The Pirate King Ch. 22

The next few moments were filled with silence punctuated with quiet swears and the soft drip of water from fingers growing pruned from dipping and marking over and over and over. When she was finished, Cassandra leaned back in her chair. The merman, who had a sister with the gift, had been sitting quite patiently as he understood the necessity and importance of sudden clairvoyance. However, that did not mean he was not curious. He cleared his throat pointedly.

Cassandra slowly began to shake her head. A smile spread over her lips. "Holy fucking shit," the prophetess finally said. She turned to the merman, her smile turning into a full-blown grin. "I have to say, I did not see that coming. Would you like more tea?"

*****

This is how the stories go. The man enters the underworld, bereft, and begs for his love. The death god grants his wish, but it is conditional. You must not look back. You must sing the whole way. You must never let go of his hand. And the man, because he is human, because he must, because of fate, fails.

I am not a man. My lover, he does not believe in fate. And neither of us had ever had the bad fortune of finding ourselves to be conditional.

Still, I had thought I would need to carry his soul back from the underworld. That is how the stories go. That is how the myths are told. But my Captain, my love, he has never been, will never be what I expect.

His soul twined about my form as I made the walk back to the gates, cool and dry and filled with dark brightness that made my skin shiver everywhere it brushed. When I had entered the halls of Dave he had leapt to me, his laugh the only sound filling that hall, ringing out and drowning out whatever greeting Dave might have tried to give.

I do not think Dave greeted me. I think there was only my love, his darkness, his laughter. His control. Dave had never stood a chance; why had I thought this would be difficult? Why had I ever believed Dave to be anything of consequence? As I turned to go, between peals of joy and amusement and the feeling of his soul against mine, I could have sworn I heard the god of death sigh in relief.

My love laughed the whole way back to the surface. I could hear it, feel it, taste it. I lived it. I wanted more, I could have breathed it, it was so essential to my being. I wondered if perhaps his soul was made up of it, his laugh, the breath from his lungs, the burning kiss of a thousand stars. My need. My quiet, sure love for him that I poured into the space between our atoms and tickled at the backs of our eyes.

I had thought I would need to carry him. I should have known, should have realized, that he would be the one to carry me.

The gate was still open when we reached it, leaking light and life into this dark, cold place. There should have been some import here, perhaps, some moment of consequence, but we were greater than the weight of the world and we simply walked through the threshold, held together by light and dark and salt and wind and love, love, love.

I don't know what we looked like to mortal eyes. No; there were no mortal eyes in that place. I don't know what Miranda saw, her good eye narrowing and her burnt, clouded orb seeming to turn away. Nor did I care. I waded through the narrow stream to where I had left the Captain's body, then knelt.

His soul wrapped around my torso, slipping under my clothes to find and tug at the molecules that made up my skin. I tasted eternity. I saw the end of all the worlds, the beginning of each and every star.

"Love," I said quietly. My hand landed quietly on his body.

And still, his soul lingered.

I knew his hesitation, understood why he looked at a body and thought, even for a moment, that it might be less than what he had now. But I also knew that he could return to this as he wished. Couldn't I? Wasn't I a body, an ocean, a water droplet, and all of these things existed in truth and in opposition and simply were what I was? And so I knew it was not a problem for my Captain to be the whole of the sky and to also be a smile, to have hands, to walk on feet here with me on this earth. To kiss me. To hold me. And had I not found these things to be as great, as awesome, as the truth of the sea?

Nor, truly, did it surprise me to find him so filled with eternity. Had I not seen this a thousand times already? I felt his soul press against his body and it felt no different to me than it ever had to me before. The only surprise to me was that he seemed so new in his knowledge of himself.

"Love," I said again. I felt patient. I felt my oceans just under my skin, an inch away from the sky, felt how they were small compared to the eternity of the blackness of space. Felt how the molecules of my salt and water were nothing compared to the number of stars contained in the smallest, gentlest portions of my love's soul.

I wanted to tell him that this was not the end of his discovery. That, instead, this was the beginning of something new. And I would be here for every step. But I did not have the words.

And so I showed him instead.

When my lips first met his they were cold and lifeless, all of him still contained in the laughter around my body. But soon there was less and less of him on my skin and more and more of him in the form I held and soon he was kissing me back, his arms snaking around my neck and his hand coming to anchor in my hair. I gasped as he bit my lip and his mouth parted and that laugh came cracking out once again, and I felt the sky cover my skin yet again even as I held it in my arms breathing and solid and alive.

We said no words. We had no need for them. I helped him to his feet, his soul finding home in his body in spurts and jumps that left him jerking and alternatively shaking with power and on the verge of collapse. I looped my arm under his shoulder and supported him, would always support him, as he laughed and laughed and loved me and I loved him. It was like that that we took our leave from that threshold place. Two bodies entwined. Two souls threatening to leap from the bodies they had found themselves within.

We walked past Miranda on the way out. She stood, her arms crossed, pottery shattered at her feet. I held my love and waded upstream, bare feet rejoicing in smooth stones and sand, until her pursed lips were the barest memory and I again felt the sun on my face.

***

Just south of the Northernmost Island, where the former kings of the North crossed paths and changed the fabric of the world as a man learned what it meant to be the universe, or, perhaps, as the universe learned what it meant to be a man, a splendid ship bobbed on the sea. The sails were meticulous, the decks perfectly clean. Not a rope was out of place, not a man without a job. Even Ghost, as exacting as he was, would find it difficult to find fault with such a ship.

He might, of course, be too busy finding fault with the man who stood at the rail, staring up at the sky.

There was nothing outwardly wrong with him. Like his ship, he was meticulous, his blonde beard clipped into shape and light wavy hair held back in a neat braid. His clothing was clean and well-kept, his ensemble so simple that it bordered on uniform. He actually had a navy uniform that he quite liked to put on and look at himself in, as he cut quite a dashing figure in the bright red and black, but he hated the idea of the navy on principle and could never bring himself to wear it.

Not that anyone would say anything about it. After all, he was King.

The entire crew, without their Captain really noticing, had all adopted his austere and clean-cut approach to clothes. Gone were the bright purple scarves and red pantaloons. Gone were the ruby encrusted bracelets and gold teeth. They wore enough earrings to preserve their paths to the after life, a talisman that could be tucked into their shirt or hidden from view, and perhaps the occasional bracelet flashed in the sun. That was all. It was unclear if this was because all men who preferred louder clothing choices had already been singled out and therefore were not longer with the crew (or, often, alive), or if the others had heard this unspoken message and had shifted their clothing accordingly.

Whatever the reason, the man standing beside the King now was much the same. He wore a simple white shirt that tucked into brown breeches. His hair was cropped close to his head. The only thing that set him apart from someone you might find on the docks was a tattoo that wrapped around his arm as if it had intention, that, when looked at from the corner of your eye, seemed to move. If you had walked a bit too close to him, trying to get a closer view of that strange, strange tattoo, you might have noticed the strangest smell, briny, dark, as if you were standing on the bottom of the ocean.

"Sir," he said quietly. The King sighed and put down his spyglass.

"It came from the Island."

He was not looking for confirmation. He was correct; he knew it, the man beside him knew it, the whole of the ocean knew it. The man waited for instructions.

He waited a long time as the King stood silently staring out over his oceans. Then, finally, he sighed, his hands coming to rest clasped behind his back.

"Well," he said, "I supposed it's been a while since I've seen my sister." His eyes narrowed for a moment and the man beside him felt his mouth go dry, a moment of nervousness that was as familiar on this deck as the call of directions. But the moment passed as the King began to smile, his face relaxing. "And my brother at the same time. How fortuitous. North, then." And with that simple instruction, left dropped at the first mate's feet to hurry and scoop up, dissect, and enact perfectly, the King turned and strode across the deck, whistling quietly to himself as he did. Although it was considered bad luck, none of the men said a word as they nodded their respect and hurried to look busy under the slowly repairing sky.