Meg sits in the rigging, pulling her violin closer to her chest and trying very, very hard not to cry. Her heart feels far too heavy where it dangles, a passion fruit between her lungs. It is waterlogged, it is too heavy, each throb hurts.
She will never see him again.
Her father shouts orders below, tells the sailors to remove the gangplank (she can hear some kind of rough edge to his voice, it is grated by the air). She doesn't like some of the men they've hired, as the original crew aren't at all ready to leave immediately. One boy, with horrible oily skin and thick breath, keeps looking at her, rolling his eyes up and down her body – it makes her feel dirty, and makes her aware of the rising panic in her chest.
'Wait!' It's Thomas. Down below, holding a bag, running to the ship.
'Leave the plank!' she screams, then swings herself down the rigging, landing on the deck and running down to the dock, catching his hands in hers.
'What are you doing here?'
'We're coming with you.'
'What do you mean, Thomas?' calls down her father from the side of the ship.
'He means, John Smith,' speaks a woman, approaching the boat and clutching a bag in her arms, 'that we are coming with you.'
'We are going to Spain.'
'No. We are going to England.'
'If I am not mistaken, Rebecca, I control this ship.'
'If you want to save your daughter, John, you will do what I say.'
Meg half thinks her father will refuse, and she catches Thomas' hand in hers out fear that she will lose him, lose him just as she though he would stay with her, keep her grounded, watch the seabirds wheeling in the wind.
But her father does not refuse the Indian woman. And, with more confidence than Meg has ever seen the woman display before, she climbs the gangplank and easily swings herself onto the ship.
John Smith looks at her with injured eyes.