Standing at the bow, I can pretend I'm not on a ship. I lean out beside the figurehead: Shankar the goddess of snakes, sword raised to strike, sixteen snakes half coiled around her body, poised to deliver their own vile blow. I stick my head out holding onto her elbow twenty feet above the choppy water, moonlight leaving a shimmer on the sea, a divine path. I fly over it. The demon goddess by my side. Who would dare to stand against me now?
"Sir, your soup is getting cold."
I turn, still full of swollen vanity.
Raferty stands hunched over; he is always hunched over— it's kind of his thing. "Sir, I'm sorry to disturb your revelry."
I grunt. The world has called me back to its vulgar, mundane, series of insults against my dignity. My wooden prosthetic leg lashed to my swollen stump with leather, itches, throbs. The scab that covers half my face stings as the salt air settles into the cracks along the edges. The bone in my jaw shoots nerve pain directly into my brain like the cutlass is sinking into the marrow all over again. The six pieces of iron fired into my torso are cold even though my body is on fire.
Raferty turns and limps back to the galley. He didn't always shuffle like a freak. He used to be a tall proud man fit for battle, for work, for any challenge that could be faced. His body betrayed him, didn't get out of the way of the splintered wood that embedded into his spine. The splintered piece of wood was one of a thousand that used to lie together to make the hull of the ship before the cannonball tore through it.
We are a skeleton crew, figuratively, almost literally. I sit at my desk, boards of wood salvaged, found drifting, pieced together to form a place for me to work, to eat. I float my tarnished silver spoon down toward the pewter bowl of thin fishy water. A child's rhyme running through my mind. Something my mother used to sing to me.
This spoon full of rust,
will turn you to dust.
Open your lips little one.
Grow strong my vital son.
Don't die a failure like your good for nothing father who left me to raise his welp all by myself, penniless, friendless, my only solace the hope that one day I will see him dead.
My mother wasn't a very good bard. Her verses lacked a certain subtlety, but they left an impression. I lift the spoon out of the grey water turning it to let the contents slide over the edge and fall back into the bowl. I look up at Raferty stooped by the door. Was the poor soul still trying to stand guard? "What did Mick find to put in the soup?"
Raferty tries to find a part of his sleeve that isn't smeared with filth, finally settling on a suitable piece of cloth near his elbow; he twists the fabric and bends down to dab his leaky eye. "I believe Phineas trapped a couple of rats. Mick boiled them down with some seaweed and the rest of the salt."
I can only taste the faintest hint of salt. The lukewarm water has hints of soap run through dirty socks, a fungal profile without any chunks of meat, just slimy bits of plant matter that won't break down no matter how long they are chewed. I reach up to my bottom lip and pluck a thin piece of fiber, hold it up to the orange squid skin lantern. "Did Mick bother to skin the rats? I believe this is a piece of fur."
"Would you like me to bring out the chef so that you can register your complaint? He can take it back and prepare it to your satisfaction."
I shrug. "He might take offense and put something vile into my soup to assuage his dignity."
Raferty rubs a cramp out of his thigh. "That's right, better to suffer in silence."
I finish my soup, doing anything else would be ungrateful. I know that Phineas and Raferty and probably Mick himself have gone without so the rest of us could have. "Have you gotten any more information from the prisoner?"
Raferty examines his sleeve again almost like he can't believe there are so many different remnants of his body's fluids all concentrated in such a thin fabric. "The island is called 33. No one goes there and comes back again, an unspeakable treasure guarded by a cruel monster, same old cryptic nonsense. I don't think we got the good end of that bargain. He is just telling us what we already know. We have been chasing shipwrecks, lost treasures, all just fantasies. I think we should forget 33, no one will speak of it. I say we set sail for Linton or Vale. We can hide out, hope the Empire forgets us."
I chuckle. "We have something that most men would give anything to have. Why would we want to squander it cowering in some hole slowly flittering away our miserable lives getting picked off by other crews one by one? We can have it all again, our glory, our honor—I run my tongue over my swollen gums—our teeth."
"Island 33 is a myth."
"Island 33 is our only hope."
"Sir, with all due respect what is this great thing that only we have that most men would give anything to get?"
I put my spoon back into the empty bowl. "Raferty, we are dangerous. We are to be feared above all others because we have nothing left to lose."
