12
…To freedom wi th all heart
“I don’t think I really caught your name,” Captain Pierce said to me, his gaze to the bow I made moments ago with a pair of tights and a broken oar.
“Donna,” I answered.
A soft chuckle escaped him. “Donna Balboa.”
And for some reason, my full name coming out of a renowned pirate captain’s mouth, was enough to hearten me and start to believe, once and for all, that yes, I was born to be one of those. That I was ready and willing, and that I did have what it took to be a pirate, because after all and before all else, I loved.
I wanted to be all three: the madman, the romantic, and the pirate.
“You know they're going to start talking about that indestructible arrow of yours, don’t you?” he continued saying, “Five doubloons that it gets to Loro before us, and you have a ballad as soon as you step foot into port. ”
Duke laughed behind me. “I double that bet.”
“They were from the royal navy, I highly doubt they will follow us to Loro…” I looked around and saw how Jonah and Efren approached us with a loud laugh. “Will they?” I whispered, confused by the secret laughter that everyone was sharing except with me.
“The winds, love,” Captain Pierce explained with a smirk. “They are the ones who move the stories from sea to land.”
I glanced up at the sails, filled and driven by Ventus’ breath, standing motionless as questions furrowed my brow, my thoughts tangled in the wind as the captain’s voice droned on.
“Men write songs from legends carried by the winds.” He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a murmur. “And you are about to hear your name in one for the first time, pirate .”
That word sent a shiver rippling through me, like an icy current coursing from head to toe, only to surge back up and settle in my heart, squeezing it in rhythm with the crashing waves.
I took a deep breath and smiled.
Go live, Lady Love.
“Does that mean I can stay?” Please, could he say yes? “I bring no trouble.”
He tilted his head, his gaze lingering on me with the kind of smile that made it impossible to tell if the gesture was an invitation or a joke, and said, “The most boring of statements.”
He threw me the pink shell that Dara put in my hair just this morning and I caught it with both hands. “You and your Goddess figure out a way to get us to the Heartbreak Harbor without scratching my ship, and you can sail on The Rebecca under my command.”
We can do that, Lady Love.
My eyes widened at the voice in my head. Again that voice, a voice that I believed to be the fruit of my nervousness and anxiety, my fear and loneliness, an invention of my subconscious to justify what was happening to me. But it felt like… Surely something it couldn’t be.
My thoughts were immediately interrupted by the voice of the captain.
“Jonah, give her some clothes,” he said, pointing at me. “Everyone be ready to dock port at midnight. And be prepared to waste some ammunition.” He continued talking as he turned around and headed for the cabin. “I owe money to that whole bloody island.”
???
Tucked away in the privacy of a small cabin with a bunk bed—where Jonah had told me I’d find clothes—I had already changed into boots, brown pants, and a white linen shirt tied at the chest with a loose bow. Finally, I could sit quietly with my thoughts.
In the span of a single morning, my entire life had shifted.
Just last night, I was whispering my farewell to the sea, and today I was sailing aboard the fastest ship in the Nine Seas, alongside one of the most infamous and wanted pirates of the Four Kingdoms .
I woke up this morning about to be named Lady Hart, forced to leave behind all the legends and myths that I so wished were true, and now I was living one. All those years and that hopeful little girl was right after all. The books were right. All this time, I had convinced myself that the call of the sea was nothing more than a romantic notion for ballads and bedtime stories—yet now, it seemed I was truly hearing it. Thalassa was calling me, my father left me her mark.
I had the favor of the seas.
“Are you really Thalassa?” I whispered urgently into the small cabin, hoping that voice would hear me—the same voice that had guided me since I first stepped into that church and began to understand who I truly was, and always would be, no matter how hard they tried to change me.
I waited for an answer but my mind was quiet, so I tried again with the question I was dying to ask. “Did you know my father?”
Silence again.
I carefully ran my fingers over the bloodstained wedding dress I had folded and placed on the bed beside me. “Thank you for saving me. The sea saved me, right? You saved me.” I caressed the corset completely disassembled, opened in half by the knife that had been stuck in my stomach minutes before, and then pulled out by the same person who nailed it there.
I had some help with the rescue, Lady Love.
I leaped out of the bed in an instant.
“Are you Thalassa?” I asked again out loud. “Can I talk to you? ”
She was the Goddess of the Nine Seas, she ruled the ocean and had been receiving offerings and listening to prayers for centuries, who was I to establish a simple and mundane conversation with her? Just an ignorant girl.
That is one of my many names, yes. I am the sea, Lady Love . You can call for me anytime you need.
My heart started to beat very loudly. “Can I really?”
Anyone who passed by this instant or opened the door, would see a girl completely lost in madness talking to herself. But it was true—I was speaking with her, I was talking to the Goddess of the sea.
All those years praying to her, all those years waiting. And she was with me, the sea was talking to me.
I have always been with you, Lady Love. You just realized it now.
“ You knew my father,” I stated whispering and almost trembling, scared that she would stop speaking to me for being too insolent.
I know every sailor, Lady Love.
I let out a nervous breathy laugh. “Is what they say true? He went to the island? Did you see him?”
That is not a story for me to tell, Lady Love.
My heart was pounding. Maybe this was not the time for me to know, maybe I needed to find out on my own.
“Why do you always call me that?” I whispered with teary eyes at the repeated mention of Dara’s nickname for me .
The winds. And Dara Aldhes. She has begged for my intervention in the life of Lady Love for so many years. She prayed until her last breath for Lady Love. For you.
I lay down on the bed with unstoppable tears running down my cheeks, crying at the image of Dara on her knees begging for my protection. She gave her life to give me the one I always wanted to live. And I witnessed how my friend of so many years—the one who claimed to love me—pierced her heart with the sword The King gave him the day he became Captain of the Royal Guard, and I couldn’t do anything.
So I was going to do it now. I was going to finish this for her—whatever it was. I was going to stay, because she wanted me here, and I loved her. And because this was the life I had been seeking for so many years. “I know for certain that your most thrilling and inspiring adventure starts now.” With her words resonating in every corner inside me, I closed my eyes, and I waited for sleep to take me.
My life began now.
???
A voice behind the door calling my name woke me up. I rubbed my face with my hands as I got up and headed towards the door when I heard, “I’m Efren,” accompanied by the clearing of a throat. “Efren Barone.”
I opened the door and came face to face with the man with long blonde hair framing a torso and arms covered in red tentacle tattoos.
“I’m Donna,” I said with a smile. “So nice to meet you.”
“Oh, I know,” he responded with a grin. “That your name is Donna, and that is very nice to meet me.”
Now that I was hearing his voice, I could tell it had a musical quality to it, like each word was rolling off his tongue with a smooth, almost lyrical rhythm. Perhaps he was from Jévira.
He glanced down at my shirt and gestured towards it with a subtle tilt of his head. “I was looking for that.”
“Oh! I apologize, I didn’t know it was yours, Jonah said I could—”
He laughed. “I guess he had it all this time.”
“He said you never wear a shirt.”
He leaned in as if about to tell me a secret, then whispered, “Because I know he likes to watch.” He wiggled his eyebrows playfully, then took a step back and turned to leave. “C’mon, you don’t want to miss this!”
I immediately followed him. “Have we arrived yet?”
“Aye.”
I widened my eyes, confused by the time. “I thought we were arriving at midnight?”
He laughed and looked at me as we walked. “You’ve been asleep for a long time. Exhausting day, princess?”
“Stop flirting with the newbie, Barone.” Jonah appeared in front of us with a rope draped over his shoulder .
“Goldie Tusk, would you look at that?” said Efren with a smirk, nodding at me. “I found my shirt.”
Jonah responded by tossing the rope at him, and Efren laughed at his reaction.
“C’mon you, we dock port in a matter of minutes.”
Efren started to follow him but turned around to face me with a raised brow and a smile that twitched into a smirk. With a triumphant, knowing look, he mouthed, “I told you he likes to watch.”
A smile tugged at my lips as I stepped onto the deck. The night sea breeze greeted me, and I looked up to the sky to see it was already dark and adorned with millions of stars.
We were entering Isla Loro’s port, a lot of ships and even boats, small and large, were already moored. The port was poorly illuminated, only by the surface of the sea, sparkling with the reflection of the stars as if they themselves had fallen into the water knowing that their presence was needed in such darkness.
There were a couple of streetlights but I could see they were broken in a way that seemed like stones had been thrown at them on purpose, as if someone had wanted to be left in the dark, or simply hide this site. It was as if one were walking into a secret. Everything was quiet, yet in the distance, laughter and singing drifted on the air. Voices of joy. Something about this place felt somehow like the antithesis of a siren song, it appearance seemed terrifying but the chanting and laughter that embraced the atmosphere made it want to take two steps forward and delve into the dark mystery. There was a pull to search, by fair means or foul, for the contrast that lingered just beyond, waiting to be discovered—stark and beautiful, a promise that beyond the darkness lay a place of delights and endless possibility.
I clenched my hands into fists and bit my bottom lip, as if I were unintentionally holding back the urge to run through the streets of the island.
“You've never been here, have you?”
The captain’s voice broke through my trance, and I instantly turned to face him. He must have seen the question painted all over my face because before I could say a word, he was already answering, “You have that look.”
I met his gaze with furrowed eyebrows like I was being part of a riddle I didn’t know about.
“Look?” I asked. “What look?”
“The look that would make a sailor wonder not only what he is, but what could he become.”
I held my breath at the unexpected response. Somehow, him noticing something like that and saying my gaze held such power, made me feel like dipping my toes in the shallows, like cold water rushing over my body and growing warmer as it rose, until it reached my cheeks.
I let out a breath and cleared my throat as I immediately busy myself looking up, searching for another source of light. Searching for the one who was always there, every night I spent alone wishing from the window. Searching for the one I related most, the one who dreamed of grazing the sea but never could.
But the moon was nowhere to be found .
“Don’t go looking for her. Selcate does not bother to visit this island of miserables.”
I looked again at Captain Pierce, he was loading his belt with a sword and two knives, while he continued saying, “Even the moon has lost hope in us.”
“Maybe because you lost hope in her first,” I dared to reply.
“Pirates don't lose the only thing they have. They cling to it,” he murmured with sad eyes. “That is why we started praying to the wrong God, the only one that was present at all times. Death. This massive persecution against piracy only forces us to hope and beg for him to collect us at sea, and not hanging from the rope of a sovereign.” He took a step forward, and whispered, “Don't be fooled by the mystery. Mornatos rules this place because he seems to be the only God that shows us a little compassion.”
He took my hand, opened my palm carefully, and placed a dagger. “You better stay close, love. Because even the death feels drawn to the sea. And sometimes, the wind is the only one that can save you.”
And in that exact instant, I felt an immediate cold gust that moved my hair like a waving flag.
I closed my eyes as I felt the wind when he took a step back. A sudden wave of fear and enigma crashed into me, and it made me look down at my hand, to the beautiful dagger.
The hilt was intricately crafted with rubies that looked like drops of crimson blood frozen in time. It looked like an ancient relic, but it felt like I was holding something more than a weapon, like it was heavy with unspoken truths. It seemed to hum with a silent energy, as if the essence of both life and death flowed through it. The dagger’s edge gleamed in the dim light, like a thin line separating the worlds it held within, and as I held it, I couldn’t help but wonder which side would claim me first.
Careful, Lady Love.
“Don’t you dare lose it.” I looked up at the captain and saw him nodding towards my hand. “It was a gift from the Governor of Pearlspire.”
“A gift?” I asked.
He started walking backwards, still facing me with that terrible smirk that I was sure was one of the reasons why he was called captain, and said above the creaks of the deck, “More like a loan, I would say.”
And then he winked, and I found myself fighting a smile.
When the ship was already docked and the five of us were walking through the dark port only illuminated by the reflection of the stars on the water, Captain Pierce voiced out, “Once we enter The Mariner’s Mirage, we ask for them, and we go.”
As we entered one of the gradually more illuminated streets, I could hear the sound of instruments, songs, and laughter, more clearly. My eyes went wider as we approached the light at the end of the alley, a beautiful light that seemed to came out of some cracks of something I figured it was a door.
“We are not spending the night here, you have three hours to find them and undock The Rebecca,” the captain continued saying as we walked.
“Oh c′mon, Captain!” Efren Barone said .
He was now wearing an open black leather sleeveless vest, and of course, no shirt. He moved forward and turned, so he could face us while walking backwards, and with a voice that carried a whisper of unknown, said, “To sea with all worries…”
And at that exact moment, we arrived at the end of the alley where an immense arch closed by two doors was waiting for us.
The doors were made of a very dark wood with two knobs in form of a coin with a sea serpent painted on them. In the arch above the doors, it was engraved with gold lettering a quote that said:
“To sea with all worries, to freedom with all heart.”
And guarding each side of the doors, two skeletons the same size of the arch, with smiles full of golden teeth and a pirate hat above their skulls.
Efren loudly whistled a melody that was both playful and foreboding, a harmony I recognized very well, a tune that echoed like a forgotten tale of lost treasures and daring escapades, conjuring images of hidden coves, the clink of coins and flags gnawed by cannons floating in the sea. The tune Dara used to whistle every morning. My heart shriveled at the sound. And as if speaking a secret language, the skeletons immediately moved their arms in unison and grabbed the knobs.
I gasped unconsciously and took a step back as the skeletons opened the doors very slowly. The music and laughter began to sound louder as the doors were opening wider .
Efren faced us with a smile that looked like he was about to reveal the best secret in the world, and screamed above the loud music, “To freedom with all heart!”