Paradise Cursed – Snippet 8
CHAPTER 7
While I didn’t want to appear discourteous to the three chattering passengers seated at my table, I could not keep my eyes off the intriguing brunette across the way. It wasn’t Erin Kohl’s magnificent dark hair or her hauntingly beautiful profile that drew my gaze. It was the sudden cold fear in her eyes when she regarded the cards her sister laid on the table.
“… married five times, divorced three,” Ola was saying, “widowed by two, mother of four and doggedly determined to live hearty before I start burping grandbabies.”
“This is our first time on a barefoot cruise,” said the man Ayanna had introduced as Nelson Woods. “And you say you’ve done this before, Ola, so perhaps you could give us a hint of what to expect.”
“The brochure was so vague, wasn’t it, Nelson?” The wife’s voice conveyed a measure of disdain.
I brought my gaze back to find her staring at me with narrow pale eyes. Bitsy? Betsy? This recent inability to recall names was an embarrassment and damned annoying.
“Discovering the particulars of your voyage one day at a time,” I said, infusing my smile with practiced charm, “is part of the Sarah Jane’s allure. Much like unraveling a mystery.”
Ola laughed and patted Bitsy-Betsy’s arm. “Hon, you gonna love it, so just relax. Let the cap’n and his crew do their thing. First day, though, is usually at full sail, so I hope you got your sea legs on.”
As they prattled, my eyes drifted to the troubled profile across the way…and without warning my thoughts harkened back to a time of pain and helplessness, but also a time when love filled my heart to bursting, a time two centuries past. American vessels were being attacked in the Caribbean, suffering heavy losses and driving President James Monroe to a furious declaration of war on piracy.
I learned that Monroe’s fighting ships could not give chase over shallow reefs and sand banks. Then word went out that captains with fast ships and certain skills might earn hefty rewards as scouts. Having long since grown sick of plundering and thievery, I offered the Sarah Jane into service. Small and quick, much like the pirate schooners commanded by Charles Gibbs— a particularly nasty piece of work who once cut off the arms and legs of a captured captain— the Sarah Jane slipped quietly into hiding places from Cuba to Venezuela and chased pirates into the open sea.
It was on one of Gibbs’s captured and burned out cargo ships that I found Remi Babineaux, beaten, bruised, her feet and hair scorched, as the ship continued to smolder. I could scarcely believe she was breathing. My crew found forty-five other souls aboard, all dead. When I tried to hasten the woman away to safety, she jolted out of her semiconscious state and fought me like a rabid dog. I managed to carry her to the Sarah Jane, where I bandaged her feet, daubed her cuts with antiseptic and, slowly over the following days, learned that Remi Babineaux was accompanying her family’s heirlooms from New Orleans to Saint Martin. Her parents were relocating there to care for an aging aunt. Remi had insisted on taking passage with the cargo, thinking it adventurous.
“The cargo is gone, but I will deliver you to Saint Martin,” I promised, during one of her lucid moments.
“No.” Her brown eyes beseeched me. “I cannot face them. Please.”
She became so upset that I agreed to let her remain on the Sarah Jane until she fully recovered. Unexpectedly, a breath of relief filled me when I knew she would not depart immediately. As weeks passed, her battered face healed. Her hair, which I had clipped quite short to dress her burnt scalp, grew into a cap of brown scruff. Scarcely had she regained her strength than she demanded I allow her to work off the debt she imagined she owed for her passage and care.
“You owe nothing,” I told her firmly. “To fill your time, however, Cook might have a chore or two.”
She pressed her lips together firmly in an expression of annoyance, yet all she said was, “Thank you, Captain.”
I came to know that expression quite well, as Remi Babineaux became one of my best crewmen while at the same time stealing my heart bit by bit. And now I saw a similar expression of annoyance as Erin Kohl pushed away the deck of cards.
***
Ayanna fought down nausea. Pain ripped through her belly as she slipped from the dining room into the dark. Stomach bile rose in her throat. The pain and queasiness were only symptoms of the other sickness that lay deeper, darker inside, impregnating her bones.
A fresh breeze washed over her. She breathed the air deep inside to quiet her belly and fell onto a lounge chair overlooking Montego Bay. Kicking off her shoes, she rubbed briskly at her arms to warm them up.
Never had she felt so cold, even that spring when she traveled north to New York City, yeah. So many tall buildings, people rushing every-which-way. So many clothing stores. How did one wear so much clothing? Did those hitey-titey ladies not sweat wearing one gansey over another gansey, two dirty shirts to wash instead of one?
Shivering, Ayanna worried about getting sick. Her palms were wet with perspiration. Her upper lip felt damp. A claw of bitterness scratched at her from inside. Maybe sickness was part of the Bokor’s curse. Ayanna prayed she would be able to fulfill her duties aboard the Sarah Jane—at least until they sailed. She needed away from Jamaica, far from the
Bokor, far enough to weaken his magic. And she needed to find stronger magic to break the curse.
Sarah Jane’s strong magic was legend, but nobody Ayanna spoke to could say how the ship’s magic worked. Every story was vague in detail, high on spooky innuendo.
She gasped in pain as cramps attacked her feet. Her toes curled under. Both feet arched from her ankles as if she were standing on point. They felt so cold, as if dipped in ice. Ayanna tried to stand, walk it out, relieve the cramps. Cha! Sweat poured from her brow, no matter that she was freezing.
Captain McKinsey expected her to make happy passengers in the dining room, yeah, but she cannot do so like this. She peered around at the empty deck and began limping, stumbling toward the companionway to her cabin below.
Once inside, she fell on the bed, legs drawn up as she tugged the blanket over her shivering self. After a bit, the quaking calmed and she reached down to rub her cramped feet. The skin felt rough, deeply callused. How could that be?
Lifting a hand outside the blanket to click the bedside light, she felt a fresh round of shivers, but after another bit of warming up, she squirmed around to stick one foot near the light. When her fingers touched cracked skin, she drew the blanket aside.
Her foot shone with gray-green iridescence, like fungus or —
Ayanna’s stomach heaved as she realized what she was seeing, touching. Scales.
Her feet were growing scales?
Nah, that was wrong, not fish scales. Cool to the touch, and with tiny bumps like in picking up a —
She bolted to the toilet, fell beside it. Vomited.
When her stomach was empty, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, pulled herself up to the sink and ran water to rinse. Steadying against the shivers and the foot cramps and her heaving stomach, she peered at the skin on her other foot. It too was gray-green rough, like snakeskin. Or baby crocodile belly.
Touching it brought more sickness to her stomach and a red-black haze to her brain. She stumbled to the bed, weak, impotent. Her body turned to mush. She crumpled on the floor, lay her cheek against the cool linoleum.
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