4

Captain Teeth, 1725 AD

Five years later

“With a t-wink-le in his eye and a s-song in her heart, they sailed into the s-s-sunset,” I read with pauses too long and accents askew. “I bet he had a twinkle in his eye after she emptied his bollocks in chapter four. This may be my favorite book yet.”

“Aye, Captain, I’m proud of you,” says Chub, my quartermaster and best friend. “You read that book in nye under a week. Last summer, it would’ve taken you a week to figure out a paragraph’s worth of words.”

“I have a great teacher,” I say with a clap to his shoulder. Each evening as the sun sets and he takes his shift at the helm, he teaches me to read. Reading is one of the many things I’ve learned since becoming Captain of Patricia’s Wish . Only the patience and cunning of me hearty could bring me to the level befitting the crew in such a short amount of time. “A steady supply of bawdy books has helped too.”

“A pathetic excuse for the real thing,” Chub says in an exaggerated tone that suggests his lady love has stepped on deck. “Nothing is as fine as resting one’s head over his lady’s heart.”

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 boarding Patricia’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 and life 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 my ennui where 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 are other ,” 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 flip into the open hands of their owner. She uses her fingers to weave them into a complicated lace pattern with lightning speed. Maybe I underestimated her other nature. “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 of other s, 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 pity scrunching 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.

“Yeah, that’s the kill devil,” I say, squeezing the railing until my knuckles whiten. “Old prune pulled the card of an octopus.”

“Octopus is the ace of diamonds, you nutmeg,” Chub says with a laugh. “Your lady love is an heiress like me Catty, squirreled away in an island hacienda.”

“I’d like to think that,” I say, looking at my seven knuckles. “But you said it first, this boat has a habit of attracting others . What if I’m to meet the mighty Kraken who sinks boats all over the Atlantic? What if it’s an omen that I will find peace at the bottom of the sea?”

“Nobody is meant to die alone,” Catalina says, clutching her half-woven lace to her chest.

“Listen here, cup-shot pudding head, you can’t be sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean by some demonic squid for two reasons. The first—our course is west to Mexico with the Atlantic at our backs. The second—we’ve flown overboard more times than I can count. The sea always spits us back onto land. The Caribbean doesn’t want the likes of us littering her seafloor. ”

“Devil take me,” I say, chuckling with my hands over my face.

“He didn’t want our sorry arses either,” Chub says with a loud guffaw. “Ol’Blackbeard marooned us years ago. That’s how we ended up sailing under Magda—”

“And yet you stayed to sail under me. You’ve been quartermaster under all three of us. I appreciate you sticking by me,” I say with a clap to his shoulder. “No use both of us walking the night. I won’t sleep until morning with Vampire Magda’s ways still in my bones. Why don’t you and Catalina retire? I’ll take a turn at the helm.”

“Mighty kind, Captain,” Catalina says, winding the end of her threads into a ball to take her project down to the officer’s quarters by the infirmary. The blasted happy couple has the room beneath the captain’s cabin, so their near-wedded bliss rattles my windows. “She’s out there, you know. Your lady love dreams of you right now; I just know it.”

“Dreaming of wringing your neck with her tentacles,” Chub quips. He ducks my swat to the back of his head—not an amazing feat since he’s two feet shorter than me.

“Not funny. If she sinks me boat, you’ll be in Davy Jones’s locker next to me,” I say with a laugh.

I wave off the happy couple and take the helm. Patricia’s Wish sails into the sunset like the boats in my books, but I stand alone at the wheel. Where’s the wench to nestle under my arm and squeeze my bicep? Is it too much to ask for a companion to laugh at my jokes, sing bawdy songs, and dance between the sheets? The gulls quiet, and a hush descends over the Caribbean. Nothing but the gentle lap of the waves—

And Catalina’s cries of ecstasy. Bloody hell.

Why couldn’t I find my wife first? My jealousy of my quartermaster will worsen before it gets better. As captain, I must officiate their wedding. Chub wrote down what to say when he officiated Branko and Magda’s wedding. Can I read his scribble without sounding like a pudding head? I should read the passages nightly to get the words down. I’ll be a hurricane of emotions during the ceremony, which will throw a storm over my focus.

I won’t just be joining them in holy matrimony. I’ll be releasing my best mate from his post and the sweet trade. Chub the pirate will become Ellis the husband, farmer, and father. While I’m trapped in a marriage with the sea…and whatever tentacled beast swims in the abyss, he will retire to land.

Abandoning my post at the wheel, I stomp to the railing and glare at the pretty pink sunset. I keep a bottle of high-class rum tied to this section of railing for her…my lost love. The half shot of firewater burns as it dribbles down my throat. I pour the other half of the shot into the sea in the hopes it will find its way to her lips.

“Where the hell are you, love? Why must you torture us by hiding from your intended? I know I promised to scour the world and travel all her seven seas to find you, but I didn’t think you’d put me to the test! Just appear in my life, and I’ll change into whatever it takes to make you happy!”