The last and longest moments of my life made my knees ache and tasted like salt. But, then again, most of my life made my knees ache and tasted like salt; our food was pickled, our drink leaked and mixed with water in the bilge, and the very air was a brine that coated my tongue as surely as the sun tanned my hide. That’s just part and parcel with life on deck, and to the last of my undying days, I will be angry that those were my last, law-abiding thoughts on God’s green earth.
The deck pitched and sailed beneath where I knelt, a fierce wind whipping my hair free and cutting through my jacket, the chill as biting as my sister whenever she’d nip my beanie from me head when I was young. The roar of the sea, a constant drone that beats with your heart if you hold it long enough, pounded under the screams of Skivvy, who first showed me how to eat hard tack without breaking your teeth. The trick is to stuff a chunk in your cheek while you suck the juices from your beef. Once you’re done, it’s a least a bit more ready to be mashed up and swallowed. But that’s not nearly as important as how Skivvy’s blood was pooling by my knee, the deep red of it swaying with the ship’s deck as he howled, held up by two men as red ran down his face like tears. Guess we’ll have to call him one-eyed Skivvy, now.
Skivvy’s cries finally faded, the poor scubbard fainted dead away. I shivered, the iron ‘round my wrists clinking with me as they dragged Skivvy by, his worn, booted feet moving through my vision like a corpse.
“Well, lad?” I looked up, the sun a shining halo ‘round a tri-corner silhouette, her violent red hair flapping in the wind like a banner, a dagger spinning lazily in her brown fist, her skin as dark as my own.
“I—I don’t—” my teeth chattered, chopping off my words like limbs.
Her eyebrow went up. She knelt, the sash of pistols ‘cross her chest clinking against the hilt of her cutlass. The dagger spun again, winking in the noonday sun. She stank of sweat, a smear of black across her cheek ending just below shadow-bagged eyes.
“Cabin boy?” she snapped.
I nodded. It was almost too much, my stomach curdled – Three weeks at sea, and I still didn’t have my sea legs.
She tilted her head to the side. “That your captain?”
I didn’t want to look. But I looked all the same. Captain Barnet lay on his back, his wig and hat askew beneath his head, his hands gripping the bare, wiry ankle attached to the foot pinning his chest to the deck. He squirmed, twisting his head towards me.
“Jon!” his voice was hoarse. “Jon, don’t—” he gagged as the foot moved from his chest to his throat, stoppering it with jagged, yellow nails.
I looked back at the woman. Nodded. Her eyes narrowed, suddenly not exhausted, but hollow, hollow, hollow. “He good to you? He feed you well?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Such a merciful, generous captain.” She spun the dagger once, turning the blade into a wheel of silver before letting the tip fall to gouge a small triangle in the deck. “I’m sure he trusted you with lots of important duties. Shine his boots. Trim the sails. The like.”
I nodded. Skivvy and me trimmed the sails only yesterday. “You’re not half bad, boy,” he’d told me. “Though I can’t figure why yer stomach settles better in the air than on deck. Swaying’s worse up here.”
“I dunno,” I’d said, twisting a tar-covered rope around my wrist. “I just like it. Smells better.”
The woman yanked the dagger free from the deck. “I bet he tells you things,” she commented, all conversational. “I bet when he saw our flag o’er the waves, he told you to hide his purse.” I stopped nodding.
It sounded like Skivvy’s awake. I could hear him, screaming and half-blind across the deck. Our surgeon’s dead. I knew, because I saw him when I was hiding under the portside stairs, missing an ear and his shoulder a mess I don’t think even he could’ve stitched up. I thought I knew mess, growing up on a farm in Kinsale. But adventure’s dirtier than all the dung pits I’ve ever cleaned together.
The woman leaned closer, her teeth mottled and missing. “You know what kind of ship this is?” Her dagger drifted closer, crisp and pointed at my eye. “She carries blood money. Slave money.”
I swallowed. Adventure is so, so messy.
The woman’s dagger pricked beneath my chin, cold as me mum’s fingers when I left, cold as morning frost on the windowpanes.
“Would you lose your tongue for blood money, boy?” she asked, so softly the crack of our shredded sails overhead nearly drowned her out. “How about an eye? Join your mate, and between you, you’ll make a working man.”
My stomach swelled. My knees hurt and bile rose, bitter and salty, in the back of my throat. She watched me, unmoved when I doubled over. “Or,” she breathed over my shivering back, “You can join us. Join us, and be free of that weight.” She rose, lifting the dagger from my skin. I looked up at her, the pound of the surf measuring my life in beats of my heart. Waves swell, hearts beat, and in the end, it’s all the same ocean beneath.
I looked up at her and felt my chin dip. A grin spread across her face like a siren spreading its wings, relaxed and toothy.
“Jack?” she called over her shoulder.
“Aye, Anne?”
“Kill the dear captain.”
“But, Anne we don’t know—”
“I said, shoot him!” she snarled, a drop of spittle cresting her chin. There’s silence, and then a raucous bang and the singed scent of gunpowder. I can’t help but flinch, as though it were a musket ball through my brain instead.
She turned back to me, a pillar against the sun. “Free him,” she barked. The barefoot pirate came to my back, his hands calloused and icy against my skin as he fiddled with my manacles.
My wrists were released, my steps slow as I got to my feet.
“What do we call you, lad?” she sheathed the dagger, flicking a catch over the brassy cross guard.
“Jon,” I swallowed, my throat thick but my stomach settled at last in my first day of life. “I’m Jon.”
“Jon,” she extended a hand, greening bronze rings bedecking her fingers. “Welcome to the crew.”
