The Stowaway

XVII

"Let those who wish have their respectability- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous, and the romantic." Richard Halliburton

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XVII.

Tom would never admit it, or show it, but the last punch that Eliza had thrown into his hand had bloody hurt. She had the hang of it, alright, and God help any man who would ever be on the other end of her fist.

Eliza was smiling gleefully, her eyes bright, made only brighter by the warm afternoon sun, and her loose, chaotic curls were blowing across her face in the sea breeze, with still that little bit of ink on the end of one.

"Ha!" she cried in victory. "That one was good, was it not?" she challenged.

"Adequate," was all Tom would say in reply, meanwhile his palm was throbbing. He quickly turned away from her so that he could flex his hand and try to stop the pain. This action only made Eliza laugh.

He could manage a little wounded pride if she could shatter the nose of any grub who ever laid hands on her.

He supposed the good thing about his hand hurting him was that he was distracted from the pain in his forehead. The sensation of having his skin pulled back together by a sewing needle was only intensified by Eliza standing so closely to him, breathing on him. He had done his best to concentrate, but she was beginning to have a talent for distracting him.

Tom turned back around to see Eliza punch an imaginary foe, before spinning around as though she was dancing. Her blonde hair twirled around as well, and she laughed at herself.

"You are peculiar," he remarked.

Eliza pressed her lips together smugly before curtseying. "Thank you," she replied.

Tom wanted to laugh, at her or with her, he was unsure, but all he managed was a small, fleeting smile. That was the second time today he had laughed or wanted to.

It was as though for a second, he had forgotten it all. He had turned around and seen a pretty girl dancing amidst punching and she was the only thing on his mind. He could be happy, and feel happiness in that moment, and all that had happened was inconsequential.

Except it wasn't, and it had happened, and those realisations forcibly made all remnants of happiness disappear. He could not escape it, as though he were swimming in mud.

Eliza had described her situation as suffocating without anyone noticing. He had not realised how perfectly fitting a description that was for his own situation, his own misery. He could not escape from it. He was drowning, and had been for two decades, and nobody knew. He had never let anyone know.

"Was that I smile I saw, Captain?" Eliza gasped, her eyes widening.

Eliza looked so happy, and yet Tom knew that in her pocket was a letter to her sister, her favourite person in the world, as she had stated. But she was a sister that Eliza had abandoned, no matter how she put it. How could it be that she was so happy after hurting someone who loved her?

Tom cursed himself, cursed his demons, for putting Eliza anywhere near the level of sin that his own mother had committed. He knew it was wrong, and yet those demons continued to haunt him, continued to pull him back down under the water whenever he tried to come up for air.

Tom did not answer her question. Instead, he asked one of his own. "You told me that you felt as though you were suffocating without anyone noticing," he countered. "Can you breathe here?"