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Roach straightened, putting his hands on his hips. "He has a fever!" he announced, nodding decisively.
Stede waited a moment to see if there was anything more coming, but there wasn't. "That's it? I knew that already! What's causing it?"
Buttons breathed in the air of the sick room, sucked it deep deep down into where vibes might be shimmered into Magicks. He held the air inside for a count of ten, before giving it up as a bad job.
“Aye, this illness is bad for balance like.”
“There’s bad juju creeping all over this ship,” Frenchie mumbled from under the kerchief clutched to his nose and mouth.
Buttons sniffed deeply and noisily again. “Vibes,” – sniff – “juju,” – “humours,” – sniff – “all on the turn.”
“Usually smells nice in the captains’ cabin,” Frenchie gasped.
“Illness, vibes, balance: it’s all one ‘n the same, boy. Can’t treat any of ‘em separate or we’ll all find ourselves in the gravy.”
“That’s what I been telling them.”
Side by side they stood over the feverish captain, each surely with their own notions of a cure.
Buttons moved slowly through the ballast and stores of the Revenge. He came down here regular-like after any raid or trade, directing Frenchie or Roach to move around the liberated crates and bales to where they suited most harmonious. Now his palms were flat against the wall of the hull, feeling her, listening to her.
“Reveal your disequilibrium, lass,” he murmured gently.
She groaned aft.
Buttons picked up his pace, his bare feet sloshing through the bilge water, the fingers of his right hand never breaking contact with the hull, fingers tracing up, across and down her ribs.
As he passed her seventeenth rib the boat was rocked by an outsize wave, and Buttons tossed off-kilter into a crate of musical notation, a language he dinnae speak.
The ship had a mighty discombobulation in the rib associated with mysticism. Buttons tried to remember the origin of the written music. Had that been the raid of the ship full of castratoes headed for Port Royal’s new opera house? “Sorry lass, I ne’er shoulda let such an unauspicious find block the flow in yer seventeenth. I’ll see these cleared out within the hour.”
She groaned, low, lengthy and loud, and it was as if the very planks Buttons pressed his palms to were keening in pain.
“It’s more’n that?”
The ship’s distress echoed up his arms into his very joints and marrow. There was something darker, too, sticky like tar, and it wanted the Magick that burbled in Buttons’ gut.
Buttons’ eyes widened with the realisation he didn’t recognise his foe. “Are ye a ghost?”
The stickiness didn’t answer while it probed deeper in his corporeal form, menacing the Magick that had been starved by imbalance. Buttons wrenched his hands from the plank nigh close to the two making contact. He stumbled back against the crate, gaze flicking from the hull, to his blackened palms, and back again.
“Lass, I dinnae know how badly ye been suffering. No wonder Cap’n Blackbeard took to his sickbed. I’ll pilot ye safely to Salt River Bay ‘n consult those with more wisdom than my sorry ken.” Buttons looked at his palms again, lightly touched them with his fingertips. Sticky. In an effort at consolation he brushed the back of his hand against her seventeenth rib. “I failed ye, lass. But if I cannae repair it my name ain’t Nathaniel Buttons.”
For four nights after the Revenge reached Salt River Bay Buttons was refused leave to go ashore and seek counsel on restoring balance to the ship. Cap'n Bonnet's notion of healing required as many concerned people on hand as he could gather, yet wouldn't give an ear to Buttons' wisdom. Buttons spent every night in the ship's belly, listening to her pain.
At last most of the crew were granted a night's shore leave, to assuage their worries over Captain Teach’s illness with the aid of a variety of inebriants at a tavern. The tavern operated on the principle of the barkeep being whoever recently had the most bountiful raid of liquor to be willing to exchange some for profit. Buttons was still slowly sipping his first and only watered rum, half an eye on which Salt River Bay denizens his crewmates were starting fights with. The other eye and a half were on the view of the street afforded by the half-missing plank in the wall of the tavern structure.
The night wore on and clouds began to drift in, obscuring the moonlight for any length from a blink to a full-body morning stretch. Ivan won his brawl with the surety of one retained by the mighty Blackbeard himself. Black Peter was applying braggadocio to the task of talking his way around the five arm wrestling opponents lined up to win his offered purse.
The dark spells expanded until they were the rule rather than the exception. Buttons began to consider that he may not see what he was looking for. Mebbe events would turn out favourably without this intercession, but in his experience it were more likely for a fishing net to turn up a sea tiger.
A huff of wind curled through the ersatz window, causing Buttons to blink and almost miss the momentarily moonlit sight he had been watching for.
“Where you going, Buttons?” Roach asked woozily as Buttons pushed his half-full tankard into his hand.
“Events are aligning,” Buttons informed him. “I must away before they move without me.”
“Wise,” said Roach, trying to tap his nose with his finger but sloshing rum over himself instead.
Buttons hurried after the cloaked figure, with some certainty regarding the what of the destination, even without a notion of the where. Contemporary names of places were of no significance, apart from the Power that a name could imbue. The energy of the thing, the flow from ancient to this hour and minute, was the thing. Mebbe he ought have insisted on Frenchie accompanying him ashore, given the lad the odds to learn a thing or two. Next time. Buttons knew he had many Next Times ahead of him. How many Frenchie had had nae been revealed to him.
The settlement had been left behind. The dirt track ended at a stile. Buttons followed his guide over and along a desire path worn down by ovine beasts of the field. His bootlace caught on a long-fallen tree trunk and he fell on his britched seat. Ten paces ahead his guide stopped too, and shed their cloak. Buttons debooted, debritched and desmocked. He rolled his duds into a neat lump and tucked them into a hollow under the tree trunk for safekeeping. His guide was likewise ungarbed. The clouds had mostly cleared, yet Buttons couldn’t see where their clothes had been cast.
Buttons watched intently as the guide raised a bare arm to point at the waning gibbous moon, then to their own feet, then to a distant standing stone that hadn’t been visible until this very moment. Buttons echoed the pointing, the moon, his own feet, the stone. He followed the desire path until he stood toe to toe with his guide. The guide held out the cloak they had worn, seemingly gathered from the air around them, and held it between them.
“Dinnae if yer flinching from the old skin to skin or being neighbourly,” Buttons announced. “But I’ll don it all the same.”
The guide didn’t resist when Buttons took the cloak and draped it around his shoulders. A silvery pin fastened it at the neck and the folds fell to just below his arse. “One size dinnae quite fit all.”
The guide shrugged, and started their journey back in the direction they had came.
Buttons proceeded to the standing stone without a second thought.
The only person at the stone was the stone herself.
“I am vulgarly unfamiliar with what courtesy to make to a Taíno goddess, but perhaps that’s what the cloak’s for.”
The moonlight strengthened, revealing a petroglyph on the stone’s face, about sixty degrees from the side Buttons had addressed.
“Begging yer pardon, mum,” Buttons excused himself as he side-stepped around to face the petroglyph.
The goddess’s carved face glowed with benevolent moonlight.
Buttons cleared his throat and checked the cloak’s folds were covering anything a deity may find objectionable. “Being as I’m not conversant with how to make a request of yeh, I’ll lay out the troubles we’re having and humbly accept any guidance yeh can offer. There’s an upset in the balance on the seacraft in my care. First I thought it were the cap’n’s illness that were unbalancing the other cap’n, because we do have a surfeit when it come to upper management. But my lady ship herself is suffering a discombobulation. It’s such that I cannae tell if my lady ship is unbalanced and causing the illness or if the illness of the man is spread to the ship. I start to ken we might be quickest righted if we dropped the ill man in the drink and carried on with those who keep their health. I have no grudge against him but I’ve always been willing to sacrifice a man to my love the sea for the good of a vessel.”
The stone stood stonelike.
Buttons raised his eyebrows. “Two sons. Twins? That’s a blessing, aye. Unless one of them be an evil twin? Nae? One for fair weather, one for rain. I needless tell ye which a sailor prefers. But then if your godessness has been housed inside a rock for a wee bit ye may be unfamiliar with the whims of sailors.”
The petroglyph faded low for a breath.
Buttons threw himself prostate on the ground before the stone, heedless as to what the cloak was covering. “Aye, I be a weak and hubristic mortal. I ask yer counsel then dare to overlook the truth of your meaning. Two sons. Rain and fair. That be the balance we need. Cap’n’s illness comes from my lady ship’s imbalance. I will tend to her as I would my own mother, as soon as Cap’n’s well enough tae be moved from his sickbed. But I am afeared my Magick is low, because her imbalance has thrown my gut out of humour.”
Buttons made his way up to his feet and flapped the cloak’s folds for modest coverage. He breathed in deep, held the energy in his gut where the Magick inside him burped like Roach’s yeast. He blew the sweet, yeasty breath out between his summer teeth.
“I am your humble servitor, goddess Iguanaboína.”
Buttons realised he had nothing on him, not the smallest token, which he could tithe to the goddess for her guidance. “I am regretful again, mum…”
With a flurry of wind, Karl circled above Iguanaboína’s stone, then settled on her bonce. Karl squawked and lifted his tail, gifting Iguanaboína a generous helping of guano.
“That be a bonny omen, that be,” Buttons nodded sagely.
Buttons and Karl returned to the fallen tree trunk but his duds were nowhere to be found. He hung the cloak on an upward branch and made his natural way back to his lady ship.
In the new morning’s sunshine Buttons handed down instructions to the Revenge’s crew. “There’s a suitable careenage on yonder shore near Triton Creek.”
“Oh, yeah,” Pete agreed. “Dunno how many ships I’ve careened over yonder. Must be about… twenty?”
“Mebbe you should advise us, Black Peter. Aye’ve only used that beach four times meself.”
Buttons listened to Pete’s bluster swell and recede like the tide, until he concluded with, “If you want to take charge this time, Buttons, I’ll let you know what you’re doing right.”
“I’d be grateful if ye can lay in the supplies we be needing,” Buttons replied.
“Too easy,” said Pete. Then, “But what do you think we need?”
“I’ll have Master Spriggs compose a wee list.”
Lucius raised his wooden finger. “I guess it’ll work out best if I tag along with Pete to do the shopping, seeing as I’ll have the list in my ledger and everything.”
Both Lucius and Pete were now looking slightly above Buttons’ head, as if receiving instruction from some spirit of the temporal realm who had taken the form of the first mate’s bald pate, and not both picturing the assortment of concealed spaces in alleys where two seamen on land might pleasantly pass their time.
“Tar,” announced Buttons. “Dry firewood. Sturdy brooms.”
“What’s happening?” said Lucius. He looked at Pete, eyes wide. “Wait, babe, is this the list?”
Pete grabbed his belt and adjusted the seating of his trousers. “Could be. I’ll let him finish, then I’ll let you know.”
“Loan of a cauldron from the harbour master’s stores. We nae want tae purchase one outright from the blacksmith.”
“We’ll need the blacksmith for nails though,” Pete said smugly.
“Have yer previous vessels used nails under the waterline, Black Peter?”
Pete shifted his weight. “Maybe they did. What would you use?”
Buttons looked back to Lucius, who had finally located a pencil in a waistcoat pocket. “See Swanson the Chippy for four passeree of pegs. Yeh mebbe need to see Peggy Sue as well, given the number of vessels in the harbour sadly in need of repair.”
“Yeah, that’s what I always tell the shipwright to use,” said Pete.
Lucius had balanced his open ledger in the crook of his left arm, and held his stubby pencil at the ready. “Can you say all of that again from the very beginning?”
“Tar,” said Buttons. “Four barrels.”
The Revenge was laid on her side after several mishaps. Buttons soothed her as she finally went down, promising the immodest exposure of her underskirts was a needful, and temporary, evil. Not even an evil. The facilitation of a ritual to restore her balance.
The cursed musical notations had been offloaded into the hired sloop and sold in St Thomas along with all other profitable and unnecessary goods, by Cap’n Bobbet’s estimation of what was unnecessary. Cap’n Teach dozed like an Eastern prince upon a lounge under a tree, surrounded by crates and sacks and guns and sails. The crew breamed and scraped and tarred, starting at her bow. Buttons was prepared to distract any industrious sailor away from working on her stern, but no member of this crew were as industrious as they were desirous of company and larks. The men worked slowly at the fore, leaving Buttons alone to examine her aft.
Buttons had directed her portside be worked on first. He stepped into her shadow, seeing this side of her for the first time. He let her draw him toward her seventeenth rib, where her energy by nature should be strongest. The barnacles were thicker here, almost knotlike, a blemish wider than his arms could spread. Buoyed by the goddess’ Magick, he placed his palms against her hull at the widest point of the mass he could manage.
“What foul evil's this?” he shouted as the blackness roiled in his gut against the goddess’ Magick. Then, recollecting himself, he began to chant in his old tongue:
Thou liest down in the destructive ocean
Without impairment and without fear;
Thou risest up on the peaceful wave-crest
Like a queenly maiden in bloom.
His gut revolted. Unwilling to break the circle by moving a hand he wiped the bile at the corners of his mouth onto his shoulders.
Thou liest down in the destructive ocean
Without impairment and without fear
She groaned, long and deep. At the bow Buttons’ crewmates were backing away from her hull.
Thou risest up on the peaceful wave-crest
The eldritch black mass began to crack. A large piece near the centre fell away, like a chick was struggling to enter the world.
Buttons breathed deep, fuelling the Magick with his lady’s waking energy.
Like a queenly maiden in bloom!
With a shattering sound that had never before been associated with barnacles, the mass shattered. Buttons pulled his hands away from his lady’s side and stepped back in long strides.
Frenchie, Roach and the others were running across the sand and gathered behind Buttons. He mentally questioned his utility as a human shield.
“What the fiddle is that?” Frenchie yelped.
“It’s hideous,” Oluwande said as he ducked behind the Swede.
“Could it be the kraken?” asked Swede.
“It looks like a possessed knot of dicks,” said Wee John. “Right unhealthy ones.”
“Oh god, I think I’m going to be sick,” Lucius said into Black Peter’s shoulder.
Buttons took two steps back toward the hull, waving off the crew’s cries of caution. It did in truth look like a possessed knot of dicks in the throes of venereal disease. Toxic, offensively masculine. But also something more familiar. He prodded one with a pinkie. Ignoring the Lucius’ pleading, he brought his fingertip to his lips and licked.
“Aye, number six hundred and sixty six on my list of a thousand sea creatures. This writhing mass be a breeding ground of donkey dung sea cucumbers.”
“Did Buttons honestly just call them donkey dongs?” Lucius sobbed.
Buttons gave the unfortunate creatures a final disparaging glance and turned his back. “Crew, rid our lady Revenge of these vile phalluses. Once she is restored in her feminine energy she will once again keep our crew’s balance. Only then will our cap’ns woes be over.”
Mebbe, Buttons thought to himself, this wouldnae have happened if Jim hadn’t died.
“Can I set them on fire?” Wee John asked, hand raised.
“Aye.” The Revenge’s brine-soaked wood would not burn, and she’d be appropriately cleansed for her new coat of pitch.
“I can make those fuckers into stew,” Roach was saying as Buttons walked away. Any further suggestions were lost to the sounds of Lucius vomiting into the sea.
The Revenge was underway to regaining her former feminine glory and Magick and would be ready for the spring tide. Cap’n Blackbeard was regaining his strength. Cap’n Bonnet was planning an interlude, co-captain to co-captain.
Buttons made his way to the lagoon, the most Magick-charged place in St Croix after the Taíno’s ancient zemí stone. He waded into the water and let himself be surrounded by the ethereal glow. The Magick kissed his skin and lapped into his every cranny and nook.
Buttons eased himself onto his back to float under the moon’s glow. He was aware of the dinghy full of captains row into the far end of the lagoon. He watched the Magick trailing behind the craft and splashed around by the oars. He felt no need to draw attention to his own presence.
The Magick of the lagoon was amplified fivefold by the energy and vibes of nascent lovers.