“Not you, miss. But magic is dangerous.”
So it was. I thanked the boy and sent him out.
My next visitor proved to be the cook.
“You have five minutes to tell me what you’d like for dinner and to inspect me, too, ’fraid that’s all I can spare.” The words would’ve been brusque if the man didn’t seem so merry. Mr. Smalt, as he introduced himself, had cooked for Captain Jax for several years now. As I studied him for signs of the curse, he cheerfully told me of all the places he’d seen since joining the crew.
“And to think, the palace sacked me, and the head chef said I’d never amount to anything!” Mr. Smalt finished brightly.
“Palace?” My cheeks colored a bit.
“I come from Endergeist, where we picked you up,” he explained, oblivious to my discomfort. “Shame, what you had to do to that princess. The king and queen waited so long to finally have a little one of their own.”
My stomach sank, almost all the way to my toes. In fact, if it fell through the polished planks of the captain’s cabin, straight through the underbelly of the ship and into the bottom of the ocean, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.
“People used to get so excited if there was even the rumor the queen was with child,” he rambled on. “Lovely that it finallyhappened. Guess there’s worse things, though, then having a babe who sleeps all the time, eh?”
I bristled at that. “A curse is no light matter, and the princess is not asleep.”Yet.“The spell won’t take hold until she is of age. I’m not needlessly cruel.”
“I know,” replied Mr. Smalt. “That curses are not a light matter, I mean. Can’t say I know you well enough to assess your character, though you seem nice enough. Bit stiff.”
As if to prove his point, my back went rigid. I wanted to be offended, but couldn’t quite manage it. Part of this was because of his jovial demeanor.
The rest was because I was quickly becoming fed up with this curse. I was back to wondering if I had been misled.
Bluebeard hadn’t fabricated the details, had he? Not that he’d given me many. Then again, I’d rushed into making the deal with him, convinced it was the only way out.
I closed my eyes a moment, listing what I knew for sure.
Iknewthere was a curse. The way the second curse reacted when I laid it upon Bluebeard was proof. There was already a curse present.
Iknewthat death magic and cursed objects were real. I’d studied quite a few of them at Dewspell, and read about hundreds more.
So why—and how—was the curse hiding from me?
“One thing I’ll say for this curse,” Mr. Smalt said, changing subjects as though we had, in fact, been discussing the curse already, “it does keep me from slicing myself in the kitchen, long as we aren’t too close to the Hidden Isle.”
That had me blinking to clear my vision, no longer focused on magic but on the cook’s ruddy face. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Didn’t the captain tell you? We can’t be killed or even take more than a bit of a walloping until we get closer to the isle. It’s part of the curse.”
Part of the curse. The Hidden Isle.That description tickled something in my memory.
I thanked Mr. Smalt for his help, confirmed my choice of menu and my dietary restrictions, and sent him on his way.
My third visitor proved to be the man I’d first mistaken for Captain Bluebeard.
He was almost as tall as Jax, though built a bit leaner. Still, I wouldn’t want to be paired up against either of them in combat drills. First Mate Aoki looked as though he could take on a bear, but there was more than just brute strength to him. A hard edge hid behind his dark eyes—eyes I remembered from the night this ship was boarded and its crew dispatched. I suspected he had a more ruthless nature than the other pirates I’d met so far, and that he didn’t particularly care to keep it hidden.
I still hadn’t asked what was done with the survivors from the original crew. If there were any. I didn’t have the heart to, and frankly, it wasn’t my job. Fairy godmothers had all sorts of missions, and it was imperative we didn’t carry our own standards into the various countries and cultures we went to.
This pirate ship was undoubtedly a culture all its own.
“I can only spare a few minutes,” Aoki said, tone flat as if he’d like to be anywhere but here. “This ship is operating with a skeleton crew as it is.”
“Trust me, I won’t need long.” I resigned myself to more failure.
This time, however, as I studied the first mate, I held my hands up to either side of his temples, an act he had to stoop for.There.At last! I could feelsomething.
