Page 80 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

“Remember you? Don’t you know you’ve become a part of me?”

He nodded, tears stinging his own eyes now, and she lifted up and eased onto him, taking him all, and gasping just as he did. She rode him slowly, deliciously, setting his scalp on fire as he drifted towards oblivion.

Maggie gasped his name over and over, not Bash, but Bastian, as though he alone could protect her from all the ills of the world. It occurred to him in the moment when she threw back her head and cried out as his seed spilled into her that perhaps if he was very lucky, more than just his memory and name would live on.

Chapter Nineteen

The sun rose bright and cheerful, as though no storm had forced them into hiding, as though Maggie’s world wasn’t about to be torn asunder. She woke with a stomachache that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with the empty, Bash-shaped hole about to be punched through her heart.

Careful not to wake him, she donned her old clothes. They no longer fit, belonging to a different girl in a whole different lifetime. Despite having bound her breasts flat for weeks, the bodice felt tight and restrictive, like one more cage from which she couldn’t escape. The skirts were too loose, the sleeves of her chemise much too tight, where new muscles had formed, and she longed to wear the comfy sailor attire she’d quickly grown accustomed to.

As Bash dozed in fitful slumber, she inspected the pendant he’d given her. He’d offered no words of explanation, merely hung it around her neck as though it had always belonged there. It was a lovely oval carved from soft wood, with a marquetry flower inlaid in lighter shades. And though she’d feared the wood might swell and be ruined from the damp, it looked as perfect as it had when he’d given it to her.

Like her own folding frame, inside it held two tiny sketches. One showed a beautiful black woman with long coiled hair, the other was unmistakably baby Bash. Unlike the wood, the portrait of his mother had begun to curl from the damp. Maggie blotted it gently, but it fell out of the locket into her hand.

There was writing on the back. The faded inscription was difficult to read so she moved to the mouth of the cave for better light.

Mahogany, cedar in a row

Coconut palm and pimento

Bury not my body there

In earth too rich and scented air

Dogwood blossoms, moonlight glow

Fondest dreams of sweet mango

A shiver ran down Maggie’s spine. It was the song Bash had awoken singing after taking the medicinal hashish, sure as beans, as Langley would say. He’d been humming it for weeks, struggling in vain to remember all the long-lost words. Carefully, she peeled the picture of baby Bash from the left side of the locket and turned it over in her palm.

The king once built a town so fair

Red hibiscus lined the square

Dance a waltz, then dance again

Down the hill, an empty lane

Andrew’s spire calls out to thee

Hear the bells but do not see

“All right?” Bash asked in a groggy croak, and Maggie whirled guiltily around to find him raising up on an elbow and blinking at her through sleepy eyes.

“I’m not sure,” she whispered.

“Mmm?”

She knelt beside him, opening her hands for him to see. “The pictures got wet, and I tried to dry them out, and well—she’s your mother, isn’t she?”

“Aye,” he said, gazing fondly down at the likeness.

“Could she have been sending you a message with her song?”

“Her song?” he asked, running a hand through his sleep-tousled hair.

She wanted to run her fingers through it too, but now was not the time.