Stranger Tides
Chapter Three : Conversation
In which names are not learned.
They catch her up in the net and drag her out of the water. The wet sand clings as she is pulled through it, catching in her hair, skin, scales. No ease is permitted them in their toil - every foot they gain is hard fought as can make it. She thrashes in their grasp, the strength of her tail whipping around her knocking one, then another from their feet before she is struck senseless and placed in a clear cage.
Finally aboard and cut away from shore, rigging shifting without the touch of any human hand, they take her down and store her in the hold, her tail wedged between barrels of fish. It's either an ironic or calculated statement of her position aboard ship. Knowing the Captain of this cursed ship, as she does, it's both. Efficient dramatics were always something he had a talent for. She use to admire that. It was something they had in common. Unless provoked - and her sisters would be very, very provoked right now - their hunting strategy was to lure their prey to them. Shallower waters made picking over the trinkets of the remains so much easier, and remaining near kelp beds had its uses. Even sailors knew that much.
Even once she is stowed, bound in the bones of the hull, the crewmen linger, thronging in the hatchway, one going so far as to polish the barrel's hoops for the opportunity to stay longer. The others make every excuse to chance by. It seems that the taste of the sea is on them. Salted fish is in high demand.
Her threats, wordless and sharp of tooth as hey are, have no mark on them, and they are soon against the glass, the boy nearest of all, smearing the clear wall with the mist of his breath till the world outside grows a blur. The Quartermaster approaches, and she knows him only by his step, because when he appears in the small box of blue it is with the same unfamiliar, dead face. They disperse, quiet as seals in shark waters.
Eventually, he leaves as well, as silent as he came, and she is left alone with the fish and the muffled slap of waves against the hull. She likes fish. Not salted to keep like wood in the deep, she has no taste for it, but fresh, all silvery scales and fragile bones ...
She is hungry, has not eaten more than minnow for days, and yet she is forced to ignore the pull, her deep seated need to take one of these two legged meals into the deep with her. She will eat when she leaves this cage - the sleeping guard will make an easy catch.
When she gets out. Any wave length the wood is strong, and the workmanship solid. Her compliments to the craftsman. If and when she comes across him.
The chinks of light fade, here, gone and here again as her watchdog settles in for the night. She has made nary a mark on her confines. No matter. Now is the time for waiting. The waves lull the ship into a dream state. If not for the glass, she could be adrift in the currents...
If not for the net that caught Si-si, she would be.
The timbers creak and settle. Her guard, if that he could be called, splits the air with his growling by the stairs. Faintly, the slap of rope at the mast is heard. Again, the wood groans.
"You are a mermaid."
Daughter. Where did you come from? The stairs had been silent, and the creak of timber unchanged.
"How do you know my father?"
A demanding little thing, isn't she. Like himself, only ... less. Softer. More unsure of the world. She seems the kind to grow, given the chance. That, or go to the depths fighting as the last scrap of air is pulled from her. A person of interest, perhaps even interesting enough to let live.
She hums a scrap - a call to all pay heed the squall - before acknowledging her presence with a sigh. "I was beginning to believe you wouldn't come."
"What? What did you say?"
Did she speak too lowly? Dear oh dear. Daughter will just have to come closer, won't she?
The glass is cool - cold against her skin.
The pause between them grows longer. Nothing to hear but the waves, their breathing, and the snoring.
She will silence him at the first opportunity she finds.
Her head is tilted, eyes dark like ... like nothing beneath the waves. Interesting. She has her fathers hair, curls and all. No flames. Trapped as he is, she can smell nothing but the salt in the water and the splintered bones of her last meal, but she imagines that Daughter lacks the smell of burning that follows her sire like a cloud.
She slaps at the glass again to get her point across.
Not long passes before she gets the idea, fumbles at the lock until she puts the lantern down. Lifts the lid.
She barely tastes the difference in the air (and there is a difference, of salt and sweat and no one could say it's fresh but it's newer) before there's metal at her collarbone, cold, muted, sharp metal, and a very familiar smirk on the face looking down at her.
His daughter indeed.
"I'm not making it that easy for you."
Her? Escape? She lets her shoulders drop, arms open and floating at her sides. The image of innocence. Where would she go?
Her mute appeal doesn't work. Her wrist is bound, not once but twice to the strut of her cage, before the blade is moved and Daughter settles back against a barrel, nearly sending her lantern to the floor. She snatches it up before it hits deck.
So, not raised aboard a ship? Not a surprise. Sailors tended to be a superstitious lot, both with and without reason. Those with reason tended to live short lives, so that she and her sisters could live long. It was the way of the sea.
"Now, how do you know my father?"
"Your father knows many women."
What reason would she not to know him? Daughter will just have to work it out for herself.
"You're a mermaid."
Denial? No, not quite. Confusion, perhaps.
Confusion she can work with.
"Only a fool seeks to hunt mermaids. Why would he?"
"You do not think that he is foolish?"
He hunted mermaids. Burned and herded and killed her people. That is foolish in the extreme. But not he. Many things Edward Teach was, but not a fool.
"Why."
She stands, moves away. Takes the light with her.
She too rises, to follow, but is brought short by the rope.
A question for a question. An answer for an answer. Is that not how it is done?
She pauses at the base of the stairs, alone in her own little pool of light.
"There is a ... prophecy."
A bad one, is the lengths taken to subvert it are any indication. No matter of hers, only that it concerns her.
"What is your name?"
Daughter pauses in her assent.
"It is customary, is it not?"
A laugh. She leaves as quietly as she appears, leaving only darkness.
Clever girl. An answer for an answer. Names have power.
Then again now, this ...Teach, would it be? She sailed with this crew, by choice by her actions. Seemed to care for the Captain. More idealistic than smart, then, but still ... interesting.
And useful too.