01. sink or swim: a novel of lady pirates and merfolk
They always said Captain Harry Roberts had the Devil's own luck.
As a curtain of rain doused the rigging and sails, the only illumination the intermittent forks of lightning striking into the turbulent waves, the pirate wondered if perhaps it had finally hit its limits. The deck tossed and bucked like an unbroken stallion -- the wild to-and-fro-ing would have sent a lesser seaman careening over the rail. But the captain pushed forward doggedly, hand tight around the sea-slick wood.
"What's the status!" Harry screamed over the tempest, voice crying out between crashes of thunder.
"The hole aft is getting bigger, Cap!" the first mate reported, the usually stoic sangfroid slipping slightly. If asked before today, Harry would've said it'd be a frozen day in hell before Jo's steel of self-control would so much as bend; now the captain was half-tempted to check the tropical waves for icecaps. "The bilges are half-full and the level's only rising. If we don't find the eye of this storm or a harbor soon--"
The rest of the words were lost in an apocalyptic crack. The questing lightning had finally earthed itself in something solid: the central mast. There was a terrible, pungent scent of ozone and ruined wood, a chorus of screams from the crew in the adjacent rigging still trying to secure the now useless sails, and then the top third of the splintered mast gave way to gravity and fell. Jo threw an arm around the captain's waist and dove to the side only a moment before the timber cracked the boards they had been standing upon.
"Captain!" shouted the steersman over the chaos. "Captain, I see a cove ahead!"
"Aim true, Agnessa!" Harry ordered, standing and helping Jo upright, apparently unfazed by such a narrow brush with death. "Our lives are in your hands now!"
"Aye, Captain!" The thin arms strained with the wheel, hauling the listing craft to the east. If it had been anyone but Agnessa standing there, Harry might have worried. But the steersman's slight frame belied a whipcord strength and a diamond-firm resolve. Lashed to the tiller with knotted rope, feet planted as firmly as if she was rooted there, Agnessa stared straight ahead through the storm as if she hardly noticed the pelting rain and wailing wind. When she was focused on her job, she never paid the slightest of attention to anything else.
Harry Roberts was not superstitious. While other pirates carried talismans and steered clear of so-called cursed wrecks and paid soothsayers outrageous sums to foretell the luck of raids, Harry scoffed and listened only to the wind and the waves. Harry understood the sea and knew its dangers -- and refused to pay any attention to omens and signs.
But not everyone in the crew ignored such things.
"Look!" shouted a voice from a crow's nest. "Did you see it?"
"See what?" came the rejoinder down on the tilting deck.
"Just off the bow -- a giant tail! Something is leading us into the cove! A sea serpent!"
"You're seeing things, Mad! There are no serpents in these waters!"
"I swear, Cap! I saw it! It's good luck, it is! We're being guided to safety!"
"And you've been hitting the rum again! You're imagining things -- or seeing jetsam stirred up by the storm!" Harry caught at a swinging rope and hauled hard to pull up a sagging sailcloth. "I swear to Ol' Jones himself, Jo, that when we get through this and shipshape again, I'm tearing out Wrath's liver with my own two hands."
"As well you should, Cap," replied the first mate, once again outwardly unruffled as the ship scraped past an outcropping of coral that would have sunk a craft with a less deft steersman. "To break a parlay like that proves him the most dishonorable of fools."
"To think that I saved that cur's life!" fumed Harry, ducking as a chill wave doused them. "Twice! I should've let the noose have his dirty, rotten, double-crossing neck!"
"Turning his cannons on us was utterly uncalled for," agreed Jo.
"In a way, I guess you could say we were lucky this squall blew up," said the captain as Agnessa spun the wheel sharply, missing a half-submerged wreck that had clearly fallen victim to the treacherous reef they were now navigating. "Bloody hell, remind me to give that woman a kiss when we weigh anchor. She's got us dancing through this muck like it's a bleeding waltz."
"I'll just take a couple of those eagle egg rubies you've been hoarding, Captain," called the steersman. "You can save your kisses for someone you actually want to kiss."
"Good God, woman, how did you hear that over this roaring?"
"Your voice sorta carries, Captain."
"She has a point," said Jo. "...And I believe the storm is abating."
A ragged cheer rang out as the black clouds roiling like oil overhead began to dissipate, weak gray sunlight shining through the drizzling rain. Almost immediately a rainbow cut across the sky, arching triumphantly over a beach that couldn't have been a more welcoming sight. The driftwood-dotted strip of sand would no doubt be golden when dry. The sagging palm trees looked to be heavily weighted with coconuts. And -- by far the most lovely of sights -- a clear stream trickled down from a volcanic hill lush with greenery, spilling over the black rocks and soaked beach into a small, misting waterfall.
"Weigh anchor, if it's still attached," shouted the captain. "Take stock of provisions and the state of the hold. Jo, I need a headcount immediately. And Agnessa, three of those rubies are yours, m'girl. Not even Davy Jones could've sailed through that reef in such weather. You're a credit to us."
"Just doing my job, Captain."
"Both lifeboats still accounted for?"
"They are, Cap," called Mad Maddie, sliding down a rope to land with monkey-like agility beside Harry. "I volunteer for the landing party!"
"Of course you do," Harry smiled, pulling off a paisley-patterned headscarf and mercilessly twisting it to wring it dry. Next to be doffed was a leather coat made three times heavier with water, which was draped over a patch of railing to drip dry. The boots felt half-full with brine, but there'd be time to empty them on shore.
Then Captain Roberts undid her long blonde hair from its salt-encrusted braid and threw back her head to laugh. "We made it through Wrath Drew's cannon fire, a typhoon, and Hell's Teeth itself! I'd like to see another crew manage so much in a day! Excellent work, beauties!"
...Just beneath the waterfall, submerged to the nose, he watched the bustle on the ship...
And waited.