Paradise Cursed – Snippet 4
“Rebuilt seven times from a mixture of old materials and new,” I said, “the Sarah Jane suffers decades of eccentricities. Out at sea, the rigging creaks, the bilge pump moans, and people make up tales.”
Graham chuckled. He leaned forward across the chair back to place his elbows on the white table cloth. “Captain, six months on the Atlantic can make a person stir crazy enough to hear ghosts, but scudding around these islands for a few days doesn’t qualify. Yet the stories persist.”
Gritting my teeth, I cast another glance at Burke, suddenly all round-eyed and perked ears. He apparently had not heard the rumor before now. With seventy percent of every passenger list being female, and happy passengers even better advertising than the Internet, I disliked having to pass on hiring Graham. His clear gray eyes, the sleepy sort that would enchant the ladies, were worth even more to me than his impressive sailing skills.
“Sailors and scuttlebutt are like women and lip rouge,” I said, as pleasantly as I could manage. “Changing color on a whim.”
Graham tapped his folded newspaper. “According to the Cayman Compass last summer, a woman claimed she saw Blackbeard himself raging around the foredeck during a thunderstorm.”
“Hmmm.” I shut down hard on the shiver that ruffled my neck hairs. “So then, Jason, if you’re frightened of a rumor, why are you here?”
A pretentious chuckle. “Did I say I was afraid?”
At times like these, I long for the old days, when I’d toss this chap and his oily grin out solidly on his buttocks, and a dozen better men would line up hungry for the job. Bent on containing my annoyance, however, I swallowed a curse and allowed my gaze to travel lazily around the dining compartment. Once the aft end of the gun deck, it now boasted a wide expanse of glass casements, an assortment of seating arrangements, and a fine rug bartered from an East Indian cargo ship some ninety years past. The Sarah Jane’s original wheel, figurehead and compass, as ancient as the joints in my knees, had been shined up and incorporated into the current décor. Brass pots of frangipani blossoms adorned each table, scenting the air with their intoxicating sweetness.
Except for the recently added upper deck, where our passengers enjoyed sunning and mingling, this was the primary common area. Even when I had to bend my own elbows to the task, we kept it as elegant as any on a commercial ship, yet the East Indian rug, once resplendent with intricate and brightly colored design was faded now in a well trod path near my table.
Cursed or not, the Sarah Jane was my home.
“Exactly what are you saying?” I asked, finally.
“The way I heard it, this cruise should be good for hazard pay.”
“Hazards?” Burke’s voice came out a tremulous squeak. Squaring his clipboard to the table edge, he asked. “What sort of hazards?”
“No crewman on our voyages has ever been seriously injured,” I stated simply, if not with complete disclosure.
On another chuckle, Graham said, “Yet your crew keeps deserting you.”
CHAPTER 2
For Dayna Kohl, the weird stuff didn’t begin on a dark and stormy night. It began on a brilliant sun-washed afternoon. Sunshine glinted fiercely off the turquoise water. It bathed the bleached boards of the pier beneath her feet and glittered from jewelry, from crisp white shorts and from the Crest-whitened teeth of fellow travelers. Sunshine stained a rosy glimmer upon the white hull and wooden masts of the tall ship anchored in Montego Bay. It glinted from the brass trim.
That same Caribbean sun warmed Dayna to the bone even as a southerly breeze cooled her skin. The biggest thrill of her life was anchored right out there in front of her.
She glanced at her nine-years-older sister and potential fun squelcher. Erin was biting her lower lip, a sure sign she was thinking up fresh arguments against sailing. Before she could voice them, Dayna slipped away. She squeezed past the passengers lined up to shuttle out to the Sarah Jane, waited while a pair of tweenies took selfie shots, then eyed the shuttle craft — a stinky motor launch.
Yuk. Dayna wished they could repeat their morning ride: a skinny bamboo raft with room for only two passengers plus the cute Jamaican oarsman who made it glide like mother-of-pearl along the White River. The motor launch, spazz-out boring and less environmentally authentic than a bamboo ferry, packed twelve at each trip. But it was clearly more efficient.
Erin, of course, would prefer the smelly, predictable launch. That’s if she didn’t opt to ditch the cruise altogether.
Shading her eyes with her hands, Dayna squinted at the three-masted schooner silhouetted against the sky. Trim. Ample. Marconi rigged, capable of fifteen knots at full sail—or so the brochure had promised in its flowery descriptions. Experience the thrill of blue-water sailing and soul-thrumming adventure when you take the helm of a magnificent tall ship.
Would Captain Cord McKinsey really allow an almost-seventeen-year-old girl to sail his craft?
“It’s smaller than I expected,” Erin said against the click-click-clicking of her camera.
Dayna hadn’t noticed the passenger line moving, and her sister along with it. Erin’s yellow tote jammed full of photo gear nudged Dayna aside, practically knocking her into the water. She knew it wasn’t intentional, so she nipped the protest that threatened to spill from her lips. The purpose of this trip was to cheer Erin out of her funk.
The prettier and, usually, most level-headed of their parents’ two girls, Erin had gone a little spacey after catching her fiancé with another woman. She doused them with a bottle of chilled champagne she found beside the bed, snatched their clothes and tossed them in a maid’s laundry cart, then keyed her ex-fiancé’s shiny black Jaguar on her way out of the hotel parking lot.
Go, Erin! Dayna had silently cheered, listening to her sister’s teary confession over cocoa and Oreos. As Erin bared her raw emotions, the nine years and completely different interests that separated them melted away, and Dayna felt close to her sister for the first time since they were both kids. She wanted to hold on to that closeness.
Seven days at sea was a perfect chance for them to really get to know each other in the deeply personal way that sisters should. Never mind that Dayna’s passion was to sail every ocean around the world. A thousand times since that Oreos night, she had thanked the Goddess of Aborted Weddings for her chance to take the cheating fiancé’s place on the “honeymoon” cruise. But as soon as they arrived in Jamaica, Erin had started looking for reasons to remain at the resort. The Sarah Jane’s size was only the latest among many.
“Two hundred-twenty feet is not small for a tall ship,” Dayna explained, as tactfully as she could manage. “Thirty-six across her beam, and she’s been sailing far longer than any other historical craft. She was once a pirate ship. Can you imagine sailing under the Jolly Roger?”
“Age isn’t her best selling point. I wonder if we should take another Dramamine tablet.”
“We’re not going to puke. Unless they keep playing that music.” The sounds drifting from the ship were definitely not Katy Perry or Taylor Swift. “What is that crap?”
“Dayna! Please watch your language.”
“Dat is a steel band,” said a woman in line ahead of them, “and da song dey play is ‘Yellow Bird’.”
Tall didn’t come close. Like WNBA Sheryl Swoopes tall, but gorgeous. Dayna couldn’t help staring.
The woman’s dress, colored like exotic bird feathers, molded to her body like paint, and her skin was such an interesting shade of black. Dayna closed her mouth, not wanting to act like a rube her first time outside of Texas. Erin would likely knock her off the pier for real.
“I am Ayanna,” the woman said. “I am taking position as first mate on da Sarah Jane.”
“Not possible,” Dayna blurted. “First mate, a woman who looks like a—ow!”
A jab from Erin’s elbow stopped her from saying, “rainbow lorikeet,” one of the exotic birds on the cruise brochure.
“We’re very happy to meet you, Ayanna,” Erin said. “My rude sister has never been on a cruise and is worried about what we’ll encounter. Otherwise, she would show better manners.”
“I’m not worried, it’s you—”
“A sister is a blessing,” Ayanna said. “You are fortunate to have each other on dis voyage.”
The woman smiled, nodded, then turned to climb down into the launch. Dayna couldn’t help following every undulating movement. In her curve-hugging dress and sandals,
Ayanna was as nimble aboard the flat-bottom boat as if she were wearing workout duds. Even the crummy music sounded better now that Dayna knew the captain’s crew included women as other than kitchen duty.
“What did you think I was going to say?” she asked her sister as the launch drove away and an empty one approached to take its place.
“Prostitute? Hooker?”
“Jeez, Erin! We’re not in Texas anymore.”
“No. We’re too far away from everything we know.”
Erin scowled at the gently swaying launch and at the smiling helmsman reaching to take her hand. When she shook her head and stepped back, Dayna got a crappy feeling the Sarah Jane would sail tomorrow without them.
Buy the book now, because summer’s coming and you’ll want a great read.
