Elodie followed Ventus up the masts and between the sails, clinging to the ropes as her last safety. She felt like a cat, her footsteps light but decisive and sure. It came more easily to her than she might have expected, given that she wasn’t exactly one for climbing trees and such as a child. 

He led her into a web of netting between the beams and masts, a hammock hanging higher in the air than Elodie had ever been. Ventus let himself flop into it gently, only to look up and see Elodie’s own apprehension. 

“It’s perfectly safe,” he assured her. “The ropes are strong, and there are other places like this throughout—-we’d hit one of those before we hit the deck.”

He paused. “I also wouldn’t let you fall.”

Elodie couldn’t help but smile as she joined him. The moment of falling into the netting was terrifying, especially with how the ropes gave a little under her weight. But true to Ventus’s word, she did not fall through. 

“Told you.” He grinned.

She laughed, and they both sat up, adjusting their position so that they could better look out into the seas and skies ahead. The moonlight gleamed off of the waves, turning them silvery-blue, and millions of stars shone like diamonds around them. The wind of the high altitude whipped loose tendrils of Elodie’s auburn hair and the grayer streaks of Ventus’s dark hair like the sails beneath them. 

“It takes your breath away,” Elodie declared after a moment of silence. 

Ventus laughed, something Elodie had not heard from him before. “Moments like this? These are the best parts of being a sailor.”

Elodie watched as a little of the humor fell away from his face, giving way to something more contemplative. 

“Then again, I wouldn’t know anything else,” he continued quietly. He tugged at the sleeves of his jacket, picked at a fraying thread where a button once had been. “I’ve never been on land for longer than a day.”

“How could that be?” Elodie couldn’t help but wonder aloud. “Not even when you were a baby?” 

“Maybe when I was a very small child, but even so, I wouldn’t remember.” He shrugged. “I must’ve been a small enough child when I first came to live with the Black-Sail Fleet. They’re all I remember.”

Elodie tilted her head, considering her memories of her capture aboard the Foxtrot. “Doesn’t seem like much of a place to grow up.”

“It isn’t.” Ventus let go of the fraying thread and looked up and out, into the ocean. “But there are some who are like me. I started off on one of the bigger ships, one that often sailed with my father’s. There was a cook on there, Esmerelda. She had children of her own, the gunner was their father, and she looked after the other pirates’ children. But I didn’t stay there long.”

“Why not?” Elodie frowned.

He looked back to her and smiled wryly. “I’m bad luck, you see.”

“What do you mean?” 

He looked back out, skyward this time, and frowned. “Usually, you’d see it by now. Storms tend to follow me, wherever I go. Cloudy skies and strong winds and high tides.”

Elodie blinked. “Like how the weather changed so fast—“

“Aye, that was probably my luck coming in handy for once.” Ventus nodded. “Sailors and pirates especially know to follow superstition, there’s a truth to it. And they knew soon enough that I was the reason that misfortune followed. So they started shifting me around from ship to ship within the fleet—not that they could throw me out entirely.”

“Why’s that?” From what Elodie had experienced, she imagined that Captain Reynard would have no trouble doing something as heartless as abandoning a kid on shore. 

“Because my father would have their heads. One crew tried that—and he was quick to make an example out of them.” 

The way he said it, so casually, so coolly, took Elodie aback. 

“Oh.”

“My old man does look out for me, in the best way he can, I suppose.” Ventus became quiet. “I’ve only met him once or twice, you know. He can’t really see or talk to me often.”

“Because of Mrs. Hawkins up in Yorkhaven.” The pieces finally fell into place for Elodie. “You’re not her son.”

“No.” He sighed. “I’m not. No one knows who my mother was. Best guess is that she was some barmaid or innkeeper’s daughter who seduced my father, and fell into some misfortune where she could not keep the child.”

“I see.” Elodie found herself reaching out to touch his arm, to provide some semblance of comfort. “We’re both bastards, then.”

“Aye.” The wry smile returned. “Bastards and pirate heirs—the perfect team.”

“But if your father’s been looking out for you—why did you help me? Why did you leave the Black-Sail Fleet?” Elodie could not help but feel sorry for him. 

He tilted his head. “You know, sometimes you don’t listen.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I already told you—I did it because it was the right thing to do.” He placed his hand over hers on his arm. “Nothing more than that. And while he did do his best—Reynard’s not the kind of man you want to serve under.”

Elodie could only imagine.

“I’m not exactly pleased to be cozying up with the Albionese navy, but Jennings isn’t a bad captain,” he continued. “Certainly one of the better ones. And seeing as I’m allowed to keep my head and all, I guess it’s better than anything else.”

Elodie didn’t know what to say to that. So she said nothing, until Ventus removed his hand from hers. 

“I didn’t mean to tell you all that.” He sighed again. “You’re easy to talk to, you know.”

“I’m glad you think that.”

“Jade and Kas think so,” he pointed out. 

“Fair enough.”

They fell into a more comfortable quiet—that is, until Elodie had thought about their dilemma regarding her mother and Captain Vance’s treasure. 

“I guess we’ll be looking for your father and his map,” she said. “You know, I didn’t realize that he and my father had sailed together.”

“Oh yes, that would have been back when the Flying Gang was still together.” Ventus leaned back, where the ropes curved up into small walls. “Nearly every big-name pirate then was a part of it.”

“The Flying Gang?” 

“You haven’t heard of the Flying Gang?” Ventus grinned. “I would’ve thought your mother would have told you all about the Flying Gang.”

“No.” Elodie rolled her eyes. “Tell me then, will you?”

“Aye aye.” Ventus saluted her, then laughed. “Well, my father sailed with yours until he had the funds for his own ship. But they remained comrades—they and several of the other big-names of the time sailed together and were the ones who took Libertalia from Albion.”

He glanced back out around them again. “They thought that the world should be more like it is on pirate ships. No kings, where everyone contributes, everyone looks out for each other, and no one man has all the say. Libertalia was a chance to make that.”

Elodie considered that as he spoke. A world with no kings, a world where everyone had a say in what went—it was as if the world was turned upside down. But she could see how it would appeal to the lawless, and it was a code of their own honor. 

“However, when the Empire of Albion had their own privateers turned against them, and there were no more wars against Cartagena, they cracked down on the pirates, including your father.” Ventus looked back to her. “My father gathered the Black-Sail fleet then, all of the pirates who were left banded together, and began a war of their own against Albion. It was said that your father’s death was what caused him to finally snap.”

“Oh.” Elodie wasn’t quite sure what to think about that. 

She supposed people really weren’t all bad or all good. She’d known that for a long time, being the daughter of pirates. But it was difficult to wrap her head around that the man who had arranged her kidnapping to lure out her mother, who wanted to find some dangerous treasure for his own means—essentially betraying her father, as she had found out—was also a man who had been one of her father’s closest friends, who looked out for his bastard son in his own way, and had mourned her father so deeply. 

“Revenge is the deepest form of love, I suppose.” She echoed a sentiment her mother had always told her. She’d come to know as she’d grown up that her mother had referred to her father, who had killed her mother’s first husband to avenge her and win her freedom. 

“I wonder how true that is.” Ventus was contemplative again. “I think I’d want something different.”

“What would that be?”

“I don’t know,” Ventus admitted. “But I’ve had my father enact revenge for my sake. And I don’t know that it made me feel any better about what happened.”

They fell into a silence, and that was when Elodie heard it.

The song of the narwhals was still the sweetest, the most enticing she’d ever heard.

But this was pretty damn close. 

It could only be siren-song.