Page 2 of Sea's Secret

“What? You like this?”

“It reminds me of home,” Sands said, stopping so abruptly that I almost ran into his back.

“What are you stopping for?” I asked in irritation.

“I thought I heard someone,” he said, then began walking again. I kept up with his pace, and we were silently moving about the streets once more.

I was only allowed to step foot on land when ordered to. For years, I told myself I did not mind because I was comfortable aboard the ship. That was true, somewhat. I did love so many things about sailing, but I hated being part of Veeto’s crew.

I frowned. I hated being controlled. It gave me no real hope for a will of my own, but when Sands became a crew member, he showed me a way to defy Veeto even more than I already had.

Sands finally stopped in front of a small, dusty, golden sand-ridden, stone home. Most of the buildings and the homes in Thorn were made from the same stone.

“Don’t frown yet,” Sands said with a laugh. I snapped my eyes toward him with a side smirk.

“I was thinking of our beloved captain,” I said with a grunt.

“Ah, why did you have to go and do that? Ruins the entire night of rebelry,” he said.

“It’s revelry; ‘rebelry’ is not a word.”

“I’m making it a word. It’s what we do, after all, and it deserves to be a word.”

Sands knocked, and I waited behind him, preparing myself. It wasn’t that I was not ready, as I’d done what I was about to do that night several hundred times before, and doing it was the only way I could survive waking up each morning. But still, it was painful. In my head, I believed that if I could just help as many people as I tortured, the good would cancel out the bad.

An older man opened the door with a look of pure happiness upon his tanned face, his eyes crinkling at the sides.

“The Hand! You really came! Welcome, welcome, please come in!” the man nearly shouted.

“Do you want all of Thorn coming?” Sands asked, looking this way and that, down the street.

The man covered his mouth with his hand as he bowed and then opened the door wide for us.

“So sorry. Thank you for coming. I had no hope–”

“You understand that The Hand cannot heal?” I asked as we walked inside, and the man closed the door behind us.

“I was told that the gift takes away pain. I think that if she were without the pain, she would have the will to live, to get better.”

“It is not a gift,” I grunted at the man before I caught myself. I tried to be more gentle with the people I helped, but it was hard to be gentle when I was not a gentle person. I had been formed to be rough, cold, and harsh.

“Sorry, but I am grateful. You bless all of these suffering people. You are a blessing from the Ancients.”

I understood, of course, why people thought that, but I hated that anyone would assume that I was a great blessing. I was a wicked pirate, and if they only knew of the things I’d done, they would never have praised me. But I kept silent about all of that.

“Let them have some hero to hope for, even if their hero has your face,” Sands always told me. “Just let them believe what they will. Everyone needs some good; it helps us in hard times to have hope in someone,” Sands said when we first began to visit with those in pain.

Among the peasants within nearly every kingdom near a port, my name was known. I never expected my deeds to travel so fast and so far, but they had. I even met a few people who had figured out that I was actually Prince Dominick. Like in Embra, when I was there for the Princess Tourney, I helped many people. Sands always pretended to be my servant, and we tried to be discreet, but we had been discovered. Luckily, we convinced the people there not to reveal my secret. I might have, possibly, threatened them a little, but it was an empty threat, even if they did not know it. If Veeto ever discovered that I had used my curse to help people, I had no idea what he would have done to me, but I knew that, at the very least, those few small freedoms I had been granted–if they could be called that–would be gone.

“The Hand, he must focus. We will be in and out quickly,” Sands said with a nod.

“I am ready.” Another lie, because is anyone ever ready to take on someone else's pain tenfold? No. And there I was, almost craving to take away their pain and make it my own. Maybe, I liked feeling pain; perhaps, that was why I did it. Glutton for punishment? Then again, maybe, I liked to imagine that I was more than what Veeto and his crew thought I was.

I am stronger than they realize.

There were twelve people inside the small, one-room house. I could tell from the expressions upon their faces that they were all hurting in different ways.

Faces are very telling, I thought.

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