Aft of the deck
A shiver of bells at her ankle and the sway of coins over the diaphanous silk that permitted the peeping of caramel-colored calves, the leisurely line of ankle to knee. Old coins, strung low until they dipped below the southern hemisphere line of her belly, like fairy-lights strung from the jut of one hip to the next until she was music with each step of her foot, but the genie strode like a choice made in the middle of a storm, like the blade of a knife is certain and quick. She stood at the back of the boat with her hands wrapped over the railing and the churn of the white-whipped waves cast up froth and spray. There were plenty of people stood at the fore, at the world before they whistled through it but she could feel the heavy weight of the lamp hung like a promise at her hip and she chose the back of the boat, the emptiness of spray-soaked deck to admire the world the boat had cut through, the weight of it guttering the water.
The wind was biting at her bare arms and the salt-bleached boards were slippery beneath the soft slippers on her feet but her toes curled and the genie let the filmy veil flit, like a blush on night sky, slip free from the back of her head with a laugh that was brined thick and pleased. The spilled-ink of a night sky was broad expanse above her head, and she didn’t know if they sailed West or East, North or South, there was no compass to spin drunkenly in circles, confounded by the magic of a boat. It didn’t matter, she knew she was a fantasy of a hot, perfumed night, scented with sandalwood and oiled with unctions and there was no perfume in the air here but the bloom of a storm, ozone and salt and that was different, it ran hot beneath the skin, warm enough to withstand the wick of night over the drenching spray.
She gripped the railings with wind-chilled hands, and she kicked off the sandals with quick glee, one-two, careless where they fell across the deck. She tested her weight experimentally against the rails and she hooked one foot and then another against the lower rungs, until it felt like falling free without any thought of landing and the boat and its people at her back, forgotten.