Chapter Text
“Have you ever heard of ‘retirement’?” Ed asked. “When you stop working by choice, to pursue a life of leisure?”
Izzy looked over at him from where they leaned against the rail together, Ed facing out across the water, Izzy supervising activity on deck. The crew huddled together, sorting their share of the spoils from the latest raid. “Mm. That’s not much of an option in this line of work. The only retirement we get is...death. What brought this on?”
“Some advert I saw in the last newspaper. ‘Retire to the Canaries and Become the New You. Adventuresses, Adventurems and Adventurers Welcome; Extensive Range of Nautical Crimes Absolved.’”
Izzy scoffed. “Sounds like a scam.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go to anyplace that’s advertised,” Ed said, in a tone that implied Izzy ought to have sussed that out. “And I wouldn’t go as myself. But what if Blackbeard turned up dead?”
Izzy slowly swivelled his head and looked him in the eye.
“His corpse disfigured beyond recognition, of course.” He nodded towards one of the bodies the crew had brought over, to plunder at their leisure.
“But still identifiable as Blackbeard.”
“Well, he’s wearing Blackbeard’s clothes, he’s on one of Blackbeard’s ships.”
“What happens to you?”
“I’m not even there. My name’s...some fancyman name. I’m a wealthy landowner. Of course, the crew would need a new captain. Someone who really knows the ropes.” He gave Izzy a wide-eyed stare.
“You mean me. I suppose it could be me, yeah.”
***
So, a year or so later, when Ed had finally reached a point where he was not just feeling ennui but truly bored out of his skull, that’s what they did. They sacrificed the smallest ship for the Blackbeard-is-dead scene, and Izzy sailed off on the flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge.
Ed paid for passage, first on a Portuguese ship, then on a Greek ship. He spent some time tooling around the islands in the Aegean Sea; a couple of seasons, give or take, picking up languages and land-based skills.
Then he bought a villa on a tiny, secluded island, sheltered from northerly and easterly winds by larger landmasses; fed and watered by a grove of olive trees, a vineyard, a chicken coop, and a flock of sheep, and both a bubbling stream and a deep well. Sunset view from his veranda and, if he got up early and walked for an hour, sunrise on the other side of the island. Weekly market only a half day’s row away. He’d head out, order his various supplies and foodstuffs, spend the night at an inn and taverna, pick up his goods the next morning, and row home.
Now and again, he went fishing. For over a year, he experienced retirement to the full.
Then, one day, just when he’d begun to consider sending Izzy a message, find out what he was up to, he pulled up a surprise in his fishing net.
***
He cast his net one more time, because the water was calm and the late-summer afternoon a warm one. He’d already caught enough fish for that night’s dinner and for his new smokeshed; might as well try for a few more and he could attempt to salt-preserve them.
The net weighed down almost as soon as he’d cast it, tugging his arms low over the side of the boat. Hand over hand, he hauled it up and pulled it over the side, water dripping over the boards and his bare feet in their sandals.
“What the...” He peeled away the netting and looked down at his prize.
Creamy white marble, well-defined torso, a secretive, almost cheeky smile. Missing arms. But—A mermaid’s tail.
“You’re quite the specimen, aren’t you?”
He propped up the statue on the curve of its tail, where it had been designed with a sort of plinth, all of a piece with the marble that made up the rest, but clearly not a part of its actual “self”. He grasped it by the waist and looked up into its face from his seated position. Then he stood, transferring his hold to under the statue’s missing arms. It wobbled slightly as the boat rocked with his movements, then stilled.
They were of a height, the statue maybe an inch or two shorter, so that Ed could tilt his chin and kiss the smooth forehead.
If he wanted to. But what an odd action to think of in connection with a statue.
He laid the statue on the opposite bench and rowed home.
He couldn’t carry statue and basket of fish together up from the strand and over the stretch of seagrass to his villa, so he took the statue first.
“I know you’ve been under the sea for who knows how long, mate, and you don’t seem to have even a scratch. But you never know. Some cat might take a shine to you. Sharpen its claws on you. Can’t leave you out here all night.” He carried the statue like a child, both arms under its mermaid bum, but it was man-size, and heavy. Still, he kept talking. “Probably used to saltwater by now. Don’t want you cracking or anything in the fresh air. Or are you new? You don’t seem new. Floated up from the wreck of some fancy old-timey ship, did you?”
He went up his two front steps slowly, so as to not conk the statue’s head on the overhang, where the roof over the veranda came down, or on the bougainvillea trailing its leaves and pinky-purple blooms everywhere. He set it down beside him on its plinth as he opened the front gate, and the statue was surprisingly sturdy; all he had to do to keep it steady was to keep the statue close, set a hand to its elbow. As if it was tired after a long day and might rest its head on Ed’s shoulder.
“Don’t mind me, I’m being stupid,” he mumbled as he lugged it inside the gate and across his wide veranda, dragging the statue along with an arm about its waist. “Been out in the sun too long, I expect.”
He entered the villa and stopped in the centre of his front room and looked around. His villa was a single-storey one; beyond the front room, and his bedroom at the back, he had a kitchen off to the side, plus what he called a state-of-the-art ensuite, with a water tank heated by its own wood-fired stove and a plumbing contraption that let him stand under a spray of hot water. Bliss, especially in the foggy and chilly winter months.
“But where to place you?” he murmured, glancing sidelong at the statue’s face. Such fine detailing in the plump curve of its cheek and the loose curls of its hair. As if waiting for a hand to—
“Not too close to the fireplace, I guess. But you are cool—though maybe marble’s always like that? Never really had anything in my hands as fine as you before.”
He stood the statue against the stretch of wall beside his table and two chairs, next to his bookcase. “Let’s try this for now. I’ve still gotta see to the boat and the fish, make some dinner.” He gave the statue a pat on its shoulder and set out to finish his chores.
All along, as he went in and out, through to the kitchen, out to the veranda to eat his dinner at sunset, then to read for a while by lantern light, then once around the place to batten down the hatches—final check on chickens and sheep, bring in the cushions off the veranda furniture and close up the shutters—for the night (rather earlier than he usually did), he felt the statue’s gaze on him.
Or maybe he was the one gazing.
The statue was perfectly formed, and for all that it rested with a hip glancing against the bookcase, it seemed quite elegant, as if it were clothed in exquisite cashmere and lace, or the mermaid version, pretty corals that wavered in an unseen current, and not—
In the nude. That’s how you talked about statues, right? You didn’t just say “tits out”.
In the lantern light, Ed sat on his comfy sofa, which was more of an Ottoman style divan; made up of a cot with three mattresses piled on it and lots of cushions at his back where it was pushed up against the wall. He pulled his basket of mending onto his lap, talking all the while to the statue across the room.
“Guess you’re not very, hm, bendable, are you? Or else you could sit beside me. I’d like to know when you’re from. One thousand years, two thousand years? Were you always at the bottom of the sea? D’you have those cute guys, those monk seals, as friends? Do they dive down—well, how deep were you? Down where it’s wetter. Colder. Never mind, I guess I don’t want to know; I’ve seen enough of the kinds of creatures that can come from there.”
He shut up, and hung his head over his lap, concentrating on his needle sliding in and out of a sock. But talk of cold soon made him look again at the statue’s bare shoulders, bare chest. Maybe the tip of its tail felt a chill or, worse, missed the water.
He pawed through his mending basket, found the shawl he’d bought last winter; his first winter here. A few stitches had unravelled and he’d meant to try laddering them the way the elderly woman at the market—the one he bought all his knitwear from—had shown him. Both of them knew he’d likely end up bringing it in and asking her to fix it for him.
Putting the basket aside, he hopped off his divan and brought the shawl over to the statue. Wrapped it snuggly about its shoulders and knotted the tapering ends together over its broad chest.
“How’s that? Warmer?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
I fell asleep and I’m dreaming was his first thought. But that didn’t make sense, because he’d seen the statue’s lips move, directly before his face. And the sweet whisper of its tone was unlike any voice he’d ever heard before. His next thought was I need to hear more.
“Am I asleep?” he asked, for want of anything wittier to say.
“I don’t think so,” the statue told him. “I do feel as if I’m waking up.”
Its—his—words came slowly, as if dredged through a throat that had been silent for millennia. Ed set his palm to the marble neck, then snatched it back. “Sorry, shouldn’t touch you without asking.”
“You carried me here,” the statue said, and now his mouth moved in a brief laugh.
“You remember that? What else do you remember?”
“Oh, everything.” The laugh was cut off, and the new glow in the statue’s eyes dimmed. “Well, there have been some good moments. You were right about the seals.” His smile was soft, yet tinged with sadness. “And the two thousand years.”
“Wow.” He surveyed his place once more. “Is there any spot you’d rather sit? Can you be close to the fire if I light one?”
“I don’t really sit. If you want to pull up your armchair to the fire, I could lean against it?”
“Sure, yep, let’s do that.”
This time, when he slipped his arm around the statue’s waist, he imagined it was a bit more malleable. But when he propped him up by the armchair, he was as steady as ever on his plinth. Only his face and neck seemed to have changed in hue, grown more rosy—like a blush.
Ed wanted to keep staring at his eyes, at the colours that kept flickering through them, green and brown and gold, like sunlight shimmering in the warm Caribbean shallows he hadn’t seen in nearly two years. Fascinating.
But he turned aside and began to layer kindling and wood in the hearth.
After a while, the flames rose higher, and he added another couple of logs and a few pinecones, ready to step back and stop coaxing the fire. The statue had been talking the entire time.
“...it was the seals that started it, getting me to talk. They kept coming around to my boat, where it was lodged in the depths—I used to be closer to the mainland, actually, but after some...unpleasantness...the boat and I sort of floated a bit, and we ended up near here a few hundred years ago. The seals have been attentive, much like yourself, and they were the ones that first stirred me out of my thoughts. They taught me languages, and reported now and again of events in the world. Did you know they get news from the whales, as far off as two oceans away? I’ve never seen the ocean, only the Middle Sea and the Aegean. It would be—”
“Hey, whoa, mate— Statue— What’s your name?” he blurted.
“Oh, um. I never had a name. The man who sculpted me didn’t give me a name. But...”
It might be a trick of the lantern light, but the statue’s face seemed to pink even more, as if he felt shy or embarrassed about something.
Ed crossed the hearth to him, then realised that if he sat down, they wouldn’t be at eye level anymore. Instead, he leaned against the same arm of the chair, directly before the statue. “D’you have a name now?”
“The seals brought me one. Only a decade or so ago.” He added in a whisper, “Stede Bonnet.”
“The Gentleman Pirate!”
The statue’s eyes widened, and a gold sheen flickered in their depths. “You’ve heard of me?”
“Oh yeah. I’ve heard of you. I’ve heard all about you. Well, your namesake anyway. You do know that he’s...”
“Yes. His career was shortlived, apparently. But I delighted in hearing about his exploits. Because he felt trapped, yet managed to escape. And I...”
“I get it. Always hoped I’d meet him but I never got a chance before they captured him. So... Can I call you Stede?”
“I’d like that.”
“I’m Ed,” he said, and stopped himself just in time from holding out a hand to shake.
“It’s lovely to meet you,” Stede said, and there was that sweet whisper again. His gaze rested on Ed’s face, warm and bright.
“Stede,” he repeated, just for the pleasure of a new and lovely name for the creature before him. He thought back over Stede’s stream of words. “Wait— You said unpleasantness. What—”
Stede’s face fell, and his lips pouted. “Such a long time ago. You’d think I’d’ve forgotten it by now, that I wouldn’t even remember it, let alone still be dwelling on the pain.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, as if whatever painful event had happened had been his doing.
“It was routine— I mean, I was used to being teased.”
“Stede,” he said again, a sort of imploring sound. He cast about, trying to figure out how he might sit down, in case his hovering disturbed Stede, and ended up perching on the arm of the chair.
Stede waited till he’d stopped shifting, then said, “My sculptor was... He came from a distant land and settled in a village near here. People appreciated his bowls and amphorae, because he was a skilled craftsman. But on his own time, he liked to fashion more intricate shapes. Sea birds, a thousand different sea creatures...and me. He only ever worked on me by the light of a full moon, so it took him many years before he decided I was complete.”
“Did he... He didn’t sell you?”
“Oh no. I was simply decoration. And company, I like to think. He taught me many things, as if I were alive and could learn, or as if I might someday become flesh, and apply what I had learned. The rulers of the village changed, though, and the new leaders were not lovers of beauty. What they did not understand, they swept aside.”
Stede let out a sigh, and on his breath came the scent of wildflowers, wafting as if from down the side of a distant mountain. The firelight played across his cheeks like gilded fingertips. Ed clutched the arm of the chair to keep from leaning in. Then he got up and poked at the fire that didn’t need poking.
“They raised my sculptor’s rent,” Stede went on behind him. “They did this to others as well. New taxes were introduced on fruits and vegetables entering the village. My sculptor decided to return to his distant home. He sold what he could, packed a few items. I was terribly excited, because he’d made certain to leave space on his cart. I was going to see the world!”
Ed turned in time to catch the shimmer of excitement that passed over Stede, from his curls, right down to the peachy hue along his collar. But then Stede blinked, and the sunset colours faded from his cheeks.
“The night before our departure, two or three of the governors broke in to the atelier. It was difficult to be sure of their number because two, at least, looked like twins, though one had lots more hair. And they moved quickly, and bickered the entire time, not like the pure tones of my sculptor, so that I pretended to shut my eyes and ears and not listen.
“They broke a fair few things, hauled me out and tossed me in a dinghy, tied my hands to the oarlocks. They kept jeering, telling me to row, to dive and swim, as if... as if even they believed I might be real, but instead of aiding me, they feared me. What could I do to them?”
Ed left the fire and returned to Stede, this time not stopping himself from placing both hands on his shoulders, close to his throat. He reached out a tentative thumb on each side and brushed at the rosy tint of Stede’s neck. Malleable. Like skin. “Some people are afraid,” he said quietly, sweeping his thumbs back and forth against the soft roseblush of Stede’s skin. “They’re taught fear from childhood. Others gain power and then fear it’ll be taken from them. Many people have been hurt, and hurt people sometimes turn that hurt on others. But I can’t imagine looking at you and not being...”
He raised his eyes to Stede’s, met the hesitant but inquisitive look in them. “...not being entranced,” he finished even more quietly.
“How do I look to you?”
“Fantastic. Here— Have you never seen yourself? Let me get you a mirror!”
“A what?” Stede asked, but Ed had already bounded away.
Only once in his bedroom did he realise that he didn’t have a handheld mirror, only the fancy armoire that had come with the villa, and its built-in mirror.
He went back out. “I’ll have to, um, carry you.” The process of touching and lugging Stede felt a lot more intimate now that he had a voice—and a name.
“Do you mean you have something that will show my reflection?”
“Yeah. Have you really never looked at yourself?”
Stede did the facial equivalent of a shrug, pulling in his lips and blinking at him.
He stepped across. “Come on, then. I mean, if you’re fine with me—”
“You pulled me out of the depths, Ed. I think I’m fine with you shifting me across a room. Ed,” he added, as though testing out the name. “Is it a modern name?”
“Not really. But you’re from this part of the world?”
“I suppose you could say that. Though my creator wasn’t. I learned from him.”
“That sort of explains your accent. Some of your words sound Scottish. But others sound...” He didn’t know how to begin to explain his own heritage, or how Stede could possibly sound as though he, too, came from Aotearoa. It made him wonder about how far seals and whales travelled, and what sorts of things they learned about humans. An idea to dwell on some other time. “Either way, it sounds nice,” he finished lamely.
Stede beamed at him.
“Right, let’s, uh...” He stood side-on to Stede, hips touching, and slipped his arm around his waist, at the line where mermaid scales gave way to smoother marble above. “This all right?”
“Yes, Ed. I trust you. You’ve been so attentive today. Like the seals.”
He laughed, and suddenly, Stede’s head turned. Slowly, as if shifting against heavy sands. Stede looked at him in confusion. “That was meant to be a compliment.”
Ed cut off his next chuckle. “I gathered that. Not laughing at you, mate. Just... Funny. To think of myself and seals together.”
“Friends come in many shapes and sizes. I have not had many, and I treasure those I have.”
“Yeah.” Breathless, he didn’t add more, but shunted them forward a step across the tiles.
Fifteen steps to his room, and another five until they stood before the mirror. He made sure Stede wasn’t about to tip over, then ran back to fetch the lantern. Set it on the shelf above his bed, then scurried to Stede’s side.
“I know what I am,” Stede said slowly, his gaze roaming up and down his form in the mirror. “I’ve met a few merpeople over the years—”
“Wait—”
“Yes, I know your kind consider me a mythical creature.” Stede smiled, at him, that secretive, slightly cheeky smile Ed had first noticed.
“Yeah, but what do you mean ‘a few’?”
“We are rare,” Stede said simply. “We live a long time, or so I am told. We—” His blush returned in full force— “We choose our lifemate, and some choose to have offspring. And then we explore the deeps. Or, rather, those muses who inspired my sculptor do so. I have not seen much of the world.”
Stede turned back to the mirror, gaze flicking over his body once more. “I wonder what I might look like if paint had been applied to me?”
“You can see a bit of it,” Ed ventured, indicating Stede’s reflected cheek with an open palm. “You’ve got some pinks and golds...”
“I do, don’t I?” Stede said, pleased. “I do think my creator did lovely work on my hair.”
Ed’s gaze landed on the single curl swooping low over Stede’s forehead and he turned away to escape the urge to brush it with his fingers, find out if it was marble—or had become as silky as it looked.
His gaze then fell on his bed, and he was faced with a new dilemma. “You said,” he began slowly, “that you felt like you were waking up. Do you sleep?”
“Not in the way that other creatures do,” Stede answered readily, meeting his gaze in the mirror. “My eyes didn’t used to close. I did not speak with my sculptor, but I’m sure he understood that I could hear him, though he did not dwell on the matter. And at first, after I was separated from him...” Stede turned his head from side to side, watching himself blink slowly, one after another. “When I was stolen, and later broken, I lost hearing and sight for some time. It was the seals and their attentiveness, their care, that woke me, as it were. After that, I had regular intervals in which I dozed.” Stede winked at himself, then looked at Ed in the mirror and winked at him. “This is the first time I have had any kind of movement other than my mouth. Perhaps if I close my eyes, and keep them closed, I will sleep.”
“Do you need anything else?” Ed asked, still rather dazed by that wink. He thought of his own routines: smooring the fire, visiting the ensuite, changing into night linens, reading by lantern light, then lighting a short, stubby candle in a tall-sided candleholder, to have some intriguing shadows to watch for a while, but to keep safe, in case he fell asleep before he could blow out the candle.
“Thank you again for the shawl,” Stede said softly. “I think that is all I need at present. Will I stay here?”
“Um...”
“You may move me out, if you wish. I should hate to intrude.”
“No, it’s not that.” He’d imagined Stede as the statue, for a moment, as if Stede would stare unblinking at him from across the room all night. But Stede could shut his eyes, and turn his head. “If I... I mean, if you want to stand by the headboard, then we could...keep talking a bit?”
“I would love that.”
“Right, here goes.” He couldn’t move Stede side-on and still get him into position in the narrow gap between bed and wall, so he lined himself up in front of Stede, and sort of nudged him along with hip and hands, until he was resting in the corner where two walls met, barely a handsbreadth from the side of Ed’s bed. “Be right back,” he muttered, and ran off.
“It’s a statue, mate,” he told himself sternly, as he banked the fire and hauled the fire screen into position. “What’re you getting all flustered for?”
He set aside all thoughts of his body being flush against Stede’s, ignored all the images flooding his mind of Stede’s interested, trusting gaze on him.
Washed up in the ensuite and luckily happened to have a change of clothes on a shelf right there, a smooth, cotton Ottoman-style tunic. Returned to the room, swapped lantern for candle, shucked his sandals and crawled under his blankets.
Only then did he glance at Stede, as if having ignored him for the last few minutes might have dimmed his sparkle, or have lessened the sudden ache of desire in Ed’s chest. He still wanted to learn what Stede’s hair felt like.
He propped himself up on one elbow and looked up, and there was Stede, looking across the room at the mirror. “I’ve never seen myself, and I’ve never looked at myself with another beside me. You have beautiful hair, Ed.”
“Uh, yeah.” His other hand flew to his crown, patting his own hair like he hadn’t ever touched it before—as if he touched it on Stede’s behalf. “Gets a bit salty over the summer, when I’m in the sea a lot.”
“And is it summertime now?”
“Edging into autumn. Full moon tomorrow or the next night.”
“But you have your shutters closed.”
“Ah, yep.” He didn’t want to get into vulnerability, and safety, after having lived for so long on a ship that could outrun any threat. “We can stay out tomorrow night and wait for moonrise, if you want,” he found himself saying.
“Could we really? Oh, Ed!”
He couldn’t speak for a few moments, undone by Stede’s breathy moan. Occupied himself with arranging his pillows to his satisfaction. “Right. Suppose we should get some sleep.”
“Certainly, Ed,” Stede said and dutifully shut his eyes.
Except they didn’t, talking long into the night.