9. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Dominick

“ I will say, Nick, I have had many voyages, and none of them have been quite as awful as this one,” The Grimm said with a snarl. I would give him credit for not grumbling during the first few days. I, however, hated that I couldn’t get his words out of my head from the day we’d sunk that pirate ship and sent twelve pirates to their watery graves.

“You don’t have to do as he says.”

If only he knew.

“You can thank the captain for your experience. He runs a marvelous ship,” I said with a hand on the wheel. Veeto let me steer the ship when he was in his cabin. I loved very little, but I did love the feel of the wheel in my hands and the sea’s salty air upon my face.

One day, I’ll have a ship of my own, and my uncle will no longer be a thought in my mind.

Stop it. Not yet, I argued with myself.

“How long until we reach Sorra’s port?” The Grimm asked.

I knew the answer without looking at the map, but that was something he did not need to know. No one needed to know that I was smarter than I appeared. He’d already seen too much. It was good that he would be off the ship soon. I didn’t need him ruining my carefully laid plans. Not when I was so close.

I kept one hand on the wheel, making an effort to wobble as I pulled out the map from my jacket pocket within my black coat. I held out the map, biting the corner of it with my teeth as I unfurled it.

I had convinced my uncle on the day after we sank that ship, that we should travel the Marren Sea in search of Marren Island. Just East of Marren Island lay the Misted Seas, and those seas were my last hope of finding my sister. I had searched everywhere else. When speaking with Veeto, I’d waited for the right time, and he was always happy after plundering and sinking a ship. It had not been that difficult to convince him. I spoke to him of treasure piled high in lagoon caves and of pearls as endless as the sands upon the shore. Of course, his eyes grew wide with greed, and he stopped listening, just began insisting that he must have that treasure. Was I sure there was such a treasure on Marren Island? No, but he did not need to know that. We needed something, first, even before we could locate Marren Island. It was something I was not even sure existed: a mermaid.

For a moment, I became lost in a memory of a conversation I recently had with Veeto.

“We need a mermaid–or some magical sea creature. Because the tales about mermaids are all we know about magic, and I believe mermaids are our best chance. Plus we know sirens exist. Too many men have been killed by them.”

“Go on–” Veeto said with his hand under his white-gray beard.

“We’d have to stay in those waters, there,” I said, pointing to a spot on the map spread out on his desk, a map I had stolen from Gideon’s private collection. “And if they really do exist, the mermaids of Marren would have to reveal the island to us, but they only rise when the tides change with the shifting moon.”

“Aye–we can go ‘bout the sea there in circles for a few days.” Veeto nodded at his desk as he looked at the map I had pointed out, one among his other maps of the kingdoms and seas we had traveled.

“We have to capture one of them–or some other magical sea creature,” I said, reiterating, sitting in the chair across from him as he played with his beard.

“Aye, I shall be the firs’ to find a mermaid–after all this time,” he whispered. There was only one thing Veeto loved more than treasure and causing pain to others. He also loved making a larger name for himself. He was already known as The Dreadful Captain Veeto of the Crimson Blade, but of course, being that, as well as the first pirate to actually capture a mermaid and travel to Marren and even beyond? He would not pass that up.

“So, we have a plan?” I asked, standing and taking the map from him.

“Yes, I am impressed. You actually have a brain in that thick skull of yours.”

I just rolled up the map and left with a smile on my face. One step closer to my goal. Many pirates had tried before, of course, to find Marren Island. Everything about it was filled with dark lore. There was trouble in those deep seas just beyond it. Many creatures were said to be lurking, protecting the island from humans, and the one magical beings that pirates knew of through those stories were sirens. Sirens were said to suck out a man’s very soul, even as they seduced him, pulling him down into the depths, and those men never would see it coming because of the sirens’ calls. I had beeswax from Embra to block my ears from any of their songs. I would not be pulled into a watery grave before I completed my mission. I hoped that we would only find a mermaid, not a siren, and if I had been someone who prayed to the Ancients, I would have asked them to deliver one to us. The other problem was how did one tell a mermaid apart from a siren? If mermaids did, indeed, still exist, the Marren Sea would be the only place to find them, I was certain.

They had to have been hiding since the Great War. It only made sense. I had heard rumors that an entire forest was revealed in Solalune recently. It had been hidden by unknown forces since the Great War. The Westwoods was its name, and it hid magical creatures for all that time.

Are the mermaids hiding, also?

I thought so.

Yes, Uncle, I do, indeed, have a brain in my skull, I thought, sarcastically.

Some believed that sirens had once been mermaids, and that after the traitor, King Falcon, ruined the world, he ruined them, too.

I was on my way to finding Princess Layla somewhere across those Misted Seas. She has to be there , I thought. The only other possibility was that she could have been inland, but I had a distinct memory of mother and father speaking of Layla when I was a boy. They said she was on some hidden coast.

This has to be where she is–it has to be.

Still beside me, The Grimm waited for my answer, and I let that memory slip away and looked at the map as if I needed it to remember. From my calculations, we were a half day away from where Marren was said to be.

“About a day,” I finally answered The Grimm. I rolled up the map, making a show of dropping my hand from the wheel and then leaning forward as if wobbly again. I chuckled and grabbed the wheel with a wave of my hand.

“Someone should take away your drink supply,” The Grimm said with a grunt.

“And take away all the fun?” I said with a smirk.

“Is it fun to be drunk while steering a ship?”

“Nothing better in all the seas,” I said. With nothing else needed from me, he walked away. I stood still and breathed in the salty air again, grateful to be rid of him and his questions.

I needed to find a mermaid.

I needed to find Marren.

I needed to sail the Misted Seas and find my sister. She had to be there.

I smiled and spun the wheel to the side, making the ship groan as the crew cursed at me. I chuckled and raised my hand to them. I was only at a level one on the pain scale, which was rare. I would not let it go to waste.

“It was just a large wave!” I called out to more groans and curses. Ah, the sounds of a pirate ship were glorious. I grinned into the wind.