Chapter 5 Sofie #2
Most legends also said it was cursed. Just, not like this. I had never heard of the Bride before Bluebeard spoke of her.
“It’s a myth,” I said, almost angry now. “And if it were real, it probably would’ve been crafted in the world of monsters. You’d have to have a death wish to meddle with it.”
“It’s powerful,” he said as if agreeing with me. That wasn’t the point I was trying to make at all. “That’s why it’s so jealously guarded by the Bride. Some say only the worthy can master it. That’s the trouble right there. Every great pirate thinks he’s worthy.”
“You people are mad.” I turned, ready to storm out of my own cabin, then froze.
I remembered fireside tales of isles hidden by magic, whose locations moved. They could not be found except through magical means, usually a compass that had a habit of disappearing, or a map that was always changing its ink. But were they really more than just folklore?
Whatever Bluebeard had gotten his crew into, it was knotted up with more complex magic than anyone ought to mess with. It would take the best and brightest minds of Dewspell—myself included—forming a team and working at this curse for years to break it.
And I probably had weeks to do it. Alone.
Master Aynia would scold me for being so rash and making a deal with Bluebeard. And right now, I wanted to scold myself, too. Either I was about to prove myself as a legendary-level sorceress, or I was going to fail miserably.
“You’ve been to this Hidden Isle,” I prompted the first mate. “Bluebeard must have touched the treasure in order for the curse to affect him.”
“I saw it with my own eyes,” Aoki said, a shadow passing over them. “I’ve even seen the Bride, the horrible hag.”
What?
“Your captain claimed this was death magic,” I said, fine hairs rising on my arms. “How could you have seen her?”
The first mate rolled his eyes. “Of course you don’t believe me. No one does. The captain was too occupied at the time, but I know what I saw.”
“A ghost?” It wasn’t impossible that some of the caster’s spirit became visible when they tried to take the treasure.
“Call it what you want,” Aoki said. “I know what I saw.”
I’d now studied three members of this ship’s new crew and the curse that dwelled within them. Yet all it afforded me was more questions.
Again, I thanked the pirate before me and dismissed him.
The fourth crew member to arrive was the siren. Safira. The one who’d made it possible for Bluebeard to marry me.
I didn’t know if I was more furious or impressed that she had so thoroughly snared me with her magic.
She belonged on the educator’s track at Dewspell Academy, not stealing treasure of dubious provenance as a pirate.
Perhaps if fate had dealt her a better hand, she would’ve been able to put her magic to better use.
I was relieved to see that, this time, she wore rose-tinted spectacles, and that her hair was bound up in a well-pinned updo, meaning she came in peace.
Most people thought a siren’s allure was in their voice.
It wasn’t just in their voice. It was in every part of them.
Her gaze, her movements and even the swaying of her hair were all tools to augment her ability to enthrall.
And I’d fallen under her power like some silly novice who had yet to master protection spells. She was that powerful.
“I know the circumstances are not ideal,” Safira said as I studied her, my hands hovering around her temples like I did with the first mate, “but I’ve been a friend to the captain’s other wives. It doesn’t have to be a deep friendship. It just…helps them to have someone they can speak to on board.”
“I’m fine, I assure you.”
“There are times you might not be.”
“A hazard of living a full life.” I withdrew my hands, shaking my head. “The Bride didn’t want her work to be studied, I see. Thank you. You may go.”
But she stayed rooted to the spot, her golden brown eyes searching me from behind her pinkish spectacles. I almost let them catch me in their magical allure again before I remembered who she was.
“I meant what I said,” she told me. “It’s not easy being the captain’s wife under this curse. It can be…well, terrifying. The nightmares alone.”
“I’m fine,” I repeated, busying myself with my the dishes from a light lunch Jovus had delivered to me. “You don’t need to pretend to be my friend.”
“It doesn’t have to be pretend.”
“I’ve friends enough,” I said curtly. “Ones who have never helped kidnap me and lure me into a marriage with a staggering mortality rate. You know the type. Actual friends.”
She snorted. “Fair enough. But know this: you’ll change your mind when the Bride comes calling. They always do.”
Wait. What now?
“What do you mean, when the Bride comes calling?”
Her eyes shifted to one side. “The captain didn’t tell you?”
“No, he did not. Are you saying the Bride’s spirit is here?”
Safira shifted uncomfortably. “Sometimes. We aren’t really certain how—the captain should explain it.”
“I’d rather you—wait!”
As it turned out, sirens weren’t all slow, hypnotic movements. They could move rather quickly when they wanted to. Safira was out on the deck before I could say anything else.
For obvious reasons, I didn’t try to follow her.
I was almost glad when she left me alone in the cabin, free to mull over the pittance I’d learned, and also to wonder what sort of terrors the other wives had been through before the curse eventually took their lives.
I’d assumed the death magic of the curse slowly drained the life forces of Bluebeard’s past wives, or that they were of frail constitutions or victims of a brigand’s lifestyle. I hadn’t thought that a curse stemming from an object could’ve caused their deaths directly.
Just how powerful was the Bride? And how much dark, forbidden magic did she know to be able to pull that off?
To my increasing frustration, no one else came to be studied until well after nightfall, when Captain Jax arrived moments after Mr. Smalt delivered our dinners.
“You owe me some answers,” I announced.
Bluebeard arched his scarred eyebrow in reply.