Chapter 2

For the next several days, I barely emerged from the galley. That's another word for kitchen, and I'd learned several other words that sailors used. They talked in code. Some were not so savory. Clearly, my disguise was as weak as my current headspace because the few men that deigned to even notice me paled and didn't speak a word. At first, I was worried about the captain's semen joke having literal consequences. I wasn't interested in a tryst with a sailor, not when Rummy's hazel eyes were still so fresh in my mind. But then, as the few men who did get near me acted as if I had the plague, I began to get offended. Did I smell? If I did, it couldn't be worse than some of their joyous, sweaty aromas.

One evening as I sat on a crate peeling potatoes with a rusty pocketknife, prepping food for the next day, another task I'd adopted from my life working in hospitality, the usual clatter and stomps from above stilled. Something else graced my ears, and I ascended the staircase for the first time to the tunes of the men singing under the stars.

My throat dried at the vastness before me. And it sounds stupid. Again, we've established that I was very not smart at this point in time, but it was only then I realized I was out to sea. On a boat, leaving my home for some distant land, never to return.

The somber realization must have been written on my face because Captain Fig remarked, "You look hard up in a clinch and no knife to cut the seizing."

"What does that mean–" I began when a man interrupted.

"Don't make it talk!"

Another chimed in. "You've gone and fucked us all now, Fig. If this weren't a hell's mission anyhow."

The rough-looking man in a torn shirt shot me a look of disdain as he continued. "Sailin' us through the sugar seas on a fool's quest to the land of bells." He threw his apple core off the side of the ship.

Captain Fig shrugged. "Night's as clear as day. Maybe that sugar sea legend was all to keep us from gettin' the gettin' goods."

Again, they were speaking in some code I could only partially decipher. But it was clear my presence wasn't wanted aboard. The tone of the evening, and the steely look in the crew's eyes, sent a shiver of unease down my bones. But not only that, I hadn't even bothered to ask where we were going. I'd assumed this was a shipping vessel, delivering or fetching goods, and we'd sail to another island town. But from the conversation, a sense of dread settled over me as only the stars illuminated the partially visible faces of the dozens of sailors before me.

"Sugar seas? Land of bells?" I asked hoarsely when the captain flicked me a glance before taking a long swig of something that smelled awful.

"Crock of shit stories, girl. Pay them no mind."

The other man stood, his face hard and horrible. He pushed a rough finger into the captain's chest. "I've lost men to these very sugar seas we sailin' through this very minute. Friends of mine, family. None survived. Nothin' now but whispers of flesh-eating creatures of the deep, pirates that'll flay you out and use you as bait to catch one of the sugar monsters, songs of the tide that'll drive you mad…" He gave the drunken captain a shove and the old man toppled over easily onto the deck, not putting up a fight, but rather conceding to the moment. "You tricked us, lied, all for a chance to get to this fabled blood-stained utopia. Hell, we ain't even know if it exists. But," he pointed at me and my body froze as the ship rocked. "Somethin' goes wrong, I'm putin' the blame on you. Everyone knows it's bad luck to bring a woman aboard."

"She ain't aboard, Quintin," the captain argued, pulling himself up and wobbling forward. "She's below deck feedin' y'all sorry lot."

Quintin scoffed, passing me a hateful glance before grabbing a bottle of alcohol and walking away.

The men fell into conversation, some scattering back to their night duties, as trepidation followed me back down the stairs to my wet corner kitchen.

It was funny; I thought as sleep evaded me and I went back to shakily peeling potatoes, that I'd set out on such haphazard adventure, to find myself in almost the same place as I'd left. Alone in a kitchen, surrounded by misfortune and people that hated me.

Though the ones I'd left had reason to hate me.

This crew of sailors didn't, well, not any reason I'd given them other than just being a woman and I guessed that was just inherently unlucky whether on land or at sea.

As I drifted to sleep, my mind rippled with thoughts of what mystery lied beneath the creaking ship boards. What terrors could such an innocent name hold?. The sugar sea. Had men really gone missing through this stretch of water that looked like any other, or was the sea captain right and it was just sailor ghost stories? Regardless, the land of bells awaited, and I had to make it there. A place to begin again, far, far away from her.