“This god is trouble, but not so strong, as Cortez himself proved. What else did you see?”
“Jaguar, wrought of water.”
“Koosh-koosh. Balam. The jaguar god assumes many forms, but he is a protector and won’t travel far from his worshippers. Was that all?”
“No. There was another. A giant, with a lightning staff.”
She frowned. “One leg, or two?”
“One.”
“Kooooosh. Bad. That is Hurakan, the Ruarchan that controls the wind. Very powerful. Others might give up chase, but Hurakan will track your ships to Spain and beyond. Your people have roused a great enemy.”
Could such a wind god exist? If so, what might happen if it tailed them "to Spain and beyond"?
“Bad timing,” Capricho said. “Spain prepares her Invencible, a great fleet for war with England, the size of which the world has never seen. There is no way those heretics could defeat us. Unless . . .” Capricho shuddered as he remembered the ferocity in Hurakan. “Sails require wind’s blessing. If Hurakan stalked us up the English Channel, it would be disastrous.”
"Of this there is no question." The mermaid dropped the cross from her fingers. “Vengeance is mine, saith the lords.”
“Vengeance? Not against my ship. My men did no harm to his worshippers.”
“Did you not? Whose blood is on the gold in the belly of your galleon? You think Hurakan cares whether you did it with your own hands?” She flicked the cross. “You bear the mark of the god that destroys Hurakan’s people. You flaunt your god’s emblem on towering sails as you move through Hurakan’s waters. Your arrogance is boundless. How could you believe you would not draw his wrath?”
Capricho had no answer. Word by word she left him naked and exposed.
“Did they kill others among my men? Salvador, did you recover one by that name?”
“Your ship and men are safe—I am not without my own power in these waters. But I found you breathing brine without gills," she raised a scaled brow, "unhealthy for your kind. So I gave you the mist-kiss, and now you are mine.”
“Yours? Because you found me? Señorita, I am not some bit of salvage for you to claim for your trove! I am Captain Don Capricho Delgado y Cervantes, appointed by his Majesty King Philip II of the glorious realm of Spain!”
Slits underneath her jaw flared a moment, exposing red gills. “You would steam like this? When you are more corpse than captain? You should thank me for saving you, instead of filling your chest like a puffer fish.” She paused. “And it’s Silganna.”
"Qué?"
"My name. It is Silganna."
Capricho winced. “Por favor, Silganna. Forgive me. Death has cramped my manners.”
Silganna chuckled. “Forgiven. And you are right.” She brushed a fingertip over his lips. “I cannot claim your love. I must earn it.”
“Love? Who said anything about love?”
“Why do you think I saved you? Did my mist-kiss mean nothing?”
Capricho vaguely recalled the caress of lips, a static charge, then darkness. “I am certain it was wonderful, but as to my heart, you cannot have what was lost.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“If this is death, then there are no secrets.”
“And if, by chance, it’s not?”
“Then I can help you. Tell me.”
Capricho felt his pain unraveling, a knot coming undone under the fingers of her tone.
“Diedre was my betrothed.”
“Tell me.”
“She was from another realm. Scotland.”
“Tell me.”
“This was ten years ago. I first met her on the Guadalquivir Quay—the docks where the gold from these lands gets unloaded.”
“A long way from her realm, it would seem.”
“Scots come to Spain for education and alliances against our mutual enemy, the Protestant English. The day I saw her is branded on my mind. Diedre was the fairest of the señoritas who swarmed the quay when we were unloading the treasure fleet. Skin like cream, hair of bright burnished copper—Diedre was an emerald among stones.”
“Koosh.”
“I had months before next passage, and I spent it all with her. I invited her to my family’s estate, walked with her through our vineyard, picnicked beside the big willow on the river that borders our property. My madre was not pleased.”
“No?”
“To her, if you aren’t of Spanish blood, you’re as good as a heretic. But love transcends all borders. Before I returned to sea, I asked her hand in marriage.”
Capricho tried to batten the hatch against his emotions like he had so many times, but the air tingled, compelling him, and he could not stop the flow. “I thought of nothing else at sea. My bread was the dream of our future. Her wedding gift was to be a hacienda on the Spanish Main.”
His chest tightened, the pain pushing against Silganna’s enchantment. The power of the curse of his broken heart. Even in death it refused to release. And yet, here he was, about to confess to a strange being his greatest shame. He fought against it, but it was no use. Whether by enchantment or by catharsis, he had to speak this.
“When I returned, another hand had claimed her.” He breathed deep, exhaled. “She died of influenza while I was off chasing dreams.”
Silganna’s eyes glistened. The cavern kept time by the plink of water droplets. Finally, she spoke. “You could not have helped this.”
“Qué? How do you know? Had I been by her side, my presence might have given her the strength to survive.”
“You do not know this. You afflict your soul to no purpose, Capricho.”
The pain coiled. “It is my soul to afflict. Not yours. Mine.” The spell broke. He pushed her hand away. “If I am alive, return me to my ship.”
Silganna searched his eyes. “I wonder how sure you’d be if the wound no longer burned.”
“Just as sure. I can love no other.”
The music of falling droplets. The rise and fall of Silganna’s chest became the endless waves of the sea.
“Very well.”
Blackness consumed him.
Within a horseshoe-shaped cove, the gibbous moon illuminated lush hillsides, hunched like weary giants before a white sand beach. Surf spilled into the bay, surging in silvered froth as it rolled across the shallows and broke upon the shoreline. The galleon El Pez Volador rocked with each wave, anchored securely in the center. Her roughly furled sails glowed in the moonlight, ghostly arms of torn canvas lifting forlornly in the breeze.
Flames flickered in the firebox, splashing crimson and amber across the forecastle bulkhead. A few men on the late guardia de modorra watch huddled around the fire—sodden, slumped, and silent. The rest were below, gunners in hammocks strung between cannons, sailors stacked in orlop bunks, officers in berths at the stern. And within the once empty berth of the great cabin, their captain now tossed in fitful sleep.
Capricho moaned and rolled to his side, shivered as mists spilled through his dreams.
He was aloft in enchantment, sailing a skiff across an ensorcelled sea. Off the bow loomed a cracked and weathered monolith, dark as blood, standing fast against the timeless pummel of waves. He sheeted in, drew the sail tight, set course for the crag. As he approached, he caught sight of a jagged snag atop it. Mottled brown and black roots rambled from its stump, draping the rock in gnarled and twisted tendrils. He knew this tree in his heart of hearts.