"None of us has the power to face them," the boy said. "Only the moon can confront them." He craned his neck at the full moon above.
"What will the moon do?" I grimaced. "It's just a white plate, hanging up in the sky." The words escaped me. I remembered when I thought the moon had smiled at me. But not again. That must have been my imagination. The moon was, and had always been, the plate up in the sky. That plate I saw kids throw rocks at near the Pond of Pearls in Styria. The same white plate they talked to, which reflected on the water's surface. Sometimes the girls pretended they were pulling it down to them near dawn, as if holding it with an invisible rope. Then the moon faded away, making way for the sun to shine a new day. The moon was nothing but a plate I had enjoyed looking at before I gave in to sleep every night when I was a child.
"You're so naive," he said, not looking at me. "The moon is the Creator's eye in the sky. And it's a girl."
I gritted my teeth, pretending to pray with the others. There was no way I could argue with the boy's nonsense.
"She lives on the moon," he elaborated. "Or is the moon herself. We don't know. She looks after the goodhearted when they cross the sea at night, and she protects them from all evil, especially the mermaids. The moon and the mermaids have somehow been connected since the beginning of time."
"Then why isn't she down here protecting us?" I asked. The prayers all around annoyed me. They called for the girl in the moon to protect them. Each of them offered something—a ring, a sword, and sometimes a day's catch of fish. It was absurd.
"I told you she only protects the goodhearted," the boy insisted, and offered his stash of tobacco in front of him. He pleaded to the girl in the moon and told her it was all he had. He promised to stop smoking if she saved him today.
"Aren't we goodhearted?" I had to see where this was going.
"Most of us are, I think. We're all misfits running away from an evil past on this ship," the boy said. "There must be a dark soul on the ship." My mind—although resisting the idea—thought of Angel. He wasn't a dark soul, but was always mistaken for one. Never had I thought it might be me. "I think it's him." The boy shivered and pointed behind me.
I turned around, thinking I'd see Angel. But it wasn't him. The boy was pointing at Captain Ahab's closed cabin. In spite of the assumptions and the rumors I'd heard, I was curious about why he hadn't come out with all the noise around him.
"He is a dark man, I'm sure," the boy said. "Why isn't he praying with us? Offer the moon something!" he told the man behind the closed cabin.
"Yeah, offer her something," the silver-toothed man said. "Maybe your clothes." He grinned at me, and gulped discreetly from his beer.
"You shouldn't be drinking when we're praying." The boy snatched the ale away from him and set it right next to me. A few sailors peeked back at us. We had to bow down immediately and shut up, although the silver-toothed man wanted his ale back.
"Give it back," he hissed between gritted teeth at me. I ignored him. I had nothing to do with it. The ale was just next to me, that's all.
The man's face reddened. He decided to defy all and stand up. "I know why the moon isn't answering us," he shouted at everyone. "Our offerings aren't enough. We're not offering her all we have."
"Shut up," a sailor said. "Everything we have is laid here upon the deck."
"Not everything." He pointed his finger at me. I didn't understand what he was implying. "This girl has something she isn't giving away." He wasn't talking about clothes. "I saw her board the ship with a sack. It seemed full of precious things. I think she is a smuggler."
"We don't see any sack with her," another sailor said.
"I saw it!" A misfit raised a hand.
"The barrel man has it." Another misfit stood up. "I saw him hide it in a different barrel each day."
"Find the barrel!" the head of sailors ordered immediately.
The mermaids' humming was driving everyone crazy. The crew spread all over the ship looking for my sack in the barrels of wine. I wondered why they hadn't offered the wine to the moon, but years later I learned the moon didn't accept anything that was the color red.
Stranded, I called for Angel, the wind sucking my words into thin air. There was no point resisting. Angel couldn't show with the mermaids still humming. Why risk him turning into a full vampire by impulsively sucking on the sailors' blood under the mermaids' influence?
The sailors were frantic, and I was about to see my dreams crashed and burned. I didn't know in which barrel Angel had hidden the sack. I didn't even know what was in the sack. I just knew it was my only precious offering to Lady Shallot in the Tower of Tales.
Finally, one of them showed up with the sack. I ran to him, trying to get it, but the men held me back.