Page 8 of Hooking Captain Teeth

“Yeah, that’s the kill devil,” I say, squeezing the railing until my knuckles whiten. “Old prune pulled the card of an octopus.”

“Octopus is the ace of diamonds, you nutmeg,” Chub says with a laugh. “Your lady love is an heiress like me Catty, squirreled away in an island hacienda.”

“I’d like to think that,” I say, looking at my seven knuckles. “But you said it first, this boat has a habit of attractingothers. What if I’m to meet the mighty Kraken who sinks boats all over the Atlantic? What if it’s an omen that I will find peace at the bottom of the sea?”

“Nobody is meant to die alone,” Catalina says, clutching her half-woven lace to her chest.

“Listen here, cup-shot pudding head, you can’t be sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean by some demonic squid for two reasons. The first—our course is west to Mexico with the Atlantic at our backs. The second—we’ve flown overboard more times than I can count. The sea always spits us back onto land. The Caribbean doesn’t want the likes of us littering her seafloor.”

“Devil take me,” I say, chuckling with my hands over my face.

“He didn’t want our sorry arses either,” Chub says with a loud guffaw. “Ol’Blackbeard marooned us years ago. That’s how we ended up sailing under Magda—”

“And yet you stayed to sail under me. You’ve been quartermaster under all three of us. I appreciate you sticking by me,” I say with a clap to his shoulder. “No use both of us walking the night. I won’t sleep until morning with Vampire Magda’s ways still in my bones. Why don’t you and Catalina retire? I’ll take a turn at the helm.”

“Mighty kind, Captain,” Catalina says, winding the end of her threads into a ball to take her project down to the officer’s quarters by the infirmary. The blasted happy couple has the room beneath the captain’s cabin, so their near-wedded bliss rattles my windows. “She’s out there, you know. Your lady love dreams of you right now; I just know it.”

“Dreaming of wringing your neck with her tentacles,” Chub quips. He ducks my swat to the back of his head—not an amazing feat since he’s two feet shorter than me.

“Not funny. If she sinks me boat, you’ll be in Davy Jones’s locker next to me,” I say with a laugh.

I wave off the happy couple and take the helm.Patricia’s Wishsails into the sunset like the boats inmy books, but I stand alone at the wheel. Where’s the wench to nestle under my arm and squeeze my bicep? Is it too much to ask for a companion to laugh at my jokes, sing bawdy songs, and dance between the sheets? The gulls quiet, and a hush descends over the Caribbean. Nothing but the gentle lap of the waves—

And Catalina’s cries of ecstasy.Bloody hell.

Why couldn’t I find my wife first? My jealousy of my quartermaster will worsen before it gets better. As captain, I must officiate their wedding. Chub wrote down what to say when he officiated Branko and Magda’s wedding. Can I read his scribble without sounding like a pudding head? I should read the passages nightly to get the words down. I’ll be a hurricane of emotions during the ceremony, which will throw a storm over my focus.

I won’t just be joining them in holy matrimony. I’ll be releasing my best mate from his post and the sweet trade. Chub the pirate will become Ellis the husband, farmer, and father. While I’m trapped in a marriage with the sea…and whatever tentacled beast swims in the abyss, he will retire to land.

Abandoning my post at the wheel, I stomp to the railing and glare at the pretty pink sunset. I keep a bottle of high-class rum tied to this section of railing for her…my lost love. The half shot of firewater burns as itdribbles down my throat. I pour the other half of the shot into the sea in the hopes it will find its way to her lips.

“Where the hell are you, love? Why must you torture us by hiding from your intended? I know I promised to scour the world and travel all her seven seas to find you, but I didn’t think you’d put me to the test! Just appear in my life, and I’ll change into whatever it takes to make you happy!”

5

Sabrina

“Oh, I get it now,” Bettina says from behind me. Drat! I didn’t lose her around the Bahama Islands. “I knew if I followed you into the Caribbean, I would end up under a pirate ship.”

“And when I follow you on land, will I end up under a pastor?”

“I hate you sometimes, Sabrina,” she says, crossing her front two tentacles under her seaweed-wrapped breasts. Funny how many human gestures she uses in her Kraken form. She even covers herself with makeshift clothes when nobody under the sea cares. It’s almost as if her heart has convinced her to become human when she bonds with her soulmate.

“No, you don’t,” I say with a sigh. “Help me cut this line. Teeth’s alone at the helm. If I cut the anchor loose, the boat will drift for hours before he knows what happened.”

“Howmany anchors has he lost since you met him?”

“Seven, but I’m not counting,” I say as my blade saws through a deceptively strong strand. Where do they buy rope like this? I’ve never seen threads so thin yet stronger than a shark’s bite. While my hands busy themselves with the rope, I use six tentacles to dig the sand out from under the anchor. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about a few rogue pirates when boats fill our seas like sandfleas.”

“No, I’m worried my little sister fell for a pirate and will likely get herself hurt.”

“Too late,” I reply, bunching my tentacles around me in a comforting ball. The water temperature dropped. I’m cold, not sad.Yeah right.“He rejected me years ago and broke my heart. I’m not swooning over him. I’m plotting his demise.”

My sister’s smart enough to let it go but doesn’t reach for her knife to help me. This conversation has played itself during every season of every year since Teeth mistook me for a half-penny-upright in a seedy brothel. Should I have chased him despite the waning period of my human form? If I’d run to his ship, I could have turned into my Kraken form on the deck. My fear of Magda, the she-devil captain, and further humiliation kept me tangled in our musky sheets. Would I have had the strength to defend myself if Teeth rejected me and I was forced to battle avampiress in my Kraken form? Or would they have welcomed me with open arms as Teeth’s soulmate and another?

I’ll never know.

The sawing of my knife slows as tears gather in my eyes. My arms are as sore as my gills. The sunset faded into the night while I worked my blade. The clear skies clouded with threats of rain. I’ve struggled with this anchor for hours. Even the sand pit I dug isn’t deep enough to free it. I misjudged the size of the rock they used for mooring. The new rope may defeat me.

---