Page 6 of Hooking Captain Teeth

“Cards can’t talk, ye pudding-headed buzzard,” he gripes, yanking his hand away. She holds steady while his blue eyes blaze with icy rage. She guides his hand back and forth, an inch over the fan of cards. “Maybe two of them buzz like rope burn.”

“There you go,” she says with a grin minus her top teeth. “Pick up the two cards and toss me two doubloons from your bag.”

I toss her the coins while Chub flips over two cards from the fan. The first card is near the top, with ten tentacles waving from the edges to the center. The second card is right in the middle of the deck. Chub growls at the giant spider staring back at him from an intricate web. I turn the spider card to face me and break the tension between Chub and the drawing. Sure enough, the spider is smiling.Huh?Chub’s lady love is a happy spider?

“Before you allow your rage to destroy my tent, please listen to their meaning. The tentacles signifyriches—true diamonds—your lady love is quite wealthy. Do you know any wealthy ladies from the Pintarro, Brown, or LeFaire families? Those are the only families in the Caribbean with enough riches to inspire ten tentacles.”

“That no good Pintarro has been a thorn in our sides for years,” Chub says with a chuckle. “There’s no way he’d surrender the bonnie Catalina Pintarro to a pirate. What’s the spider?”

“Her,” the fortune teller snaps.

Chub’s smile falls from his face. “In one breath, you say my lady love is a wealthy lady—the most bonnie of prizes, and in the next, you call her a blimey bug?!”

“I don’t call her anything. It’s the spirits.”

“Smite your spirits and curse their descendants,” Chub says, rising from his chair. “Let’s cast aboard, Teeth. It’s nearly sundown and time to weigh anchor. I want to nap off this experience before I’m to steer us from port.”

“But that’s only one lady,” the fortune teller whispers in a sultry, feminine voice. Long lashes flutter over the bright, sea-green eyes sunken into the old hag’s face. “Don’t you want a peek?”

“I’m not afraid,” flies out of my mouth. Chub pauses by my side and clasps my shoulder. The silent command for me to stay and draw my cards is heard as loud as if he shouted it. “Just one glimpse. Not twocards that will argue with themselves or three to break a tie; I want one card with one message. That’s all my simple mind can handle—”

“Not your mind, but your heart is what can handle the lady who burns for you.” Avast ye! The fortune teller’s eyes are gorgeous. I could get lost in them. And to hear my lady burns for me without knowing me? My shaft stands to half-mast, ready to extinguish the inferno in my britches that has nothing to do with the fireship who infected me last night.

“Where are you?” I whisper as I run my hand over the cards in the same manner she taught Chub. The corner of a card catches on the stump of my former marriage finger. It flips out of the array and bounces into my lap. With trembling fingers, I pluck it from the gap between my erection and my belt. “Little lady has an appetite in the sheets to match mine!”

“Blimey, man, that’s your future wife! Have some respect!” Chub scolds me with a slap to the back of my head.

The momentum sends me forward, and the card tumbles from my hand. It settles into my view as if presenting itself like a dinner plate. A bright red octopus stares at me with squinting eyes and menacing teeth. Blooming beasty looks ready to jump from the paperto rip my face off. I don’t know whether to be excited or terrified. My lady love could be as monstrous as Magda with twice the arms to dodge.

“Right,” Chub says, flipping a doubloon at the black-eyed witch who conned us into a card reading. “If ten tentacles mean a wealthy lady, me hearty will marry the fecking Queen of England! We’re done here.”

“He knows his lady love—”

“I’ve never met the Queen of England.”

“King George the First rules England,” the fortune teller says, rubbing her eyes with exasperation.

“I haven’t met him either!”

“Time to board, matey,” Chub announces, squeezing my shoulder. “You won’t find her in this tent. Best keep to the seas and build a fortune to house her…especially if your queen requires a castle.”

“She doesn’t require a castle—she’s not royalty. That’s not what the cards are trying to tell you. You’ve met your lady love before—”

“Great,” I snap, rising from my seat. “We had our chance and blew it? Story of my life.”

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 ofPatricia’s Wish. Only the patience and cunning of me hearty could bring me to the level befittingthe 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.”

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