The Explorer's Apprentice

14:Charlotte's Secret

Abby Bronte

Abby doesn’t even have time to think.

Not with the strange man who calls her ‘Charlotte’ constantly on her case.

‘Why aren’t y’ wearing the blue dress Charlotte?’ he’ll say sternly, like there’s some type of dress code for Heaven that she didn’t receive the memo of. The man is big, like a giant, with a mass of thick, dirty, dark hair that starts on his head and ends somewhere on his chin like an unruly bush. The hair commands his head, as if adding the face were just an afterthought. The looks threw her off at first, but Abby really should have known she’d meet him eventually.

Doesn’t everyone get to meet their guardian angel when they die?

She lets him lead her into steerage, deep into the belly of the boat. The ship, or at least the sections of it that Abby is actually allowed to view, is everything she has ever imagined, and so much more. The hallways are endless mazes of laughing children and smiling adults. People hold hands and joke and pet their dogs and slide around in their socks. The floors shine with wax and still smell of soap. The rooms are small, but the mattresses are soft, and the sheets are clean. Little boys clomp up and down the sturdy, winding stairs and shout and pretend they are captains. Little girls dart in and out of the elevators in droves, pretending they are royalty on vacation. The air reverberates with greetings, strangers meeting strangers. It’s amazing to see so many smiles. Abby had been expecting a lot more tears on the boat of the dead, but to them, this is a dream come true.

Then again, why wouldn’t it be?

Everyone is dead, but they are going to heaven on one of the most beautiful, romantic, famous ships of all time.

This is Abby’s dream, too.

This is Titanic.

Abby tries to drift over to the elevators. They always looked like so much fun. If she could get just one ride…. She doesn’t get a few feet before the guardian angel yanks her away will a snarl. Later then… she has to admit, he wouldn’t be the first choice for a guardian angel. Hairy, smelly, and… brash.

‘I told ya to wear the blue one. Y’know th’ customers like that one best,’ he says. Or, ‘Donovan Clemet was, I ‘ave to say, the most pleased I’ ever seen him in weeks after tha’ last visit. Looks like y’got a regular on yer hands.’

At this, Abby feels a strange, sudden wave of disgust and nausea, like the feeling she gets before taking an important test she isn’t ready for, or when she knows that her parents are going to ground her. It’s like her subconscious, the not-yet voice, knows something that it isn’t willing to share with her – a deep, dark secret in the very pit of her soul. It’s like when you forget a name. It’s there, on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t get to it, not for a while.

A part of her wants to ask him what all this means – Titanic, death, the reason for his abrasion, everything. But she doesn’t. She just can’t make herself do it. Every single time she goes to ask, it just doesn’t seem as important anymore. For whatever reason, she knows that she’ll find out soon enough, perhaps when she’s more ready to find out.  For now she tries hard to be perfectly content with knowing little to nothing.

She tries very, very hard.

Abby lets him pull her along, drowning out the sound of his babble. Guardian angels must get pretty lonely. He keeps talking about customers. Customers, customers, customers, as if they’re the most important thing in the world. As he guides her in a rush through the endless hallways and rooms, going deeper and lower and farther south into the boat, he speaks of them, whomever they are, like how one might speak of oxygen.