Hidden Island Chapter 31, part 1 of 3

Hidden Island
Chapter 31, part 1 of 3

"So, there was something under the water?" Captain Vex asked.

"Yeah," Will nodded as he bolted down the last spotlight lanterns on the railing next to the ship's wheel. The other three hadn't survived the fight on the prow, and Captain Vex wasn't thrilled about that. Those lanterns were expensive.

Will's hands hurt severely, but he still had more to do before letting the Doctor look him over. Besides, there were much crew worse off than he was. "I started to figure it out when the other ship started moving strangely the first time. Remember?"

"Aye. It seemed like it was pinned in the reef, and we were stuck on the ship, but it jerked back. Ships Dinna do that," Captain Vex nodded, then tilted her head in thought. "Unless something is pulling on them," she added a moment later, figuring out where Will's conclusion had come from.

"Exactly," Will nodded.

Understanding slowly dawned on the Captain's face. "It would have to be huge."

"The only time I've seen a ship move like that before was a whaling vessel," Will agreed.

"So ye were thinking a whale was using a broken ship as a hand puppet? Why would it do that?" Belita asked, shaking her head.

"Well, something as big as a whale, at any rate. I think it uses the broken ship for the same reason the grindylow call for help. To get our attention," Will shrugged.

"Crafty bunch of freaky evil bastards." Belita sounded horrified and impressed. "I'm right proper pissed at what they did to my ship."

"We should be glad we got away,' Will said. "There's not much known about Grindylows. Most people who run into them aren't as lucky as we were."

"Guess there is that," Belita agreed. "Luck was on our side tonight. We're still floating after a reef, a storm, sea monsters, and bombs."

"How many did we lose?" Will asked.

"Twelve so far," Belita said sadly. "Might be another two before the night is through."
Will felt like the air had been pulled from his lungs. "That many?"

"And another two dozen wounded. Five were probably crippled for life. I've never lost so many, Will. Those are warship numbers,' Belita shook her head, looking stricken.

I will need to figure out what to say. He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her for reassurance. She took off her hat and laid her head on his shoulder momentarily. It wasn't like her to show that kind of vulnerability, but she was tired and raw, and no one else was watching. Will noticed and wondered why she would let him see her that way but knew better than to ask questions. It was more important to be there for her.

Instead of talking, he looked through the spyglass again. "Let's concentrate on finding a spot to make land.

That's the best thing we can do for them right now."

There was no one left to stitch. Bella had been pinching a suture needle for so long that her hand didn't want to open. It spasmed as she spread her fingers and shook it out. Surprisingly, her hands and arms were the only parts of her that weren't smeared with blood. Doctor Kalfou had been adamant that she wash her hands between each patient. She'd claimed sharing blood caused sickness. Bella had never heard that before, but she wasn't a doctor.

The Captain's cabin was horrific. The bed was a bloody ruin. Wounded sailors leaned against every inch of the wall and were laid out on the entire floor save for a narrow path from the door to the bed. The puncture wounds were the most immediate problem, and she was glad that part was over with, but the Doctor still had her hands complete with all the broken bones. Besides their awful barbed tongues, the Grindylows' other favorite way to hurt people was to grab them and squeeze. They were solid. Half of those who hadn't made it died because their throats had been crushed. Many others had awful bruises where the grindylow's tentacles had wound around them and just constricted until bones popped. Doctor Kalfou's current patient was breathing shallowly and frothing blood on his lips. His ribs had been squeezed until they punctured his lung.

Quinn, Reeve, and the Norths had just finished carrying the dead out to the midship and laying them in repose.

The Kestrel was solemn. Everyone aboard understood that they hadn't won. They had survived.

"Danica, prepare to make landfall," the Captain's muffled voice echoed from the deck above them.

"All right," Doctor Kalfou said. If you can walk under your power or with some help and aren't waiting for treatment, I need you to return to your bunk."

"It's flooded," a crewman said. "That's where the hull cracked."

Doctor Kalfou's fatigue and frustration showed on her face, but before she could respond, Mister Reeve's hulking form darkened the doorway. He'd been leaning against the wall just outside. The cabin's ceiling was too low for him to be comfortable, and there wasn't enough room for him anyway.

He was covered in drying blood that was beginning to crack on his skin. "You heard the Doc," he barked. "If you can walk, start walking. Where you go, don't be her problem. To find the Quartermaster."

With a chorus of groans and winces, the injured painfully made their way out the door. Those that remained were the ones who couldn't move on their own: the unconscious, those with severe blood loss or broken legs, and the two amputees.

"Thank you, Mister Reeve," Doctor Kalfou said with a tired smile. "Forgot you were waiting out there, I."

Reeve shrugged. "I can wait. Don't think I'm dying."

"In that case, you need to get cleaned up. The Captain's washroom. Go." Doctor Kalfou said, gesturing to the door near the bed.

Reeve nodded and hunched his way through the room. He had to turn sideways to fit through the narrow doorway, and even then, it was a tight fit.

Doctor Kalfou began stripping the layers of bloody sailcloth off the bed, looking pained when she saw how much blood had soaked through into the bedsheets. "Might not be any saving the mattress," she sighed.

"Vex has running water?" Reeve laughed from the other room. "Well, don't that be just decadent. Going to be stealing that for my ship."

Bella moved to help Friday with the sails and the bedding. "I don't know what we would have done without you," she told the Doctor.

"Had a few more casualties but managed somehow," Friday said gently. "Did well, you. Thankful for your help, I."

"I'm not sure I would have gotten through my panic without you and Jack. I would have just hid in a closet," Bella laughed sadly.

"There be no shame in fear," Friday said gently. "It shows us the truth of who we are. If we can accept it, fears can become strength. If we reject it, we reject ourselves. That is the only shame."

Bella didn't know what to say, so she just shrugged. "I don't feel firm right now."

"Saved lives tonight, you," Friday said firmly. "If that is not strength, nothing is."

"There any towels left?" Reeve asked from the other room.

"No, they were used for triage," Doctor Kalfou answered over her shoulder.

"Well, you ladies are in for a show then." The big man awkwardly squeezed through the doorway again, concealing his manhood with both hands. Belita opened up her footlocker and pulled out a flowing yellow skirt.

She passed it to Reeve with an amused smile. He took it and held it in front of himself, looking a bit less uncomfortable.

Doctor Kalfou began to look Reeve over. He was wounded in at least a dozen places. There were five puckered, angry-looking punctures and even more ragged scratches from claws. There were even a few ugly-looking bite wounds.

Doctor Kalfou's eyes narrowed. "It seems you heal very quickly, Mister Reeve." Every one of his wounds looked like at least a day old rather than an hour. The shallow claw marks were barely more than scratches. The swollen and inflamed puncture wounds were the worst of them, but they still looked significantly better than the other sailors who had them.

Reeve nodded and tapped his tattoo-covered chest. "My Animus." He paused and thought for a moment. "My, ah, guardian spirit? Mine likes blood. Makes me heal faster."

"Well, that is... useful," Doctor Kalfou said, scanning her eyes over Reeve's intricate tattoos. The pale vitiligo patches on Reeve's face, chest, and stomach made his tattoos stark in contrast, but Doctor Kalfou thought he looked a little like a patchwork quilt. From a distance, he was just an odd collection of strange patterns and two-toned skin. She could see how beautiful the ink was this close to him. His body was covered in line after line of careful patterns. Waves. Islands. Shark fins. Overlapping diamonds like scales or armor. At the center of it all, across his broad chest, was a pattern of triangles that looked very much like a shark's mouth.

Beneath it all were many pale scars. She knew from her tattoos that scars could easily mar the art, but on Reeve, every scar was beneath the ink, including the fresh ones still forming. She leaned in and looked closer.

The skin directly beneath the tattoos was healing faster than the rest.

"So there is magic in them?' Doctor Kalfou asked.

"In all Akula tattoos. Most are weak. Mine is," Reeve explained.

"Can see why you did not come to see me sooner, I," Doctor Kalfou said with a half smile. It was hard not to be impressed.

"My Animus is strong but can only do so much. This is as much as I will heal with its help. For the rest, I come to you," Reeve said with a slight shrug.

"Well, you might not like it, you. Stitches are best on fresh wounds. These punctures that have already started healing look inflamed. I will have to flush them, which means opening them back up again," Doctor Kalfou ran her curved stitching needle and a narrow-bladed knife through the candle's flame on the nightstand. "Sit."

Reeve looked a little exasperated but sat on the bed. Bella started dragging the bloody sails and bedding onto the deck, leaving the Doctor to her last patient.

The storm was still raging. The waters were calm here, near the island inside the reef, but the rain and wind had picked up. It was a warm, southerly wind full of fat water drops that slapped the skin and splashed down so hard that the spray gave the ship's deck a shallow haze. The last time she'd been out on the deck, she'd been naked. The water on her skin had felt surprisingly lovely. This time, her clothes began to feel heavy and clingy almost instantly. Her fatigue and worn nerves made the annoyance of wet clothes much more aggravating than it should have been. She didn't know what to do about the bloody mess; she was half-carrying and half-dragging, so she just dumped it by the mast.

She was surprised at how busy the deck of the ship was. Danica North was directing about ten sailors dealing with the fight's aftermath. The corpses of the grindylows were being dumped overboard, and buckets of water were being used to rinse any stubborn blood away that the rain wasn't taking care of.

"Just leave two," Danica said to the swabs as Bella passed. "The doc wants them."

"There," Will said sharply from nearby. Curious, Bella turned around and looked at the helm, squinting into the falling rain. She could see Will pointing toward the shore in the faint light of the mast lantern.

"I dinnae see anything," Captain Vex said. Bella walked up the stairs, wondering what they were looking at.

Will handed the Captain the spyglass and reoriented the spotlight lantern towards a group of trees. "See that stretch of treeline that splits up the beach? There's a break in the trees there. It looks mostly like a shadow from this angle, but I think there's an inlet. Look at the water in front of the trees."

There's not much in the way of waves, but it's enough to form an eddy at the mouth." Will explained.

It took Captain Vex a few moments to find what Will was talking about before she answered. "I see it. It barely looks like anything. If that's an inlet, I will have Tae swing wide and come at it from dead ahead. We'll scrape those trees if I try to come about too close. I'll need ye tae reef spot for me."

Will nodded and was about to reply when he noticed Bella. She gave them a small, tired wave.

"How are you holding up?" Will asked, looking concerned.

"Not a scratch on me," Bella shrugged. She looked down at her bloody clothes. "I'm just tired and need to get cleaned up."

"I think the whole ship would agree with you," Will said with a small smile.

"Belita, your bed got used as an operating table. We're not going to want to sleep in it until it can be replaced or cleaned," Bella said, cringing a little as she delivered the news.

The Captain looked pained. "Go ask Mister North to pull three hammocks and bedrolls for us."

Bella nodded. "Where should I set them up?"

"Hold off on that. If Will is right, we won't be sleeping on the ship tonight," Captain Vex said. Then she returned to spying out at the oncoming eddy Will had found. "Let's thread this needle, Will," she said, swinging the ship's wheel and gently maneuvering the Kestrel closer to the inside of the reef.

Will gave Bella a nod and quickly unclamped the spotlight, hefting it to the starboard outer rail. He bolted it back on again and then started scanning the waterline below.

Bella trudged back down the stairs in search of Mister North and nearly ran into Jack as she and Quinn exited her room in the lower hall.

"Oh, hey," Jack said, looking worried, relieved, and apprehensive. I'm glad you're here; I wanted to apologize."  

"It's all right, Jack," Bella said, holding a hand to cut the other woman off. I'm not upset. There are things to talk about, but they can wait."

Jack looked relieved. "Where are you headed?"

"To find Mister North," Bella said. "I'm trying to figure out where Will and I will sleep tonight."

"I guess the Captain's cabin isn't habitable right now," Jack said, realizing the predicament. She threw her thumb over her shoulder. "North's in the hold. Just follow the sounds of yelling."

"Where are you headed?" Bella asked.

"The bilge," Jack said, making a face that said exactly what she thought of her task.

"What's a bilge?" Bella asked.

"It's the lowest part of the ship, where all the runoff collects. There's a pump down there. We're going to see if we can put a dent in some of this flooding," Jack explained.

Bella was impressed. "Will it work?"

"It will buy the crew more time," Jack said.

"Time to what? I thought we weren't in danger of sinking soon," Bella asked.

"Salvage," Jack said.

"What?" Bella was feeling like she was in over her head again. There was so much about ships that she didn't know.

"Go find North. It will be self-explanatory,' Jack said. She was about to leave but hesitantly added, "If you and Will need a place to sleep tonight, you can set up in my room. I don't think the water will reach that far tonight. I left the door unlocked."

There were many reasons that Bella might have felt apprehensive or conflicted about sharing a sleeping space with Jack, but tonight, she was too tired to care. She nodded, "Thanks."

Jack gave her a small smile and headed down the hall, followed by the impassive Quinn.

Bella found Mister North in the main hold, shouting.

"I don't care where you put them!" North bellowed. "Just keep the path to the stairs clear and move everything to the aft. The priority now is to get everything that isn't floating clear of the water. I want two palettes under everything. Stack the crates to the ceiling. Nail up some cargo nets and put all the sacks in them!"

The hole in the hull had been steadily letting in water. From what Bella understood, it took a long time for a ship to sink from damage like that, but it was still a significant problem. The Kestrel was sitting in the water with her nose tilted downward. The forward crew berth was flooded. Water spread out the broken door and flooded the hold's floor. The whole hold had at least some standing water and was close to knee-deep toward the prow.

Nearly all the crates were soaking up water, and some were starting to float.

The group of injured sailors was loitering near the entrance to the short hall where the doors to Jack and Morant's rooms were. They had nowhere to go. Bella wasn't about to interrupt Mister North right now. Getting hammocks could wait. She approached the injured group and said, "Follow me."

Then she led them back to Jack's door and opened it. "You can rest here until Mister North finds you a better place."

There was a smattering of thanks as they painfully headed into the room, sitting on beds, footlockers, or just on the floor. The small room only fit some of them. Bella's brows furrowed in thought for a moment. She looked around the hall at the other three doors. She knew one of them was Morant's room. Morant's group of porters was using the other two. She knocked on the door across from Jack's. After a few moments, a thickly built man with short-cropped brown hair answered.

He didn't say anything. He just looked at her, glancing at her bloody clothes for a moment, and waited.

"We need to use your room as an infirmary for the injured for a little while," she said.

"We got our own injured," the man said.

"Did you go see Doctor Kalfou?" Bella asked.

"There was a line. Mister Lynch took care of us," the man said.

"I'm not going to disparage Mister Lynch's medical skills, but you should check in with Doctor Kalfou," Bella said.

The man nodded grimly. "You're probably right. I still can't let you in, however. Lord Morant's orders."

Bella rolled her eyes in complete exasperation. Typically, being non-confrontational is a carefully practiced survival skill. Between her fatigue and the aftermath of the stress she'd forced herself to endure, she no longer had any amount of patience. "Which door is his?" she said, overpronouncing every word to punctuate her annoyance. The man pointed across the hall at the door next to Jack's, then shut his door. Bella looked pained.

One of the injured sailors, a man with a broken leg she remembered dancing with on the deck a week and an eternity ago, gave her a thankful smile. "Don't bother a noble because of us, Miss Bella. You have done more than enough for us tonight already."

Bella shook her head firmly. "You saved that noble's life tonight. The least he could do is give you a place to sit down," She went to Morant's door and hesitated a moment before knocking firmly.

A few moments later, Mister Lynch cracked the door and peered implacably into the dim hall. "Yes?"

"We need a place for the wounded to heal. Your porters won't let them in," Bella said firmly.

"Ah. One moment," Lynch said, then shut the door. It opened again a short while later. "Lord Morant's answer is no. You will need to find another place for them." The door shut again before Bella could reply.

The witch's eyes narrowed as she glared at the closed door. She turned back to the group of wounded sailors.

"Wait here." Then she headed back upstairs into the rain. On the deck, the large hatch doors were open, and Danica was directing sailors and riggers to haul crates out of the hold below with ropes and pulleys. Bella found the Captain still at the helm. She'd just finished steering the Kestrel in a wide arc and was straightening the ship out again. The ship was now pointed straight at the island. It was little more than a dark outline against the stormy sky.

"Clear over here. It looks like we avoided the reef," Will said, quickly unclamping the spotlight lantern from the rail. "I'm going to the prow to light your way." He hefted the lantern and ran down the steps without waiting for a reply.

Captain Vex glanced at Bella. The witch's expression was unambiguous. "What's got ye all mad?" the Captain asked.

"Morant won't let the wounded into any of his cabins," Bella said.

Captain Vex looked frustrated and focused on the shoreline again. They were approaching the island fast, with no light yet. She saw the bobbing beam erratically lighting the deck as Will rushed to the prow. "I'm a little busy,"

"You and everyone else!" Bella snapped. The hold was flooded, there was nowhere for them to go, most of them were barely conscious, and nobody was helping them!"

Captain Vex's eyes flicked to Bella and then back to the shore. Will was getting the lantern clamped, but she still didn't have a good view. "If I manage not to crash the ship, they'll have places to sit down soon. Until then, put them back in my cabin."

"You're just going to let Morant do this?" Bella asked, surprised and upset.

"Aye, for now. Later, there will be a reckoning, but first, I have to get the Kestrel safe on the ground," Captain Vex said, never taking her eyes off the shore. Will's lantern swept up and focused ahead, finally showing Captain Vex what she needed to see. Her aim was pretty good, but the waves had pushed the Kestrel offline.

She turned to correct the course and hoped they had enough time to straighten out again. "Tell Mister Reeve to take over for Mister North, and tell Mister North I need him prepping us to sleep on shore."

Bella was frustrated but nodded and headed back downstairs. As she reached the deck, she heard wood scraping on wood. They'd reached the inlet, and suddenly, trees loomed around them. A low branch dragged slowly down the railing, catching on every post before thumping to the next one. She ducked back down into the hold hall and gestured to the wounded. "We're going back to the Captain's cabin." The wounded men looked at each other, then painfully followed her back upstairs again.



To be continued