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“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Ed’s always thought so, but it’s not something you talk about. Sure, on a clear night the stars are reliably gorgeous, and the moon makes shining furrows on the water. Clouds and silver linings, bird flocks crossing. Sometimes the sky is black above and the sea is black around you, and the ship is the only thing that seems alive in the entire circle of the world. Sometimes the sea glows silver-blue with its own light. If you’re very lucky you’ll catch a pod of dolphins bright with phosphorescence, dancing off the bow.
You might nod to the other guy on watch as you pass by. Tip your chin toward the stunning glow of early dawn. But you don’t talk about it.
Unless, apparently, you are Stede Bonnet.
Who is sitting on a rock by the sea, trousers rolled up and feet covered in sand, leaning back on his hands, eyes fixed on the sky. “Shooting star,” he says.
Ed looks just in time to see the flash fade away.
“You must have seen so many amazing things out there,” Stede says, still looking out over the waves. “What’s your favorite thing to see at night?”
Ed knows the obvious answer–I’m looking at him–isn’t the one he’s asking for. He settles beside Stede on the rock. The sea tonight is gentle. It rolls in steadily but softly, lines of white at the crests of tiny waves.
Stede nudges him, shoulder to shoulder: Are you going to answer me or what?
“I don’t know.” A zig-zag of lightning on the horizon. The masts glowing with St. Elmo’s fire. Rigging lit up, sudden and sharp, in the heart of a storm. “All of it, I guess.”
“Tell me?”
He can see it all clear in his mind, memory stacked on memory, thirty-two years at sea. “This might seem weird, but I don’t think I can.”
Stede sits with that for a while. “Can you tell me why not?”
He doesn’t have words for that either, but he has an idea. “Want to try something?”
They haven’t known each other very long. Every time Ed asks that question, he wonders if this will be the time Stede stops saying yes.
What he gets this time is a curious half-smile. “Probably?”
“Let’s stay up all night.”
“We’re not kids anymore,” Stede says gently. “I don’t know that I’d make it till morning.”
“We’ll plan it out,” Ed says.
“Go on,” Stede says, and Ed thinks he’s probably humoring him but he keeps going anyway.
Nobody’s relying on them right now. No ship, no crew. No customers, either, because even though they are innkeepers now, for real, or at least for real soon, as soon as they, y’know, open for business, they don’t actually run an inn yet. “We’ll go to bed at sunrise and get up at sunset. Picture that, life of luxury. We get to lie in bed all day.”
“And how long are we planning to go nocturnal?”
Well, not forever, because you probably can’t run an inn when you’ve got your mornings and evenings switched. Even though people are mostly paying you for the nighttime part. “A week or two?”
That bright star on the horizon is Jupiter. Mars shines red further west. The North Star anchors the sky above their heads.
Stede leans against Ed’s side, making a line of warmth in the cool evening air. “Sure, why not?”
The first night, they walk for miles along coves and cliff tops, stopping to wade in phosphorescent water, watching the tide creep in and back out again from a promontory above the sea.
The second night, they take the rowboat out under a full moon, lie down across the benches, and watch the stars turn.
The third night, a storm rolls in across the water, sends heavy rain pattering across the beach, and sails inland on its own wind. Right in the middle of it, Ed grabs Stede’s hand and tugs him from their covered porch and down to the beach, where they stand together on the strip of sand that’s narrowed by the wind-whipped waves, arms open, and let the rain pound against their skin. And Stede laughs, as the wind turns his hair wild and rain rushes down his face, and Ed laughs with him.
The fourth night, Stede stands at the window as the stars emerge. Ed steps up beside him and hands over a mug of tea. They walk together to the water, which shines glossy and smooth under unimpeded stars. The air is calm. Everything’s hushed, nothing moving but the sea. Ed’s not sure who starts yawning first, but it’s contagious. “I’m tired,” he admits, at the same time as Stede says, “Can we go to bed?”
Over breakfast the next morning–started well after sunrise, and consisting of tea and toast in bed–Ed asks: “What was your favorite thing to see at night?”
Stede doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m looking at him.”