On the Oro Jackson the sun seemed to climb earlier than usual.
The crew, heads pounding from the feast, rubbed sleep from their eyes as Buggy's shrill squawk split the morning.
"Hey. Has anyone seen Kael?"
For once the red-nosed brat sounded rattled. "His hammock's empty."
"Out for morning drills, probably," Scopper Gaban yawned, not overly concerned.
Shanks scanned the deck and frowned. "No. I can't feel him on board."
Only then did the unease take hold. They searched everywhere, from the crow's nest to the galley, the hold to Roger's cabin, and found nothing.
At last they spotted it at the stern. One of the spare single-mast cutters was gone. A few frayed lashings lay beside the davits.
"That guy went off alone?"
"Why?"
It made no sense. With the Final Island almost in reach, why would a core crewmate vanish now.
"Quiet." Rayleigh did not raise his voice, yet the chatter fell away at once. Leaning on the mainmast, lenses catching the pale sun so his eyes were unreadable, he said, "Kael has something he must do. Something that matters to all of us."
The captain's door opened.
Roger stepped out bareheaded, black hair wild, face a touch pale but eyes burning bright. He took in the empty davits, glanced at Rayleigh, then let his gaze pass over each man on deck.
Silence held.
"Ahem." Roger cleared his throat, then split the morning with that sunshine grin. "Ku ha ha ha. That little punk does love acting cool."
No question. No scolding. As if he had expected this all along.
The crew blinked. In the captain's smile there was no anger, only a helpless warmth.
Roger strode to the helm and slapped both hands on the wheel. The crack of it blew the gloom apart.
"What are you standing around for. Kael's off prepping a surprise for our victory feast. We are not letting him show us up. Make sail. Our heading is the Final Island."
"Yo!"
The roar rose again to the sky. Doubt lingered, yet their trust in a crewmate burned hotter. The Oro Jackson came about and drove forward, cutting for the unknown.
No one heard the low aside as Roger turned away. "Idiot. Always making it harder on yourself."
The run to the end of the world was longer and crueler than even their legends had promised. This forgotten sea warped weather and currents in ways charts could not bind, each mile a fresh hazard.
They wandered into a bank of fog that never lifted. Every needle on every compass spun madly. For fifteen days the Oro Jackson blundered in circles like a fly without its head.
"Damn it, what is this cursed place," Buggy howled, clutching his hair. "If Kael were here he could hear the right route."
They sailed into a storm whose mountains of water tried to crush the mainmast. Gaban and the hands bled their palms raw on the lines to keep the ship from rolling.
"Tch." Shanks wiped rain from his eyes, watching the next wall of sea heave up to eat them. "If Kael were here, he could shave half these waves off their height."
Once, running from the Navy, they blundered into a shoal field under moonless sky. Gaban dove again and again into black water, feeling out a path with his own body until the great hull scraped free. When they hauled him aboard he was shaking and blue around the lips.
"If Kael were here," Gaban rasped around a bowl of hot broth, forcing a grin, "he could map this seabed cleaner than our charts."
If Kael were here became the crew's refrain over the long year that followed. Each time trouble rose, each time they hit a wall, they thought of the man who had left. He was gone, yet his presence had never loomed larger.
And Kael did not sever the line completely. Two months after he slipped away, a News Coo circled the ship and dropped a small tarred box onto the deck.
Inside lay a sour-smelling lump of deep-sea coral and a note in bold, slanting hand.
"Roger. Grind it. Chase with high-proof. No backtalk. — Kael"
"What is this garbage. Smells like the captain's socks after a century," Buggy gagged, pinching his nose.
Roger turned the coral over in his hands, a smile on his face more honest than usual. He could picture that stubborn fool wrestling some nightmare in the abyss to pry this thing loose.
"Ku ha ha ha. Miracle tonic from Kael." He laughed big and tossed the coral to Crocus.
Bullied by the note's tone and wanting to steady the crew, Roger choked down a bowl of hell-flavored medicine with no complaint.
After that, every month or two, another "surprise" fell from the sky. Bark from a mumbo-jumbo tree said to cure all ills. A ritual blossom from an isolated tribe called the Flower of Life. Even once a suspicious crystal allegedly formed from a giant dragon's tear.
Each time Roger cursed the idiot for getting swindled again. Each time he swallowed every last scrap without a blink.
No miracle came.
Time gnawed and would not stop. Roger coughed more often, sometimes red wetting his lips in the small hours. He met it with louder laughter and bolder swagger, yet the bone-deep fatigue clung like barnacles to a keel, thickening and thickening, beyond scraping clean.
The crew played along without a word. Feasts came faster. The bottles drained deeper. The laughter rang louder.
They fought the creeping silence named Death the only way pirates could, with noise and heat and life.
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