Script quote with stars on a forearm

Sam Pennick shipped out of Whitby the spring he turned sixteen, bound for the Cape on the barque Lark with a sea chest, a rolled blanket and his sister's handkerchief knotted round his wrist. Ada had sat on the harbour wall the night before and written him a wish on a scrap of paper, then dropped it in the water because she said wishes sank better than they floated. Sam laughed at her. Mr Hollis, the old mate, didn't laugh. He took Sam up to the foredeck and showed him how the stars lay over the sea like salt scattered on dark cloth, and how a man could steer by the small ones if he learned their names.

Sam learned them all that voyage. He learned them through the Roaring Forties, when spray froze on the rigging and the galley fire went out, and he learned them again off the African coast when the pitch was so hot the men slept on deck and counted blue sparks on the water. He wrote to Ada on every scrap of paper he could beg from the purser, and every letter ended with a little cluster of stars drawn in ink.

The letter waiting for him at the Cape held one line in her careful hand. She had never sent a single wish out to sea, she wrote, because she'd been keeping them, and she'd decided a wish kept close was a thing you had to go and earn. Sam read it twice, tucked it inside his shirt, and went up the mast to find the pole star for himself.