Chapter 35: Playing with Sharks
Shockingly, praying did a miraculous job for my comrades; or rather, it did them tremendously well, but not at any of my doing. Oh, no. For me, praying did not a damn thing, but for my shipmates, it created wonders.
Hernán kept up with the entire praying suggestion I had established while I grew lazy with my own proposition. As he lay in his hammock, moving those tiny, rosary spheres between his fingers, I sat idle in a chair, moving my lips to what he was saying but not really saying anything. I hadn't assumed prayer to result in an action monotonous and void of feeling. The consistent recitation of a couple of prayers over and over again did not exactly portray itself to me as an act of pure devotion to a particular and almighty deity. Even if Hernán repeated each prayer with the same dull tone, I never memorized any of them. I had not the patience or attitude to form the incentive required to be a dedicated monastic such as he, and I voted against emulating his Catholic traditions. Of course, perhaps my lack of involvement was what destroyed any further blessings from God. Hernán prayed just once and oh the wonderful things that happened afterwards! (for him, at least). I didn't know what Hernán was doing in that head of his whenever he sat down to pray, but whatever it was, it didn't work for me.
He himself was well again before the end of the week, and he was rapidly joined by numerous other folk, including my brother and sister. I was happy to see more people getting well (though through suspicious methods), and I wasn't hesitant to get them back to work, although Jack overruled any order of labor I issued. When I asked him why he didn't want any of them to do work, he simply told me that there was nothing todo.
Why, one may ask?
There was no more wind.
And as if the puzzle over why the crew got ill and over how they recovered so suddenly was not vexing me, my father had the nerve to cheerily add that we had no more wind and were doomed in the dreaded, damned Doldrums!
"Well," I growled after Jack had told me such news. "Maybe Hernán can fix that problem since he's so damned lucky when it comes to curing damned bad luck!"
"You might want to ask him for assistance then," he said, fully aware that I was angry and making it seem as if it was not so.
I shrilled and marched away, absolutely frustrated with how the twisted world worked. It was my idea to start praying. Of course, I didn't think it would bloody work, but it was still my idea and what happens? Some damned Don gets the credit!
"Maybe he's like that because he uses black magic," proposed Roland, adding a mysterious "Ooh!" noise afterwards with unnecessary hand motions. "You know, voodoo and all that pagan philosophy."
I only glared at him, but he ignored the message and continued to elaborate.
"A devil worshipper even. That's some evil work right there, sister. Evil—"
"He's bloody Catholic, you twit!" I burst, amazed at his stupidity. Roland shoved it off.
"God, Astrid. I bloody knew that," he answered tersely. "I'm not a damn simpleton. I just did it to peeve you." He turned around and leaned his back on the railing of the ship as he looked up the mainmast and at a little group of Spaniards up in the rigging. "The only way I see it, plainly, is that you have pitifully rotten luck and he's just a blessed bastard."
"Sure. Go and support the Spaniard instead of your own sister," I griped.
"He did save your life three times already," he countered. I shrank. "But then again, that could also add to the fact that he's just so damn lucky!"
I could have bitten his fingers for bringing it back to the luck subject.
"Oh, shut up! God, I hate having to compete with that." I grimaced and frowned until my face was scrunched and red in color. Why? Why was it always like that?
Roland laughed.
"You're jealous, sister!" he cried, sending his arms into the air as if signaling to the entire crew that I was, indeed, jealous. Yet, stupid as I was, I denied it, and it only convinced him all the more.
I made a sorry attempt to defend myself, saying that anyone in my position would feel the same way.
"No," Roland scoffed. "Only you, sister. Only you."
I cast the idea away. I was not jealous. Hernán was just lucky. Perhaps too bloody damn lucky for my own comfort, but it was just luck. But, dammit! Why the hell did he get all the luck and I received none?
Damn, unfair world. Damn.
The Doldrums were not a happy place to be when one was already quite angry with every surrounding person. To make matters worse, the Pearl had sprung a small leak conveniently in the cargo hold and half of our food supply was rotting, and therefore, inedible. So it was no surprise that by the end of the next week, the crew members (all of whom had healed from the odd ailment that struck them but two weeks ago), were tired, sunburned, and starving.
I didn't even bother to complain to Jack at that point. I had given up. With no wind, we couldn't get to port, and if we couldn't get to a port, we could never replenish our nonexistent food supply.
"Your face."
I twitched at the sound.
I was sitting on the floor of the quarterdeck, my back leaning against the rail and my legs spread out in front of me. My eyes strained to keep open in the blazing light of the relentless sun.
"It's red."
I frowned all the more.
"Jack, I swear if you weren't my father, I'd have threatened to kill you already," I answered bitterly, pushing the words out through bared teeth.
He sat down beside me and dropped something onto my lap. I looked at it and my eyes began to water as the sun continued to blind me.
It was a bottle of rum.
"You seem to need it more than I do," he said, grinning his happy grin.
I popped the cork out immediately and brought the spout to my lips, elated that the rum inside the murky glass bottle was actually cool on my tongue. I glanced at him after I had blinked the water out of my eyes and tried to smile. But my face hurt from the sunburn.
"You seem to be taking our bad luck rather well," I mumbled, taking another gulp of rum but choking when I swallowed too much to handle. The rum spewed out of my mouth and onto the deck, right at Tom's passing feet.
He cursed and shook his foot at me. "Christ, Astrid," he moaned. "Now I have drunken shoes." I was too tired to return a retort, but it didn't matter. He had already walked off, going over to the waist to shout orders to his crew on his own ship, which was anchored right beside the Pearl.
"Bad luck, eh?" Jack echoed, looking up and squinting at the sun. "What do you suppose we do about it then?"
I shrugged my shoulders and drank some more. "We can't do nothing," I slurred, already feeling the alcohol's effects on me. "Too damn hot, too damn hungry, too damn everything."
He nodded his head as he grimaced, though, he certainly wasn't grimacing for the same reason I was.
"Aye. We haven't found that bloody treasure either."
The realization hit me like a rock on the side of my head and I spit out more rum in my mouth.
"You're bloody right!" I screamed, gasping afterwards. How could I have missed it? The treasure was the reason why we were suffering in the first place! And it had troubled me so much that I couldn't even complete my thoughts. "But it said—the coordinates—where is it? Are we lost?"
"Aye," Jack said calmly, nodding at me as I made the discoveries he had already found in that head of his. His thoughts, I wagered, must have been impossible to navigate. "We've been lost. Ever since that storm. But I'd say being lost is a stroke of good luck."
I gaped at him, my eyebrow raised and a shriek ready to burst out my throat.
"We're lost!"
His face, in reply to my cry of pure terror, contorted into an expression that would befit a man meeting the eyes of his reaper, and although awkward he looked, I could tell he would get over the fact that I was, in fact, mad as hell.
"Well, that wasn't so bad," he murmured to himself while I collected my breath and my bearings after such dreadful news.
The sun had become an even greater nuisance and my blood felt even hotter than before, pulsing through my body with rage in tow and making my temples beat angrily. Blinded by my fury, I had grabbed Jack by the shoulders and shook him.
"Why didn't you tell us we were lost!" I screamed. Again, he appeared unnerved, and he gently pried my fingers off him in a very delicate manner, almost as if he was afraid to touch me lest I lash out at his face.
"Well, it makes perfect sense if we're lost." His attempt to reason with me failed.
"What!"
He winced as the word was roared onto his visage, and he grimaced and rubbed the side of his face with his hand. I must have spit on him by accident. He wiped said spit on my trousers' leg, but I was too angry to care.
"Tell me, love," he began, seemingly bearing that same wise disposition that came out at random moments, "How do you find a lost treasure?"
My fingers curled, turning my hands into claws, but I retracted my arms and instead waved my fists at the sky. "Ooh, don't make me think, Jack!" I groused, my voice raised another octave. "You know I can't solve your riddles. I never have. I never will, I…"
I continued to rant about the difficulties I encountered whenever I was asked to put my nonexistent wit into use and I wasn't sure what Jack was doing during the entire verbal assault, but I had a feeling that he was sitting there, tired and bored with my whining, rolling his eyes and threading his braided, beaded beard with his tanned fingers. My temper, evidently goaded by my consumption of rum, fueled my flamboyantly violent hand gestures and slurred, sour words as I flung my tantrum with as much self-restraint as a toddler. Meaning, in other words, I was acting no better than a child, and my conclusion flared out in such a manner:
"So, tell me, Jack, how the bloody hell do you find a bloody, damned lost treasure, eh?" I heaved a sigh afterwards and chugged the rest of the rum down, setting the empty bottle down with exaggerated force as I waited for his answer.
"I'm glad you asked, love," he rejoiced mildly. I sank and buried my face in my hands. I could not understand how he could remain in such a cheery mood after such disasters. "It makes perfect sense for one to be lost while one is looking for a lost treasure, aye?"
I groaned and lifted my disgruntled face to him.
"I feel sick," I murmured. He inched away, but not after sticking the tip of his forefinger on my forehead and pushing me back a little as he looked at me.
"I'm sorry, darling, but if it wasn't for all the red on your face, I'd be able to tell you if you were green."
I moaned all the more.
"I know!" he cried, somewhat with mock enthusiasm. "What you need is to be in the water," he suggested, not a hint of mischief in the proposal.
"What were you saying about the treasure?" I asked, averting the conversation back to a matter of importance.
"We're lost, and the treasure is also lost, which means, it should be here," replied Jack, a bit too hurriedly for my slow brain.
"But we're not even on land. How can we dig up the treasure if we're at sea?" I wondered, and he smiled at that. And then I knew why he had suggested I go in the water. The treasure we were seeking wasn't buriedtreasure. It was sunken treasure.
Ohhhh…
Immediately afterwards, Jack let the rest of the crew know the true nature of the treasure that had lured them in the first place and they scurried about like rats as they prepared boating parties. Of course, a good deal of them had to stay on board the ship to help unload whatever treasure was gathered, and I had every intention of staying on the Pearl with Tom (and Jack, and Gibbs, and Cord, of course…) but Roland knew me too well and hauled me into a boat with him and some other crewmates.
The first thing I noticed when I was lugged into the boat was that there were rifles at the bottom. So, ignorant as I was, I asked why they were in the boat if we were just looking for gold. And as it was among males, they all exchanged a certain, unnerving glance and I grew cross at them. Roland even turned his head and coughed out a laugh before turning back to me.
"Well, sister," he said, "you can't always trust pirates."
And then they all broke out into raucous laughter and I didn't understand the supposed hilarity until the boat bumped against something. We were only some fifty feet away from the Pearl and we weren't near any land. Nor were there any rocks jutting from the sea. It was almost as if something had hit us from below.
We all peered over the rim of the boat in hope of catching a glimpse of what hit us, but no one saw anything. We let the matter go, for a while, and had even settled on a spot to go swimming for treasure. Of course, Iwas told to stay in the boat and mind things while the men went out to fish for treasure, and I consented only because my skills as a waterman were clearly outmatched by theirs.
Only, before anyone took a dive into the clear water, the boat was hit again, and then again, and then again. The nudges were not of any great degree of strength, but they seemed to be increasing in force and number. Hernán, the oh-so-lucky one was the first to scan the water for whatever was causing us these disturbances and he turned back to us, his face expressionless.
"We have company," he said. "There's a shark nearby."
"No," added Sefu dourly, a warning in his voice. "There are many." Again, as a group, we all looked over the edge of the boat and sure enough, a couple of fins popped up from the water. I gulped and gently pulled on Roland's arm.
"We should go back and tell Jack," I proposed, but my brother and, not surprisingly, the rest of the boat crew, turned to me and frowned.
"What's a bunch of sharks compared to treasure?" Roland scoffed, getting up on his feet as he doffed his shirt. The other crewmates followed his example. "If you see a shark, sister, just shoot it. All of those rifles are loaded. Just prime it and pull the trigger. Oh, and of course, aim, but these—" He pointed at an emerging fin. "—buggers are huge! You're not likely to miss."
He got into a diving position, but I pulled him back.
"The fact that they are very, very large is what worries me, dear brother," I scowled. "Playing with sharks isn't exactly something that I'd deem safe."
"This coming from the girl who put herself in definite peril by enlisting in the navy disguised as a boy," snorted Roland. The others looked at me a bit befuddled, as if they thought my crime was as bad as jumping into a sea swarming with man-eating sharks.
"That's not the same," I countered hopelessly. "Men aren't maneaters."
"Right," mocked Roland. "I forgot. Women are." He laughed and jumped into the water, and I shielded myself from the splash that followed. As his head surfaced, he grinned at everybody else. "Besides, I'm starving, and we're not bloody likely to get anywhere without finding some damn treasure. And I'm about through with staying on that godforsaken ship. Therefore, I'm willing to take my chances now, sister. I'm tired of being idle."
And with his little speech finished, he took a dip. For his sake, I grabbed a rifle and held it, looking at the water for any sign of a ravenous shark, but no fins came up. Roland surfaced some fifteen feet away from the boat and waved, and soon everyone else was off into the water, laughing, splashing, and treasure-hunting. I merely sat in the swaying boat, my hands still holding the gun, and I watched them all swim away. Most of them swam a great distance, at least forty or fifty feet, and I waited, and waited for any sign of their forthcoming return, but most of them just swam even farther out. There was the occasional bump against the boat, but I didn't bother to lean over and shoot the bugger what rocked the vesse;. The shark hadn't done anything to hurt me, so I found it fair if I not shoot him for not minding his surroundings better.
My face began to hurt again as the sun glared down on me, and my eyes began to water as they strained to maintain their focus in the hellish heat. The heat became so insufferable that my nose began to bleed, and I had no option but to dunk my burning head into the water for just a few moments while I tried to recollect my bearings and cool off.
As I leaned over the boat edge, my face submerged, and my tense body finally finding some easy, I began to notice that the waves were getting considerably bigger because I started to feel water flowing over and lapping against my head. I dared to open my eyes in the brackish sea and saw little red ribbons of flood flow out of my nose, but then I noticed something white and frothy in the distance. As I continued to stare, I noticed that there were hands and feet paddling through the water, and then I saw it.
There was a shark, striped and absolutely gigantic thrashing closely behind a panicky swimmer, its jaws opened wide.
I pulled my head out of the water, gasping for breath and reaching for a rifle before I stood and prepared to aim. Only, as soon as I got on my feet, I noticed that the man frantically swimming towards the boat for safety was none other than Señor Luck himself. A wicked bitterness overcame me and I huffed and lowered the rifle in my hands, removing my finger from the trigger. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Roland and some of the other crewmates realize what was happening and they started swimming towards Hernán for aid, but I knew they wouldn't catch him in time. They were all too far away.
"Dammit, Astrid!" Roland shouted as he punched through the water. "Shoot it!"
I didn't know what to do. My limbs had frozen and the rifle was useless in my hands. I would not aim, I would not fire, I could not aim, and I could not fire. I couldn't. How could I when this foreign youth, who had all the luck in the world, was finally the unfortunate one, and more so, unfortunate enough to be at my mercy?
"Help me!" he cried. His strokes through the water were weakening and the shark's massive head loomed out of the water.
"Shoot it!" Roland's order pounded against my ears. "For God's sake! Dammit, Astrid! Shoot the damn shark!"
By that time, Hernán was exhausted and his motions slowed and stumbled.
"Help me," he pleaded wearily. "Please…" And then his head sank beneath the waves.
I swallowed hard and lifted the gun, but I started to shake. Tremors racked my body and the rifle dropped from my hands. Roland was swimming all the more aggressively now as was everyone else, and I knew he would unleash hell upon reaching me. I was only separated from my fears when Hernán resurfaced, this time screaming as the shark took large, deep gulps of water as it tried to wedge his foot in its mouth, which it eventually managed to do.
The shout that followed made my blood ice over and I shrank in the boat, crouching down as I covered my ears.
Just get up and shoot it, Astrid. God dammit. Shoot the bloody thing!
But I couldn't muster my mettle. Not after all the hate I had for the young man. Not after secretly wanting him to get hurt for some time now. No. I couldn't.
The boat tipped a bit as someone got in. It was Sefu, and without even looking at me, he grabbed a rifle, primed it, aimed, fired, and then seized another rifle as he made another shot, and then another; and he kept shooting until the shark was floating on the dark, bloody water, its jaw lying open limply and Hernán's mangled leg finally free.
And after the deed was done, Sefu looked at me and said, tonelessly, "Go and bring Hernán to the boat."
I hesitated to comply, but his glare on me made me aware of my shame, and I, duly chastened, obeyed the order. When I approached Hernán, who was barely even conscious, he clearly refused my help.
"I'll swim there myself," he told me, his voice more of a dry rasp, and I had nothing to say to him in return. I wasn't quite in the Samaritan mood anyway, so I let him be and simply followed him back into the boat; and by the time we got back there, everyone had returned and Roland's fury was adequately represented in his eyes. I wouldn't have been alarmed if he had lunged forward and snapped my neck.
"Don't say it, Astrid," he fumed, his teeth clenched. "Don't you dare say you're sorry because you evidently are not." He pushed my head with just enough force to make my brain hit the walls of my skull before commanding me to sit and stay put until we rowed back to the Pearl.
They took hooks stored at the bottom of the boat and hauled the dead shark alongside. Why they decided to keep the shark, I did not know, but I did not ask for my own sake. I could still feel their anger brewing, and their resentment was boiling up rather swiftly. Hernán was still awake, but he already looked half dead. His left leg was in horrible condition. I could see the puncture wounds with frightening clarity, and the edges of every wound were jagged, shredded, and blood spouted from them as if they were fountains.
Roland didn't speak to me. All he did was breathe his annoyed breaths out through his nose in vicious snorts. His hands were still balled into hard fists, and I was just waiting for a beating, my shoulders already hunched and my knees already brought in close to myself as I bent my body into a ball of breakable security.
When we came along the Pearl, the shark was heaved onto the deck, with its pungent blood still trickling out of its large bullet holes. Jack came sauntering from the quarterdeck and down to the waist, particularly amused with the dead, giant fish thrown onto his swabbed floors. While Roland and the others helped Hernán onto the ship, I stood beside the shark and watched Jack poke the corpse, not only with his fingers but also with the tip of his boot. And then after he made his examinations, he stood upright, took a step back, threw his hands into the air and said:
"All right. Cut 'im open!"
The pirates lifted the beast up by its back fin and tied it up, upside down so that its broad mouth hung but inches from the wet deck. Tom took hold of a cutlass and after deciding on a spot to slice, swung the blade down on the creature and ripped its skin open, allowing for its innards and remaining blood to spill onto the floor. Only, as he made the slit against the shark's belly, blood and guts weren't the only things that plopped out. To our amazement, a metal clanging pounded on the wooden deck, and hundreds of little gold coins clattered onto the ground. There were so many that the shark's belly was probably stretched to its limits in gold doubloons, and a wave of gold surged over my shoes.
"Well I'll be damned," gawped Tom as he bent down and scooped up a handful of gold. "We found ourselves a treasure shark, lads."
A look of wonder was on every man's face, and they all gradually made their way towards the "treasure" shark. I turned to Jack, who stood looking remarkably unfazed by the discovery. He didn't even look surprised. If he looked anything, he looked miffed. "Aren't you glad we found the gold?" I asked him.
"You didn't find any gold," he returned, narrowing his dark eyes at me. "Neither did Tom. None of these scallywags found gold, love."
"Wot?" Tom squawked, dropping the loot from his hands and marching over to Jack. "How can you not say we didn't find your bloody gold?"
With natural complacence, Jack looked Tom in the eye and smiled. "Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but that shark didn't pursue you, O'Brian, did it?"
"It chased the Spaniard. So what?" grumped Tom. My vision was instantly averted towards the wounded Don and I said and did nothing because I knew that if I did, I'd only get angry, and I was already in enough trouble as it were. However, Jack's words weren't said at a whisper. Everyone had heard them and so attention was now set on the man who only desired the specific attention of a doctor to treat his injury. Instead, he received a mix of glowers and compliments, not medical treatment.
"What are you suggesting then, Capitán?" Guerra pondered, always seeking the best for his comrades.
"Aye. What are ye suggestin', Jack?" questioned Tom, though with more cynicism than Guerra.
"I'm simply informing everyone of who deserves credit for this stroke of luck." His eyes moved to me at the mentioning of luck and I looked away.
"Perdon, Capitán," Hernán interrupted, raising his hand as he summoned Jack. "But I found this in the shark's mouth." He pulled something from his vest—it was a small golden box—and dropped it into Jack's extended hand.
Guerra, greatly puzzled with his fellow Don's find, turned to him and said, "You put your hand in that thing's mouth while it was trying to eat you?"
The young Spaniard only smiled and shrugged.
"It was wedged in between its teeth," Hernán answered sheepishly. Guerra drew in an exasperated breath before crossing his arms and turning away, much like a father disappointed with his child would do. Meanwhile, Jack eagerly opened the box which couldn't have been much larger than my fist, and in it was a piece of cloth.
Aggravated grunts resounded from the entire crew.
"Ye know, Jack," started Tom, clearly irritated with how things were going. Though, I couldn't blame him. I would be awfully mad too if my crew was starving, lost, and dirt poor. "When you opened that bloody little thing, I was expecting something more… oh, I don't know… shiny, maybe? For God's sake, Jack! Diamonds! Silver! Jewels! But we get nothing but a damned piece of cloth!"
Having gotten rather reckless with his malcontent, Tom yanked the cloth out of the box and spread it out on the floor for everyone to see. All we saw were blurred lines of ink on a withering, rotting strip of canvas. More grunts ensued.
"Well, that's not what I was expecting," voiced Jack, signs of concern starting to shadow his face. Tom picked the cloth up and held it up towards Jack.
"Aye, I'd say a mess of—" He cut himself off, his upper teeth biting into his nether lip as his green eyes suddenly took a great interest in the back of the sheet. Going cross-eyed from his own astonishment, Tom began to stutter, and I had always found him to be a rather articulate fellow. "Bloody hell," he murmured.
"What? What is it?" I asked him, coming forward and standing on my tip toes behind him as I tried to see for myself what was making his limbs shake.
And then I saw it.
It was a map. A bit faded in some areas but it was nonetheless undoubtedly a map. Dotted lines were strewn all over the surface, leading from sea to sea, over mountains, across hemispheres, spanning the entire globe. As Tom was a rather tall fellow, I had to grip his shoulders and push him down in order to read the rest of the map, and even after doing so, I was unable to put a name to what the map was leading to.
"Obviously a treasure map, Astrid," said Tom all-knowingly.
"I bloody knew that, but what type of treasure does it lead to?"
We never got to see for ourselves. Jack snatched the cloth out of Tom's hands and said, "Mine. You—" He pointed at me. "Stop flirting and help yer dying mate." He jerked his thumb over at Hernán. And then to Tom he said: "You, stop being an arse and get to hauling in more sharks."
"I wasn't flirting," I protested, going over to help Hernán anyway.
"Keep telling yourself that, darling," smirked Captain Sparrow. "And Astrid, love," he began, beckoning me. "We need to have a little chat later on."
"About what?" I asked stupidly.
"Luck and sharks."
Dread washed over me. I was now certain that he had seen me refuse to shoot the shark when Hernán was in danger, and I knew that he knew why I didn't fire. Even after just having him enter my life, he seemed to understand how my mind worked, and I realized that I could not afford to be so transparent. Otherwise, he would be able to anticipate my actions, and if he could do that, he would never be surprised or pleased with what I could do.
I nodded at him and knelt down next to the Spaniard in need of my help, and behind me I could hear Cord giggling to herself and singing:
"Astrid's in big trouble!"
Roland agreed with a growl. "Indeed. Astrid is in very big trouble. And trust me, sister, if Jack doesn't chastise you properly, well, you can be sure as hell that I will." His glare hadn't softened and I was afraid to look him in the eye. I could always count on Roland to punish me for my wrongdoing. I did not know why he thought that my offense was of one of definite vice, but it did not matter. He was fuming mad and I had already learned long ago never to get in the way of his fury. Though brother he might have been, he was not afraid to hit me. It appeared as though familiarity, in my case, was more of a curse rather than a comfort. I only hunched my shoulders and crouched low as I inspected Hernán's wounds with carelessness. My mind was too occupied roving over the matters of my future talk with Jack and the possible lecture and beating awaiting me should I have to confront Roland. Perhaps my apprehension had become overwhelming, and as thus, it began to express itself on my face. How I was aware of that fact was when Hernán cleared his throat abruptly, catching me off guard.
I faced him, waiting for him to speak, and after wiping the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, he took something out of his pocket and brought it towards me.
"Seeing as your father and brother are not too pleased with you, I think you need this more than I do."
And he placed my rosary into the palm of my hand as I winced at the remark.
"Thank you," I managed to say. His words hadn't comforted me at all. "Though, I don't think even God can save me now from Roland's wrath. I did an awful thing."
"At least you didn't let me die," he said, ever the optimist. I was ashamed to look at him then and turned around, sighing as I fiddled with the beaded relic.
You don't know how much I wanted you to…