14

Captain Teeth

“Lass looks a little green around the gills,” Chub mutters against the lapel of his best jacket. I frown at the groom as he nods to my left.

“Catty hasn’t come out of the kitchen yet,” I snap.

My eyes scan the deck for something amiss. Spider webs hang from the lower booms to create sheer curtains around the ceremony. I’ve half a mind to store them in the captain’s quarters. What if Sabrina wishes our wedding to be as sweet? The uncouth pirates in my crew hang from the ratlines with the lanterns. If not for the captain’s title, I’d be lofted with them. Delicate flowers made of Catty’s lace adorn the barrels and boxes that usually litter the main deck. With Eze at the helm at our backs, the ship’s steady. If it isn’t Catty or the boat that worries Chub…

Sabrina huddles with her sister in the direction Chub nodded. Does her dress or expression cause him concern? If she wants to wear the duster I wore as a ratline climber, she’s allowed. My future wife has access to everything I own…and she looks so stinking adorable in the giant thing. Catty hadn’t minded that she declined another dress, so why should Chub? Or maybe it’s the way Sabrina’s eyes dart around with suspicion. She’s been slow to warm up to the crew, but that’s to be expected after what she endured at the show. If I could gut that landlubber’s corpse, I would. Whatever they did to her, their deeds stole some of the fire from her eyes.

“Give her time,” I say with an exhausted sigh.

“I have time. You have time. The boat has time. But how much time until she sprouts tentacles?”

“A few hours at most,” I whisper. Sabrina catches me staring and gives me a weak smile. Is she shaking all over? Her hands burrow in the draping of her sleeves, so I can’t tell. “I had hoped we’d be dancing and showing Sabs how wonderful the sweet trade can be. I want her to see me hearties as our extended family—people who will protect her at all costs.”

“Is that how you feel? That the sweet trade is ‘wonderful?’ Or is piracy just a better option than life on land?” Chub whispers.

“If she’s happy, I’ll have a reason to be happy as captain. Maybe I’ll step into your position when we reach Mexico, or better yet—rejoin me hearties in the rigging. Perhaps it’s the faking of competence that drowns me in ennui,” I whisper so I don’t accidentally earn myself a black spot…or a walk down the plank.

“Remember what we overheard in your cabin as the ladies readied themselves. Being Sabrina’s mate gives you more choices than captain or crew member.”

“I’ll never apologize for eavesdropping like a henpecked dairy chaser.”

“I never said you should,” Chub replies with that mischievous twinkle that warns me I won’t like his next words. “I’m opening your mind to a new life—”

“I refuse to settle on land—even in Mexico as your neighbor.”

The band’s tune changes from the sound of choking cats to something resembling a wedding march. Greenhorn, Frons, and Hash play African drums like true musicians. However, the pipes played by the bearded lady and Barrel could shatter a window.

Catty emerges from the kitchen in a dress that sparkles in the low morning sun. We’ll regret the red skies this morning, but for the wedding, they are the perfect backdrop. Chub and Catty’s fiery romance bloomed on the boat and will stand the test of time. I’m so happy for my best friend I could burst. It is an honor to officiate their wedding as Captain.

My eyes meet Sabrina’s worried gaze. Powder, the master of cannons, has brought his lads to the deck for the ceremony. They crowd around Bettina and Sabrina in a ring of protection…but Sabrina doesn’t see them as such. The others from the show huddle together on the forecastle desk, as far away from the gathering as possible. Would Sabrina be more relaxed with them? Bettina has yet to notice the distress written across her sister’s face. I’m torn between the decorum befitting Chub’s wedding and easing the anxiety I feel radiating off my lady.

“I get a maid of honor, yeah?” Catty’s question pulls me from my tormented thoughts. When did she cross the deck? I must have blanked out longer than I thought.

“You get whatever your heart desires—” Chub’s dairy-chasing promises are cut off by the lacy bouquet Catty shoves under his chin. Pointy fabric flowers embed themselves in his beard and tug his head when he tries to lower the bastards. His grunt summons laughter from the audience until he silences it with a glare. He may be the groom, but he’s also the boss…after me.

“Stand with me,” Catty says, tugging Sabrina by the elbow to the altar.

Sabs’s headshakes ruffle her hip-length hair in an exotic pattern. Her human form is no match for Determined Catty, whose strength has multiplied with long days working on the ship. Bettina sits with wide eyes of shock throughout the exchange, belaying my worst fears—she won’t be much help acclimating Sabrina to the boat. While the sisters love one another, neither has had positive experiences with the human world. How much work will it take to wedge Sabrina into my life? Wouldn’t the most loving thing I could do for her is to let her go?

Sabrina’s glassy, sea-green eyes implore me to rescue her, but where would I stick her? She can’t live her life in my room. Even cold-hearted Magda couldn’t spend her days in the captain’s quarters when her vampire nature kept her indoors. It almost killed her.

Sabrina is more vibrant, but she’s fragile after her ordeal. She must stay by my side at all times until she recovers. I wrap her hands around my elbow so my hands are free to handle Chub’s book. Her teary expression when I nod in her direction breaks my heart. Surrounded by my mateys, with my lady love on my arm, joining my best friends in marriage is the recipe for the happiest day of my life. However, the knowledge that I’m scaring my lady half to death by dragging her on deck cuts me to ribbons. What do I do?

“Friends, Crew, me hearties…” I read Chub’s scribble in the margins of the old Bible we found when we stole the boat. The words of his ceremony will be identical to what he said at Magda and Branko’s wedding…at his request. As I read each solemn vow and flowery metaphor, I’m struck with gratitude. Without Chub’s help, I couldn’t have read the passages and would have faked it. “Do you, Catty—um, Catalina Pintarro—take this man, Quartermaster Ellis Morehouse, as your husband, to have and to hold as long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” she says with love shining for my best friend.

“And do you, Quartermaster Ellis Morehouse, take Catalina Pintarro as your wife, to have and to hold as long as you both shall live?”

“Aye, with all me heart,” he says, bringing their joined hands to his chest. “Catalina, I promise…”

Chub’s poetic pledge of love and prosperity fades into the background. I’m captivated by the differences in our hands. My missing fingers are obvious reminders of my lurid past. Chub’s beefy, stout fingers sport scars, blisters, callouses, and bruises from life on the high seas. However, he also keeps his nails impeccably clean, and the whirls of hair at his wrist are pink fuzz that speak of the educated, well-mannered man he became. Do I have a hope of assimilating into a village or island society?

Despite Catalina’s money and Chub’s experience in the sweet trade, there aren’t wedding rings. If Patricia’s Wish had more luck, we’d have found heaps of treasure in the five years we’ve sailed. A trio of incompetent captains, a plague, and countless hurricanes doomed this boat to failure. While the best days of my life were spent behind the helm or the cannon, I have nothing to show for years of work. I have my stories, but those don’t buy farmland. Sabrina and I don’t have two nickels to rub together.

We can’t survive off the boat. She’s terrified to stay on the boat.

“I love you too, Ellis,” Catty wails as she throws her arms around the groom. As her lips plunder his mouth, her bouquet does its best to stab him.

Sabrina’s job as maid of honor is to rescue Chub from the flowers, but she’s glued to my side. I close my book of ceremonies and pry the bouquet from Catty’s fingers. My lady shakes as if the storm brewing struck her with lightning. All my protective instincts flare to life. The sweet trade is not for her, but luckily, neither is village life. We are no merchant or farmer and his wife. Sabrina must be free of the human world…and I wouldn’t mind shedding more of society’s shackles either.

The pressure on my inner elbow changes as Sabrina shrinks a few inches. Her feet must be morphing into tentacle tips. Good thing my giant duster will cover her transformation but leave her precious soulbeak exposed for my cunning plan.

“Get your captain some rum!” My shouts are met with cheers and whistles from the crew. The band kicks up a lively jig. Chub’s fingers tap the side of his leg. One announcement, and they will dance until the heavens pour rain upon us. Let them think I’m toasting the newly married couple. I chose to enter this life when life on land was too constricting. The sweet trade’s noose tightens around my neck. It’s time to leave again.

“I said, someone water your captain!” My shout grows terse with urgency.

The last time I felt this certain, I stood on the gangplank of the Queen Anne’s Revenge . The crowd’s mood wavers with uncertainty as my tone gives away my inner turmoil. This is goodbye on my terms. After a healthy moment too long, Eze scrambles down the sterncastle’s deck stairs .

Of course, the nutmegs would leave the helm unattended because the rest of the crew couldn’t be arsed. Even Chub rolls his eyes at their incompetence. He steals Eze’s flask and throws a hit down his gullet. I must take advantage of Sabrina’s diverted attention and the element of surprise! His book thuds on the deck as I wrap my arm around Sabrina’s shoulders and the other arm behind her knees. She squawks as I raise her to my chest.

“Catalina, would you pour, please.”

“You want me to fetch a cup?” Avast ye, I forget how sheltered she is. I’d ask Chub, but I don’t think Sabrina wants another man close to her delicate belly.

“A shot in my lady’s naval if you please,” I request. My arms tighten to metal bonds as Sabrina squirms. Catalina pours half the bottle over Sabrina’s wiggling belly. Enough liquid filters through the lace panel on the jacket’s front to soften her soulbeak.

“Please,” she whispers, tears threatening to spill over her cheeks.

“Here’s to true love,” I shout as I slurp the grog from my lady’s body. My teeth snap threads of silk as I root around the soulbeak. The flat of my tongue flicks it into my mouth.

Bettina wails in the crowd when she realizes what I’ve done. She launches herself at me, batting my shoulder with tiny fists. Catalina retreats into Chub’s embrace. The crew’s shouts of ‘traitor’ amongst the jeers and roars break my heart. They would have loved Sabrina, but I couldn’t take the chance on them. If I doomed her to a life in one room, I’d never forgive myself. Wild things like Sabrina and me need space more than air.

“Fecking lot!” My shouts become scrambled cries as my mind blanks.

The pain in my knees, feet, and ankles eclipses the times I’ve been shot, stabbed, and burnt. I lower to the ground at half the speed of a fall as my legs divide into tentacles. Chub shouts something about removing my boots. Errant appendages thrust from my body and pound the deck, blistering the planks into splinters. The suckers along them open and close as I collect sensory information about my surroundings. I tear at my leathers hanging in tatters around my waist. When I free my gills from their clutches, I huff with renewed vigor.

Instincts stronger than I have ever known course through my veins. My tentacles slink and stalk until they meet with Sabrina’s thinner tentacles. I twine them with hers, wrapping us in a ball of strength.

“We must go overboard,” I say between pants, “or I’ll breed you right here and now.”

“Why did you choose this?” She takes my face into her hands and presses our foreheads together.

“I chose the best place for us,” I reply. Her tears fall onto my cheeks. “Just because I’m determined to be with you doesn’t doom you to a life of misery. I’d be a terrible husband if I didn’t want to make you happy above all else. I see your struggles with humans—”

“You see me,” she says, leaning back to stare into my eyes.

“Yes, Sabs, I finally see you.”

“Oi! Now what! A Kraken for a captain?!” The rude shout from the crowd earns Chub’s icy glare. If he identifies them, they will boil beans for the crew and swab the poop deck the morning after.

“No, a former Kraken as a Captain,” I shout with a chuckle. I throw Catalina’s bouquet to Bettina, who fumbles it but recovers. “Long live, Captain Betts!”

“Long live, Captain Betts!” The chant rings from the ratlines above and the bilge tanks below. Fists and flasks are raised in support of Bettina’s taking over the boat. Chub nods his approval before nuzzling the neck of his new wife. As much as he deserves the promotion, he’s on his way out of the sweet trade and wouldn’t want to be sucked back in like a whale caught in a whirlpool.

“As your Captain, I now pronounce both couples—husbands and wives! You may now kiss your brides!” Bettina's shouts are accompanied by a frenzy of cheers. She pumps the bouquet over her head like a champion sword, and the crew rallies for a battle.

Chub wastes no time in bending Catalina into a low dip and kissing her senselessly.

“Wives—plural?” Sabrina murmurs.

“Married like a proper couple,” Bettina scolds, wagging the bouquet at her sister. “I know you two, and you’ll have eggs by nightfall. My little nieces and nephews must be legitimate, born from holy matrimony…well, as holy as you whores can be.”

“Then I’ll kiss my bride.” I grab Sabrina’s chin to turn her stare from her sister to me. My lips claim hers as my tongue spears her mouth. A fire ignites between us. My tentacles squeeze her as our new appendages writhe against one another. Three pockets open at my waistline. Out of the central one pops my new Kraken cock. I can’t wait to learn all the ways to quiff my wife in my new body.

“Teeth, we need the water,” Sabrina whines against my lips.

“I can think of something I need more,” I growl against her lips.

“Captain,” Chub yells over our heads. Catty smothers a giggle behind her hand as Chub laughs out loud at us. “Permission to throw the Kraken whores overboard for indecency.”

“Permission granted,” Bettina yells with a broad smile stretching her cheeks. Her giggle brings tears to my lady’s eyes.

I shelter Sabs in my arms as the crew hoists us into the air. She tucks her head in her arms and leans into my body as dozens of hands clutch our bodies. I guess we’re taking my dusters and best dress shirt with us into the abyss. The crew sings a bawdy song about a man lured to his death by a siren who dies with a smile on his lips. I laugh at the audacity.

“One for the boat!” They yell as they swing us over the edge and back.

“Two for her crew! Three pays what’s due!” We swing twice more. Sabrina shrieks each time we sail back onto the boat.

“And four in hopes you float!”

My laughter trails down the Jacob’s ladder as we fly over the railing and into the drink. The ocean smacks my back. Sabrina fights out of my embrace as soon as we are enveloped in seawater. I chose the Kraken form not only to accommodate her fear of humans but also to explore life under the sea. In my mind, I concocted adventures we would take together. She slides through my tentacles and disappears in a cloud of ink as soon as we touch the sand.

Did I make a mistake?