Page 37 of Those Fatal Flowers

His jaw tightens. For a moment, I worry he might lash out, but instead he turns back to his log pile to start a fire. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure if you were coming back.”

“Well, here I am.” My tone is harsher than I intend it. “Come on, then. Let’s see how bad it is.”

He nods and peels his tattered shirt from his frame. The sight of what lies beneath it makes my lips press together in a thin line. His body is littered with bruises and cuts, and there’s a large gash on his left flank. He wrapped some fabric around it to stop the bleeding, but the blood that stains the bandage is an angry purple tinged with green. What comes next will be unpleasant.

I kneel before him, and my nose shrivels instinctively; I smell the wound before I see it. The sweet, rancid scent, so much like his compatriots’, climbs into my nostrils and settles there. I do my best to ignore it, distracting myself with peeling the makeshift dressing from his side. Combined with the smell, what I find beneath it makes me gag.

“That bad?” he asks sheepishly.

A piece of coral scooped out a chunk of his side the size of my fist. It left a deep laceration, with yellow tissue pocketsscattered throughout the crimson. The flesh surrounding the wound is red and hot. My stomach sinks. It’s likely infected. I press gently on its right edge, and Jaquob hisses out air, recoiling. A creamy pus emerges in my finger’s wake.

I retrieve a clean rag from my bag and douse it with the alcohol.

“This is going to hurt.” I hand him the bottle. He takes a large swig of the liquor before turning his gaze away. I do my best to clean the wound before wrapping it in a fresh bandage, but only the Fates know if it’ll be enough.

I continue sewing the tinier cuts closed, and he continues gulping down alcohol.

“All right, that’s it for the top half,” I say after some time. “Let me see your legs.”

The liquor and the pain have made him delirious, and he chuckles a bit before standing to unbutton his pants. “As you wish.”

They’re so badly torn that they nearly fall from his frame. He retakes his seat next to me. I suddenly feel flushed. This is the first man that I have seen both naked and alive.

Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down.

I chant the words to myself, hoping the incantation will ensure my focus. It doesn’t. I can’t help but glance at the limp member between his thighs. I’m curious despite myself.

He catches me looking and snorts. “What, like what you see?”

My stomach turns. What rests between his legs looks just as grotesque as it does on the corpses I’ve gutted. I was certain there’d be some difference in its presentation on a living man, but this revelation only leaves me more baffled. How can such an ugly organ be the root of man’s oafish pride? What about it causes them to strut about so proudly?

“Don’t be foolish.”

I reset my attention to scour his legs for more injuries. Thankfully, his bottom half is mostly unscathed. It’s the wound on his side that remains the most serious.

That wound might kill him.

“You look like a woman,” he says, hiccupping. “A beautiful one, at least from the waist up.”

As if to underscore his point, his eyes linger on my breasts. I forgot to be ashamed of my nakedness before, but now I flush beneath his scrutiny.

“But you’re not a woman, are you? Not a human, anyway. Can you even—”

“You’re right,” I snap back, eager to change the subject. “I had the form of a human once, but that was a long time ago.” I stand up again, putting a few paces between us. “I’ll bring you a fresh set of clothes tomorrow.”

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he says. “Truly, I’m thankful for your help.”

“You asked me what I am. What about you? What were you doing on that ship?”

“I’m a trapper returning to France. We were only at sea for a few days when the wind blew us off course, and then that fucking storm hit…I’ve been sailing since I was fourteen and crossed the Atlantic three times. Never in my life have I seen a storm like that. It was like Hell opened above us and let loose its fury.”

Most of what he says means nothing to me. I don’t know the names of cities, seas, or countries anymore. But the part about the storm piques my attention. I think about offering my sympathies, but they would be a lie. I sway on my feet, already weary of the worry he’s brought me.

“Are you leaving already? I’ve been alone all day, and apparently my whole crew is dead, and I’ll soon be joining them. Spare a few minutes of your company for a dying man?”

“What would we talk about?” I ask, surprised to find myself considering his request. But there’s a reckless part of me that’s desperate to discover what it is about this man that caused the Goddess of the Dead to intervene on his behalf.

“Anything. Tell me about yourself. How long have you been here?”

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