Read an excerpt of Bones of the Deep
Chapter 1
The wooden crate creaked as the crane lifted it from the back of the truck and swung it out over the water. Eve Calder’s breath stuck high in her chest as she watched her precious cargo clear the dock, one of her fists clenched so tightly that the manifest crumpled within her grasp. But the canvas straps were still buckled tight, and the crate was sturdy. There was no need for concern, so she forced herself to relax. She couldn’t risk attracting unnecessary attention.
The busy Fijian harbour of Suva baked around her, the heat pressing down thick and wet, settling into the hollows of her collarbones and the creases of her elbows. Diesel fumes mingled with the sharp mineral tang of salt and the sweet-rot smell of fish guts baking on the concrete, alongside harbour water roiled by too many hulls and too much commerce over the years. While there were paradise islands nearby in Fiji’s South Pacific waters, Suva was a commercial hub where no one had time to relax under palm trees. Dockworkers shouted in Fijian and English, their voices bouncing off the corrugated iron cargo sheds. A forklift beeped somewhere out of sight, and the excited laughter of tourists drifted from the customs building.
For a moment, Eve considered whether it might be easier to travel on board one of the enormous white cruise ships floating further along the wharf. She would be more anonymous amongst the many passengers, all gorging on unlimited buffets and endless entertainment. It would be a faster crossing to Vanuatu as well. But she couldn’t risk the efficiency of corporate processes or the intense security screening. She required a smaller ship and the more personal attention of a captain in need of funds, and so she — and her precious cargo — were joining the Southern Crosswind on its route to Port Vila, the harbour capital of the islands of Vanuatu further west.
The two-masted brigantine sat majestic alongside the pier, her hull a deep blue so dark it was almost black, with cream trim along the rails. The paint was scratched and faded near the waterline, scuffed by years of bumping against dock fenders in reef-scattered anchorages, but above that she was all polished timber and gleaming brass and lines of rope coiled in perfect spirals on the deck.
Eve had seen the marketing brochure. Sunset behind full sails. Dolphins in the bow wave. Smiling tourists leaning on the rail with cocktails in hand, looking out at an azure ocean with not a care in the world. A South Pacific paradise.
She could only hope that this crossing would be so untroubled.
The ship towered above the dock, foremast, mainmast, and an intricate web of shrouds and ratlines rising into the glare of the sun. The furled squares and triangles of cream canvas sails hung in their gaskets, and the rigging hummed faintly in a breath of wind.
Eve smiled as she thought back to a ship like this she had sailed on years ago, before her career pivoted to the more clinical scientific research vessels with their sterile labs and high-tech equipment. She had found peace during the long nights on bow watch, standing where the deck tapered toward the ship’s figurehead, the world reduced to the rush of water and the vast expanse of stars above. The Southern Cross. The Milky Way. Seemingly close enough to touch.
She could almost feel the bow lifting under her boots, feel the spray on her face. The pure, uncomplicated joy of being alive and far from land. Simpler times, indeed.
The crane juddered as the crate swung over the gap between dock and ship, and Eve stifled a gasp as her cargo dropped a little, before righting itself and swinging on. The label Scientific Samples was painted on the side of the crate. Words that barely described what lay inside, but might just keep prying eyes away.
Life was far from simple now, and that younger, more principled version of herself felt like a stranger.
She looked up at the quarterdeck, where Captain Tom Rourke watched the cargo loading operation with his hands on the rail. He wore the dark blue and white uniform of the ship, and in the deep furrows around his eyes and the weathered grain of his face, Eve could see the decades spent aboard, squinting into salt wind and equatorial glare.
Eve had met Rourke in the port office earlier that morning. A quick handshake and a brief glance over the paperwork before he pocketed the fat envelope that had come with it. He asked no questions and signed off on Eve’s cargo sight unseen, with an unspoken promise to carry it safely to their destination. The journey would take seven days — first blue water sailing across the open ocean, then navigating slowly through the islands of Vanuatu before reaching its capital.
Now, as the crate swung toward his ship, Rourke raised one tattooed forearm and called an order down to the workers.
The crane slowed, and the dockers shifted below, tightening the lines. The Southern Crosswind rolled almost imperceptibly against her fenders, as if bracing herself for what was coming aboard.
A couple of crew moved into position around the open hatch where the crate would descend into the hold. An older Fijian man with grey in his close-cropped hair and a coil of rope over one shoulder took charge. While others shuffled and gestured around him, he stood motionless in the chaos, watching the crate with the particular stillness of someone who had learned patience from the sea.
Eve looked down at the manifest she still held too tightly, the paper crumpled from her stress and curling at the edges in the humidity. Cargo: Scientific samples and research equipment. Fragile. Temperature controlled. Handle with care.
Her signature. Her responsibility. Her risk — and her reward, if everything went smoothly and she managed to get the cargo to Port Vila without incident. Lord Harrow-Ashcroft’s primary research vessel waited there to receive it, and so did the role he had promised her. Director of his private collection, based out of London, with an almost unlimited budget for exploration and procurement of rare specimens. The kind of position that came once in a career, if it ever came at all.
Seven days for the crossing. All she had to do was keep quiet. Keep the crate sealed. Keep sailing.
The wood creaked once more as the crate eased down towards the deck, bumping up against a side rail as it descended. The thump echoed through the hull, through the water, through the soles of Eve’s shoes on the sun-hot concrete. She couldn’t stifle her gasp.
“Don’t worry. We’ll look after your precious cargo.”
Eve turned to find a man in a faded Southern Crosswind logo T-shirt. Early forties, maybe, not much older than her. Mixed-race, his skin the warm brown of sea-soaked driftwood, of reef sand after rain. Dark hair tied back at the nape of his neck, a few curls escaping to stick to his forehead in the heat.
He pushed up his sunglasses, revealing sharp brown eyes with tired lines at the corners. He had the build of someone who lifted heavy things for a living, and his hands were clean and callused, with a smudge of grease along one forearm like a tribal marking.
“Luke Nawaqa. Engineer.” He held out a hand. “I hear you’re coming aboard with us.”
“That’s right.” Eve shook his hand. His grip was firm and professional. “Dr Eve Calder. And yes, the crate is precious cargo. I’d like to stay near it while you load.”
Luke checked his documents, frowning slightly. “Are you sure about the weight? Those straps are straining hard. Manifest says—”
“Captain Rourke signed it off.” Eve turned away to hide her eyes. The weight was more than the manifest stated, but only by a few hundred kilos. Surely not enough to make a difference to the weight distribution in the ship.
“Most of the bulk is a protective case around my scientific samples. It’s an extra layer for safety.”
Luke’s frown deepened. “As long as it doesn’t go through my floor. Or my generator.” He looked up at the ship. “She’s old. Doesn’t like surprises.”
“Neither do I,” Eve said, too quickly.
“First time on a tall ship?”
“Not quite. But first time on this one.”
Luke’s gaze flicked up to the rig, where a deckhand checked something in the shrouds, silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky. “Well. She’s prettier out in open water in full sail. You’ll get a chance to see that on the way, weather willing, of course.” He looked back at the crate, now being lowered toward the open hatch. “Are you coming aboard?”
“In a minute.”
Eve couldn’t pull herself away while the dockworkers still wrestled with her cargo. Chains rattled. Boots thudded on timber. Ropes snaked out, holding the crate steady as it descended.
The older Fijian man moved in and took hold of one of the guidelines. His muscles bunched under his faded shirt as he kept the crate from swinging too far. His movements were economical, unhurried, with the ease of a man who had done this ten thousand times.
“That’s Samu Vakatawa,” Luke said, following her gaze. “He’s been on this run longer than the rest of us put together. Knows this harbour, these channels, and every reef and rock between here and Vanuatu. Every sacred place, too.”
Samu’s head turned slightly, as if he’d heard his name over the din of the dock, or felt their eyes on him.
For a moment his gaze met Eve’s. There was no accusation in his look. Nothing that should have made her stomach dip and her skin prickle with sudden heat. But she knew what was really in that crate. And the way Samu looked at her — a kind of measuring assessment — made her feel as if he suspected something, too.
The crate bumped one more time against the side of the hold, then vanished into the open hatch. For a moment, framed against the bright sky, it looked as if the ship had swallowed it whole, and Eve couldn’t help the sense of foreboding that rose within her.
Out beyond Samu, beyond the shelter of the harbour wall, a hard dark line had formed on the horizon where before there had been nothing but blue. A smudge of bruised purple climbed over the edge of the world. The air was still hot, still thick, but now, a breath of cooler wind blew down the canyon of the dock, bringing with it the faint metallic tang of rain that hadn’t yet fallen.
The kind of wind that comes before a storm.
Chapter 2
The captain’s cabin was one of the few private spaces on the Southern Crosswind. It wasn’t much, barely eight feet square, with a bunk against the bulkhead and a desk that folded down from the wall. But it was his, and Rourke was grateful for it. Eighteen years of command and the accumulated debris of a life lived at sea: charts soft from handling, brass instruments dulled by salt air, photographs pinned to the timber where the varnish had worn away.
Rourke closed the door behind him and stood for a moment listening to the sounds of the dock — the creak of lines, the slap of water against the hull, the shouts of the harbour workers.
Through the porthole, he could see the crane swinging back toward the wharf, its work done. The cargo was secured. He’d received his first payment, and there was more to come on delivery.
The money couldn’t come too soon.
Rourke lowered himself onto the edge of his bunk. Carefully, the way he did everything now, conserving energy he no longer had to spare. The pain was manageable today, just a dull pressure beneath his ribs that he’d learned to ignore. Tomorrow might be different. Next week almost certainly would be. But today, he could function. Today, he could captain his ship.
He pulled open the drawer beneath the chart table, reaching for the envelope hidden at the back. It was creased from handling, the paper soft at the folds. He didn’t need to open it. He’d memorised the contents months ago, but he opened it anyway, some compulsion making him read the words again.
Auckland Oncology Department. The letterhead was tasteful and professional, designed to convey competence and compassion in equal measure. Below it, his death sentence, rendered in the passive voice of medical documentation.
Adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. Stage 4. Locally advanced, involving the superior mesenteric artery.
It was inoperable. The surgeon and the oncologist had been clear on that. Chemotherapy might extend his life by six to twelve months, but he would have to stay on dry land. Without treatment, the median survival was four to eight months. That had been four months ago.
Rourke folded the letter and slid it back into its envelope, put it back into the drawer, into the darkness where he kept the things he couldn’t bear to look at but couldn’t bring himself to destroy. His hands were steady. They’d been steady when the oncologist told him, too. A lifetime at sea had taught him to absorb bad news without flinching. Take the wave on the bow and keep sailing because what else was there to do?
He’d told no one. Not the shipowners, who would pull him from command immediately. Not his crew, who would look at him differently — with pity, or fear, or the particular discomfort of the healthy in the presence of the dying. Not even his sister in Dunedin, who would insist he come home and spend his final months in her spare bedroom, watching television and waiting for the end.
No, thank you. His end would come at sea, somehow, someday. Not wasting away in a hospital bed. Rourke had made that decision the day he walked out of the oncologist’s office, and he hadn’t wavered since.
But the ship. The ship was a different matter.
He pulled out the accounts ledger. The real one, not the sanitised version he sent to the company each quarter. The numbers were written in his own hand, columns of figures that told a story of decline. Revenue down eighteen per cent over five years. Operating costs up twenty-five.
The hull inspection that should have happened last year, deferred because there was no money to pay for it. The rigging that needed replacing, the sails that were patched beyond patching, the bilge pump that made a sound like a dying animal when the ship heeled over at a certain angle.
The company didn’t care about this individual ship. They were a holding entity in Singapore, which had bought the Southern Crosswind as part of a job lot: three ships, a marina in Tonga, and some waterfront property in Vanuatu.
The property and the marina had appreciated. The ships had not. Every year, there were meetings about ‘rationalising the fleet,’ which meant selling the underperforming vessels for whatever they’d bring and writing off the loss.
The Southern Crosswind was the oldest vessel in the fleet. Built in 1962 in a yard in Auckland, she was one of the last traditional brigantines constructed in the South Pacific. Over sixty years of service. Decades of carrying cargo and passengers and, once, during a cyclone, a hundred and fourteen refugees from a flooded atoll. She’d earned her rest, but rest, for a ship like this, meant the breaker’s yard. Stripped for parts and scrap metal, her timbers burned or buried, her story ended.
Rourke couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t let that happen. As long as he was captain, as long as he could stand at her helm and feel her respond to his hands, the Southern Crosswind would sail.
But he wouldn’t be captain for much longer. The pain was getting worse, and the fatigue harder to hide. Three months, six months, maybe a year if he was lucky, and then the company would discover his secret, or his body would simply give out. Either way, the ship would need a new master.
He thought about Luke.
Fifteen years at sea, and more natural talent than anyone Rourke had sailed with in decades. Luke understood the ship the way some people understood music or mathematics: instinctively, completely, absorbing a language that couldn’t be taught. He’d watched Luke at the helm in rough weather, seen the way he anticipated the waves. The way he moved with the ship rather than against her. Given time, the necessary certifications and sea hours, and the chance to prove himself, Luke could be a great captain.
But he had a temper. Rourke knew about the fights, the charges, and the reputation that followed him from port to port. He also knew about the provocations Luke faced, the casual cruelty of men who saw his mixed heritage as an invitation to test him, but fairness didn’t matter to the maritime boards, or the insurance companies, or the owners who signed off on command appointments. What mattered was his record, and Luke’s record had holes in it that would take years to fill. Years Rourke didn’t have.
He considered Samu.
The Fijian had been with the Southern Crosswind even longer than Rourke. He’d signed on as a deckhand in 1987, worked his way up to bosun, and could have had his own command decades ago if he’d wanted it.
But Samu didn’t want command. Samu only wanted this ship, this route, this particular stretch of the Pacific where his ancestors had sailed in outrigger canoes before Europeans knew this ocean existed. He’d turned down three offers that Rourke knew about, probably more that he didn’t. The company had tried to transfer him twice. Both times, he’d threatened to quit, and both times, they’d backed down rather than lose him.
Besides, Samu was sixty-one. Too old to start over. If the Southern Crosswind were scrapped, he’d go back to his village on Kadavu and live out his years in the house his grandfather built. That would be fine, but Samu deserved more years on the ship he loved.
And then there was Jess.
Rourke closed his eyes, feeling the familiar ache that had nothing to do with the cancer. Jess had been cooking on the Southern Crosswind for eleven years. She’d come aboard as a temporary replacement while the regular cook recovered from surgery, and she’d never left. She was fifty-four now, a widow with two grown children in New Zealand who called on Sundays and sent photos of grandchildren she’d never bonded with. The galley was her kingdom, and the crew was her family. She’d told Rourke once, late at night over whiskey in this very cabin, that she’d rather die than go back to land and be shackled to the expectations of being a grandma. She loved the freedom of the ocean. It was all she wanted, and at her age, she wouldn’t get another galley position on a ship as lovely as this.
Rourke understood them all. They were his people, his responsibility, and he would not fail them.
Which is why he’d taken the money.
He opened another drawer and pulled out a different envelope, the paper stiff and expensive. The letterhead read Harrow-Ashcroft Holdings, with an address in Mayfair, London, that probably cost more per month than the Southern Crosswind earned in a year.
Rourke had never met Lord Harrow-Ashcroft, but he knew him by reputation. He was a collector of rare things and an acquirer of items that weren’t available through legitimate channels. The kind of wealthy eccentric who treated international heritage laws as suggestions rather than legalities, and who had the money and connections to make problems disappear.
Rourke had carried cargo for him twice before, always through intermediaries, always with payment in cash and a serious bonus upon timely delivery. The crates had been similar to the one now sitting in his hold, each accompanied by a nervous academic who didn’t want to answer any questions. He never asked what was inside. He’d learned long ago that it was better not to ask.
The payment for this voyage was thirty thousand dollars. More than the ship would earn in passenger fares for three crossings. Enough to cover the hull inspection and repairs to the bilge pump. Enough, maybe, to convince the company that the Southern Crosswind was worth keeping for another few years and buy time he wouldn’t be around to use, but might help his crew.
Rourke set the letter down and stared at the photograph pinned above his desk. It showed the Southern Crosswind under full sail, her bow cutting through blue water.
She was beautiful. She’d always been beautiful. And when he was gone, when the cancer had finished its work and his ashes were scattered on the waters he’d spent his life sailing, his only wish was that she would still be here. Still carrying passengers between the islands. Still creaking and groaning and complaining in the language only her crew understood.
That was what mattered. Not what was in the crate. Not what Dr Calder was smuggling for her wealthy employer. Not the laws Rourke was bending, nor the principles he compromised. Only the ship mattered, and the future he was trying to buy for the people who depended on her.
He heard footsteps on the deck above, the familiar rhythm of Samu’s patrol. Checking the lines, testing the rigging, doing the thousand small tasks that kept a sailing vessel alive. Samu had been on deck since before dawn, and he would probably stay until well after dark. He didn’t sleep well; none of them did at their age, but Samu channelled his insomnia into work and service, into his love for the ship and life aboard it.
Rourke should tell him. He should tell all of them. They deserved to know their futures were uncertain, but what good would it do?
Samu would worry. Luke would grieve. Jess would try to force him to rest when there was work to be done. Their pity would poison the last months of his command.
No. Better to let them remember him as he’d always been. Strong and steady. In control. A captain until the end.
He put the letter away and pulled the chart toward him. The route from Suva to Port Vila was marked, the waypoints noted, the hazards circled. He’d sailed it countless times. He knew the currents, the weather patterns, and the particular quirks of the sea between these islands.
The weather forecast was concerning, though. A tropical depression forming to the north-west, still chaotic, but with the potential to strengthen. The sensible thing would be to wait it out. Most captains would. He’d seen the skippers from other vessels gathered at the marina bar, talking about delays and rescheduled departures. He could join them, wait for the system to pass, then sail in a few days.
But Dr Calder had made it clear that timing was essential. The research vessel at Port Vila had a narrow window, and arrangements that couldn’t be postponed.
Besides, the bonus for on-time delivery was substantial. Another twenty thousand, on top of the thirty already promised. Enough to give the Southern Crosswind another year of life.
The depression might strengthen, or it might dissipate. That was the thing about weather in the tropics. It was predictable until it wasn’t, stable until it suddenly turned. But Rourke had sailed through all kinds of weather. The ship could handle it, and the passengers might just get a taste of real life out on the wild sea.
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. “Tom?” Jess called out, her voice muffled by the timber. “The passengers will be boarding soon. Thought you might want some lunch before the chaos starts.”
Rourke smiled despite himself. Jess was always trying to feed him. Of course she’d noticed the weight he’d lost and the fatigue he tried to hide. She hadn’t said anything directly; that wasn’t her way, but the portions she served him had grown larger, the meals richer, as if she could cure whatever ailed him through sheer force of nutrition.
“I’ll be out in five.”
He heard her footsteps retreat, the familiar creak of the companionway as she headed back to the galley. For a moment, Rourke sat in the silence of his cabin.
Forty-three years. Three ships. Two marriages, both casualties of his devotion to the water. No children. None that he knew of, anyway, though there had been port towns and lonely nights and the kind of brief connections that sailors always made with the women who waited on shore.
It was a good life. Not perfect, but then what was? Every day on the ocean was worth it, and he would seize every one of them he had left.
Rourke straightened the charts and stood. The pain flared briefly, then subsided to its usual dull background ache. He had passengers to greet, a voyage to prepare for, a crew that depended on him, and a crate in the hold that would pay for another year.
He’d made his decision. They would sail.
Chapter 3
A door slammed and Eve finally tore her gaze away from the cargo hold the crate had disappeared into. She turned to see several taxis and a minivan pull up alongside the dock, disgorging passengers and luggage in a confusion of wheeled cases and impractical hats.
The tour company rep, a young Fijian woman in a bright floral polo shirt, checked names off a clipboard under the thin shade of a parasol, her smile fixed and faintly desperate in the heat.
Eve had seen the passenger manifest as part of her agreement with the captain. She’d scanned it for anyone who might ask awkward questions about her cargo, but they all looked like tourists on the trip of a lifetime.
A woman in her early fifties stood apart from the cluster, dragging a medium-sized suitcase and looking up at the Southern Crosswind with an expression caught between awe and ‘what have I done.’ Her sleeveless top was already damp at the small of her back, and she twisted a thin gold band on her left hand. Eve guessed this must be Helen Cartwright — a lawyer, if she remembered correctly.
A few metres away, a man in an expensive linen shirt, flashy Rolex, and wraparound sunglasses was talking too loudly. American, of course. Early forties. He wore a Panama hat, entirely inappropriate for the wind he would soon encounter on deck.
“I closed that nine-figure deal within a week of the pitch,” he boasted to the rep, who smiled politely. “Figured I deserved a break, then I’ll have a look at property on some of these islands.”
Brad Lozano III. Eve had looked him up after seeing his name on the manifest. Money from venture capital investments, and clearly new money by the look of him, despite the dynastic pretensions of his name.
A middle-aged woman in a Southern Crosswind crew T-shirt, her face flushed from the heat, approached the gangway with two crates of vegetables on a handcart. As she manoeuvred around a stack of bottled water, she nearly crashed into the path of another arriving taxi.
“Careful, Jess!” Luke called from somewhere near the bow. “Are you going to run down the tourists before we leave, or after?”
“Depends who forgets to tip,” she shot back without missing a beat, and winked at Eve before heading up toward the ship.
The newly arrived taxi disgorged a young man clutching a laptop-sized dry bag like a lifeline. He pushed his hair back from his forehead as he scanned the dock with rapid, darting glances.
Ethan Park. Korean American, early thirties. A tech startup burnout, here for a digital detox, according to his booking form. Eve noticed his fingers twitch toward the dry bag, suspecting that his detox wouldn’t even last the day.
She intended to stay as distant as she could from them all, and avoid questions about why she was really there, or what lay in the darkness of the hold.
The tour rep waved her clipboard at the gathering passengers. “Okay, everyone, if I can just get your attention!”
Eve cut around the cluster before she could be swept up into it. She’d already signed the indemnity forms and read the safety briefing. On paper, she was a researcher, here to collect environmental data during the voyage, which explained her cargo if any authorities asked. In the meantime, she would remain neutral, bland. Forgettable.
The gangway bounced under her weight as Eve boarded, and she curled her hand around the rail, her palm against the warm, salt-gritted metal. The deck thrummed beneath her boots, and a low vibration rose through the timber as the engine came online deep in the ship’s belly.
As the final passengers boarded, she stood by the mainmast, letting the shipboard sounds wash over her. The rattle of chain through hawseholes. The slap and squeal of mooring lines under tension. Shouts from the crew in that particular cadence sailors used, half instruction, half song.
“Lines off!”
Captain Rourke’s voice carried cleanly from the quarterdeck, his years of command giving it an effortless projection that cut through the harbour noise. There was no need to shout. The crew heard him. The ship heard him.
Luke dropped down the short ladder from the afterdeck with the balance of someone at ease on board — even when the ship was heaving, she imagined. Eve watched him cross to the port bow, where Samu and a younger crewman coiled the slack of a thick hawser as a stevedore on the dock slipped it from the bollard.
A gap opened up between the hull and the concrete.
The harbour water in between was dark with oil sheen and floating debris. A plastic bottle, a dead fish rolling belly-up. Then the swell nudged the ship back, and the gap closed again, as if the dock was reluctant to let her go.
More movements, more small shifts in the geometry of rope and timber. The Southern Crosswind was coming properly awake now, shrugging off the stillness of the dock, remembering what she was built to do. The masts creaked overhead as if stretching after a long sleep.
Eve felt the ship’s slight, inevitable roll as the last line splashed free.
A cheer went up from the cluster of passengers on the foredeck as the gap between ship and shore widened again. A foot, then two, then a spreading channel of dark water.
No going back now.
“Alright, folks.” Rourke came down from the quarterdeck and stood with one hand on the mast. “I’m Captain Tom Rourke, and I’m responsible for getting you and this vessel safely from here to Vanuatu. With any luck, we’ll have some fun along the way.”
Polite chuckles. The sound of people relaxing into the performance of a man they wanted to trust.
“This isn’t a cruise ship. You can get your hands dirty if you want to — hauling lines, flaking chain, taking a turn at the helm, or standing a watch under the stars. My crew will teach you everything — if you want to learn.”
Rourke turned to nod over at Luke.
“Luke there is our engineer and my second-in-command, so ask him any technical question. And be especially nice to Jess — she controls your food and therefore your happiness.”
Jess grinned from behind a crate of provisions as Rourke continued. “Samu up there keeps us off the reefs and on the straight and narrow. Any questions about the islands, or the old ways, he’s your man.”
Samu raised one hand without turning. His gaze was fixed on the harbour mouth, where the channel markers lined up in a sequence of red and green.
“Now, some boring but important stuff. There are ropes to trip over, ladders to fall down, and bits of metal to bang your head on. Move carefully. One hand for you, one hand for the ship. If a crew member tells you to move, you move. They’re not being rude; they’re trying to keep you in possession of the correct number of limbs.” His gaze flicked to Brad, whose attention was on the horizon, not the captain. “Questions?”
Eve watched Rourke’s face as he spoke. There was no drama, no attempt to frighten anyone for effect. Just a presentation of fact. She’d heard that tone before in briefings on research vessels and submersible descents, in all the routine ways that humans reminded each other that the ocean didn’t care if they lived or died.
“Last thing,” Rourke said. “You’ve all seen the clouds out there.”
He nodded toward the horizon. The bruise-dark smudge Eve had noticed from the dock had broadened now, spreading across the sky like an ink spill.
“We’re watching the forecast,” Rourke continued, “and I’ve done this run more times than I care to count. So have Samu and Luke. We know what this ship can handle. If things get rough, we’ll keep you informed. Until then” — he spread his arms wide — “enjoy the ride.”
He turned and joined the crew, an easy camaraderie between them as they expertly navigated the busy channel out to sea.
The harbour stretched behind them in a widening panorama. The angular jut of the fuel dock, the container cranes looming over Suva’s waterfront like skeletal giants, and the green hills beyond. The island was already smaller, receding the way her old life had — the cramped university office, the endless grant rejections, all of it shrinking behind her the moment she’d said yes to Harrow-Ashcroft and glimpsed a new horizon for her career.
The breeze off the water grew stronger, carrying the salt and iodine tang of the surrounding reefs, with the cleaner smell of open ocean beyond. The wind lifted Eve’s hair from her neck, cooling the sweat that had gathered there.
Ahead, the channel markers led toward a gap in the reef, and beyond them lay the edge of the shelf, where the turquoise shallows gave way to a deep, almost purple blue. The drop-off. The beginning of the real ocean.
Samu stood at the bow with one hand on the forestay, the other shading his eyes. He called distances back to the wheel in a low, steady cadence, his voice carrying without effort. “Ten metres. Eight. Five to the red. Reef head showing starboard bow.”
While the ship had the most up-to-date instruments, the reef and its ecosystem were living things, and Samu’s sharp gaze aided their way through.
The tourists clustered along the rail, pointing at the shallows where coral heads showed beneath the surface, brown and gold and vivid green, their edges sharp enough to tear a hull open. A turtle broke the water for a moment, its expression ancient and unhurried, before slipping back into the blue.
“The reef is so close,” Helen murmured, coming to stand near Eve at the rail. “Feels like we could reach out and touch it.”
“We’re still inside the lagoon,” Eve said. “It shelves off fast on the other side of the markers though.”
She knew the charts of this area. Depth numbers multiplying beyond the neat blue hatching of coastal shallows. Two hundred metres. Five hundred. A thousand. The numbers became abstract beyond a certain point, just digits that meant a very long way down.
A frigate bird wheeled overhead, all angles and sharp black wings. It circled once, riding a thermal, then turned abruptly back toward land, its wingbeats suddenly urgent, as if it had hit an invisible wall.
Samu watched the bird fly away. His lips moved silently as he bent and touched the deck with his fingertips, then as he straightened, he touched his forehead in a gesture that looked like prayer.
Eve’s skin prickled. She told herself it was the change in the air. The breeze had picked up a few degrees of coolness, threading through the warmth like a current of different water. The metallic tang of rain sharpened the salt, carrying something almost electric on its edge.
The engine note shifted as they cleared the last of the markers. Rourke gave a brief blast on the ship’s horn, as a courtesy to other vessels, to the harbour, to whatever spirits might be listening. The sound rolled out across the water.
“Stand by to set sail!”
The words galvanised the crew. They moved toward halyards and belaying pins with the coordination of those who had done this together a hundred times. They unwrapped the lines around the sails and with a flapping, snapping sound, the canvas was suddenly alive. The foresail dropped from its yard, cream-coloured fabric bellying and twisting as it searched for the wind.
Then it caught. A shudder ran through the rigging, and the sail filled with a sound like a held breath finally released.
The ship heeled. Just a fraction, a gentle lean to starboard as the wind took hold, but Eve sensed it in some deep, animal part of her brain that remembered what it felt like to be carried by something far more powerful than herself.
The mainsail followed. More canvas, more hands hauling, more of that glorious creaking and straining as the Southern Crosswind remembered her purpose.
Then the engine wound down. Coughed once. Fell silent.
The hiss of water along the hull and the creak of timber and rope. The flutter and snap of canvas overhead. The wind itself, speaking directly to everyone aboard.
A murmur went through the passengers. Awe, or something close to it. Even Brad looked briefly sincere, his macho posturing forgotten as he stared up at the belly of the mainsail.
Eve walked forward, past the cluster of passengers and the coiled lines and brass fittings sparkling in the sun. She moved to the bow, where the deck tapered toward the bowsprit and the figurehead pointed the way into the blue ocean ahead.
The water was fully deep below them now, a rich blue-purple that could have been ten metres or ten thousand, and there were days of only blue water ahead.
Of course, there were scattered islands on the way to Vanuatu, atolls and volcanic peaks, but most of their route passed over water that went down for kilometres.
Eve shivered as she thought of the ocean beneath and what lay down in the cargo hold, what she had brought up from those depths.
A swell suddenly lifted the Southern Crosswind, held her for a heartbeat at the top of the rise, then let her slide down the other side. The masts creaked. The sails strained at their sheets. The wind came stronger, carrying the first breath of whatever waited in that wall of cloud on the horizon.
Perhaps it would pass them by. Perhaps the sun would shine every day of their passage. Seven days was all she needed, then this would be over, and a new phase of her life would begin.
Behind Eve, someone laughed. A bright and uncomplicated sound, someone having a good time without knowing what fathomless depths lay beneath them all.
Chapter 4
The bunks were coffins with curtains. Eve stood in the narrow corridor of the passenger quarters and watched the others discover this for themselves as they stowed luggage and rested before dinner.
The space was barely wide enough for two people to pass, lined on both sides with wooden berths stacked three high, each one curtained off with faded canvas that did nothing to muffle sound or provide real privacy. The air was close and warm, thick with the mingled scents of sunscreen and nervous sweat and the particular mustiness of mattresses that had absorbed decades of salt air.
Helen stood before her assigned berth — middle tier, port side — with the expression of someone realising that the brochure photographs had been taken from very specific angles. She reached in and tested the mattress with one hand, then grimaced a little.
“It’s… cosy,” she said, with determined brightness.
Brad had no such restraint. He stood in the middle of the passage, his arms crossed. “You’re kidding me. This is steerage. I paid a premium and they’ve got me bunking like a goddamn refugee.”
Helen tried to calm him. “It’s clearly an authentic experience. The bunks must be traditional.”
“Traditional for who? Prisoners?”
Ethan had already climbed into his berth and drawn the curtain. Eve could see the glow of his phone through the canvas, a device he was supposedly here to escape.
Eve found her own bunk at the forward end of the passage, where the hull curved inward and the space narrowed even further. She’d requested it specifically so she could be closer to the bow — and above the hold.
She slid her bag onto the thin mattress and sat on the edge, feeling the ship move beneath her. The Southern Crosswind heeled gently to starboard, the sails drawing well, and through the hull beside her head she could hear the rush of water, intimate as a whisper.
Behind her, Brad was still complaining, Helen was muttering about seasickness tablets, and someone’s luggage had become wedged in the passage too narrow to accommodate it all.
Eve lay back and pulled her curtain closed, listening as the hull creaked around her. The water rushed by. And below her, in the darkness of the hold, her cargo rested.
* * *
Dinner was served at eight as darkness fell. The compact saloon was a low-ceilinged space of polished timber and brass fittings gone green at the edges. A long table dominated the centre, scarred by years of burns and spillages, flanked by bolted-down benches that forced everyone into proximity whether they wanted it or not. Electric lamps swung gently above, casting shadows that swayed with the ship’s motion.
As the passengers assembled, Jess emerged from the galley with a pot of fish curry, the steam fragrant with coconut, lime, and ginger. She moved with easy balance, setting the pot on the table without spilling a drop.
“Fresh catch,” she said. “Snapper.”
Brad perked up at this. “You fish from the ship? What kind of gear do you use?”
“Trolling lines, mostly. Maybe Luke will show you.” Jess smiled at everyone. “Sticky rice is coming. Makes it easier to eat when the ship’s moving.”
Eve took a seat at the far end of the table, her back to the bulkhead, where she could stay out of the conversation. She found the forced conviviality of strangers tiring. It was one of the reasons she’d pursued so much time underwater — the silence, the solitude, the relief of a world where no one expected small talk.
The bright chatter merely masked a growing awareness of how small the ship was, how vast the ocean, and how many days remained before anyone could escape.
Helen sat down opposite Eve. “You’re doing marine research, I hear?”
Eve spooned herself some curry, determined to finish the meal quickly. “Yes, environmental data collection. Reef health. Biodiversity indices. That sort of thing.”
“Sounds like important work.” Helen nodded with the vague approval of someone who didn’t really understand the details but wanted to be supportive.
It was hard to talk anyway as Brad held forth about a fishing trip in Costa Rica that had apparently involved a marlin the size of a small car, and very soon, the passengers retired for the night, exhausted by the sun and the sea air, still getting used to the roll of the ship.
Outside the portholes, the last light bled from the sky. The stars emerged, hard and bright and indifferent, and the Southern Crosswind sailed on into the dark.
* * *
Helen couldn’t sleep.
It was the heat and the unfamiliar motion beneath her, and the thin mattress that did nothing to cushion the hard slats beneath. Brad’s snoring didn’t help, and the smell of salt and old wood and a faint chemical tang from the head all added to the nausea.
Helen lay in the dark and listened to the ship breathe around her. The creak of timber and the whisper of water against the hull, and the distant clang of something metal shifting in the hold. It was so different to back home, and yet these should be the sounds of adventure, of escape to whatever she was looking for out here on the edge of the world.
Instead, it made her long for her bedroom back in Hampstead. The familiar give of the mattress she’d slept on for twelve years. David’s breathing beside her, not a snore but a soft exhalation she’d learned to tune out so completely she only noticed it when it wasn’t there. The particular quality of London night, never quite dark, but always softened by streetlights and the glow of neighbours’ windows and enlivened by the distant rumble of a city that never really slept.
But Helen was here because she desperately wanted to escape that bedroom. That house. That life. She’d spent eighteen months planning this trip, researching different kinds of voyages, comparing routes, reading testimonials from other women who’d done something similar. Women who wrote about finding themselves on the open ocean and about shedding the accumulated weight of decades and emerging lighter, freer, ready for the next chapter.
That’s what she wanted, wasn’t it? Because home wasn’t enough anymore. She needed to prove she was more than just work and domesticity, on repeat, ad infinitum. She needed to be a more interesting person again. Someone who went out into the world and did things, rather than sitting at home every evening searching for the next series to binge-watch.
Helen lay in her bunk for another ten minutes before admitting defeat. Her insomnia had clearly followed her from London. Of course it had. You couldn’t outrun your own body, and the biology of midlife was just one of those challenges.
She slipped from beneath the thin blanket and dressed quickly in the dark, moving carefully past the other bunks. Someone muttered in their sleep as the ship rolled, and Helen braced herself against the passage wall, feeling the unfamiliar motion in her stomach and her knees.
The galley was lit by a single lamp when she pushed through the swinging door. She’d expected to find it empty and had planned to make herself a cup of tea and sit alone with her thoughts until exhaustion finally claimed her. Instead, she found Jess.
The cook stood at the narrow counter with her back to the door, a knife in her hand, working through a pile of vegetables with a rhythmic efficiency that spoke of years of practice. Onions, already diced. Carrots in neat orange coins. A pot of something simmered on the stove, which swung gently on pivots as the ship rolled, staying level while everything else tilted. Helen watched it for a moment, oddly hypnotised.
The small space was warm with the smell of stock and herbs.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” Jess smiled. “Kettle’s just boiled if you want tea.”
“Thank you.” Helen hesitated in the doorway. “I don’t want to disturb you.”
“Don’t worry, you’re not.” Jess glanced over her shoulder, and Helen saw the tiredness in her face. Not the fresh tiredness of one sleepless night, but the kind that settled into the lines around your eyes and never quite left. “Company’s nice, actually. It gets quiet on night prep.”
Helen found a mug and a box of tea bags as she moved carefully in the cramped space. Everything in the galley was secured against the ship’s motion. Pots in their racks, utensils on their hooks, even the cutting board held in place by wooden rails. A whole life made stable against constant movement.
“Do you do this every night?” Helen asked.
“Mostly.” Jess swept the carrots into a bowl with the flat of her blade. “I don’t sleep much these days. You know how it is.”
“I do indeed.” Helen poured hot water over her tea bag and waited for it to steep. “How long have you been on the ship?”
“Eleven years now. I love it out here.” Jess started on the celery, her knife moving in quick, precise strokes.
Helen took a sip of her tea. “That’s a long time.”
Jess shrugged. “Not really. The ocean is the only thing that makes sense some days.”
Helen found a spot on the bench that ran along one wall. Outside the porthole, there was nothing but darkness, the absolute black of open ocean at night, unbroken by city lights or passing ships or anything that might remind her where she was.
“What did you do before this?” Helen asked.
“I cooked back on land.” Jess paused for just a moment. “Everyone has a life before. Mine ended, so I found a new one.”
The words hung in the galley’s warm air, and Helen waited, sensing there was more, but not wanting to push.
“My husband,” Jess said finally. “Neil. He was a boat builder. Wooden boats, traditional methods. We had a yard in Whangārei, up in Northland, New Zealand. Twenty-three years we worked there together, and I cooked for the boaties and tourists.” Her knife resumed its rhythm, slower now. “He went deep-sea fishing one morning and didn’t come back. They found the boat two days later, empty, with no sign of what had happened.”
“I’m so sorry,” Helen said quietly.
“I couldn’t stay in the house. Couldn’t stay in the yard.” Jess’s voice was matter-of-fact, but her hands stilled once more on the cutting board. “Everything reminded me of him. The sawdust, the varnish, the leftover coffee in his tin. The kids were old enough, so I sold everything and got on a boat. I wanted to be out here on the water where he is, at least in spirit.”
She turned to face Helen and leaned back against the counter. In the lamplight, her face was softer than it had been on deck, the lines of competence and efficiency giving way to something more vulnerable.
“What about you?” Jess asked. “What are you running from?”
Helen opened her mouth to deny it, to give the version she’d rehearsed, about needing adventure, or treating herself, or stepping outside her comfort zone. But something in Jess’s steady gaze made the prepared words stick in her throat.
“My marriage. My job. Midlife. All of it.” Helen sighed. “I’m not running from it, exactly. More like… trying to remember who I was before, or who I could be again. There’s nothing wrong with any of it. From the outside, my life is perfect. But to me, it just feels like the same monotonous comfort day after day. I needed something to break the cycle.”
“So you got on a boat.”
“So I got on a boat.” Helen smiled. “Doesn’t seem as brave when I say it out loud. A few weeks on the other side of the world, and then I go home to the same house, the same husband, the same life—”
“Will you, though?”
Helen blinked. “Sorry?”
“Will you go home to the same life?” Jess turned back to her vegetables, resuming her work. “Seems to me that’s a choice.” She scraped the celery into the pot. “The sea doesn’t necessarily fix anything, but sometimes it shows you things from a perspective you couldn’t see from land.”
Helen sat with that for a moment, feeling the ship move beneath her, sensing the vastness of the dark water all around them. She thought about David back in Hampstead, her daughter in Bristol, her son in Edinburgh, the web of obligations and expectations and routines that had become so familiar she’d stopped questioning whether they fit her anymore. Perhaps she had more choices than she thought.
She set down her tea and moved to the tiny sink. “Can I help?”
“Sure.” Jess handed her a knife and a bag of potatoes, showing her how to hold them steady against the ship’s motion, how to peel in long strokes away from her body.
They worked in companionable silence for a while, the only sounds the thud of knives on cutting boards and the gentle bubbling of the stockpot. Outside, the ocean moved in its ancient rhythm, indifferent to the specks of life upon it.
“My kids call on Sundays,” Jess said eventually. “Both of them every week without fail. They send photos of the grandchildren. They ask when I’m coming home to New Zealand.” She shook her head. “But they don’t understand that this is home. The sea took something from me, but it gave something back too. A reason to get up every day, and a place where I’m needed.” She glanced at Helen. “The crew here — they’re not much, but they’re mine. Luke, Samu, even that grumpy old bastard Rourke. They need someone to feed them and fuss over them, to make sure they eat their vegetables. And I need to be needed.”
Helen understood that. The need to be needed kept her in her marriage, her job, and her life, long past the point where any of it made her happy.
“I envy you,” she breathed. “Finding a place where you fit. Finding your people.”
“You’ll find yours.” Jess spoke with quiet certainty. “Sometimes it takes losing everything to figure out what you actually want to keep.”
Helen finished peeling the potato and reached for another. The motion was becoming familiar now. Brace, peel, turn, brace again. The ship rolled, and she rolled with it. Perhaps she was starting to find her balance.
Chapter 5
Eve heard Helen go up to the galley and the strains of her soft conversation with Jess.
She couldn’t wait any longer. She swung her legs over the edge of the bunk, dressed quickly, and pulled on soft-soled shoes. The passage was dark, with only emergency lighting casting small pools of red at intervals along the floor, and Eve stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust, feeling the ship’s motion.
The route was simple enough. Back along the passenger corridor, through the watertight door, down the ladder, and into the hold. She just needed to check her cargo was safe, then she could sleep.
The working section of the ship smelled of diesel and rust. Pipes ran overhead in bundles, with insulation coming loose at the edges. The deck plates were steel here, not timber, and they rang faintly under her feet. To her right, a ladder dropped into darkness.
Eve took the ladder, gripping the rungs tighter than she needed to as she descended into air that grew cooler and damper with each step.
The smell changed. Less diesel, more bilge: that particular reek of water trapped in a ship’s lowest places, stewing with rust and old oil and the organic residue of everything that had ever leaked or died down here.
And ahead, in the deepest part of the hold, was the crate.
Her feet found the deck at the bottom. Eve pulled out her small torch and turned on the tiny penlight. The hold was smaller than she’d expected, and the overhead low enough that she had to duck slightly. Cargo netting lined the bulkheads, holding tinned food, spare parts, coils of rope, and other supplies next to more tie-down points and drainage channels.
The ocean was louder down here. She could hear it moving against the hull on both sides, a sound almost like breathing, and the ship’s motion felt different too. It was more immediate, more intimate, as if she were inside the body of some great animal rather than merely riding on its back.
She reached the crate and stood with her hand on the plywood. The straps were still tight, the metallic buckles cold under her fingers as she worked them loose one by one. Then the latches — a series of them, sequenced, secure enough to deter casual inspection but simple enough when you knew the order. Eve worked them open, her heart pounding as she considered what lay within.
She lifted the lid.
What was inside the crate?
Keep reading Bones of the Deep —
