by Seven Jane
“Come,” Winters cut in briskly. He took her by the arm, ignoring her glower. “The sky grows light.” I had not realized so much time had passed and was surprised to find that it was true. Already the dark black of night was fading into a pale, purplish dawn and there was a sliver of the sun’s orange eyelash visible on the horizon. “We must return to the ship.”
At his words, Evangeline was visibly mollified, but she made no move to allow herself to be removed from the island. “She will never let us leave this place, Erik” she said, her voice reduced to barely more than a whisper. “You know she won’t.”
Winters pulled her tightly against him, riving her hand from mine as he took her into his arms. He touched a crooked finger to the underside of her jaw and forced her eyes to his, his face equal parts intensity and resolve. “She cannot keep you here,” he stated in a rumbling tenor. “I will not allow you to be trapped any longer. I will see you returned to Isla Perla, I swear it.”
Evangeline scoffed softly. “She is a goddess, Erik. She does not concern herself over the desires of men any more than she does over mine.”
Winters was unmoved. “I do not intend to ask.”
The Riptide was just as we had left her, floating mightily on the still-dark ocean waters. A shadow stood against the railing, a deep grey smear against a sky of lightening blue and purple. With the light behind it I could not make out a face, but it appeared to be staring in the direction from which we came, watching intently as we moved quickly out from between the cliffs. Jomo, Dunn, and Winters took turns manning the oars, rowing quickly and wordlessly. Little had been said since we’d left the black shores of Evangeline’s cave, but more than once Dunn had stopped to scent the air, sniffing for something that only he seemed able to smell but never did he say what it was or how he might be able to identify it. Evangeline and I had barely spoken on the trip; when at first I had attempted to draw her into conversation she had held a finger to her lips and shook her head in the universal sign for quiet, motioning meaningfully at the water as if it might be listening. We had left the cave with little ceremony, lingering for a few minutes only so that Evangeline could rid herself of the golden gown and redress in the clothing the captain had brought along for her in the small bag. Had it not been for the unnatural gilded sheen that now laid upon her skin, she would have looked no different than the last time I had seen her as the scrupulous proprietress of Isla Perla, dressed simply in a linen shirt with smocked accents overhung with a simple, belted leather corset, and a striped, seersucker skirt. Her golden curls had been gathered and knit back into a simple braid. More than once the captain had hooked his fingers in the brass clasp of her belt and used it to pull her to him, staring at her as if he didn’t quite believe her to be real. It was an oddly intimate gesture, but never once did his normal countenance break into anything other than what it always was. He remained hard and expressionless; the only hint to what may boil beneath the surface was the way he stared at her—as if she were the great treasure he had ever known—so that the look was even more desirous than it might otherwise have been.
When the lookout spotted our approach from the rail of the Riptide, the echo of his voice was loud enough to be heard across the water. “Haul anchor,” he shouted, and I thought the voice might have belonged to O’Quinn, but it was hard to tell over the mermaid’s song, which had started again, only this time it was devoid of its former sultry sound. Their cries were shrill and menacing and the noise of it stung my ears.
“The captain comes!” the lookout called again, more authoritative this time, and a loud, grinding sound followed next, and then the creaking of the capstan as it turned heavily, the men pushing the bars as quickly as they could to raise the anchor from where it rested on the seabed. Normally the job would have taken an hour or more, but the men moved with unique urgency so that the capstan squealed loudly as the wet rope coiled against itself around the barrel, and the heavy anchor groaned as it was carried along. A long, dark shadow moved underneath the water in the direction of the ship, causing a rippling wake that ran from near where our skiff floated to the ship’s hull, stopping just under its keel. I hoped it was the anchor sliding upward, but I had never seen a rising anchor cause such a widespread stir. It moved with an unsettling speed and was too curved to be a simple length of straight rope. It lurked just below the water’s surface and I refused to look at it again as the small boat bumped against the hull of the ship. Winters guided Evangeline to the ladder first, holding her hand as she scaled the few rungs and was pulled over in a flurry of skirts, and then the captain pulled me to my feet next, his hand wrapped securely around my shin as I found my footing on the ladder. Dunn and Jomo followed next, and we ascended quickly like a line of ants scaling the side of a great hill, leaving the small boat to bob uselessly in the water. Winters was last to leave the skiff, and as his boots stepped into the rungs of the ladder a shudder passed under the water like a note of terrible punctuation, rocking the ship so forcefully that had one of the men’s hands not caught mine as I stepped over the railing of the deck I might have been pitched back into the sea.
The moment Winters’ feet touched the deck he was barking orders and pushing men away from their toll at the capstan and toward other tasks, moving in the self-assured pace of the well-prepared. “O’Quinn, prepare the guns. You there, cut and run. Faster, damn you, or I’ll leave you here and let the sea have her way with you!” He gave the order for the men to cut the lashings to the anchor’s cables so that it fell lost into the water, and Domingo returned the ivory eye that he had been rolling nervously in his fingers to its socket, grabbed a knife, and set about to sawing the thick rope. Evangeline moved confidently about the ship, and I saw that she had added a belt with a half dozen knives and a short sword around her hips. The men acknowledged her as she moved among them, most giving small nods or even bows, but they did not linger with more formal introductions and she ignored them completely. Dunn was at her ear and speaking to her in the same rushed murmur that he often did the captain, and Jomo was sharpening a new edge to one of his many blades while his eyes stayed securely locked upon Evangeline. All around me the men prepared for a battle, moving in synchronized urgency in the same manner they had when we’d previously faced danger, and I freed my sword from my belt as another shudder rocked the ship.
A boom cracked the sky as the clear, dawning blue turned steely grey and the clouds covered the rising sun.
“The sea awakens!” Winters shouted, but his warning came too late. Before the last of his words had been spoken, a crimson-red cephalopod limb erupted violently from the water. It was overwhelmingly large, at least twice the width of the ship at its thickest point and bearing suckers that in some places were as large and round as I guessed the moon might be. It writhed above the water, flailing wildly in the air as another limb crashed upward, and then another, until all eight arms of a giant, red beast were twisting in the air above us.
I saw two things at once: first, a tremendous avarice overcame Jomo’s eyes as he beheld the writing, red tentacles above him, eyeing it as one might behold a bounty of precious jewels, and then, the end of one of the arms swung forward and coiled itself tightly around Evangeline’s waist, and before she had the chance to cry out, wrenched her roughly off the deck and beneath the waves.
“Evangeline,” I screamed, reaching vainly for the air where she had stood half a second before as simultaneously I heard the roar of Winters’ voice rise in an angry bellow above the noise.
He yelled in a wordless thundering of fury as he thrashed his sword wildly at a tentacle that still hovered in the air above the deck, the remaining seven arms wrapping and tearing viciously at the ship’s masts and railings. The edge of his blade caught the pointed end of one limb and sliced at it so that a sucker-tipped end fell squirming to the deck like the severed phalange of an undead hand, but he had already forgotten it, rushing to the rail of the ship and scaling it in two smooth leaps even as it cracked and broke beneath his feet
from the weight of the monster’s beating. With his sword raised in one hand, Winters grabbed hold of a length of rigging in the other and prepared to dive into the depths after Evangeline.
“Captain,” Dunn called, arriving at his side. I could hear his voice even above the screams of the wind and the sirens as they buffeted around me. “Let me. I can make it.”
The two men stared hard at each other, and then Winters nodded and Dunn flung himself overboard without another word.
“Wait,” I screamed. For what I didn’t know, but I was rushing toward them as fast as my feet would carry me, dodging men and falling debris as I made my way across the deck. But before I could reach them surprise gripped me as another slick red limb wound itself around my waist and lifted me into the air, holding me so tightly that I could not draw breath enough to scream. My sword dropped from my grip and clanged loudly against the deck as I was swung high over the ship, the figures of Winters and Jomo and the rest of them only small specks below.
The last thing I saw before the arm pulled me roughly underwater were the blood-red sails of the Caleuche slicing upward as a large spray of water lifted the Spanish galleon atop the ocean. Wraith-like grey men were stationed at the rails and at each gun port, and more hung over the edge of the ships to man the large canons that were pointed directly at what was left of the Riptide. I could see the waving eels of my father’s hair and a hard, unfeeling expression transformed my father’s face into that of a stranger’s. Beside him the unmistakable form of Tom Birch stood still and brittle. I saw Erik Winters turn to meet them, a sneer on his mouth and his red hair whipping angrily in the wind as Jomo loomed at his back, and then I saw nothing but water.
XXII
When my eyes reopened I was back in the sea cove, lying in a heap on the hard, limestone floor, and the strange woman who inhabited the place was standing over me, her face still covered in its lacy mask though she was staring at me with the license of a goddess. I pushed myself up and got my bearings, feeling over my body to see what I had lost. My hat had managed to stay atop my head and I tugged at it reassuringly as I met the gaze of the woman. There was a smug look of victory on her face, but her smile was as sinister as before and just as unwelcoming. Evangeline was there in the cove as well, standing stiffly with her arms crossed over her chest and wearing a look of wrath and of fierce determination. Dunn was on his knees at her side, not in a posture of supplication but of defeat as if he had been forced there. His face, too, was twisted in rage.
For a moment, no one spoke, and when at last someone did I was surprised to find that it was me, and I heard a harshness in my own voice. “Let us go,” I demanded, addressing the goddess familiarly, and unafraid. “Return us to our ship and leave us in peace, Mother.”
Evangeline and Dunn darted startled eyes to me, as the sea goddess let loose one of her baleful laughs. “Oh, don’t be cross, my darling. You are home now, and you will never have to leave our little island again.” Her words were sweet, but her voice was cold and inhuman.
“We have no desire to stay on your ‘little island’,” I countered, without bothering to affirm it with the other two. This place may have once been home to Dunn, but judging by the expression on his face I believed that the sentiment had long since passed. I longed now to return to the open water, to Isla Perla, and Claudette.
“You, my dear Merrin, and your sister of course, are the daughters of the sea—of a goddess,” she purred, motioning to herself in lazy, languid movements as she stalked away from me and moved closer to her vanity, utterly disregarding what I had said. The red silk of her dress was the same color as the beast thrashing above, and she looked terribly proud of her own reveal though I had guessed her identity long before. I did not know her name, or at least her real one, but it did not matter. I knew she was the sea witch who guarded this island, and had stolen Evangeline from Isla Perla, and that would be the destruction of us all if she were not stopped. It was her crimson limbs that were thrashing above, destroying our ship, and it was her minions that had attempted to lure the Riptide to crash on the cliffs of Bracile before making land. She was the she that my father had referenced, and though I knew that she was my mother, I had no great love for her in my heart. Only fear, and something like loathing.
“You are safe here, my darling girls,” she explained, as if she were bestowing some great mercy, her masked face pivoting from mine to Evangeline’s, who was as stony and contemptuous as it had been before. “I will not suffer you to endure the mortal world and its men.”
“It is not your right to keep us here,” I said. “To condemn us all to this curse.”
“And what curse is that, dear? The curse of Jones?” she smirked over her shoulder. “Such a charming way to put it, isn’t it? Davy Jones always had a flair for the dramatic, though of course he couldn’t recognize that it was his own greed that damned him. You’re so much like him in that way, Merrin.” She made a tittering, scornful sound. “It’s an unfortunate tragedy of your mortal coil, but it will pass over time as your heart returns to the sea where it belongs. In time, you will forget the curse of Davy Jones, just as easily as you will forget Isla Perla and all that you knew before you returned here, to me.”
“Captain,” I spat, angry despite my fear, of the implication of her words. “Captain Davy Jones. My father. The man you loved once, or have you forgotten who he was to you?”
“Forgotten?” She spun to face me, the red silk of her dress flying out around her like fiery fang tips of a red rockfish. “I forget nothing.” A deep, gurgling rumble echoed around her; it shook the cove and I had to anchor my hand against the length of a limestone column so that I didn’t fall. There was venom on her tongue as she said the last, and her face whipped to Evangeline who rolled her eyes petulantly but said nothing. Dunn moved uncomfortably by her side and she touched one hand lightly on the roll of his shoulders to still him.
Our mother recoiled at this. “How can you touch him with such affection!” she seethed, her gaze landing angrily on Mister Dunn. “You, you miserable little monster. I know your face, even if it is old and cracked with age. It was you who ferried away my daughters, who stole them from me and took them across the ocean.”
“Aye,” he answered defiantly, rolling his eyes upward in a look of defiance. “That it were. I be followin’ the orders of my captain then, and I be doin’ it again if I could, witch.”
I expected her to be furious, but she only smiled at him, and it was a smile that could freeze fire. “And tell me, dog, how has it felt all these long years to be trapped in one form?” She pulled something from behind her back. I thought at first it was the blanket that had covered me when I had visited this place in my dream, and indeed it was that, but I realized now that it was not simply a supple leather blanket of sealskin, but was sealskin itself. His skin, I realized, as I saw an expression of agony and desire brush past his face. If it had not been for Evangeline’s guiding hand, he would have crumbled to the floor from the sheer pain of seeing it.
My mouth fell open. Mister Brandon Dunn, the wiry, white-haired quartermaster who had spent so much time longing for the sea and talking of its legends, was in fact not a man at all, but a thing of the sea itself. I had missed it before, but it was plain to see now. He was a selkie, a seal who could assume human form. Even my father had called him such; I had thought it was a just a pet name for the old sailor, but he had been trapped as much in this form every bit as much as Evangeline had been trapped on this island, and as I had been trapped in my own ignorance.
“What have you done?” I gasped in horror. I looked from my mother to Dunn and then to Evangeline, who shook her head at me in warning as my eyes caught hers, but it did nothing to stop the words that followed next. “You’re not a goddess at all; you’re a monster.”
“A monster?” the woman repeated, dangling the sealskin just out of Dunn’s reach as she advanced on me. Her lovely pearlescent hair and silken gown swirled angrily around her. “The distinction is a matter
of perspective, dear girl. I am a mother,” she insisted. “I loved that man once, that cursed Davy Jones. I loved him so much that I left the sea for him, and I bound myself to him so that he could sail the sea unharmed in immortality with me. But men are greedy, Merrin darling. Men are weak. And Davy Jones was no exception—no more than Erik Winters.” Evangeline stirred angrily at this and narrowed her eyes into thin, blue slits. “They are all weak. I gave Davy Jones everything, everything, but he was more in love with his gold than he was with me, and so I gave him just what he deserved after he left me on that island to rot.”
“He didn’t abandon you,” I argued. “He loved you.”
Evangeline moved closer to me to take my hand in hers so that we stood united. She added to the story, “He set about to free you … to free us all. And—”
“He abandoned me,” she seethed. “And when he did he took the two of you in his hold, stealing you away so that I couldn’t find you, couldn’t bring you back to where you belonged.” She waved her hands around the stark and inhospitable chamber. “And so I sank the ship he had you on and tried to bring you back to me, but you were lost—my two, precious daughters, along with the infant son of the captain who had tried to help him …” She pointed now at what was unmistakably a human skull on her vanity. “Though he has already paid grievously for his error. Heavy is the price for stealing from the sea.”
I looked at the skull with dread. Mother or not, the sea was cruel, and there was no empathy in her. “Name him,” I demanded, though I already knew. “Name the man whose skull that is.”
She sneered at me and waved her hand in a mock flourish. “Captain Amadeus Birch was his name, father of the boy Tom Birch, formerly of the Riptide. But don’t worry, darling, I’ve kept him, too, on the Caleuche, and Erik Winters and his African prince will soon join him there. And perhaps you, as well,” she said, her eyes spearing Dunn again at Evangeline’s feet.