by Pam Godwin
It took a minute before I could push up to sit. Resting on the opposite hip, I met Madwulf’s pitiless gaze with the bravest face I could muster.
“On the morrow, at eight bells of the morning watch, I shall return.” He dropped the compass onto my lap. “If it’s not unlocked, I’ll provide another incentive. I’ll do this every morning, and each incentive will become increasingly more convincing. I do hope you solve the puzzle before you’re too broken.”
He ambled away, and I hugged the compass to my chest, realizing my shirt was still awash in the sticky blood from the man in the cottage. I felt sick. Scared. Angry.
Daily beatings.
The horrendous pain in my thigh would be less pronounced by the morning. I could do this. I’d endured a fortnight of torture on the admiral’s flagship. Blows against my bones with a wooden plank were less intrusive, less damaging to my psyche. I would survive this.
I wanted to see Priest and Ashley again too badly to give up.
Gripping both hands under the knee of my injured leg, I dragged it out in front of me. My choked whimpers couldn’t be helped. The agony swept through me like fire, but the limb didn’t look broken. No visible bones protruded. No unnatural angles. Just muscle and ligament damage, perhaps.
As the Caribbee heat blazed down upon my pale skin, I scooted into a patch of shade cast by the rigging. Over the next few hours, I moved with that shadow, desperate for its cool protection as it crept across the deck with the passage of the sun.
Blitz headed east. The bird island was southeast. If Madwulf had taken my bait, we would be headed there. But it was too soon to know.
That night, I lay on my back on the deck, staring up at the starlit sky and thinking about my father. I’d toyed with the compass all afternoon without any real commitment to opening it.
It was time to solve it. Shackled to the foremast, I faced certain torture on the morrow. At some point, I would have to give up the combination in exchange for mercy. But I needed to figure it out first.
So I closed my eyes and mentally recited poems, songs, and rhymes that I remembered hearing in my father’s Irish brogue. God’s wounds, I missed him. If he were alive today, perhaps he would be disappointed in me for taking so long to solve his puzzle.
When you’re ready, you’ll know what to do.
I didn’t know what he’d meant when he said that, but his compass had saved the two men I’d left on the beach. I didn’t think he would mind that I’d bartered his treasure in the name of love.
Maybe, if I unlocked it at the right moment, it would save my life, too. I just needed to be strong and patient.
My strength, however, waned miserably over the next few days.
Each day, at eight bells of the morning watch, Madwulf emerged from the lower decks. “Unlock the compass, lass.”
“I’m trying.”
Standing calmly before me, he signaled to his brutes and watched coldly as the plank of wood damaged another part of my body. It struck my ribs on the second day, my shoulder on the third. By the fourth morning, the pain was so tremendous I hadn’t slept.
I couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stop whimpering. Couldn’t eat or breathe or focus on anything beyond the terrible, constant agony that decimated every muscle and bone.
My leg had swollen into a contusion of black and blue damage from hip to knee. Though I couldn’t stand on it, it was the least of my tribulation.
The ladder of bones beneath my left breast had broken in several places. I was certain of it, for every breath made me cry out and wheeze. And my arm refused to respond. It wouldn’t lift or move in any way. Dislocated shoulder? Possibly worse.
My teeth rattled endlessly, my nerves and sinews ceaselessly twitching and convulsing. The pain governed me, overtaking my motor functions, and the dread was more than I could bear. Could I withstand another blow from that plank?
Adding to the misery, the moon and stars had abandoned their watch over me. Clouds crowded the sky, black and brooding, rolling alongside Blitz as if set on the same course.
Where were we headed? The compass said south. The direction of the bird island. But after four days, we should have already arrived. I feared we’d gone too far east and overshot the destination. Jade’s destination, if all had gone as I hoped.
Madwulf never mentioned a route, and the crew didn’t speak of it.
Throughout the voyage, they lived loudly and boisterously, soaring with high spirits on board Ashley’s ship. Heavy drinking ran rampant day and night. The supply of farm animals dwindled as they gorged on freshly slaughtered meat. Sometimes, they tossed raw scraps to me, laughing and keeping their distance as if I were the feral dog.
As if.
As a result of their excessive drinking, eating, and overall misbehavior, they failed to do much of anything for the better part of a week. Madwulf didn’t partake in the merriment. He didn’t discourage it, either. Remaining below deck, he presumably indulged in the luxuries of the private quarters and slept in the bed I’d shared with Ashley.
It became my practice to block it all out. I sat with my back to the unruly festivities, turning the compass on my lap and reciting every rhyme I knew. All the while, I strained my eyes on the distant horizon, watching, hoping, wishing for sails to appear.
The prospect of Jade coming near this one-hundred-gun warship again scared me to death. But my crew knew what they were dealing with this go around, and Priest and Ashley would be with them. Ashley knew Blitz’s weaknesses. If anyone could defeat her, it was him.
More storm clouds rolled in, stealing my view of the horizon. The heavy overcast forced me to stare at the deck, the gunwale, anything or nothing at all, as long as I didn’t glance down. One glimpse at my abused body shoved me into the shadows whereupon the pain resided, dark and hopeless.
On the fourth morning, Madwulf paced before me, visibly agitated. “You look like death’s head upon a mop-stick. Ghastly, truly. I wouldn’t ride you into battle.”
“Rot in hell.”
“Open the compass, Bennett.”
“I said go to he—”
Hands shot out from behind me and wrenched my injured shoulder backward. The joint screamed, shooting blades of racking pain through my neck and chest.
My attacker was joined by another, and together, they pinned my elbow against the foremast, holding it with my forearm extending past the timber. The agony in my shoulder throbbed so brutally I drowned in the nauseous, spinning dizziness. Black dots peppered my vision. Acid seared my throat, and excess saliva filled my mouth.
The brute with the wooden plank approached.
“No.” I shook my head wildly and dropped the compass in a useless effort to jerk free. “No, no, no, no! Please! I’ll unlock it right now. I promise.”
The two men restrained me as the brute with the board swung it hard and fast at my forearm. The blow hit like lightning, snapping my arm backward at the wrong angle. Bones cracked from elbow to wrist.
I screamed, choking on the anguish. Ice surged from my feet to my chest, chased by a boiling eruption of vomit.
The contents of my stomach expelled past my lips. That was the last thing I remembered before passing out.
I floated back to consciousness on the wings of my father’s words.
Start and end north.
His warm, soothing brogue began to sing to me from somewhere behind, overhead, and all around…
Oh, sad fellow, by the thrust of my blade
North to south, click, click
South to east, one tick
I remembered it as a cheerful melody with morbid lyrics. It had been so long since I’d thought of it. How did the rest go? I crawled through the strange wet fog around me, humming along and searching for the words.
Until a sharp, stabbing throb caught me unawares.
With a gasp, I found myself lying face-up, choking, drowning as if submerged in the sea. The deck stretched out beneath me. The stink of farm animals flooded my nose. My limbs felt weight
ed, my entire body soaked. If I had to guess, someone had dumped a bucket of water on me to rouse me.
Sounds were distant. Garbled. Voices. Someone was talking to me, saying my name over and over. That English accent didn’t make sense. I recognized it and turned my head, seeking its face and blinking through sheets of misery. Christ almighty, I hurt…everywhere.
My eyes opened, and I stared up at the concerned mien of Lieutenant Flemming.
Bending over me, the blond doctor reached down and gently tipped my chin side to side. Creases fanned from the corners of his miserable eyes, his face pale with fear.
Given his crestfallen expression, he wasn’t here as a willing new recruit. He was a captive, just like me. Because every pirate crew needed a doctor, and Flemming happened to be the only ship’s surgeon on Blitz.
“Where are we?” I croaked.
His head angled down, shaking slightly as his eyes lifted to the pirates lounging, drinking, and belching around us.
“The arm will need to be set and braced, sir.” Flemming sat back and looked up at whoever stood outside of my view.
“I dinna care about fixing her.” Madwulf’s voice sieved through my chest like ice water. “Just keep her alive long enough to open that compass.”
The task of solving the puzzle suddenly felt too big, too impossible, and it grew more so as I turned my neck and saw the mutilated wreckage of my arm.
A splintered white bone protruded from a bloody gouge near the inside of my elbow. My forearm curved outward in an unnatural angle, lying like a dead, displaced thing on the deck.
I gagged and released a soundless scream as my stomach clenched and heaved. Viscid, bitter fluid projected from my mouth, and the shivering… God save me, the tremors were overpowering, uncontrollable. As the magnitude of my injury forced itself upon me, I shook with a violence that engaged every muscle and ripped apart every nerve.
No need to look at Lieutenant Flemming’s grim face to glean my fate. I wouldn’t survive this. My heart had known that all along, but the bulwark of stubbornness within hadn’t allowed me to accept it.
As Flemming tipped a medicine vial and poured a sizzling liquid over my exposed bone, the unholy pain tried to drag me into its darkness again. Blood ran cold through my veins, and my breaths hissed wetly past my clenched teeth, each exhale riding on the lamenting sounds of my cries.
Through the haze, a final wish rose to the surface. A wish I’d carried with me since the day I found my father hanging on the gallows.
Before I died, I had to see inside his compass. I desperately needed to hold and smell and read whatever he’d left for me.
Flemming squeezed a water-soaked cloth over my mouth, offering fluids. Then he padded away, disappearing below deck with his chest of supplies and flanked by two pirates. Madwulf moved in, taking his place.
Refusing to be goaded, I pressed my lips together and glared mutely up at him.
“It’s all good, lass.” He touched a jagged fingernail against my cheek and softly cleared wet locks of curls from my face. Then he set the compass on the deck beside me, his eyes hard, intent, determined. “Unlock it, and all the pain goes away.”
“Aye.” My teeth chattered, slicing up my tongue as I tried to roll into a sitting position. “Can…y-you…help…?”
He gripped my good arm and hauled me up. The sudden movement hurled me into a spinning, blinding vortex of queasiness. I dry heaved through the misery until my back settled against the foremast.
Weakness, pain, and fatigue plagued my body, pushing me down into an awkward, uncomfortable slump. I couldn’t straighten or move without blacking out, so I remained where he left me, dragged the compass closer to my hip by the chain, and threw every ounce of concentration into solving the puzzle.
Hours passed, and night fell too soon. I lost precious time during bouts of unconsciousness, but I was getting closer to remembering the song my father had taught me. It was the only rhyme I knew that mentioned navigational points of direction. But no matter how many times I turned the instrument along with the chant, nothing happened.
The darkness didn’t help. A thick black blanket of dreary fog hung over the ship, snuffing out the moonlight, the lantern light, and everything around me. I couldn’t see the dial on the compass, and with every passing minute, my body began to give up.
Morning arrived with a horrifying awakening. I’d evaded sleep, but my mind wasn’t working right. There were moments when I remembered the entire song, but the compass didn’t respond to the combination of steps. I was doing something wrong.
I was out of time.
Amid the damp, dense mist, Madwulf’s silhouette appeared.
Right on cue, someone struck the ship’s bell. Once… Twice… Between each of the eight resonant rings, I swore I heard the squawking of nesting birds. My heart jolted.
Madwulf nodded at something behind me. I didn’t see it coming, but I heard the swing of the plank whistling through the air before it collided with the side of my face.
The force of it sent me flying sideways, rupturing my ear and jaw in a jarring clap of thunder. I collapsed on the deck, clutching the compass and swimming in a smothering, crippling pool of pain.
Blood spurted past my lips. My mouth gaped open, and my throat burned raw with my screams. The vibration of my shrilling voice battled the explosion of anguish in my skull. But I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t detect a single sound.
Swallowed whole by the agony, I wept in the startling silence. The deck was hard and sticky beneath my cheek, the constant punch of pain swarming from every direction, tearing through my ribs, chewing at my arm, and piercing my head like the tireless stabbing of a sword.
Sanguine droplets spluttered from my mouth and stained the deck. All I could do was stare at those red beads of blood, and in that moment of noiseless clarity, I mentally hummed.
Oh, poor fellow, your life will end
And I say so, and I know so
Oh, sad fellow, by the thrust of my blade
North to south, click, click
South to east, one tick
I’ll cut you thrice, east to west
I’ll spear you once, west to north
Say I, dead man, you met your end
I’ll drop you down to the depths of the sea
Where the sharks’ll have your body
And the devil’ll have your soul
The clicking, ticking, once, thrice verbiage hadn’t made sense before, so I’d ignored those parts. Perhaps that was where I’d gone wrong.
Determination took over.
Sprawled on my side with my weight on my uninjured shoulder, I exerted more energy than I thought capable as I dragged my hand—which still held the compass—toward my face.
A smear of something thick and dark blurred my right eye. Swollen skin? Broken vessels? I strained to see through the partial vision. Worse, I still couldn’t hear a single sound. Even my breaths had been silenced.
It didn’t matter. Listening wasn’t required as I dug down deep and gathered the last vestige of my strength. I just needed enough grit to stay awake and turn the dial.
The world narrowed to my father’s song and the rotation of the brass casing in my hand. North to south. I depressed the center pin on which the needle turned. Two clicks. Did I just feel a spring release inside? My pulse quickened.
Carefully, hurriedly, I followed the series of steps in the rhyme, gritting my teeth as pain swept up and down my body, wracking me from the inside out.
When I reached the end of the song, the needle felt unsteady as if it had been ejected from its housing. I slowly lifted it away, shaking with shock. It had never done that before. Whatever had held the dial onto the compass had been rotated away like a vise opening its toothy grip.
My fingers trembled as I untied the leather thong around my neck and inserted the stone in the hole in the center.
It fit.
Start and end north.
I turned the compass north.
&nbs
p; A series of springs vibrated inside the casing. Without my hearing, I couldn’t detect mechanical movements, but I imagined a stack of wheels turning in the chamber, or gears with teeth, sliding levers into notches and shifting pins. Maybe it wasn’t that complicated, but the damned thing had eluded me for seven years.
Until now.
The seal around the casing parted, and for a moment, I didn’t believe my eyes.
It was unlocked.
Painful breaths rushed forth as I cracked it open and found two miniature scrolls of paper within, each no larger than the jade stone.
With only one usable hand, I placed it over the little rolls of paper and worked my fingers in an agonizing attempt to unfurl one of them. The grueling effort became worth it the instant I saw my father’s handwriting.
My beautiful daughter,
If you’re reading this, I’m probably gone from this world and waiting for you in the next. I have so much to tell you, starting with
The tiny paper was snatched out of my grip. With a bellow I couldn’t hear, I scrambled after it. Only my limbs wouldn’t cooperate. My body was too broken to seize the hand that stole my father’s letter. More hands fell upon me, taking the compass, the jade stone, and the second scroll.
The grief that assailed me was unwieldy and devastating. It replaced my blood with poison, my air with smoke, and my limbs with lead weights. I couldn’t breathe or move. Still, I tried.
I reached through the haze, shaking violently, seeking anyone who would listen.
“Please. My father’s letter… I beg you.” I pushed the words out, but not one reached my ears. “I can’t hear. My ears… Something’s wrong. I just want to see the letter. Please.”
The dense mist glowed in pale shades of gray, swirling around me as I lay on my side, bleeding and cracked in so many places. From this angle, with my cheek on the deck, I watched innumerable black boots stepping around me. One pair stopped an inch from my face, and Madwulf lowered into a crouch.
He held one of the tiny scrolls and unrolled it between his big fingers. Then he started reading.
