Chasing Boston

by Grey, Rebecca

  "Here, let’s have a sit, and then we can..." He covers the side of his mouth with his hand in a mock whisper, "hold hands."

  "Right, yes." I agree, looking around the grassy area he's led me to. "This seems as good a spot as any."

  He sets the picnic basket in the grass. I open the lid and settle the wooden figure carefully next to it. The sweet smell of Hilda's baked goods waft up to my face and I inhale deeply. There's something about it that will always feel like home.

  A small red blanket has been folded and stuffed in the side of the basket. I wiggle it free of the dishes that clink together inside. Desmond steps aside politely watching as I fan the blanket out between us. "There, now we don't have to sit in the grass."

  "You think of everything." He steps onto the blanket and crosses his legs in front of him.

  I didn't even think to bring a quilt to sit on, that was all Hilda's doing. Without her help today, I would probably have forgotten how to even function as a human.

  Wild girl.

  Boston's voice whispers inside of my head, because it should be him here reminding me of my duties and how I should act. It should be him here helping me sweep all my wrongdoings under the rug so my parents don't get quite so angry.

  I try to hold in my sigh as I pull the brownies, pastries, and even the small perfectly cut sandwiches out in front of Desmond. He watches, content to be served. He might not have a servant to open and close his doors for him, but he's happy to watch me present him with this meal. The sigh finally slips over my lips.

  Instantly, his eyes shine with concern and he offers me a hand as I sit next to him. He keeps my fingers in his. I'm glad for the lace gloves, no matter how thin the material.

  "What's wrong?"

  My brother hasn't returned. I think my brother's run off chasing a fairytale that doesn't exist and is probably stranded somewhere starving to death as we speak. No—don’t think like that.

  What am I supposed to say? So I say nothing at all.

  "Look, Millie," Desmond squares himself in front of me, sitting up onto his knees. "I know that you are not fond of me." Understatement of the year. "In time we will become close. Love will come. I promise I will be a good husband. You will surely be a good wife." He pauses giving me time to interject but all I do is purse my lips.

  He carries on, still smiling as if him holding my hand right now will make the rest of our utterly boring, utterly normal, utterly forgettable lives better.

  "You will not need to worry about having your needs met. I've got plenty of financial security. I even asked your father to keep your dowry because I simply do not need it. You are not a burden to me. I do not expect to be paid to have you as my wife. Your town and these silly outdated traditions..." He stares unblinking into my eyes.

  With his free hand, he runs a finger down the length of my face then back up to my ear to tuck a loose strand back. "Millicent Acker...you're beautiful and we will make the most beautiful children."

  I fight not to cringe at my name. I fight not to throw up in my mouth. Children? I'm supposed to be thinking about children right now? I still feel like a child. How am I supposed to even think about taking care of one? Or two? What if he wants to have two?

  Dread consumes me, eating me up from the tips of my toes all the way to the top of my head where my thoughts bounce around without sticking. I laugh lightly, the words that I should say, the girl that I should be, get stuck inside my throat.

  ***

  Even though it's lunchtime the docks are still busy. I expected the crowds to have lessened as crews take their breaks and enjoy a meal at one of the many restaurants in Himond. I've been here a few times to see Boston when he’s returned and there have always been so many people that I felt like I was wading through water to get to him. I'm not sure why I expected less now.

  People of all shapes and sizes are boarding or leaving their ships, many carrying supplies in their hands or just talking animatedly to a partner. There are several guardsmen littered throughout the long street before the piers. Many of the men are there to enforce the city’s fee for ships to be left at the port. The afternoon air is thick with the smell of salt and fish. A swirling fog of body odor hovers over many gathered here.

  My feet ache from walking the distance from my house to the dock. Desmond had dropped me off and I waited on my porch waving at him until he was nothing but a dot in the distance. Basket in hand, I’d headed away from home instead of inside of it.

  The day had continued to grow warmer. Now sweat trickles down my spine and I push my sleeves up my arms. I shoulder my way through the crowd as I've done on many occasions heading for the long row of ships.

  The crowd thins the closer I get to where I can see the names engraved on the side of the boats. The Harpoon. Devils Fisher. The Angel of the Sea. One name remains missing, Homestead, my father’s ship said to always be able to find its way back home. Yet it isn’t here. Another myth that I can safely say is simply not true.

  I earn several questioning glances as the men coming home from sea, dressed in rags or weeks old clothing, catch sight of me in my finery. I'm not unfamiliar with the way they look at me now. I do my best to follow Boston’s instructions and make myself look like more trouble than I'm worth. I don't offer a single friendly smile or dip of my chin. I tense my jaw, narrow my eyes and hold onto my basket tightly as I storm the street.

  Near the space where Boston often docks there's another ship. It's made completely of black wood as if the entire thing had been set to flame and lived through it at some point. This ship has no name. My steps falter as I lay my eyes on it, and as I stumble an arm reaches out to catch me. I look up quickly, meeting the eyes of a worried guardsman.

  "Excuse me, Miss, can I help you? This isn’t exactly a safe place for a woman like you." A woman like me? "Many of the men leaving their ships have been lonely for quite some time, I don't doubt that they might find it enticing to be in your arms."

  I frown. "Thank you for your concern, Sir, but I'm quite capable of handling myself. Perhaps you could answer me this; I am looking for a man named Rumi Williams? Would you be able to point me in the direction of his ship?"

  The man opens his mouth to speak but shuts it again. His eyes glaze over as if he suddenly lost himself in a distant thought, and for a moment I wonder if he's forgotten entirely that I'm standing in front of him. He straightens, his hand dropping away from my arm and he clasps fingers in front of him.

  "I don't think I'm familiar with that name."

  "He's the captain of another ship. He comes to Himond often, I'm told. Don't all the captains have to register their ship with the city guards?"

  Pools of white smoke gather in his eyes but he pulls a little leather-bound journal from his pocket and begins flipping through the pages. "Yes, every boat must register and pay the fee, but I don't have anyone under the name Rumi Williams.”

  I shove a finger into the top of his journal pulling it down so that I can look inside as the man pulls the journal away and snaps it shut. He shoves it into his pocket again.

  "That is not possible," I stutter, turning to look back around at all the boats and point one gloved finger toward the black ship. "Who does that ship belong to?"

  The guardsman follows the line of my finger and he tilts his head, examining it for a minute, then opens his mouth and promptly closes it again.

  "What ship, Miss?"

  I stare at him for a long moment wondering if he's joking with me. Then I shake my finger again gesturing to the boat. "That boat!"

  Again his eyes move toward the boat and go blank. He looks down at me, his brows pulling together. "Are you okay? Can I escort you home?"

  I scoff lowering my hand back to my side, looking in between him and the ship, wondering which of us is losing our mind. "No, you do not need to escort me home. Thank you for your…help. I'll be on my way."

  Instead of heading back home to rest as I probably should, considering I may or may not be seeing ships that aren’t
there, I weave through the crowd until I can no longer see that guardsmen and find another instead. I hold my picnic basket between us. He already has his ledger open, his finger pressed against the pages of it, looking for something.

  "Excuse me? Excuse me, Sir?"

  He looks up but doesn't remove his finger from the book. "Yes?"

  "I'm looking for someone named Rumi Williams. Can you point me in the correct direction?"

  The man clears his throat and nods, finger caressing the page. "Does he have a ship?"

  I nod, even though that statement is debatable. He runs through his list of names turning a few pages and examining those as well before he flips back to where he was and lifts his head. "I don't have anyone registered under that name. However, if it was a sailor just trying to impress you then I can advise you that most crews visit Himond’s bars in the late evenings. If he's in town, I'll bet that he's there."

  I smile and turn back to look at the black ship. Still there. Still nameless. Still real.

  "Thank you for your assistance."

  The man closes his book around his finger and thumps the cover a couple of times with his other hand. "Miss, if you don't mind me doing so, I’d like to offer you some free advice." He doesn’t wait for me to respond about whether I want his advice or not, he continues. “Don't go chasing after love. Especially with men like these.” He gestures to the crowd around us.

  I bite my tongue, knowing that there are several good men here. Men like my brother, Boston. Still, for every good man, there are at least two criminals. So I know what he means.

  "I'll keep that in mind, thank you."

  I give him a gracious nod and continue on. The moment I make it through the docks and back onto the walkways on my way through town I take my shoes off and toss them into the picnic basket with the now empty platters. Thankfully my skirt without heels covers most of my feet. I don't need to know what the town would say about me wandering around barefoot. That's not something my father would be happy to hear.

  I rub my heels a few times before I start up again, turning over a plan in my mind. Boston has warned me about the bars in Himond. Always suggested I stay far from them, which only made me more curious.

  Three small bars make up the darkest corner of Himond, all of them on the same street trading patrons like cards in a high risk game. I will try not to think about why one specific bar haunts me too much tonight. I’d wanted to experience something outside of the parties my dad hosts or attends, wanted to experience a man too, but with that, I'd also experienced way more than I imagined…my first heartbreak. George. He was charming and handsome and far too old for me. After he rolled off of me, got dressed, and left the little room at the inn he had rented, I never saw him again. I knew when he walked out of the bedroom that was the end of our relationship.

  Not once since then have I gone back to a bar. I am simply no longer curious, been there and done that. I feel so stupid now.

  How can you love a man that you've only known for two hours? The answer is you can't. I was an idiot, young and gullible, and I let that man take advantage of me because I didn't know better.

  Now, for the second time, I would be experiencing a bar. I'm older, but am I any wiser? All I have to do is make it through my parents’ questions about my tardiness and sneak out of the house. That shouldn't be too hard. I've done it often enough. I can do it again.

  7

  Before The Deal

  Rumi

  Seventy tattoos. Seventy souls bound to service—tethered to me, to death and darkness and all the terrible things in-between. A handful of them remain aboard this very ship. An even smaller fraction of those that travel with me actually like me.

  I shouldn't expect them to like me. I am death incarnate. I am the darkness that tears away their soul and sends it off to the Otherworld.

  Every time it hurts. They're bound by the power gifted to me through my bloodline. They are not loyal servants. They are not my friends. I wasn't born for friends.

  Our soul-eating ship has come to a stop outside one of the many smaller cities that only survive because of their ports. The crew moves noisily outside of my quarters. They chat excitedly, hurrying through the last of their tasks.

  My worn leather desk chair warms in the sun, where the light trickles in through the one small window. The light burns against my skin but I force my hand into the rays. I watch the way my skin reddens then heals back to its sickly pale tone, the once black hourglass scarred just under my knuckles starts to fade. It transitions from black to blue to gray and then to nothing. As if it was never there. As if the deal was never made.

  Sixty-nine tattoos. Sixty-nine souls contracted to me.

  My heart aches the same way it does every time someone's service has come to term. The pain spreads slowly through me, leaving my hands trembling, and my eyes prickle with tears I wish to will away. Shaking, I grab the vodka off the edge of my desk.

  The liquid stings down my throat until my body is warm. Until I'm burning from the inside out. Until everything is suddenly right.

  I sit, bottle in hand, watching the plain skin of my hand burn and heal over and over again. A swift knock against the door warns me of Jac's presence as she leans into the room. Her dark braids have not been bound into the hat she usually hides them in yet. They hang down her shoulders and past her chest. I still remember the day I found her and the way she'd clung to me in hopelessness. Her skin, matching the darkest night, made my hand in hers look as if I was suddenly the moon lighting her path home.

  That was the first and only time she had begged. To save a daughter—an infant so close to death her soul had been hanging on by the slightest thread.

  A kind man she did not meet though when she asked for the child to be spared. She met me. She gave her life for a baby she would never get to see grow up. A child who would never know their mother.

  "Arnold is leaving. Would you like to see him off?" she asks and her hazel eyes land on the empty space on my hand, then on the liquor bottle in the other.

  "He does not want me to see him off."

  Arnold, like nearly everyone else on this ship, merely tolerates me but mostly hates me. They hate the way I trap them here. They hate the way no one remembers them. The way their bodies follow my every command even when they want to fight it.

  They made the deal. I gave them a gift. And they still despise me.

  "You're the captain. You should be out here." She steps in, wrinkling her nose as if she can taste the alcohol in the air. Her heavy boots stomp against the floor as she closes the space between us and yanks the vodka from my hand, setting it back onto the desk. "You've done this a thousand times."

  Each one more arduous than the last.

  "Shake his hand. Let him go," she says more sternly. The only one on this whole fucking crew to ever dare speak to me that way. I stare at her for a minute so she snaps, "Move it."

  "You know it should be me giving the orders not you," I grumble, and the leather of my pants groans as I force myself to stand.

  "I think you like being told what to do on occasion."

  I snort and shrug into my long jacket to protect my skin. She gives me the barest of smiles, already heading for the open door that lets the commotion of goodbyes into the room. I grab my wide brim hat from a hook next to the door, shoving it onto my hair, and step out into the day.

  Arnold grips Tumber, a man about his same age with ten more years of service left, in a firm hug. He whispers into his ear, something encouraging, something to get him through the next decade.

  Slowly, Arnold lifts his pale green gaze up to my face. Excitement leeches from his gaze. Those eyes flood with nothing but disdain. A distaste for everything that has to do with me. Hate that I used to think I didn't deserve but have come to expect.

  He looks different than the man I took aboard my ship twenty years ago. His brown hair has lightened from his days in the sun and there is now a sprinkle of the slightest bit of gray mixed in. His skin is no
longer youthful but creased with several deep wrinkles. He's still the same man though, still stubborn, angry, and filled with loathing.

  Most people are only thankful for the gift that I give them for the first few years of service. Then no matter how I've helped them they always grow to resent me. Arnold, however, hated me the moment we met. The anger inside of him only grew stronger.

  He's glad to be rid of me and perhaps I should be glad to be rid of him. Should.

  My stomach is all tied up in knots and I touch the spot on my hand that had one once been stained with our bargain. I stand there cupping the back of my hand as he finishes his rounds. A handshake here, a big hug there, polite conversation, or the chatting of friends made over the years. There's excitement as he leaves but underneath that is a deeper sorrow. It's not my own, though mine plagues me more than the others does.

  When Arnold sets foot off of the gangway he will forget. He will forget me. He will forget the crew and he will forget this ship. I'm not sure what story his mind will make up to fill in the gaps of his history, but there's always something. They've been away on vacation. Some think they've traveled to visit family or gone abroad for school. Whatever they think their story is, they'll never know who and what they were in the blip of time they were bound to me.

  I grind my teeth together, making sure my features remain blank. The past forty-five years have made me good at hiding the current of emotions that always runs through me. I'd rather not feel at all but I've never been able to effectively numb myself.

  Arnold stops in front of me and extends his hand. It's not a thank you, it's not a goodbye, it's not anything but a fuck you. My skin is tight from tears I shouldn't have cried earlier. Tears that weren't worth this man who so plainly doesn't care about me. Yet, I know the pink of my cheeks and the red of my eyes had quickly faded. He'll never know the state of distress I'd been in only moments before.

  Arnold will not see how I crave my crew's companionship. Even if they hate me, even if they want nothing to do with me, or if they leave my ship with the farewell of a good right hook—which has happened on more than one occasion—I still wish they would stay. They could choose to stay. They never do. But the simple fact remains that they could, and then they wouldn't forget, and I would be a gracious host.