She had tried to ignore the superstitious mutterings that arose after the storm had swept over 6 sailors, leaving their ship and it's precious cargo barely afloat, at the mercy of the sea.
A woman on board was bad luck.
That saying was muttered quietly behind her back at first, then more loudly as the days passed when there was no wind to fill their damaged sails. Their unjust accusations went to a full blown witch hunt when an albatross fell, dead, at her feet. By the secretive grins of a few of the swarthy men that day, she was certain it hadn't been accidental, but only a handful would listen to her. Five years she had given to this ship, to the companionship of these men and still they turned on her, rabid in their eagerness for a scapegoat.
"Avast ye qualling weather-bitten minnows! Give 'er up and we trouble ye no more!" A rough voice called out from the group of men who had so recently called her friend.
She gritted her teeth and pulled into a tighter circle, back to back with those few men who had decided to side with her against the rather irate seaman. Not one of her friends budged from her side, and she almost wept from the relief and gratitude she felt at their heroic actions. Cutlasses were raised and clashed, blows thrown as the sailors fought, voices pulling down curses from the clear sky. Chaos reigned as she dodged and darted out of harms way, a heaving mass of bodies following in her wake wherever she went.
Fight, parry, dodge, dodge, parry... her world had come down to these few actions, trying to stop the lethal touch of the sword to her body. What the sea hardened sailors lacked in finesse, they made up in brute force and it was just a matter of time before they took the advantage that their larger numbers gave them. Too soon, they were everywhere, swarming down upon her and her desperately fighting comrades. Pain exploded inside her skull as a belaying pin caught her upside the head and darkness followed her down to the deck.
What she awoke to was far more horrifying than any fight. She was bound, tied to the mast, helpless to do anything but watch as one by one, her courageous band of comrades were forced to walk the plank; sent to a watery grave. Tears of rage coursed down her battered face unchecked as one by one, those most dear to her vanished from her view.
The sailors came for her last, their meaty hands pulling at her roughly, painfully, even before her bonds were properly cut away. Every foot they dragged her along the slime coated deck she cursed them. After receiving two blows for each word she spoke, being that there were more than enough willing to do her more harm, she cursed them inwardly. Never would they leave this accursed spot. They would spend their last days mired in a windless sea, their thirst and despair bringing them madness and death. She called upon her ancestors, upon the gods of sea and wind to hear her soul and heart's cry for justice and revenge.
A victorious cry went up from the mob as she was thrown overboard, cutlasses raised in the air in triumph. But... there were those few who had seen the woman's face as she fell, her lips peeled back in a savage grin and eyes staring with no sense of fear, but hatred and a deep, abiding, satisfaction.
Do not copy or quote the above material without the expressed consent of the owner of this page.