My lungs are burning.
I’m trying to get onto the beach, but the salt water is in my mouth, my nose and my eyes.
The eyes are the worst. They sting me so bad I can’t open them, and I don’t know just how much longer I have to keep fighting for my dear life to get onto the sand.
I dart my hands in front of myself again. This time my nails scrape the sand, little pebbles hurting my fingertips.
I’m just a man abandoned,
Cast aside, left alone,
By those I thought were friends,
But their true colors were shown.
Oh, Mother, what would you do if you were betrayed like that?
She’d probably fling a bottle of wine right over their heads. Yes, that’s exactly what she’d do. But I don’t have a bottle within reach, and I’ve already lost this round.
But you know what, Vinicola? You’re not a loser. You’re the man who will rise above this, no matter how fast your heart is pounding. You’ll live to tell the tale.
Father always said, “Dead men tell no tales.” He heard it from his privateer friends and kept repeating it over and over.
Well, it stuck with me.
I’m a storyteller who will keep singing my songs, no matter what.
“Just a bit more, Flaxen Hair,” I hear Miss Captain’s voice. She’s laughing at me. “You’re almost on the shore.”
That’s cruel. But at least, she’s telling the truth.
I push forward, dragging myself until I can feel the solid ground beneath me. When I finally collapse on the wet sand, my chest heaving with effort, I feel both triumphant and utterly defeated.
Someone comes over to me, and by the deep, pronounced footfalls and a heavy slap on my wet back, I assume it’s Zayan.
“Get up, man,” he says. “I caught your songbook.” He drops the notebook next to me, just a hand’s reach away where it won’t get touched by the waves. “Just don’t sing or I’ll cut your tongue off.”
I groan, feeling the exhaustion in every muscle of my body. Slowly I pick myself up, checking if the songbook got wet. It didn’t. I don’t know how that’s even possible, but I’m not the one to complain when luck shines my way.
Still, I won’t thank Zayan. Hethrewme off the ship.
“Uh-uh,” I mutter, squinting up at him through the salty sting in my eyes. “Did you save my dignity too, or was that too heavy to carry?”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “Your dignity? Oh, that sank faster than you did.”
“Mm, I thought so. You couldn’t carry it out because you don’t know what it even is,” I blurt out in response.
Miss Captain chuckles a couple of feet away. Zayan cocks a brow.
I just untie my leather vest and take it off.
He watches me in the process before creaking a smile as Gypsy is walking towards the line of the jungle. She can’t hear us anymore when he tells me, “I changed my mind about you. I don’t want to kill you anymore.”
“Is that so?” I reply.
He’s referring to the conversation we had when he was supposed to get me onto the land. He told me then that if we weren’t just the three of us here, and Gypsy wouldn’t have absolute certainty that if something happened to me it would be because of him, he’d kill me.
I’m sure he meant that.
