His fiancé, Catalina, doesn’t usually join us for our reading lesson since she’s busy cleaning up after our evening meal in the galley. She sails with our sorry lot for Chub, but as soon as we dock in Mexico, they will leave the sweet trade for their next adventure. I’ll miss them terribly, but I couldn’t be happier for me best matey.
From a street rat in Ireland to quartermaster under Blackbeard, he worked his way into a fortune before boardingPatricia’s Wish.Together, the couple has more money than sense. Blimey, why the richest lady in the Caribbean stays on as a ship’s cook and not a guest is beyond me.
“Over his lady’s heart, buss my cheeks! You mean resting your head on your lady’s dairy,” she says with a cheeky smile.
“Easy for you to say. You have each other,” I grouse. I face the ocean to miss the kissing and groping as the couple greets one another. A flat, calm sea with a pink sky overhead is exactly what a sailor wants to see. We will have nice weather.
“The last brothel we visited—the one in St.Kitts—was it me, or were the wenches younger than ever? Half of them I was too scared to touch. What if their fathers came after me? The other half, I wanted to feed them and read a bedtime story to tuck them into bed. Not a one could raise my mizzenmast—” This was the first time I’ve had a problem bedding wenches. After I returned to the captain’s quarters, I tested my plumbing. Thank goodness it was shipshape.
“—And that’s saying something,” Chub interrupts as the happy couple laughs at my expense. Catalina’s herbal potions have cured more than a couple of ailments within me britches, so there’s no hiding my love of brothels and their employees.
“Maybe you are done with brothels?” Catalina asks with a shy smile.
“I fear me hearty has caught the ennui,” Chub replies.
“I haven’t itched for weeks!”
“I can attest he hasn’t,” Catalina says. “My oregano plants are thriving. It’s exciting to use them for more than tinctures.”
“Ennui,” Chub explains after he yanks the wheel to the left to correct the rudder. “Ennui is a plague of the spirit. It’s when a pirate tires of the sweet trade andlife in general. It’s a type of loneliness.”
He’s right. Pretending to check the hull over the railing, I flick my tears into the drink. It takes a few sniffs and a pull from my hipflask to bury myennuiwhere my friends can’t see it. I can’t help the pang of jealousy when I turn back to them. Catalina’s arms loop around Chub’s neck as she nestles against his side. His left arm cradles her while his right steers the ship’s wheel. I have no interest in Catalina, but I’d give a few of my infamous teeth to have my lady love cuddled under my arm.
“You’re looking for your lady love in the wrong places, matey.”
“I don’t expect to find her in a brothel,” I shout, throwing my hands in the air. “The wenches are just to scratch the itch until she arrives.”
“Seems to me the brothels give more itches than scratches,” Catalina says with a giggle.
“What I meant was you’ve been looking for a human woman when this boat has a history with women who areother,” Chub says, kissing Catalina’s temple to show me where I’ve gone wrong.
“Why? Because the ship was first captained by Magda the Vampiress?”
“The Vampiress who stole our pal Branko’s heart,” finishes Chub. “Why else would he resign to become a landlubber on a godforsaken island? I’m about to leave the sweet trade for Catty, too.”
“I don’t think our sweet Catalina can be compared to Magda the She-devil.”
“Oh yeah?” Catalina says with a fire igniting in her brown eyes. In the span of a heartbeat, she unfurls the leather cuffs from her spinnerets and sprays ten fibers at me. I don’t dare move a muscle as the nearly translucent threads wrap around my neck. If either of us jumps in alarm, she may strangle me. She makes ropes strong enough to hold the weight of two crewmen. But before she joined us, her spinnerets made all the lace in Europe, but she abandoned the Pintarro Textile Empire for Chub’s embrace.
“You could use Catty’s mortar and pestle to track down your lady love. The thing has magic from the old country,” Chub suggests, rubbing his red beard. When he rubs his beard, it’s usually because he’s devising a cunning plan where I’m the decoy or bait. Such is the life of a Captain—we are nothing more than cannon fodder in floppy hats and brightly colored jackets.
“Oh no,” I say through clenched teeth so I don’t jostle the threads on my jaw. “No more magic. Not after that horrendous card reading in St. Kitts.”
“My bowl isn’t some parlor trick like a crystal ball,” Catalina says, whipping her fibers off me. They coil around the railing of the sterncastle deck before the ends flipinto the open hands of their owner. She uses her fingers to weave them into a complicated lace pattern with lightning speed. Maybe I underestimated herothernature. “That mortar and pestle told me who my soul mate was, told him that I was his—and tells me what to feed you each day. Its magic is real.”
“I don’t doubt magic, the existence ofothers, or that the devil walked on the earth as Blackbeard. You don’t understand my terror when the crone pulled out her cards after her crystal ball showed nothing,” I say, pacing the small platform of our sterncastle deck.
“Nothing? Some fortune teller,” Catalina says with a tsk.
“I asked what nation held my lady love, and the crystal ball glowed with swirling smoke. The fortune teller said I should see the landscape, but all I saw were empty waves,” I say with a hollow chuckle.
“So, she read your cards?”
“Yep, I asked her haunted deck to show me my lady love—” I pause to swallow my terror at the memory “—wanted to see the smile of my firecracker. Somewhere in this world is my match. I know the fire in her heart, but I wanted to know her face. I thought it was too much to ask for the direction I must travel.”
“Aye, I bet she’s as playful as a breeze but strong as a hurricane,” Chub says with a look of pityscrunching his features. If anyone understands my loneliness, it’s him. We inherited the boat from Magda and Branko to find love…not treasure.
He won. So far.
