The weight of my limbs is too great, as though the blood flowing sluggishly through my weary vessels has turned to lead. Even my eyelids hang laden like anvils, so strongly burdened that I can scarcely manage to pry them apart even a sliver. By Laod, my head is pounding like an axe in the forest, sharp and constant and ear-splitting. Over its throbs, I can make out the ring of steel clashing against steel in rippling shrieks and scrapes. Gunshot reverberates all around; close, but not immediate. Voices. Aggression, valor, spirit, rage. In the haze of my awakening and the loud and prominent aching of my head, it is a strain to listen for the chaos nearby.

My heart flutters, and my eyelids do, too, until I am wide awake and staring at rock. It's a small cave. So small, it could not really be called a cave at all, if you think about it; rather, a slab of rock that covers me, jutting over the hole in the ground where I am neatly hidden, a familiar white coat draped around me. Covered in long grasses and dirt, almost buried, I feel as though I may as well be dead. This cramped, damp crevice feels close enough to a cold, final grave, that I start to wonder—half-musingly, yet, half-convinced—if I have died after all.

No, can't be. My scalp scrapes against the rock overhead as I inch forward to peek from my hiding place at frighteningly close combat between the Witch's men and our own, who grapple like animals with menace and malice glinting in their blood-lusting eyes and flashing over their sharp, bared teeth. Few guns are out. The battle appears almost futile with so many swords against our small few in close quarters. My eyes drift downwards to the scuffling collisions of boots and sandals and uprooted plants and their dust, and quickly glance away at the sight of bodies, wounded or dead, covered in blood either way.

My throat catches with a wave of illness and I sit forward, shoulders hitting the overhang. My hand flies to my forehead and rests there a while as I breathe and breathe.

I don't want to fight, I think.

I think I hurt people.

I don't think I can do it again, even if I wanted to.

The thought makes me only sicker and my head bows lower on my hunched shoulders, chin sinking pitifully to my dirty chest.

Why, I wonder, did I join this fight at all? Why did I come to these Isles?

For Mother. It was all for Mother. I did not cry when she died and it wore on me terribly, but the tears are ample, now. Sniveling silently, cowering alone. Snot on my quivering, pursed lips, salty crystals listing meekly down my cold cheeks. I could not avenge her. I don't know who the Witch is, this Darling, nor where she is, nor if she, truly, is at any fault at all. I know not where the Captain is, either. He, so hellbent on revenge against the same woman; he who convinced me to hate her, too.

Now, we—my comrades, and his crew—are fighting his battle, and I know not what it means. Where is he, while our loyal hands bravely put their lives on the line... for what? His sunken old ship, Eclipse? He lost a crew already, and he was losing this one.

My fingers gnarl through my fallen hair, scrabbling for any grounding feeling. The stinging tug against the roots stirs nerves throughout, and I think I must move now or never. The grass and dirt falls from my lap as I push to my knees. I take the coat with me as I crawl hesitantly out from under the rock with my heart in my throat. Away from the fighting and bloodshed, the clay village stands by the edge of the woods. My brows set, expression brave as I can summon, and I start to run, pulling the coat's oversized sleeves on as I go. The tails flap wildly at my heels.

Then I fall. Suddenly. Why, or how, I do not know until I am staring at my bleeding shin in amazement. I gasp as the pain smacks me like a belt. A second bullet flies at my head, and I cry out, throwing my arms over myself, ducking. It whisks past like a silver fish through the rapids. I scrabble to get back on my feet, but my leg protests beneath me and it is all I can do to lunge a few yards away and gape back.

As I blink, the shooter falls to the ground. Leslie stands over him and grins at me.

The great red grizzly of a man bounds through the grass and lifts me in a suffocating, terrifying hug. Will I ever resurface? Will my spine survive his constriction? Has my own crewman turned on me?

"Walter! Where have you been?" He hugs tighter, then releases me. I stagger back, keeping all my weight to the one leg I can trust, breathing heavily. I want to run. I long to. My eyes dart to their corners, searching for my next move. Leslie pulls a scroll from his waistband and claps it into my hand. "Take this. It is very important that Darling does not get ahold of it, hear? Nor any of her crew. Aye, lad?"

"What?" I try to push it back at him but he turns me around, towards the woods.

"Keep it safe!" he says.

"Leslie!" I wail.

With a flash of teeth and a crow of excitement, he swivels on his bare heels. His tattooed back ripples with muscles as he bounds to battle with his sword to the sky and a skip in his heavy, blundering step.

I grip the scroll in both hands and, afraid to chase him, afraid to stay still, afraid to disappoint and drop the paper, I turn round and continue desperately onwards to the village. There would be places to hide there, I am certain. Quiet places, without blood or soot or loud, loud noises.

My leg jolts with every excruciating step. The outskirts of the village approach after many collapses to the ground, after my knees are scraped raw. I see a familiar face and feel a familiar unease. A chill touches my nape and my breath escapes in a silent gasp.

Low in the grass, I gape up, my jaw hanging.

Increas Langley stands on the start of a packed dirt road, his black attire moving eerily in a breeze I cannot feel. His blind white eye stares at me for some time beneath its slithering scar, until his head turns, and his steely gaze catches with recognition. His eyes widen for a second, forehead sinking, and he shakes his head with warning. Slightly, as if hiding the motion, his glove sneaks behind his back and lifts his half-cloak to gesture again for me to go away. Go away.

It isn't safe here, either. It isn't safe!

Then, where? I wince at the panging in my heart. Where?

Past him, I catch a glimpse of long, silken red hair falling over brown leather and past that, the blue and gold coat of our captain. Darling. This is the woman that—

Increas rounds on me fiercely and I throw my hands to the dirt, feet pedaling under my weight. My hands, with the scroll, pound against barks as I enter the woods, pushing off as if they might propel me somehow faster. My limbs flail like pinwheels as I trip over the crunching underbrush and plummet gauchely through the low, scraggly bushes. Twigs catch on my wounds and it takes all that I have to bite my lip instead of scream, to tumble to the ground instead of make myself known with a holler.

Beyond the first line of bushes, I stop to catch my breath and look around for anywhere I can go. My stocking sags, no longer green- and white-striped, but so saturated with crimson that the color seeps from the fabric and spills over my beloved bronze buckle. My heart seizes, caving my whole chest inwards.

It is only one bullet, I have to remind myself, sucking breath shakily through my teeth. The captain had his whole lower leg shredded, and I was about to faint over a bullet? No. I could be better than that.

I clench my jaw and look to the bubbling creek winding ahead. Pale running water glistens blue under the light of those strange and unworldly wisps which dance across the land and flit through the air like dandelion fuzz. Along this burbling—almost soothing—creek, there stands a rocky overhang. A small cave, just big enough for my gangly lean-muscled limbs to fold in if I curl up tight. I would give anything to curl up tight. I clutch my shoulders, hugging myself. It is cold here, beneath the shade, by the chilled creek.

With a shudder, I limp to the water, soaking my socks carelessly in its frigid grasp. It splashes around my ankles as I trudge through the shallowest strip, feeling the smooth stones roll underfoot. The crimson of my shin spreads into the gentle currents and trickles lazily away, a soft pink against the faint cerulean.

My hands sink into the soft mud floor of the cave at the opposite bank, my shins comfortably enveloped in the creek's mellow bubbling pink. Head-first, I crawl in and circle the ground like a dog. My ruffled hair, the red leather tie hanging by mere strands, spreads over a wall as I scrunch up in the space. Comfortably cramped. Safely cramped.

The scroll beckons in my quivering hands and my traitorous, over-curious eyes find it. It unrolls with ease at gentle touch, much more conditioned to being flat that cylindrical. Much more accustomed to hanging on a wall in a frame. In my weak and unqualified hands, I behold one of the paintings from the captain's cabin.

And I do not know if it is the key, or the decoy.