Page 55 of Enchanted By a Pirate
He tilted his head before laying his dark eyes on her. "There may be someone who can help you remember."
The corners of her mouth shot up and she felt euphoric, like she had won the lottery, but his serious look nipped her exhilaration in the bud. "Who do you have in mind?"
"There is a siren. Her name is Meysandrine. She is said to have the gift of sight."
"You mean seeing the future?"
"Not just the future, but other things too. The ones that are hidden from us."
"Okay, and you believe she could help me remember?"
"She might. But her answers are not always clear and rarely what you want to hear."
"That doesn't matter. Let's go see her. What do we have to lose?"
Chris ran a hand through his stubble. "I'm afraid my crew won't be happy about you taking her advice."
"Why not?"
"Because I've been to her before and her advice… well, it wasn't all that helpful."
What? "When did you see her and what did she say?"
"When you disappeared, I sailed to her. I tried everything to find you. She told me that in order to find you, I had to use all my strength to take to the heavens. Shortly after that, I dumped the fairy dust over the Fortuna and flew into the air, but the giants felt threatened and you know the rest."
She looked at him thoughtfully. "So she didn't give you good advice."
He shrugged. "It could be that I misunderstood. Considering the mutineers brought you here on my ship, you could say I succeeded."
That was true.
Meysandrine. A siren.
"Where does she live?"
"No one knows for certain. Normal sailors can't find her, but we pirates can hear her call. There's this place where I found her before. It is located in the middle of the East Sea, which is why no one has consulted a siren in a long time. A great many rocks rise from the sea and the giants' strong breath causes violent storms, so no one has sailed to it in recent years. But I managed to find her before and I'll do so again."
"Especially since Toni is trying to persuade the giants not to blow storms at us."
"Aye."
"Will it be timely? I mean, Toni is waiting for us and we can't waste any time. Who knows if all the fairies aren't already…" She left the sentence unfinished but Chris also knew what she was thinking.
"Since we're sailing through the East Sea anyway, we wouldn't need much more time. We would sail a bit further than planned and that would only take a couple of hours of sailing time at most, depending on the wind."
"That should do it. So how does it work? Does she come up through the water? Is she sitting on a rock?"
The captain laughed. "No, you have to throw a gold coin into the sea where she is. If she wants to tell you something, she appears to you in your dreams."
In a dream? She wouldn't get to meet Meysandrine in person? "Then how do you know you didn't just dream it?"
The captain smiled. "So skeptical, madam?"
"Well, for a gold coin… It sounds like a lot and you have to have one. And I don't have any with me."
"How lucky that a rich pirate would lay all his treasure at your feet."
Anna's jaw dropped. Did she understand him correctly? Of course, there were stories that pirates had great treasures, stole them, and buried them on secret islands, but she'd never thought for a second about her pirate possessing such riches. "Would you throw one into the sea for me? To Meysandrine?"
