Stranger Tides
Chapter Four : Journey
In which retribution is sworn and a pirate disappears.
The sailors return above decks with the sun, the usual shouts and scurried activity of a ships first watch. All the work that needs doing, sun after sun after sun, to keep wood and mortal men above the surface of the sea. None speak to her, though they look upon her in the morning as they did the evening before, with muttering at the sight of her hand affixed to the outer surface and many strange gestures besides. She speaks to none of them. She does not sing. She lets what small part of the sea is trapped with her hold her, and she drifts as preparations begin to keep the ship afloat for one more day and the day after it, and the day after that. She has known many ships, and they are all the same.
She cannot escape, not from this cage of glass, nor the belly of the ship, nor would she escape from the deck of the Queen Anne with the rigging against her.
Mermaids have use enough of what humans cross their path, and humans have their own for any of the sisters they trap. None of them can be on a ship.
So she drifts, half awake and half asleep, and waits to be taken out.
For all the charade they make of it, they do not make her wait long. The sun has not reached its highest when sails are furled and anchor touches sand.
The transfer is as silent as any other part of her captivity. Not at all, in plain sight of fact and as truthful as she ever is in sight of the sun. Not a one of them talk to her, but the shouting of orders and, the pull of rope, waves on wood are an understated melody. One that pulls her into deep, strange memory.
They carry her over the shale and sands, which she is familiar with, and into the tree beds, which she is not. This is where they get their ships. Endless mixture of browns, greys and dark shiny greens as thick as kelp on the seabed. Hint of breeze teases her skin through the cracked opening, carrying with it the faint must of rooting plants. Oddly tasteless. In water she could know a thousand things from one touch of sensory membrane, yet now there is nothing but salt on her tongue. Truly, the form of a lure is a cage every bit as strong as this glass.
The procession wades through the trees and through water that rises until only the effort of sailors - she recognizes Singer leading by her tail - keeps the water from washing over the edge and into the coffin and slowly with complains of eels and snakes onto the firm press of dried land once more, moving upwards until their line comes to a halt. Shade of the trees is sweet relief from oppressive baking heat of the sun. What water remains with her is near enough to fresh caught prey to remind her of her lack. She has enough surrounding her to spend weeks feasting, yet cannot touch a single one of them
Quartermaster comes striding into the gathering, sending men to their feet in a wave. He collects pistols, gathers them up and turns back along his path. None are happy to be relieved of their weapons, but he is a hard one to argue with. Even silent.
A single shot follows, and the shocked clammer of strange birds. Silence settles. A scream puts end to the developing murmur.
They return and mark the way down the slope again turning against the shadows, Teach and Daughter knocking their heads at the rear. The sudden tilt as she is born aloft to follow sends her against the glass yet again. Revises her preferences once more. Singer, then the other three delighting in casting her about, and then a fish or three to clear their taste from her mouth, then Sleeping Thunder, once she makes note of him this night, and then ...
They have lost a pirate. A Captain was he, by his manner and friction with Blackbeard's every act. Daughter had seemed interested in his company, drawn to his side like a young one to bright coral, fearful of the sting yet without the sharp edge to match and break the delicacy open clean. It had been an odd thing to have about a ship.
The leaves of the trees above her are turning golden - such a clear, vibrant colour, nothing of a likeness to the chests of gold that she and her sisters keep as a curiosity in their deep grottos - when a jolt, curse and cries of shock, and even as she draws her attention back the rock studded ground rises towards her like the crest of a wave.