Captain Lester shifted his feet, his brave stance crumbling. “Cilla, the Fee aren’t—”
His eyes widened, staring beyond Cecilia.
She turned. The water surrounding the ship burst upward, rushing toward the sky like an upside-down waterfall. It arced above the topmost sails to form an inverted bowl over the ship, caging the vessel in an impenetrable prison. With the sky now obscured, the ship plunged into a blue darkness, its sails hanging limp in a dead calm. Multi-colored lights began appearing inside the wall of water, human-sized, perhaps slightly larger, and level with the ship’s deck. Red, green, violet, and more—all beautiful, and all painful to look upon. Cecilia forced her eyes to keep looking. Squinting and blinking, she peered at a silver-hued glow, wondering and dreading what she might soon see. As her eyes adjusted, she beheld the head and torso of a woman, the tail of a sea creature.
They were mermaids. They were the Fee.
How beautiful they appeared, with their flashing eyes and lustrous hair! But the beauty felt strained, as though it might burst into ugliness at the slightest breath. No one spoke for nearly a minute. Cecilia struggled to breathe and risked a glance at her father.
He drew a quivering breath then stepped toward the starboard rail, doffed his hat, and bowed awkwardly before the silver-haired Fee who somehow looked bigger than the others. “I’m Captain Martin Lester of the Sister Wench. Who might I have the honor of addressing?”
The creature regarded him with cold eyes. “We do not reveal our names to pirates.”
Cecilia winced and stared at the back of the captain’s head. He hated that title. Don’t be a fool, Father, she silently pleaded with him. It’s just a word . . .
Captain Lester thrust the cloth-wrapped mirror toward the Fee as if it were a sword. “The proper term is ‘privateer,’ ma’am, and you’d do good to remember that!”
Cecilia pressed her hand to her face. Oh, why did he have to be such a buffoon?
A sneer twisted the Fee’s silver lips. “Indeed? Do privateers rob their employers and expect to go unpunished?”
Captain Lester lowered his arm. “No . . .”
“Well then,” the Fee said, her voice weirdly prim and dreadful at the same time. “I believe punishment is in order. It’s only fair. We have always seen fit to reward your spying, and now we see fit to punish your trespass.”
Captain Lester donned and straightened his hat. “I accept whatever punishment you deal me.”
“Your courage is admirable,” the Fee said. “Return the stolen item and await justice.”
Shuddering, Captain Lester uncovered the mirror and let the cloth fall to the deck. The diamonds shone in the stormy light, scattering prismatic color across the faces of the seething Fee. Thunder bellowed, and Cecilia thought she heard horrible insults in its echoes, though the cage of water muffled the full sound.
The Fee reached out her arms, the current of the water-wall forming foamy shackles around her wrists, and wrested the mirror from Captain Lester’s hands. Lightning lit the ocean cage, and thunder crashed, and this time Cecilia knew she heard words.
Punishment. Punishment. Punishment.
One by one the Fee vanished, diving silently from the walls of water into the ocean outside the darkness of the dome, until only the silver Fee remained. She pointed the mirror glass at Captain Lester. Lightning flashed, and the mirror reflected a small beam of light.
A whirlpool appeared in the wall of water directly in front of Captain Lester. Nearby crew members shouted and scrambled as far from him as possible, grasping anything their hands could find to protect themselves from the turbulence the whirlpool would certainly cause. The whirlpool widened and deepened. The ship began to pitch back and forth, side to side.
“Go in. You have no choice,” the Fee said. With a flick of her tail she swam out from behind the whirlpool, still pointing the mirror at the captain. She remained unaffected by the water’s turmoil, her face impassive.
But then she smiled. And it was a smirk of complete, cruel satisfaction.
Cecilia’s fists clenched. Slowly she edged away from the tiller. The Fee had not yet noticed her. The mirror shone starkly in the Fee’s light, casting unnaturally vivid colors across the quarterdeck: the blues too deep, the greens too bright, the reds too harsh. The Fee loosened her grip on the mirror, tilting it, and swept it to the side, its glass still facing Captain Lester. The whirlpool tilted, surging toward him, following the motion of the mirror.
The mirror controlled the whirlpool. It must, surely it must! Cecilia took another step toward the Fee. If she could take the mirror . . . If she could somehow snatch it from the Fee’s hand and shatter its glass, perhaps she could make the whirlpool disappear.
Another step. The Fee tilted the mirror again. The edge of the frame emerged through the water-wall, droplets falling from the glittering diamonds to the deck. The whirlpool surged forward.
Cecilia made a dash across the deck and grabbed the mirror with both hands. The Fee shrieked, slinging her arm backwards with unaccountable strength. Cecilia, her grip still firm upon the frame, felt her feet leave the deck, her side strike the rail.
Then she toppled and lost her hold on the mirror. For a moment she floated, suspended in the water-wall, and saw the ship’s blurry deck, her father’s ashen face . . . Then, jerked horribly to the side, she felt the world spin into a blur. Her lungs burned; water and motion and darkness were everywhere.
The whirlpool swallowed her whole.
Chapter 2
EVERYTHING WAS MUFFLED. Her head throbbed and her nose felt thick, clogged, unable to draw breath. She gasped and heaved, forcing her throat to suck in gulps of air despite the scratched and torn feeling in her mouth. Lying on her stomach, her face turned to one side, she relearned how to breathe.
Once air flowed through her lungs, she stared at her own hand. Only then did she try to remember why she was shuddering and why she was scared. Then she noticed the floor beneath her hand.
It wasn’t the weathered deck of her father’s ship, nor was it the sandy stretches of a beach. It also wasn’t gold. Father John Francis said that heaven was gold, and if she had died, she assumed that’s where she would go. So she couldn’t have died . . .
The wood was red. Not the deep brown of the pau brasil trees she had seen near Tortuga. No, this was red. Screaming red. Cut-throat red.
Cecilia took another deep breath. She pushed herself off the ground and onto her feet.
The world rocked. Cecilia stumbled and slammed into a set of heavy bars. She held herself against the bars for a long moment, listening to the familiar creak and toss of buoyancy. She was on a ship. A red ship. She blinked and focused on the bars. Bars . . . like prison bars . . .
Cecilia’s mind surged out of its fog. She stood in a small gaol lit only by the strangled light of a dying candle in an algae-covered lantern hung from the low ceiling. Bars made up the entirety of one wall. Rotting hay littered the floor, its dull yellow a stark contrast to the eye-aching red. Water dribbled through a crack in the curved back wall.
She stumbled to the cell door. It was locked. She rattled the bars with all of her strength, but they did not give way.
“Hullo?” she called, blinking into the darkness outside of the cell. Her only light source was the lantern. Everything was the same red wood. Why was it red? Was it blood-stained? Cecilia shuddered and hastened to assure herself that the blood would be brown at this point, but the thought did little to comfort her. “Please, let me out! Hullo!”
Nobody answered. Cecilia shoved her hands through her soaked hair, pushing the tangled locks out of her face. Her head felt light, disoriented, unable to process her surroundings, much less her terror. Her skirts and petticoats were heavy, sopping wet, yet she did not feel cold.
Exhaling a shuddering breath, she sank to the floor. The reek of moldy hay hit her nose, bringing tears to her eyes. She blinked them back. She couldn’t lose control. Not now. Everything would be sorted out soon. There had bee
n some sort of misunderstanding. She had dreamed a horrid dream, fallen into this nightmare . . .
Eventually her tears subsided, and the moldy smell served to clear her head of fog. Cecilia took a few calming breaths. She crawled to the curved wall, which appeared to be the inside of the ship’s hull, and pressed her eye to the crack, peering out of her cell into the world.
Ocean. Although she could see nothing but darkness, she suddenly knew that she was in the bilge of this ship, far below the water line. She scrambled away from the crack, expecting torrents of water to burst through and flood the room. Nothing happened. Even the dribble had stopped.
What is this place?
She crept back to the crack and peeked out again. No matter how she strained her eyes, she saw only the same darkness that had surrounded the Sister Wench. It was black and hopeless. How could she tell if there were Fee in the water?
Cecilia pushed herself away from the crack and stood up, more carefully this time. Kicking aside the straw, she sought for something, some clue or tool that could help her escape the gaol. She found nothing but composting hay. She gagged at the stench and pushed the slightly fresher hay over it. Still coughing, she sat down and stared at her shoes, watching the water droplets leaking from her gown fade into the floor.
She didn’t know how long she sat in a daze, but she snapped out of it as soon as she heard laughter.
“Get down here, Billy! You ain’t getting out of it neither. Cap’n’s orders and all,” a gruff voice said, followed by a deep guffaw. He sounded British, though poorly educated.
A smoother voice replied with a more polished accent, “It’s William, thank you very much. And I absolutely despise checking the bilge. It’s filthy down there. Besides, it is logical to assume there is no one in the ship’s gaol. We would have heard the shouting.”
Cecilia opened her mouth to shout, but natural caution held her back. She didn’t know who these men were, and she was completely helpless and unarmed. She waited.
“Oh, there ain’t no one there, but you still get to go and check. I sent in a report to the cap’n, and he said ye had to! He also poked fun at your being a blue-blood and all.” The gruff one chuckled again.
William swore both at the gruff speaker (whom he categorized as ‘churlish low-life’ among other more colorful titles) and at the captain (‘the idiotic Frenchman’). An eerie blue light appeared in what seemed to be a passage between bulkheads, and she saw that the bilge was empty but for her cell.
However, at the moment more urgent matters preoccupied her mind. No matter what she might do, this William person was going to find her. What was it her father had said her first day aboard the Sister Wench? “Just keep your head high and act confident-like. The others will leave you alone if you pretend you know what you’re doing.”
Clearing her throat, Cecilia called to the light, “Hullo? Is anyone there?”
She heard a startled gasp then pounding feet. The blue light emerged from the passage and reached Cecilia’s prison, causing the walls to appear lavender. Any greeting Cecilia had intended to speak upon seeing William vanished. She clapped her hand over her mouth to hold back a scream.
William wasn’t human. His body was the blue light, the nasty color of dried foam clinging to sand. His clumpy hair seemed to ooze. A black blob throbbed and pulsed in the place where his heart should be, dark and squirming like a dying squid.
William stopped in his tracks, and his face mirrored Cecilia’s own expression. “You—you are solid!” he gasped.
Cecilia pressed her hand tighter to her mouth. His teeth reminded her of the slimy stones lining the lake behind her old home, stones she avoided because of the leeches clinging to them. Only with great effort of will could she force herself to speak behind her trembling hand, whimpering, “What are you?”
William stared at her for several moments longer. His soggy eyes blinked. Then he bolted out of sight. The cramped cell almost seemed brighter without the glow shining off of the wet, ghostly man.
Cecilia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. A horrifying thought crossed her mind: What if she had gone not to heaven but to . . . some awful hell? Cecilia grasped at the rosary hidden beneath her dress, rubbing her trembling fingers over the familiar shape through the cloth. Could this be purgatory?
The light appeared in the passage again, this time far stronger. She dropped her hands and clenched them at her side. Shouts and footsteps echoed through the ship. The blue light intensified, forcing Cecilia to blink, her eyes stinging again as if they had just been doused in salt water.
William appeared first, but after him swarmed a crowd of the monsters. Cecilia cried out and scrambled backwards, pressing against the wall. Each creature was unique in its hideousness. Though they looked like watery men, she believed their skin would have the texture of a crab’s shell. Their hair seemed nothing more than seaweed draped over their heads and held down by their hats, and their teeth might have been stolen from a dead shark. But worst of all were the throbbing black hearts visible through the blueness of their skin and clothes. Everything about them felt rotten.
The creatures grabbed at the bars and shook them, gnashing their teeth at Cecilia. Some shoved William forward, jostling him toward the door.
“Get it open! She’s in my omen!”
“And in mine! I want her first!”
“Come here, girl! I’m finally going to be free!”
“Everyone needs to remain calm,” William said, his voice shaking and difficult to hear over the noise. Someone slammed him into the bars and ordered him to open the door. “We should all try to be rational about this. We need to talk to her!” William protested.
Demands and insults flew at him, ending in a muscular ghost pulling William off the ground and shaking him. “Let her out, lobsterback, or I’ll squeeze your heart ’til it bleeds as red as this cursed ship!”
“Put him down, Jack,” a familiar voice shouted. Cecilia scanned the crowd until she spotted a monster slightly less horrifying than Jack making his way toward the two. He jerked William out of the large ghost’s grasp. “Billy’s right. We need to talk all this out, and somebody oughter tell Cap’n.”
“Franklin. Brilliant timing.” William sniffed and dusted off his clothes, sending splatters of water to the ground where they sizzled before disappearing.
“Get out of this, Frank,” Jack growled, taking a step toward him. Frank simply glanced up and grinned at him, flashing crooked teeth the color of black pearls. Jack shook his fist. “And don’t you even think about telling the captain. He’s got no rights in this. If he even shows his ugly face here, I’m going to—”
“What, je t’en prie, will you do, my dear Jacques?” a voice with a decidedly French accent intoned.
Cecilia strained her eyes trying to catch sight of the owner of this new voice. She couldn’t see anything beyond the line of specters immediately outside her cell. Everyone fell silent. Jack glared at Cecilia, shoved William into the wall, and stormed away.
The voice lost the heavy French accent, speaking now with barely a hint of it. “William, please unlock our guest and lead her to my cabin. Frank, I should be most grateful if you will find and annoy Jack. I’m irritated with him. And I believe the rest of you have duties to perform. This ship won’t sail itself, after all. Well, it will, but that’s no reason to stand about and gawk like schoolchildren at a menagerie. It’s just a solid female human, after all. It’s not as if we’ve seen nothing of the sort in—oh, years! Step lively now.”
The ghosts scrambled away, casting forlorn glances back at her before disappearing into the passageway. Frank grinned and winked before dashing off after the retreated Jack. Cecilia stepped away from the wall, trying to find the speaker. She saw no more than a tricorn hat and the swish of a long black coat.
William offered a small smile, rendered no less hideous for its friendliness. “I apologize for the fright you’ve undergone, my lady. And I also apologize for being the one responsi
ble for your . . . er . . . abnormal welcoming party. You must understand, I was quite shocked upon seeing you here.”
Cecilia attempted to smile in return, but it was difficult to smile in the vicinity of that throbbing black heart. William pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, swinging it open with a creeeeak.
Suddenly unwilling to leave the only shelter within sight, Cecilia drew a heavy breath. With no alternatives available to her, she stepped out of the cell into this dreadful, red nightmare of a ship.
Chapter 3
WILLIAM BECKONED FOR Cecilia to follow him and led her out of the gaol, along the short passage, and into the underbelly of the ship, his rippling glow lighting the way. Nothing seemed to be stored in the bilge: no sails, rope, ammunition, water barrels, or food. Did these monsters live on air or . . . or were they even alive?
Despite these thoughts her fear subsided, or most of it anyway. She studied the back of William, feeling both curiosity and revulsion. When she looked past the dripping hair, the black heart, and the slimy blueness of his skin, he appeared oddly normal. He was thin and tall, his face gaunt and sickly but commanding. He was probably around twenty, barely older than she was.
“I’m terribly sorry, but you really must climb up,” William said, wringing his hands as though he could not believe his own audacity in asking a woman to climb a ladder. Cecilia blinked back at him, confused, then realized she had been staring, and that he had probably already mentioned the ladder with no response from her. He no doubt thought her slow-witted.
She attempted a smile. “Oh, certainly. I can climb.”
William nodded and nimbly scrambled up ahead of her. Cecilia followed close behind. They emerged onto another red deck, this one divided by bulkheads yet appearing mostly empty. William led her aft to a companionway which they ascended to a main deck lined on both sides with cannons larger than any her father had owned. Looking up and around, she counted three scarlet masts rising into a canopy of dense fog. This ship was much larger than the Sister Wench. “Is this a man o’ war?” she asked.
Five Enchanted Roses: A Collection of Beauty and the Beast Stories Page 2
