Page 16

Betts

The crew feasts on roasted birds while playing with the biggest fowl on deck.

The band plays their flutes, whistles, and drums. Chub leads a small group in a merry jig around the wheels on the sterncastle deck.

Everyone is in high spirits with a belly full of spiced meat and the entertainment of new pets.

Their first order of business was naming the Elephant Bird, Elle, and giving her a nest on deck.

How the merchant planned on mating this female bird with his female bird—her name was Begonia, right?

—to fertilize eggs is beyond me. However, his loss is our gain.

We acquired three new sailors and Elle as our newest mateys.

Then someone mixed our grog with the merchants’ mead stores, and the fun began.

But my head is too full of questions to celebrate.

The most important one is what to do with Hybris, AKA Flint.

He’s using his charms on me, and half of me is dangerously close to liking it.

The heat, scent, and strength of his body wrapping me in safety awakened a need in me that I forgot I possessed.

I’m shaken to my core. This is the magic spell he casts over women…

or is it? The married tart in the brothel wasn’t looking for security—not when she had the guts to hike her skirts to her waist in public.

While I can console myself with lies like Hybris could be any man or I’m just in need of a good goat’s jig with an extra-large sugarstick , the truth is I want him…

like every other woman who crosses his path.

Why the change of heart? Doesn’t take an old salt to figure that one out, Betts.

I’m tired of being resilient. When was the last time someone stood up for me?

I always pulled Sabs from scraps—never the other way around—whether she was being mauled by a drunken sailor or a toothy shark.

Richard couldn’t be seen as improper with me in public.

While I assumed a man of the cloth couldn’t show favor to an unmarried woman, it was his status as a married man that kept him from showing me attention.

On the boat, we work together, but I’m expected to hold my place with displays of strength. Chub can only do so much from the shadows. That’s why I needed space to sort my feelings about Hybris…who my crew nicknamed Flint because they’ve accepted him…

“Got room for one more?”

Speak of the devil.

I thought sitting on the bowsprit with my legs wrapped around the mast jutting from the front of the boat would keep the company away.

Not many of me hearties have the nutmegs to dangle beyond where the boat’s deck reaches.

From the white fright coloring Hybris’s face, he doesn’t want to be out here either.

Overcoming his fears makes him worthy of invading my hiding place.

“Sure, but let me take those mugs and plates, so you can keep your feet under you,” I reply, rising to stand.

“No, no,” he all but screeches as the bowsprit wiggles with the momentum. “Stay still—I mean. There’s no reason for you to get up. I’m coming to you anyway.”

“Oh, buss my cheeks!” The man is adorably flustered and shaking like a loose sail.

I swivel on my toes and reach for his bounty.

His fingers tremble as I take the pair of plates.

One plate is piled high with roasted meat and globs of gravy over hardtack.

The other has bite-sized morsels of bird nestled beside smaller dollops of sauces as if paired for perfect tasting.

“I know your diet is strict, but you earned this feast as much as we did. You deserve to taste the birds.”

“I’ll share the meat, but I draw the line at riding Elle. There’s no way she’s throwing my arse onto the deck.”

“Gotcha, tell Chub to put the caged birds into the captain’s quarters. Aye, aye, Captain!” He’s changed his shirt and smells clean and fresh. Thank goodness he ditched the flouncy jacket like a proper pirate. Damn thing gets tangled in the ropes…like how his damp hair dangles around his horns.

“Don’t you dare! I was coming to the party. It’s my responsibility to make sure the other ship sails off without a parlay with a third boat. I can’t have the navy attack us with most of me hearties dozing off the drink. We’d be slaughtered—”

“And roasted?” He settles next to me on the bowstrip and mimics the way I hug the beam with my thighs to stay aloft. I laugh at his joke while he trades me a mug of spirits for his heavy plate.

“Of all the legends floating around the Caribbean, there aren’t cannibal pirates. Cannibal islands—yes. Mermaids, sirens, and krakens waiting to eat pirates—yes. But not man-eating pirates.”

“I guess some things are too wild to be believed,” he murmurs, sipping his grog.

“Oh no, those creatures are on this boat!”

His eyes sparkle as he belly laughs. “Maybe that’s why it feels like home.”

“No, it needs more dusty British furniture to resemble your parents’ home. Seriously, with all those servants, how was their house coated with dust?”

“Because half the servants earn their pay in the bed chambers—”

“Yeah, your father’s an easy mark. I hate to say it, but he’s not as tightly laced as his reputation.”

“Between you, me, and the bowstrip,” he says, leaning toward me until his balance makes him reconsider, “Mother has more bedmates on staff than Father. They’ve hated each other since my sister’s birth—maybe before that. Birthing a satyr and a girl took Mother to the top of Father’s shit list.”

“That’s terrible,” I say, sipping the grog and pulling a face. “It’s not her fault what pops out of her marriage box—”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. My sister has the prettiest green eyes…just like the gardener’s.”

“No!” I lift my cup to cover my mouth.

“But father’s second cousin, twice removed, who lives in Sweden, has the same green eyes…because that color is common,” he says sarcastically, balancing his plate on his mug to eat a pinch of the darkest meat.

“Oh, of course, it would be idiotic to think anything else,” I reply with giggles.

“Almost as idiotic as allowing your meat to cool to ice. It’s much tastier warm—especially this one with the spicy chocolate sauce.”

“Oh, I don’t know—”

“Come on, the woman who sliced and diced half a dozen merchants today can’t be scared of a bite of food.”

I glare at him as I mop the brown sauce with the meat beside it and struggle to cram the big morsel between my teeth.

If I hate it, I prove my point…which wouldn’t make a lick of sense to him because he doesn’t know I was a kraken until I lost my soulbeak to Richard.

I’d win the argument in my head, but nothing else.

Confessing my mistake to Hybris wouldn’t be worth the victory because I may lose his respect.

And I love the food…dammit.

“You’re right,” I say with an over-dramatic sigh. “Thank you for allowing me a taste of the bounty.”

“This boat has taught me what’s fair and just is more important than winning the lion’s share of the spoils…and that some things are worth more than temporary pleasures.”

“Like Elle’s companionship?” I ask the silly question because he’s speaking from the heart, and I’m not ready for that. He must know the truth of his involvement with the boat before I can commend him for learning virtues from us.

“How did you guess?” He laughs at his own joke, as I lick my fingers.

Chocolate and exotic birds, huh.

Our conversation is a far cry from the philosophical and religious discussions I had with Richard, but this is nice.

Less heavy. I think the light companionship of someone who isn’t contemplating the meaning of life or what happens after death would be good for me.

My life went from carefree bliss under the sea to the turmoil of human affairs without a breath of normalcy.

If I hadn’t observed my sister’s world of brothels, taverns, and dancehalls, I would think the human world was nothing but misery.

Could there be an in-between world? What I wouldn’t give for the carefree life I had in the sea, but with my human legs!

Maybe that’s what Chub and Catty hope to find in Mexico—a quiet, wholesome life surrounded by community, children, and love.

If that’s the case, perhaps I should quit the sweet trade and try my hand at being a landlubber, too.

If Mexico doesn’t have the puritanical patriarchy of the rest of the continent, I could use my saved wages to build a tiny hut.

Would Chub and Catty mind? What would happen to the crew?

“Penny for your thoughts,” Hybris says, licking the grease from his lower lip.

“If you ask Chub, a captain must always think about what’s next.”

“So, what’s next for Captain Betts?”

“Delivering Chub and Catty to their happily ever after,” I say, wiping an orange sauce off the plate with a pinch of meat. “After decades of service, he deserves to retire as a family man and not in a pine box.”

“Then what?” He raises a roasted leg to his mouth and tears off a big piece. I try not to think about what bird appendages are our meal.

“We go where the wind takes us,” I reply with a shrug. “We will be heavy with supplies from working in Mexico for a few weeks, and the boat will get fresh repairs while we’re docked in friendly territory. It’s the perfect conditions to sail into the trade routes and scout for a sweet prize.”

“Then what?”

“What do you mean, then what? I can do many things, but predicting the wind’s direction isn’t in my skillset.”

“Let me ask more directly,” he says, flashing a contrite smile. “What’s the happily ever after for Captain Betts? What’s your end goal? The same as Chub’s?”

“Fathering Catty’s sons in Mexico? I’d be ill-equipped for such a dream—” I giggle at the glare he shoots me for being obtuse.

“I have a list of wants a mile long. The top on my list is a family. I miss my sister, and I’ve always wanted children—a houseful of children…

” My voice drifts off with a wistful quality as my dream plays in my mind.

I miss playing with the orphans in the fields or on the beach more than anything in the world…

except playing in the sea with the fish… when I had tentacles.

“I shouldn’t contradict the dream of a vicious pirate captain…

but I never make rational decisions—just ask my father.

However, it would be amiss if I didn’t point out that having children while celibate and raising them on a vessel filled with blood-thirsty pirates won’t make you the best mother ever to walk the earth. ”

“Those are plot holes in my master plan,” I say with a laugh.

“But you are in luck,” he says with a wink. I cringe internally, waiting for him to offer to sire my children. “There’s a falling star. Tonight, there are loads of them. Look—there’s another.”

A white light streaks across the sky and then vanishes.

“Don’t be frightened,” he says with a chuckle. “They can’t harm us, but they can bring wishes. Think of the thing you want more than anything in the world and tell the falling star. Your wish will be granted.”

“Wish granting? What are you, five?”

“Come on, when’s the last time you wished for anything for yourself?”

Something about the sparkle in his eyes and the intimacy of the moment makes me want to believe someone will swoop in and reverse my mistakes. I want my wish to come true for once. When was the last time I allowed myself to wish?

When Richard smashed my dreams and took what I loved most about myself.

“I wish I had the carefree life I had when….when…when I had my tentacles.” A tear slips from under my eyelid, tracks down my cheek, and lands on my thumb. Damn Richard for ruining who I used to be. And damn myself for allowing it to happen.

When my eyelashes flutter open, I find Hybris staring at me with his jaw dangling from his face.

“You heard that, didn’t you?”

“No, I’m just agog you actually did it.” He recovers quickly, but I’d be a fool to believe him. The damage is done, but what’s one Other knowing their captain was another Other ? “Are you okay?”

“Well, I’ll be agog if you find a way to make it come true for no other reason than to prove it works.”