Andy thought that if she jumped out into the sea, if she let her body float wherever the current took her, she would never be seen again and that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. There were no ships for miles. By the time anyone sailed past, she would be long gone, sinking to the bottom of the ocean. She would be picked apart by fish by the time she hit the floor, the only remaining bits of her body bloated and blue. And then as days went by, weeks, months, a year, she would be nothing but a skeleton buried in the sand.

Tobi met her where she stood at the railing at the stern. She didn’t look at him. She kept watching the ripples the ship left behind. The water was calm that day, and they seemed to be the only disturbance. If Andy jumped in, the circle of waves she would make would go on forever.

Out of the corner of her eye, Andy could see Martin standing with them. He kept his distance as he usually did around Tobi but stuck around for her.

“We’ll be docking in a week,” Tobi said.

Andy nodded. They were docking for food and supplies. Andy’s small crew would get time on land, and then they would be back on the ocean, hopefully, in time to cross paths with an English merchant ship. But after that, Andy wasn’t sure what to do. If they were lucky, they would get a few new crew members out of the merchants. And they needed more crew. If they weren’t so lucky, Andy would lose even more men, and she would have to recruit at the next port they stopped at. And she didn’t know how much money she could spare to bribe pirates to get on her ship.

“I think we should get out of these waters soon,” Tobi said.

“Why?”

“Because the longer we sit here with a weak crew, and an even weaker captain, the more likely we’re going to run into the Navy,” Tobi said as if explaining the situation to a toddler. If Andy had a fraction less of self-restraint, and if she hated Tobi just a little more, she would have thrown her arm out and struck him. “We’ve been sitting in the middle of their route. And if we run into the Navy right now—”

“I know,” Andy snapped. There would be no way they could take on the English Navy at the moment. Not with their crew. Not with Andy debating jumping ship. “We’ll sail south after we dock. How’s that?”

Tobi nodded. “Should I make a route now?”

Andy shrugged. “If that’s what you want. I really couldn’t give a fuck.”

Tobi didn’t look amused. But he never really looked amused. He was always scowling. He had scowled as long as he had been first mate on the ship. Under Eli’s captaincy, he scowled. Under Andy's captaincy, he scowled just a little bit more. He scowled so much that he had permanent lines around his mouth, carved in like someone had chiseled away at his face.

He left her alone. Martin stepped forward and took his place. He looked out into the ocean with her. He hadn’t been a man of the sea before Andy had found him at a port. The ship was in desperate need of a surgeon, though, and he was in desperate need to leave land.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Are you going to ask me that every single day?”

“Until I know you’re back to your old self.”

“I am back to my old self.”

Martin hummed. He hummed a lot. Andy never minded it. It was a habit of an old man, and she couldn’t deny an old man his habits.

“I’m fine,” Andy insisted. “Leave me alone.”

Her body didn’t ache all the time, and she wasn’t waking up every night drenched in her own sweat. The relapses of midnight fevers were growing further apart. It had been almost a week since she had woken up so sick, a new personal record. It was good enough for her, and she would make it good enough for Martin.

Though, the old man was nosy and always meddled in her welfare. No one else on the ship particularly cared about one another, and Andy never figured out why Martin was the exception. He was a terrible pirate. He never took anything from other ships but medical supplies. He wasn’t ever eager to jump into battle like the rest of them. Often, he complained to Andy when she was about to throw the crew head-first into a raid. He was a very terrible pirate.

But Andy could never get rid of him. He patched up bullet and knife wounds better than anyone else she had ever seen. He knew more than just stitching up gaping holes in bodies, too. He knew how to treat fevers. He knew how to splint a broken arm. Before him, their medical care had been crude. Andy couldn’t go back to that.

“If you’re not fine, I’ll bleed you again one of these nights,” Martin offered. “It’ll get you back in shape.”

Andy held her breath, hoping that Martin would leave. But he laid his rough, thick hands on the railing, and he stared out into the ocean with her. She wondered if, with his distant eyes, he thought about the same things she did. Going overboard, letting the ocean swallow him up. She wondered if he knew, as a surgeon, the best ways to die. The least painful. Andy had heard once that drowning was quick and easy. A lungful of water, and it would begin. And then the brain apparently blacked out what came next.

It was preferable to bleeding out from being run through with a sword or having a bullet rip through her. It would especially be preferable to succumbing to a fever or infected, pus-filled wounds. But it would have to wait for a different day when she was a little more certain that she wanted such an intimate relationship with the sea.

***

That night, there was light fog. Andy sat on the deck with the rest of the crew, half-listening to the ghost stories they told one another. She considered sleeping outside that night just so she wouldn’t have to walk all the way to her quarters. It was warm enough, though she would probably wake up damp and sticky in the morning when the fog cleared.

But if she woke up in the throes of another fever, her pain would be on display for the entire ship to see.

She pushed herself up and walked to her quarters. They were spacious. Whoever had initially owned the boat wanted something grand to separate them from the rest of the crew, who only had a handful of meager bunks and hammocks.

Eli had taken little things from every captains’ room of every ship they had pillaged and spread them over the quarters when he lived in them. There had been animal furs, statuettes, compasses, globes. Some were useful to Andy when she took over. Others, she tossed overboard. They weren’t her trophies. She didn’t want them near her.

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And anything that reminded her of Eli was better off at the bottom of the ocean. She had found enough in the past year of leading raids to make the quarters her own. Useless, dirty things cluttered every available space. They were nothing sentimental, but they stayed anyway even as Andy piled more and more on top of it all. She almost suffocated in her clutter, but it was how she liked it.

She stretched out on her bed. The sheets had been stolen from a Navy ship long ago. They weren’t great, but they were better than what the rest of the crew had. They were better than what Andy had had a year ago. They were, honestly, almost better than any other blanket she had ever had in her life.

At some point between blinks, as she stared up at her ceiling, she fell asleep. It wasn’t long before she was awake again, imagining freezing cold hands grabbing her limbs and pulling them down through her bed. She felt like she was choking. And then she heard a blood-curdling, pained scream and wondered if it was her or someone else being dragged away by the detached hands.

They grabbed at her hair and gripped every joint in her body tightly. The pain was almost unbearable. Like the hands were crushing her bones. Like her body was swelling up against them and every muscle was tightening.

She fought with her sheets, trying to free herself from the moldy, rotting corpses’ hands. She pushed the blankets off of her arms and kicked them to the bottom of her bed where they wrapped around her legs, finally breaking out of sleep. The hands were gone, but she still heard screams.

They sounded like they belonged to an animal. When Andy’s eyes snapped open, she thought for a second that something was dying right next to her. But then she realized she was alone, and no animals could be anywhere on board. Not any animals that could make such an awful sound. The screams weren’t real, Andy assured herself. There was no way they could have been. They were part of her nightmare. They would be gone with the icy hands. Though, the chill they left behind was still there.

She was soaked. Her sheets were wet where she had laid, and her hair was plastered to her forehead and around her ears. Her head was fuzzy and heavy, hard to lift off her pillow. Her bones really did ache. Her joints didn’t want to bend.

When she was a little more aware of her surroundings, she pulled her legs from the tangled blankets. The night air chilled her when it touched her damp skin. The hair on her arms and legs pricked up.

She should have assumed her midnight fevers weren’t behind her, and the long vacation from them must have meant that she was due for another relapse soon. It was frustrating. To still be sick after so long. To be weaker than she ever had been. It was humiliating. Surely, her crew saw her as infirm.

There was commotion outside. Andy pulled her sheets back over her legs. If there was a real problem, Tobi could handle it and brief her in the morning. She didn’t want anyone to see her in her current state.

But the commotion grew, and then Andy heard the scream from her dream again. Something was dying. It clawed at her chest. It made her feel sick.

She threw her blankets off of her again and grabbed her boots and floor-length, black coat even though every part of her body protested. She felt for her gun in the pocket. Whatever was making that awful noise, she was going to put it out of its misery and then return to bed before she collapsed.

The crew was gathered on the deck, looking out into the black ocean. There was barely a moon. The water was still. The fog hadn’t cleared, and it smothered the light coming from the crew’s lanterns.

Andy’s head swam at the next scream. It fell flat without an echo, and Andy couldn’t hear it coming from any real direction. But it certainly wasn’t coming from the ship. It made her head spin until she couldn’t see straight and chilled her further to the bone.

Andy’s knees were weak. The scream ended, and she crashed to the floor. She shivered too hard to move her arms underneath her to push herself back up, and her entire body begged for her to stay down.

She thought that maybe that was how she was going to die. Some monster in the ocean was going to jump onto the ship and trample them all. She would go first, having no fight left in her. Or maybe if the crew got too restless, she would be crushed by them while they ran for safety. Boots would stomp on her throat and chest, and no one would even notice her let alone help her up.

The deck was sticky and musky. Andy’s cheek was pressed into it, scratched by the splinters of wood that stuck out. She was so cold, though, she couldn’t feel if they were piercing her skin.

When she closed her eyes, ready to let whatever was going to happen, happen, she was hauled to her feet. Four hands pulled her up and then dragged her to lean against a mast.

“Captain?” Tobi asked.

Her lips and cheeks tingled. She grabbed onto the mast but could hardly feel it under her stiff fingers.

“What do we do?” Tobi asked.

Andy wanted to say that they could leave her alone. She was upright again, and she could lean on the mast until she could support herself. Attention didn’t need to be drawn to her little spell or her fever.

Martin raised a flask to her mouth. It was one of the only things he owned before he became their ship surgeon. It was nice. Silver. Engraved with his name. Dented and dingy. It was filled with whiskey, and Andy lapped it up. Martin somehow always had a little whiskey on him. It was used sparingly. Recently, it seemed like it had only been Andy who took sips from it.

“What are we going to do?” Tobi repeated.

Andy pushed the flask away. The whiskey burned in the pit of her stomach, but her senses were returning to her. The ship looked a little sharper. Her limbs felt like they were part of her body again, under her control. Martin kept a tight hold of her elbow. She could feel his fingers pressing to what used to be thick muscle. She could feel the moist wood under her hands again. Slimy as usual. Just as a lot of the ship tended to be.

The deck felt a little more sturdy under her. Or, her legs weren’t as shaky.

She wrapped her jacket tighter around herself. The chills wouldn’t leave until morning.

“Captain, what do we do?” Tobi said.

“About what?”

“For fuck’s sake.”

There was another scream. Andy cringed. Her shoulders went up to her ears, and she tucked her chin down into her chest.

“God,” she moaned.

It didn’t sound so distant anymore. Andy looked around again. The crew was leaning over the railings of the ship, carefully, holding out their lanterns at arm’s length. They looked prepared to pull back at any moment as if they were worried something would leap out from the water and snatch them.

“What the fuck is that?” Andy asked.

“We don’t know,” Tobi said.

“I say we go find it, figure out what it is, and we shoot it.”

“It could be miles away.” Tobi continued talking, but Andy barely listened. She pushed herself away from the mast, away from Martin’s hands. “I meant what do we do to stop us from going insane?”

Andy slowly moved up the short steps to get to the forecastle. Martin and Tobi followed her. Above the rest of the crew, Andy looked out ahead of the ship, to the approaching water. She couldn’t see anything.

She held her breath. When another scream came, she closed her eyes. She focused on the feeling of the light waves under her and the creaking of wood.

It felt like something was tugging her forward. Like something was embedded in her chest, like a harpoon, reeling her in right over the bow of the ship. Something wanted to keep her moving forward. Something was drawing her towards it. Something wanted to meet her.

“It’s ahead of us,” Andy said.

“So, we turn around?” Tobi asked.

“No. We keep going forward."