Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 60 of 63

Bram stood on the boards under the mast and looked up at the crown seam. A hand's length of stitching had pulled loose along the top curve. The bag sagged where the tension had gone out of it. Every hour he stood here, Kesh moved another mile west toward the next stamp. Omondi climbed down from the inspection ladder with his glasses fogged and a strip of frayed thread pinched between two fingers. He nearly missed the last rung and caught himself on the mast rope. "Full seam repair," he said. "Not a patch. The thread's rotted where the heat ran through it back at the cold front." "How long?" "A skilled sail-mender could do it in eight hours. Maybe six." "And this harbor?" Omondi shook his head. "The harbormaster says their mender broke his hand last week. The next one is two harbors east." Bram walked to the office and asked anyway. The harbormaster shrugged and pointed at a chalkboard. No mender listed. No tender available to fetch one. Kesh had signed in twelve hours ahead and left at first light. Cora was already up in the rigging when Bram came back. She had a strip of the loose seam in her teeth and a lash knife in her hand. She dropped down and landed hard on the boards. "I can stitch it," she said. "It's not clockwork." "It's stitching. I sewed harness gears back at the shop with waxed thread finer than this." She held up the strip. "Show me the weave once. I'll match it." Bram looked at her. Sixteen years old, hat pushed back, hands already black with pitch from the mast line. She had climbed a sleet-covered face for him. She had run the owl through three storms. "Omondi runs the tension gauge," Bram said. "You stitch. I feed you thread." They worked through the afternoon and into the dark. Omondi rigged a bench lamp and burned his sleeve twice adjusting the wick. Cora sat cross-legged on the crown platform and pulled each stitch through with her whole shoulder. Bram fed her waxed cord from a spool at her knee and read the tension off Omondi's gauge every fourth pass. At the eleventh hour she tied off the last knot and cut the tail with her teeth. Omondi ran the gauge along the full length and read the numbers twice. "Holds at climb load," he said. "Barely. But it holds." Bram signed the repair log himself and stamped it. He had lost the day. Kesh was a full harbor ahead now, maybe more, with clear weather on the western circuit. He rolled the log and put it in his jacket pocket. The seam above him ticked once in the mast wind and went quiet. "Launch at dawn," he said. "We fly hard."