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 been 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 responsible 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.
“She was,” William said, his tone melancholy. “A fighting frigate, all 110 feet and 26 guns of her. This way now.” He led her toward one of two ornate red doors set on either side of the companionway stairs up to the quarterdeck. As Cecilia obediently followed, she got a clear look at him by daylight, and her steps faltered in renewed horror.
His hair now looked like slithering eels, his coat appeared to be made of a moth-ridden sail, and he smelled like putrid seaweed. She forced herself to approach him, trying to see what she had seen before.
“Right in here, my lady,” William said, and opened the door, revealing a darkness far more violent than William’s blue glow.
Cecilia shivered and peered inside. Her eyes stung, but she kept them open and forced herself to focus on the room.
A gray sun shining through a glass-paned window revealed the silhouette of a figure wearing a long black coat, and yet beyond the window, all was dense fog and dark ocean. The room itself, what could be seen of it, was shockingly elegant. A Persian rug covered the floor, the table and chairs were ornamented, and gilded chests were shoved against the walls, practically screaming to be opened and the riches inside perused. Dim candles glimmered in the heavy stillness of the cabin.
The man spun around. Cecilia gasped at the sudden movement.
“Ma chère, we do not have all day. This would be true whether or not you stood gawking stupidly in my doorway, as there is no day here. But I assume you are more intelligent than you currently appear, and thus I shall also assume that you understand my gist.”
Despite the amused condescension coating his tone, something oddly alluring in his voice roused Cecilia out of her discomfort and piqued her curiosity. Perhaps it was the strange combination of matter-of-fact sarcasm and a French accent.
“William, merci. Leave.” His tone was curt and final. William bowed, backed from the room, and closed the door.
Cecilia sucked in a breath, her curiosity extinguishing like candlelight in a storm, and spun about to stare at the closed door as though it were an impenetrable barrier.
“I suppose this is all rather frightening,” the captain said. When Cecilia, bracing herself, looked back around at him, he gestured for her to sit in a stiffly upholstered chair. Even as he made the gesture, he knelt before one of the chests and retrieved from its interior two tin mugs. After staring at them for a moment, he huffed, tossed them back into the chest, and then rummaged further, emerging at last with two goblets.
Numbly, Cecilia took the proffered seat. She eyed the captain, trying to steel herself before her first glimpse of his ghoulish looks, which were sure to be worse than William’s. William was horrid enough, but at least he produced a blue aura. This man, by contrast, dimmed any candlelight and sunlight that might have touched him.
The spectral captain spun from the chest and placed the goblets and a bottle on the table. Cecilia gazed up at him, trying to discern his features. She couldn’t. The darkness of his heart seemed to have spread, shrouding his face and body in inky blackness. She could see the faint impression of a straight nose, a twisted smirk, and long fingers. Otherwise, his shirt, his trousers, his overcoat—all were dark like his skin.
Somehow, his entirely shadowed body was even more awful than the soggy figures of his crew. It brought to mind images of the suffering and demons and hell that Father John Francis had warned about from his pulpit.
“Do you have a name, Mademoiselle?” the captain asked as he uncorked the bottle and poured. Cecilia recognized the dull smell of wine, like metallic blood. It reminded her of the Fee and the whirlpool.
Her stomach quivered, but she accepted the goblet he handed her and held it tightly with both hands. Rallying herself as best she could, she answered the captain’s question. “My name is Lester. Miss Cecilia Lester.”
The shades of black on his face seemed to shift as if he raised an eyebrow. “An English surname? And your English is flawless. Yet you look Spanish to me.”
“Mother is . . . was,” Cecilia stammered. “But I grew up in St. George’s Parish.”
“Ah. Bermuda, a British colony. And you are of mixed nationality, yes? Tres exotique.”
Cecilia’s fingers tightened around the goblet’s stem. She suddenly found she didn’t care about anything but getting answers. She set the goblet aside and leaped to her feet, glaring up into the black space vaguely shaped like a head. Words wouldn’t form, so she simply stood her ground.
The captain chuckled and tilted his head to view her better. “Exotique. That was a rather poor choice of wording, given the circumstances. Though I meant it as a compliment. Ma chère, you have the great misfortune to find yourself aboard the punishment vessel of our mutual friends, the Fee—home of despairing and accursed men-turned-monsters. Welcome aboard the Rose. I hope you do not intend to stay long.”
Cecilia stared at the captain and felt him returning her gaze, though she could not see his face. At last, feeling strangely satisfied, as though an important question had finally been answered, she sat. “So all of you were . . . are people?” she asked.
The captain nodded. “Mais oui. Our appearance is part of our punishments. As if being stuck on this appallingly colored ship is not punishment enough.”
“The Fee were going to punish my father,” Cecilia mused aloud. Worry for her father, his ship, and even his crew rushed into her mind, casting out her momentary calm. Did the Fee spare him? What if they assumed he had bee
n behind her attempt to take the mirror? She gripped the arms of her chair. Had she only made his situation worse?
“Your father? How did you come to be here, then?” the captain asked, settling gracefully into the chair behind his desk, his goblet in one hand.
Perhaps motivated by fear, perhaps by her relief at not being killed, or perhaps simply to distract herself from the dark form of the captain, Cecilia poured out her tale as hastily and effectively as she could. She explained how her mother had died of influenza, how she’d been left destitute. She told about how her father had come to St. George’s Parish at last, finding her in the care of kindly Father John Francis, the only man in all the village willing to take in a privateer’s daughter. Captain Lester had promised to carry her back to England by the end of the year . . . to London, where he claimed he had a respectable sister who might just be willing to take in the daughter of her less-than-respectable brother.
She told of her weeks aboard the Sister Wench, enduring rough and rowdy men, bad weather, and the inconveniences of shipboard life. At last they had taken on supplies at Tortuga, an island overrun by pirates and rampant with degradation, depravity, and despair. Cecilia had observed the port from the safe distance of the Sister Wench’s deck, having no desire to venture ashore. She had been truly happy to put Tortuga astern and embrace the rollicking waves of the ocean again.
Finally, her tale nearing its conclusion, she spoke of her discovery of Captain Lester’s thievery, of the beautiful mirror that belonged to the Fee, of the wall and the whirlpool—and of her reckless decision to steal back the mirror in an attempt to save her father.
The captain listened silently, nodding his shadowy head throughout the story. When Cecilia fell silent, her temples throbbing at the telling of her own tale, the captain spoke again, his voice surprisingly soft:
Five Glass Slippers: A Collection of Cinderella Stories Page 38
