In the Wake of the Kraken
Page 15
Worst of all, Oriana had spent countless nights crying on Grant’s shoulder about how much she missed her child and her colony. He had promised her so much, and she had been deaf to the lies coloring his words. He felt no remorse in taking everything away, and her skin crawled as she recalled every single one of his touches.
“Monster,” she whispered, her aching eyes closing at last. “If I ever get out of here, I’ll make you pay.”
Hours later, Oriana stirred at the sound of footsteps. She expected to see Grant’s handsome, despicable face when she opened her eyes, but Cait was there. Hesitant steps replaced the first mate’s usual confident gait as she approached the brig with a bowl.
“Chef made your favorite,” Cait said in a hushed tone. “Eel stew.”
“I’m not hungry.” Oriana turned away.
“Please eat, Ori.” Cait knelt on the ground and pushed the bowl between the bars. “You need to stay strong.”
“What’s the point?” Oriana asked. “He won’t let me out until I forgive him, and I can never do that.”
“I can understand that.”
Oriana’s head snapped to Cait. She glared at the first mate. “Can you, Cait the Cruel? How long have you known he had my seal skin?”
“I didn’t! I swear!” Cait answered, shaking her head.
“Sure you didn’t,” Oriana responded with a bitter chuckle. “You’re more loyal to Gallant Grant than anyone. That’s why you make sure to always have eyes on me wherever I go. You jump at his bidding.”
“That’s not why,” Cait said, and a blush bloomed on her cheeks.
Oriana leaned forward and grasped the bars with angry hands. “Then why do you let me drag you all over the place?”
Cait's green eyes melted under plaintive brows, revealing her heart. “I would follow you to Bottomless Braddock’s blade. To the Kraken’s maw. To Hell.”
Cait reached a hand through the slats and stroked Oriana’s cheek.
“Cait?”
“Ori…”
Oriana’s heart stirred within her, along with realization. Every adventure and laugh had been with Cait. While others quaked with fear at the first mate’s approach, Oriana lit up. Time after time, Cait had proven she would do anything to make the selkie happy, and Oriana hated any day that lacked her companion.
Their faces moved closer, and Cait’s hand slid from Oriana’s cheek to her neck. Without thinking, their lips pressed together in a soft, warm kiss full of unspoken promises. Oriana’s heart sang, joyful that she had listened to it at last. Yet, when their faces parted, she once again remembered all that Grant had stolen from her. Would he take Cait, too?
“I can’t believe he did that to you,” Cait said. “All these years. All those hours spent looking for your son.”
Hot, angry tears spilled onto Oriana’s cheeks. “I hate him. I wish he could feel this pain.”
“Then let’s make it happen,” Cait said.
Oriana couldn’t believe her ears. “What are you saying?”
“I saw my death in the fountain and it changed me.” Cait wiped the tears off Oriana’s flushed face. “I was very old, but a captain, fighting against a rival ship. A sword pierced my side. I grabbed someone, and I said...”
Cait’s jaw tensed and she swallowed hard.
“You said?”
“When you see my wife Ori, tell her I won’t be home for dinner.” Cait’s eyes shimmered with the promise of tears. “I don’t want to die any other way. We need to put an end to Gallant Grant.”
Oriana nodded. “He stole my skin. Let’s see how he does without his.”
“Thanks, Cait,” Gallant Grant said, taking the tea from his first mate. He took a sip and winced. “Didn’t you put any sugar in this? It’s so bitter.”
Cait put the captain’s other dishes into a pile and grabbed a rag. “You said you had a headache. I put a little willow bark in.”
“It’s that blasted selkie giving me a headache,” Grant said. “If I can’t charm the tears out of her, I’ll have to give her other reasons to cry.”
Cait clenched her fists and swallowed her words. She couldn’t give herself away. She cleaned the table, watching the captain drink his curare-tainted tea from her peripheral vision. Minutes felt like hours until she noticed his drooping eyelids and the odd sway of his head.
“I fink I ha too mush grog,” the captain slurred.
“Maybe you should lie down,” Cait said.
Grant pulled down his jaw and pinched his skin like rubber. “Why canna fee anyfin?”
“The grog,” Cait lied. “Lie down.”
Grant nodded and attempted to stand up from his chair, only to collapse to the floor as his legs gave way. Peering up at Cait from his position on the ground, terror shone in his eyes as he realized his first mate wasn’t towering over him to help him to bed.
“Go to sleep, Captain,” Cait said, before kneeling down and hitting him on the carotid artery with the side of her powerful hand, making everything go black.
When Grant woke, he couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t even make his mouth and tongue form words. He could only scream like an animal when he saw, from the corner of his eyes, the nettle rope binding him.
“Scream all you want,” Cait said, wiping a skinning blade with a rag. “I took the ship past the Magician’s Marketplace. We’re moored by the Forest of Night. Everyone else stuck here is screaming too.”
Shock slammed into his heart like a bolt of lightning. This wasn’t the first time he had visited the Forest of Night, a terrifying thick of venomous plants and man-eating pixies covering up the majority of Brig Island’s western end in perpetual darkness. However, he had only been here long enough to maroon a few of the crew that displeased him. If you made it out of here, you could survive about anything.
He tried to look down at his body, but he couldn’t control his head well enough. It bobbed around until settling on his left shoulder, so that he watched the waves lapping beyond a shaking brush. Then Oriana came into view from behind the branches, and all the pieces clicked together. She was handing him a pirate’s justice for the wrongs he had committed against her.
She sucked on a finger, then waved her hand as she winced. “The saltwater did nothing for that stinging nettle. I’d hate to be Grant when that curare wears off and he has to feel the nettle ropes he’s bound in.” She turned her head from the first mate to the captain. “Oh, you’re awake. Good.”
Oriana moved so close to the captain that her black eyes threatened to swallow him whole. She tilted his face right and then left, tracing lines over his cheeks and smiling.
“They don’t call her Cait the Cruel for nothing,” she said. Grant screamed again, and Oriana pressed a finger against his lips as she shushed him. “We’re not going to kill you. I just wanted you to know what it was like for me, looking in the mirror and not recognizing myself.”
He let his scream die, trying to figure out her meaning, only to have his thoughts interrupted by a shriek of agony in the distance. Oriana’s smile widened.
“Maybe that was someone you abandoned here,” she said. “No, we’re not going to kill you, but I can’t promise none of the others lost in these woods won’t.”
“Ouch!” Cait slapped her arm and something small and winged fell to the ground. “Can’t promise the pixies won’t kill you either. But, once you’re out of the nettle ropes, you’ll have as much chance as any other injured pirate in surviving this jungle.”
Oriana walked back to Cait. She nestled against the first mate, who kissed the top of her head with tender affection. “Though, if you make it to The Mend for healing, I think you won’t be known as Gallant Grant anymore,” Oriana said, her dark eyes glinting at him with cold calculation. “With as much skin as Cait’s taken from your face and arms and chest and legs, I can only assume they’ll call you Gruesome Grant.”
Oriana pulled a small bottle from her pocket. Then she tossed it onto the ground at Grant’s feet. At this point, Grant had som
ewhat more control over his head, and he managed to move it just enough to see the shimmering liquid swirling in its glass container. Selkie tears.
“That’s all you ever wanted from me anyway, right?” Oriana asked, but Grant couldn’t even blubber a reply.
“If you can get to that bottle in time, you might heal enough to stave off hypothermia or infection,” Cait said. “The scars, though, those will stay.”
Sunlight broke through the branches above and gleamed off the glass. While Cait and Oriana left him behind, Grant watched how the breeze moved the branches, causing the light to dance on the bottle. He longed to feel the sweet coolness of those selkie tears. However, as the poison in his tea wore off, the wind burned like wildfire.
The cold water was heaven sliding past Oriana’s gorgeous sealskin. She leapt up over a wave to watch her wife and lover, Cait the Courageous, at the helm of her ship. Her little selkie heart sang as she looked to the east at the sunrise. The Kraken’s limbs stretched into the sky greeting Torganal Island, the place Oriana had last seen her son years ago.
Diving back underwater, she raced toward the seaweed her colony loved so much in this area. Could they have returned? Could she be that lucky? She squinted in the darkness, whipping her head around for some sign.
A unique and familiar scent stilled her, and whiskers tickled her back. She turned to see the rounded cheeks she loved so much. He looked bigger than she expected. He had likely grown out of his lamblike bleats. Still, she had no doubt who this could be, and her body hummed with a happiness she hadn’t known in far too long.
“Mother,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Never So Near, Never So Far
A.R.K. Horton
The bloom, the blush, the springtime love
Await the Vista maidens.
Their hair a flag, their cheek a dove,
Their hum a blissful cadence.
* * *
They’re never so near,
Never so far,
From pirates bound for treasure.
Ships sail ‘round
These islands that are
Taunting them with pleasure.
* * *
Sailors do say mermaids delight
In Undercurrent raptures.
Their unbound breasts a lustful sight.
No one denies such creatures.
* * *
They’re never so near,
Never so far,
From pirates bound for treasure.
Ships sail ‘round
These islands that are
Taunting them with pleasure.
* * *
The lone widows who roam Dagspire
Haunt you with longing glances.
They give you all you can desire.
Just give them starlit dances.
* * *
They’re never so near,
Never so far,
From pirates bound for treasure.
Ships sail ‘round
These islands that are
Taunting them with pleasure.
* * *
A tender touch is not too much.
The Mend can offer plenty.
A sack of gold the dames can clutch,
Procures a group of twenty.
* * *
They’re never so near,
Never so far,
From pirates bound for treasure.
Ships sail ‘round
These islands that are
Taunting them with pleasure.
* * *
Deep in their chest, a thund’ring crest,
No ecstasy forbidden.
Undressed or dressed, but ne’er repressed,
Labruma gals aren’t hidden.
* * *
They’re never so near,
Never so far,
From pirates bound for treasure.
Ships sail ‘round
These islands that are
Taunting them with pleasure.
* * *
You risk your neck to find a wife
Within the Holy City.
But she can grant immortal life,
A fate no one can pity.
* * *
They’re never so near,
Never so far,
From pirates bound for treasure.
Ships sail ‘round
These islands that are
Taunting them with pleasure.
The Ballad of Tasmin the Tattered
Astrid Knight
“They say she steals your soul, you know.”
Tamsin blinked, glancing away from the statue in front of her and to whoever thought it would be fun to interrupt her sulking contemplation. A handful of feet away stood an elf, though they were the plainest looking elf she’d ever seen. They had dull brown hair, lifeless eyes, and teeth that were a little too big for their mouth. Their massive ears were pointed ever so slightly, save for the left that seemed to have some sort of bite taken out of it. They stooped down at the base of the statue, taking a small pair of shears and clipping errant leaves off the shrubs growing there. Tamsin chuckled humorlessly. The orc would have thought that a floating merchant market consisting of nothing but tied together rafts would have been less than conducive to growing plants. Though, there was a rumor here in Saltskiff that it had once rained toads. She supposed anything was possible.
The elf sniffed as they pruned another shrub. “That’s what they say, anyhow. It isn’t true, not one bit,” they said, their voice simple and lilting. “After all, I see her every day, and I haven’t lost my soul yet, have I? No, I haven’t.”
Tamsin glanced back up at the statue. It wasn’t very imposing, at first look, since it depicted a small, round-faced halfling woman. Beneath the shadow of her tricorn hat and mane of grey hair, however, dark rusted stains streaked from her dull eyes to her jaw. Tamsin shivered. Of course she had heard the rumors: that Magdalene the Merciful’s statue would occasionally cry tears of blood, and if you were a sod unlucky enough to be staring into her eyes when that happened, your soul would be ripped clean from your body.
Of course she had heard those rumors. Why else had she been staring at the thing dead on for close to an hour?
“Funny,” the elf snickered as they straightened themself up, twisting one of the trimmed branches between their fingers. “Most people don’t look at her at all. Usually, folk just avert their gaze until they’re past her.” They smiled to themself, focusing on the twirling branch in their grasp. “It’s nice to have someone besides me admire how pretty she is. I’d wager she likes it, too, yes indeed.”
Nodding, Tamsin poked at one of her tusks with her tongue and looked back at the statue, hoping the elf would just go about their pruning business and leave her be. “Happy to give her the company,” she muttered, narrowing back in on the statue’s eyes once again.
“I’m Dillon, by the way,” the elf said.
Damn. She shouldn’t have said anything. Now it was a conversation. “Hello, Dillon.”
“Hi, there.”
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Mm.”
For a second, Dillon seemed like they were about to leave her be, crouching back down to trim down another hedge, but soon they popped back up like a spring daisy and blurted out, “Can I ask you something?”
“I’d rather you not,” Tamsin drawled.
“But can I? Just because you’d rather I not doesn’t mean I can’t.”
Sighing, Tamsin, not breaking eye contact with the statue, said, “What is it?”
“Why do you look at her when everyone else is so afraid?”
She let the night’s breeze blow past her, just strong enough to lift a strand of her long, matted hair off her shoulder. The empty eyes of Magdalene stared back at her. No pity and certainly—unlike what her name suggested—no mercy.
Yet they remained dry. Not a single crimson drop spilled forth.
Her shoulders slumped as her gaze broke, falling to th
e perfectly tended bushes surrounding the base of the statue. “Because, Dillon,” she said, resignation laced in her voice. “Where I’m going, I can’t be afraid of anything.”
She hadn’t been called Tamsin the Tattered for long. The first time she heard the title was at The Mend, the tavern in Marauder’s Sanctuary, not long after it all happened. When she washed up on the island’s shore, she was as close to death as she could get without actually making friends with him. It had been months of healing broken bones, closing infected wounds, and watching black bruises fade back to green. Even after her body healed, though, Tamsin stayed at The Mend, hoping that one more tankard of ale would be the thing to heal what still seemed to be broken. Each day, she would set herself up in the back corner of the inn, listening to the revelry of the healing and the healed as they chattered and made merry, feeling much like a nail that hadn’t quite been hammered all the way into its base board.
It was there that she heard the ballad, a mournful yet mocking tune, strummed by a Felician, his cat’s paws plucking out the song with cheeky derision:
* * *
O sing of the woes of Tamsin the Tattered,
Whose crew’s gentle bodies were beaten and shattered