Chapter 3 Hopes and Dreams
The snap of sails overhead cracked like whips against the cloud-brushed sky, but Captain Caleb Hyde heard nothing—nothing but the echo of a voice he hadn’t meant to speak.
You found me.
The words still lingered in the air, as though clinging to the salt-laced wind.
Crewmen scrambled around him, voices raised in frightened confusion.
“Did ye see her vanish?”
“By me deathless soul, I ne’er seen the likes o’ that!”
“Blast me eyes, I swear she were a sea spirit!”
“Nay, a cursed mermaid come to drag us to the deep!”
Caleb clenched his jaw. His gaze remained fixed on the damp planks where she'd stood only moments before. A glint of moisture shimmered there, as if the sea had tried to follow her. Female…or something else? A sea creature with black, shiny skin and wide webbed feet?
Her eyes. That’s what haunted him most, those eyes. Deep sea blue with flecks of turquoise, like the Caribbean just before a storm. He’d never seen eyes like that. Yet…he had…in his dreams. Aye. Since he was a boy. That gaze had followed him through nightmares and longing alike.
He exhaled sharply, drawing the crew’s attention.
“Enough,” he barked, his voice sharp as cutlass steel. “Back to your duties, the lot of you.”
They hesitated. Liam O’Neill, his boatswain, narrowed one pale brow, arms folded across his chest, blond hair flailing in the wind. “Ye saw her too, Cap’n. Don’t tell me ye didn’t.”
“I saw something strange, aye,” Caleb replied, low and measured. “But I’ll not have fear unraveling this crew. The wind’s with us. We sail due north till further orders. You’ve the deck, Liam.”
With that, he turned, his long coat snapping behind him as he strode toward his cabin.
The door closed with a creak and clicked behind him. Caleb had barely taken two steps before shadows shifted in the corner.
“I felt her,” Ayida Noire whispered, stepping into the light.
The ship’s cook stood there, shawl pulled tight, her dark eyes two eclipses in the low light. “She weren’t woman. She weren’t angel. She was mermaid, Capitaine. A harbinger.”
He arched a brow. “Of what? And why are you in my cabin?”
“Of drowning,” Ayida said, curling her fingers like claws. “Of destinies twisted. De sea opens for such as her and swallows de rest.”
Before he could reply to the madcap woman, the door opened. Alden Shaw, his quartermaster entered, scar cutting across his cheek, polished wooden cross glinting at his throat. “Was it her?” A knowing look passed between them, the look of friends who shared secrets in the night.
Not answering, Caleb moved to stand by the stern windows and stared out upon the rolling sea glittering in the afternoon sun. Was it her? Whoever “her” was. Shaking his head, he crossed arms over his leather jerkin. “I don’t know what I saw.”
“Extraordinary.” Oliver Brandt’s muttering spun Caleb around to see the ship’s surgeon limp inside the cabin, coat damp, spectacles fogged. “I’m hearing the tale all over the ship. A woman appeared out of the sea and then vanished?”
“Nay,” Caleb said a bit too harshly. “’Twas no woman. And whatever it was, it didn’t just vanish…it”—the way the lady separated bit by bit was forever imprinted on his mind— “unraveled.”
Alden raised a skeptical brow as Ayida finally turned to leave, mumbling in Creole beneath her breath.
“Rest assured, whatever it was, it is gone,” Caleb scrubbed his jaw.
Brandt leaned his cane against the chair and folded his hands over his portly belly. “There’s an explanation for everything. Science and logic need govern our thoughts, not spirits or mermaids.”
“There are many things around us we cannot see, my friend. Much of them evil,” Alden said to the doctor before he faced Caleb again. “You best make up some tale for the crew. They are a fearful, superstitious lot as you well know.”
“Aye.” Caleb nodded. His glance landed on the Bible perched on his desk with its worn edges and stains. He’d done his best to tell his crew about Jesus, to allay their belief in fearful myths and fables. Thus far, he hadn’t much success. But he wasn’t ready to give up.
Brandt cleared his throat. “Captain, this… whatever this is—it does not change your mission, does it?”
Sails thundered above them as they filled with wind, and the Sentinel tilted to larboard, creaking against the strain. Balancing his boots on the deck, Caleb shook his head. “The mission remains. For my father. For my grandfather. The destination is the same.”
“Ye still haven’t told us what yer meant to destroy.” Liam fingered the green stone hanging around his neck. “Only that it must not fall into the wrong hands.”
“’Tis better you don’t know,” Caleb replied. “Safer for all of us.”
Brandt raised an eyebrow. “You are still working with Woodes Rogers?”
Patches stirred from her spot on Caleb’s bed and leapt onto his desk, nudging against his arm.
He eased fingers over the cat’s soft fur.
“Aye. Helping rid Nassau of pirates and gathering up any renegades as we come upon them. In addition, my letters of marque make fair game any Spanish ship that dares cross my path.”
There was a murmur of satisfaction between the men—orders, structure, purpose in a world adrift. When at last they filed out, leaving the cabin still and creaking, Caleb stood alone before his desk.
Picking up Patches, he set her in the sun on the stern window ledge and knelt before the wooden base beneath.
Then taking his knife, he pried open one of the planks, pulled out a bundle of cloth, and spread the fabric aside.
The Ring of Solomon lay nestled inside, ancient, golden, humming with some unknowable life.
He stared at it, letting the past whisper through the worn ridges of its design.
His sister Emeline’s voice drifted from memory. “It can call the wind, Caleb… the storm. It listens to the bloodline. And it obeys.”
He wondered. Could it undo the past? Could it make right what he’d broken, revive those whom he had sent to their graves two years past? If only…
Yet his mission was to destroy it, sink it to the depths where no man would find it, where no one could ever use its power again.
But thus far obstacles, delays, and accidents had kept him from honoring his father’s orders. Sabotage?
Someone doesn’t want me to finish this.
Rising, he glanced out the stern windows, where amber from a setting sun bled across the waves. Did the strange appearance of the sea nymph have something to do with the Ring?
Those eyes. They haunted him. Not just a memory. A presence.
Why had he said it?
You found me.
It had slipped from his mouth like instinct, like prophecy. Like the breaking of a seal on something far older than the war or…even this Ring.
He clenched the relic in his hand and whispered, “Who are you?”
?
Miami, present day
Inhaling deeply, Desi closed her eyes, gathering her strength and pasting on a cheerful face before she knocked on the door to her sister’s apartment. Within minutes, Daria opened it, her ever-present smile beaming and her blue eyes filled with their usual sparkle of hope.
“Ready?” Desi asked, stepping inside as Daria moved to get her backpack.
Was it possible, or did her sister look even thinner than the last time she’d seen her just three days ago? Skin as white as sand covered her face and arms while blue shadows tugged upon her eyes. “You been eating like you promised?”
Slipping on her backpack, Daria spun to face her. “As much as my stomach can handle. Now, stop nagging and let’s get this over with.”
The “over with” was Daria’s dialysis which had to be administered three times a week.
Normally, Desi only had time to drop her off at the hospital and pick her up, but today she would stay the entire four hours of treatment.
No diving excursions were scheduled until early afternoon, and since it was only seven in the morning, Desi had plenty of time.
Besides, she wanted to hang out with her sister, find out how she was doing and offer as much support and love as she could.
Not that any of that mattered when the doctor said that without a kidney transplant, Daria would not survive another year.
“You really don’t have to sit with me, Desi,” Daria said as she settled into a chair at the dialysis center at Jackson Memorial. “I’m a big girl now.” The nurse had just inserted the needle and was hooking her up to the dialyzer.
“Oh, a big girl, is it?” Desi teased, taking a seat beside her sister. “At twenty?”
Daria slanted her lips. “You’re only twenty-three.”
The nurse smiled and patted Daria on the arm. “Now, just relax, dear, and I’ll be back to check on you.”
After she left, Desi faced her sister. “I want to stay. We don’t get to talk much.” She avoided looking at the needle in her sister’s arm. She hated needles. Almost more than she hated hospitals.
Daria grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I know it’s hard for you to come here, Des…after Mom.”
Wasn’t it just like Daria to try and comfort Desi?
Ignoring the swelling in her sister’s hand, Desi swallowed a lump of guilt and sorrow.
“I just hate it that she spent her last minutes here.” Tugging from her sister’s grip, Desi hugged herself, feeling a sudden chill.
“In this cold, sterile place that smells like…like death.” The dreaded word fired from her lips before she realized.
But when she glanced at her sister, no fear appeared on her face.
Just the usual blanket of peace…and a hope that always baffled Desi. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Daria chuckled. “That you said that gruesome word, death? Oooooooh.”
Desi huffed. “How can you make fun of such a serious thing?” She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. After Pops died, you’re all I have.”
“Oh, Desi, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make light of it. It’s just that death is not the end. Actually, it’s a beginning.”
Desi shook her head, her annoyance shoving aside her pain. Temporarily. “Don’t start all that religious crap with me.”
“It’s not crap.” Daria gave a gentle smile. “God is very real. He loves you and wants you to know His Son, Jesus. Who else would die so torturous a death for you…just so you can be with Him forever?”
“I know all about the Gospel. I grew up with the same parents, remember?”
Frowning, Daria studied her sister. “Then what happened to make you lose your faith?”
Desi shrugged and slid a strand of hair behind her ear.
“I don’t know if I ever had any.” She studied the look of expectant hope beaming from her sister’s eyes, a hope she didn’t wish to crush.
But if Desi was anything, it was brutally honest, and she wasn’t one to lie to spare someone’s feelings.
She preferred the truth, so she gave it to others. Point blank.
“Mom and Dad prayed for this God of yours to heal you for many years, but nothing ever happened. In fact, you got worse. And then Dad died at sea and Mom wasted away in this hospital until there was nothing left but bone and flesh and broken dreams.”
Daria glanced down at her swollen ankles, the joy of only moments before fading from her face.
“I’m sorry, Dar, I’m not like you. I can’t believe in something or someone who is supposed to love us and be all-powerful but who never answers prayers.
Look at our lives. We lost both our parents when we were not yet teens.
What kind of God does that?” Her voice came out a bit louder than she wanted, drawing the attention of another dialysis patient a few yards away.
Daria attempted a smile. “There’s a purpose for everything.”
“Even death?” Desi regretted repeating the word.
“Especially death.”
“I will never understand you, Daria, but I will always love you.” She leaned closer and gripped her sister’s swollen hand. “It totally sucks that I’m not a match. But I promise I am going to find a way to pay for a transplant.”
“You worry too much. I’m near the top of the wait list, and if we get the call, God will provide what we need.”
Sweet, sweet Daria. So na?ve. What she didn’t know was that her insurance only covered part of the cost of a transplant.
Then there were the anti-rejection medicines and follow-up visits that could cost thousands a month.
As it was, Desi was paying $1500 out of pocket every month just for dialysis.
Money she could use to increase her business, which wasn’t doing well at the moment.
She needed more customers, she needed to win the lottery…
She needed a miracle.
Or better yet, to find that treasure Pops swore was right off the coast.
Instead of arguing, Desi sat back and smiled. “You have my word, Daria. I’m not going to let you die.”