Steel

He was right, she didn’t belong here. But he wasn’t any more likely to understand what had happened to her, so she kept her mouth shut.

He leaned forward, dropping his voice to a whisper; she tried not to flinch away. “Here’s some advice—keep your wits about you. This ship won’t sail free forever. When you decide you don’t want to hang with the rest of the dogs, I can help you.”

“Why would you help me?”

“Well—it might be that we can help each other, when the time is right. Think on it, why don’t you.”

She slipped out of the cell, shut and locked the door. She didn’t know what to make of the guy—and she could already tell him she didn’t want to hang with anybody.

She was adrift on an alien world. The clothes they wore, the ship, the work, the smells, the words they used—all of it was wrong, and she was exhausted from trying to figure it out.

Back on deck, the cook had a plate of food waiting for her—and the food didn’t even smell right. She’d have to eat, sooner or later—and what kind of dream would make her eat food like this? Next, she watched the cook fill a tin cup from a tap in a small barrel.

He gave it to her, and she raised it to her face to see what it was. The liquid had an amber tinge to it, and it stung her eyes and made her wrinkle her nose. Not water, then.

“What is it?” she asked Abe.

“What is it?” echoed Henry, who was nearby, laughing, unbelieving. “It’s got rum in it.”

Oh, her mother would be horrified at this. Well, she’d wanted to try it. Carefully, Jill brought the mug to her lips.

This didn’t smell sugary and fruity like those endless rounds of rum punch or her mother’s pretty drinks with slices of pineapple in them. This was acrid and seemed more like rubbing alcohol than something you’d drink. She took a bare sip; fumes filled her sinuses and the liquid burned her tongue. Surprised, she drew back, blinking away tears.

The pirates laughed. One of the women, hair in a braid and scarf on her head, yelled, “That’s no way to take yer grog, you tadpole! Bottoms up!” The woman tipped back her own mug to demonstrate.

Bottoms up. If they could do it, so could she. She tipped back her head and poured the rum into her mouth, figuring if she drank it fast enough, she wouldn’t taste anything.

Her whole mouth—lips, tongue, throat, everything—turned to fire, puckered, went tingling, then numb. She started coughing, which made them all laugh harder, but she was too busy gasping for breath to notice. Then she felt warm. It started as a heat in her stomach, which spread out to her limbs like syrup, thick and sticky. Then she felt very, very relaxed. She might have taken her brain out of her head and put it on a shelf. And that was okay. It meant she didn’t flinch back in a panic like she might have done when Henry put a hand on her arm.

“Think maybe you’d better sit down, eh?” he said.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she murmured, but she let Henry guide her to a convenient barrel, where she reached behind her because the seat seemed to be moving. Or she was.

“Cor, I reckon the tadpole ain’t never had a drink before,” one of them said. More laughter. Jill still had her plate of food, and she was still starving.

The pirates were settled into impromptu seats around the deck, perched on the side or on barrels or on the deck itself. Noisy and eager, they ate with their fingers, and since she didn’t have a choice, so did she. The food didn’t taste too bad—but the rum may have killed her taste buds. Maybe that was the point.

As they drained their rum, the crew grew louder, laughing harder, trading jokes and insults, punching each other until one of them fell over, which made them all laugh even more. Then one of them pulled out a fiddle, and another had a silver pipe, just a little longer than the length of his hand. They began to play.

It was like folk music, bright like birds singing, and soon people began to clap, stomp their feet, and sing along, but so loud and slurred that Jill couldn’t make out words. Her rum was almost gone, and the light from the lanterns had turned to halos in her wavering sight.

This was like a story. Golden lantern light played on wood, rope, and canvas; the ship became a bubble of light and music traveling through a shadowed world. She’d fallen out of her world and into this one, where the words and voices were strange. The stars were huge and bright, and a three-quarters moon rose, turning the sea to silver.

Later, many of the pirates seemed to fall over and sleep where they were rather than make their way to proper beds. She didn’t even know if the boat had proper beds apart from the captain’s, but the way her head was spinning she thought maybe she ought to find out. She could sleep and figure out what to do in the morning. Maybe they’d be at a port, and she could find a phone to call her parents.

Even though she was pretty sure she wouldn’t find any phones.

Jill blinked to focus and say something about beds, but the deck was moving at the edges of her vision. Because it was a boat. And the waves rolled, and her stomach flopped. She bent over and lost everything she’d eaten and drunk, right on the deck she’d spent so much time scrubbing clean. She could feel the start of a pounding headache.

“God help you, you are a tadpole.”

People were there, one on each arm, and they pulled her up, and the world flopped again, but her stomach went with it this time and didn’t empty itself.

“I can walk, I’m fine,” she tried to say, but the words came out wrong because her tongue wouldn’t work right. So that was rum. Why had she wanted so badly to try it, again? It turned out she couldn’t walk very well after all, because they brought her to stairs she couldn’t even see. By then her eyes were closed.

She heard the captain say, “Any of you vermin takes advantage of the girl in this state I’ll have his hide. Understood?”

“Aye.”