Awake

Chapter Thirty-Five - A Place Worth Guarding

  It was all so clear: the feel of the sand beneath her feet, the smell of coconut and eucalyptus, the spikes of the grass, the splashing of fountains and waves biting chunks out of the beaches. Idyllic. Paradisiacal. It seemed Carmen had only preserved the good memories, folded carefully away between the pages of her mind like pressed flowers.

  And that night, of course. Fresh and real and immediate in her memory. Everything about the fire: the colour of the flames, the driving heat, the way it seemed to rip her breath away. Everything about the sky: the bruise-like clouds, the slashed-red sunset, the way it fogged with smoke. Everything about the way the air had tasted: of salt, of gunpowder, of smoke, of sweat.

 Everything about Carmen was defined by before or after that night. It was the point by which she measured herself. Carmen before, Cream after. One afternoon an island girl with braided hair and white skirt torn up the side, the next morning a kidnapped child struggling to balance on the deck above a swaying sea.

  Perhaps her memories weren't so good after all. They blurred when she tried to focus on them. The details had been saturated, swept away by her own sense of self-preservation. They left only the vagaries behind, a scattering of sensations mixed in with panic that was creeping up again on her now. And rage. And hate.

  Carmen slowed her racing heart with deep, even breaths. It was over now. It was over. It had been over long ago. She had learned and she had fought and she had survived. Those men who had killed the people she knew, those men who had kidnapped her, those men who had treated her that way...they had served and respected her in the end. Or they had died.

"It's alright, you stupid girl," Carmen told herself, so softly that the words were hardly pronounced at all, just puffs of air. "You killed him. Remember?"

She replayed it all in her head, just to remind herself. The deck worn smooth beneath her bare feet, planted and secure. She had learned how to move on a ship by then, learned how to keep her balance with it. The tattered hems of the trousers she'd torn short beating at her calves, the stolen shirt flapping in the wind like a surrender flag.

  Valentine had laughed at her. Captain Valentine, with that curl to his lip that she hated, with those granite eyes that she hated, with that hair and those hands and that way of looking and standing and speaking... Carmen knew what hate was. She had never hated anyone the way she had Valentine. And he had laughed.

  The crew had been watching. She had felt their eyes on her. She knew them all by now; it had been nearly a year, after all. Nearly a year of sailing under Valentine, of running dangerous chores and taking the worst watches, of his casual backhand every time she got in his way, of the punishments he dolled out, always smiling at her, testing her, watching her.

  She didn't know what he'd been hoping for, what he'd been trying to create. Maybe he had just wanted to break her. But Carmen didn't break easily.

  The crew had loved little Missie Cream, with her quaint manners and flashing eyes and her fierce determination. They had taught her how to be one of them. It was thanks to them that she could stand there, glaring up at Valentine as he towered over her, lifting the stolen sword with hands that didn't shake at all.