Page 43 of Meeting Her Mate
“I’m guessing some sort of warehouse?” I’d replied, not really in the mood for her riddles.
“Right you are!” Mallory said. “But here’s my plight. The warehouse has been nonfunctional for years now. Yeah, I agree; the fault lies with me. I could have been a better manager, but when your resources are stretched as thin as mine, you can’t spare any men or women to go handle the warehouse.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “Does it pay more?”
“You mean, does it pay more than the mindless data entry stuff you used to do? Of course! But have you ever managed inventory before? Do you know the first thing about warehouses? Can you make sure that all the decommissioned ships go in there and are stacked atop each other? Will you take responsibility for the biannual maintenance of those ships? Kid, it pays almost two thousand dollars more than your last job, but it’s a ton of responsibility.” Malloy had made sure to make the job as unappealing as she could with her eloquent verbal description, but I knew her better than she knew me. She was dissuading me. She didn’t know how desperate I was for a job.
“I’ll do it. All of what you’ve said. It’s gonna keep me busy and away from people. Right? I’ll be the only one there? I won’t have to interact with the wharfmen and the fishermen and all the rest of the pack members?” I asked.
“There’s an automated crane in the warehouse that picks up all the ships and places them on the shelves. All you gotta do is feed the coordinates and watch the thing do its robot magic. What more do you need? There ain’t gonna be anybody there with you. The job gets kinda lonely at times. But you get to pick your hours as long as you do all the work within the week.”
I agreed to the job, and as soon as I got the keys to the warehouse, I went down there with my first assignment. The warehouse was at the far-left end of the wharf. It had an indoor harbor from where the crane could pick up moored ships. The crane wasn’t as big as I was expecting. It was a relief that it was automated. I didn’t know the first thing about working a manual crane, but these automated ones were just a YouTube tutorial away from understanding.
The fated moment came when I was making my way through the warehouse, tallying the inventory, and making sure that all the old ships were accounted for. That’s when I saw it.
That’s when I saw Will.
***
“Can I open my eyes now?” The floor is slippery and wet!” Will protested.
“Oh, just trust me,” I said, holding his hand and guiding him inside the warehouse, positioning him right in front of the harbor, where his surprise bobbed up and down in the water. “Okay, now! Open your eyes.”
I was staring at Will, who was staring at his surprise. His face had turned long, and his mouth hung open, his eyes round, and his cheeks stretched to their limits.
“Is this…”
“The Grimm Reaper!” I squealed.
Although its wood was old, with its polish chipped off at most places, and although it could use a couple of coats of paint, Will’s old ship that he’d sailed across Europe to America was still reflecting its old resplendence through its size, its sails, and its massive hull. It was bigger than your average sailboat but smaller than a yacht. I hadn’t gotten the chance to go inside it or climb above deck. I wanted to surprise Will first.
“This is my ship,” Will whispered, his mouth covered by his hands. “I thought it was destroyed or lost or sold or worse. I thought it had sunk to the bottom of the sea!”
“I was checking inventory in the warehouse when I first saw it. At first, I thought I was hallucinating,” I said, unable to hold my excitement. “But then I saw the name painted on the side. It doesn’t look exactly like it does in the old pictures, but it’s the same ship, right?”
“Oh, God in heaven, it’s the same ship. The same one that I captained across the ocean with my entire pack inside it.”
“How’s that even possible? How did you fit around twenty or so people in it? I mean, it’s big, but it’s not that big,” I said as we walked closer to the harbor to take a good look at it.
“We were packed under the deck, body against body. It wasn’t about comfort. It was about voyaging to safety. This is the vessel that saved all our lives,” Will said.
“And now it’s yours again,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Hell yeah. I checked the archives in the record room. The ownership document still has your name on it.”
Will was still in disbelief. It was evident in the way he kept walking around the harbor, looking at the Grimm Reaper. He squinted and stared at every part of the ship for ten whole minutes while I stood there in complete silence, watching the gentle waves come inside the warehouse harbor.
Then Will suddenly jumped aboard, touching the handles on the wheel, walking to the capstan, then to the main deck, and then eventually down the hatch. After he did not appear for a long time, I got worried and jumped aboard the ship as well. From there, I went down the stairs into the cabin.
“Will?”
“Look,” Will said, pointing to a notch in the wooden wall of the cabin. I went closer to take a better look at it. It was dark in the cabin, with the only light coming from the dusty windows. But I could still make out the W.G. carved with a knife on the wood. “It really is my ship.”
“What are you going to do with it?” I asked. “Does it make you happy, being reunited with it?”
“Happy? Happy doesn’t even begin to cover it. I feel as if I’ve been made whole again. This ship, for the longest part, was an extension of me. I trusted this vessel with my life and the lives of all my pack members. It feels like I’ve reconnected with an old friend,” Will said.