Imaginos knocked on Desdinova's cabin door an hour after the rescue. He had wanted to give her time to adjust to being back aboard her ship, but he also didn't want her to feel ostracised.
Eventually, Desdinova opened the door.
"I just managed to get the baby to sleep," she told him.
"I can come back if you wish," Imaginos apologised.
Desdinova stepped into the corridor and closed the door. "No, it's okay. I need you right now." she gazed at the floor, seeming troubled. "I don't want this baby, Imaginos. I know that's a terrible thing for a new mother to say, but…"
"It's not terrible considering how it came to be," Imaginos said. "It's honest. And you have the right to feel that way. We can find an orphanage at our next port if you wish. Or if you have family in some nearby port…"
"Think, Imaginos," Desdinova reminded him, "we have parallel families. How do you think they would react if we went to New Hampshire when we're supposed to be in our nineties looking like we're twenty-three at the most? No, we cannot go to my family. It'll have to be an orphanage or adoption. Though I don't relish either choice. Given the reputations of both. I'd almost rather leave the baby on a random doorstep."
"That would be just as bad," Imaginos looked at her with concern in his eyes. "Are you sure you want to give him up? I only ask because you seem very concerned about the well-being of a child you claim to not care for."
"How can I not care?" Desdinova asked. "I carried him for almost nine months. I spoke to him in my belly when I was alone in my cell and there was no one else to talk to. I tried to ignore him at first, but it was either him or go mad with loneliness. I grew attached to him, but I tried to keep it like a professional connection. I guess he became a friend, if that makes any sense."
"It does in a way," Imaginos assured her. "You've had a terrible time. You're bound to have mixed feelings about the baby. And I'm not helping much. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," Desdinova said. "I just…"
A loud wailing could be heard through the door and Desdinova automatically disappeared through it.
"Yes, yes," she said, her tone listless as she bared her breast for the child. "I'll feed you. I don't blame you for any of this. I just wish I could trust this world to raise you right and find you a home that would do right by you. I don't want you to turn out like your damned father. I hate that man so much. Thank the stars you'll never meet him."
The baby simply cooed as it latched onto her breast and happily suckled with not a care in the world.
"None of that means anything to you, does it," Desdinova said as she supported the infant's head. "All you care about is getting fed and changed and held. I wish I could love you, little one. But after all that I've been through, I don't know if I can."
CHAPTER SEVEN:Over the next several days, Imaginos noticed how unhappy Desdinova continued to be. He and the rest of the crew did their best to join in the responsibilities involved in taking care of the baby to give her as much time to herself as they could. But the chore of feeding the baby always fell to her. And in the long run, her mask of indifference broke and Imaginos found Desdinova sobbing in her hammock as the baby cried in its crib a few feet away.
"I can't do it anymore," she wailed. "It hurts more and more every day. Physically it hurts. Emotionally it hurts. I want you to do something for me, Imaginos."
"What do you want?" he asked.
"At the next port, I want you to leave the Plutonia and take the baby with you. I don't trust anyone else with him. Can you do that for me?"
"I.." Imaginos began.
"I'm sorry," Desdinova cut him off. "I know I'm being selfish. I know the Sea is in your heart, just as it's in my own. But I can't bring myself to love this baby because of the pain I went through on that dreadful ship. You didn't go through it, Imaginos. So you won't associate the baby with those feelings. Please?"
"I'll do it for you, my beloved Captain," Imaginos promised. "If you're truly certain this is what you want."
"It is," Desdinova said, wiping away her tears.
With the impending departure of the baby, Desdinova's mood changed at least four times a day. Her crew would sometimes find her snapping at them over the smallest infraction where she would normally laugh it off. At other times, she would burst into tears in front of them, then scold them for noticing or not noticing.
The crew didn't know what to do. They didn't want to influence her to keep a baby she didn't love. But they weren't sure if she truly didn't love it.
"Imaginos," one of them asked on the day before he was scheduled to depart. "She won't be the same without you. You were the light in her life. Are we really sure this is the right thing to do?"
"I don't know, honestly," Imaginos replied. "But it's what Desdinova wants. And a ship is no place for a baby at any rate."
"Why would a pirate crew want a baby on their ship?" another crewman asked.
"No doubt to ogle at our captain while she fed the infant," Imaginos replied, angrily. "Twisted sons of bastards. The important thing now is to find a home at the next port where I can raise the baby."
Soon the cry of "Land ho!" could be heard and the crew of the Plutonia began making preparations for disembarking.
Desdinova had given them a one-week shoreleave, mostly so that she could have some time to herself after Imaginos had left with the baby. She wanted time to get her head back together after the emotional departure of the man she loved and the baby she tried so hard to love at some times, and hate at others.
She wrapped the baby in a patch of her bed cover that she had cut away for it and handed him to Imaginos.
"Be good for your daddy," she said to the infant. "Thank you, Imaginos," she added, giving Imaginos what she feared would be their final kiss before he departed.
CHAPTER EIGHT:Making sure the baby was warm, Imaginos stepped down the gangplank of the Plutonia as soon as the crew had finished extending it. He didn't look back as he made his way onto the pier. This country was going to be his and the baby's new home.
"Come on, Balthazar," he told the infant, looking down into the innocent eyes that were filled with wonder. "Let's find somewhere to stay tonight. Tomorrow we'll find a proper home."
He carried the baby through the streets, earning a fair few odd looks as he went along. In the end, he came to a farmhouse that seemed somehow familiar and yet different. As if he had been there long ago but the structure had been built upon in the meantime.
Knocking on the door with one hand, he waited for an answer.
After several minutes, he was about to knock again when the door was opened by an elderly woman in her seventies.
"Well, what have we here?" she asked, looking at Imaginos and the baby with that mixture of adoration and suspicion that seems the purview of little old ladies who've grown up on the farm. "Are you a widower, young man?"
"I am not," Imaginos admitted. "My name is Imaginos. I am a mariner who has been tasked with the responsibility of raising my captain's son."
"Imaginos!" the old woman gasped. "But you would have to be at least ninety! You can't be my Uncle Imaginos!"
Imaginos laughed, suddenly. "Stacey?" he asked her.
"I haven't been called that for years," Anastasia told him. "Well, come in, then. I suspect you've got quite a few tales to tell. I've got a few bottles I use for when my grandchildren come over. I'll make one for the baby. Boy or girl?"
"A boy. His name is Balthazar."
"A good name," Anastasia smiled. "What happened to his father?
"His father attacked our captain," Imaginos explained, launching into the tragic tale of how Desdinova had been kidnapped, abused by the pirate captain, and then forced to almost give birth into the Sea.
"I can understand why she wants no part of raising the child," Anastasia told him in the end. "And if she were locked away during her pregnancy, she must have had no one but the unborn child to talk to."
Imaginos nodded as Anastasia reached out for the baby. Handing Balthazar to her with some reluctance, he followed her to a room where a pair of bassinets sat in the corner.
"My son's wife had twins a few years ago," she explained as she laid Balthazar in one of the bassinets, "They've since outgrown them, but I keep them for future generations. I planned to give them to my granddaughters for their babies when they come. But they've got a few years to wait. You can use this one for little Balthazar for now."
Imaginos looked down at the sleeping baby for a moment, then followed his niece out to the family room.
"What happened to your mother?" he asked.
"She died twenty years ago," Anastasia explained. "Consumption. She used to talk about you. Said you always looked so young, like time couldn't touch you. Said she saw you several times in her travels. We never believed her. Just figured she was mistaking similar faces for yours. I can't believe it's really you."
"Time and fate have been kind to me," Imaginos admitted.