Cast in Dark Waters

7

Onboard the San Muy Malo, Crimson told her story to the Maycombs. About how she’d found the village completely empty and discovered two gravestones next to each other, one for Daphna, the other for Villaine. FEVER had been scratched on both. And below that, GOD GRANT YE REST.

Beneath his sorrow, Maycomb’s rage boiled until he was almost hissing. “And the other privateers?”

“All dead or shipped off to escape the disease, I’d imagine.”

“So there was no Loogaroo? Is this what you say? You didn’t find the Boabhan Sith, the Dearg-Due?”

“No,” she said.

Instead of relief he grew only more frustrated. She understood why. It takes a great leap of faith for a man who prides himself on reason and common sense to believe in such spirits, and once the leap is made, there’s no turning back. Then he must have his proof.

Crimson considered telling him the truth, but she knew that eventually this reality would eat away at him as much as his doubts. Better he went to his grave believing his daughter to be the same pure girl he’d last seen. It served her memory that much the better.

She retrieved the pouch of diamonds and returned more than half its contents to him. “This will pay my wages.”

Elaine Maycomb did not cry. She had finished with that and now had to take her grief and make it into something else. Perhaps she would heal there on the coast of Virginia, perhaps not. “Thank you, Lady,” she said.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Crimson told her.

She left the couple then and went to hold watch in the bow with Welsh, listening to Hedrick and his men carousing a bit below decks. She couldn’t help scanning the waves to see what might be lurking within.

It was true that both Villaine and Daphna rested in the earth. Welsh himself had cut the words on the gravestones with his dagger, after hacking off all their heads and burying them face down. Then he and Crimson had built a bonfire and burned the bodies as best as they could. Let the animals of the jungle scatter those cursed bones and embers.

“We’ve a good wind pluming the sails,” he told her.

“Yes, we’ll make Port of St. Christopher’s in three days at this rate.” She caught him looking over the side. “Any mermaids?”

“They say Blackbeard himself died after twenty-five stab wounds and five bullets. His head was taken and hung on the bowsprit and his body tossed overboard. It swam around the ship thrice before finally sinking out of sight.”

“You think Blackbeard might’ve been one of those beasts?”

“Nah, he was just a pirate,” Welsh said, grinning. “Nothing special ’bout him.”

There was a great deal inside her that needed to be said but she could find no way to frame her thoughts. They had come close tonight, she and the old man. Close to death and whatever might lay beyond it. I love you, father. “Welsh—listen to me, I—”

“In the morning, lass,” he told her. “Now, get yerself some sleep, and blessed be that ye don’t dream tonight.”

But she does. She dreams of a snow-covered tower built by a father who adores her, and the love of a husband who was once sunburned a golden copper and now flits about the room as white as the wings of a moth. Perhaps there are mermaids down in the ocean, or maybe those swimming there are only more murdered sailors kicked about in Neptune’s surf.

Mama calls from the tide, where she reaches up with her broken fingers.

This, however, isn’t real, she knows. This is only dream. He can kill her a thousand times in this place and it won’t matter at all, really. He’s done it dozens of times already, and still she awakens and does her duty. He is down below at ten or twenty fathoms, buried in the silt and seaweed, awaiting her arrival for when she’ll finally set him free.

The shipwrecks creak and crumble on the reefs, rotting timbers tumbling aside. Dead men lay strewn across the rocks, eyes still open and mouths working. Snow begins to fall as he presses his icy body against hers.

He hungers, but she does as well. This, perhaps, is how it’s always been meant to be, with one desire played against the other. She tries to hold on but as he moves to her throat, she knows he only wants blood and companionship. Even the dead…especially the dead…can be beset by loneliness.

“Soon, Tyree. Be on the lookout for me. We’ll have an end to it, one way or another.”

She is a pirate, and she’s not afraid of blood.

Reaching, as his lips skim the veins of her throat, she pulls open the shutters and looks down below at all the writhing shadows and souls cast in these dark waters.