The Pirate and the Mermaid
Chapter 6 – The Island Rescue
Ella had been working on repairing one of the skeletal constructs, when the first cry of “person overboard” had sounded across the ship. At first, Ella couldn’t believe her ears, who on the crew could be foolish enough to go overboard on a nearly dead calm sea?
Then, the call began to spread through the ship, all who heard it repeating the call as loud as they could, just as they had been taught. Ella was immensely proud of the girls on her ship. Very few of them had been born into this sort of life, and most of them had been rescued from some of the most inhumane situations, but with Ruth’s training, and her own guidance, each of them had ended up blossoming into confident, talented young women.
Ella slowly eased herself off of the bench near her work table, as the bell on the deck began to ring. She stretched her arms over her head, feeling a satisfying pop in her joints. Her right hand clacked against the door handle as she opened the door to several young women running along the corridor towards the deck. Her entire right arm from the shoulder down was made entirely of bone.
“Who called ‘person overboard’?” Ruth shouted over the hubbub. Ella chuckled to herself at hearing what she referred to as Ruth’s captaining voice. It sounded angry to most people, in fact, most people thought of her wife as being grumpy and overbearing. Some even went so far as to say cruel, but Ella, and most of the crew, knew better.
“Solu was on watch tonight, Captain,” one of the girls answered, “I think it was her!”
“Hmph. Let me see.” Ella exited onto the deck to see the entire crew on the deck around the starboard railing, and Ruth peering over the edge.
“Careful you don’t join her, Ruth,” Ella warned. Everyone quickly turned toward her, except the skeletal constructs.
“Ella,” Ruth said, “make sure none of the other girls are missing.
After a quick headcount, it was determined that only Solu was missing. Which begged the question who was the person that had been overboard? The best thing to do would be to ask Solu what she saw, so Ella commanded the skeletons holding the rope to start pulling her up. After only a moment, the skeletons all lost their balance, but continued pulling despite the setback.
The rope came up empty, it had clearly been cut. Everyone started yelling at once, frantically looking for more rope, Ruth had to physically stop one girl from immediately jumping over the railing after her. After nearly a minute of this, Ruth reached for the pistol slung at her hip, and fired once in the air over the port side railing.
“Enough!” Ruth shouted over everyone, “I will be forming a team to go searching for her momentarily. Ella, could you prepare the tracking spell for us?”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
“Of course, dear.”
“How long will that take, do you think?”
“Not more than a couple of minutes, could you have one of the girls bring me one of Solu’s hairs, I’m sure there are some in her brush or perhaps on her pillow. I’ll need that to make it work.”
“Beth, go get the hair, and then meet me in my cabin.” Beth had been on the ship the longest, and had proven herself reliable. Ella sometimes thought that Ruth was training her as a kind of successor.
“On it, Captain.”
“Anne, Glenda, and Jill, follow me. Henrietta, you will take over the watch. The rest of you get below deck. I’ll not order you to rest, I’m sure you couldn’t if you tried, but I do need you out of the way.”
Ella heard the rapid shuffling and murmurs of quiet dissent as everyone started obeying immediately. She meanwhile returned to her workspace, and began combining reagents for a search spell. After only a minute, Beth knocked at the door.
“Come in, Beth,” Ella answered, “go ahead and put one of the hairs in here. It’s a good thing her hair is so distinctively red, we might have had to try this a few times to make sure we got the right one.”
With the potion done, Ella sent Beth ahead to the captain’s cabin, and made the last few tweeks to the potion before heading there herself. The captain’s quarters, which Ruth and Ella shared, were separated from the cabin where Ruth conducted her business. The cabin had an entrance not only below the deck and stairs up from their quarters, which was very convenient, but also an entrance from the main deck.
“Ella, I need you to lead these three to where Solu is. I’m sending you because she might be hurt, but leave any heavy lifting to the others. I trust you should be able to get to the bottom of this, but bring her back, dead or alive. We don’t leave crew behind. Beth go below deck and keep the girls calm, the last thing we need right now is panicking.”
“I know, dear, though I doubt that she’s dead,” Ella responded with a comforting smile, more for the sake of the worried girls, than how she actually felt.
With the guidance of the spell in the flask, which sent out a bright green light in a straight line towards what she was seeking, it wasn’t very long before they made their way to the island near where they had decided to lay low after their last raid. In fact, it didn’t take long for them to see two figures lying on the beach, near where the light indicated Solu was.
As they approached, one of the figures, a mermaid perhaps, slid along the beach and swam away under the water. When they arrived at the other, Solu, they saw that she wasn’t breathing, her deep red hair pasted to her unmoving face, covered in sand.
Ella checked the woman’s vitals and while she wasn’t entirely dead, she would be soon if they didn’t start her breathing again. With a groan, Ella got up from her knees, and began drawing complex sigils in the air around the body of Solu.
“Is she going to be alright?” Anne asked, visibly and audibly trembling.
“I’m not sure, but I’m going to do my best. Just give me a moment to finish this spell.” Ella replied in what she hoped was a reassuring way.
At first, Ella was afraid that the spell wouldn’t take hold. She held her breath for a minute praying that it would work, staring intently at the glowing green sigils that were just over Solu’s unconscious form. The spell began to fade, to the horror of everyone around, but shortly before they went out entirely she began sputtering, coughing out impossible amounts of seawater, before finally catching her breath with a horrible wheezing inhale.
“Get her on board the ship,” Ella commanded the worried looking group of young women, “She’s going to be alright, but the captain and I need to find out what happened here.”