She found herself lying on the cold, hard wood. She raised her head and looked around as if she had just woken up. Her face was covered in dried tears. Remembering what her mother had said, Katie checked her shoe to feel if the necklace was still there. It wasn’t.
“Tyson! Cyrus!” she called out. There was no answer. She shouted their names again but still no answer.
She heard footsteps quickly approaching. Katie stopped shouting. She held her breath so as not to make any noise. A man with a long, patchy beard, opened her cell door and said, “You’re coming with me.”
12
The Pillars of Dusk
Katie was roughly pulled to her feet as the man grabbed one of her arms and yanked her up. She hastily found her balance before being walked out of the cell with the man. He had a firm grip on her arm as he dragged her along.
“I won’t try to escape, you know,” she lied. The man tightened his grip on her arm in response. They walked down the narrow hall and climbed up some stairs. If Katie previously had any doubt whether or not she was on a ship, it disappeared now. Everything was wooden, the floor, the stairs, the walls. She could smell the strong stinging scent of saltwater as they ascended the stairs. Katie thought the ship must be fairly large as they climbed up four flights of stairs before stepping outside.
Sunlight blinded her as they stepped out onto the deck. The sun was just above the horizon, which Katie took to mean that it was late afternoon.
“You’ll be with your people soon,” the man said gruffly. Katie didn’t respond to him. When her eyes adjusted, the scene in front of her gave her a shock.
The first thing she noticed was that they were out at sea, way out at sea. She looked around. Only blue water could be seen from all sides. The only other thing she could see outside the ship was the sky, which in the distance was hard to tell there even was one.
There were about twelve men on deck, all who belonged on the ship, each wearing what Katie could only make out to be a uniform, though each was different, and their only similarities were the holes and stains on them. There were three other people on deck, though they were wearing newer clothing, though also stained dirty.
One was Tyson, another was Cyrus, but the third was someone she didn’t recognize. He had wavy, bleach blond hair and was largely built. The three of them were scrubbing the wooden planks that made up the deck. She noticed that Tyson’s arms had been bruised.
He threw Katie to the floor, the shock of it temporarily masking the pain. Her head felt like it was about to explode.
“Get up!” someone yelled at her. She looked up and saw another man staring down at her. At first, his appearance was blurred, and it seemed as if there were three men until the pain subsided and her eyes properly showed her that there was just one man. He had a scruffy beard and dark hair that was tied back in a ponytail. His eyes were darker than his head. “Get up!” He kicked her in the leg. Either it didn’t hurt too much, or Katie was still in too much pain to notice. The man had yellow teeth.
Katie still stayed on the ground. “I told you to get up!” He kicked her again, only in the stomach this time. Katie let out a yelp of pain and doubled over. Her leg now hurt too.
“Stop!” she heard someone shout. Katie glanced up again, slowly, scared that she would be kicked again. The large blond guy walked up to Katie’s attacker.
“What did you just say?” the man said, putting his face close to the blond-haired man’s. Katie could practically feel the pain of the larger man as he smelled the reek that must have come from the pirate’s mouth.
With no change in expression, the blond man stared right back at the pirate and said, “I told you to stop.”
For another second, the two stared at each other, then the pirate whipped out a wooden staff that Katie hadn’t previously seen and hit the man across the head.
Katie watched as the man fell to the floor unconscious. Blood seeped through his blond hair and spilled onto the wooden deck.
“Take him to his cell,” the pirate commanded. As if they were there all along, three other pirates ran up to the blonde man, picked him up and dragged him down the stairs. Katie thought this man must be the Captain. “Leave him there until he wakes and when he does, call me. If he hasn’t in two days, throw him overboard. I don’t care if he’s still breathing.”
The pirates nodded, and they disappeared out of sight. Katie looked up again. The Captain was staring down at her. “You can clean this blood off my deck,” he spat at her. “And next time, I don’t care how pretty you may be, you’ll meet the same fate. As long as you’re freeloading on my ship, you work for me, under my conditions and at my disposal.”
“I didn’t ask to be on your ship,” Katie replied with as much spite as she could muster, though her breath was short and faint, and she was unable to keep her glaring gaze.
“Don’t lie to me,” the Captain seethed. “I know you were looking for treasure on the sunken ship. And as we didn’t find anything, I have reason to believe one of you three have it. Or had it, since we didn’t find anything of value in your possession.”
“You’re so stupid,” Katie said, coughing slightly. She wasn’t sure why she said that, but that was all she could think of saying.
The
