In the back of his mind, though, behind all sense and beneath his happiness, the half-formed plot unfolded unencouraged.
I could race with her to the other shore. We could run inland, as far as the earth would hold us. No one could touch us there, not even Mother. No more errands, no more . . .
No more ocean.
Not worth considering. The prospect fled even the furthest corners of possibility. Why nurture it? There was no indignity or price worth that one last loss. He was immortal, so far as he knew, and his Mother was the queen of her kind, mistress of the tides. He might escape her if he wished hard enough, but it would cost too much.
But deep down, still underneath and mostly unheard, a small part of him mustered a faint objection. It was not so long ago that I settled for no master. Even the seas, I commanded.
The Gasparilla strained against him, only a little—only a nudge as the wind hauled it across the calm Gulf surface. He adjusted to account for the extra air and looked up at the stars so quickly that Bernice didn’t see him do it, even though she was suddenly standing beside him.
She put an arm around his waist and asked, “What’s it called? The island?”
“Captiva. You’ll like it there,” he murmured, unwilling for the moment to be drawn into old stories of prisoners and plunder. “It is beautiful. You might say that it’s captivating.”
She hopped down off the stand where the pilot’s wheel was mounted and went back to the rail. “I never liked living on an island last time.”
He’d forgotten about that. “But you won’t be living there now. We’ll only visit, and we’ll leave richer than we came. Surely you find that acceptable?”
Bernice thought it over and then shrugged, tossing her sticky curls. “I guess. Is it hot there?”
“Is it hot here? How far do you think we’re going?”
“It’s kind of hot. It’s not that bad, though,” she corrected herself quickly. “It’s nice with the breeze, here on the water.”
José tried to relax; he tried to shake off the irritation. “Yes, the water is fine. And I think you can suffer a few minutes of excessive warmth on shore—it won’t be the end of you. I wonder if . . . I can’t remember. There was a crown, a woman’s crown—a tiara, I think they call them. It was white gold with a blue-green diamond set in the forehead. I’m almost certain I left it with the chest at Captiva.”
“And if it’s there, I can have it?”
“I can think of no fairer home for it than upon your brow. I was saving it for someone who was worthy of it,” he said, more because it sounded nice than because it was true. He’d held on to the crown for the same reason he ever held on to anything—it was valuable, and eventually he could have sold it.
“Aren’t you sweet,” she said, batting her eyelashes and being deliberately, overtly coy. Between her fingers she was holding something small and shining. She twisted and tweaked it. She held it up to the sky and let it catch moonlight.
“Not in the least,” José cheerfully assured her. “I only believe that you’d slit my throat and take it if I tried to keep it from you.”
She laughed then, merry and fierce. The object in her hand bounced into the air and she caught it in her palm; she tossed it again, and caught it again.
“And you can’t even contradict me! What’s that you’re playing with?”
Bernice lifted it to show him, though it was too small to see from where he stood at the wheel. “It’s a mermaid, I think. A weird-looking mermaid.”
“Where did you get it?”
“In that music box. You know how they sometimes have little dancers or ballerinas in them?”
“Yes,” he said. He didn’t know, but he could guess what she meant.
She grinned and held the trinket up to her eye, examining it more closely as she spoke. “I used to have one like that. My mother got it for me from this little shop in the city. In New York City, I mean. We went to this little import store when I was just a kid. I heard this music box playing and when I pulled it down to look at it, there was a little shepherd girl, like Little Bo Peep. And when you opened the lid, she popped up—she was on a spring, or something—and she would twirl around, holding her bow, or her staff, or her . . . whatever it was, anyway, she stood still and spun around in a circle while the music played. I think it was from France.”
“That sounds right,” he said. “They make things like that there. I think perhaps they always have.”
“I wonder if this thing came from France.” She waved the small figure, pinching it between her thumb and finger. “It’s ugly. It’s a little monster mermaid. It almost makes me think of Mother.”
José heard the emphasis, and he knew which Mother she meant this time. Arahab was monstrous, yes. But not ugly, or at least he didn’t think so. She was exceedingly different from anything that ever walked the earth, but she was never meant to walk. Mother was made . . . not for the water, but maybe of it.
He hadn’t thought about it before. It hadn’t occurred to him that Arahab was ugly. Years before, he’d seen great whales and sharks that lumbered near the surface, graceless and heavy; but below they were swift angels, perfect and fast, and awful in the oldest sense of the word.
She was like that, too, their Mother was.
Behind his ribs and in the back of his skull, José objected to the idea of someone calling her ugly—even if that someone was Bernice. It wasn’t strict love that he felt for Arahab. It wasn’t strict respect, either. It was something else altogether, hovering between the two and incorporating a touch of fear.
“It sort of looks like her, doesn’t it?” Bernice asked, wagging the ugly mermaid. “Not its split tail, like legs that end in fins. That’s not what I mean. I mean its face, maybe. The way it’s all blank and cold.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” José said, not looking to see how she waved the broken piece of the music box.
“Wouldn’t what?”
“Never mind, love. Get rid of it, already. Throw it overboard, if that’s what you intend to do.”
“You haven’t even looked at it yet.”
“Who cares? If it looks like Mother and it makes you think of her, give it to her. Be gracious. Turn your insult into a gift.”
Sullen, Bernice hoarded the mermaid in the cup of her hand. “I wasn’t trying to insult her.”
“Prove it,” he said with a sharpness that signaled a command. He was tired of the subject; he only wanted to sail, find his island. If she’d leave him alone and let him concentrate, he could have them there in an hour. It would take another hour more to find his old spot and retrieve the promised treasure, and then they would need to take to the water again—without the Gasparilla.
The ship was too conspicuous. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed it was gone. The odds were good that the boat would be missed before the people who’d been drunkenly sleeping or playing upon it. Those men and women, and that boy—they’d been wealthy, José had to assume. The Gasparilla was a gauche, unholy tragedy of faux cheer and incorrect nostalgia, but it had probably cost a fortune.
Someone would miss the people, too, if only to note their absence and then mount a great cacophony of outrage and vengefulness.
But if José knew anything about humanity, they’d miss the boat first.
Bernice made another grumpy whimper and then reached her arm back. She launched the metal mermaid into the Gasparilla’s wake, where it sank.
“There. I made a wish, and it’s gone. Are you happy now?”
“Perfectly, yes.”
“You’re a grouchy old bastard.”
“You’re not the first to suggest it,” he said. He pressed his torso against the wheel and enjoyed the spokes, enjoyed the wood spreading out like a hand to grasp him. “Tonight, though. Tonight there’s no reason to be anything but fine.”
Bernice snorted. “Fine? Aim low, why don’t you.”
“Fine, yes. It’s much more manageable than joy or bliss. The weather is fin
e, the water is fine, the wind is fine, and we have this fine ship. You have no reason to feel otherwise.”
“All right, Captain,” she said.
He didn’t mind that she added a note of mockery to the word. She didn’t understand, so he couldn’t hold it against her, even when she continued to tease him.
She left the craft’s edge and came back to José at the wheel. Folding her legs beneath herself, she sat at his feet. “How much longer until we get there?”
“Not long. Be patient.”
“I’m not very good at patient,” she confessed.
“I know. Do it for me, or, if nothing else will hold your attention, do it for the tiara with the diamond. You can control yourself for another hour, can’t you?”
“Sure. But just an hour. How long have we been out here, anyway?”
“About half that long.”
She sprawled out prettily on the deck. “And you used to do this all the time?”
He nodded and did not look at her. “All the time.”
“All day?”
“All day, for weeks. For months.”
“Jesus,” she groaned. “I don’t know how you stood it.”
José shrugged. “You lived in the city, didn’t you? Surrounded by people, and smoke, and trash, and noise. All day, every day, for months at a time? Well. I don’t know how you could stand that.”
“But the city was great.”
“And so was the ocean.”
Bernice scooted herself over until she found José’s foot, which she used for a pillow.
“Is that comfortable?” he asked.
“Terribly,” she confirmed. “I might even take a nap.”
“By all means,” he told her.
She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, tilting her sharp-cheeked, bloodstained face up to the stars. She folded her arms across her chest. She took a deep breath and was quiet enough for José to ignore her.
The rest of the way, he did his best not to move his foot.
After less time than he’d estimated, the sky said he was close. He watched for the shoreline. The moon could show only so much, and small lights burned here and there—but only here and there. Not many people lived on the island, or few were home. Why would they be? The big festival was under way a few miles in the distance, and it would continue to run for days.
A small pier, much too small to dock a craft like the Gasparilla, played host to a string of fishing boats and dinghies with oars crossed inside.
José skirted the shore’s edge, staying far enough out to escape the notice of any late-night beachcombers. He withdrew his foot from underneath Bernice’s head, and when she grunted at him, one eye open and accusing, he said, “I need to pull some sails. Would you care to assist?”
“Not really.”
He said, “You’ll be sailing with me on the Arcángel, you know—and it will be as first mate, not as passenger. It would be worth your time to learn a few things now.”
“I’ll learn them later. You said so yourself, this night is for fun, not for a mission.”
“I’m the captain, aren’t I? I suppose I could order you to take up a rope.”
“I suppose you could try.”
A spike of something hot and almost angry shot through his chest. He forced it down and pushed it aside, more because it did him no good than because he was afraid of it. She doesn’t understand, he told himself. It’s not something I can hold against her. She is only a woman, and a young one, at that. She is only beautiful.
She was still sitting beside the wheel, now leaning back on her elbows and saying without a word that she had no intention whatsoever of rising. Her breasts were pushed forward under the light, gore-speckled blouse, and her hair was drying into a mess of sea air and tangles.
“What an unrepentant little wench you are,” he said. He tried to make it sound teasing and friendly.
“And you love it,” she accused. “You know you do.”
“Of course I do. I’d never tolerate it otherwise.”
She laughed, again because she didn’t understand. The cheerfully wicked sound tinkled through the night. “You tolerate me. Is that how it works?”
“I tolerate you, with love. What’s so bad about that?”
She stopped laughing. A smile lingered, indicating that perhaps she was more aware than he’d thought. “It’s a fine balance.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Be quiet now. We’re close, and it’s been so long since I’ve visited. I’m not sure what sort of reception we might expect, if any. And I can’t recall the closest way to the zanja.”
“The what?” Bernice scanned the shoreline, a motionless black line on shifting blue-black water. It told her almost nothing, so she asked him again. “What did you call it?”
He hunted in his memory for an English equivalent. “The hole. There’s a place on the island, not so far from the shore—it’s a place where the ground sank and left the greatest pit you ever saw. If it were a little bit larger, and if it had an outlet to the water . . . then it would make a perfect harbor, hidden and overgrown.”
“I don’t get it.”
“When water moves underground,” he tried. “Like a river flowing through a cave, do you understand?”
“Yeah, I get it.” Though he could tell that she didn’t.
As he reached for the ropes and the nets and tugged the sails into position or out of the way, he tried to explain. “The water carves as it moves, and sometimes, after a long time, it carves away so much that the earth collapses. Think of it as a cave without a ceiling, and that should give you some idea. There’s water in the bottom—not always, but sometimes—and in my zanja, the pool is deep enough to float a large boat.”
“And you want to sail this thing into it?”
“No, no. We couldn’t if we tried, not unless Mother saw fit to lend a hand. The pit is too far from the shore, and surrounded by earth or rock on all sides. The spring that feeds it empties to the ocean, but it gets there underground, and not by any river or stream. I only imagined that it would be a wonderful harbor. I used to dream of sailing my own ship into it, and dropping anchor, and fearing nothing.”
He returned to the wheel and took its spokes in hand.
“I had even thought that one day, when I was finished with my work, I might live there. I could almost afford to buy the entire island outright, back then. At least I could have owned much of it, and owned it fairly, and legally. By then, Spain was ready to sell the whole peninsula to the old English colonies, and there was a chance I might be left alone. It was easier then, to change a name, shave a beard, and hide.”
“You used to have a beard?”
“I told you, we spent months onboard the ship.”
“Ugh,” Bernice said. She propped her elbows up on the rail and put her chin in her hands.
“And now that I know how strongly you disapprove, I will never grow it again, my princess. But”—he maneuvered the ship around a sandbar he suspected more than remembered, and began to push toward shore—“I thought that I might become a respectable landowner, on an island like this—or maybe Sanibel, or some other. I could live on what we’d plundered for another hundred lifetimes, were I so blessed to live them. You must understand, I was a very old man for my profession.”
Bernice made a short, idle hum that falsely indicated that she was paying attention.
José’s arms did the work of two men, and sometimes three. He pulled the masts and mainyards into alignment. He tied everything down to hold it, and he returned to the wheel to guide the craft forward.
“I knew that I didn’t have too many years left ahead of me. I would’ve been a fool to think otherwise. And so yes, there is this island—and there is a place here that I love, and I thought it would be fine to retire from the ocean and live here, surrounded by the water and safe from those searching it for me.”
“But you got greedy. That’s what Mother said.”
That was true, and fair. And it did not offend
him. “I should not have chased the last ship,” he admitted.
She lifted her face from its nest in her hands. “So why did you? If you already had more money than a king, why chase one more score?”
He tilted his head and lifted a hand in a gesture that said nothing. “To have more. And since it’s no more complicated than that, I don’t imagine I would have made a very good retired buccaneer, so it’s just as well I never had the chance to be one.”
“What about now?”
“What?” he asked, not understanding. “What about now? Can’t this ship be the last one? Nothing’s keeping you anymore, except—”
He cut her off. “Except for you. And Mother, who does as she likes. And things are different since we met her, aren’t they? Let them catch us if they can, for all we care. Their laws have no authority over us.”
Bernice stood up straighter and turned her back to the rail to lean against it. “You’re not worried about anybody catching us?”
“I wasn’t when I was alive. Why should I be now?”
She smiled, a malicious little streak that tugged at the blood painted on her face. “I knew I liked you for some reason.”
He pretended not to hear her. “We’re here,” he said.
“What, now?” She turned around again and looked off into the water. “All the way out here?”
“Any closer and we’ll scrape bottom. This island has no harbor for us, darling. From here on out, we swim or row—the choice is yours.”
Before he could even glance over to the lifeboat strung from the other hull, Bernice was in the water again. He heard her enter hands-first in a perfect dive, with a splash so small, she could’ve been a fish.
Although he was only just beginning to dry off, José followed her.
Holes and Hideaways
He hit the surface with a similar splash, quiet enough to be mistaken for an oar, or a bird. The black bath engulfed him, and he swam blindly through it in the direction of his island. He had left the Gasparilla’s anchor raised so the boat was free to drift behind him.