Archive of Our Own

“Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs” – Moby Dick

“I have no idea who you were.” Flint looks almost shocked at this realization. John tries not to shift, repressing the urge to run that immediately rises up. “Not before we found you, at any rate.” John has to laugh at that, like he’s some stray that Flint decided to keep, here on these godforsaken cliffs that Flint insists they train atop.

         “Jesus Christ, don’t do that,” he says. “If you want to know where I come from just ask.” It almost even feels like the truth to say it, like if Flint asked him in the just the right way, John could find the words that would make his life till now into something that could be understood.

         “I think I just did,” Flint says, and when he does there is a rush and roar as the sea starts to drown John, he will certainly drown here now, swallowed by the sea that Flint can call up, that wine dark deep that is lapping at his ankles now.

         “I was at a home for boys,” John starts (don’t see me he means, don’t look here, there is nothing to notice beneath the shine, I am no one, I am nobody, I am from nowhere, I am –)

he loves watching Mama light the candles. The way the room goes from a deep dark blue, filled with the gathering night like a pail filled with water, to a bright yellow; the sweet smell of the candles beginning to burn themselves away; Mama’s hands in the light of the flames, so golden as she covers her eyes to sing. He thinks it must be magic, that Mama can talk to G-d like this, with the fire, and so he presses his small body up to hers like he can soak up some of her specialness so he can do it someday too.

         When she tucks him into their bed that night he asks her “Mama, when I’m big like you will I be able to talk to G-d?”

         She laughs and bends down to kiss him all over his face, and he squeals because her long brown curls tickle when they brush his cheeks. When they are both done giggling, she rests her cool hand on his forehead. “You don’t have to wait at all my dear, He can hear you from right where you are.” He smiles back up at her, she looks like what he’s always thought an angel must be, and he thinks okay G-d, if you can hear me I want Mama and me to always be as happy as right –

 “Home for boys - I know, I know.” Flint looks almost disappointed as he walks, pacing and considering his sword like it will be able to tell him why Silver would do this to him. “You told me once or twice of your experiences there.” John does not need to turn to know that Flint is looking at the sea right now, that he is squinting as the sun glints off of the water, that he is about to ruin them for something John cannot understand.

“Except it isn’t true. Is it?”

The water is around his knees now, John can feel the currents and the tides tugging at his clothes. “Why would you say that?” the words sound natural coming out but he can tell that he’s done something wrong Flint knows, he knows, what does he know, how did he see it, don’t see it – 

when it rains, he and Mama act out stories from the Torah together, (even though he’s almost nine and sometimes he feels like he should do more grown up things like playing pirates with his friends from school, but the rain makes such a good rhythm for their voices) and today they’re doing his favorite. Mama always lets him be Moses, and she works to play all the other parts, sweet Miriam and cruel Pharaoh and G-d in the burning bush. 

They are just about to get to the plagues, when the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he opens his mouth to ask Mama why would He do that, why would G-d make it harder for Moses to win –

There is a noise from outside, a terrible wailing that sends fear sliding down his spine, as quick as a raindrop down a window pane. He feels frozen by that sound, desperate to know what could make that noise, terrified he will find out.    

  With a strength he didn’t know she possessed, Mama picks him up and carries him into their kitchen, pulling up the door to their small root cellar and shoving him in so fast he doesn’t even have time to gasp in shock. 

“You must be absolutely silent right now,” She says, more serious than he has ever seen her. “Promise me you will not come out, no matter what you hear. Do you understand, Eliyahu? Eliyahu Solomon, show me you understand right now.” He manages to nod. 

“I’ll be good Mama, I promise,” he whispers.

She closes the cellar door. He twists his body to watch until the last sliver of her is gone, hoping she will come down soon, hoping he will not be too scared of the dark.

The dark is terrible and he is so scared of it, until the screaming starts, and then he is so scared of the light, and he doesn’t want the monsters up above to hear him, don’t hear me –

Flint is studying him; Silver has always felt studied by Flint and he has always been able to keep ‘John Silver’ firmly in place, a mask made to sit so perfectly on his face that there is no way to see where it joins. But for some reason, today he feels unmoored by the fear and distrust in the other man’s eyes. 

“I remember when you first told me, it sounded like a… invention, a story told to blend into the crew. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I thought if you ever became somebody worth knowing –” They both look away at that, the truth of them too close to the surface. “–that I would learn the truth eventually,” Flint finishes. “You just told me that story again… why is that?”

He is almost undone by the confusion in Flint’s voice, the look of openness that begs John to come to me, unload this burden, let me carry that for you the way you offered to carry mine . Flint’s face has always been easy to read, a book in a language John knows better than his own mind; it’s what drew him in to the other man in the first place, standing on the railing of the Walrus that first day. John Silver longs to sit down, to reach out, to bring Flint in the way Silver himself was welcomed back in that dark forest. 

But John Silver is just a coat that he has put on for now, he reminds himself. This is not safe, the voice says, though it is comfortable, it grows thin; can’t you feel the wind? His love may be a bonfire but it will burn out quick. 

“It isn’t important,” he insists.

“All right,” Flint says. “Although, you know that isn’t true either.”

John is screaming, he thinks, but the words sound fine when he says “Why isn’t it true?” (why can’t it be true why must I let it matter to me)

“You know my story,” Flint says, and the water is rising faster now, he will drown on this cliff with Flint watching. “It has made me transparent to you, and for some reason I cannot figure –”

“I don’t want you to know mine.” It’s the last thing he can get out before John is drowning in the sea of his own memory, and there is nothing to hold onto as 

***

Eliyahu is still shaking when he gets to the harbor two days of hard walking later. There are so many people moving and shouting and he knows that if he stands still he will stand out, not the least because of the bl- (his mind reels back) the blood on the knees of his pants. 

So. New pants. He tries to look like he knows where he’s going, turning purposefully down an alley, rolling his plan over and over in his mind until it is a pebble in a stream, smooth and seamless.

Last month he had heard the Rabbi’s wife (lying on the ground, empty eyes soaking up the red sky) talking to his – he blinks hard. They had been talking about some family in Rotterdam who had left for London, that London might be safe now, that they could be safer there. The trip wasn’t too far, the boats could be found. 

He pulls a pair of mostly dry pants off a washing line, leaves his own on the ground in the alley, he scans the crowd for any other unaccompanied child. Spotting one, dressed not so differently from himself, he calls out to him.

“Hey, you!” (the words feel strange in his mouth, it feels odd to think between words, they are not so smooth as Ladino or Spanish) The other boy turns to look at him. “You know if any ships here are going to England?”

The boy sizes him up and Eliyahu thinks very hard, please do not see me, don’t look too hard, I am no one important. It must work because the other boy shrugs and says “Not sure why you want to go there, but yeah. The Rachel goes back to London tomorrow, docked down at the end there.”

  Eliyahu nods his thanks and moves on, an eager cant to his shoulders as he slips through the crowd now; G-d, he thinks, I must be on the right path since you let it fall into my lap so easily (he has already started to forget his walk, the dark, the light, the flames, the blood – he has wrestled it into a box the way that Jacob wrestled with an angel to win a new life). 

He listens from behind a stall across from the Rachel’s pier, though he cannot understand much. They speak yet another language, bearing only the slightest resemblance to his own tenuous grasp of Dutch. Eventually, he decides he must move or die frozen here with fear. 

“Excuse me.” He thinks this man will understand him, he seems to speak the most Dutch of anyone from this ship. “I’d like to come aboard your ship, to work.”

The man barely glances at him, and snorts loudly. “Tiny thing like you? You couldn’t even hold a rope if I handed you one.” He turns his back in clear dismissal.

“Please sir, just ‘til you get to London.” Eliyahu hates the desperation that begins to bleed through, but it must be compelling because the man turns back, looks at him once more. 

“How old are you?” the man asks. 

“10.” From the look on the man’s face, this number is not remotely believable, but he merely sighs and motions for Eliyahu to follow as he moves up the gangplank onto the deck. 

There is an exchange of words between his new friend and another man, taller and much less weathered. This taller man approaches, a slip of paper and quill in hand. 

With a flawless accent he says, “You want to join as a cabin boy?” Eliyahu nods vigorously, fearful of his own accent that can no longer be hidden through another’s incompetence. “Very well, we are down by one cabin boy, so as long as you can sail tomorrow, you are welcome aboard. You have until then to gather your things.”

“Haven’t got any things.” He is considered, and so he forces himself to relax a bit, and thinks don’t see me, don’t see me until the man sighs.

“I will at least need a name for the log. You have got one of those I presume?”

The boy pauses (he is letting go of his own name already, willing himself to leave it behind like a shirt that has grown too small) “Solomon Little.”

(that very first day, he swallows back dangerous words as he watches the land disappear. He is called to do a task, and between one sneaking glance and the next, the shore has vanished and he swears it must be ocean spray that drips into his mouth he has never seen the sea before – )

As soon as he can, Solomon slips away from the Rachel. He waits for no one to be looking, for the hustle and bustle of unloading goods onto English soil to occupy more of people’s minds than they intended, and then he melts away into the crowds of people surrounding the docks. 

This is a test , he thinks, overwhelmed with this new place. G-d is testing me, and I will prevail.  

He lasts three days.

On the morning of his fourth day in England, Solomon is starving. He knows only what few words he had heard before boarding the ship here, and then the words that he spent the two week journey breaking up in his mouth, chewing over them like ill fitting sticks. Mostly he has gotten by so far by stealing, but he is too nervous to venture too far from the docks – he knows that if he were to go too far, there is no guarantee that he will be able to get back, to get away if need be. 

This is a harsh lesson that London teaches him: movement is freedom. 

He is being beaten by a gang of urchins his own size. He does not understand why, and he cannot say enough words to explain, to beg for friendship. Then, for whatever reason, the other children scatter. 

Solomon lays where he is, too tired to keep the tears from falling, until a gentle hand touches the top of his head. He tries to scuttle away, and looking up, he sees the face of a kind looking young woman. She says something, but he catches only the word ‘mother.’ He blinks, uncertain what the right answer is. The young woman gives him another smile (almost like the one his Mama) and puts out her hand.

He takes her hand, and she walks him through the maze of streets, winding ever deeper, ever farther, into the city. 

The other children on the street peek out as the woman walks him past their alleyways, and Solomon wonders what they are so afraid of, what they can see that he cannot, and he thinks maybe G-d is sending me ahead, like Joseph into Egypt, and I will – 

When he sees the gates of St. John’s Home for Orphaned Boys, he does try to run. He cannot read the words on the gate, has no way of understanding what they mean to the orphans of London, but he can tell what a gate like that is for. It is for keeping in, for locking away, for no escapes. The kind woman’s face is no longer kind, and her grip on his wrist makes the bones grind together, and even though he wails and twists and begs her in every language he knows he is dragged through those wicked gates. The noise they make when they shut will rattle in his nightmares for a decade.

  He is brought to some kind of office, where a stern looking woman sits behind a desk. They are all dressed funny, these women, all wearing the same long blue dresses and headscarves. They are talking about him, clearly, making gestures and noises that indicate he is to be an object of both pity and disgust. 

“Please,” Solomon begs, “my parents will be looking for me, it will be dark soon!” They will not understand but to tell the story will make it feel more true.

The moment the words leave his mouth the older woman reaches over and slaps him so hard across the face that his vision blurs. “English,” she says. While he is still reeling from the blow, the woman who brought him to this place drags him into yet another room. 

This room is darker, and damp, and there is a basin of water that looks both murky and freezing. The woman strips him of his clothing and pulls him towards the water. When he resists, she leaves, and he relaxes – until she returns with another woman in tow. Together they force him into the icy water, scrubbing him with a soap that burns. 

This is a test, he thinks to himself, it will be over soon . He clings to his composure as they dry him, as they give him new gray clothes, as they throw his old clothes in the fire. 

When they cut off his hair though, he weeps. A test, a test, they can’t see me really, swim down, stay down, don’t notice me.

He is given a new name, “John,” the nuns insist, tapping on his chest, repeating it over and over in his first few days. Yes, he thinks, see John and don’t see me, I am nobody, I am John.  

He stays nothing, that first year, clinging to the shadows, hiding from the nuns and the bigger boys alike, absorbing all he comes across like the rags they are given to clean with, becoming what he needs to be to survive. He tries to hide his learning, trying to keep a sheen of ignorant innocence on his face to cover his mistakes, whispering in chapel so they will not hear his words a moment behind the others, tripping over themselves to catch up. 

It works for so long, he makes it so far, they can’t see me he believes, he lets his guard down for just a moment – he lets himself laugh at a joke that he overhears some of the meaner boys making at dinner one night (such a stupid thing to lose himself for, a joke about sausages), and Sister Mary-Theresa (she is always watching, just as he is, eyes like a hawk circling a colony of field mice) narrows her eyes. 

“Your English has come along, John,” she says. He nods, looks away, hopes that she will take this as his shyness overcoming him rather than fear. 

On Sunday, when the service finally ends and the boys are all shuffling out with feet clattering across freezing stone floors, a hand falls on John’s shoulder to hold him in place. The other boys continue to stream past, just barely brushing sleeves as if his bad luck will bleed like the cheap dye of their clothes. 

He does not ask where they are going when she marches him down the halls (good children do not ask questions, and John wants to be of even less notice than a good child). He would have thought they were going to the Mother Superior’s office, but they have turned down a hall he cannot remember ever going down, almost behind the chapel, to an unassuming door.

It is so gray in this room, the weak December sunlight that shines in from a single window reflecting off of the stone walls and floor. Some sort of basin rests between the Mother Superior and the priest, as she says, “ – assumed he was simply some Christian foreigner’s child! Of course, we should have done it as a precaution but it will be done now either way. Ah good, you’re here!” He does not trust the smile on her face, like a spider on a plentiful web. “Well, the Father must be on his way soon, let’s begin.”

“No, wait,” John says, but the priest has already started chanting. “Please, wait – I don’t want to do this!” He kicks and fights please G-d I am fighting I do not want this but there are many hands pushing, pulling, and forcing him under the water. From underneath the frigid waves made by his small body the sunlight seems to waver, seems to ask isn't this what you meant, to disappear?

He is pulled forth, gasping and choking as his knees hit the unyielding stones. God if this is a test I cannot understand it deliver me, please I can’t do it anymore. The sunlight shimmers like a laugh. He does not leave for six more years.

***

He is laying in bed that night with Madi, his muscles aching, his mind spinning out in a wild spiral. He does not know how she can rest like this, she sleeps so soundly, her quiet breaths smoothing out the night like the susurrations of the waves on the shore. He feels like the water is calling out to him, he can’t remember what day it is that shouldn’t matter to him. He wants to see the moon. Damn Flint! Damn him for opening this box in his mind and heart, for pretending he would let Silver pour this story into his hands without complaint or pitying remark. 

  He slips from the bed don’t worry it’s nothing, just me (I'm nothing, don’t worry) as quietly as possible; he is unused to the heat of sleeping in a shared bed, more comfortable with the shallow cold after the other person leaves. 

Outside, the moon is just a sliver in the sky, like God’s fingernail has pressed into the skin of the earth to leave a mark. He thinks, the new moon is coming . He thinks, I do not know what day it is , and that thought appearing again startles a laugh out of him, then another and another until he is gasping with them and the tears begin to stream down his face; he can’t catch his breath and his arms are trembling. 

A warm hand presses between his shoulder blades stop it don’t see me, don’t see me like this and a man’s low voice says

“How long have you been standing here?” The girl’s voice startles him from where he is leaning against the wall, considering his prospects. Two months out of St. John’s, he has abandoned his apprenticeship and he is fifteen with no skills except lying. There is not much for him in Whitechapel.

He cranes his neck to look up at the girl leaning out the window above him. She is pretty, with long brown hair and a cheeky smile, about his age. She is also a prostitute, he knows. “I was thinking,” he calls back to her.

“Didn’t know you boys could do that.” She laughs at her own joke before he can, which makes him smile. “What’s your name then?”

“Sam,” he says.

“Well Sam,” she says, “come up! We have tea! I’m Lizzy.”

(“It’s easy money,” she tells him later, “and you’d make so much with your pretty face, ‘specially once those curls grow a bit. All you’re doing is selling them what they want to hear – it’s not really you they want. She takes good care of us here, not like some places.” She is so kind, and he knows how to do that, how to lie and look sweet and tell people what they want to hear, it doesn’t sound so – 

“ – wrong? It's alright Silver, it’s just me.” Flint swims into his field of vision, his voice distant like he is shouting across a battlefield. His hands are up, motioning to signal that he holds no weapons like he would need them, as if he hasn’t unraveled me with one exchange , his brow furrowed in confusion (concern? He wants to leave, the voice whispers, he is embarrassed that you are ). Flint reaches out to steady him, a hand on his back again. “It’s alright, I’ve got you love, hold on – “

(there you go love that’s it sweetheart oh don’t cry pretty boy gonna cry now huh shhh it’s alright)

(hands pulling his hair, hands on his back pressing him down, hands on his throat, hands hands everywhere always taking more than he wanted to give, hurting and pushing and pinching and pulling, leaving behind more than just a bruise and an ache)

Silver turns and vomits into the dirt. “Sorry,” he croaks out. don’t look at me, don’t see me

“Don’t worry about that now,” Flint says. “Come on, let’s go inside and sit down.” He moves back now, pulling John along gently, buoying him on a stream of kindness into the room (John came to his room, he hadn’t known, he didn’t mean to). 

Flint guides him, places him on the side of the bed the way John has seen him place a book on a shelf. He is so afraid that Flint will leave, or that he will sit down, that he will touch him, that he will let go. Instead, Flint kneels down in front of him, offers his hand palm up, resting it on John’s knee. 

“What should I do?” – 

“When we are rich and old, and we leave this place,” Lizzy whispers into the space between them, and he smiles just to see her smile back (even though it pulls at his split lip from last night, he will always smile for her through all his aches and lick the blood from his lips) . “What will you do first?”

The sheet over their heads filters the sunlight, makes it even more golden than honey, it makes their little cave so sweet. “I will eat a different cake for every meal,” he says, “and I won’t even finish them.” She giggles. “What will you do?”

“I will hire a boat to take just me, all the way to the new world so I can swim with mermaids. If you’re nice to me I’ll let you come too.” She takes his hand and they breathe together.

“That’s a good plan,” he says.

John shakes his head. He doesn’t want to see Flint’s eyes. “Okay,” Flint says. “Okay. You don’t have to know.” He moves closer, Flint’s hands sliding up to his forearms, a warm anchor. He draws in a slower, shuddering breath. Somewhere, an animal howls.

Lizzy shakes and shakes, like she can’t get warm even as the fever boils her blood and makes her face flush, no matter how many cold cloths he presses to her face. She begs him to leave, she begs for her mother, she weeps until she has no tears left. 

If you’re there God , he thinks, let me get sick, take me – instead or too – I will pray, I will do anything, I will be good . He’s been awake for three days with her when he finally sleeps, just for a minute he tells her, he’s just so tired. 

When he wakes, it is so quiet and he can hear his lonely breaths echoing in the room, and the sharp noise his heart makes when it shatters. 

“Can I stay?” John asks, when he can speak without his bones rattling apart. 

“Please,” James says. And then again, “please.”

The moon seems to wink at him through the window when he lays down, so he turns over to look at James’ face instead.

***

When his boots hit the Boston cobblestones he is twenty-one (he thinks) and he is alone. 

He laughs with the men as they go ashore for leave, slowly lagging more and more, pretending to drop something and finally separating himself from them by turning down a side street. I am no one he thinks, brushing his hands down the front of his shirt to wipe away the last of ‘Jonah,’ leaving a blank canvas behind. 

It is unseasonably warm for March, so he walks longer, relishing the feeling of the steady earth, there is no pitch and roll to accommodate for here. It hasn’t been so long since they left Savannah but he always misses the trees while he’s away. 

He wanders for so long that he finds himself standing outside a college as the air begins to chill with the setting sun. He watches the other young men, scurrying in and out like ants from the building. When he feels ready, he mimics their brisk walk, I am nobody, don’t look at me . 

The building is a library. He is fascinated, having never seen so many books in one place before. He pretends to search with purpose, letting his fingers brush the spines just barely. 

“You don’t strike me as someone who is overly familiar with the works of Shakespeare.”

He looks up to see a young man standing next to him, strawberry-blonde hair and well kept clothes. He lets a sheepish set come to the corner of his mouth. “What gave me away?”

The other man looks him over, his glance lingering at his mouth before he leans in conspiratorially. “You seem to have misplaced your waistcoat.” He puts out his hand to shake. “Stephen Chase.”

“Elijah Samuels,” and as the words fall out he pulls the name on, letting it settle onto his skin and he takes Stephen’s hand. “Any recommendations, for those of us less familiar?” Elijah lets his hand linger a bit before pulling it away.

“I’ve always been most partial to the sonnets,” Stephen says. “I have a lovely edition at my accommodations, if you’d like to see.”

Elijah grins. “I would quite enjoy that, I think.”

Elijah lingers in Boston, against his better instinct, for two years. He cheats at cards, steals small things to fence in nearby cities, nothing that will be overly noticed. He flits in and out of Stephen’s house and life, unwilling to overstay his welcome, but straying past his own boundaries all the same. 

It’s hard to leave when Stephen looks at him that way after they fuck, his face so open and trusting. He wants to be with Elijah, wants to know his mind and heart as much as his body. Stephen reads with him, and talks to him, asks him questions about his life and his family. Elijah spins fantastic lies about a mother and younger sister back in London, a drunken father who died when he was a child ( look no further, there is nothing underneath, I am the waves and not the water ). 

One morning, as Elijah dresses, he can feel Stephen’s eyes on him, like a concentrated ray of sunlight on his back. “What?” he says, not turning as he looks for his own shirt.

Stephen says, “I was just thinking, we should talk about where we should go.”

“For supper? Aha –” Elijah emerges with his shirt, but pauses at the look on Stephen’s face. 

“My education at Harvard will finish in a few months time, and I think it would do us both well to leave Boston for a trip. Wouldn’t you?” 

Elijah feels the voice, tugging at his mind like a child pulling at its mother’s skirts, reminding him to leave, leave now before the coat is too tight to take off . He finds the kind of smile Stephen wants to see, says “Of course, let’s talk about it during supper. But for now, hurry up before you’re so late that you don’t get to graduate at all.” He leans over to kiss Stephen’s cheek, but the other man turns to kiss him fully. 

That afternoon, he walks to the docks by Bunker Hill, with only the most necessary items in his bag, including the money he got from selling Stephen’s pocket watch. He buys passage on the first ship he comes across that is leaving that day. He watches Boston grow smaller and smaller from the deck ( it’s not that he will miss it, he just wants to make sure it’s really gone ). He hardens his heart.

He disembarks in Carolina and does not become someone. I can stay no one this time, this time there will be no test he thinks. The days slide past; he slips in and out of different personalities, here charming and experienced for a well to do widow (three strings of pearls and her grip in his hair makes him flinch for weeks afterwards, remembering), now sweet and green for the shopkeeper’s daughter (he quotes the Song of Songs for her and steals enough from her father’s store to pass as a peddler on the road to Baltimore). 

He travels the Chesapeake this way, letting himself get lost in the flow of days, not keeping track of time or lies. He means to keep to the South, but after an unfortunate game of cards (governors should know better than to let just anyone at their tables), he finds himself straying further than he meant to. He thinks he is in Rhode Island, looking to find work that will take him away, when he sees them.

The children are singing a song he used to know as they play in the street next to a house.  All the air leaves his chest, and he wants to scream at them they can all see this is not safe weren’t you taught to be quiet . A young man leans out the window of the house, says something to the children, that makes one of them run off. Then the young man sees him and calls out. 

“Won’t you come in? We’re one short of ten men.” the words are not English and they make his head spin and his heart ache.

“I’m sorry,” he says in careful English, holding back the traitorous words that spring up in his mouth, like they’ve been lying in wait all these years. “You seem to be mistaken, I’m not…” how did you see, what was it you saw but he can’t finish the lie and he leaves before the words fall from the air

The words haunt him all the way onto Parrish’s ship, and he is so distracted he gives them a name too close to the truth; he calls himself John. 

***

When Flint’s crew arrives, he runs to hide. He had cased the ship almost as soon as he had joined the crew to find the best place to hide if anything should happen; there was no way he was dying for a shit job like this one. 

He had just finished hiding the little packet the now dead cook had been so eager keep, slipping it into his own pocket when the door burst open. 

“My name is John Silver,” he says. “And I happen to be a very good cook.”

He likes Max immediately, against his better judgment. Certainly he doesn’t trust her, but John can recognize that she is something of a kindred spirit. When she says she can find a buyer for the page he isn’t surprised. 

In the captain's quarters, he flips through the pages of the log books, a feeling growing behind his ribs like nothing he has felt before. He laughs – Spanish gold! A tiny piece of paper is his ticket out, away from the sea forever (or at least for a good long while yet). 

(He ignores the voice that whispers in his mind you tempt destiny, it isn’t freedom you taste but a trap laid by the gods )

Obviously it all goes to shit the very next day. Silver watches Captain Flint beat that man to death and feels a chill race up his spine. Tick tock, the voice says, time runs short to outrun your fate . 

He steps up onto the rail of the ship, knowing it is desperate, but better safe ashore than anywhere else on this ship. He takes one look back and sees – 

Flint, stalking, hunting him. Silver doubts anyone else can tell but he can see, for Flint this is personal; he will not be satisfied or let this page go. Silver jumps. 

Later, he smiles smoothly at Flint across a table, insists they might be friends by the end of this thing and he can feel the growing current between them as Flint bares his teeth like a shark. He thinks, fate may catch us all in the end but you don’t see me, not at all, not really .  

And so the dance begins, around and between the two of them, Flint and Silver, Silver and Flint. Silver is fascinated by the way Flint lets his feelings play cleanly across his face like clouds in and out of the sky, but frustrated by the way the other man keeps him at arm's length. Let me in, let me slip past and around you, I won’t stay long and you won’t even notice I’ve been , he wants to say. 

“Keep wondering,” Flint tells him but oh, Silver knows now, can see it in the way Flint has to glance again at his hands, like he can’t help himself. The man may have a wife, but that’s not all he wants, and Silver can work with wants. 

(The man-of-war is a disaster. Silver can feel the question that the other captain wants to ask, knows his Spanish is not quite right (he can feel the wrong words resting just behind his teeth, sounding like his mother’s voice praying) but he hopes it is just right enough to pass. If Flint listened a bit closer he might notice but then fucking Dufresne mutinies. He never thought he’d be so grateful to almost be killed.)

“Who do you think it was that dragged you onto that goddamn beach?” he asks Flint, and the carefully hidden shock on the other man’s face is almost as gratifying as his frustration. He’s insane , Silver realizes listening to Flint’s plan, but he still swims out, still climbs into the man-of-war, still follows Flint into hell like he’ll get some kind of reward for it. They’re not much better off than before, even for all the fighting and nearly dying, but at least they’re on a ship, one step closer to getting that gold so Silver can get away, leave these men and himself behind . 

That first night on the man-of-war, after Dufresne informs them of their (temporary) removal from the crew, Silver wanders through the ship, looking for his hiding spot away from the rest of the men. Every part of his body aches, from his fight with the Spanish sailor, and the punch in his stomach that he took earlier during his recitation of the goings on. All he wants is to be alone so he can disappear, so he doesn’t have to be anymore, but he can hear an echo to his footsteps that he knows means someone is following him. 

“Is there something I can help you with, or are you just trying to drive me crazy?” he asks, without turning. 

“That depends, are you crawling into a corner to die? Or is there some other reason you’re here and not in the crew quarters?” Silver turns at the sound of Flint’s voice to see the other man lingering a bit behind him with a small smile, bitter and defensive, playing at his lips. 

Silver is too tired to play this game now, but he pulls up some semblance of charm, and replies, “I think I’ve been beaten enough for tonight thank you very much. I’ll find somewhere else to sleep.” He squints over at Flint. “Hang on, what are you doing down here? Certainly you aren’t following me out of a sudden concern for my health.”

Flint looks uncomfortable suddenly. “Oh, so I’m not the only one hiding from the men,” Silver says. He sidles up to Flint, covering his frustrations and pains with the farce of seduction. “You’re welcome to warm my hammock Captain – if that’s what you want with me.”

Flint scoffs, but he also flushes (it’s impossible for him to hide that, with his ginger complexion). “Don’t be ridiculous,” Flint says. 

But he doesn’t move when Silver closes the space between them, doesn’t stop Silver as he puts a hand on Flint’s chest and pushes the man back against the wall (Flint doesn’t reach out but he lets Silver push him, glances around to ensure that they’re alone). Flint shudders when Silver’s knees hit the floor in front of him. “So you’re saying you don’t want me to do this then?” Silver says. 

Flint says something that sounds like ‘little shit,’ and Silver flashes his teeth in a grin before Flint’s hands twist into his hair and he feels nothing nothing nothing, there is a cool blankness in his mind and when he finally comes back to himself Flint is already moving away again, leaving nothing but a lingering taste in Silver’s mouth. 

The next day at breakfast, Silver is planning the next installment of his goings-on, when Flint asks him why. “You can leave,” he says, “there are other ways of making money,” a perfect harmony to the alarms that ring always in Silver’s own mind. Silver sits on a bucket in front of Flint, a mirror image of their places the night before, below decks. 

“I don’t want to make money,” Silver says. “I don’t want to be a pirate, or join a crew, or even be on this one.” This is the first true thing he has ever told Flint, as close as he has ever come to showing how much he wants to run. Freedom from you , he tells Flint, but when he crawls back to a corner choking on the punch he’s just received, he finds himself sharing even more with the man. 

“I spent three years at the St. John’s Home for Poor Orphan Boys,” he says. And – before he can stop himself – “I knew a boy named Solomon Little.”  He can’t watch Flint listen; all good lies grow from a seed of truth but this one’s roots scrape too close to the heart of him. 

He’s still spitting blood later that day when Flint deigns to return the favor, sharing how he’s opened the path to Dufresne, who now willingly walks down it like the fool he is. Silver watches Flint smoothly reclaim his captaincy in one golden afternoon battle, longing to taste the power that Flint weaves around himself with barely a word or gesture. 

He goes to Flint’s quarters that night. “I suppose congratulations are in order then,” Silver says. Flint merely looks over at him, quirking an eyebrow. Silver shrugs. “Just an offer,” he says. “I meant no offense, Captain. Although you seemed quite amenable to the proposal last time.” 

Flint rolls his eyes skyward, like he’ll get some kind of explanation for Silver’s continued existence from that quarter ( a futile effort, Silver thinks, trust me ). But still he says, “Bolt the door.” Silver does it happily.  

It’s going so well, he’s letting Flint fuck him just the way he wants while still enjoying himself, when his hands stray past one of the many invisible boundaries that Flint has. Fair enough, Silver is thinking, until Flint pins his hands down to the bed. Instantly he is floating, watching the proceedings from outside himself, a mildly amusing play for no one’s benefit but his own. The version of Silver that exists on the bed gasps and Flints stills. Moan here, whispers the real him, kneeling down by the false version’s ear. Sell him the story we want him to see, tell him to “Keep going,” Not-Silver pants. There you go, Real-Silver whispers, it’s not so hard to feel good, to be good, to win the prize. How close can you hold yourself to the candle’s flame before it burns too hot? A bit longer than that I think, Real-Silver says. When they finish, he collects his body from the bed, slips away to merge shadow and self in private. 

For three nights on their journey back to Nassau, Silver comes to Flint’s cabin. On the third night, when Silver moves to leave the bed and become himself again, Flint touches his arm. 

“You might as well stay,” Flint says, face as open as John has ever seen it. 

“All right,” he agrees, so surprised he can’t even keep it from his own face. They don’t speak for the rest of the night, and it is the deepest sleep John has had in years. 

Perhaps this is why he allows it, why he lets Flint tie him closer to the crew and himself with each passing day. He resists, denies his bonds to anyone who will listen ( Flint’s men , he says to Max, as they watch one another over a blood-stained floor), steals the gold straight out from under Flint’s nose once the other man looks away from that goal for a moment. Flint avoids him once they’re underway to Charlestown, which Silver is thankful for. It will make for a cleaner break, he tells himself, it will be easier to forget this way. He watches Flint leave, dreaming of the moment he can flee this ship and the vortex-like way it pulls men in. 

You didn’t win, Silver thinks. I did, I told them the lie and they didn’t see me, I got away with it, won the gold and lost none of myself. I am still no one – 

He feels almost hysterical, sitting in front of that desk with Billy’s words echoing around in his head. I’m nobody he wants to scream, don’t look at me don’t see me don’t –

         “All we need are ten men from your crew to sail this ship,” the fuckwit in front of him is saying, and John almost chokes on the names crawling up his throat. Always ten men, never any more or less, like God is laughing at him, or begging him perhaps. It all sounds the same from down here. 

“No.” It is a shock even to John that he manages to say it. A blast of a gun, and he watches Vincent die in the chair next to him. Again, he marvels at the power of his voice to take and give life at seemingly any whim. He is almost too distracted to notice what Vane’s man is doing. 

“You’re going to give me those men,” the man says, holding an axe.  

“Now, what good would killing me do?” I will not blink first, do you hear me God? I have seen myself through worse tests than this . 

“None, whatsoever.” 

Then there are hands, so many hands lifting him up only to lay him out and hold him down. 

“No, wait –” Silver begs, but the axe still falls and the pain is so sharp and brutal he can’t even escape his own body to survive it please let the men come soon oh please and the only small mercy is that he is so focused on screaming and breathing that he couldn’t even change his mind if he wanted to. 

My men , he calls them, grinning through his shaking, wracking pains when Billy comes in through the window. My men , he thinks as Muldoon helps him to Howell. 

“I don’t want this,” John screams, “Did you not fucking hear me? I said I do not want this !” The words echo across time and space, he can hear a different John begging to be rescued, for help that never comes. Have I not given them enough yet, Lord? Let me go, deliver me . 

Hands holding down his hands, someone makes a soothing noise, he hopes they cannot understand the words that spill forth now; for once he dreams not in English but in his mother’s tongue and when he surfaces some time later, still praying in her voice, there is a cooling hand that brushes against his cheek as if to say you are safe now, rest.

When his fever breaks, he takes off the crucifix he had put on, throwing it overboard. He watches as it disappears, the greedy waves taking it as they take everything else in.

***

Madi finds him alone there, in James’ bed, the next morning. “I know what he asked of you,” she says as she sits down on the bed next to him. “Will you answer?” John shrugs, leans into her touch as she combs a hand through his hair. He remembers her same hand on his own, what feels like so long ago, when they first truly saw one another. G-d, I will do anything to stay with her, to keep this place at her side . 

He goes to the cliffs, like the sinner he is, one who cannot resist temptation. Anger fills every line of Flint’s body, (for whom he could not say, but it is always safe to assume that it is Silver’s own fault). 

“I have no story to tell,” he finally admits. Please believe me, this one thing I cannot give you, this is all I have . 

“No one’s past is that unremarkable,” Flint declares. 

Silver cannot help the smile that creeps onto his face at Flint’s stubborn resistance to the idea. “I have no need to account for all my life’s events in the context of a story. Events some of which no one could divine any meaning from other than that the world is a place of unending horrors.” I will not let it define me, John thinks, do you hear me G-d? None of it is mine. “There is no storyteller imposing coherence, nor sense, nor grace upon those events. You know of me all I can bear to be known. All that is relevant. That is to say, you know my genuine friendship, and loyalty.” 

They stare at one another. I will not speak of it first in the daylight, I will not be the first to love when you will not . “Can that be enough,” John asks. Can I be enough for you as I am? Will you take me in my sickness, and my fear, and my unease? Here is my soul, the very truth of myself in my hands for you to keep if you want it – look at how it bleeds for you.

Flint walks away, lets the conversation drop with no answer. John lets the last sharp shards of his heart fall in the sand through his fingers. There is no noise, and when they land they don’t shatter, just keep falling forevermore.

***

Such a beautiful place for it all to end. Skeleton Island is so green, and he is so sick of the ocean, its changing moods. John feels like he has been screaming at G-d for ten thousand years, all to get to this place. Isn’t this what it was all for? You wanted me to love them Lord and I did as you asked – and for what? Why do you harden their hearts against me? Why must a prophet suffer in pursuit of your word?

“Why would you want to do that?” James asks, as if he cannot see any reason in the world beyond his own.

“This is what it would be,” John pleads. “Time after time after time. Endlessly. The measuring of our lives and loves and spirits so that they may be wagered in a grand game.” Don’t you grow tired of it all? “That isn’t a war, that is a fucking nightmare.”

James is crying now, John can see. James is begging John to let him throw himself upon the rocks of this war over and over, to let him crush himself under the weight of the boulder that he created for himself, like this sacrifice is love and not selfishness. 

“There is freedom in the dark, once we have illuminated it,” James insists, but John is so tired of making his home in the dark.

You do not want to illuminate, he wants to scream. You just want to burn and burn until there is nothing left, not even for us. I wish we had been enough for you, I wish you wanted to live for me and not just die.

“All this will have been for nothing. We will have been for nothing. Defined by their histories, distorted to fit into their narrative until all that is left of us are the monsters in the stories they tell their children.” How dare you, John thinks, how dare you pretend now that you love me in a way that matters.

“I don’t care,” John says. It is the most true thing he has said in his life. 

James lashes out in anger, hitting with his words in the soft part of John. He has no choice but to take out his gun and say the words he has least wanted to set free. I will break my heart over and over to keep you safe, I will pull this gun, I will give you away before I let you die for this.

John watches from a safe distance as James and Thomas embrace. There you go G-d, I have done what you asked and led my people to their promised land. I gave everything up so that they might know happiness. He looks up at the cloudless sky. What do you have to say to that?

There is no answer, just the same sounds of birds calling, people talking, wind rustling the trees. It is spring, he thinks. He still does not know what day it is, but one day (maybe soon), it will be Friday night again. There is alway that. 

***

Life is not a story; there are no endings or beginnings to see around the bend. Just the next day always dawning. And someday (maybe soon), a man walks up to a house. He asks the people inside if he can come in, unload his burden, if he can come home. 

I’d like to tell you a story about a man named Solomon Little, he says.

Later, they say, come inside first. Are you hungry? We have set a place for you at our table; we were hoping you would come.

“Don’t stop after beating the swords into ploughshares, don’t stop! Go on beating and make musical instruments out of them. Whoever wants to make war again will have to turn them into ploughshares first.” – Yehuda Amichai

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