Page 5 of The Withering Dawn
I was stuck between two dark and unknown paths, each capable of eating me alive. I thought I didn’t care too much about dying, but maybe I did.
Maybe when he picked me up like my life meant something, even if I wasn’t what he thought I was, a spark of light ignited somewhere in the dark recesses of my withering soul. It was warm. Unfamiliar.
I hadn’t felt warm in a long time.
I shook my head at him, silently refusing to leave.
With a grunt, he started to ascend the nets like he didn’t believe me. I watched him for a bit, waiting for my brain to come to its senses. It didn’t.
So, I started to climb, too.
I chided myself for being the dumbest siren that ever lived, going from one human prison to another. But I was not like others. I wasn’t like others in so many ways and like a dog on a leash, I followed the man up that netting and onto his ship, facing whatever fate he would decide for me.
When he told his men to put me in the hold, I wasn’t surprised. I was, after all, a monster. A monster with nothing. With no one. A monster without her claws or even her will to fight. I was led down into the hold where I was locked behind bars again, soaking wet, defeated, and somehow still glad that I pulled that man from the water.
Ashamed, tired, and feeling increasingly numb to the world, I curled up on the floor and closed my eyes, turning inward like I always did until the world disappeared and I was in the secluded silence of my mind.
I woke to the sound of a man clearing his throat. I quickly sat up and leaned against the wall in the corner, curling my knees to my chest when I spotted a middle-aged man sitting on the bench against the opposite wall with a notepad in his lap. He had a pair of small glasses balanced on the tip of his prominent nose and a premature gray streak of hair in his otherwise brown ponytail.
Something about him unsettled me. He had a slimy air about him and a faint stench that tickled my nose like food about to turn.
“Ah,” he said, his eyes sweeping over me like I was an artifact behind a glass pane. “Awake. Wonderful. Can you stand?”
He got up from the bench and approached the bars, waving a charcoal pencil at me.
“I’d like to get a good look at you from all angles. If you could just—”
Heavy boots stomped down into the hold, drawing both our eyes.
“What the fuck ye doin’?” a gruff voice said.
On the steps stood a man with a stout stature and a scruffy face. He wore a scarf around his head that covered shaggy, copper hair and he was holding a pile of cloth in his hand and a flattened pillow. But his eyes were fixed on the man with the glasses.
“Forgot ye have a patient, did ye, Henry? Cap’n’s needin’ a couple more stitches.”
“Right. Just wanted to pop in and see our new prisoner while he wandered about trying to get things in order.”
He tucked his notepad under his arm, pushed up his glasses, and walked toward the stairs, tossing me one last glance, but he didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, his gaze licked over my body in a way that made my skin tighten around me.
The other man tapped the bars as if to get my attention and tossed the cloth items into my cell.
“Cap’n asked me to bring this to ye,” he said.
I reached for what I could now tell was a set of sheets. I would have said thank you if I had a tongue, but I doubted it would matter. I only needed another day or two. I could feel it. My tongue was half the length it was supposed to be and felt awkward in my mouth. The regeneration was always stranger than the emptiness when it was severed in the first place. You’d think I would be used to all stages of my tongue’s regrowth, but I wasn’t.
If I was back on the Perry Smith, they’d be sharpening their blade for my next trimming or fixing a leather gag between my teeth.
But they were all dead now and I was glad for it.
“Told me to bring this as well,” the man said, holding up a metal cup. “It’s nothin’ fancy, but judgin’ by how skinny ye look, no bread or meat would do ye any good. It’s just a bit of bone broth.”
He put it on the ground and slid it through the bars, keeping a bit of distance. I knew the man from the water was their captain. They had all been shouting it when they thought he was going to die. I wondered if he had told them what I was. There was no other reason this man would be so cautious. I was so frail looking that if I were human, I’d practically be dead.
I took a deep breath and slowly reached for the cup. It was warm. The contents indeed was nothing fancy. Just some broth with particles floating in it from whatever stew or soup it had been scooped from, but it was much more than I was used to. I raised it to my lips and took a sip. The way it felt in my mouth was like sunshine on cold skin. I felt the color in my flesh returning. I felt my blood moving. I took another sip and then gulped the whole cup down eagerly, careless that it barely had any taste.
Then I placed the cup on the floor next to the bars again and wiped my lips with the back of my hand, draping the blanket over my almost bare legs.
“I’ll, uh… I’ll bring ye another,” the man said, staring at me like I was going to do some kind of trick. “You’ll need a little more on your bones no matter what the cap’n decides to do with ye.”
