Sometimes, Andy could feel Eli’s hands on her.

They tugged on her shirt. They untied her trousers. They felt for her breasts under the bandaging she used to bind them close to her chest. They chilled her flesh wherever they touched her until the freezing cold spread all over her body. She was left trembling.

His hands were large, and his fingers were thick. When they grabbed her arms, they crushed her muscles. Andy could feel every callous on his skin. His hands were so rough it was like being rubbed down by coarse sand. A thousand tiny scrapes appeared on her arms, too tiny to see but still stinging.

She felt his hands when she slept. Especially when she was feverish.

When she felt his hands in the middle of an awful dream after her relapse, they felt too real. It was as if he was standing over her again. Andy balled up her fist and swung upwards. She wouldn’t let him get any further than he had last time.

Syan stumbled back. Andy’s fist just missed cracking her jaw. She stared down at Andy, eyes wide and betraying the stoic mask she had been wearing. Her hands were clasped together in front of her.

“You were crying out,” she said. “I was going to wake you.”

Andy sat up, curling her legs underneath her. Sun lit up the room. She looked around Eli’s cabin—her cabin. She saw all of her junk. All of her little pillaged treasures covered every inch of the place. There wasn’t a sign of him anywhere.

She looked up at Syan who still stood next to her bed, awkwardly, unsure what to do. Syan’s poise was gone. She had been shaken, frightened, and she couldn’t hide it from Andy. Her hair which had been so beautiful and tangle-free now looked like it had been slept on for days. It hung in her face, making her cheekbones look that much more hollow and alien.

“Get back on your side of the room,” Andy said. She felt like a child again, demanding her own space for herself.

Syan held her shoulders up, reclaiming some of her pride. “Don’t cry out in your sleep, then. I only wanted to repay you.”

She turned and began walking back to the fainting couch. She limped. Her wounds clearly weren’t as healed as they looked. Martin must have been right. There had to have been damage underneath.

Andy tossed her blankets aside. She was hot all of a sudden. Her fever was still burning through her. If Martin found her sweating and panting, he would bleed her again, and she wasn’t sure if she could go through that twice in one week.

“What do you mean by repay me?” she asked.

“You freed me from the nets six moons ago,” Syan said. “I thought waking you from a night terror would be some help to you.”

“You don’t have to repay me. I only pulled you out of the fishing net to get you to shut up. Did you know we could hear your screaming miles away?”

“Yes. That was my intention. I was looking for help.”

Andy crossed her arms. “You shouldn’t cry for help from just anyone. You could have attracted the wrong people.”

“As far as I’m aware, you are the wrong people. I wasn’t looking for humans.”

“Then who were you looking for?”

Andy fell back on her pillows. She spread her arms and legs out. It was blessedly empty. Free of all hands except her own.

“My choir. I was expecting to drive away any humans. I have no idea why you came.”

So, Syan had been trying to deter humans and trying to attract her people. Her sirens. It was probably why Andy felt so ill that night. Maybe they shouldn’t have chased after her. Maybe it was a dumb decision to sail into the sickening shrieking.

But then Syan probably would have died. She didn’t look well at all when they found her. She didn’t look well sitting on the fainting couch, either. She was trying to calm her breathing. Andy could see her chest rising and falling a little hard after her short walk.

“How did we beat your choir to you?” Andy asked. “How did you get so far away from them?”

Syan laid her hands on her legs. She spread her fingers out wide, her palms pressed into the raised scarring of her thighs.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t know how we reached you first? Or you don’t know how you got so far?”

“I don’t know.” Syan rubbed her thumbs into her legs, massaging little spots. “We were separated somewhere in northern waters when I was trapped by the net. I was dragged away, and when I finally broke free, they were gone. They hadn’t followed.”

Andy almost held her tongue but, as usual, she did not. “That’s shit. That is a heaping pile of whale shit.”

Syan let out a short bark of a laugh. “You’re crude.”

“But tell me I’m wrong. Your choir could have helped you.”

“I don’t know what happened. Maybe they had to leave. There could have been more trouble. It might have been too dangerous for all of us if they had followed me.”

“What I don’t understand is that you managed to pull a fishing net off of a boat. You must be incredibly strong. You’re telling me that a group of you couldn’t have easily freed you before it dragged you away?”

Syan shrugged. “I’m not that strong.”

“I suspect you must be stronger than humans. When we’re both well again, we’ll have to wrestle to determine that.”

“I’ll take you up on that challenge.”

“Have you ever wrestled with a man before?”

“A man, yes. A woman, I haven’t had the pleasure.”

She thought about the excitement of having Syan’s wide, strong hands pin her to the floor. Syan’s hands would warm her where Eli had touched her.

“You need to tell me all about your type,” Andy said, her curiosity peeking out again. “How often do you interact with humans?”

“We try to keep our distance, but humans have been bothering us an exceptional amount. When they come into the same water we’re in, and they stay around a little too long, we have to do something.”

“And that’s when you eat humans?”

“I told you. We don’t eat humans.”

Andy laughed to herself. She got a sick joy from annoying other people. And something about annoying Syan brought her extra joy. She loved seeing Syan’s half-pout on her otherwise well-controlled face.

But as much as she wanted to continue annoying Syan, she also wanted answers to all of her questions. She sobered up and sat up again. The muscles in her back tightened, and her hips fought against her. She settled on lounging back, supporting herself on her elbows.

“What about the Navy?” she asked. “How often do you see them?”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“The Navy?”

“They have big ships. White hair. Blue uniforms.”

“The Blue Men.” Syan lowered her head down and then back up. She didn’t meet Andy’s eyes. She squeezed her hands together. “We see them a lot.”

“They’re violent, aren’t they?”

“Yes. But we can be more so. It’s just their… determination that causes the most trouble. They never give up looking for us. And it’s exhausting.”

“They never give up chasing us, either.”

“What’s your relationship with them?”

“Well, we’re pirates. Pirates and the Navy are natural enemies. They want to capture us. We want to avoid them. Or kill them. Mostly avoid when we don’t have a lot of men to defend the ship.”

“Are you avoiding them right now?”

“We are.”

“Have you ever had to fight them before?”

Andy had. She thought about bloody hands and her long-lost knife. She thought about other, larger encounters with them while she was under Eli’s command. But they always paled in comparison to her first confrontation, when she was alone.

“There was this one run-in I had,” Andy said. “I got away. I stabbed this captain through the hand with my knife and ran.”

“Oh.”

“What about you? Any good stories?”

“I’ve drowned a few of them with my choir. But we haven’t been as lucky as you. Not everyone in my choir has been able to run away.”

Andy let out a slow breath of air. She wanted to know more, but she was also happy leaving the conversation where it was. She didn’t need the grim details of Syan luring men off their ship and holding them underwater while her kin was kidnapped, and Syan didn’t need to know any more about Captain Bettridge.

It wasn’t like they would run into him. It would be a miracle if he continued serving after Andy stabbed him. She had driven her knife directly through the middle of his hand, sticking him to the table, severing anything inside that got in the way of her blade. There was no way he could have ever used that hand again.

Andy was positive he was no longer a Navy captain. He probably returned in shame after letting a pirate get away. Not even an experienced pirate, at that. Just a young person who wandered a little too far away from the rest of her crew on land.

There was a knock on the door. Martin walked in holding two bowls. One was in his hand. The other was wedged in his elbow like he was a poorly-trained servant.

“You need to build your strength back up,” he said. He handed one bowl to Syan. “I’m sorry if this isn’t to your liking, my dear, but really, it’s not to any of our likings.”

“The gruel isn’t very good on a pirate ship,” Andy said when she took her bowl.

She stirred the porridge around. Her hollow stomach ached. She hadn’t had much food, and she was starving enough to be eager for the tasteless lumps.

“Oh no,” Martin mumbled.

Andy looked up. Syan had forgone her spoon and had begun scooping her porridge out with her fingers. She bent her fingers and brought her mouth forward so as to not spill any food on herself. She took one slow bite and then finding that the porridge was edible, began diving her fingers back in and quickly pulling them into her mouth.

Martin sighed. Andy smiled.

“I like her,” she said.

She dropped her spoon and dug her fingers into her bowl.

***

It took a few days for Andy and Syan to totally get out of bed and step outside beyond Andy’s cabin. Syan’s legs had almost totally healed on the outside. Her scars had flattened and faded. But she still walked a bit unsteadily. She wobbled up the stairs that led to the deck, Martin keeping a cautious hand out behind her.

The sun hurt Andy’s eyes. Pain pierced through her head until her vision adjusted to the bright light.

She was pleased to see the day crew had gathered on the deck. They sharpened their knives and swords. They napped in sunny spots like they were a bunch of cats. Tobi, of course, was missing. He was probably buried under logs and maps somewhere.

Syan watched them all in what was probably her own, subdued version of awe.

Andy walked Syan to the edge of the ship on the upper deck and found a spot for them to sit. Syan stretched her legs out in front of her. She had been lent a pair of trousers by someone, though Andy wasn’t sure who had any clothes to spare. They barely fit her. They looked as if they were supposed to be long enough to reach her ankles, but they stopped before. A rope held them up at her waist, bunching the fabric together.

“How many men are on this ship?” Syan asked, craning her neck to look at all of them again.

“Right now, there’s 17 of us. There’s me, the captain if you haven’t caught on yet, and Tobi, my first mate.”

“What’s a first mate?”

Syan ran her fingers through her hair. She swung it over one shoulder and began dividing it into three sections, pulling it apart. It seemed that all she needed to do to untangle her hair was run her fingers through it.

Andy felt her own hair. She liked keeping it short. She sawed away at it with a knife every so often so that it never reached past her ears. But it always had a straw-like texture. It was dry and knotted most days.

“A first mate is the second in command,” Andy said. “If I couldn’t act as a captain, Tobi would take over.”

He was probably acting captain as they spoke. He wasn’t one to waste time taking command. He wouldn’t like having to hand it back over now that Andy was out of bed.

Syan plaited her hair. Her fingers worked fast to braid it together until she reached the ends. It was tight and even. It looked perfect. Without anything to hold it together, she let go and let the very bottom unravel.

“That’s Jonny, our quartermaster.” Andy pointed. Jonny sat below them, whittling a chunk of wood. “He keeps track of all our records. He knows what we have and don’t have on the ship. And you’ve met Martin. He’s our surgeon. Everyone else is a deckhand. And half of them are off their shift right now, so they’re probably sleeping.”

There would have been more to introduce if that nasty fever hadn’t killed them. If Syan had only been there months before, she would have met Andy, healthy, and a handful more men.

“What does the captain do?” Syan asked. “Besides lay in bed for a week after recklessly chasing sirens?”

“I do a lot. I lay in bed for a week even when I’m not recklessly chasing sirens.”

Syan sighed and looked back to the crew. Without a serious answer, she wasn’t going to humor Andy with any more conversation. It looked like Andy was going to have to lay off the jokes. After all, Syan had been straight with her about her life. Andy could at least keep the balance and offer some sincerity.

“If you really want to know,” Andy said. “I decide where we’re going. I decide what ships we attack. I decide which ships we avoid. When we need more crewmen, I decide who we snatch off other ships and force to join us.”

Syan ran her fingers through her hair again, undoing her plait. She didn’t look worried or scared, but she asked, “Was I snatched to be part of your crew?”

“Why, do you want to stay here?”

Andy was a bit too quick with her question. She sounded desperate. But having Syan on board took her mind off of her problems. She had only been there for a week—and most of that week, Andy was unconscious—but while she was there, Andy hadn’t thought about how much she usually wanted to jump overboard. The water didn’t call for her.

Syan was new. She was change. Not only that, she was proof that there was more life beyond what Andy knew. Proof Andy could touch. And Andy wanted the opportunity to touch Syan. She wanted to tease her and talk to her until Syan allowed her hands on hers.

“I’d just like to know if I’m here for convalescence or if I’m here to do dirty work for you,” Syan said.

“You’re here for whatever you like. You told me you drowned men. I’m not going to force you into anything.”

She did wish Syan would stay, though, just a little longer. Syan’s hands left her hair and laid on her thighs. If she did want to leave, Andy wasn’t sure if she could. Not yet, at least.

“Right now,” Andy said, “we’re headed to a port. There’s a small town we’re stopping at to pick up supplies and recruit more men. Between now and then, I don’t plan on having a run-in with any other ships if we can help it. We have a few weeks left at sea where you don’t have to do anything.”

Andy didn’t want to make the offer, but she did anyway. It would be the right thing to do, and while she hardly ever cared about doing the right thing, she knew it was different this time.

“So,” she said, “when we get to the port, you can hop off the ship and do whatever you want. Or you can stay with us.”

“Until I find my choir?”

“Are you really going to go looking for them?”

“Of course. I need them.”

“But they didn’t look for you.”

“I don’t know that. They could be looking for me right now. So, I could either depart at the port and swim back to where I lost them. Or I could stay with you and look for them wherever you’re going?”

“Sure.”

It wasn’t exactly what Andy was offering. Maybe it would be too much to offer someone a permanent place on the ship when they weren’t even human and when they had something else waiting for them. Possibly waiting for them.

Andy doubted that Syan’s choir was out there looking. She would think it wouldn’t be hard for sirens to find one another if they could be heard so far away.

But still, Andy wanted to ask if she wanted to stay for reasons beyond trying to get back to her choir. She wanted to ask if being on a pirate ship inspired any new feelings. Anything that made her want to be a little adventurous. She wanted to know if Syan had been tired of her old life, too.

Thinking about going back to her old life, with a siren only being a fleeting moment in it, was more devastating than if Andy had never met Syan at all.

“But why do you need them?” Andy asked. “Why do you need to find them?”

“Because I need—” Syan began to snap. She stopped herself. “Because sirens don’t travel alone. We just don’t.”

“You’re not alone. You’re with a whole crew of people.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Andy didn’t press. She wasn’t going to get on the bad side of a siren. She didn’t need to know everything so badly.

The idea of Syan leaving and, really, the idea of Andy meaning less to Syan than Syan already meant to Andy was crushing. Andy had just met someone new, someone she could explore and get to know, but she had no intentions of staying longer than she had to. Because Andy wasn’t worth getting to know.

Andy looked out to the ocean. Everything she felt only moments ago was different. If Syan wasn’t true, lasting change, then maybe an accident where Andy toppled overboard was appealing again.

“Let me think about it,” Syan said. “It might be a while before I’m fully recovered. I don’t know what it’ll be like to swim in my condition right now.”

“Take all the time you need.”

And in that time, Andy would hope she would decide to stay.