A chill ran down Zander’s spine.

“Once we board, we do what we can to survive," Yarrow continued. "We look for resources that can be of use to us. We aren’t friends, any of us, alright? Better them see us as castoffs, easily controlled and manipulated, not a group of unified outsiders.”

Zander nodded, swallowing. The plans they’d made just this morning drained from his head like so much blood, leaving him lightheaded.

When the men boarded the ship, Zander knew immediately Yarrow was right. He knew it had been too much to hope for, that these pirates would be fair and benevolent like Ace’s crew. Rather, it seemed they’d stepped right out of a fantastical story.

They reeked of rum and sweat. Their clothes were dirty and torn, as if there weren’t enough to go around. They shoved one another roughly as they climbed aboard, shouting, more grunts than words. Zander, Yarrow, and Theo were already on their knees, their hands up, but they were each shoved to the ground anyway and quickly disarmed. Ace’s cutlass was taken, but tentative relief snaked through Zander when they failed to notice his inner pockets or check his boots.

The pirates spread across The Valerian like rats looking for cheese, and Zander winced when he heard their fruitless search turn to wanton destruction, the frustrated men breaking anything they could find.

Zander heard more than a few English accents among the crew, including one from the captain, who stood at the helm of his vessel, shouting orders for the captives to be brought aboard. The ship was close enough Zander could see the captain clearly. His face was marked by deep wrinkles that resembled the grooves ocean waves sometimes carved in the sand. They snaked across his skin, which was bright red and blotchy. His eyes were narrowed as he grimaced at the damaged sloop, assessing it. He wore fine clothes, a stark contrast to his men.

A hand roughly grabbed Zander by the elbow, hauling him up from where he knelt on deck. “You heard ‘im,” said the sailor, who had a thick Irish accent and a mess of tangled red hair. Ace’s blade already hung from his belt.

Zander heard Theo cry out in pain as a scrawny pirate with a length of canvas tied around his head in a makeshift eyepatch grabbed him by his injured arm, pulling him up to stand.

Yarrow stood automatically at the sound of Theo’s cry, earning a punch to the head from a large man with wild blonde curls. Zander stifled the urge to scream as Yarrow’s body fell limp to the ground, unconscious. He saw a flash of panic in Theo’s eyes as he watched his lover fall, but he showed no other reaction as the men marched him away, Zander and the Irishman following in their wake. The large pirate who’d hit Yarrow stooped down and hauled them up, throwing them over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

Upon boarding the ship, the captives were brought before the captain. Theo and Zander were forced to kneel by their captors; Yarrow was dropped roughly to the ground at his feet. One of the longboats was still at The Valerian, the men remaining likely still looking for loot, of which they would find precious little.

The captain stood in front of them, his hands on his hips, his feet spread apart and his pelvis thrust forward. He looked down his nose at them silently for a few moments before speaking.

“It appears someone got to you ‘fore us,” he said. “So, I’m left with only you three as a reward. Convince me why I should keep you aboard my ship when I could kill you and be rid of three extra mouths to feed.”

Theo spoke right away, mercifully saving Zander from responding.

“I’m an expert marksman, and my previous vessel’s boatswain,” he said. He nodded his head toward Zander. “He’s a sailmaker. That one there,”—he angled his head toward Yarrow’s unconscious body without looking at them—“makes the best rum punch you’ve ever tasted in your life. But between you and me, Captain, both of them are a right pain in the ass.”

The captain looked dubious, his eyes dancing between Zander and Theo as he assessed them both. “A sailmaker we can use,” he said. “And the small fellow can scrub decks as well as anyone, I’m sure.” A rumble of quiet laughter sounded behind him from a few crew members, who were eyeing Yarrow with a mixture of amusement and malice that made Zander’s skin crawl. “As for you,” he said, his gaze returning to Theo. “You expect me to believe you’re an expert marksman?”

Theo flashed a smile that reminded Zander of a snarling dog. “Give me back my pistol and I’ll prove it to you,” he said.

“Ha!” the captain scoffed, then gestured to two men on his right. “Put this one in the brig for a few days,” he said. His voice turned to a low growl. “Leave some scars on ‘im first. Stuff the other two in the orlop and give them something to do.” He turned on his heel abruptly and walked away.

A large man with a snake tattoo covering one arm shoved Theo in the direction of the brig, a vicious smile on his face. Another man followed, carrying Yarrow’s satchel in one hand and twirling a small blade in the other.

Before he disappeared below deck, Theo looked back at Zander, a meaningful look in his eyes.

Zander knew what the look meant. Survive, it said. Both of you, survive.

Zander carefully picked up Yarrow’s body, draping his arms under their back and knees, and headed below deck to the orlop. He would survive, and he would get them out of this mess, and they would find Ace if it was the last thing he did.

Once, he was in between. On one side of the liminal space in which he existed was the world beyond forms, where it seemed that only moments ago, he’d been whispering soft promises to his love. On the other side was a world with which he was familiar, but within which he did not, at present, belong.

For she had been swept away again on the tides of the universe, and this time, they did not let him follow. This was her lesson. But he slipped in between anyway, and he stayed with her.

She lived a lonely life, devoid of the warmth she deserved. She had no one to which she could turn, no one to talk to who truly understood her. Sometimes she would cry out to him, and he would throw himself against the barrier between their worlds, trying to reach her. And though she could not see nor hear him, his thrashing against the insidious wall that separated them seemed to calm her down.

She began to believe, deep within her soul, that someone was coming to save her. She didn’t realize he was already there.

When she talked out loud to herself, he talked back. They carried on conversations like this quite often, and even though her ears couldn’t hear what he said, he found ways to whisper to her that went deeper. Eventually, she knew what he was going to say before he said it. Sometimes she would stop in the middle of a sentence and laugh, anticipating what he would say.

“I know, I know,” she would say. “You’re right.”

She called him her “imaginary therapist.” She wondered at times if she was mentally unstable, carrying on conversations with someone who didn’t exist. The strange thing was, she felt more heard by the fictional character in her head than she ever had from a real person.

Sometimes, she would talk to him in her head, and he would talk back. They’d run through her anxieties together while she sat listening to a lecture, and he would calm her down. She’d tell him jokes while she did the dishes, and she imagined him laughing and telling her how funny she was. And when she scolded herself for being pathetic, telling jokes to a fake person inside her head, he would tell her she had been many things in their lives, but she had never been pathetic.

And when she laid in bed at night and cried, wondering where her true love was, wondering why he hadn’t saved her, he tried to call out to her from the space between worlds.

I’m here, he would say. I’m right here. Hold on.

Eventually, his words would sink in, and she would fall asleep. The next day she would wake with renewed hope that her life would someday be filled with love.

But years went by, and no love came. Hope, like a balloon, drifted higher and higher until it ran out of air, and came drifting down.

No one ever came to save her. No grand love unfolded before her like a stage upon which she could dance. And eventually, years of loneliness and rejection made her fold in upon herself and give up.

In the last years of her life, a faint presence kept her company. A voice without sound, a shoulder without substance, a kiss without breath. And she grew comfortable with what she perceived to be her perpetual instability—perhaps, the reason no one ever gave her the love she desired.

But one day, when her body was weary and old, he found the barrier between them growing thinner. It thinned until he could push his way through, reaching across to take her hand.

And then he saved her.

When she awoke on the other side, she found the love she’d always dreamed of, waiting.

14

Zander was in a state of hyper alertness as he scrubbed the orlop deck on the strange new pirate ship. Yarrow lay nearby on a spare piece of canvas he’d found, still unconscious. He registered every breath they took, heard it even over the sounds of Theo being beaten just over their heads. They’d brought him to the gunner deck, where a small cell lay in one corner. Zander passed by on his way to the orlop just in time to see the man with the snake tattoo throw the first punch.

His heart beat wildly in anger and fear. Adrenaline coursed through his body, begging him to move, to do anything at all. But he was hopelessly, infuriatingly stuck.

The orlop of the new ship was much larger than The Valerian’s tiny storage deck, as he’d expected, but it was not well looked after. Thick layers of grime coated the corners of the deck, and some of the wood seemed to be rotting away. It was a maze of crates and barrels, some of them seemingly empty, and others that smelled as if they were filled with rotten fruit, or dead mice. A thick, musty smell overwhelmed him and made him sick to his stomach. The man guarding them either didn’t notice or didn’t mind it in his seat near the stairs.

A sharp intake of breath alerted Zander to Yarrow’s consciousness. He made his way to them quickly and quietly, mindful of the guard, whose eyes had drifted closed a few minutes prior. He put his finger to his lips when Yarrow opened their eyes, his other hand cradling their head comfortingly.

"Welcome back," he whispered. “Don’t sit up yet. You got a nasty knock to the head.”

Yarrow’s blue eyes darted back and forth, silently taking in their surroundings. After a few moments, they carefully lifted themselves onto their elbows.

“How long have I been out?” they said, their voice soft.

“Not quite an hour. How do you feel?”

Yarrow’s hand trailed to the back of their head, and they winced as they touched the point of impact. Their short blonde hair stuck up in odd places, parts of it barely matted from blood.