Pepin forced his breathing to steady, trying to make himself appear less forbidding and thus alleviate the sudden darkness his appearance had caused in the room. Cecilia looked ready to faint but for the defiant gleam in her eye. Her curiosity regarding the omens was only natural, and her swooning would serve no purpose.
The two imbeciles before him, on the other hand . . .
“Franklin. William.” Pepin was pleased at how soft his voice sounded. The two pirates shuddered and tilted their heads to glance at him out of the corners of their eyes. Pepin crossed his arms and leaned casually against the wall. He examined the mirror room as though only just noticing it. “Why would you bring Mademoiselle Lester to such a dreadfully dull part of the Rose? This is hardly a considerate gesture of hospitality.”
“Uh . . . well . . . you see, sir, we . . .” Frank stammered. William trod on his foot, causing the oaf to shut his mouth.
Pepin raised an eyebrow. “Mais non, I do not see. William, would you care to explain?”
William, to give him credit, put on a brave face. Though it could be only so brave while wet, dripping, and framed by slimy black hair. “She wanted to know about the omens,” he said.
“You could have explained them without coming here.”
William’s watery skin rippled. “Didn’t think of that, sir,” he replied, his voice wavering, betraying the fear he was no doubt attempting to quell.
Pepin waved a lazy hand. “Fair enough. You’re both fools. Run along now. Mademoiselle Lester will be along shortly.”
William and Frank stood for a moment before gathering whatever senses they possessed and scurrying away from him. Cecilia clutched the book to her chest. Pepin frowned at this. Her expression struck him as odd. Her lips quivered, and a lock of thick hair slid over one eye. Cecilia was scared, and for some reason this seemed wrong.
No, he knew why it felt wrong. The dark hair, the trapped look, the helplessness . . . She looked like his mother on that day so long ago . . . .
“We’re simply going to talk,” Pepin said, focusing on the situation. She didn’t relax. Indeed, she looked as though she might be ill, so dark were the hollows around her eyes. “Are you well, Mademoiselle?” he inquired politely.
Cecilia nodded. She tightened her hold on the book as though fearing he might snatch it from her. At last she broke the strained silence, saying, “Why didn’t you tell me all of the horrible things about the omens? What are you planning to do to me?” Her voice shook.
Pepin adjusted his stance. He must appear less threatening. He could not have her throwing herself overboard. “I did not tell you because I did not want you to be frightened. Cowards prey on weakness. The pirates aboard this ship would have sensed that you were easy loot and would have attacked. By acting as though the omens did not bother you—for what else would they have assumed we were discussing last night?—you made them wary. What with your being solid, they might have assumed you had unknown powers that could fend them off.”
Cecilia shifted her weight, looking down at the floor of the room. She scuffed her shoe along the ground, tracing a pattern only she could see. Pepin observed her, tilting his head to one side, wondering what she made of this strange mirror room. The men saw terrors, their nightmares made reality. When Pepin had first arrived on the Rose and was given her captaincy, the Fee had suggested locking men into the room to make the ship sail faster. Pepin had agreed. The ship had skimmed the water like a skipped stone, gliding and glorious, the fastest Pepin had ever traveled in his life. He had loved every second of it.
Until he unlocked the door to be greeted by a seething Jack and a pile of gaunt blue bodies. The poor sailors had nearly died of their own terrors all because Pepin wanted a little speed! Even now he saw the Book of Omens clutched in Jack’s hand, sizzling black blood dripping from its leather cover to the floor and vanishing into the nothingness that was Pepin’s nightmare.
Pepin forced his thoughts away from that rather disheartening memory to focus on more amusing matters, such as Cecilia’s current confusion. She continued to stare at the ground for several more seconds, various emotions flitting across her features—sadness, anger, disbelief. She jerked her head up and looked directly into him, almost through him. He shoved away the urge to shudder and met her gaze.
“Unknown powers,” she said, her voice level. “I’m a worthless, penniless, and friendless woman, barely out of childhood. What powers might I possibly have?”
Pepin smirked at her analysis. He would hardly have described her that way. Exquise! Magnifique! Charmante! would have been his chosen adjectives. “Oh, you have no powers in reality,” he said with a shrug. “But sailors are a superstitious lot.” He indicated the book clutched in her hands. “What did you read inside?”
“You know very well what I read!” Cecilia exclaimed, her voice losing the control she had gained during her brief silence, growing higher in pitch. “You know that all of those men want to hurt me! No doubt you want to hurt me!” With an effort she mastered herself, her jaw firm and tight with tension. “You’re just waiting to do it.”
Pepin chuckled dryly. “I swear to you, Mademoiselle Lester, I have no intention of hurting you.”
“Then tell me your omen,” Cecilia said.
Pepin fidgeted. “C’est une situation délicate. Embarrassing.”
Cecilia’s eyes narrowed. Hair fell over her face again. “Tell me.”
Pepin sighed. He dropped his head and waited a few moments before standing straighter and meeting her eyes with what he hoped was a cool, clear, open-hearted gaze. “My omen . . .” His voice trailed away. He took a step forward into the black chasm of the room. The pit surrounding him seemed to fade under the intensity of Cecilia’s gaze. “My omen says that to be free of this curse, I must fall in love with the Solid Woman and she must love me in return. Only then will I be free.”
Chapter 6
CECILIA STARED AT the captain, at the shadows where his eyes must be. For once he appeared completely serious, even somber. She became suddenly aware of how greasy and wind-blown her hair must look, how filthy her dress was. A hot flush rose in her cheeks, and she would have given anything to hide it. Just because he claimed that he needed her to love him didn’t mean she must necessarily reciprocate his feelings. Must she?
No. No, she couldn’t love him. How could she love someone she couldn’t see? How could she love a notorious pirate, such an evil person?
How could she even contemplate such a notion?
Pepin seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. He let out a dramatic sigh. “Alas! I know it is a hopeless task! Well, at least half of it. I believe I shall soon fulfill, if I have not already fulfilled, my own part of the equation.”
Cecilia shivered at his last words. Their tone was biting, derisive, as if he couldn’t believe himself. A surge of pity rushed to Cecilia’s head, forcing her to blink away the pressure in her eyes. Because he was right: She knew both too much and too little to ever love him. It was a hopeless task.
A hopeless task . . . The phrase struck Cecilia suddenly, and she frowned. A hopeless task. She considered the horrible omens she had just read and suddenly felt as though she held in her hands a particularly troublesome sailor’s knot. As though somehow she were meant to untie it.
Meanwhile, Captain Pepin stood before her, having just made his improbable declaration. She must offer him some form of answer. “I am . . . I am so sorry,” she began.
Pepin huffed and pressed a hand to his heart, cutting her off. “Mais oui, pour salt water on the wound, will you? No, no, make no apology! ’Tis a mere flesh wound, not a blow to my heart or soul or anything important!”
Cecilia felt oddly guilty. “I did not mean to hurt you,” she said, furious at herself for how hotly she blushed. “I was insensitive, but I . . .” She held up the leather book. A hopeless task, she thought once more, and could not keep herself from asking, “Do you think the Fee intended all the omens to be hopeless?”
The shadow
of Pepin’s face turned weirdly quizzical.
Cecilia continued: “I’m not supposed to be here. The Fee did not expect me to fall into the whirlpool. Could it be that they never intended for you to find a Solid Woman, and thus never intended for you to be saved? Because if so, that is cruelty beyond any I have witnessed!”
“Indeed it is,” Pepin replied dryly. “And what is more, I believe you are correct. I have considered it many times myself. The Rose sails an ocean that is not of earth, not of heaven, not of hell . . . not of anything except punishment with no offer of hope. Everything in this eerie netherworld has been taken and arranged by the Fee at some point. The men, the disgusting food, the Rose, small islands, treasure, other ships—”
“Other ships?” Cecilia interrupted. “There are others?”
“Mais oui, other ships with other cursed men searching for escape. We run across each other occasionally. And we fight. Such fun. As I was saying, the Fee—”
“Fight each other?” Cecilia exclaimed. “Why would you fight each other? Are you not all trapped together in this world?”
Pepin raised his arms defensively. “How else are we to find out if they have a Solid Woman?”
“You could try talking!” She sounded like a screeching fishwife in her own ears, but the captain did gall her so. Besides, the thought of being caught in a battle between eager, bloodthirsty ghosts provided incentive beyond mere courage. “By fighting each other, you do exactly what the Fee want you to do. Why give them the pleasure?”
Pepin shrugged. “You can trust no one, Mademoiselle Cecilia. Not in this world, nor in the other. Who deserves trust?”
“It’s Miss Lester, Captain Daviau,” Cecilia said, biting the words out aggressively. Just when she had begun to think some decency remained in him, he began talking like the very pirate all the tales made him out to be! Well, he could disregard her opinions, but he would not disregard her dignity.
“But of course, Mademoiselle.” Pepin flourished his tricorn and bowed extravagantly. “Propriety may be dropped among friends, but not between those who are courting.”
Though she knew he must be teasing, Cecilia hastily exclaimed, “That is absolutely not what I—”
Yet again he laughed at her ire, waving a shadowy hand to hush her protests. She wished then that she had not provided him the satisfaction of watching her rise to his bait. Oh, what an aggravating condemned ghost-soul was he!
Pepin’s voice lost some of its mocking amusement, turning momentarily serious. “Last night,” he said, “I mentioned the one port at which we can dock, oui? We sail there now. There is an enchanted cabin on the island that will let no one pass inside without someone solid. Now that we have you, we can enter. I do not know what will happen then, what waits for us inside that cabin. But I feel it is a better option than your being tortured or murdered or skinned and fed to alligators.”
Cecilia’s eyes widened. “Is that one of the omens?”
Pepin chuckled. “Were you not listening? Did I not just say you would have to fall in love with me?”
Cecilia stared at him for a moment, but then realized it was yet another joke. She felt her mouth pull in an attempt to smile. It felt absurd, but then it also didn’t. “You’re hardly an alligator,” she said.
“C’est vrai. I am but a shadowed monster with a pulsing black core. Nothing like so bad as an alligator.”
Cecilia might have sworn she saw Pepin wink, and she ducked her head.
“Though if the port turns out to be nothing,” he continued, “if you might garner the merest crumb of sympathy for me, I would be most obliged.”
Cecilia raised her chin and allowed Pepin to glimpse the smile she had sought to hide. She hadn’t intended to, but something about the tone of his voice softened all the harsh feelings she had, up to now, nurtured toward him. She could discern no reciprocal smile on his face, but something told her he was pleased.
She pursed her lips then, as a new thought rose unbidden in her mind. The Fee were liars, promising hope and giving pain. They must have told Pepin about this port and about the need for a Solid person. What if nothing happened? The ghostly men would want to beat her and kill her and assault her and . . . What would she do? Surely Pepin would protect her, especially if she somehow managed to fall in love with him. But was it possible to make oneself fall in love?
She supposed not. After all, if one could, it would stand to reason that one could make oneself not love someone as well. And then Cecilia’s mother would never have fallen in love with the pirate that was Cecilia’s father. Not if she could have helped it.
For the sake of her sanity, Cecilia forced these thoughts away. The port would work. She would not fall in love with a pirate. And she would make it safely to London and the home of her father’s respectable sister.
“When will we arrive at this port of which you speak?” she asked.
“I am not entirely certain,” Pepin admitted. “The distance changes every time, but this might have something to do with the fact that the Rose only ever sails about aimlessly. And attacks other cursed ships.” The last was added with a barking laugh.
Cecilia, disliking the mockery in that laugh, narrowed her eyes at the shadowy specter that was Pepin. “You say the Rose sails aimlessly?” she said, a sting in every word. “My father tells me that a ship takes on the spirit of her captain.”
Pepin’s shadow rippled, and the room grew darker. Cecilia’s eyes felt a sudden sting, as if an invisible ocean wave had just slapped her. She blinked and tried to focus on the words Pepin was murmuring under his breath: “Esprit de la Rose. Indeed.”
The next moment, however, he seemed to shake away the gloom, and the room lightened. “I should go and see if we are nearing the port,” he declared. “And I need to deal with Frank and William. But first, I feel you must make a new acquaintance.”
He sauntered out of the room, leaving her alone with her dream of London and the book. The pain receded from her eyes, and she could think again. In a panic she dropped the book into the chest and slammed the lid. Then she dashed to the door of the room and, standing on the threshold, called out into the redness, “Wait! Where are you going? You cannot leave me here!”
He came back into view so suddenly that Cecilia suspected he had purposely waited for her to scream at him. He bowed low. “My sincerest apologies, Mademoiselle Lester. As I should have said to begin with,”—he made an elegant sweep with one arm—“do follow me.”
Chapter 7
CAPTAIN PEPIN LED Cecilia up from the hold to a deck that may or may not have been the one on which her cabin was located. From there he walked along a passage that seemed to follow the length of the ship toward the bow, though she couldn’t be certain in the near-darkness. Apparently the ghosts felt no need to hang lanterns since their own blue bodies gave off such a glow.
“Wait!” she protested, lifting her skirts so that she might more easily overtake the captain. “Are we heading toward the bow? You told me not to venture that way.” Although, she realized, recalling the view from her cabin window that morning, she might already have done so.
“You’ll be perfectly safe, Mademoiselle,” Pepin called back over his shoulder. “Allez!”
Still holding her skirts in both hands, Cecilia hustled after him, her stinging eyes struggling to see in the gloom. “You said it’s where you keep the insane ones!” she persisted.
The captain paused before a door, which seemed to lead to another room that could not fit on this ship, just like Cecilia’s own strange cabin. If she didn’t know that the Rose was enchanted—or cursed, rather—she would have thought it a door leading out to empty air and a cold drop into the sea.
Pepin’s face remained as inscrutable as ever, but she could have sworn he grinned at her. “Speak calmly to it. No sudden movements or loud noises and you will be fine. Je vous promets. I promise you.” With that, Pepin reached out and caught Cecilia by the elbow. He swung open the door and, before she could so much as utter a pro
test, pushed her inside.
Cecilia yelped, spun around, and rattled the latch, but she heard only Pepin’s bark of laughter and the click of a bolt sliding shut. She was trapped!
“’Ullo, there.”
Terror clutched her by the throat. Cecilia whirled about, pressed her back to the door, and saw . . . not quite what she’d expected.
A young boy—perhaps ten years old but no more—sat in the corner on a white stool. All around him the room was dark, and she could make out nothing of its contours or features. But a gentle aura surrounded the boy, revealing his thick curly hair, which was sky blue and bushed around his face. His expression seemed to have worn a mischievous grin for so long that it now had trouble supporting his confused frown.
She blinked at him. He did not look insane.
“You’re solid!” he exclaimed. A curl fell in front of his eyes as he bounded from his stool. Unlike everyone else aboard the ship, he didn’t look remotely terrifying. He was blue, yes, but he wasn’t slimy or malformed.
“Yes . . .” Cecilia replied hesitantly. “And you look different.”
“I know. Why are you solid? How did you get solid?” His aura followed him as he crossed the little distance between them. He glared at her suddenly, his expression wary. “You didn’t follow your omen, did you?”
“I never had an omen. I came here solid because I inadvertently took the punishment meant for my father,” Cecilia explained, speaking as softly as she could with her heart pounding in her chest. What was this? This boy did not even sound insane! “Why do you look different?”
Comprehension crossed the boy’s features, and he grinned suddenly, revealing a chipped front tooth. “You’re the one in the omens, ain’t ya?” His smile disappeared. “I’m really sorry about that, miss.”
Cecilia shivered. His sudden solemnity was unsettling. “Who are you?” she asked.
“My name’s Curly,” the boy said. He stuck out his hand. “Curly Tanner. What’s your name?”
Five Enchanted Roses: A Collection of Beauty and the Beast Stories Page 5