The Prize Rules Ch 02

*****

Eden learns a little more about the handsome member of the crew on the ocean liner in this. As well, I offer a few little views of other things which happen at other times in the story.

Please try to remember to look for changes in the year and the locale if it's there at the top left as the scenes change, otherwise it will take a lot longer to figure things out – which is not what I'd want at all.

I hope this is enjoyed.

0_o

*****

1945 Kiel, West Germany

"There is only one bed in here," the girl said as she looked around the cabin.

The woman nodded, "Yes. It would have cost almost twice as much for a cabin with two beds and I am not made of money. Besides, I learned from the nights that you came to sleep with me because you said that you were frightened - even though I knew that by then, you really weren't - that we can manage to sleep very well together.

Neither of us takes up very much room, except when you sprawl all over the bed and try to force me onto the floor in your sleep. So I asked for a cabin with a double bed and there it is.

We can still hide ourselves and snuggle when you want to and there is almost enough room for me to retreat and hide from you when you flail your arms and legs all over like some wild animal in your sleep. You're lucky that I love you so much or I'd lock you into one of the suitcases every night."

"I - wait..." the girl smiled, "You knew that I wasn't always frightened? Why did you let me stay then?"

The woman grinned as she put her arm around the girl's shoulders and looked down. "Because I love you, the same way that you love me. I think that we really are becoming a mother and a daughter."

She sighed as she sat down on the edge of the bed and pushed a little of the girl's hair behind her ear, "I don't know if you can understand this, but I think that all children need their mothers more sometimes. That's just the way we are when we are small. The hard part of it for the mother is to know when to hold tight because it is needed and when to ease off when it is not.

Sometimes you had a nightmare and needed to feel safe because waking up from nightmares always made me wonder at first if they were really over when I was little. That's when I needed to know that it was alright. That's why I let you sleep with me after bad dreams."

She shrugged, "Sometimes, I think you just wanted to feel like nothing could be wrong and nothing bad could happen. I think it's important to have that feeling sometimes, but you didn't have a place like that until I came.

Anneliese was busy and frazzled and you were someone else for her to take care of there. I know that she loves you, but I also know that you need something that she has no time to give enough of.

Your father wants more than anything in the world to be with you, but he can't be until it is time for him to come home. When he had to go away before he'd even seen you to say goodbye, I saw that he almost cried, but there was nothing that he could do. He looked just the same way when he gave me his permission to take you away like this.

So I know that sometimes, you just wanted to sleep near to me. I think it was your way to feel a little better about things. I wouldn't have sent you away because ... well, I just wouldn't. I can remember how it felt when my mother would only hug me - and she did that a lot. Everything was better then.

Besides," she smiled wetly as she looked around the cabin, "now we are on our way. Just as soon as the ship leaves port, another amazing thing will happen."

She looked into her daughter's eyes as she put her hands onto the girl's small shoulders, "You and I will magically turn into adventurers, off on our journey at last. From right here in this cabin, we will plan out our epic wanderings."

"There are two pillows," the girl said as she noticed them.

"And I can finally trim the ends of your lovely hair, now that I've gotten the little waves out of it at last," the woman said, knowing where this might go soon.

"I get my own pillow," the girl smiled a little.

The woman continued speaking, "And in here, we can practice with our flutes so that we are in harmony. You'll love how it sounds then."

The girl nodded her agreement and the woman was so happy inside to see that she was finally seeing some relaxed confidence in her almost-adopted daughter, as well as just a hint of mischievousness. It couldn't have been there in Anneliese's home because it could never grow there.

"We could fight with the pillows," the girl smiled a little evilly for one so young, "They're not big like at home."

There was a slightly unsettling thing about that, the woman decided as she thought about it without replying. For just a little thing - just a little girl slowly nearing her sixth birthday, that little kid - when she was squealing and having a ball - could move through blankets and covers like a weasel and she'd discovered that her new mother was extremely ticklish.

When it had happened, the two of them playing like that, there was the ... lack of sophistication that one could expect from somebody that young and her tickles could be closer to pokes then, but they'd just ended up in a ball of blankets every time, out of breath and gasping with laughter.

Play like that - with complete abandon - was something that Katryn had never known before. Mòlì knew it and that was why it was allowed. She was new to all of this - as new as her little girl, though at least she had memories of times something like it in her own childhood.

When she'd questioned herself while she was getting the bed back in order in Anneliese's home, a thought came to her that a child ought to be allowed to be a child now and then.

The woman looked down, trying to hide her own grin for a moment.

Finally she sighed, "And we can have pillow fights."

––––––––––––––-

1937 Bridgetown, Barbados

As he climbed the steel steps to the bridge, Hans-Joachim thought about Eden. He found that he had to, not that it was an unpleasant thing to do. He wondered at it a little and he told himself that the reason for it was that she was different.

He almost winced at that thought and told himself not to be an idiot. Then, not liking his original decision, he sought to refine it a little, and just to keep matters simple, he settled on her hair as the starting point.

Many women tended to keep their hair up in some manner – especially here in the tropics, but he'd also seen it in women back home. His own mother and his sister, before she'd gotten married, had almost unbelievably long hair – which they never let anyone really see, since they kept it up in a bun almost always. It was something that he found to be unattractive if a woman had the hair for it.

Also, many women kept their hair cut a lot shorter than that. Ullmann knew himself and to him, it didn't really matter so long as it added to her appearance.

The lovely and beautiful Miss Eden Chang wore her very long hair parted in the middle and the back of it had been tied in the first step of tying pigtails, he decided. But instead to going on to braid it or tie it any farther; that was as far as it went. He knew why, of course, and it was for the same reason that women tied their hair into a bun – to keep it off the backs of their necks.

Miss Chang had just done it in a way which accomplished the end in mind, the tied portions of her shimmering jet-black mane spilling down over the front of her shoulders instead.

He thought about her quick and confident smile and the almost ethereal beauty of her almond-shaped eyes for a moment. But it was almost time to get to work and thinking about women was not the way to go about it.

He moved his mind on to other things then as he reached the top of the stairs. He had a course to plan out for the morning and he wanted it to be ready long before his meeting with the captain.

As much as he'd found that he liked Eden, he wasn't here to meet women. But his mind came back to one detail a few times as he worked.

For a young Chinese woman from Trinidad – which was hardly a hotspot of Germanic culture - such as say, Mexico City might be thought of ...

She'd gotten his name absolutely correct on the first try – even down to the soft nuance at the back of the throat in the middle of his second name. He'd never yet met any non-Germanic English speaker who could get it at all.

–––––––––––-

The liner pulled out of port the next morning on time to the second as the tugboats' ropes slid away into the water.

As she felt the gentle rumble from the massive propeller shafts through her feet while she stood at the rail, Eden congratulated herself just a tiny bit once more. Their departure marked her taking the next step in her long pilgrimage of a sort and she was a little pleased, wondering how many Trinidadian girls ever got to go on a journey such as hers.

Once they'd eased out into the harbour proper, she left the side railing and walked up toward the bow, wanting more of a panoramic view and to feel the sea breeze in her face.

She was a little sad that she had only her books to read, and they were little more than a few dog-eared pocket novels which she'd been given by her cousins. What she really wanted at the moment was a camera. No matter how this worked out, she thought to herself, there were memories being made here – as insignificant as they might be to many of her fellow travellers.

But cameras cost money and so did the film they required to be able to catch those memories, and Eden's family – as extended and large as it might be – were not wealthy enough to have been able to afford something such as that. She didn't mind, understanding things. She only wished for one.

And she missed Cora-leen most of all. In a very real way, this was something of an adventure that she was just embarking on, and if things could only have been different, the best way to do this was to be with her best friend. That would make this all the more memorable.

She sighed as she counted off her steps in this so far as she considered that her signing the huge stack of papers back in Robert Kirkwall's office was the first.

Her preparations, such as they were, had been the second and her trek to the wharves down in Port of Spain Harbour had been the third. From there, she'd ridden as one of only three passengers on board a slow and old freighter to Barbados. The ride had been tortuously boring and knowing that she'd left her family and friends behind just made Eden feel as though she was now completely bereft of them.

Now she considered herself to be truly on her way. This liner would take her to New York where she'd board a ship from a different line for the trans-Atlantic crossing. She'd asked why she couldn't have just gone to England directly from Bridgetown and Robert had said, "The Hamburg Amerika line does have a ship which runs from the Caribbean to Europe directly, but it puts in at Kiel in Germany. You'd need to take a train to a port in Belgium and from there, find your passage to England.

Not so easily done these days anymore," he said, "when half the world is very nervous.

Hamburg Amerika has the best passenger coverage in our waters, but from New York on, it'll be somebody else, I'm afraid."

Once again, Eden didn't care. She was on her way and it wasn't costing her anything. So what if she had to go the longer way across the pond?

A small group of Caucasian women walked to where Eden stood, talking among themselves. One of them commented to her that it was such a lovely day. Eden turned and as she agreed with a smile, she watched the surprise as it flickered across their faces.

She reasoned that they hadn't known that she was anything other than Caucasian from the back, since she was dressed similarly to them, and once they saw a different sort of person there, they hadn't expected a reply in English. The conversation stopped pretty much right at that point.

He didn't know what it was about, but Hans-Joachim had seen it from the bridge as he was leaving it. On a whim, he walked that way instead of directly to his cabin. At least part of a morning spent with Eden was better than a whole day spent poring over his notes.

"Well, Eden?" He began cheerily as he approached a minute later, "Was your cabin up to your standards?"

Eden's face showed her pleased surprise, "Good morning, Hans-Joachim. I have no complaints to make. Everything is fine." She was conscious of the gazes from the other women, though she put on no airs. She was just a little happy to see Hans-Joachim again.

"Where do we stop next and how long until we get to New York?"

He chuckled, "If you wanted to go there directly, you are on the wrong ship. On this run, we stop at every little rock in the sea, or at least every other rock all the way to Nassau. After that, we sail direct to New York. It ought to take only twelve days or so – as long as a fortnight the way that we tend to wander a little. Why? Are you in a hurry?"

He reached into his pocket and produced a slip of paper. From it, he told her their expected travel time down to the hour of their making port, barring anything unforeseen.

"How do you know all of that?" Eden asked, clearly amazed, "I can see that there is writing on the paper, so I know that you are not making it all up. Did you ask the captain?"

He laughed and shook his head, "No. I am afraid that the captain only commands the ship to sail. As to where we go, he tells me, but if he wishes to know the times and all of that, he asks me then. I am the navigator. It is a chore which the captain could do also, but instead, they pay me to do that little bit of thinking so that he can have deeper thoughts.

Please tell me that you have not had breakfast. That was where I was going now, well, after I drop off these charts in my cabin. The crew's mess is not as luxurious as the passenger's dining lounge, but I like it all the same. Would you care to join me?"

Eden nodded, glad to have his company. It hadn't crossed her mind at all as she'd thought about her trip, but going alone and knowing no one had already gotten a little tedious to her. She was surprised at herself for it. She'd always been the sort of person who never minded being alone.

But out here and on a ship where most of the passengers travelled in little groups of between two to maybe ten, she felt a little lost.

"I'd like that very much if it's allowed," she said.

"It is allowed - sometimes," he nodded, "and if it is not, then I will remind the chef that my contract states that I am allowed to sit at every meal. To date, I have only eaten at most, two meals out of the three that I am allotted per day. I am sure that there is a little room in all of the ones that I have missed to allow you to eat one with me."

He shifted his charts to his other arm and he held one out to her. Eden took his arm, smiling.

"I'll bet she's a spy," one of the women whispered to another a little too loudly, "Why the news is full of the way that the Germans and the Japanese are joining forces."

The comment reflected both the ignorance of the speaker as well as the current state of tension then prevalent in the Western Hemisphere. People were beginning to think that there were fifth columnists behind about every other tree, though most islanders of any description were too busy making a living to give the notion much of any thought at all.

Eden turned and looked back. After a moment, she said, "I am not Japanese, and I am not a spy. I don't think that you would know either one if you tripped over them. I think that spies try to hide themselves, so who would want someone like me for that? I was born on Trinidad. I don't think that you need to worry about this gentleman very much either. You ought to look at the name on the side of this ship if you are that nervous over it."

She turned to Hans-Joachim, "How many Germans are in the crew here?"

He grinned, "I would guess over eighty percent, and those who are not can speak it well."

He nodded to the women, "This is a passenger line which offers luxurious travel and comfort over most of the world, not spies and rumours. Guten Tag."

They stopped at his cabin and Hans-Joachim laid his maps down on the bed quickly as Eden waited outside. He rejoined her as quickly as he could, not wanting her to see the rest of his charts. Before each outbound trip and as often as he could at every stop, Hans-Joachim collected maps of the Caribbean seas and the waters around every little 'rock' as he put it, knowing that one day soon, he'd be glad that he'd made the effort while he'd had this chance of it.

"I like this much better than the lounge," Eden said over her breakfast, "It looks more like the sort of place where I am accustomed to be, and with you here, I am safe from old men who think that I might be looking interested when I am really trying not to laugh."

"A good thing that I am only a slightly older man," he grinned, "I am twenty-three, so I hope to hear at least a little less laughter."

"Isn't that a little young to be the navigator on a ship like this?" Eden asked, "I mean, I am sure that you know your job very well, but ..."

He shrugged a little, "I come from an old sea-faring family. I learned to navigate my small boat around the rocks and shoals from the time that I was nine. I sailed alone in a bigger boat from close to Kiel all the way north around Denmark to the Frisian coast and back when I was fourteen.

Then I learned how to navigate the proper way in the navy," he laughed. "I have the proper accreditation for the job. The captain and the first mate can do it also, and we all sit together once a day to go over my plans and routes."

He looked at her for a moment, "How old should I be for it?"

Eden laughed, "Never mind, Hans-Joachim, I'm sure that you are more than skilled enough. Please forget that I asked it."

"I have wanted to ask you," he said, "But I did not want to seem to be prying at the same time. What is it that waits for you in New York? Is it an occupation? The freedom to make your own choices far from home? I have been thinking these things since we talked to the spy hunters out on the deck there. It is none of my business, of course. Do you go there out of love, perhaps?"

She shook her head, "None of those, though they sound so nice when I hear you say them. I'm only going to New York to catch another ship to England."

Hans-Joachim sat back in his chair, clearly astounded, "England? What in the world would you want to seek there? The sun shines there rarely and the people are all pasty white, and more than half of the time – depending on where you are, it rains."

He shook his head with an exaggerated shudder, "No thank you. It is bad enough where I come from, though the sun shines more there and the winters are colder. It actually snows there and quite a bit."

Eden spoke of her dreams and of how she was struggling to make her place in the world, as well as what she hoped might develop back where she was from and then she went on to tell of going for some training with the Women's Royal Naval Service.

"I want to learn all that I can," she said, "I know that likely a lot of it will have no place back home, but I know what the place needs. My biggest problem is that I am a woman. No one - or very few at best even take me seriously.

A thought which I use to drive myself ahead sometimes is thinking of all of the time that I spent on fishing and sponge boats back home. Funny, I do not recall ever seeing any of the men who tell me that I can't do it because I am a girl there with me working with their hands and their backs the way that I had to."

There was a moment of silence between them and then Hans-Joachim said, "Give me your left hand for a moment please, Eden."