"Why…why do you think it does that?"
"How should I know, Mariana? You were the one who brought that wretched abomination aboard the ship. If it were up to me, I would fling it over to the sea and forget that it even exists." The first mate sighed. "But that's not how any of this works, is it? I just hoped that you would have an idea or two about it, but it seems like you are just as ignorant about it as I am."
"I don't think it's wise to send it to the bottom of the ocean," Mariana said. "That is the most magical place in the world. No one alive knows what the deep sea is like. Down there, the powers of the cube would only be amplified by the waters."
"Yes…I think you are right about it. I have it in my pocket."
Mariana shivered. She had sensed that there was something wrong with the first mate, she had just been totally unaware of the reason for her unease.
"Is it directly touching your skin?" she asked.
Wolfe shook his head.
"So, we may want to do something about it. Maybe it is better if I keep it."
They agreed to let the captain guard the dice. Wolfe left. He had other duties.
Mariana felt so abandoned.
She drank her tea in silence, although it was cold already. She had her little window that always showed her a very pretty view of the sea, and she loved to gaze towards the sky and the blue waves.
She heard something rattle behind her.
It was the cat.
The little beast was walking into a hole in the wall that was barely large enough to fit its whole body. Curious by now, Mariana thought that she should investigate this flaw in the ship, but she found no hole after the last hair on the tip of the black tail had disappeared behind her shelf.
Then she saw the cube on the table.
She froze.
She had not left it there, especially not like that, with its insides threatening to roll over onto the table. She couldn't have it rolling around like that! A single rocking movement of the ship would be enough to tip the box over and there would be no telling whom the dice were about to call.
Before she could catch any of them, a jerking motion rolled the dice. A cross, an eye and various lines came up as the result.
Mariana covered her mouth as something dark started to manifest into the corner of her cabin.
There was a whiff of a scent so similar to Daniel's skin that she was almost lured by it, and she almost failed to light the candles on time, but she was steadfast.
The tendrils of smoke disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. Now, though, Captain Mariana had a whole new problem to think about.
She was quite convinced that Daniel, too, was somehow interested in the cube, but for whatever reason, the pirate king had failed to take the item from her. Perhaps it was because the very act of owning something so sinister was so unlike Mariana. She wondered why his smell followed her like this. Was Daniel secretly a demon?
That would have explained a lot. Mariana could not stop herself from chuckling a little. If she was to fall in love with a man, a demon seemed like a great candidate for that. It would not be completely outside the realm of reason - perhaps the pirate king had not always mingled with those whose houses smelled like sulfur, but a hail of brimstone sure followed him on a metaphorical level.
How could she let herself be fooled like this? He was a demon, that was why he wanted for himself the only thing he had to obey!
Mariana struck her fist into the wall and got a couple of small, nasty splinters into her knuckles. Her first thought was that she should not handle the dice while she was still bleeding, but on the other hand, the ship could rock again and she had a scarf she could use as a first line of defense.
For now, the back of the shelf would have to do. She planned to bury the dice in earth like people buried dead cows in the filthy ground, that was if the whole self-summoning demon complex thing got too complex for her. It made her sad to think about Daniel buried on land like a beast of burden.
Real people got their final resting place under the waves, so it had always been, and Mariana did not want to be the one to break the tradition.
She did what she could do to the sentient dice and buried her own face in her scarf almost immediately.
She noticed that the expensive piece of fabric had Daniel's scent on it, and she immediately doubted her magnificent revelation.
How was it even possible to kiss a man and not notice that he was a demon?
Ah, the kiss…the memory got those nasty, happy butterflies rising from her stomach again. She felt queasy, like she was about to faint from the sheer delight of having kissed her true love.
But just like the waves rocked the Good Wife back and forth, her emotions were fickle in a fairly predictable way. She was to always return to him, no curses needed. With no sense of any clear boundaries between him and her, she was to revolve entirely around the pirate king until the day of her death, and maybe even after that, depending on whether she was in the mood for a horror fantasy about an afterlife where they could wrap their souls around each other for all of eternity.
She dried her tears with the scarf, hoping that there was still a way of bringing him back to her without any bloodshed.
Wasn't it so that love excused every callous thought towards other men who fought and died so Mariana could be with Daniel again? She wanted to think so.