Page 14 of Shiver Me Satyr

“None of that, Flint,” Chub scolds. “You saved yourself like a sailor—not a fancy puff who tells sailor stories. Don’t shake your head at me. I’ve heard all your dribble, first and second hand. Tales of foreign lands from the snowy southernmost tip of the globe to the fragrant spice roads of the east, from the northern lands of my birth to the sunset in the west—all travels you never took. Stop trying to inflate your trousers with your lies.”

I look at Betts to contradict him, add her opinion, or rule on his judgment. Her attention is anywhere but on me—the helm, the storm, the sails—like she doesn’t care an ounce whether I live, drown, or die by Chub’s sword. Then why did she coach me to the top? Did she want to see me drown or earn my way on deck?

Rain splatters on the deck between us as if Mother Nature decides to throw her gauntlet at me, too.

“I apologize, Captain, Quartermaster,” I reply to my hooves.

“Go below before the sea decides she likes your taste and wants to keep you,” Betts orders, her voice thick. She stomps away, but not before I think I see tears threatening to spill over her cheeks.

Her retreating form is as powerful as the building storm as she crosses to the sterncastle deck at the back of the boat. She points to places where the sails blow loose in the rigging, sending crew members scurrying across the booms and ropes to fix them. She kicks a rope snaking across the deck as if it offends her. Gretta appears at her feet to coil the rope and secure it to the deck. Instead of taking the wheel from Eze, she presses a spyglass to her eye to gaze over the sternside railing.

Always has one foot forward and a scowl on her lips. I wonder for the thousandth time what happened to Betts to make her heart so cold. She made no move to assist me, nor did she burst into hysterics like a colonial woman. My life-or-death situation was met with frozen indifference, but the tears suggest it’s encasing true emotion. Who took her warmth? Is this the natural evolution of a pirate woman? No, she’s not this cold to the other crew members. It’s me…or my father…

Pride blooms in my chest. I’ll take rancid hatred over indifference any day. I’m acknowledged as a sentient being if she hates me—whether I deserve it or not is another matter. My teeth clatter as the wind pushes me across the deck. I want nothing more than to climb the sterncastle deck stairs to confront Betts, but doing so in a storm would make me look more like the selfish child I’m often accused of being. Our eyes lock before I stomp down the galley steps to the orlop deck.

“You made it out,” Greenhorn says with a look of surprise, pulling his eyes and mouth into circles.

“Was I not supposed to?” I sneer as I cross to my bunk. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to make it. Maybe Betts, Chub, and Catalina didn’t help me because they hoped I’d be washed away.

How much of it was fake? Just the rescue, or the bath, too? Was Greenhorn sent into the ocean as collateral damage, necessary for ridding them of an irritant? What about how we bonded over fencing? Was that fake too, so I’d be so covered in bilge sludge that I wouldn’t argue with going overboard in stormy seas?

When he doesn’t answer, I whirl around to question him.

He’s vanished.

8

Captain Betts

Hybris stayed out of my sight yesterday, and I’m better for it. As much as the female half of humanity would be better off if he drowned, I couldn’t do it. When I swung over the railing to verify he was gone, I was shocked to my toes to find him clinging to the boat. I thought the storm was a gift from the heavens, relieving me of my responsibility of putting him to death. I could let Chub do it, but that’s not fair.

I should have dispatched him the moment he stepped foot on the ship. I was mad enough then. Memories of Pastor Richard telling me to hide in the larder from his wife strangled me when I found Hybris in a larder with some poor man’s wife. My repentance for corrupting a woman’s husband doesn’t absolve me for what I did to their marriage—because the sin wasn’t mine.

How many months of prayer did it take for the message to break through?

Too many. But the guilt and the lost love flooded back when I saw Hybris under that woman’s skirt. His lack of remorse made it worse. Why didn’t I kill him then? I was in such a hurry to run away from my memories that I put the practical matters to the side…totally out of character for me. Now, Hybris is Flint, has a face I recognize as crew, and is a part of our story. His story is full of lies, but it’s a story I know.

Nobody can know their captain can’t kill a man whose story she knows.

I’d get the blackspot swifter than the winds of a hurricane.

“You okay, Betts?” Catalina says as she enters the captain’s quarters. She carries a tray of raw, Atlantic herring. I’ve never been able to process the white flour in hardtack, so I must order a crew member to fish daily. While they love having a fish dinner each night after a hard day’s work, I can’t help but wonder if they resent the lady who can’t digest most human food. It’s a weakness I hadn’t expected to have after my conversion to human was complete. Something went wrong when Richard took my soulbeak—besides the fact that he wasn’t my soulmate and had no right to choose my fate.

I tried to be a human in every way, once; now, I have no choice, but my guts remain stubbornlyOther. The intestinal distress I suffered after a chocolate-studded hardtack was something I didn’t think I would survive.

“I’m trying to memorize Magda’s instructions, but I’ve got a block,” I say, pushing my hair out of my face for the thousandth time today. The longer I lean over this table, the more I want to chop it off with my dagger and tack it to my door, warning the crew of my mood.

“You haven’t eaten this morning. Your brain needs fuel—that’s all.” She sets the tray on top of the map I brought in from the war room. The prize falls over as if she’s conquered it with my breakfast as her only weapon.

“Thanks,” I say, lifting a small silverfish from the plate. “I need all the help I can get.” She winces when I bite the head of the fish and suck out the rich insides. I lick my lips and rub my stomach with the delicious innards sliding down my throat.

“Sorry,” I whisper, replacing the fish on the tray. “I was hungrier than I thought.”

“It pleases me to watch people enjoy my food. I just wish I could cook them for you.”

“I’m sorry, but for most of my life, I ate the fish as it swam past me.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me…Captain.”

---