Ahoy mates! My sincere apologies on not posting last week. Writer's block + Busy schedule = Bad Crest. You all should have posted, and you would have gotten my rum like Em did.
Nevertheless, my friends, I have a chapter this week! Newly (re)written, so Kat isn't completely bonkers in this one. So, no more delay. For you...
Red
Twisting, turning. Flying, falling. Run here, run there, kill this, kill that. See this person about an impossible task of finding a skeleton and stealing his ring, or dig up a treasure from a deserted island. Things that a girl raised in upper-class England should not have the talent or the ability to pull off, yet she does.
Kat picks up her gold handled cutlass. The blade reflects in an invisible light, and in that shine, she sees it all. Every single person, every single deed, everything that she has experienced in the Caribbean. The Cadet from the lawn of the governor’s mansion is the first to come; her first murder. She sees Josie, Nate, Fabiola, Solomon. There’s Charles and Sarah, her family rediscovered. Lawrence flies by with his bright red hair and emerald eyes, from the moment he saved her in the dark sea to the rage coursing through his body.
The blade suddenly turns a deep red, making her drop it in shock. Out of it flies the faces of all those that had fallen at her hand. So many Navy, EITC, and even the spirits of skeletons floated upwards and become real, concrete figures. Around and around her they spin, their voices building from hisses to a roar. Again and again they chant at her. “Pirate, Pirate, PIRATE!” Kat clutched the sides of her head, rubbing her temples, plugging her ears, anything to try and get the voices to leave, but nothing would work. Then, with a resounding screech, all of her victims shout, “KILLER!”
Kat let out a high pitched scream, making the voices surrounding her explode into smoke. She fell to her knees on a damp shore and her hands dropped from her head. They would have been better place where they were though, for as they fell, Kat saw them shining with red. She looked in horror at what could only be blood coating her fingers. In desperation, she dipped them in the water in front of her and pulled them out, but the red did not dissipate. Over and over she dunked the hands, frantically rubbing, wildly scrubbing, but nothing would change it.
“No, I washed you away, I got rid of you!” she yelled at the blood gracing her fingertips. Before any other attempts could be tried to rid the red, however, a slicing pain came from her side. She grabbed at it with a gasp, and when she pulled her hand back, she knew that this time, the blood was her own…
~~~~~
Kat woke to a sting in her side, which she held in her sleep. She groaned in pain, as she was not quite as numb as before. With tightly shut eyes, she reached over to her desk for a bottle of rum to buzz her into unconsciousness again, but her fingers met only with shards of glass. Her eyes flew open to see her hand grappling with the sticky mess left on her desk that had, that morning, been a whole, and full, rum bottle. She groaned, this time in annoyance.
Charles suddenly burst through her cabin door in clear excitement. “We did it Kat! We got everyone out of the jail!” Dirt was smeared across his face and his vest hung sloppily off of one shoulder, but his grin was wide and white. Exhilaration practically flowed from him, making Kat almost want to jump up and join him. Almost.
“That’s great, Charles,” Kat muttered, rubbing her head where a headache had begun to form. She tried swinging her legs out of bed, but hissed when her side reminded her it was still there and still searing. Charles’ face instantly snapped to worry. Kat was lucid enough to notice this, though, and waved it off. “It’s nothing,” she told him, forcing herself not to grimace. “Where’s Lawrence?”
Charles shrugged and glanced out the window. “I think he went to go try and clean up a little. Wait…” He squinted. “Yah, there he is.”
“Great. Can you go grab him for me?”
He nodded and began heading out the door, but an afterthought from Kat stopped him. “Charles, are you sure you’re ok?” she asked with doubt hidden behind her words.
His eyebrows raise slightly in surprise, and a grin quirked the side of his mouth up. “Of course I am, Kat!” he said cheerily. Kat herself couldn’t help but notice the blood spatter that darkened his grey shirt.
“Alright then,” she murmured, and Charles took this as dismissal. He exited the door to find Lawrence, and when he was gone, Kat sighed. “He’ll be a great pirate,” she muttered bitterly. It saddened her to see how well Charles operated in this world.
She decided to put it to the back of her mind. The pain overruled all other thought process now that Charles wasn’t here to distract her. Since her rum had been destroyed, she opted for tonics instead. Her side hissed at her and burned as she stood, but she tried to put it off. Of course, though, her cabinet was on the other side of the room. She gingerly walked over to it, feeling the burn grow and spread with every step. Somehow, though she didn’t know how, she made it across, but fell and sat with her back along the cabinet door, breathing heavily. Good god, things should not be this difficult.
A knock came upon her door. “Enter!” she called, then let her head slump backwards into her cabinet’s door.
Lawrence entered as he always did; Fling open the door, flinch at it’s speed, shrug, and slam it closed. This time, however, when he glanced around for Kat, he saw only an empty room. “Kat?” he asked the room cautiously.
“Over here,” she called weakly, raising a hand. Lawrence crept over to her sitting behind one of the chairs that had fallen in the battle earlier. She looked up at him meekly.
“Did you know that being sliced in the stomach and almost bleeding to death hurts more than being transformed into a skeleton and back?”
Lawrence shook his head softly at her, as if condemning her actions. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked as he leaned her against the wall instead. “You should be resting." He opened up her cabinet and began looking for a tonic. They’d been through too many battles together for him to not know where they were.
“Resting is boring,” she huffed. “Besides, my rum is gone and the pain got worse. I need
something to dull it.”
“Yes, clearly,” Lawrence replied, finding what he was looking for. He brought the bottle down to her and unstoppered it. “Here. Drink,” he told her.
Kat took the bottle to her lips and guzzled half of it down. Then she began coughing and making faces. “Good god, that has the texture of mud and the taste of wasp venom. Which one did you grab?”
Lawrence grinned. “The strongest one, of course.” He capped the bottle again and placed it back in the cabinet. Kat made another disgusted face as the aftertaste began to kick in, but as the tonic flowed through her, she began to feel lighter, and the pain began to numb.
“Alright, I’ll admit, that makes me feel a lot better,” she told him as he sat down next to her. “How did it go today?”
Lawrence shrugged. “It went as you expected. At least something did, aye?” he tried to joke. Kat just glared. He withered. “Anyway, my team fared pretty well. We took them by enough surprise that they didn’t have time to call reinforcements. It wasn’t difficult to just grab the keys, unlock the doors, and tell everyone to run. Luckie led the others through the town, helping kick out all Navy that had taken up residence in homes. Overall, there isn’t much worth mentioning, though I’m pretty sure that we have the townspeople on our side.”
Kat nodded. “Good. Perhaps tomorrow we can end this for good, with a swift movement. We’ll go into town again and try to stir up some of the people.” Kat held out a hand, and Lawrence hauled her to her feet. “Let’s go.” She began walking slowly to the door, but felt more strength in her muscles now. There was no longer a shriek coming from her side.
Lawrence followed next to her obediently. “Where are we going? Not far, I hope” he said, worriedly looking at the bandage.
“Not far at all,” she replied. She paused at the door, considering something, then turned back to her bed. Her sword shone up at her from when she had polished it that afternoon. She took the golden handle and saw her reflection, tired and beaten, in the blade. The blood red of her dream flashed across her vision for a brief moment, turning the world crimson. With a blink, though, the browns and greens and greys of the world returned. Kat sheathed the blade in silence.
“We’re just headed down to the brig,” she said, turning back to face him. “I want to have a chat with Jenkins.”
Lawrence quickly made to open the cabin door for her and Kat stepped out into the twilight of Tortuga. The sun was always brighter as it fell into the sea, and far past the bay, it shone into Kat’s eyes. She squinted in brief pain, but when sight returned, she saw her crew staring at her in awe and wonder.
“No, I’m not dead!” she shouted at them, crushing what would have been an incredibly touching and cheesy moment beneath her boot. “Don’t you all have better things to do than stare at me like beached whales?” They immediately returned to what they had been doing, and Kat continued to lead Lawrence down into the brig, but as they passed Tim, they heard him mutter to Ironhawk, “She’s Kat Crestshot, mate. You expected anything less?” Kat had to force herself not to grin.
By the light of a dim lantern, Kat and Lawrence descended the many layers into the bottommost hole of the ship, the only place they let rats reside; lockup. Kat stood staring at the unconscious forms of the two Navy swine, the lamp casting deep, menacing shadows over her face.
“Sarah spelled them to sleep, you said?” she asked Lawrence behind her.
“Aye. They haven’t woken since.”
Kat nodded. “Fetch her for me, will you?” she requested. His footsteps echoed as he made his way back up to look for her sister, leaving her alone with the two forms.
Disgust made her body tremble as she looked upon them. She was much different than the young woman that had killed a Cadet three years ago, but she still felt the barely contained fury. How many times now had she been scorned and scathed by the Navy? Abandoned, betrayed, wounded; this described the relationship. When would it ever stop? When would it cease to matter?
Before she could work herself up too much, Lawrence returned with Sarah. Her sister immediately began accosting her. “What are you doing up and about? You should be upstairs resting! That still isn’t completely healed, you know! Why w-”
“Sarah, there’s more than enough time to rest later,” Kat spoke over her sister. “Right now, however, time is of the essence.”
Sarah huffed and crossed her arms. “You can’t wake them without me, and I won’t do that until you rest some more.”
Kat sighed and rubbed her eyes in exasperation. Really? Now, of all times, was when Sarah decided to have a backbone straight and strong? “Look, if I don’t talk to them now, more people of Tortuga will die at dawn. You want that?” she demanded of her sister.
Sarah was fuming, but Kat slowly saw her begin to give way. With hesitation, her hand disappeared into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the small straw doll. She got close to the bars and waved the doll around three times counter clockwise. Slowly, the two began to stir.
Kat drew her sword and swiftly barged into the cell. The iron door crashed as she pointed the tip of her blade to the suddenly alert Jenkins’ neck. “What was it you said about failure, Captain?”
Jenkins sat very still on the grungy, watery floor. “I believe I said that you were the one that fails, Ms. Crestshot,” he replied with strength, but Kat saw fear flickering behind his eyes like the lamp that sputtered behind her.
Kat pushed the blade further into his neck. “That, sir, is where you were wrong.” She released it from his windpipe, and he immediately relaxed and began breathing heavily. Kat paced a circle around the two soldiers, her sword hanging loosely at her side. “I must admit, you got me very good, Captain.” She rubbed gently at her bandages. “Nevertheless,” she got very close to his ear and whispered, “you lost.” She stood straight again to continue. “And now you will bow to my whims, rather than try to make me bow to yours. You and your colleague here are no better off than I was not so long ago.”
“I will not bow down to a pirate,” Jenkins growled with clenched teeth. “You are nothing but a villain, a knave, a devil in human form. You are out of the boundaries where you belong, and for that, you deserve your fate.”
Kat got right in front of his face, her nose inches from his. “I know the boundaries, Captain Jenkins. I have
lived the boundaries, sir,” she snarled. “The boundaries are overrated.”
She shoved her body away from him and began pacing again. “You have lost four of your men because you refused to trust me. Now-”
“You’re a pirate! Why should I trust you?” Jenkins demanded.
Kat made a quick, clean slice across his upper arm. He hissed in pain. “Ah ah. I wasn’t finished, Captain.” Jenkins glared up at her, but he shut up. “As I was saying, I have a proposition for you that may meet your appeal. You order the full retreat of all your men here on Tortuga, and I make my honest assurance that none of them will be kicked into the ocean or killed on their way out of the bay. I think that’s more than reasonable, don’t you?”
Jenkins let out a barking laugh. “Leave Tortuga? Are you mad? We-”
“Yes Captain, I am mad, but that’s hardly the point of this conversation,” Kat spoke softly, yet easily cutting him off.
“Listen carefully, Kellan Jenkins, and choose wisely. I am giving you the opportunity to live and fight another day. Any other pirate, and even many of the common residents of Tortuga would not give you this chance. You are very lucky.”
Jenkins’ face was hard. “I will not abandon my post.” He shoved the words from between clenched teeth.
“So you send your men into imminent death?” Kat shouted. “Even I do not do that, Captain! Lives are precious, yet you throw them away like pawns! This is your choice?”
Kellan Jenkins was silent.
Kat looked down at him coldly. “Very well. Their blood is on your hands this time, not mine.” She turned on a dime out of the cell and slammed the iron bars behind her, leaving Lawrence and Sarah to follow her out of the darkness.
~~~~~
“We ready?” the figure whispered to the man at its side.
“We just have to wait for… there!”
A shadow came running towards them in the darkness. “We’re all set. Everybody is clear and out of the way. Nothing should happen on our side.”
“Good.” A click and a hiss accompanied the orange flame. The face of Kat Crestshot was bathed in its glow for a moment before she dropped it, quite purposely, on a small trail of gunpowder. It began running towards a main source, and cries of “Run!” echoed through the area. If the Navy heard them, it no longer mattered as they sprinted in any and all directions away from the powder trail.
A sudden blast lit up the Tortuga night. Kat Crestshot walked calmly away from it, a hard glare gracing her naturally soft features. She had warned Jenkins, and now his jail was engulfed in flames.
I really thought this chapter is better than the one I had originally planned. That one involved Kat taking a far too strong tonic and being all loopy and... yah. It was disastrous. I don't do comedy.
Well mates, feel free to tell me horrid it is.
I kid, I kid. Unless you think it was horrid and then, please, tell me. Thank you for the reviews and thank you for being patient while I worked past that bloody blockade in my mind, haha. And, as always, Thanks for reading!
-Kat Crestshot