A Ship of Bones & Teeth

by Karina Halle

As a Syren our first instinct is to lure men to their death. We seduced them, drowned them, and ate them, their body providing us with enough power and nutrients to last us months.

Throw yourself off the ship, I tell myself. Let the seas claim you. Better to drown and die than live with that man and the man he’ll become again.

perhaps it wasn’t the spell or my charm that won him over, but the fact that I was beautiful, nude, and silent. Something he could both

show off to the world and manipulate to suit his whims.

I will never fit in here among the humans because, at the heart of me, I’m not one.

Yet I’m not a Syren either. I just exist in this space between the worlds with nowhere to belong to. My soul is adrift.

“It is…the Brethren of the Blood.”

“But the Brethren are just tall tales, aren’t they?” I ask. “They aren’t really a ship of the undead and damned.”

“Pirates! Pirates spotted, ghost ship at portside! All hands on deck! Get the captain!”

Every soul on deck starts panicking and yelling, running back and forth, and their energy is contagious.

There have been countless stories of them attacking the Spanish galleon fleet coming in and out of Manila, the ships ransacked, treasures taken, and everyone on board either left for dead or kidnapped. At the heart of them is their leader, Captain Ramsay “Bones” Battista, a man deemed so evil that even the devil didn’t want him.

Better to risk drowning and swim to shore than to spend a minute with whatever the men on this ship have in mind for me. And that includes my husband.

From this height, her features are obscured and yet I’m strangely compelled by her. It’s like she’s not even trying to stay afloat, like she wants the sea to swallow her whole. She wants to give up.

And I’m here to ruin it all for her.

I expect her to scream for help or try to swim away. Instead, the princess punches me right in the face.

He looks to me, the shadows deepening more, so that I swear I’m looking through his skin and at his skeleton underneath.

Or all the legends you’d heard about them being a ghost ship are true.

“You can drop the sword now, luv,” he says softly. “It won’t do you any good. I’m not going to let you get away, no matter how much you beg. And believe me, I would love to hear you beg.”

Edonia never mentioned how human love can wear many disguises and can change over the years, becoming sour and corrupt as spoiled milk.

“This isn’t a normal ship. This isn’t a normal ship. She can’t sink if she was built in the bowels of hell!”

I don’t know what it is about a woman that wants me dead, but I swear nothing gets me harder.

She doesn’t

understand why I’m doing this and that’s fine with me. It’s not just a matter of possession, it’s for her own good.

If you say so.. lol

There’s something not right about her. There’s something inside of her that she keeps buried out of fear and I’m starting to see that whatever it is that lives in her and gnaws away at her bones is dying to come out and play.

“But why be a princess, when you could be a pirate?”

“A woman like you? The very one that’s struck me in the face twice, tripped me up, and driven her nails into my flesh so hard that she’s drawn blood? I think that woman is a force to be reckoned with. She just needs someone to set her free.”

Until they’re sailing through uncharted waters in the dark and they hear the siren’s call, until they’re shipwrecked on a shoal and feel eyes watching them from the depths.

They might tell you that mermaids are real. They might tell you that they’re demons, no different than the Kraken. True monsters of the deep.

Mermaids aren’t the delicate beautiful women of the sea that you’ve heard about. They’re predators. They eat the hearts of men. They seduce them, fuck them, and tear them apart. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. You’d find more mercy with a lion.”

She tastes heavenly, feels like sin, and I know she has the power to pull me to the depths and sink me. Yet it’s a risk I’m willing to take in order to get her to say my name like that again.

But to hear her need for me, her want for me, overriding her hate for me, there’s nothing more wicked than that.

It doesn’t matter that we are at the bottom of the sea, all I want, all I need, is to kiss her once and for all.

“My little monster has come out to play again,” I say, grinning up at her. “Don’t you know this only excites me?”

Some might say he speaks straight from the devil, but I’m discovering I like what the devil has to say.

Is it possible that the man who kept me in a cage is the same one to set me free?

“Not that pathetic prince, but me. I’ll claim you in every way that I can, my essence so deep inside you that I’ll become a part of your blood and bones.”

Don’t you think, then, that we belong together? We could rule the seas as leaders of a new empire—a dark empire. You were never meant to be a princess, Maren. You were meant to be a queen. Perhaps my queen.”

I need you. I really, really need you.

More than I’ve ever needed anyone. And yes, this is a physical need in so many ways, but you drive me to despair, luv. You make me lose my reason. And I’m not going to give up on you giving in to me. I need your submission so badly that I feel the ache in my bones.”

But the truth is, he has hurt me. And more than that, I’m angry at him. Angry that he put me in this position between wanting him and hating him.

What if I both scarred him and scared him? What if that thin line of respect we seemed to have for each other has been shredded the same as his face?

“I caused you pain,” I say to him, and he raises my other hand to his mouth and kisses my wrist, the tender sensation causing a ripple in my chest. “I was a monster.”

“But you’re my monster, Maren. My fierce little creature. You did what you were born to do and what I told you to do.”

I can either keep her locked in here forever or I can let her go free. I’m not as worried now that she may do further harm to me, but I am worried she might jump into the sea and leave me.

With her pirate attire, her black hair blowing back in the wind, even those faint lines of gills on her neck, she looks so beautiful that there’s a sharp ache in my ribs, a longing for her that has slowly been coming to fruition. She belongs here, right here beside me, with the ocean breeze in her hair and the sun on her skin.

“The captain loves his crew and he loves his ship.”

“And he’s capable of loving more things than that. Even a former hostage, former princess, former thorn in his side.”

Life doesn’t pull any punches just because it’s already beaten you to the ground. It doesn’t let you breathe just because you’re already drowning.

“Then perhaps the both of us are mad, if madness and monsters are one of the same,” I murmur. “But we can be mad together. We can drown in our madness together.”

“Like you’re the moon and I’m the tides, and every thought, every need, every want, is drawn to you, Maren.” I laugh to myself. “You’re right, this is madness and I’m drowning and I don’t give a damn.”