Keep Fighting
It was a strange group that arrived back at Nanny Eleanor’s cottage that day. Charlotte and Sariah carried the unconscious George across the threshold and to the couch. His chest rose and fell periodically, the only sign that he was even still alive.
Nanny Eleanor gave a side glance at Charlotte—sniffed—and marched off into the kitchen. “Hmm. We’ll get him patched up. I’ll just grab some more bandages and—Sariah, please sit down. I’ll need to wrap your foot, as well, or your mother will swear that I gave you all sorts of infections and rashes, and if they have to cut it off, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Sariah claimed the seat by George. She’d never been particularly interested in seeing what the innards of a merman’s tail looked like, and now that she could see it, she was rather disgusted. She would much prefer not to be able to stare at the muscles underneath his scales, the hint of bones she thought she saw.
“So—Miss de Berry,” Nanny Eleanor began when she came back. “Perhaps you ought to tell me the whole story.”
“I’ve been Phineas’s agent on these waters for a while.” Charlotte leaned back against her chair and stared at George. Her brows were furrowed, her eyes sympathetic as Nanny Eleanor began to clean. “I thought I was supposed to be George’s guide. You know how Phineas is—sharp as a tack, but sometimes he forgets to inform us of some important minutiae.”
“Frankly, I had no idea you existed.” Nanny Eleanor’s rag was soaked with red as she scraped off the clotting. George mewled and twitched in his sleep, so Sariah leaned over and took his hand. “But if you were Phineas’s agent this whole time, why the ridiculous facade of a ditzy, nosy neighbor?”
Charlotte chuckled and crossed her legs. “I thought that would be obvious. I saw two people carry a merman up the shore, and I didn’t expect there to be any other agents around. Hunters, yes. I had to make sure you weren’t a hunter, and, if you don’t mind me saying, your attitude had me quite convinced you were.”
“And we thought you were the hunter!” The words burst from Sariah with enough force that garnered a sharp reprimand from Nanny Eleanor. “Sorry—but we did. What made you change your mind? How did you find George and I when we ran away?”
“I’ve been watching you ever since you absconded with my target.” Charlotte swept her hair back from her face again. It was so long that she sat on it—a very pirate-like hairstyle. Sariah approved. She might even start to grow out her own hair. “I saw you two playing yesterday, but he seemed safe for the moment. But when you ran away today, I had to follow. It took me a while to track you down, but you’re lucky I’m good at my job. James and John are oafs, but even oafs can be dangerous.”
Sariah sobered again and ran her thumb over George’s knuckles. He twitched once more as a moan escaped his lips. “Will George be all right?”
“He’s not dead yet.” Nanny Eleanor threaded a needle as she prepared to give him stitches.
Sariah has to focus on George’s face instead. His brow furrowed and he gave an odd half-grimace.
“Go get him something to drink. Yourself, as well. We’ll get both of you back to normal here in a moment.” Nanny Eleanor shooed Sariah into the other room, and, in a few minutes, the older woman’s promise had come true: Sariah was feeling far more like herself with her foot all wrapped and her throat wet, and George had come to as well. She now sat at the top of the couch, next to his head, and periodically took sips of her water.
“Hold still one more second,” Nanny Eleanor told George. “I’ve almost got your stitches done.”
George’s flipper flicked—which must have been his pain reaction—and he clenched his eyes shut. Sariah gathered him up in her arms—the only part of him she dared to move—and held him close.
“It’s okay. It’s almost done, and then everything will be better,” Sariah assured him.
Nanny Eleanor glanced at Charlotte before she turned her gaze to Sariah. “That’s not an accurate assertion.” She sighed and finished his work on the tail. “This impaled him, Sariah. I can stitch him up to stop the bleeding, but that’s all it will do. He needs a better doctor than me to look over, but I can make sure he doesn’t bleed out until he gets there.”
Tiny bubbles of panic began to rise in Sariah’s stomach. She twisted this way and that, trying to meet the eyes of Charlotte and Nanny Eleanor. “What do you mean? What will happen? When can the doctor be here?”
“Not soon enough.” Nanny Eleanor gently flipped George until he was on his stomach. There was another wound here, bleeding just as fervently, and the whole couch was filthy with gore. The movement made George’s head slip down to her lap, and Sariah patted his hair. “I’m afraid by the time news reached any adequate physician and they made their way back there, George might not be in any position to be saved. As it is, he’s already weak. And…”
Nanny Eleanor pursed her lips and fingered the area of the wound. She scooped out the coagulated blood and rinsed her hands in the bowl at her knees.
That must have been the signal for Charlotte to take over. “Look where the wound is, Sariah. It’s very low, but it’s right next to the flipper. James and John knew what they were doing. George can’t swim. Not right now, but possibly...ever.”
“He could be paralyzed?” Sariah’s words sounded like a squeak. “Forever?”
Charlotte shifted forward in her seat. Her eyes crinkled, and it looked like she might be holding back tears. “That could be a possibility, yes.”
Even though it was George they were discussing, he didn’t utter a sound. If he cried, he did it quietly, the tears soaking into Sariah’s clothes. But Sariah, on the other hand—she burst into loud, messy sobs. She hadn’t been a good pirate after all. She hadn’t even been a good friend. If she’d just let George stay in the tub—if she never would have come up with the harebrained scheme to run away—
“Oh, Sariah.” Nanny Eleanor’s voice was heavy, weary even. “James and John knew where we were, anyway. You can’t blame yourself for what’s happened. Perhaps if I had taken Leon inside...told my father and brother about him…”
Sariah’s shoulders quaked with the force of her sorrow. She reached for Nanny Eleanor like a little toddler, although it was safe to say that, even as a toddler, she’d never wanted to cling to her grandmother as badly as she did now. It was if the words she’d spoken, the grief they now shared, had been the thread to stitch together their souls, their hearts, in a way that eleven prior years could never have done. Though her hands were filthy, Nanny Eleanor seized her granddaughter’s and gave her a squeeze.
“Your next choice is all that matters, Sariah. And you must do the right thing, no matter how badly it will hurt. Mermen are made to be protected, after all,” Nanny Eleanor whispered.
Charlotte’s voice was equally soft. “I can take George. Phineas has some connections that may be able to save his life, but...we would have to leave as soon as your nanny finishes stitching him up.”
Sariah nodded. “Okay. I won’t even pack—we’ll just go…”
Nanny Eleanor grasped her granddaughter’s hand more firmly. Her eyes were soft. “Sariah. You can’t go.”
“Why not?” Sariah would have jerked her hand away from Nanny Eleanor, but her grandmother clung to her too fiercely. “I’m brave. I’m old enough to go!”
“Sariah...where he might have to go, there might not be a chance to come back,” Nanny Elanor said. “It could be years before he could even get better.”
“No!” Sariah screamed. She held fast to George even as life threatened to rip him away from her.
“Riah,” George whispered. His voice was barely a breath against her. “I’ll come back.”
“What?” She jerked her head down.
He tilted his own very slightly, just enough so that one dark could look at her—could plead with her. “If you let me go, then I promise. I’ll come back. One day. Just let me go. You have people who love you here.”
Sariah’s throat felt clogged. She thought of Mother, Father, Lizzie, Frances, Fitz, Connor, and baby Rosalie. Even Nanny Eleanor.
“Do you promise?” Sariah swallowed. Tears dripped down her face and onto George’s, and Nanny Eleanor finally released her hand so that she could wipe the salty droplets from her granddaughter’s cheeks. “Promise me that you’ll come back. Because—because Blackbeard isn’t dead yet, and I don’t think I can fight him alone.”
“I promise.” George wrapped his fingers around her. “I couldn’t leave my best friend without her sharpshooter.”
“Not a cannonball will be fired without you,” Sariah assured him.
The other women in the room began to piddle about and find necessities: Charlotte somehow built a stretcher from bedsheets and brooms while Nanny Eleanor finished her doctoring duties. But Sariah only stared at George while they worked.
“Davy Jones is out for revenge. He’s heard of the great Sharpshooter, and he wants you for his own crew.” “He’ll have to destroy our entire ship before I leave it.” “We’ll just go into hiding—just for a while. Just until he gives up the search.” “He’ll never find us.”
Their whispered battle plans faded away at different intervals when the pain became too great. When that happened, Sariah would rub his back or his head until it was over. Or, when it seemed like conversation was too big of a strain for him, Sariah would tell a story instead. But they weren’t all from her imagination. She told of swimming trips with her family, of their trip to the mountains where Fitz ran away to be a “wild man” until he got scared by a snake, of when baby Rosalie was born and Sariah was the first sibling to hold her. She told of Lizzie’s great acting skills in their homemade plays, of Frances’s daydreaming, and Connor’s grubby hugs and sticky, honeyed kisses he gave. And, above all, she promised that, as soon as George was better, he, too, would be included in the stories.
There would always be room in the family for him.
“Done,” Nanny Eleanor announced after Sariah concluded her last story.
Somehow, Sariah suspected that Nanny Eleanor had been finished for a while, but she would never accuse her grandmother of having Frances’s sentimentality.
Well. Never out loud, at least.
“Help me move him to the stretcher?” Charlotte knelt beside George and slipped her arms underneath his tail.
Sariah nodded and cradled his head, and the three women managed to move him onto the pallet and outside. Charlotte’s ship was anchored a little off-shore, so they gently lowered him to the floor of the rowboat the three had paddled to shore earlier.
And though no one asked her if she wanted a moment alone, Nanny Eleanor and Charlotte both drifted to the side.
George’s breathing was steady now, but his face was still pale and sweat and tears dampened his cheeks and chest. Sariah grasped either side of his face with her hands and, at a loss for what else to do, stuck out her tongue at him (that must have been the spirit of Fitz; she quickly shoved him out).
George smiled, but this time, his lips barely twitched, and no dimple appeared. “I’m scared, Riah.”
“Don’t be. You’re going to pull through this and you’re going to swim again. And you’re going to come back and play pirates. Don’t back out of our plans now.”
“But what if I don’t make it?” George whimpered. “I don’t want to die yet.”
“Then don’t.” Sariah rubbed her thumb across his cheekbones. His eyes were a little sunken, and there were huge bags under them. Even quieter, she repeated, “Don’t.”
His bottom lip trembled. “I don’t want to say goodbye. I don’t want that to be the last word I ever speak to you.”
“It won’t be!” Sariah shook her head. “You just promised you’d come back. You just promised to be my sharpshooter. Are you really going to go back on your word? That breaks all the rules in the Pirate’s Code of Honor!”
“Since when?”
“Since I made it up, just now.” Sariah pressed a kiss against his forehead. “Don’t go getting yourself into any more cages, George.”
George wrapped his arms around her neck. They both lingered there, smelling like salt and sweat and blood and tears. “Don’t go fighting Blackbeard without me.”
“Never.”
Charlotte put a hand on Sariah’s back. “It’s time to go. We don’t want to dawdle too much.”
Sariah wiped under her eyes. She wasn’t sure what liquid she was wiping away, but she sniffed all the while. “Okay.”
Charlotte got in and used the oars to push off. Sariah stood still and let the waves lap over her toes, felt herself sink lower into the sand. She wondered, if she stood still for long enough, if the world would just swallow her whole and she’d plunge into George’s world. Transform into a mermaid and swim after him, tasting the sea foam and eating seaweed and fish for the rest of her life.
Nanny Eleanor came and wrapped one arm around Sariah’s shoulders to draw her near. Sariah leaned against her grandmother’s chest and lifted a hand to wave. She almost said goodbye, but then remembered George’s one wish. So, instead, she yelled, “I’ll see you soon, George! Keep fighting!” She waved harder, screamed a little louder. “Keep fighting!”
George’s answer was barely audible. “Keep fighting, Riah.”
They’d reached the ship. Sariah’s feet were buried up to her ankles. Charlotte tied her rowboat back onto it and scurried up the side so that she could hoist him in. Soon, they were both on the boat, and Sariah took a deep breath.
“Keep fighting, George!”
She screamed so loudly that even all the mermaids under the sea probably heard that. But all that mattered was one scared, injured little merman heard. He lifted his arm and waved as Charlotte took the wheel.
Sariah stared at that pale arm and waved her own back until she couldn’t see him anymore. All she could see was the back of the ship, angled away for her, heading towards parts unknown.
George was a real pirate now.
“Well. That was quite an adventurous first week, wasn’t it? And, to think. We still have all summer left.” Nanny Eleanor took a deep breath. “I can hardly imagine what might happen.”
Something caught Sariah’s eyes. She bent down and saw a whole seashell, bright red and white against the sand. She snatched it up and held it against her chest as she ran her fingers along the ridges of the scallop. “So...you said you needed someone to help you with more rescues?” Sariah tilted her head up to look at her grandmother.
Nanny Eleanor gazed down as well, a hint of a smile toying at her lips. “Ah, I suppose I did. Are you looking to be my protégé?”
“Well, I suppose it’s something I might be interested in.” Sariah grinned and planted a kiss on Nanny Eleanor’s cheek. “After all, mermen are made to be protected, aren’t they?”
Sariah shook her feet free of their sandy prison. Arm in arm, grandmother and granddaughter, mentor and protégé, headed towards the cottage together.
~The End~
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