Page 59 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

“Aye, sir.”

To Langley he added, “But keep it down. This is supposed to be sickbay, not shore leave.”

“Aye,” Langley echoed, sitting up a little straighter.

“Fetch me if anything changes.”

Maggie nodded, laying the back of her hand against Bash’s cheek to check his temperature once more.

Bash’s mother was radiant in a dress of green and gold. Her skirt flapped in the wind as she stood on the white sandy beach, gazing out to sea. She didn’t look like anyone else on their island, and she didn’t love like anyone else, either. She loved Bash with her whole heart and nothing held back in reserve.

The breeze carried her voice to him, where he perched on a rock watching her. It was an old familiar tune and Bash hummed along, trying to dredge the words from the back of his memory. She sang them, but they were gobbled up by the surf, so he hopped down from his rock and went to her.

Skipping along until he grew tired, Bash slowed to a walk, and then a trudge, his feet growing heavier and heavier with caked-on sand. It was like sailing into a headwind, he fought and fought but never got any closer, so he broke into a run. She turned, squatted down, and held her arms out for him to fly into, so Bash ran harder until he tripped over his own feet, landing facedown with a mouthful of sand, slicing his ear open on a sharp shell.

After scraping his eyes clean, Bash glanced behind him to see how far he’d come. His boulder was miles away, an almost indiscernible speck. When he turned back towards his mother, she was gone.

Bash began to cry, rubbing his burning ear, trying desperately to remember the words of her song as though singing it might bring her back to him.

The king once built a town so fair.

Red hibiscus lined the square…

His eyes snapped open. He was on a ship, the familiar creak of timbers a comfort in his discombobulation. His head pounded, the whump, whump, whump of his heartbeat so loud it was almost deafening, and his ear burned like fire. He reached for it, but someone caught his wrist, then entwined their fingers with his.

“You mustn’t touch,” his mother scolded. No. Not his mother. Maggie. He blinked, and she came into focus. “Do you need more hashish? I can rouse Langley.”

Ah. Hashish. That explained the vivid dreams.

“I dreamt of my mother,” he said, and his voice sounded strained and scratchy to his own ears, too loud and too close by half. “What’s happened?”

“Have something to drink,” she urged, tipping a tankard to his lips, and he tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down with a firm yet gentle hand. “Tiny sips. What do you remember?”

His vision swam and he closed his eyes. Waves, on a beach. Why did his head ache so badly? Even his hair hurt. How on earth did one’s hair hurt?

“I was on a beach.”

“A beach?”

“She was singing this old lullaby she used to always sing.”

“She?”

“My ma.”

“Before your dream, Bash. What do you remember from before?”

He tried to think, but it was all a blank of blinding, searing pain.

She knelt before him so they were eye to eye and licked her lips. He’d kissed those lips once, he remembered that, kissed them and grown lost in them. He wished he could kiss them now, except he firmly believed even his lips would hurt to touch. They felt as dry and cracked as hers had been the day he found her.

“Do you remember boarding a ship?” she asked. “With Langley and Samson and Dutch?”

Dutch. He’d been standing with Dutch, feeling small and disgraceful as a whipped pup.

You’re better than that, Bastian, Dutch had scolded. You’re not your father. You must treat the child as I treated you.

Shame washed over him, and his eyes burned as though full of sand like in his dream. “Can you ever forgive me,” he whispered. A tear tickled down his cheek like the slow, fiery slice of a knife. Was he crying fire?