The Maiden in the Mirror

by Scott Hamerton

  "Neither of those are options that I like."

  "No, I don't suppose you would, but I doubt they want you dead. If they did, and they thought they could kill you, they would have already done it."

  "So, they want to recruit me?"

  "That is the most likely conclusion. You clearly demonstrated several skills that will be of great interest to them."

  Minerva imagined that Lintumen intended to comfort her. Unfortunately, he failed stupendously. Rather than dwell on the matter, she moved the conversation forward. "Isn't there a danger in just changing the way the world works on a whim?" she asked. "What if someone lost control of it?"

  "We call that phenomenon going rogue," he said with a heavy frown. "A rogue magician has lost the ability to discern imagination from reality. Some argue that this is a higher state of magic, and many would agree, if not for the fact that nearly every rogue magician ever to exist has needed to be eliminated."

  "That seems a bit harsh."

  "Imagine a person with the ability to turn your head inside out, just by thinking about it. Can you control your thoughts so perfectly as to protect everyone around you? Everyone you love? Do you ever have nightmares?"

  Minerva's eyes went wide. "I see."

  "You want to ask me if I have ever seen it happen."

  She nodded.

  "I have. Once. A novice magician went rogue when I was still in training, many years ago. In his imagination, everyone was a murderer, or a thief, or worse, and that's what they became. The city fell into chaos, and crime ran rampant, for a time."

  "What happened to him?"

  "My tutor attacked the matter directly, permanently solving the situation."

  "I'm sorry to hear that," Minerva replied, hardened by the assumption that Lintumen's tutor executed the man.

  "It was necessary."

  "What was his name?"

  Lintumen stopped to appraise her sincerity before replying. "Bartleby Montgomery."

  "I didn't mean to bring up a painful memory. I'm sorry."

  "His memory is not painful to me. He will forever be a good reminder to remain vigilant against the frailty of my own mind. It's just that, in all my years, you're the first person to ever ask for his name."

  Chapter 46

  Proper Attire

  "Minnie!" the twins bellowed from above. Luff and Leech always radiated exuberance at the sight of Minerva, and they dropped out of the sails to embrace her in a three-person hug as she emerged from the sterncastle.

  "Nice leap. Very professional. Even the landing."

  Minerva blushed. "Thanks for vouching for me."

  "Sure thing. You owe us."

  "You never said anything about that!"

  "You never asked."

  Debts were apparently standard commodities for Luff and Leech.

  "Okay, what do you want?" she asked. "I know you already have something planned."

  The twins grinned wickedly.

  "Come to the common – this evening. The new crew – wants to meet you."

  Gunner's words rang in Minerva's mind. Be crew. She reluctantly agreed.

  "Great! See you tonight. We put your things – away in your room. Thimbler left a note. Go read it – and hurry back. We're short on riggers."

  It seemed so long ago that anyone had called her a rigger. They didn't even ask if she was planning to work with them; they just assumed. Minerva hurried down to her room, thinking about their assumption, and concluded that she liked it.

  Minerva's room remained exactly as she remembered, including the smell of wood that lingered everywhere inside the Skyraker. A small package of miscellany sat on her bed. The twins must have put her clothes away, so she checked the drawers. Shirts in the top. Pants and belts below. Underthings in the third drawer. Minerva suddenly felt very embarrassed at the idea of the twins putting away her underwear. At least they organized everything in a reasonable manner. She opened the very bottom drawer, expecting to see only her lonely orange and black dress waiting for her.

  Beside her sturdy and elegant gown, that she cherished more than anything else, she found the most stunning blue dress she ever had the pleasure of holding. It shimmered without movement, and a small letter, tenderly sealed with wax, lay silently on top.

  Dear Minerva,

  I want you to know that I've spent most of my life hiding from who I am. Only now do I see how foolish that was. I owe you for that, and so, I want you to have this dress. It means a great deal to me, but I know that you will treat it with the respect and care that it deserves. I'm giving it to you not because I no longer want it, but because I desire for the world to see how beautiful it is.

  I want the world to see how beautiful you are.

  All I ask is that if you ever find a time to wear it in your travels, please come back and share your tale with me. I invite you to visit whenever you please.

  Thimbler

  P.S. I included some shoes that I think will go well with the dress. I hope they fit.

  Minerva carefully closed the letter and set it aside, and then lifted the dress to reveal a pair of dark blue dress heels with an open toe. They fit perfectly. The heels weren't very tall, but she felt much taller in them, and a lot less stable.

  Already late for her shift, she resigned herself to practicing walking in them later, and then returned the items to the drawer and made her way to the deck to help with the sails. The rest of her day was filled with teasing calls from the twins to scrub harder and stop gawking, but she was too lost in the thought of one day wearing the wonderful blue dress and new heels.

  The first supper aboard the Skyraker was beyond busy. Big Jim had his hands full with the new crew, and Minerva could already see the hatred boiling in the eyes of some of the younger ones. More than a few of them gave her twisted glares when they realized that there was a girl on board, leaving the galley to once again be split into haters and fans of the infamous pirate girl.

  Surprisingly, it didn't bother her as much as she thought it would. She saw Spit at another table, pointing at her and undoubtedly spinning wicked lies about her witchcraft. He sneered at her when she looked, and she wondered why he even bothered to board the ship.

  Luff and Leech alleviated Minerva's tension by dragging her over to sit with them, and a cloud of familiar, alluring smells assailed her as Gunner sat down beside her.

  "Did you see - her dive?" the twins asked excitedly.

  Gunner looked down at Minerva with a smile, forcing her to blush. "Sure did. I've heard her shout before, but that scream was something else. I bet the whole of the port caught wind of that. Probably thought a banshee had come to carry them off."

  Minerva stewed in her shame while the rest of them laughed.

  Then Gunner put his arm around her. "Luff and Leech say you're going to come by for a visit this evening."

  She nodded stiffly, trying to wish his arm into sticking there permanently.

  "It will be good to see you there," he said, and then he picked up his plate and walked away to a table of friends.

  Something of a conversation occurred afterward, but Minerva didn't hear much of it. Gunner was looking forward to seeing her. Should she wear the blue dress, she wondered.

  Even though Minerva's visit to Riggersport felt like a whirlwind of work and celebration, she still managed to collect a decent wardrobe. For her evening with Gunner and the twins, she settled on wearing a practical outfit of shin-length shorts meant for a grown man, and a simple shirt with a button down front. The shirt allowed her to modestly reveal her mark, as she wore a tight top underneath it that covered only her breasts.

  When she arrived in the common—a cramped deck full of hammocks, crates, hushed voices, and the warmth of bodies stifled by the smell of tobacco—she was surprised to find many of the sailors asleep. She previously imagined that they spent their evenings embroiled in fistfights and drinking contests until the wee hours of the morning.

  The ship creaked quietly around the slumbering men, roc
king their hammocks while they slept.

  In the middle of the space, a pile of personal effects had been pushed together to form a crude table. Luff and Leech sat with a few others, gambling for ale tokens. "Hey Minnie," they said quietly. "Come sit."

  Minerva planted herself atop a stack of burlap sacks laid over a large trunk.

  "This is Woody. Our new carpenter."

  A heavyset man with overly bushy eyebrows and tanned skin nodded respectfully at her.

  "This is Gags. Able body."

  Gags was perhaps in his mid-twenties with a dark complexion, and was generally nondescript, other than his mouth, which sloped directly down into his neck, completely robbing him of a chin. He smiled kindly and Minerva smiled back.

  "You made it sound like everyone would be awake right now. I don't want to wake someone up," she whispered to the twins.

  "The first day – is always hard. They'll come around. Only old hands – stay up at night."

  Minerva's chest swelled with pride. She was an old hand.

  Someone moved behind Minerva and the scent of gunpowder revealed the identity of the newcomer. Gunner gave her a comforting pat on the back as he sat down on an overturned bucket.

  "Deal me in."

  "One deck. Two-bit ante. Three in the hold. Two in the sky. Aye?"

  "Aye."

  Minerva doubted the validity of their sentence as containing real words.

  "You in – Minnie?"

  "No, thanks. I don't know how to play, and I don't think I'd enjoy gambling."

  The twins dealt the cards without her, and even the sound of the shuffling cardstock seemed excessive. Gentle snoring all around the gathering kept the conversation to a minimum, although several other broken off conversations and similar games occurred nearby.

  "Hey, what was with that crew call?" Minerva asked. "I must have seen over a hundred ships go through Riggersport. None of them ever made that much ruckus."

  "Most ships don't do crew calls," Gunner explained. "Only when a ship disbands its crew do they need to do a crew call. Then it's first come first serve, unless someone can vouch for you. If someone does, you're on the hook to come through. It's a pretty big favor to ask."

  Minerva smiled. The twins and Jim both offered to vouch for her without questioning if she would make it aboard.

  After a time, the men let her play a few hands without a bet, so that she could learn how. She found it more enjoyable than she thought it would be, and agreed to wager on the last hands of the night. She lost them all, but didn't feel bad about it.

  As the evening went by, she engaged in kind conversations with both Woody and Gags, and quickly grew to like them both, although Gags rarely spoke at length. He had been born with an underdeveloped jaw, and so speaking was laborious for him, often leaving him gagging on his own tongue.

  The nickname Minnie suddenly felt a lot less painful, she decided.

  "Can we hurk see your hurk mark?" Gags asked.

  "We told them – how big it was," Luff and Leech said proudly. It was a statement of fact, not an apology.

  Minerva longed for acceptance. She was weary of being an outsider in a strange world, so she unbuttoned her shirt and revealed her mark. A thin band of cloth covered her top, concealing only a small portion of her mark while dutifully upholding her sense of modesty.

  Woody made a very round face with an open jaw. Gags gagged in shock.

  "Now that's a mark, aye," Woody exclaimed.

  Minerva hastily buttoned her shirt, trying not to look ashamed. She didn't like the reactions garnered by her mark, but felt shamefully proud when both Woody and Gags handed her an ale token.

  "Told you," Gunner said, in a somewhat comforting manner.

  "I should probably get to bed," she said, hoping the others would agree, which they did.

  As she made her way out, Minerva spotted the dark-skinned feet of Olbus retreating up the stairs ahead of her. How long had he been there, simply watching, she wondered. In the darkness, she stumbled over someone sleeping on the floor, apologized profusely to the man who probably didn't even wake up, and then made her way to her cabin.

  Four empty bunks greeted her.

  After seeing the other sailors forced into such a small space, there was no way she would be able to sleep soundly in a room with three empty beds.

  Chapter 47

  Everything

  Normally Minerva wouldn't even consider bothering Olbus at night, but she had seen that he was awake. She knocked softly on his door and it opened.

  "Yes, sailor?"

  Olbus never bantered, a mannerism that completely disrupted the natural course of a conversation and forced Minerva to be blunt.

  "I want to give up my room."

  "No."

  Olbus shut the door so swiftly in response that Minerva needed to shove her foot into the gap just to maintain contact.

  "Ouch! Wait, look, they're cramped down there. Some of them sleep on the floor and there are four bunks in my room. I only need one."

  Minerva realized halfway through her explanation that Olbus already knew everything she was telling him.

  "I said no. Go to bed."

  "Stop that!" Minerva snapped, nearly suffering a second crushing of her foot. "You can't just say no and slam a door in someone's face. At least hear me out!"

  Olbus released the door and crossed his arms. Imposing was an understatement.

  "Okay, what if Luff and Leech and Gunner stay in the room with me? I can trust them."

  Forcing Minerva to wait for a reply demonstrated very clearly the power the large man held over weaker minds. When she held her ground and said nothing, he spoke. "No. On both counts. It's not proper. You're a lady."

  A lady, she thought. That sounds nice.

  "They are good men," he said. "But they do not worry about you like they should."

  "Not like you worry about me?" The words were out before she even thought about them. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. Nezzen told me about your family."

  "Then you understand. You will stay where I can observe you. Even men that appear good might only be concealing their nature."

  A profound sadness clung to his words. This was not where she wanted the conversation to go.

  "Return to your bunk, sailor."

  As the door closed for a third time, frantic desperation took root in Minerva's mind. She had solved nothing. She had gained no ground. She was exactly where she started and possibly a little further back; Olbus could have been seriously offended. She needed to say something comforting.

  "You're still a good man," she whispered.

  Absolute sincerity in a moment of fear. The door stopped, and Minerva took it as an invitation to keep talking.

  "I didn't realize it at first, but you've always been there whenever I needed you. Even when I didn't, really."

  No response. Keep going, her thoughts urged.

  "I know that my family is worried about me, but I'm certain that if they could see you, and how you protect me, that they wouldn't worry nearly so much. And," she said, but choked up suddenly. "And I think, right now, you're the closest thing to a family that I've got. So, I'm not sure what else I can say, except thank you. Thank you for everything, and for what it's worth, I forgive you."

  With her heart laid bare and nothing left to say, Minerva stood alone in the quiet hallway. No response came from within the cabin behind the door, but something about the unresolved openness beckoned her inward.

  The boatswain's cabin looked much like her own, except that two of its four bunks performed the duty of storage, while the other two sat made and ready.

  Olbus sat on his bed. He balled his hands into tight fists and leaned his mouth on them, with his elbows on his knees. Silent tears streamed down his face and splashed to the deck as Minerva closed the door.

  "What were their names?" she asked. "Your wife and daughter."

  "Akinyi, my wife, and Aisha, my daughter."

  "Tell me about them. Your family."<
br />
  Olbus did exactly as Minerva requested. He started talking, and didn't stop, until his voice was hoarse and his tears were dry. She realized then, that between his rage and regret, Olbus' iron military heart had never mourned.

  Chapter 48

  August Rain

  "It's late. You will be exhausted tomorrow."

  Minerva wanted to reassure Olbus that she would be fine, but her heavy lids and the sensation of having sand in her eyes told her she was wrong. When she stood to leave, her attention fell upon the readied bed on the other side of the cabin. Something about it tugged at her mind, but she was too sleepy to figure it out.

  The next morning, the twins woke her by bantering and screaming like a couple of apes. The experience was entirely as terrifying as she remembered. Before she could even grunt and flail at the two of them, they pulled open her drawers of clothing and were throwing pants and shirts at her.

  "Gonna get wet today. You better dress warm."

  As her senses collected themselves, the scent of rain filled the cabin. Minerva dressed in a hurry and scurried off to the galley to help with breakfast. Big Jim was waiting for her, looking rather harried.

  "Ah, there ye are, girl. Was worried ye'd forgotten about yer fat friend!"

  "As if I could! What's on the menu?"

  "Porridge and eggs. Soup and dumplings for lunch. Stew for dinner. As much hot food as we can scrape up. It's going to be a wet one, and the boys will need to keep warm."

  "Can't we just stay inside?"

  Jim laughed hard. "If ye want to sink, aye. The sails won't hold their lift for long in this weather. It's going to be a hard day in the rigging. Ye better eat a big breakfast."

  Minerva did as Jim suggested before heading off to her shift, but even still, lunch could not arrive soon enough. Keeping the sails lit in the rain was almost impossible. The riggers constantly needed to wring out their brooms to keep them dry. At least half their scrubbing effort went towards sweeping water off the sails, never mind getting them to lift. Every hand assisted in draining water from the ship, drying cloth or brooms, and generally fighting a difficult battle against the elements. On several occasions, the Skyraker drifted dangerously close to ground, and one time it clipped the top of a tall tree.