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It was a whipscorch rainstorm that had borne her to me, or rather, to him, as the flotsam kingdom was still his when the dusk-gilt debutant made her porting to that sinsunken citadel, a lone man— a woman at that!— sailing along, swaggering her ghost ship into the harbor as a typhoon larruped a wardrum chorus upon the bay.
It set the night on fire with superstition.
She was brought into the king's court, but not brought, so much as directed, by two men, once themselves hardy and foolish, afflicted with the sudden intelligence to keep their hands tightly around their own belts, save for receiving her soaked-through cloak when she doffed it.
I remember that moment.
Her wind-wild hair was longer than even a princess' would be kept, longer than mine, even, and black. Black like grave dirt. Black like a fresh conflagration. Black like a dying breath. She was cast with the noble features typical of those from the west, her skin pale to match, and the way the rain droplets slipping down her cheeks, chin, and through the hollows of her neck seemed hesitant to let go of the milky expanse might have warned me of something even more otherworldly of her nature, had her eyes not immediately spoken so.
The same fierce slate of blue I'd only seen before on the still surface of the tempest tensing sea.
She came before my corsair king offering her services. Draped across his leg, I watched her movements, the twist of her lips and the sprawl of her gestures, the grandiose confidence, unearned yet unquestioned.
He asked her what she could offer he who was the king of his men and the god of his world.
She answered plainly, quickly, proudly. She could offer him power beyond his little world. The power of fate's strings plucked to his tune, however discordant it may be. She could offer him that which no man had ever dared to possess: dominion over the destined wind.
All in his hall knew she did not lie, for when she spoke the gale and torrent fell silent so her words might be heard.
The king had already been trapped the moment that witch stepped through the door; for what mortal could be so foolish, so impudent, to spurn a gift from one so clearly powerful? But what mortal could be so foolish, so covetous, to accept?
She knew as such, and knew I had noticed. She knew I was the king's eyes, and the one amidst his fawning throngs which had a finger on his scales of judgement, for when her gaze fell upon me it lingered, not as a lecher's would upon my silk and skin, but as a lord's might on a warbred steed, upon my temperament, my strength. Beneath the protection of the most feared man on the seas, I felt trepidation.
He asked her price, for no such power could come without, and I more than any did not believe the words she spoke next, for I knew she spoke her true desire.
"A share of the plunder, as much as my work is due."
The spray of the ocean chills my face. The waves crest high and slow, lumbering behemoths splitting on our prow, as above, thick coils of cloud, white on gray on black, churn with impatience.
I brace my footing to the deck, one hand upon my blade, silver and sheathed, and the other upon the coffin.
The men, though the most stalwart were selected, keep wide of the simple wooden box; that old foe, superstition, I suppose. It doesn't matter, so long as their fear of me weighs greater on their minds.
A cry sounds from the crow's nest, echoing down the rigging to me. My scalp tingles at the call.
My quarry has been sighted.
True to her word, the witch took only her share of the plunder, baffling though her choices were, taking not the weapons, nor the spices, nor the slaves, but the queer things. The trinkets and baubles. The aggrandized portraits of nobles, the delicate figurines of gold and ivory... The cutlery.
Yet true to her word, the luck of the fleet swelled like the tide. Fair winds and calm seas prevailed wherever the king and his witch sailed, the cloth and rigging of his prey became twisted and tangled as they were run down, and privateers all but vanished from the lanes. I know these things as I was brought upon the voyages, for the king was not so dull as to crew a witch without eyes upon her, and I was to be those eyes. That his favorite whore was close at hand when the rum and victory flowed, and it often did with the witch, was only a convenient pleasure.
Loyal to my king, watch her I did. A simple enough task, to find myself near her, the only two of the fairer sex aboard the ship, though she did not often act as such, whether by foreign culture or her own odd predilections I did not know, and though she saw it clear why and for whom I made her acquaintance, she did not seem cross for it.
In the dim light of a lantern, below the deck on which the crew drank and sang and danced to their fortunes, as I awaited my king's call, the witch spoke the first words she'd spoken to me which held any meaning at all.
"I'm not a witch, you know."
The sky turns black, the wind whipping back on us. The crew buckles and quails as the deck shudders beneath us. Ropes slip from grips, winding onto themselves into unfixable tangles, and sails fold and flip into useless shapes. Ill omens, all, but only that which was expected for now. A display of force.
My voice rises and steadies the men, even as a shadow spreads across the water beneath the ship. I draw steel, for in this place powder would fail to light and flames would gutter out.
And I keep one hand upon the coffin.
"I'm just a simple thief."
Those were the words she said. When one simply knew the proper things to steal, it became quite easy to steal away luck, or at least so she said. She said so, leaning over the lantern, staring into me, dark and deep.
I never believed in luck, not for anything. I didn't find much value in believing in something I'd never seen nor felt nor tasted. I let the so-called thief know as much, though there was no good reason for saying so, except for that my tongue was the barest bit loosened by my small, conspicuous, social sips of wine.
A sudden sharp sway of the ship staggered me likewise, and from the sounds above, sent more than a few sailors spilling. She rocked back and laughed, steady in place as though the ship itself were moving around her, and she swigged from her mug. She leaned her eyes on me again, tight with mirth, and that night, sharing the king's sheets, I thought of the corner of her lips and the glint of her teeth, sharper than they ought to have been in the lanternlight.
For a moment it seems as though nothing will happen, save a sinking feeling in our stomachs, but the frantic cries from above warned me otherwise.
The sea is rising, not swelling, but being pushed up from beneath on such a scale that the water does not break. It streams off the edges of the growing shape on the scale of waterfalls.
My hand leaves the wood of the coffin as I approach the rail, boots steadfast on deck, to meet the face of my foe, as a lady ought to do.
The first that breaches the water is a cord of flesh, pockmarked and pebbly, wide as a city street. It rises up once, then again, then once more, until what's revealed is a tendril, three ships in length, lined with suckers that clench and pulse. It looms over our ship, more than able to crush it in one fell blow, but I know that this is only the start of the show.
It's what I'd planned.
She knew I'd followed her, with that same canny know with which she first saw me, for I knew I moved with the silence of a fallen leaf, as a lady ought to. She brought her sharings of the treasure which were that day an hourglass, a gilded birdcage, and a globe of the world, to where she always brought them, the dockhouse she'd taken her residence within, though no matter how much she carried through the door, she never seemed to run short of room.
She left her door ajar, and I knew then that she wished me to follow. And follow I did. In her makeshift home, I saw none of the treasures she'd taken, none of the innumerable paintings she'd spirited away, just a lonesome hammock, and a shallow berth where a fishing vessel ought to have sat.
She stood with her back to me, and as though she did not hear her own door creaking, she tossed her bounty into the water, before jumping in herself.
It was an invitation, warm with the cold promise of the cyan sea. Her boots left on the water's edge, her coat doffed by the door. I could deny it no more than my king could have her promise of power, though power I never desired.
The water did not chill me as it ought to, the shiver of a thoughtless excitement crawling over my skin, and when my eyes opened I knew I saw her true, blurred in the brine, her form twisted and eclipsed itself beneath the shifting sun beams until she was less than a breath from me.
And she was beauty.
It is not her coffin. She did not leave herself behind.
The kiss of the mermaid was a fabled gift. For me, those few moments were fable indeed.
She brought me to her reliquary, her chapel of humanity, where a million and more treasures glinted amidst the rock and coral. She told me of her dreams. Of her hopes. Of her childhood and father, faraway and frail.
She knew so much of humanity, yet so little.
She knew I could fill the gaps.
She knew I wanted to, and knew I would.
But could I? Could we?
The king was not so dull.
I stand facing it, facing him, form wrought true, sputtering and slimy in the foul air he kept. The men roar and shoot and do a million and more things that do nothing to one clearly so powerful, and I raise my blade.
When one knows the proper things to take, it becomes quite easy to take anything, really.
A swipe.
A chance.
A life.
The plan failed, for all the luck in the world could not hope to fend off lovesick stupidity.
All the know and the eyes and the hope meant nothing if it made us blind.
The kingdom was ours, indeed, a masterwork mutiny, a citadel to call our own, its master unseated, but beneath our laurels we did not see the keening of eager blades.
On the night of our victory, the king as his men came, with rope and hook and chain, and ragged her away in claw and tail and tooth. To take her power for his own.
But power begets truth, and the truth of him was nothing the sun could bear to shine upon.
The only fitting end for such a thing, carved from his bloated truth, sunken far from the precious sea, far from her memory.
The grave dirt is black. Black as her hair.