So I think how to explain to Half-Hanged Henry that I don’t want his daughter’s hand in marriage.
I think of the first time I made it all the way up to the topgallant yard on the Sally Dearest, how I felt light enough to spread my arms and take wing like a bird.
And I think of Pop, who only ever wanted a place of his own and a houseful of babies.
My blind, splashing hands clatter against something hard and wet and splintery. The Golden Vanity. I grab and scrabble for a barnacle handhold, but Captain Royal Navy actually careens them off proper on occasion, and I must weakly tread water.
Up on the foredeck I see faces of the crew peering over, tiny ovals of color against a flat gray sky and sprawls of dingy canvas and a tangle of rigging.
I dredge an arm out of the water in salute. Any moment now a rope will fall over the side. Somewhere in me is the strength to hold that rope, and I will find it.
One by one, the faces at the rail disappear.
Only the old man is left.
“She’s sunk!” I shout. “I sank her. Pull me up!”
The old man doesn’t reply. He doesn’t throw a rope either. He merely shakes his head.
Over my shoulder, the Spanish warship is tilting like driftwood and the whole quarterdeck is in chaos as men push and fight for dry ground. Seeing her on her way down reminds me how hot and weak my arms are, how much of a struggle it is to keep my head above the waves.
“Captain!” I howl, but it’s a mistake because I choke on a sudden harsh mouthful of water.
“Can’t do it, Joe,” he says, and disappears from the rail.
I’m gasping with every flailed stroke and kick, but I manage to free my dagger from its sheath. I punch it out of the water and shout, “I know well how to sink a ship, Cap! If this is how you’ll serve me, I’ll take you to the bottom with me. We’ll all be on Mother Carey’s table together!”
And that’s when Pop appears at the rail, fighting the first mate and the bosun, who have him by either arm. There’s a length of ratline in his hand and he almost gets it over the gunwale before they haul him away, out of sight.
He’ll go to the bottom too.
I open my hand and let the dagger fall, down and down, to Davy Jones.
Pop is roaring like a madman and cursing every Goddamn one of them and shouting at me to stay strong, his last little baby, the only one he could save.
I flail one final stroke and go under.
I’m colder than I’ve ever been, but nothing hurts anymore — not my arms, not my feet, not my eyes, not my guts.
Above me is a dull shadow set against shades of rippling, glinting motion. It’s the size of my thumb, oval but pointed at both ends.
Like the bottom of a ship.
I’m standing before a table on the quarterdeck of an ancient, rotted merchantman. Her mast is a ragged stump and stray chain shot is lodged in the gunwales. At the head of the table is a woman whose face is hidden by shadow and wavered by the movement of the currents around us.
“Jocasta,” she says, and all at once I know who she is. I know it even though I have only a whisper of a memory of her. This is the voice that would lilt through fire-warmed, comfortable darkness when I was small enough to be tucked into a willow basket. Then would come her gentle hand, rubbing my back, smoothing hair from my eyes, pushing away the dim of the room and the grit of the floor and the gnaw in my belly.
I have to swallow twice before I can answer, and it’s no more than a whisper. “Mama.”
“That’s right.” She swims one long graceful arm at an empty chair before a bare, waiting dinner plate. “Come, sit down. I’ve been expecting you. Supper’s ready.”
Pop would never say much about Mama. One day she was there before the fire in our cabin, the next she wasn’t. He’s always saying I was too little to remember her anyway, but he’s wrong.
I remember her voice. I remember her warmth. I remember crying quietly because she hadn’t taken me with her, wherever she went.
And here she is before me.
She leans to set a dish on the table, nudging several others to make room. The table is overflowing with platters, all covered with domed abalone shells.
I reach for the chair and pull it out. It glides through the water like my arm, like my backside as I start to sit down.
Then she smiles at me.
Her teeth are all pointy like a cat’s.
I freeze, my rump hovering above the seat. “Y-you’re not my mother.”
“Mama. Or Madre. Or Mater. All of you with salt for blood are mine.” She slides her lips over her teeth, her voice all Mama once more. “Come now, Jocasta. Sit down. I’ve missed you.”
Out of the darkness, out of everything cold and miserable would come that voice. And somehow things would grow lighter, starting with her and ending with me.
She’s back at her work, carving meat and dicing seaweed and piling everything onto platters made of shells all lined up along the table. This table on the deck of a dead ship.