the push from dry-dock to lake was a difficult one. Her shoes—sandals, really—were no good for the task, but she’d come a long way. It was only a matter of digging in, of pushing harder. She fell in the mud when the boat splashed free, panting. It wobbled in the shallow water, and she smiled, her face on the ground, at the scope of the thing she’d made.

She didn’t dust herself off when she stood. She went directly to climbing aboard, to pushing away from the shore with a long stretch of electrical conduit she’d found beside the storehouse. She checked the wind. It was good. She raised the sail of bed sheets. It filled. She manned the rudder. She began to sail.

It was a grand lake with few houses at its edge. There were docks and permanent rafts of timber at regular intervals, but, given the time of year, she was the lone human representative. She shaped her hands into a spyglass and tracked the land around her, noting the point at which it vanished into glittery sunlight. From her position she could see no hint of the other side. There was only water and the familiar shore. There was only her, her and the faces of the books at her feet, her and the ruffling of the sail. She set a course across the lake’s wide middle, her thirst for exploration too great to restrict herself to path she’d planned over breakfast.

The going was slow. The boat was heavier in the water than she’d imagined it might be. She sang ballads of the sea to pass the time. She pictured the boy at the far, unseen edge, the one who’d given up hope for completing his own ship, the one waiting, though he didn’t know, for her to arrive. His eyes would be a comfortable blue. He would smile, the wind tussling his hair, as she approached. His mother would offer tea. She would politely decline, insisting there were fortunes, yet, to be made on the sea, that the boy and she had narrow hours left in which to beat the Scrapyard Fleet to the sunken ship in the trench in the lake’s northern finger.

Lost in sleepy thoughts of salvage and romance, lounging on her back, the rudder’s handle fixed in the crook of her arm, it took her longer to notice the water that’d begun to pool around her heel than it might have in more sober circumstances. Picturing the scene as she did, the boy holding her by the hand along the shallow shoreline, the two barefooted, her boat of books and their raised Spanish wreck moored in the distance behind them, the cold sensation rising along her leg seemed fitting and true. It wasn’t until it mixed in with her clothes and rose to the base of her spine that she became aware of the problem.

The joints hadn’t held. Thin jets of water sprayed up between the spines and pages of the vessel’s shell. Floating at her thighs were the makings of her inner hull. Books like The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Odyssey danced lazily, bouncing against her knees, as they took on water and considered the options of sink and float. She made weak attempts at holding back the flow, but she was aware, even before she’d begun, that the damage was too far reaching for a real solution. The wax, she thought, the sun and the wax—too little; too much.

The firmer, outer shell of thick, hardbound volumes like Moby Dick shifted below her with each step. She moved gingerly toward the boat’s aft for a better view of her surroundings, but even at her most cautious, there seemed little more than firmer water below her, firmer water that threatened to give at every slight motion. So she rose gently on her toes, just enough to see beyond the books surrounding her—no land. There was only water, only a soggy boat, only her.

She fell through. The books below her gave under the pointed pressure of her stance. She fell and stuck at her ribs. She pushed to raise her face above the waterline, but the books she pushed gave, as well. Cold washed over her. She thought to kick, to break clear, but then she thought of captains. The captain goes down, she thought. The captain goes down.

It was a calm thought, her hair floating above her. Breath held, she looked up to the sun. She thought of the boy who waited, of his mother calling for him when night grew near. Maybe he’d finish his boat, after all. Maybe he’d count her among his salvaged treasures. She fixed her thoughts on his eyes, their reflection of the calm, expansive water before him. She smiled. She breathed the heavy air. She slept. She sank.

Timestamp: 03.28.08 at 09:25 AM. Filed under: Family.