Steel

The sky had begun to pale when the conversation stopped, and Nanny turned back to Cooper. “You are a pirate,” Nanny said to Cooper.

“So you say,” the captain answered, tired. “What does that make you?”

“A young woman getting old,” Nanny said. “Your orphans, I’ll take them home with me, like you knew I would.”

“Thank you,” Cooper said, and seemed relieved.

“But you owe me,” Nanny said, pointing with the staff.

“Put it on my account, woman.”

The camp began to wake, the fires were fed, voices murmured with greetings of the morning. Jill watched, dazed, still in a dream. When she woke up, she’d be in her own bed, in the modern world, where she belonged.

Nanny had moved off to talk to one of her guards, and the Africans were standing, stretching, as if getting ready for a walk. Captain Cooper came toward Jill.

“Have you been up all night, listening in on us?” the captain said, looking down on Jill with a furrowed brow and a quirked smile. Jill nodded meekly. The captain shook her head. “You’re such a tadpole.”

Jill certainly felt small at the moment.

“Get up, then,” Cooper said. “There’s a group going inland for fresh water. You’ll go with them.”

Jill was tired of work, sweat and dirt, blisters on her hands, and not understanding what was happening. But following orders was easier than arguing. She picked herself up, stretched, tried to brush some of the sand off, and didn’t succeed.

Every new job she was given was worse than the last. Nanny’s people told them that there was a creek with clear, fresh water just a little ways into the forest. The mouth of it was up the shore half a mile. All they had to do was get one of the rowboats, row the barrels there, fill them up, and bring them back.

The barrels were as big as Jill. She could hide inside one if she scrunched up. While others continued scrubbing the hull, Jill helped wrestle the empty water barrels up from the hold, lower them into one of the rowboats, and row to the mouth of the stream, which was narrow, rocky, and crowded with overhanging branches and foliage. The others made her the guinea pig, testing the water every few yards, tasting handfuls of it until it turned fresh. She must have spit out a dozen mouthfuls of briny, mucky water. Then, when they finally reached fresh water that hadn’t been tainted by the tide rolling in from the coast, they had to fill the barrels, load them back in the rowboat, and return to the shore to load the barrels back on the Diana.

She hadn’t understood the phrase “backbreaking work” until the last couple of days. She was beginning to think she’d never done any work at all. She’d had an easy life, wandering on the beach on vacation; she wanted to go back to her easy life.

She had tied her hair up with a scarf to keep sweat from running into her eyes. Her clothing was soaked with it. She was so hot, she only wanted to run into the water and float there, rocked gently by the waves. After helping to guide the rowboat back to the ship, Jill rested at the edge of the sand, catching her breath, feeling the sweat drip off her in rivers. Her face was red and burning.

She didn’t notice that she had stopped next to Nanny, who was watching her, head tilted with curiosity, suppressing a smile.

“You look terrible, girl,” the woman said. Jill nearly cried. She might have whimpered.

“And what’s your story?” Nanny said, leaning on her staff. “Has Marjory found her apprentice to be the next pirate queen?”

Jill shook her head. “I don’t even think she likes me.”

At that, Nanny smiled wide. “Sit down here in the shade. Marjory won’t care if you rest a moment.”

Nanny moved to the edge of the foliage, in a spot of cool shade, and sat cross-legged. She waved Jill over, and Jill followed. The shade felt blissful. She closed her eyes to rest them.

“So, where are you from?” Nanny asked. “No real pirate would row a boat like you did, splashing the water all about.”

Jill sighed. “I’m from a long way away.”

Nanny furrowed her brow and said, “Just how far?”

Maybe because she was a stranger, a disinterested third party without a hold on her, Jill told her everything. Not just the boat tour from the modern Bahamas, falling overboard, and being pulled out by the unlikely Captain Cooper and her crew. But even before then, her frustration with her family, with herself, with her fencing and not qualifying for the world championships by half a second. And the realization that if she didn’t hav

e fencing, she didn’t know what she had, or who she was. She didn’t know why she was here. She was adrift with strangers on a wide ocean.

She finished, rubbing her hand over her gritty hair, staring out at waves crawling up the beach a dozen yards away, at the blue morning sky. Her eyes stung, but she hadn’t cried. She felt wrung out and tired, though. Like now that she’d told the story, told everything, she was empty. Ready to be filled up by sun, wind, and waves.

“Captain Cooper seems to think it’s all tied up in that broken piece of sword,” Jill said, and sighed. “But as far as she’s concerned it’s not about me, it’s about this Blane guy.”

“Yes. Edmund Blane. Your captain—”