Epilogue
The wedding party was held in the port town of St. Augustine, Florida, founded by the Spanish in 1565. It was not far away from the fountain and we made it there before dark. We feasted at a tavern before spending the night at an inn. Sarah washed the charcoal off her hair and the paint off her face in our room at the inn, and I laced her up in a lace-sleeved cerulean seashell-patterned gown for the occasion. Her hair turned blonde again.
After a week of debauchery in the town of St. Augustine, the men still aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge sailed the ship up the Matanzas River to the meet-up spot at the harbor, according to Blackbeard's plan. We boarded the ship at the dock and bid good-bye to the Spanish town I had grown so fond of. I took Sarah by the hand and led her up the gangplank. Then the ship turned downriver, avoiding the cannons being shot from the Castillo de San Marco, the fort on the shore. We sailed a pirate flag after all. The ship fired cannons back, crumbling holes in the wall of the fortress.
Once safely out of range of the fort, down the river and out to sea, I stood at the railing on the deck next to Sarah, her hair blowing in the breeze.
"Tell me something," she said to me. "If we had to do it all over again, would you drink from the fountain? Would you make that choice?"
"I was so thirsty I needed a drink by then," I joked.
She laughed at me.
My hands gripped the rail of the ship, white knuckles pale. "What's done is done," I said. "We both drank the water. We could live forever."
"And not get any older," she added.
"Fifteen is a good age to stay," I said, leaning back against the rail with my elbows on the wood.
The ship made its way back to London, to the rest of my unnaturally prolonged life perhaps waiting ahead of me. And my closest companion, Sarah, was there with me too, the same as at the beginning, still at the end.
THE END
