Viola

She-Spider

I found myself confessing this to Henri in the kitchens. He was my ally on the ship. We were natively French people and thus shared an unbreakable bond.

"Do you want to survive or do you want to live?" He asked me.

I asked him if he needed any help chopping onions.

He laughed and handed me a banana.

"A snack," he pronounced it. "For the intellectual among us,"

I found myself confessing all sorts of things to Henri over the few hours I spent in his kitchen that day, perched on a countertop.

I even told him about himself, much to his amusement.

"You aren't a mercenary at heart. You just want somewhere to call your own and mercenaries don't have that,"

His eyes crinkled and his thick moustache turned up. "I could say the same thing about you, Mademoiselle Madeleine."

The way he said my name didn't jolt my heart like the way the Captain said it. She was reliably jarring, lewd and altogether disconcerting. But I found I looked forward to seeing her next as I found I quite liked waxing poetical to Henri.

"They say we are to sneak in Palamós tonight," he said.

"Indeed?"

"Indeed. Are you to join us?"

Am I to join them? As fond as I had grown of Henri, and as sisterly as I felt toward Ali, this was a gang of pirates. They may have been interesting people, but they certainly were not good. Each of them had killed before, killed humans with families and lives and jobs. Sure, maybe those humans had wanted the pirates dead but that did not excuse any violent acts. Some things were capital sins, and capital sins were capital for a reason.

"I don't believe I will," I found myself replying.

"No one will let anyone get you. Typically, we only meet one or two people on our little expeditions and they are usually drunks. A good knock on the head and they will not tell anyone,"

I sent him a smile. "Thank you for your reassurance, but it's not other people I worry about,"

"Then us? I do not think you have made many friends onboard, but you certainly have not made any enemies. And the Captain..." He trailed off.

"The Captain?"

"The Captain does not like us to betray our own," He finished too quickly, not meeting my eyes.

I took a bite of banana. "I think I am going to wait onboard. Maybe I can keep lookout or something. The other members of the crew may not wish me harm, but they certainly do not trust me,"

Calling the band of pirates a 'crew' left an awkward feeling in my mouth, but I had no better word to call them to Henri's face. I figured he would not much appreciate being called a filthy piece of merde.

I thanked him for his time and left the kitchen, deciding to survive. Heading for nowhere in particular, I plodded along the boards smoothed from countless others determined to speak their problems to an unbiased source. Annoyed, I noticed I was still wearing my nightgown. With any luck the pirates would pick up some modest woman's garment. Despite only having lived on this ship for a few weeks now, I had noticed Henri was privy to the problems, complaints, and tall tales of most of the other members of the crew.

A skinny boy collided with my chest area.

"Ali!"

As always, he was oblivious to any kind of social faux pas.