9-Mar-2018
Convenient that I got to use a cruise ship in this one.
The captain of the cruise ship looked at me and made a face comparable to a man who had just eaten an extra tart lemon. His tan skin pulled tight around his lips.When he spoke, he used that tone of voice that said I should have seen this coming.
“So you’re telling me that your kaleidoscope is gone?”
“That’s correct,” I said. I did my best to square my shoulders and look into his eyes, but my belly won the square versus round fight, and it was hard to look into a man’s eyes who was a foot shorter than you. I held up a finger. “My Christmas kaleidoscope.”
“And that makes it worse why?”
The other officers kept their eyes down as they rushed past, preparing to pull into port.
“Because it is worth a great deal of money,” I said.
Which wasn’t entirely true. If we didn’t have it on the ship, we would sink the next time we went near the reef, and it would, in turn, cost someone a whole lot of money. We’d be dead, so that’s one burden lifted off of our shoulders.
“And you want me to turn this place upside down in order to find it?” His pinched facade cracked, allowing the red-faced fury to begin. His dark mustache twitched.
I squared my shoulders again. “Yes.”
“Just how much money is it worth?” the captain asked through clenched teeth. Steam from his anger clouded his gold incisor.
“How much is the ship worth?”
I got a glare in response.
“Because it’s worth more.”
“And you were waving it around in front of the audience last night? Telling them how valuable it was? Then you left it on the stage and someone took it? Am I understanding this correctly?”
All but the “left it on the stage” part. I nodded.
The captain threw his arm wide and pointed out the bridge window. “Then you’ve simply lost a small fortune. I’m not going to strip search every single person getting off of this boat.” He found his rhythm, and the volume of his declarations got steadily louder. “Do you have any idea what kind of a PR nightmare that would cause? None of us would ever work in this industry again!”
“Better than being dead,” I said. Aloud. Whoops.
“What do you mean?”
I didn’t have time to explain the laws of the sea to this man. Not the real laws. Not the things that kept us safe from the Sirens and the Kraken and the Kelpies. Not the reasons we always carried a *cough* magician on board.
I snapped my fingers, and the world around me froze. I was going to get hell for this, but the Brotherhood (and now Sisterhood—we’d considered calling ourselves the Hood, but hadn’t voted it in yet) would understand. And hopefully forgive me.
If not, they’d just leave my sorry corpse on this ship when it sailed again and then sunk.
Movement caught my eye through the window.
“Oh no,” I said, cold running through my veins. I rushed to the window and saw a single man hopping from the ship to the pier.
I squinted. No, not a man, but a faerie, identifiable by the soft blue glow around him.
How in the hell had he gotten on board past my wards?
The faerie stopped and turned. Our eyes met. He reached into his pocket-he was wearing a crew uniform-and drew out the kaleidoscope. The little imp waved it at me, and stuck out his tongue.
I rubbed my face. I had to get that thing back before we sailed.
As if the faerie knew what I was thinking, e lifted the kaleidoscope and threw it down onto the pier.
I felt the pieces shatter, as parts of my soul fled from my body.
I went to my knees, unable to see out the window.
How had he known?
