The Pirate's Wish

“The Jadorr’asent me,” she said. “He said you were in danger.”

“Not anymore.” If I needed any more evidence that I repulsed him enough to undo the protective magic, it was right there: he hadn’t come for me himself.

“This is all your fault,” I said.

The manticore fell into step beside me.

“I know.”

I glanced at her. Her face looked strange. It took me a moment to realize that it was cause she looked guilty.

“He hurt you,” she said. “Soul-hurt.”

I kicked at the sand.

“As opposed to body-hurt.”

“Yeah, I got it. I ain’t stupid.”

The manticore stopped and nuzzled my shoulder like she was an overgrown cat. “I thought he returned your affection. Humans seem to care about happiness. I wished to gift some to you. In exchange for combing my mane.”

I scowled. “You had me do it so you could eat him.”

“Well, yes, that too.”

I didn’t say nothing.

“One does not negate the other,” she added.

“Well, you just made things worse.” Not exactly the wounding insult I’d hoped for, but I was too tired from everything to be clever.

“I know,” she said.

And then she knelt down in the sand. “If you would like, I’ll allow you to ride me.”

I stared at her. “Is this a trick?”

She peered up at me through the frame of her fur. “No trick, girl-human. It is a great honor to ride a manticore.”

“Are you go

“If I wished to poison you, I would shoot the spine into your heart from here.”

That was probably true.

“Come along, girl-human. We are far from your rock-nest, and I will not kneel like this all day.”

I looked at her, considering. My body ached and I was sick of walking. And it would be something to say I got to ride a manticore.

Besides, she still looked kinda guilty, and I realized I actually believed her: that she thought she had been helping – at least up until we cured the rest of the curse and she got to snack on him.

“Alright,” I said.

I swung my leg over her shoulder and settled myself between her leathery wings. She straightened up, tall as a pony. I wrapped my arms around her neck, leaning into her soft mane-fur, which smelled clean, like the woods after a rainfall.

“Do not fall off,” she said.

“Ain’t pla

And then she took off in a gallop, moving like liquid over the sand. A cold wind blew off the sea and pushed my hair back from my face. She let out this great trumpeting laugh that echoed through the woods, stirring up the birds, and after a minute I started laughing with her. The anger washed out of me, and the sadness and the fear and the humiliation. The wind coursed around us like we were flying, and it stripped Naji right out of my mind.

The manticore got me that gift of happiness after all.

Course, it didn’t last. We had to arrive back at the cave eventually, and as the manticore slowed to a trot, I could see Naji pacing back and forth across the beach. He was wrapped up in his black Jadorr’a robe and he looked like a smear of ink against the impossibly wide sky.

“You must disembark,” the manticore said, kneeling. I climbed off her and gave her a pat on the shoulder.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“It was my gift to you.”

Naji had stopped pacing and he stared at me, his hair and cloak blowing off to the side. I trudged across the beach toward him, sand stinging me in the eyes.

“Why did you undo the protective spell?” The wind caught my voice and my question rose and fell like it belonged to a ghost. “The one that’s supposed to keep me safe from the Mists?”

“Have you gone mad?” Naji stared at me. “Why would you think I’d do that?”

“Because Echo showed up. That’s why I was in danger.”

Naji’s face went pale beneath his scars.

“I didn’t hand you over,” I said. “Obviously. But it was a pretty crap thing for you to just – expose me like that.”

“I told you, I didn’t undo the spell.”

“Then why did Echo find me?” I shouted, the wind ripping my question to shreds.

A peculiar expression crossed over Naji’s face. It almost looked like pain, like guilt or sorrow or even worry, but I knew better. “I would never do something to put you in danger.”

“Yeah, just to save your own skin. I imagine you were willing to put up with a headache if it meant getting back at me.”

“I had more than a headache.” Naji’s voice was low. “I would have come myself, but I didn’t think you wanted my help. I would gladly offer–”

“You’re right,” I snapped. “I didn’t want your help. I can take care of myself. You’re the one with the problem here.”

“I don’t want you to think I put you in danger,” Naji said. “It was… The magic must have weakened more than I thought– “

His words wounded me. “So you did weaken it, then.”

“No.” He shook his head. There was that peculiar expression again. “No, absolutely not. It was an… ah, emotional weakening.” He took a deep breath. “Intense emotional reactions can sometimes interfere with magic. It will sort itself out, I swear to you. But to have you so upset with me, my magic wasn’t as powerful…” His voice trailed off.

I focused my gaze on him, sharpening it. Anger built up in my chest again. “Upset with you?”

“Yes, when I, um, didn’t reciprocate–”

“Kaol, stop talking!” My hands curled into fists and I thought about pulling my knife out and stabbing him in the thigh, the way I had the night I met him. “Guess I just ruin everything, don’t I? Not like I fulfilled one of the tasks for you or anything.”

“I told you I was grateful for that,” Naji said quietly, but he didn’t look at me.

I whirled away from him. I couldn’t look at him another damn second. My whole body was shaking. This was why I hadn’t kissed him for so long. Because I knew this would happen. My kiss was so repellant that it shut down all his damn spells.

“Maybe I’ll just leave,” I said, speaking to the sea, my back still turned to him. “Maybe that’ll make things easier.”

“Ana

I didn’t let him finish. I walked away from him, past the manticore and into the woods. He didn’t follow.

I slept outside that night, in a nest of pine needles and fallen tree branches that the manticore had stacked up deep in a clearing in the woods, not far from the shack. I could smell the smoke from the hearth. Naji’d been tending the fire the last few days, making sure it smoked proper and didn’t go out. I didn’t know if he tended it tonight. I didn’t care, neither.

I fell asleep early, after eating some berries and caribou, and curled up along the manticore’s massive shaggy side. Her heart beat against the walls of her chest, slower and heavier than a human’s heart. There was something comforting about it, like a drum beat setting time to a story.

I woke up in the middle of the night.

The manticore was still sleeping and the forest was quiet as death, which set my nerves on end. Forests ain’t never quiet, not even in the middle of the night.

I peeled myself away from the manticore and sca

“It really doesn’t seem fair, don’t you think?”

Echo.

My blood froze in my veins, and I leapt to my feet, all the muscles in my back and my arms tensing up. Her voice was coming from all over the place, like she’d melted in with the forest.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” she said, “that you can strike me in the face, and I can’t even touch you.”

“Seems plenty fair to me,” I called out, managing to choke back the quiver in my words. Echo laughed. The trees rustled a response. I beat my hands up against the manticore’s side, but she didn’t move.