Angra do Heroísmo sits atop a volatile convergence of tectonic shelves and deep-sea fissures. Preliminary surveys suggest that the bay’s uncanny calm is not meteorological but biological—an unseen force beneath the shelf that regulates current flow. Whether this organism is singular or a colony remains a matter of debate.
— The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
It was hard not to stare at my wife. I constantly found myself watching her doing mundane tasks or interacting with the crew. She was a study in growth and what happens when someone finds themselves. No longer did she listen to phantom ghosts telling her what she wasn’t.
Seas help the man or woman who tried to tell her she was anything less than she was now.
Even now, as she shouted orders to prepare for port, she moved with an effortless ease. No longer clumsy on her own feet, but sure of every step.
“Sir?” a small voice said. “I mean, Captain?”
A week and a half of travel, and I had yet to get used to the presence of Kit on my ship. Even though I had been a boy when I joined a crew with Billy, it was something else to be on this end of it. Sometimes I found myself lying awake at night worrying about whether or not it would be better for him to leave him at a safe port, to pay someone for his care.
Then I would remember exactly what I was seeing now.
A boy with meat on his bones and color in his skin. His shaggy hair was freshly cut by Emille, and his smile was far more frequent these days. Even if I found a home for him that I trusted, I doubted I could convince Val to let him go. The two were as thick as thieves.
Once, Val told me she never cared about anything enough to fight for it since joining my crew. I suspected that was no longer true.
“Kit,” I answered.
The boy’s answering smile at the use of his name tugged at something long buried in me. A name had power. To hear your own name when it was long forgotten did something to a person.
“I wanted to say something, and Val said I shouldn’t, but I think I have to, Sir–I mean Captain,” he said.
“Val is usually right, though I would thank you not to tell her I said so,” I answered.
The wind blew a hard gust, and the chill air set in around us, but Kit merely kept on smiling, hands in his pocket as he fidgeted with his feet.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” he said. “You didn’t have to take me from Newgate, and you definitely didn’t need to let me on your ship, but you did.”
I swallowed, trying to block out the warmth that pulled in me at the sincerity in his words. It was a rarity. A blessing and a curse that children endured–always being too sincere, too honest–until it was beaten out of them by adults and the cruelty of the world.
That despite his terrible start at life, he could still bear that level of sincerity, which was, at its core, vulnerability.
“Someday you might not thank me for it,” I said. “We are criminals, Kit. If the navy ever caught us, we would hang, and you’d be lucky if that was your fate too, rather than go back to Newgate.”
I could practically hear Rose chastising me on how terrible I was at talking to children, but Kit deserved honesty so that if given the choice, he could make one he could live with.
He nodded, smile disappearing to make way for a firm set of the jaw that could only mean resolve.
“All the same, Sir–Captain,” he said, steel in his voice. “Being on the Wraith is the happiest I’ve ever been. I have everything I could want, and I get to see things people only dream about. If the price of that is hanging, then I’d still choose it.”
Aye, just like a boy I once knew.
It’d been a while since I heard Billy’s voice, but I should have known he’d show himself in the face of this moment.
I knelt down before Kit and held out my hook between us.
“Sometimes the price of this life is pieces of ourselves. Sometimes we give more than we get, but when the sea is in your blood, and the wind is what carries you, it’s all worth it.”
My voice was thick with the kind of sincerity I only ever reserved for my wife. Kit nodded and straightened his shoulders.
“I understand, Captain,” he said. “I’ll make you proud, just you wait.”
If I were a stronger man, I would have told him he already did. Choosing to smile when life had only ever shown him cruelty was something that inspired me more than pink skies and calm seas.
So instead I stood and used my good hand to ruffle his hair.
