Rune’s mouth drops open. “Youlether disarm me.”
She rolls her eyes, a smile still playing on her lips. The oars push us forwards with every slice into the water. “Youlet her disarm you.”
“After,” I point out, sitting up now that he’s given me space to breathe again, “you chained yourself to me.”
Rune scoffs, but his eyes are bright. “So it’s my fault? Bear, help me out here.”
Otto shakes his head. “Sorry, Cap. Saw it coming from a mile away.”
“I just don’t see why you haven’t given me a weapon yet.” My voice is dangerously close to a whine. I feel bare. The missing weight at my hip is a constant reminder of how vulnerable I am.
“You had one in arm’s reach for five seconds and I’m already bleeding,” Rune says, lifting a brow.
I bat my eyelashes innocently. “Then you shouldn’t be so careless.”
The first brush of sand under the row boat takes me by surprise. Rune hops out, getting soaked up to his thighs. His brows lift as he catches my wandering attention, a knowing glint in his eye. “But how else would I distract you from your debilitating fear of the ocean?”
We spend the first night on the shore. We circle the island twice to find the best spot, then hunters and scouts spend the entirety of the late afternoon canvasing the area. Otto gets the game salted and set over a massive fire to smoke. The crew take his direction as easily as Rune’s, bringing a continual supply of wood from just within the trees. Strapped to their captain, I can do little to help. Instead, we pitch a large tent and makeshift table, where Tavi lays out parchment like it’s precious glassware.
“There’s been no obvious concerns,” Rune says. “Arond said the game trail to the west leads deep inland, I figured we’d start there.”
Tavi uses the sharp of a small blade to hone the tip of string-wrapped black lead. She’s only outlined the island’s eastern shore and faintly marked where the scouts reported landmarks, but it’s already beautiful.
Outside, the sun truly sets just as Soraya starts to sing, the melody floating through the waxed canvas and urging me forwards. It’s melancholy at first, that kind that tugs like the tide. Some of the others join, not all perfectly in tune, but the dissonance isn’t out of place on this forgotten island, where yet more may find they’ve stepped offThe Gilded Hartfor the last time. Perhaps they sing for those they’ve already returned to the sea. Or those who will be gone before they go back home again. The love that has touched their lives and then vanished, leaving everything muted, colder than before.
Slowly, something hollows in me. Or perhaps the hollow is only uncovered, this wound I nurselike a babe. The one that reminds me of what life isn’t. What it could have been. I reach for the necklace that’s no longer at my throat, the ache in my chest flaring again. I’d lost it. After years, I’d lost the only thing my mother was able to give me before she died. The only proof that I wasn’t Ivor’s spawn alone. She’d said it was special. That only the ocean could choose who wore it. After she’d died, I’d spent long nights clutching it as a child, waiting for the worst to come, sure that either the water would take it, or the night would swallow me whole.
“Do you want to join them?”
Rune’s voice rips me from my thoughts. I hadn’t realised the way he was staring. He doesn’t wait for my answer, just walks us through the tent flap and back under a sky that opens into a sea of stars. The chain clanks once as the backs of our hands brush. Everyone is gathered around a bonfire, some taking a turn roasting meat in the flame. Elio strums a lute, but the sound is nearly lost to the chorus of voices.
Tide take their souls
To the shore of the after
Shepherd them gently
In the sweet sweeping foam
Sea see them sweetly
Their sailor’s souls silent
Woes buried by billows
Bones beckoned home
We find a seat in the sand, and then Rune is singing too, a low baritone that tickles the nerve endings in my neck and spine.
“I don’t know the words,” I say, when he nudges me to join. The admission shouldn't catch in my throat, but I have to look away, hoping the fire won’t betray the mist that blurs my eyes. Pirates don’t sing for the dead.
By the time it’s done, I’ve curled my knees into my chest and stare into the flames, oblivious as they go on to dance and clap along with the next tune.
“That song always reminds me of my mother,” Rune says, keeping his gaze forwards. “My father wouldn’t allow it at her funeral, but I sang it for her every night, in the water, hoping my voice would reach wherever she’d gone.”
He’d lost his mother too. He’d said as much, when I’d baited him before, but hearing it now reminds me there’s a whole life behind him that I know nothing about. He goes quiet, and I say nothing, too torn open to push down the wave of emotion that crests over me, but too stubborn to let it pull me under.
After a moment, he sighs and leans back on his arms, tugging at the chain between us. “This is the part where you offer a heartwrenching anecdote that balances the scales of your past, before finally admitting you’ve fallen for my boyish charms.”
