The Vanishing Point Read Free Page B

unfettered through the endless vault of stars. Nothing could stop her, nothing could contain her. She imagined the unexplored new world that would soon be hers.
    The night before she was to sail, at the hour when she should have gone to her bed, she smuggled Father's telescope to her room. She opened the window wide and gazed through the lens. For all their distance, the stars shone warmly, beckoning to her like long-lost friends. If she could find her way back to them, she would be complete. What path might her life have taken if Father had given her the same education as Hannah, if he had encouraged her to be studious, if she had spent those countless afternoons poring over books instead of sneaking out to meet boys? A whole other future could have been hers. Yet when she asked herself if she regretted anything, she had to concede that she did not. If she had been a good girl, Father would never have thought to send her on this voyage.
    Peering through the lens, she entreated the night sky to reveal her destiny. A moment later she was rewarded with the sight of a meteor stitching its way across the sky in a brilliant streak. Soon there was not one but many. The heavens filled with shooting stars.
    "Hannah, come look!" She handed her the telescope. "Surely this is a good omen."
    Her sister glanced only briefly through the telescope before passing it back. Her face was pinched and her eyes were red.
    May touched Hannah's cheek. "Will you not be happy for me?"
    "They are sending you into a wilderness!"
    May folded her sister in her arms while the girl wept like a lost child. Her tears soon soaked through May's nightgown. Stroking her hair, May remembered the first time she had held Hannah, a newborn with an angry red face, screaming for her mother, who was no longer there.
And now I am leaving her, too.
May struggled not to cry. There was no telling what might happen if she let this overwhelm her.
    "Aye, a wilderness they say it is." May hugged her sister tighter. "But have you never wondered, Hannah, what a wilderness is like?" She thought of the tinker she had never seen again. If she could be born again, she would be that young man wandering from village to village with his satchel and tent, masterless and free. That night as she slept with Hannah in her arms, she dreamt she was a comet blazing her trail across the night sky.

3. Fog
Hannah
    "I T'S NOT TOO LATE. " Hannah tightened her grip on her sister's hand. "You can still say no." Lips to May's ear, she pleaded. "Say you'll stay here with us."
    On the Bristol pier, Hannah struggled to hold on to her sister, whose body kept shifting under her green cloak. May was as slippery as a mermaid and as difficult to hold on to. Sometimes it was hard to believe this beautiful, capricious person was truly her sister. Since she and May were as different as day and night, Father's friends liked to joke that one of them must be a changeling. May was everything Hannah thought she could never be—tall and dazzling with her chestnut hair, her full bosom, her sky-blue eyes. Her wide hips promised ease in childbirth. Hannah was six inches shorter, skinny and hard. If she were to cut off her frizzy red hair and put on a pair of breeches, she could pass for a boy. The only womanly thing about her was how easily she wept.
    "How can you leave us for a stranger?" she whispered. Even while she and May had embroidered the wedding dress, Hannah had prayed that her sister would have an outburst of her usual temper and declare that she was not really making the journey halfway around the world to marry some distant cousin. May had never obeyed Father or anyone else but done what she pleased. How had she consented to this? Hannah could not forgive May her eagerness, the way she gazed at the tall-masted ships and the sailors climbing the riggings. Some of the men were brown as bread, others black as molasses, gold glinting from their ears. When they came to port, Bristol smelled of spices and