Melody Villa

Here is the first chapter of my novel Star Crossed Seas! Make sure you subscribe for publication updates!

A stillness settled through the tavern. After a long night of drinking and dancing on solid ground, the crewmen of the Harvester relaxed into a slog, draping their bodies over stools and tables in various undignified positions of repose. Though a real bed was one of the greatest luxuries of shore leave, there was hardly a man sober enough to stumble to their room to enjoy it. 

The bartender, with tight curls of black hair that had worked their way loose from his bandana, finally stopped to take a breath. Drunks were typically excellent tippers, bounty heavy pirates even more so, but he was clearly wondering if the gold he’d earned that night was worth it. Glasses he hadn’t had time to clear towered precariously on dirty tables, their fallen shattered comrades catching the light of the fireplace across the sticky floor. The walls, overdue for repainting anyhow, were splattered with alcohol and blood, as one usually leads to another in such company. 

He exhaled heavily, the pockets of his apron clinking with coins, and poured two glasses of water. Keeping one for himself, he slid the other to the only similarly sober man in the bar, who took it with a grateful nod. 

Leaned back against the battered bar top, foot tucked on the stool under him, Ethias sipped his drink. If he didn’t allow himself the joy of a hard earned ale, at least he could relish in the water’s freshness. The potted water aboard the ship had long since grown stale during the moons at sea. 

“How’d ya do it, Mate?” the Boatswain Raffus asked, not for the first time. Even if Ethias hadn’t been the Boatswain’s Mate, Raffus was still a hard man to say no to. Despite his scarred leathery skin and black-toothed smile, the man radiated a warmth that made refusing him feel like hearsay. “How’d ya survive the fall?” 

“Hang how he survived!” The tobacco choked voice came from Zeek, nearly as stout as he was tall and covered in dark hair. Blurry blue tattoos of sugar cane flanked by well endowed Dawhaé Island women peeked out from behind the fur of his arms and chest. “How’d ya fall off the ship in the first place, Fancy? Ain’t ya gotten your sea legs by now?”

The tavern was turning out to offer Ethias no more reprieve than the crowded docks. All day he’d fielded wayward glances from leery locals, jeering calls from working girls too gold-starved to be fearful, and desperate cries from fortune tellers who sensed his fate. It was these soothsaying witches who aggravated him most. He already knew he was a dead man walking and he hardly fancied parting with hard-earned fortune to hear it said aloud. 

And now, instead of relaxing with his fellow crewmates, who neither feared him nor craved the coins in his knapsack, he was relentlessly hounded about his miracle. Ethias was exhausted by it all. They’d finally worn him down.

“Alright, alright. If you wanna know so bad.” Ethias hid a resigned grimace and settled into his seat. Though the throbbing in his head demanded the relief of a pillow, his rattled nerves cried for a drink, and his miraculous underwater encounter made the painted faces of the girls that circled the Tavern all too appealing, none of those things were to be his anytime soon. 

“It started when we boarded that Rover Cargo ship.” He urged his voice to fall into the rhythmic cadence of a storyteller. “Dodgin bullets and swords, riskin life and limb for the treasure within.”

A few more men lurched in his direction, rapt as if they hadn’t participated in the very same raid. Ethias continued, “I’d hardly planted my boots on her deck before a Rover caught me square in the sights of his musket. One pull of his finger and my brains would be splattered across the planks!”

“Lucky for me, Fate decided his musket should suffer jam. Wasting no time, I lunged at the bastard, pulling my cutlass with my right hand, preparing to cut him down with my left!” The men chuckled. They always got a laugh at how Ethias used his wrong-handedness to get the upper hand in fights. 

“But this was no ordinary dumb Rover,” Ethias cut the lighthearted tone with overblown foreboding, “this Rover was clever. Crafty. Why, I’d almost call him brave if my conscience allowed it. Before I could toss my blade to my left hand, he took his useless gun and clobbered me over the head with it!” Ethias gestured at his bandage, the enchanted eyes of the men distracting him from the pain of the wound. 

“Oh, the stars didn’t belong to just the sky that night, boys! I was dizzy as you drunks, stumbling and staggering as the Rover bastard drew his sword on me!”  

“Now, course I keep a pistol in my sash, but I’m no good with it.” Ethias took a deep breath before brandishing his left hand, trying not to look at the scar. “I ask each of ya, could you shoot worth salt with a hand as damaged as this?”

The men that had gathered shook their heads solemnly. A fine audience, they acted as though his long-healed missing little finger was a surprise. “I drew my pistol and took my shot. The poor Rover was trembling scared at my attack, but he needn’t have worried. What a poor shot it was! It sailed a deal askew from the Rover’s pretty blond head and harmlessly out to sea.”

A few men laughed, and Ethias couldn’t help his smile. Trading stories like this reminded him of being at home, sitting around the bonfire, body aching from a long day harvesting tea and surrounded by his uproarious siblings. 

“Well, boys. I figured I was spent. Done. Dead. And what’s a dead man to do?”

“Fight!” 

“Exactly!” Ethias pumped his fisted hand. “So that’s what I did! Ran at the man, swinging hard, pummeling him back to the side of the ship. As the bastard spat teeth and blood, I thought I might have a chance of surviving the night!” 

The men nodded ferociously, seemingly forgetting they knew the end of the story. They were so invested if he lived or died, they ignored the fact he stood in front of them. 

“Alas, my victory was short lived.” Ethias hung his head dramatically. “The Rover grabbed me by my collar and, with a nasty sneer, tossed me overboard.” 

“Aye,” Raffus said, the sinewy veins of his neck bulging from the strain of leaning in. “But how’d you live?”

“Oh that?” Ethias put on a wide grin. “There was nothin to surviving. I was rescued by one of Fate’s Angels!” 

Men jostled at the mention of a woman. 

Zeek scoffed. “Now yer spinning fantasy, Fancy!” 

“Afraid not,” Ethias said, keeping his smile mischievous. “She floated through the water, flaxen haired and shimmering like the air on a hot day. I ask you what else she may have been if not an Angel?” 

At first, he had truly thought the woman was an Angel of Fate coming to claim his soul for its final judgment. However, while Ethias was far from spiritual, he knew no Angel had any business kissing like that.

When she’d kissed him, his desperate hands had raked across the rough scales that sprung from her hips and down her tail, glistening blue in the broken underwater light.

She was a mermaid.

A legend that seemed preposterous on land, but was all too real once you were at the mercy of the waves in the middle of the sea. Known for their vicious cunning, no man aboard the ship would doubt he saw her, but there wasn’t a sailor alive who would believe she had saved him. 

They’d sooner believe an impossible miracle than in benevolent merfolk. 

“And what next, Mate?” Raffus teased, his cloudy eyes shining. “She decided you were too handsome to die? Or did ya charm your life off her?”

“Too handsome, most likely, seeing as my mouth was full of saltwater,” Ethias replied, shooting Raffus a look not dissimilar to the ones he’d used to woo girls back home. 

“Prolly saved ya on account of your humbleness,” Zeek grumbled. 

“Perhaps. My pretty face is outshined only by my modest disposition.” Ethias gave his hair a haughty shake. Being the best looking man in a pirate crew was a rather low bar, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have his fun with it. “Speaking of, I am in desperate need of my beauty rest.”

Ethias slid from his barstool, draining his water as if it was a drunkard’s last swig of rum. “Goodnight lads! Hope to see you lively in the morning!”

“Aye, get yer rest Mate. Ship leaves bright and early.” Raffus knocked back his own glass of ale. 

The drunken crew groaned at Raffus’ cheery reminder. While Ethias may have lost out on the joys of drinking, at least he’s spared himself the sickness that followed.