She needed answers.
Cecilia latched the window then turned to face the door. She’d not wanted to know if she was locked in, but the time of discovery had come. She tried the latch and found that it gave. Did her stomach lurch in relief or in dread? For now, surely, she must step out into the terrible unknown and leave behind the relative safety of this red-glaring room.
Pausing with her hand on the handle, she took a few calming breaths before holding her head high and swinging open the door.
“Oi! Eh, Billy! She’s up!” a gruff voice shouted.
Cecilia yelped, jumped backwards into her room, and slammed the door. She heard guffaws of laughter and a thick English accent swearing profusely. Frank and William.
She sighed. Why were they here? Had the captain ordered them to spy on her? The thought was annoying, but at least it hadn’t been Jack or one of the others waiting outside her door. With a start, Cecilia realized how likely a possibility that was.
Frowning sternly, she swung the door wide again and found herself staring into the grinning face of Frank and the scowling face of William. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Thought you might be hungry, my lady,” William replied, holding out a plate of food. “I’m sorry at its appearance, but it truly was the best that could be found down in the galley today.” He glared at Frank. “Except for that cake this fool decided to eat.”
Frank shrugged indifferently. “Stale, it was! You wouldn’t want to give the missy a stale cake, would you?”
“No, but I do not like handing her a plate of mush either, you peasantly bumpkin!” William snapped.
“Now listen here, you little—”
Cecilia quit listening to the argument. She glanced down at the plate of food then raised an eyebrow at William. Mush? What did he mean? Half of the plate was piled with fresh-baked bread, and the other side held porridge with cinnamon dashed on top. Hesitantly, Cecilia stuck her finger into the porridge—maybe it tasted like mush—but no, it was as delicious as it looked, lightly sweetened with honey.
She took the plate from William and quickly ate the bread. The two pirates did not notice her until she plucked from William’s hand the spoon he had been pointing at Frank’s throat. She ate several more bites, pleased that at least she would not go hungry on this ship. Then she noticed their silence and glanced up, momentarily embarrassed about eating her food so quickly before recalling that they were pirates and probably didn’t give an empty rum bottle about manners. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
Frank grimaced. “I can’t believe you tried the gray stuff. It’s awful.”
Cecilia glanced down at the plate, her spoon poised over the half-eaten serving. “The porridge? No, it’s delicious.”
William stared at her, considering. “You ate the moldy bread.”
Cecilia blinked. “It wasn’t moldy.”
“I think the sun’s getting to her,” Frank said morosely.
William sneered. “What sun?” He glanced back at Cecilia. “You are feeling well, aren’t you?”
Cecilia set the plate on the floor and planted her fists on her hips, glaring at both of them until they took a few steps back. When she was little, she had seen her mother do the same to her father, and he always staggered away too. “Oh, I’m feeling well considering I just awoke on a cursed pirate ship. Why shouldn’t I eat the food? It looked and tasted delightful.”
William and Frank exchanged glances then shifted until they faced each other, shutting Cecilia out of the ensuing conversation.
“I don’t think she’s lying.”
“Why would she lie, you bumbling beehive? Of course she’s not lying!”
“Is it because she’s solid? Or because she’s insane?”
“You’re one to talk about insanity! She is clearly not the mentally unstable one aboard this vessel.”
“Maybe she’s just stupid.”
Cecilia cleared her throat, pursing her lips. They continued to argue, ignoring her.
“Do you think we should tell the captain?” William mused.
Frank shook his head, flinging droplets from his stringy, wet hair. “No need to bother him.”
“But we can’t just let this anomaly go unspoken . . .”
And so they bickered, gaining in speed and volume as though they never intended to stop. Her stomach properly satisfied, Cecilia’s thoughts returned to her confusion and questions. She needed to find the captain.
“If you two are finished debating my mental capacities, I have a request to make,” she announced. Both men snapped quiet. “Thank you. I’d like to speak to Captain Pepin. Would you please lead me to him? Now, if it’s not too much trouble.”
William fidgeted. “Apologies, my lady. The captain is currently unavailable.”
“Aye, you can’t go see him, miss. He’s busy,” Frank seconded.
Peering around them, Cecilia glimpsed, at the end of a short passage, a companionway up to the main deck. “The captain ordered you to stay with me, correct?”
They nodded quickly, pleased at the apparent change of subject.
Cecilia stepped past them and made her way to the stairs, ignoring their protests. “If the captain ordered you to protect me, you probably ought to come along as I explore.”
As Cecilia set her foot on the first step, William burst out, “My lady, what did the captain tell you last night?”
She glanced back at him. “What do you mean?”
His ghoulish face seemed to darken, and he cast a quick look from side to side, as though afraid of eavesdroppers. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he said, “About the omens.”
Cecilia’s eyes widened. She returned to face the two soggy men. “He didn’t tell me anything. He shied away from the subject, actually.”
William and Frank exchanged a look.
“What are the omens?” Cecilia persisted. “Can you tell me?”
They turned toward her. They nodded. “Yes,” both said. William added, “You’ll have to help us though.”
“And keep it shushed up, will you?” Frank inserted, his voice a whisper. He glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t want the captain to know about this.”
This was certainly intriguing. “What do I need to do?” Cecilia asked.
“Follow us,” they both said. Without another word, they turned and rushed into the darkness, their watery forms making little noise, like the sea just before the first breaths of a storm.
Cecilia glanced at the stairs for a considering moment then hastened after William and Frank. She needed to know what the omens were and why the captain had tried to hide them from her.
Pepin-René Marc Daviau prided himself on being the laziest person aboard the ship. There was something powerful and invigorating about being a captain who did nothing. True, the men didn’t seem to appreciate it, but they couldn’t really do anything about it, now could they?
Pepin glanced down at his shadowy arm. He flexed his fingers. A thrill swept up his arm and into his head, causing the world to blur momentarily. Well, they couldn’t do anything about it yet, anyway. He held the power. He was the captain.
For now.
Irritated at the thought, Pepin swung his legs off his desk and strode toward the door, trying to tell himself that he didn’t actually care about going out in what passed for sunlight in the weird, floating world of the Rose. He told himself that his dark, expressionless form didn’t actually bother him. Pepin grimaced ruefully and exited the cabin.
He met several quick glares and disdainful huffs from the ghosts scrubbing the decks nearby. One made a fist and cracked his knuckles.
Pepin rolled his eyes, though no one could see it. He knew the men hated him. He knew they would kill him the moment they had the chance. However, was a little subtlety about these particular sentiments too much to ask? It wasn’t his fault the Fee created the Rose to move at speeds proportionate to the misery of her inhabitants. Blaming him was most unfair. Willia
m and Frank were the only two who showed him any respect. Even then, were they simply biding their time, waiting to betray him?
Pepin shrugged the thought away as he climbed to the quarterdeck. There, striking a pose with feet braced and arms crossed, he eyed with affected disinterest the men below him on the main deck. Some were on their hands and knees, scrubbing furiously at the red boards. He had given them the choice of scrubbing until the boards shone white or practicing curtsies for five hours. Sacrebleu, one of them was trying to curtsy! Pepin burst into laughter at the sight.
He heard muttered curses and swearing from the men behind him. They were angry. Fine. This would only make the ship move faster.
Beside him the tiller moved of its own accord, as if a huge, invisible finger nudged it from side to side; and the ship cut through the water with speed far greater than any normal vessel could attain, as if the Fee themselves were slashing through the ocean and creating an easy path. Pepin shuddered, thinking back to his last conversation with them. The Fee must truly want Mademoiselle Lester to enter that shack . . .
Mademoiselle Lester. Cecile. What was she doing right now? Pepin had sent William and Frank to watch over her, but she had struck him as an extremely thoughtful type. William and Frank . . . if they shared a single thought between them, it would be a miracle. What if they failed to carry out his plan?
What if she read the omens? What if she realized . . . ?
In a flash, Pepin was clattering down the companionway, his dignity cast to the four winds. He cursed his stupidity; why had he let William and Frank guard her? He should have watched over her himself. He should have postponed his lazy meandering to another day.
A day when he would no longer be a monster.
Chapter 5
AFTER DESCENDING A series of ladders, Frank and William led Cecilia at last to the stinking bilge of the ship, the same level in which she had first awakened in a cell on the Rose. Cecilia vaguely recalled climbing only one ladder during her ascent the day before, but she shoved this puzzle into the recesses of her brain for later contemplation. Captain Pepin’s warning that she shouldn’t venture into any of the lower decks rang in her memory. Nevertheless, she bravely followed the two ghosts until they stood at last before a certain door.
“’Ere we are!” Frank announced, indicating the door with a sweep of one arm.
He reached for the handle, but William grabbed him and jerked his hand away, then glanced back at Cecilia apologetically. “This room can be somewhat disconcerting. Rest assured, you are on the ship, and nothing is going to happen to you.”
Cecilia stared at William before shifting her gaze to the red door. “What do you mean? Is it dangerous?”
“No,” William said. “Just . . . eerie.”
This was little enough comfort. But Cecilia was offered no chance to dwell on her anxiety before Frank thrust the door open, causing William to stumble to the ground, swearing.
Cecilia took one glimpse through the doorway and forgot everything else. She dashed into the room, spinning, her braid bouncing around her shoulders and threatening to come undone.
London glistened around her. She knew it was London, though she couldn’t say how she knew. She’d never been to a great city before, but Father John Francis had told her stories of the city of his birth. Stories which had led her to dream of a beautiful place like no other. And this felt like London as she had dreamed it would be. The cobblestone street glistened with a recent rain, reflecting the clouds in the creamy sky. Beautifully old and even older buildings lined the streets and towered each above the next, vying for her admiration. It was exactly how she had imagined it.
Cecilia blinked at this thought. No, not exactly. There were no people. Only buildings and streets and skies.
She stared at the cobblestone street then rubbed it with the toe of her shoe. It was flat. The stones held no variation in height, though they looked like they did. Cecilia walked over to a building, and her hand touched a solid wall that should have been empty air.
Cecilia closed her eyes and stepped back. When she dared look again, she could see that all was not as it seemed. Here, a brief image of herself flickered in the gray sky . . . there, a glint in the stone, illuminating the building that should have been behind her.
It wasn’t London. It was a room, but a room that was a mirror. A strange mirror . . .
The Fee.
She shuddered and turned to question Frank and William, pausing when she noticed that they had not yet entered the room. Frank inched across the threshold, out of the dim redness of the rest of the ship and into her London, his gaze darting to every corner, a frown etched between his brows. William’s eyes were shut tight. He opened them briefly before slamming them shut again, twitching his head as if trying to negate an argument.
“What’s wrong?” Cecilia asked.
William’s eyes popped open. Frank snorted. “What’s wrong? That’s a good one. Don’t see how you’re holding up so well when you’ve never . . .” Frank paused. He groaned. “Aw, don’t tell me. First the food, now this room? What do you see?”
“London,” Cecilia said, glancing back at the street—no, the mirror. “It’s beautiful,” she added to herself, her whisper strangely loud in the silence.
“I would hardly describe London that way,” William said. He opened his eyes. They widened, and he shuddered but kept them open. “But I wouldn’t mind seeing London now.”
“What do you see?” Cecilia asked. “Is it bad?”
Frank’s frown deepened. “It’s bad,” he murmured. He offered no further explanation.
“Well then!” William said, abruptly changing the subject. “This makes everything easier! My lady, do you see the chest in the far corner of the room? It will be hard to spot at first.”
Cecilia glanced at the corner. She saw only a swinging silversmith sign and the street. Wait . . . the street did look a bit odd. The depth wasn’t right.
Cecilia, moving a little uncertainly, made her way to that strange, warped corner. As she drew nearer, she discerned the shape of a chest. Kneeling, she groped for its latch. She opened the chest.
The lining of the chest was the same red as the rest of the ship. Cecilia scowled at the color, hating to find it here in her vision of London. But she forgot the garish hue when she noticed the book—a shabby, leather-bound book at the bottom of the otherwise-empty chest. Cecilia plucked it up.
“Aye, that’s it!” Frank said. “Bring it here, miss! We’ll tell you about the omens with it!”
Cecilia started for the door then halted, holding the book against her heart. The two ghostly sailors seemed far too eager. Had they brought her here to fetch this book for them because they were too afraid to enter the room themselves? Were they lying to her?
Remaining where she stood, Cecilia carefully rested the book across her arm and opened the binding. “I think I’ll take a look first.”
William started forward then yelped and leaped back as soon as his boot crossed into the room. Frank’s brow furrowed. “Miss Lester, please come out. We’ll explain it all to you.”
Ignoring their protests, Cecilia lowered her gaze to the worn pages before her.
They were crammed with hurried writing in blotchy red ink. Barely legible words covered every inch of every page, down the center, along the sides, upside down. Some were crossed or blotted out, others written with smearing ink, and others with hardly any ink at all, pale and small. She struggled to wrest any order or meaning from the bizarre scrawls, and after a few moments noticed that every line of writing contained a name followed by two phrases. Cecilia began reading the lines she could decipher, the ones written with a bold and decisive hand.
Lawrence T. Witten: Impatience for his wife—Silence the Solid Woman
John “Jack” Peterson: No Compassion for Life—Murder the Solid Woman
Michael Forest: Torture—Maim the Solid Woman
Adam P. Brown: Manipulating selfishly—Betray the Solid Woman
&nb
sp; Rojo Cortez: Cowardice under pressure—Abandon the Solid Woman
Cecilia gasped and lifted her gaze from the book. She stared at William and Frank. They blinked mournfully back at her. “Why the Solid Woman?” she asked. “Why do these all involve something horrible happening to the Solid Woman? To . . . me?”
They made no reply.
She glowered at them and pressed herself against the far wall. Staring at the pages again, she struggled to recognize some sort of organization or pattern in the names, seeking the captain’s omen or William’s or Frank’s. But she recognized none of the names.
However, she did notice that the majority of the names were crossed through. She wondered at this, and then realized that it must be because they had died. There weren’t as many sailors aboard the ship as there were names in the book. How men made of water and ink managed to die, she could not imagine.
She continued to scan the names, flipping through pages hastily, trying to ignore the rising panic in her stomach at all of the atrocities the omens outlined.
Torture the Solid Woman. Drown the Solid Woman. Assault the Solid Woman.
With a shuddering breath, Cecilia started to slam the book shut. But something stopped her. There on the page was a name that was neither crossed out nor blood-red. It was fading, almost invisible, written in black ink that appeared comfortingly ordinary. She might have missed it had she not been so weary of red.
Charles “Curly” Tanner: Liar—Almost Solid
“Who’s Charles Tanner?” Cecilia asked, closing the book with shaking hands. She snapped her head up to glare at William and Frank, but then shrieked and stumbled backwards, tripped over the hidden chest in the corner, and collapsed against the wall.
The captain stood behind William and Frank.
Five Enchanted Roses: A Collection of Beauty and the Beast Stories Page 4
