Belita stood at the Kestrel's helm fighting the wheel with all her strength. The wind buffeted the torn sails and whipped the snapped ropes back and forth across the deck like angry serpents. Her ship was a wreck. The timbers were black with rot and full of broken holes. The storm pitched her back and forth and tossed plumes of water over her rails. Belita shouted orders, but her voice was drowned out by thunder. On the deck, her crew seemed like they were moving through water. They shambled slowly. Lightning flashed, lighting their rain-slicked pale bodies as they milled aimlessly. She could hear them screaming endlessly, crying for help, but she could not leave the wheel. All she could do was scream back, hoping someone could hear her.
Danica and Coleman North stood between the aftcastle stairs right below her, staring up with cloudy eyes and slack jaws. Their clothes were rotten and shredded. Danica's eyes were swollen and red, nearly bursting from her skull. She reached upward toward her captain with broken fingers. The corners of Coleman's mouth had split, widening his mouth in an infected grin. A black stinger rolled between his lips as he gurgled out his pleas for help.
Everywhere she looked her crew stared at her with white faces and red eyes. Lace. Stew. Colin. Will. Bella. Even Reeve. All of them. She knew they blamed her, and she knew they were right. Belita cried and apologized. The waves jolted the ship and wrenched the wheel from her grasp. It spun wildly. She tried to catch it, but only got her knuckles cracked by a whiling handle. It was too late. Another wave crashed and the ship listed suddenly. She watched in horror as bodies on the deck were swept overboard. The others clung to the masts and ropes, one by one, turning to stare at her with helpless blame. She held the railing for dear life and slumped to her knees, waiting for the sea to take them all.
A heavy hand gripped her shoulder.
She looked up into the rain, and saw a massive form. A shadowy, rune-scarred giant loomed over her. He was as tall as Reeve, though not as broad. He was naked, save for a pale mask. His manhood hung right in front of her eyes, limp but still shockingly large. At the end of the bulbous head was a carved ring of beached bone. Other white rings dotted his huge frame, piercing his nipples and ears. His skin was so dark that at first he looked like he was part of the rolling black storm behind him. His pale mask seemed to shift and move, like it was made from a dense fog that was continuously correcting itself as it tried to approximate a skull. A lightning flash lit up his body for a moment, revealing the bluish scars that covered his body. The larger ones, like the thick band of blue that wrapped his throat, looked like old wounds, but the rest were deliberate rows of strange glyphs. His skin looked like it was made from the darkened leather pages of an arcane tome.
"Enough of this," a thundering voice growled. The firm demand didn't come from behind the mask. It came from everywhere. It was the wind, the sea, the thunder.
"Oh gods no," Belita whispered. "Please, not ye too."
"Stand up," the impossible voice rumbled through the clouds. The ship stopped rolling. The seas calmed in moments and the sky broke as if this man's very presence cowed it.
"I'm dreaming," she said to herself. "Alright. Good." She took a deep breath and looked up at the monstrous shadow above her. "Is this really you?" Belita demanded. "Or am I just dreaming of ye too?"
The skull mask tilted. "Is there a difference?" the wind asked.
"Yes there's a fucking difference! I don't want ye here!" Belita shouted into the storm. "I don't want ye to see me. Not like this." She turned away from him, still huddled on the ground against the railing. Her heart sank further as she looked over the deck again, back to the accusing eyes of her twisted crew.
The man knelt, slid a powerful arm around her, and pulled her against his chest. "I am not afraid of your darkness," that unsettling voice said through the waves and the wind.
"I am," Belita said, turning her head away. "I thought I could handle the risks. The... death. I can't. I can't look at them."
"Look again," his strange voice whispered through the creaking timbers of the ship.
She looked up. The sky was clearer and the rain calmed to a drizzle. Her crew was busy with shipwork. Lace was yelling at the riggers. Coleman was directing swabs to lower cargo into the hold. Will and Bella stood at the prow watching the horizon. Danica gave her a happy wave.
"You cannae do this," she shook her head hopelessly. The sky darkened again. In the flashes of lightning her crew flickered between men and monsters. Coleman and his work crew moaned for help. Lace's graceful climbing became a tangled slither of tentacles. Belita wiped the rain out of her eyes and shook her head angrily. "Ye weren't there! Ye cannae change what happened!"
"I do not know what happened," the man's voice said through a soothing breeze. "But I do know that this is not it. Tell me the story."
Belita leaned her head against the aftcastle railing and hated herself. "When I told 'em what I was fixin' tae try, two thirds of th' old crew left. I don't blame 'em. They were obviously the smart ones. I wanted tae wait in Bastard's Bay, tae hire on more an' make sure we were full kitted, but I got intae a row with a kid who turned out tae be one of Old Man Teach's whelps. We left port in a hurry with th' crew at half strength. I promised th' ones that stayed a bonus, and that we'd take on more along the way."
She swallowed back the knot in her chest and continued. "We made it past one stop. One. I thought we got lucky in Barcola. Found a damn parade of good sailors willin' tae risk the Drifts. At the time, it seemed like unbelievable luck. We left port with almost all the bunks full. There were crew enough tae work in shifts again. Things were settling out. Less'n a week later I took 'em right into a grinder."
"Grindylow, Sandy!" she said with a mirthless laugh, sounding like she still didn't believe it herself. Her head listed against the railing. The more she talked, the less strength she had to hold herself up. She felt like the sky was pressing down on her. "We were attacked by Grindylow! They chased us right intae a storm, and kept coming. Twelve died in th' fight. Two more by the next morning. Dozens of wounded. Two lost a leg, another an arm. Four have gut wounds and might not survive the week. Seventeen were nearly strangled, and I dinnae even know how many broken bones they 'ave between 'em all. It was a disaster."
The big man didn't move from where he knelt beside her. He just held her. No voice echoed from around her. He knew she wasn't done.
"I wasn't prepared. I got them killed. The ship is wrecked. We're stranded," she whispered. "It's my fault."
"I see," the wind said.
"What, that's all!" Belita snapped. Her grief turned to anger in an instant. The grey clouds above them flooded with crackling darkness. Lightning split the sky as she tried to wrench out of his embrace. "I got a quarter of the crew killed, and stranded the rest in a goddamn jungle, and you see?"
He held her tight. "What do you want?" the rolling thunder cracked all around them.
"I don't know!" Belita snapped, squeezing her eyes shut. Her body went limp, the fight leaving her as fast as it had come.. "I just... I don't want t' do this anymore."
"Escape," the creaking ship said.
"Yes," Belita said bitterly. "Tae run away and disappear. Like ye did."
"Come to me then," the man said, offering her his hand.
She swallowed back her tears and looked at his huge, scarred hand for a long time. There was a part of her that wanted to push him away, the same way she wanted to push everyone away, but she trusted him more than anyone. It was obviously a mistake to trust herself, so the best thing to do must be the opposite of what she wanted. She reached for him, and let him pull her to her feet.
As soon as her legs were under her, she lunged for him. She wrapped her arms around his thick waist and buried her face in his chest. In spite of the sudden rain, he felt warm.
She squeezed him as tightly as she could. "I've missed ye, Sandy. I missed ye so much."
His arms engulfed her, and held her, letting his calm soak up her strife. His big hand gently stroked her head, and his calm, implaccable patience drained all the horror and guilt out of her. When she finally tilted her head up to look at him, the sky was clear and blue.
Now that she was standing and the shadows had cleared she looked at him more closely. She prodded him. "Ye feel... smaller."
The waves and wind somehow managed to sound exasperated. "I have eaten nothing but fish since I left you, and done far too much climbing."
"Aye, that'd do it," Belita said. In spite of her heartache, she managed an appreciative smirk as she ran her fingers down the bulges and ripples of his stomach muscles. "I bet all that fuckin' helped too."
"Likely yes," the sea sighed.
"Nothin' but fish... that dinnae sound like somethin' I'd come up with. Are ye real?" she asked again.
The foggy mask shifted, making the skull look like it was raising a boney brow at her. "What is real?"
"Don't ye give me any of that 'Mysterious Sandman' bollocks! I just want tae know if you're really you, and not just... the you I dream of."
The skull mask tilted again, and the thunder began to rumble above them. She looked up and pointed an angry finger at the sky. "No!" The puzzled thunder stopped. She glared up at the smokey skull mask. "No cryptic puzzle answers. I just... can't right now. Ye tell me true. Will you remember this when I wake up."
"Yes," distant thunder laughed.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, feeling like she'd been drowning and finally caught a lifeline. "Why did ye come? Why now?"
His hands slipped from her shoulders to her hands. "I need your help," the wind whispered.
She shook her head. "I... can't help anyone."
"You can," the thunder rolled.
She looked up at the shifting mask wishing she never had to wake up. "Everyone who relied on me just got dead or marooned."
"You owe me," the ship creaked around her.
Her expression turned to shock. Confusion, betrayal, and anger flooded through the bleak hollow in her chest. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She sputtered and punched him in the chest. He didn't react. The absurdity of it all slowly bloomed into laughter. "You arsehole."
"Had to get through to you somehow," the wind teased.
"Fuck," she muttered. "How do ye always know just what tae say tae yank me outtae my bullshit?"
The rolling storm clouds chuckled. "Practice."
"Danica told me I was too important tae quit. Will told me I wasn't tae blame. Lace told me I needed tae look out, not down. I tried! I keep trying, but I just can't shake it. It keeps coming back, and it's gettin' stronger. Every time I stop tae think, I think of this," Her jaw quivered as she spoke, and more dark clouds rolled in. She gestured down to her crew. In a thunderflash they flickered from the people she loved to barely recognizable monsters moaning for help.
The big man gave the storm clouds a firm look and they retreated again. "Back to work," the ship's timbers barked. The grotesque crew shuffled and turned, obeying orders and slowly regaining their color as they returned to their jobs. "Music!" the cracking sky demanded. Up in the crow's nest, Lace pulled out her pipes and started playing a cheery Akula sailing song.
Belita looked at him with red rimmed eyes, then out across her suddenly normal ship and shook her head with a wistful smile. "Still saving me from myself."
"You do seem to be the only one who ever gets the better of you," The wind whispered.
