She rushed to join Stubby at the helm, and he spoke to her in a low voice, “The waters be calm, and we’d do well to take adv’ntage of them while they hold. There be no knowin’ when a storm may hit.”
Ebba stared ahead. The thinnest stream of light remained, and soon that would also be gone. “Aye, but the rocks are no joke. What if we hit somethin’ in the night?”
Stubby slid his eyes to her. “How do ye feel about a wee shimmy down the bowsprit to hang a few torches?”
Ebba grinned despite the tweak of apprehension in her gut. “Aye, I can be doin’ that.”
. . . Ten minutes later, she clung to the pointed stick protruding from the bow of the ship that was the bowsprit. In truth, sometimes in calmer waters Ebba would shuffle out onto the bowsprit to feel the sea’s spray on her face. She liked to pretend she was like the mermaid figurehead located just underneath it.
But falling off and dashing against rocks wasn’t usually a risk. The thought of ending like the warrior who trapped the bird’s soul in his daughter didn’t appeal to Ebba.
She held an oil lantern in one hand and shuffled out using her legs and her remaining arm, in a similar way she’d done with the tree on Neos.
“As close to the tip of the bowsprit as ye can, little nymph,” Plank called.
Ebba’s stomach lurched as the ship swung without warning to the port side. The cliffs were near impossible to see now, coated as they were in the darkness of the lapping water.
She reached the tip. If Felicity crashed into the rocks right now, her guts would be the first of the crew to paint the walls of Syraness.
She gripped the wooden beam with her legs and held the lantern between her thighs, thankful her trousers made the hot metal painful but bearable to touch. Unwinding the end of the rope slung across her torso, she tied a loop knot, tugging it firmly to check its hold. She passed this through the lantern’s handle and held both ends of the rope as she dropped the lantern down into place. She then fed the other end of the rope through the loop twice before pulling it tight against the bowsprit she sat upon.
She shuffled backward, feeding out the rope.
Plank held out another lantern for her to place.
She repeated the process twice more before swinging off the bowsprit and onto the deck again.
The lanterns shone light a full ten paces in front of the ship. More than enough for those giving directions back to the helm.
Just as Plank clapped her on the shoulder, an eerie keening sound echoed through the rocks. The crew froze—as did Cosmo, who’d come to watch her hang the lanterns.
“What was that?” Stubby said from the stern.
None of them answered, each straining to catch the sound again.
Ebba let out a sigh when the breathy shriek didn’t come again. “Probably just a—”
The high scream ripped through the rocks again, louder this time. The sound bounced between the cliffs, seeming to come from everywhere at once. Ebba gripped onto Plank with one hand, her insides frozen by the pure menace the call held.
“Plank, is that the siren?” she whispered.
Plank stared into the water ahead, pressing his lips together as the scream echoed for the third time. “I be thinkin’ we need to take some pr’cautions.”
“Against what?” Locks asked, then rolled his eye. “Not yer blimin’ siren?”
“Aye, my blimin’ siren. That sound like anythin’ ye’ve ever heard? Magic be back in the realm,” Plank snapped. “I don’t know how or why, but it is. We saw Ladon with our own eyes. If he was back on Neos Mountain, who’s to say the siren hasn’t returned here?”
Uncertainty crossed Locks’ face. “But ships’ve made it through these channels afore. They had no tales o’ sirens. . . .”
“You said Jagger had never seen Ladon on the mountain of Neos before, despite being there several times,” Barrels said. “Clearly something has happened for him to return. I don’t think we should discount there being more magical creatures around.”
“Twenty starboard!” shouted Peg-leg to Stubby.
The ship tilted and Cosmo stumbled into the bulwark.
Plank lifted his hands. “There ain’t no harm done if we tie ourselves to the ship—just in case, ye savvy? If the way be clear o’ the siren, we’ll laugh about it on the other side. If the siren is around, we stand a chance of makin’ it through with Ebba at the helm.”
Ebba inhaled sharply. “Why me at the helm?”
A pregnant pause followed.
“Someone else can explain. I need to, uh, trim the sails,” Plank said, hurrying away.
“Ye just did that.” Ebba frowned at his back.
Locks blurted, “I’m busy watchin’ for rocks. Can’t talk.”
“Aye, same here,” Peg-leg echoed, avoiding her gaze.
Ebba turned to face Barrels, the last father left in front of her.
He scrubbed at the salty grime covering his face.
Ebba glanced over her shoulder. All of them were hiding, except Cosmo. Locks and Peg-leg were in plain sight, but looked to be pressing themselves into the deck as though hoping to merge into it. She could see Plank’s hand sticking out behind the mast, and Stubby’s head peeping over the helm.
“What did he mean, I can be at the helm?” she demanded.
“You see, Ebba-Viva,” began Barrels hesitantly, “legend says the siren’s call affects men.”
Ebba glanced over her hiding fathers again, her stomach tightening. She hated this topic with a vengeance. It was a particularly raw point between her and her fathers and one they always avoided. She was a pirate. A pirate.
“Why?” she said, playing dumb in the hopes he’d run away like the others.
Plank threw ropes to Locks at the bow, and then retreated so quickly his feet tangled together. He hit the deck, but jumped up and hid behind the mast once more.
“Because,” Barrels said, “I guess if the siren’s call affected women, then the siren herself would succumb to her song. And you are . . . not a man.” He stared at the others, who were fastening the ropes Plank chucked to them around their waists.
“Tie those knots tight, lads. Two or three of them,” Stubby shouted, peeking out and hitting his head in his haste to backpedal when he saw Ebba watching.
They were really doing this. Her fathers were really defying her personal pirate law. “Well her song still might affect me because I’m a pirate,” Ebba said, lifting her chin, eyes burning as a lump rose in her throat.
Cosmo interrupted. “Wait. Mistress Fairisles doesn’t know she’s female?” His voice showed his disbelief.
Barrels fidgeted on the spot. “We didn’t mess things up that badly. Ebba just doesn’t think being female or male is relevant to how someone should be treated. She identifies as a pirate. Which is fine,” he blurted, seeing her thunderous expression. “Though I’m afraid her reason for making the shift from female to pirate came on the backend of a grievous error of our own.”
Blood pumped into Ebba’s face. “I’m a pirate,” she said, her voice louder as fear pounded through her. At fifteen, her fathers had abandoned her to Sherry on Maltu. They’d left Ebba there and run off for months without explanation. In the end, she’d figured out why. Hard not to when her body began changing into adulthood two weeks prior to being abandoned. Ebba had thought they were never coming back, and all because they couldn’t ignore that she was female any longer. When they did return, she swore they’d never see her as a weakness to be discarded. On that day, she became a pirate. For good.
The rest of the realm just had trouble getting that fact through their thick skulls.
“She wears a corset,” Cosmo noted.
Ebba rounded on him, jaw clenched. “It ain’t a corset. It’s a jerkin.”
He dropped his gaze to her chest. “Awfully tight jerkin,” he muttered.
Her skin heated under his intense look. Ebba scowled darkly at him. She had female parts, sure. She even liked a lot of female things. And she found som
e men attractive, but. . . . “I’m a pirate,” she growled. “Don’t ye or any other sod be forgettin’ it.”
Cosmo flushed a deep red. “My sincerest apologies, Mistress Fairisles.”
Barrels kicked Locks in the side. “You two could help, you know.”
Locks’ and Peg-leg’s response was to flatten themselves further into the deck.
Her eldest father sighed. “How about a compromise? That you’re a pirate is of no doubt. But . . . let’s just say you are a different kind of pirate. One which can, uh, resist the siren’s lament?”
Beside her, Cosmo smothered a cough with his hand.
The pressure on Ebba’s breathers eased. “Aye, I can go with that.” As long as her fathers never felt they had to leave her again.
Cosmo opened his mouth. “But—”
Peg-leg kicked his wooden leg out and swept the servant’s feet from under him. The air whooshed from Cosmo’s lungs and he hit the deck, flat on his back.
“Best leave it at that, boy,” Peg-leg said.
Cosmo wheezed for air. “Why don’t you talk? You’re all just pretending.” He trailed off in response to a glare from Locks.
Pretending. That word was cropping up an awful lot lately.
“We don’t fuss over why on this ship, boy. And ye’d do well to mind that,” Locks snapped.
Ebba paced the deck, her lips pursed. The issue of pirates, males, and females aside, if the siren was real, they could be sailing into danger. And they knew very little of the siren’s power. A rope was only a slight inconvenience against potential death on the rocks.
“I’ll still be tyin’ myself to the ship, just in case,” she told them. “We’ve never really tested this element o’ my pirate nature. Better safe than dead. And we should keep Pillage below deck. He’s a lad, too.”
The words froze on her lips as she saw Barrels was gone and now mimicked Locks and Peg-leg’s posture, flattened against the deck.
Cosmo clambered to his feet with a grimace. His amber eyes glittered as he scanned her fathers, and if Ebba had to guess, she’d say he was unhappy with her fathers. Aye, well, he could get in line. She’d cried every day when they left her. For more than a year after they returned, she’d been near-speechless with fear for a week either side of docking in Maltu. But slowly she’d seen proof that her theory was right. As a pirate, she was safe; safe from the scripted life of an existence on land. Safe, and sailing with the six fathers who were her world, even if they’d shown that they could do without her.
Sherry blamed her for being childish and spoiled, but sometimes, when Ebba couldn’t pretend otherwise, she blamed her fathers for the same. This was the ship dynamic that worked. Being a dependent pirate were the unspoken terms of compromise whereby Ebba remained on Felicity.
It would take a braver pirate than her to risk changing that.
“I think we can be pretty sure you’ll be okay, Mistress Fairisles,” Cosmo said softly, his eyes lingering on her face. “But how about you tie yourself down, just in case?”
Fifteen
Ebba slept out by the helm, tied to the wheel’s pedestal, while Stubby continued to direct the ship in response to the crew’s calls from the bow. He was tied to the wheel also.
The rocky spires extended high above now. So high that even with the fog lessening on the second day, scant sunlight made it down to them.
“How much longer, Stubby?” She yawned, jaw cracking. Sleeping through the echoing shrieks bouncing through the overhangs proved a challenge. Especially as the screams became more frequent the farther into Syraness the current took them.
He passed a hand over his drawn face. “We’re only a day and night in. Thrice that distance to go.” His soft, reflective eyes squinted up to the heights either side of the ship. “I ain’t likin’ that those shrieks have fallen silent just now.”
Ebba sat up, circling her shoulders to alleviate the stiffness in them. “They have?” She listened for a moment. Silence. He was right—the siren had finally shut her gob. Thank the sea for small mercies.
Stubby hummed, spinning the wheel to port side at a call from Barrels, who was taking a shift at the bow.
“Grubby up top?” she asked. Stubby nodded.
“I’ll go get ye some food and grog and then take over for a shift.”
“That’d be nice.”
She loosened her rope and made haste for the bilge, noting Cosmo resting in his hammock, tied to the far post. No one else was below deck, except the ship cat, all hands helping above.
She grabbed two plates of tropical fruit and balanced two goblets of grog on them. Then, she returned to the main deck, shoving the bilge door open with her hip.
“Here ye go.” She shoved the plate and grog at Stubby and began to shovel food into her mouth. She slurped at her grog. Being constantly on edge gave her an appetite.
Stubby’s plate clattered to the deck.
Ebba picked it up. “Stubby, what—?”
The ship careened to port side. The wheel spun wildly and Ebba threw the plates away, lunging forward to grab a spoke. She pulled back on the wheel with all her weight.
The bowsprit at the front scraped along the rocks, and Felicity groaned at the demanding change.
They’d nearly crashed into the cliffs. “Stubby,” she shouted. Damn pirate fell asleep at the wheel.
She spared a quick glance at him and gasped.
Her father’s face was blank, his mouth slightly ajar and eyes empty—their usual reflective quality gone as though he’d fallen asleep standing . . . with his eyes open . . . mid-meal.
“Stubby?” she said, keeping one eye on the water ahead. “Yoo-hoooo.”
He didn’t show any sign of hearing her.
Ebba let out a shaking breath. “Shite.”
Up at the bow, Locks and Barrels stood in the same way as Stubby, staring at the cliffs with vacant expressions.
She peered to the bulwark where Peg-leg had been pushing off the rocks with an oar. He was the same. As was Plank at the mast, and Grubby in the crow’s nest.
Fear nestled into her gut. This wasn’t good.
Spray flew high in front of the ship. Ebba wrenched left on the wheel, the spokes spinning wildly on their axel. There was no way to know if she’d avoid the rock causing the spray.
The crow’s nest scraped against the jutting spires high above
“Grubby,” she screamed.
The toothless pirate swayed on the spot, oblivious to the peril inches away from him.
This couldn’t be happening. Was the siren here? It was the only explanation she had.
Spray erupted to the port side, and she pulled down hard to the right. Ebba needed the directions called from the front. She might miss a smaller rock. How long would her fathers be out of it?
A high-pitched giggle resonated through the channel. The childish sound sent a shiver of terror through her body and a shriek lodged in Ebba’s throat.
The giggle came again. Closer.
It sounded in her right ear, turning into an inhuman screech at the last second. Ebba drew her cutlass, swiping at the thin air, her eyes searching the shadows by the cliffs.
Stubby groaned and began to push Ebba aside to get to the sound.
“No, Stubby,” she cried. “It be the siren.” Her eyes fell on the rope around his waist.
Did they all have their ropes secured?
She quickly searched out those of the crew she could see. Relief poured through her as she saw the tight fastenings around their waists.
She guided the ship to the starboard side.
Tension coiled tight within her until Felicity passed around another rocky hazard without harm. Stubby stepped forward until his rope grew taut, and Ebba shifted to the other side of him to get a better hold on the wheel.
The giggling came again, but this time the sound held a sultry quality to it. A huskiness Ebba associated with Sherry, Brandy, and Margaritta back on Maltu.
Handsome warrior, to the rocks I bid thee.
The hairs at the back of her neck prickled. Ebba stilled as something, someone blew on the back of her neck.
There was nothing there when she whirled around.
Stubby strained against his rope, grunting. “Comin’, sugar plum.”
Ebba scrunched her nose, heaving to the starboard and then to port in short succession.
“Barrels! Locks!” she shouted, knowing deep down her cries were futile. The sirens hold on them was unshakeable.
The wind howled and despair knotted in a noose around her neck. If the wind was rising, so would the swell.
Come with me, mighty warrior to the rocks, I bid.
Stubby and Plank pulled against their restraints, reaching blindly for the cliffs. Both were wildly joyful in response to the siren’s throaty call.
Ebba tightened her grip on the helm, trying to think. It was three days to the other side of Syraness. The curving spires had finally blotted out all trace of natural light overhead.
Three days without hitting the cliffs, or a single rock. . . .
She was in a bucket of steaming shite.
Together we will rest, together we will be.
Ebba shivered, doing her best to focus through the siren’s call. She couldn’t rely on her fathers—not until they were free of the siren’s spell.
She was alone. She listened to the grunts and yearning shouts of her fathers, dread immobilizing her as she stared into the darkness ahead, the swinging lanterns her only beacons into the black unknown.
The winds had risen, and the current had quickened, adding a rolling swell that oscillated sideways through the channel, slapping against the rock interfaces.
Ebba was powerless to slow Felicity’s new speed.
Her grip upon the wheel’s spokes was like iron. Her eyes and ears focused entirely on the path ahead. She’d shoved the siren’s song into the back of her mind, ignoring the feathery brushes across her skin and light breath on the back of her neck as best as she could.
Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Immortal Plunder (Pirates of Felicity Book 1) Page 15