O Captain, My Captor Page 4

  “I never have!” I argue, a bit heated. I am being patronized again, I think, though I cannot tell for certain. “Every single thing that has happened to me since I awoke here has been a new experience, and I have no words to describe much of it! I know that these are legs and this is a ship and you are a sailor, but beyond that half of your sentences have been as gibberish to my ears for all I understand you.”

  “Really?” she asks, and she sounds genuinely surprised. “Wow. That sounds tough.”

  “It is!” I shout, almost bewildered by the obviousness of this conversation.

  She frowns. “I’m sorry,” she says, then immediately smiles again. I’m going to get dizzy trying to follow her moods. “Then we’ll add some vocabulary lessons to your leg training,” she continues, crossing back to me and kneeling next to my tangled legs. She runs her fingers along the metal circlet fastened near the bottom of one of them, and some unnoticed gesture or motion frees it with a click. “Think of all this as a learning experience,” she says as she slips the bond from my leg, unfastening me from the mast. “As an adventure.”

  “I don’t want an adventure,” I protest as she takes my arms and hauls me upright, leaning reluctantly on her as she leads me toward the door.

  “I know,” she says. “No one ever does. That’s what makes it one.”

  ***

  True to her word, this is how it is to be, and each day aboard Captain Vine’s ship — which she calls The Queen’s Runner — plays out much the same as the previous. Each day I awaken on the soft, cushioned platform called a bed in an enclosed wooden space called a bedroom, and before long my Captain appears to draw me out onto the deck. I practice walking until my legs are too fatigued to take another step, and then I usually practice other leg exercises: bending in places, stretching in others, learning all the different possible postures they may put me in, slowly becoming more coordinated. Captain Vine says that all of this activity will strengthen and loosen the muscles — that, contrary to my feelings on the matter, my legs are not infirm so much as out of practice. The muscles, she says, are the same as were in my tail, just rearranged so that they flex in places they hadn’t before. I will soon grow used to them, she says, and then they will not seem so burdensomely useless.

  Until then I watch my Captain striding around the deck and climbing around among the ropes and the twin sails with such fluid grace that I begin to grow silently jealous. She makes it look so easy, as if she doesn’t even notice her own appendages, just wills them to an end goal and, thus assured, waits until they have performed the necessary actions flawlessly. She still hasn’t put her clothes back on since doffing them after my first lesson, and I can see each slender muscle tense and shift with her every movement, a strange and strangely beautiful display of moving art that often captivates me despite myself.

  And she catches me watching, of course. And with the excuse that it’s good for my lessons in physical mobility, she plays my body like an instrument, arranging my limbs in whatever arrangement most strikes her fancy, then touching, kissing, licking, manipulating it just so to produce whatever response she’s looking for. She makes me writhe beneath her or against her and moan, pant, gasp, and cry out as she sees fit, a pinch here, a caress there, just the right amount of pressure in just the right place to quickly silence any protestation I may offer — or, more often, to simply drown it out beneath my own labored breathing.

  Each time I tell myself, “I will not give in to her. I will not reward this kidnapping by giving my captor the reaction she wants.” Each time she makes a liar out of me. Each time, I melt.

  Soon I start to wonder if I still care anymore, or if I simply go through the motions of protest out of force of habit or on the principal of the matter. If I am being honest with myself — and it is very hard right now to be completely honest with myself, confused as I am lately — I must confess that these things she does to me are … not unpleasant. Unwelcome, perhaps, unusual, definitely, but … well … I cannot yet describe it adequately. So many questions I want to ask about it, yet the only one to ask is her. And while I am sure that she would gleefully explain everything with an expert’s knowledge, I cannot bring myself to ask her. I will not willingly show her anymore weakness. She makes me weak enough as it is without my help.

  Such is my confused and curious state of mind, such the strange pleasure of this forced but unforceful submission, that I am not even sure anymore if I would still try to escape now if given the chance. As it stands, though, the decision is moot; I am chained to the mast by the ankle (one of many new words I have learned thanks to my Captain’s vocabulary lessons) each day as I go about the routine tasks Vineberry has laid out for me, and each night this shackle is replaced by another about my wrist when I retire to the bedroom. This, it seems, is one liberty my pseudo-benevolent captor is not going to allow me. As soon as one or the other of us grows tired for the day (usually me first, as the surface heat and fatigue from my exercises tire my body quickly, to say nothing of Captain Vine’s attentions), I am ushered into the structure called the cabin, of which the bedroom takes up the most space. Besides this room, there is the storage closet in which I first awoke; a small food preparation area that goes mostly unused because of my Captain’s diet of fruit and vegetables straight from the peel; and a hallway with a ladder that leads further down into the ship, below the deck, a place where I have not yet been but which Vineberry makes sure to disappear to at least once a day. I haven’t asked about it yet. I have enough questions as is.

  My bed, though, I must admit, is even more relaxing than the algae-covered alcove in my palace chamber back home. The pillow is like a smaller bed specifically for my head, and the blanket wraps me in a comfortable sheath of warmth, like exploring a kelp forest near a heat vent. The whole thing feels much like I imagine a cloud would feel if one could get up above the water high enough to lie on one — and after what I have experienced thus far, I am not entirely sure that such a fantasy is impossible anymore.

  Captain Vine is happy that I enjoy my accommodations as much as I do. Partly this is because she likes to use the bed as another stage for the games that she plays with my body, and again I reluctantly notice that the mattress does feel better than the hard deck when I am being contorted down into it, pinned beneath my Captain’s weight and my own legs curled in the air above me. But partly, I think, she is also just happy to see me enjoy anything, be it her food or her board or her body. I believe she is taking some satisfaction in being a good host, to a given definition of “good.” This is yet another font of curiosity for me, these peeks of altruism in between the inherent selfishness of her actions. I still cannot reconcile these two sides of my captor together.

  She also hasn’t cried since her first time with me on the deck, at least not that I have been privy to. That, too, makes me wonder. I get the feeling that I am not the only one suffering on this ship. In some unknown way, my situation might not even be the worst of the two.

  ***

  “We’re heading to Rockquay,” Captain Vine announces one day after returning from below deck. “I gotta dock this boat for a bit and get some work done on it, and I’m gonna need to unload those scales of yours to afford it.”

  I am not so adept at measuring time up here in the air, with day and night so dizzyingly close at hand, but I believe this morning marks a full week, perhaps a little more, since my capture. Since that first day, my Captain has worn nothing but the wooden pendant around her neck, which she now grips with one hand as if to make sure it still hangs there. This is a nervous habit of hers, I think; she seems to fondle that necklace whenever she’s seeing to the ship’s condition.

  “What is Rockquay?” I ask, sitting on my bed with the familiar chain around my wrist attaching me to the furniture.

  “Port town,” she says. “Small, but busy. It's a popular stop for the kind of people who don't like to stop unless they can't put it off anymore.” She sighs through her smile. “And I can't put it off anymore.”
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  “A port town?” I repeat. “Like a land town where ships go? With other humans?”

  “Bingo,” she says, sitting next to me. She takes the length of chain piled in my lap and fidgets with the links, looking suddenly somber. “You’ve really never been anywhere above the surface before, huh?”

  “A rocky shoal near home,” I answer. “I would cling to it with my sisters betimes and we would sing for the passing sailors.”

  “Really?” she asks, turning her smirk back on and pointing it toward me. A little bit of me melts inside at the familiar attention, anticipating what usually comes next. “That’s really a thing you people do?”

  “Of course,” I answer, confused. “Why wouldn’t we? Don’t all creatures sing now and then?”

  She says nothing for several moments, just smiles and watches me with something like thoughtfulness and something oddly like pride, as if my stating the obvious for her is something to admire. “Anyway,” she says at last, turning away and twining the chain about her fingers, “what I was trying to get at is that here soon, I’m going to need to get off the ship and do some business around town. And if everything works out, shortly thereafter I’m going to need to let a bunch of strangers back onto the ship to scrape and patch and tar various bits of it. And you’re probably not going to want to be sitting here all by yourself for either instance.” She lets the chain fall back to her lap and looks up at the mirror on the wall across from us, though without meeting my gaze in it. “If you want,” she starts, then stops, looks back down at the chain between us, takes a deep breath, then starts again. “If you’d like, you can come with me and keep me company. See your first land city. Broaden your horizons and all that. Y’know, if you want to.”

  She sounds … nervous? Yes, nervous, and slightly awkward, and maybe a little guilty. I can usually read her face, it’s so lively and expressive, but her moods continue to allude me. Something, however, seems to be bothering her, and I cannot tell if it’s something that has happened or something that she expects is about to.

  She glances sidelong at me, and the concern must show on my face, for she quickly looks away again and continues, “You, uh, you probably don’t want to go back in the water anywhere between here and Rockquay. Sorry. Do you more harm than good, though, probably. Not a friendly place for merfolk. The waters, I mean,” she adds, “though the town’s not really … well … I mean, it’s not really bad, per se, I guess, but …”

  She trails off, and now I am rightly and thoroughly confused as I have not been since our first day together. My Captain without her usual graceful confidence worries me somewhat. I think I actually prefer her with that predatory expression she so often adopts when she throws herself on me; at least then there is safe certainty in the situation and what it portends.

  “Captain … Vineberry?” I ask slowly, testing the atmosphere. She glances at me. I decide to take the plunge. “Do you … is there any hope of my ever seeing my home again?” I ask. “Honestly?”

  She frowns and grips the chain tighter in her hand, and for a tense moment I am afraid that I have upset her more, or that the answer that she is about to give me is not the one I want to hear. Instead she sighs again and looks even further away from me, so that I’m looking at the back of her head when she says, “Honestly?” so quietly I do not hear her at first. “Yes. Yes, Lorelei, I've not stolen you forever. I'll let you go home sooner or later.” She lies back on the mattress with her arms beneath her head, eyes closed. “You're something like a fancy I had in my loneliness, and I expect that here before long I'll realize what a bad idea stealing you was and set you free to rally your kingdom's army against me, and I'll flee this patch of water for another and lose myself in the world once again. But until then, I've gotta land in Rockquay.”

  Her prediction matches all the hopes I once held not that long ago — my escape, her punishment, a return to normalcy. Now I am not so sure what I want anymore; but watching her bronzed midsection stretched taut on the bed in front of me, lifting and falling slowly with her calm breath, is giving me a few ideas. I scold myself mentally for thoughts I still consider improper and inappropriate to my situation. But out loud I am surprised to hear myself say, “Then I think I will go with you, if you will have me.”

  She opens one eye and considers me for a long moment, face impassive, before sitting up and turning her whole body to face me. “Thank you,” she says, as serious as I have ever heard her. “I will. And I think we'll both be better off for it.”

  Quick as a startled mackerel, she darts in toward me and captures my lips with hers, planting her thanks on me briefly but deeply before pulling away, her smile flashing once more across her face as she dances out of the room. I flush, startled, but not as shocked anymore as I might have been. Like it or not (and I still cannot decide), I'm growing used to this treatment.

  She returns with the thin rod of gleaming metal that undoes the shackle from my wrist every morning, slipping it into a small hole on the outside. There is a muted click as the heavy bracelet breaks open, freeing my hand, which she takes in hers and turns palm-up to kiss the underside of my wrist. “We'll make landfall in a couple of hours,” she says, standing and tugging me to my feet. “You've just enough time for one final lesson, and then we'll need some breakfast.”

  I follow her out into the warm sunlight, where she turns and looks back at me, then blinks in surprise as if suddenly remembering something. “Oh,” she adds with a slight chuckle, looking me up and down. “Right. And clothes. You'll need those too, unfortunately.”

  ***

  By the time we reach Rockquay, I am finally able to walk on my own without assistance — if I move slowly, no faster than a stroll, and occasionally glance down at my feet. This is the result of my hours of daily practice, pacing to and fro across Captain Vine's ship. Today I sit and rest them longer than usual afterward so that they and my new prowess with them might actually be at my disposal when the time comes.

  I hear Rockquay before I finally see it drift over the horizon, a clamor of metal echoing on metal that my Captain identified as bells tolling in the marketplace. “To announce the arrival of a laden merchant galleon making port,” she explains. “Another shipment of fresh goods to pump coin through the traders' pockets.”

  “Will our arrival be announced thus?” I ask.

  She smiles at me. “We have no store of goods to exchange. The bells care only for those sailors that bring the city its tithe; we’ll get no such special welcome for our little ship. Thankfully,” she adds, almost under her breath.

  The echoes of the bell die away before the land comes fully into view, leaving the shrill cries of the gulls to guide us into port. Of harbors I know a scant little, mostly passed to me secondhand from stories my elder brothers and sisters had heard from scouts and visiting dignitaries to my father's court. Ours is a comfortably prosperous kingdom, but small, and contains no coasts in its boundaries. Human ships pass over us not infrequently, but never stop unless to weigh anchor against a reef for a short night's rest. I have heard, though, through my siblings' gossip, that human port cities are ringed on all sides by their great ships, with crowds of hundreds hidden from sight behind massive bobbing walls and a forest of towering poles. Masts, I now know to call them.

  Rockquay is not ringed on all sides by great ships, however; it is instead ringed on three sides by a range of jagged promontories jutting toward sky and sea like the teeth of an anglerfish, with dozens of great ships filling the open side facing our approach. Between the vessels and the stone, I can vaguely make out a swarm of humans flowing in all directions across wooden floors raised on stilts out of the water — the docks, my Captain informs me. Our ship will slip in between two of the massive ones — galleons, she calls them — and be tied to one of these docks, after which we will melt into the rushing current of humans and be dragged through the town on their riptide.

  This idea makes me uneasy. Until now, Captain Vineberry is the only human I have ever met or se
en myself. Within the hour, though, I will be surrounded by more humans than I used to have scales on my tail, all of them strangers to me, all of them jostling and in a hurry, and me stranded on legs I am only recently acquainted with, in a sea of strange and unfamiliar sights and sensations.

  I shrink back into my Captain as our ship glides ever closer. “There are so many of them,” I breathe in awe.

  “Yes, they do tend to fill up the places they go,” she says, placing her slender hands on my bare shoulders. I now wear a short but flowing dress, frayed on the edges, that my Captain pulled from some cranny below deck. The fabric, pale blue as an angelfish, is light and soft and breezy, leaving my shoulders naked while it clings to my breasts and abdomen before billowing gently out at the waist, giving my unsteady legs plenty of room for error. I still wear the cloth bowl on my head to shield the sun from my eyes — a sun hat, she says it is. “A crowd of humans will always be thicker than a crowd of any other people,” my Captain continues. “One of their advantages, I suppose.”

  “You speak as if you are not human yourself,” I remark, raising a hand to rest on hers.

  “Do I?” she says with a smile in her voice. “There's something for you to think about, then.”

  I take a deep breath to try and calm my nerves, but its effectiveness is limited. “I ... am no longer certain that I can do this,” I mutter, my hand tightening on hers.

  She pulls me back and slides her arms around me from behind, bringing my head to rest against the cushion of her chest. “Relax, my little pearl,” she whispers soothingly into my ear, “you'll not be alone. They are not so dangerous as they look, most of them, and I always protect what is mine. These are safe hands you're in.” Her hands cup my breasts through the dress as she speaks this last sentence, and the gentle squeeze she gives them does succeed in distracting me from my fears for a moment.