Fall in Love, Free

I'm cutting to the chase -- La Protagonista is being given to you, free -- one chapter at a time.
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Pru Jones, author

Wednesday 1 November 1780

Sails thumped with the shifting wind. I happened to look down at the railing. The scratch Armando made on the back of my hand at our blood ceremony had healed. How long would it take to fix the hole he cut in my heart?

A fly sitting on a lily pad was safer than being aboard our stench-filled floating prison creaking with each swell. Not that I cared. Standing over the sloshing wake against the hull below, I couldn’t imagine my beloved Armando staring out at a sea desert reflecting colorless sky. Yet, I knew he had indeed made the trip.

My trust in Maximo waned with every turn of the hourglass. His misgivings, whatever they may have been, had taken charge. The man couldn’t lift a three-tined fork without losing his temper.

Lost -- a word no one dared say would’ve been the way to describe our whereabouts. We’d been forced to rely on dead-reckoning for nearly three days, when a thimble-sized cloud-opening spattered light on a sail. Like a shot, the deck behind me pounded with barefoot seamen. That poke of sun punching a hole in the sky was all we needed to figure out where we were, provided they could find our commander, the only one on board who could navigate worth a plum pie.

Nearly three hundred years of making the crossing, Spain surely would’ve figured the whole thing out. But, slamming a mug of grog on the galley table, gravelling in a rasp from years of yelling commands in the salt air, the Santa Dolorosa’s captain said, “No matter how many times you sail the Atlantic, it’s always the first time.”

Not caring if I lived or not would soon come to an end. Everyone on board but me was about to die.