Page 42 of Wicked Tides
The embrace of the cold sea rocked me awake beneath her powerful currents. I could smell blood in the water. The iron tang of it was so strong and rotten. Opening my eyes, clouds of red swirled around me, dying the waves crimson, and within that red cloud floated body parts. Feet. Hands. Legs. Fingers. Items of shredded clothing and a few faces with their last moments of terror frozen upon them. I moved to the surface where the weather was raging. Lune’s tearspounded against the surface of the sea, cold and sharp. Frightful thunder rolled through the clouds and shook my bones.
There was a shore nearby. A black shore that smelled of smoke and salt and sulfur.
And on that shore was a man.
The gray colors of the storm shrouded him in darkness, but I could tell by his silhouette that it was Vidar.
Questions whirled through my head. Had I been freed? Dumped? Had the ship been destroyed and I’d blacked out during the whole ordeal? None of it made sense. I swam toward the black sand, nudging body parts aside as I moved. When my tail hit the bank, I forced my body to change, but there was no jarring pain or discomfort like I was used to.
Something was amiss. I glanced up at the thick, black clouds in search of the moon. If I could see Lune, perhaps she’d present some answers, but the clouds completely covered the sky.
I walked along the beach toward Vidar, my steps slow and quiet. He stood still as a statue, his body stripped of his heavy coat and boots, and wore only a pair of leather pants and a thin, tan shirt that was so wet it stuck to him like his own skin. His bare feet were buried partly in the sand as the waves washed putrid water around his ankles over and over again.
The closer I got to him, the more the rain and thunder and the rolling waves melted together into what sounded like voices. Many voices. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could hear them. Women. Men. Children. Some were screaming. Others were crying. There were whispers and shouts and angry tones mixed with sad tones and the flood of their inaudible words threatened to crack my skull.
Naked and yet not cold, I trudged closer to Vidar, slowly circling around to the front of him. The bloody water splashed against my calves as I turned to look at him, but he couldn’t see me. His eyes were far away and not a hint of emotion touched his features. He looked… dead.
I let my attention wander to the violent scar on his chest where he’d buried his silentium and I fantasized about ripping it out with my nails just to see him writhe as I told him to slaughter his crew. But… by the looks of it, his crew was already gone. Crabs scoured the beach for scraps as pieces of rotting human remains continued to wash ashore.
I recognized the smells. The violence. I even recognized the black sand beach and the volcanic stench in the air. Behind Vidar, stuck between rough rocks, was a rusted, barnacle-covered cage with the skeleton of a boy crushed into the tiny space and suddenly everything made sense.
I looked up once more at Vidar’s face. Water cascaded down his cut features and through the blond scruff of his short beard. And yet he still did not notice me. He continued staring blankly into the red ocean.
Something heavy and solid hit the back of my legs with the rush of another wave. I looked down to see the late captain himself, Ethelwoelf, the dreaded captain of the Mother’s Fang. To my people, he was the greatest menace and he’d been reduced to a bloated body floating on bloody waters with a dagger in his neck. A dagger that had been embedded there by his son. His skin was pasty and rotten with holes gnawed out by crabs. His eyes had been plucked out by birds and his lips had receded from his blunt teeth, making him an absolute horror to look at.
My eyes crept up Vidar’s body again and came to his face. If he wasn’t breathing, I’d have believed it was just his corpse stuck upright on a pole. He was so still and unmoving as the voices devoured the space around him.
“I will get you, Vidar!” a girl’s voice screamed, shrill and hateful. “I will not forget your name!”
I whipped my head around to search for the source of the voice, startled for a moment by the familiar tone. That scream. That anger. I knew it because it was me.
“You’re not scared of her coming for you,” another voice said. It was gruff and aged. “You’re scared she’ll be coming for us. And you’ll see another crew taken by the wicked tides.”
Still, Vidar did not even flinch. But it was at that point I knew where I was. I narrowed my eyes at his unmoving face and suddenly tasted his blood on my lips.
“If you eat of his flesh, you eat of his soul,” I whispered.
I skimmed his hand with my fingertips, remembering the crunch of bone when I bit off two of his fingers. I’d practically swallowed them whole. I remembered because my intent was not to eat him so I did not even chew. It was to maim him. But he got away anyway. Still, I’d eaten of his flesh. His blood found its way to my stomach and somehow into my being. I had tasted him again on that rocky island.
“You’re sleeping,” I muttered, kicking my foot out behind me to nudge Ethelwoelf’s body away from my legs. I stepped closer to Vidar and raised my chin, studying his rugged features. “Not very peacefully, it would seem.” Lifting my hand, I let the sharp nail of my finger trace the line of his jaw. “I am so tempted to make this nightmare worse for you. Would skinning you in this dream be as bad as skinning you on that island?” I nicked his chin with my nail and still, he did not flinch, even when the rain washed a stream of blood down his neck. “Or perhaps you’re too numb to feel it.”
The voices around us persisted until I could catch words here and there. Together with others, perhaps they were significant, but to me, they were only words. Haunting words. Words that clearly meant something to Vidar. I wished I could find a way to use them against him, but they were so damn vague.
“What are you saying?” I hissed, annoyed at the constant babble.
Vidar’s body suddenly jolted forward hard enough to push me off balance. I backed away from him as he toppled to the sand, a bone dagger just like the one he’d used to kill his own father lodged in his back. And standing in his place… was Vidar. He stepped over his own body, which quickly began to rot at my feet and attract crabs to the feast.
The new Vidar wore his captain’s coat and a leather tricorn hat, but his eyes were no less haunted. He stood at the water’s edge, staring out into the reddened sea, and set his jaw like he was preparing for a fight.
And then the voices grew more persistent. The weeping. The screaming. Only at that point, I could feel it. The cold chill of the rain finally found my spine and I shivered. My own voice echoed back to me once more, young and furious.
“I will get you, Vidar! I will not forget your name!”
Another voice joined the fray, one I recognized but never thought I’d hear again.
“Use it,” it spoke in a garbled tone. “Bronze and blood, my boy.”
I looked down at Ethelwoelf’s body to see his mangled jaw moving, stretching salt-swollen sinew as he spoke.
