Chapter 5 All Concerns are Noted
Chapter five
All Concerns are Noted
Rose
Beware the island that breathes. Beneath its shell lies hunger, and beneath hunger, patience. The sea does not rage—it waits.
-An excerpt from The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
Pink and orange skies adorned the evening landscape, painting Meidera with the finest brushstrokes. Most people lived and died never seeing natural beauty like this. For the lost and the weary, it pressurized inside their chests and reminded them that there was still life worth living. Not for me.
Life wasn’t meant for living when the ones I loved were sentenced to the gallows. No, this thing inside of me wasn’t life. It was death, or at least the promise of it.
“I feel obligated to say this is a bad idea,” Dilly said, eyeing our small boat.
I turned from the evening sky and stared at Dilly with her red curls pulled back into a pony and her cheeks pale beneath freckles. If I had any sense at all, I would have taken one look at the fear in her eyes and burned the boat in front of us.
“We’ll be back before morning,” I said, stepping in.
“Famous last words.” Val snorted, scar glinting beneath dwindling sunlight.
No fear commanding my first mate as she hopped in the boat like we were going sightseeing. She sat across from me and grinned wildly.
“You could have been the captain, you know.”
The words erupted from my mouth without any warning. Words I’d held tightly onto for months. Sometimes, when I was feeling especially bitter, I thought about going and finding her and demanding the why.
Her long blond hair was braided to perfection over her shoulder, while a single wisp of bang threatened to fall over her forehead.
That smile faded, and I knew this version of her.
It was different than the woman who came alive with danger or who laughed so she wouldn’t remember.
This version was far worse; it was real.
“I’m a follower. Always have been. I’ve never found anything I wanted enough to be a leader,” she said.
The words layered over me, cementing me into the moment.
I’d never thought of myself as a leader.
I was impulsive and always said and did the wrong thing.
All until the game changed. When necessity became a way of life.
Now I was whatever this was–a far cry from the woman who boarded a pirate ship with a fool’s plan a year ago.
“I would like to second Dilly’s concern,” Emille said.
He clambered on as delicately as a very tall, bald French doctor could. The boat swayed with the effort, but I didn’t flinch. The world felt heavy, and I missed who I used to be. Even though I’d spent hours and days replaying all of my faults, that version had been lighter.
“Third,” Inu said.
“All concerns have been noted,” I said.
I picked up the oar sitting over my lap and felt the pang of loss once more. A year ago, I’d hit Billy right in the stomach with one of these. Now his body was at the bottom of the sea. If there were a heaven, I knew he was there.
Pirate or not, his soul was good. One of the best to ever traverse land and sea alike. And if he wasn’t in heaven–well, I didn’t want to be either when my time came. A daunting concern given tonight could be just that night.
A wise man once told me that a man with nothing has nothing to fear, but a man with everything lives in fear. I was now a woman with nothing, trying to claw my way back to having everything. Tonight, I would risk life and limb because tonight I had nothing to lose.
The five of us rowed silently into the wide abyss of endless sea, chasing the sunset. Eager water lapped at the bottom of our boat, and I closed my eyes, listening to the waves. Listening for some divine intervention that never came.
I pressed my hand to the mark over my right chest that Emille had inked a few months ago.
It hadn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would, but back then, it’d been hard to feel anything.
I missed my brother. I missed Bash. All the pretty words in the world couldn’t change that. Some things demanded to be felt.
“The island should be just east if it will be there at all.” Dilly hummed, tracing her finger over the map in her hands.
“What do you mean by ‘ if it's there at all ’?” Val asked, “I thought that’s why we were out here on this particular night rather than drinking and gambling.”
Dilly sighed, and worry tugged at her lips and the corners of her eyes. Normally, everything in the sea delighted and fascinated her. She had given me multiple earfuls about why this wasn’t a good idea, but desperate times and whatnot.
“San Borondón is rumored to change its location often, which is what makes it so dangerous, and this a colossally bad idea.” Dilly’s bright blue eyes glared up at me.
“Aspidochelones are known for their laziness. Naps that extend decades, sometimes centuries, though, of course, there is no proof, only theory. I’ve read several accounts of an aspidochelone being inhabited for decades before it awakens.
Should I recount what happens when it does, Captain? ”
Sassy. I almost liked this version of Dilly.
She had more bite than usual. Part of me wanted to remind her that she’d run out into certain death just for the chance to see a kraken, but who was I to judge?
All she would have done is remind me that we were on death’s door anyway, so in her mind it was justified.
“Please do.” I held up my hand in welcome.
“I think I would rather not know,” Emille said, looking a little green around the gills.
“If I tell you and you get scared, will you convince Rose to go back?” Dilly asked.
The last of the pink and orange sky disappeared over the horizon, and I wondered if I’d see it again.
The truth was that Dilly’s tactic was working.
The urge to let my knee bounce with restless anxiety was loud, but where I once lacked restraint, I was more than my urges.
It felt like killing a part of myself. Late at night, when I felt trapped in this body or like someone else was controlling me from within, I would remind myself it was only temporary.
I could go back to who I was when I had them back.
The lie stopped being convincing a few weeks in.
There were some things a soul could never come back from.
“Can I find what I need anywhere else?” I snapped.
Dilly stared up from her map, eyes trained on me, body stiff. I instantly regretted losing my temper with her. Of all the people who deserved it, Dilly wasn’t one of them.
Silence stretched, and even the sea quieted her song, waiting to see if the gods would take vengeance on me for daring to challenge their will.
I hated the way they all looked at me like I was sad and broken.
A year ago, I would have lain down and lamented my cruel fate.
That was what it meant to be sad and broken.
Now I refused to bend to any will that wasn’t Bash and Oscar alive and well.
I was iron forged and ready to strike whatever was necessary.
“If the legends are true, then no, but there’s no guarantee it even exists,” Dilly said gently, like she was carefully breaking my heart.
“You were the one who told me there’s always a little truth in every legend,” I said.
The sea was now entirely still, darkness setting over with the rise of the half-crescent moon. I held my breath while I stared at it. This night, beneath a crescent moon, was why we’d made port here. If it were going to happen at all, it would be tonight.
We all stilled our rowing, feeling the twilight settle over the sea, mirrored by stars waking up to their night sky. All of them watching to see if I would fail and be everything James ever said I was. They would have to wait a long time for that because I simply refused.
“Are we supposed to be looking for an island that magically appears?” Val said.
I went to glare at her and tell her that her sense of humor was ill-suited to the moment, but she stared to her left with wide eyes.
All the air rushed from me at once, making my head spin.
“An aspidochelone,” Dilly whispered, as reverently as any mass.
“What is that?” Inu said, voice quiet on the wind.
“I knew they were real, but to see one–she’s,” a tear fell down Dilly’s face. “She’s beautiful.”
I didn’t know if that was the word I would have chosen, but it was good enough because all others failed me.
That was the thing about the Mysterious Deep: you could spend your entire life searching for something within, but the moment it became real, it still stole your breath and muddled your mind.
“It’s a turtle,” Emille said.
So it was. The island of San Borondón, which was said to come and go at will, was essentially a ginormous turtle with an island on its back.
People, for hundreds of years, mistakenly colonized new islands only to find out decades later or even longer that they had not discovered a new island, but an aspidochelone.
Sometimes a turtle, sometimes a whale. The result was always the same.
When the creature awoke and dove beneath the surface, no one survived.
The mass of its body was such a force that, despite its gentle nature, it was always fatal.
Unfortunately, what lived on its shell was important enough that I was willing to risk my life and that of those on this boat for it.
“That’s her head,” Dilly whispered, climbing to the side of the boat like she was going to get in with it.
I couldn’t appreciate what she saw. To me, it was a giant landmass, but maybe, at the edge of the island, I could make out the outline of a shadow beneath.
However, there was no soul I trusted more to tell me about the Mysterious Deep than Cordelia Shaw.
Her word was as good as law. If she said it was a turtle's head, it was a turtle's head.
“You want us to go and get on that thing?” Emille asked, mouth hanging open.
I nodded. “I trust only you to harvest the tree.”
“What tree?” he asked.