17. Chapter Seventeen #2
He was by far the youngest member of the crew, looking to be only a year or two out of his teens.
It had struck me before that he didn’t have the demeanor one might expect from a bloodthirsty pirate.
He was soft-spoken, sometimes even bashful, and seemed to have difficulty making full eye contact—not only with me, but also with some of the more boisterous members of the crew, and of course, Captain Nero.
5 He never swore or got rowdy like the other men, and I’d never heard him speaking lasciviously about any of the women he would be “bedding” at port; although it’s possible that last part has less to do with decorum and more with a lack of interest, since I’d always had the distinct impression Jim might have a bit of a crush on Ursa, or at least Ursa as I portrayed him in my stories.
If I’d given it much thought, I suppose I would have wondered how someone so young and unassuming could have become a member of the Brethren. If they believed he had some sort of precognitive power, that might explain it.
Emphasis on them believing it, since of course, it was all nonsense.
I didn’t quite know how Jim had managed to determine I might be in trouble; perhaps he’d subconsciously noticed the rainbow-eyed man behaving strangely, and his mind had interpreted the information as a sort of supernatural hunch, when really it was just a basic ability to read people.
Regardless, I was obviously quite grateful he’d known to come to my aid, and I didn’t feel it was my place to suggest his talent was anything less remarkable than the crew obviously thought it was.
Speaking of the crew, it didn’t take long for most of them to join us, once their bloodlust had cooled. It was hard for me not to look at them differently, knowing what they’d all just been up to, but they responded to me in their usual manner, no one seeming at all fazed to see me in the galley.
If it had been up to me, we never would have spoken of the incident with the rainbow-eyed man, but I suppose that wasn’t entirely practical, what with him now noticeably missing. Orion was the one who broke the news. “Mandrake6 attacked the Doc, so I had to put him down.”
I tensed, worried that perhaps some of them might be cross with me, especially if they’d been good friends with Mandrake. To my surprise, though, they all seemed outraged on my behalf, and many cursed his name, vowing to seek vengeance on his corpse.
That part was horrifying, naturally, but I found myself strangely touched by their concern. To be honest, I hadn’t known the men cared so much. I knew they liked my stories, but that wasn’t the same as liking me. It seemed as though at least the most vocal among them did.
“I’m all right,” I reassured them. Big Red, in particular, was quite worked up in his outrage, and I had to pat his arm placatingly several times to keep him from storming out of the room. “Really. It was a little fright, but nothing that will keep me up at night.”
Honestly, I didn’t mean to rhyme, it just kept happening.
Fortunately, none of the Brethren seemed to notice; the few of them closest to me were too busy giving each other meaningful looks.
Apprehension began to climb up my spine again at the sight of it.
Maybe they were more upset about Mandrake than they first realized. “What is it?” I asked tentatively.
“She oughtta be branded,” Rumbeard said.
Some of the others rumbled their agreement. A few even pounded their fists on the tabletop. I looked between them worriedly, not particularly liking that word. “‘Branded’?”
“Becoming a member of the Brethren takes years,” Blacktongue explained to me helpfully as he sat back in a nearby chair and used the tip of his dagger to clean out his fingernails. “And there are levels to it. Different ways to prove yerself to the crew.”
“Show her yer arm,” Big Red told Jim, and without asking, he held out the younger man’s limb and rolled up his sleeve so I could see his wrist. He had a few obviously homemade tattoos that had been etched into his skin: One of a compass, most likely in reference to his nickname, and two others I didn’t know how to decipher—a bird and a shooting star.
“Branded,” I realized out loud, horrified, as I understood what it was they meant to do to me.
“You can choose your own image that we’ll mix with our sigil,” Rumbeard informed me, as though this were the only reason I might object to having a permanent image etched onto my arm aboard a pirating vessel.
“It’s gotta be particular to the person and their role on the ship.
Like . . .” He snapped his fingers as inspiration struck. “A book! Cuz you tell us stories.”
The men very much seemed to like this suggestion. In a moment, several pairs of expectant eyes were turned on me. My face froze in the facsimile of a smile. My mind had gone completely and utterly blank. “Oh,” is all I could think of to say.
Orion nudged me with his boot under the table. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna do, Doc.”
I don’t know if it was the gesture itself or his tone—sort of gentle and knowing—that struck me as being entirely too familiar. Straightening my spine, I withdrew my foot so he could no longer reach it. “No, no. I think a tattoo sounds like a lovely idea. A book! How clever.”
I didn’t want a tattoo, of course, and when I dared a quick glance at Orion, it was obvious that he knew I didn’t. The men cheered, and one of them ran back to his room to grab his needles (!!!), and there was no turning back.
And that is how, I’m afraid, I’ve found myself with a new tattoo on my wrist. I wish I could say I took it with a stiff upper lip, but I’m afraid there was a great deal of swearing and crying that probably isn’t necessary to record for posterity.
Now that all is said and done, though, I do think it is rather charming. Or might be, once the bleeding stops and the swelling goes down.
1. A sensation I have rather little practice with, obviously.
2. Though this room had at one point been a prison cell, Orion had arranged for the lock panel to be reinstalled inside the door now that I was one of the Brethren’s guests.
3. I realize he hasn’t made all that much of a mark on this narration thus far, but he was really a very nice young man, for a pirate. He demonstrated how to peel an entire apple with just his teeth once. And he had a lovely singing voice.
4. Though I was often invited to do so, I didn’t usually indulge in drinking spirits with the Brethren, but this felt like an appropriate exception.
5. That wasn’t saying much, though, since virtually everyone had difficulty making eye contact with him.
6. So that had been his name.