Archive of Our Own ^beta

Uma is seven years old, and she’s hovering on the docks, watching a crowd of villains picking over the latest barge of trash to wash up from Auradon. She doesn’t dare get too close. They’ve chased her off twice already.

When she was very little, her mother used to take care of that kind of thing. As time went by, her mother started to care less, but Uma didn’t notice because she was running round with Mal, and people are so scared of Mal’s mother that they’d let her walk in wherever she wanted and take whatever she wanted. But now she’s not in Mal’s gang any more, and everybody knows it. They called her Shrimpy and threw things at her to make her back off. They’re back to treating her just like any other wharf rat – no, worse than that. They’re treating her like someone who dared to be above them and isn’t any more. They’re taking revenge.

She’s so angry she could scream. It’s not her they want revenge on, it’s Mal. Maleficent. Auradon. But they don’t dare take revenge, not even on Mal. They’ve only got the guts to kick Uma once she’s down. The cowards. The cowards.

She’s angry, but she’s scared too. She’s hungry. She doesn’t want to get so tired and cold that she forgets how to look out for herself. She curls around the gnawing in her stomach. It’s already making her smaller. She doesn’t know what to do.

‘Hey!’

Uma jumps out of her skin and spins round before she registers that it’s a high, child’s voice that’s shouted at her. She squints down the dingy alley. There’s a scrawny boy walking towards her, waving a sword as big as he is. He can hardly point it steadily, it’s so heavy.

She recognises him. Harry Hook.

‘This is my lookout point,’ he says, pointing the wavering tip of the sword at her. ‘Scram.’

Uma’s not in the mood. Every person she’s met today has kicked her around. She’s not getting kicked around by a kid shorter than she is. Who cares if he has a sword?

‘You even look at me and I’ll kill you!’ she snarls.

He looks taken aback by her ferocity, but every villain kid knows not to back down from a challenge. He drops the sword and tries to barge her with both hands out, so Uma stamps on the top of his foot. He falls down with a yelp. She looks anxiously to see if anybody on the dock has heard where they are, but they don’t care. They don’t care about two little kids tearing chunks off each other.

‘I’ll kill you!’ she says again. ‘You can’t tell me where to go!’ She stands over him and he flinches, but she doesn’t back up her words with kicks. What would be the point? She’s not going to forget who her real enemies are.

He sniffs and starts to pick himself up. He eyes her warily, but his eyes keep sliding back to the barge of their own accord. He’s got to be as hungry as she is.

‘Where’s your dad, anyway?’ Uma asks.

‘He’s on his way with the crew,’ Harry says, ‘and if he finds you here in my lookout spot, you’re going to regret it.’ He steels himself, steps towards her again. ‘One more chance. Scram.’

‘Liar,’ Uma says. ‘Why wasn’t he waiting with the other parents to divvy up the barge when it came in? Is he too tired to salvage today? Injured?’ She racks her brains for what little she knows about the Hooks. ‘Drunk?’

Harry looks speechless with fury, so Uma presses on. ‘Did you steal that sword from him to come down here and try to get something to eat? Or did he give it to you and send you here? You’re going to be in trouble if you go home empty-handed, aren’t you?’

When she ran with Mal, she’d been better off than most. Now she’s not with Mal any more, but there’s still kids worse off than her, kids whose parents can’t even protect them. It makes her heart burn up hot and bright to remember that she’s not at the very bottom. Okay, so maybe she is going to kick him a little.

‘Are you worried? Are you going to cry?’ she taunts.

‘You’ve been crying!’ Harry shouts, and he lashes out at her again. His bony fist catches her in the upper arm. It hurts like hell. It snuffs out that fire in her chest, and for a moment Uma thinks she’s going to burst into tears, but she finds that there’s nowhere inside her for tears to come from. She feels hollow.

‘I was crying,’ she says. ‘I got over it.’

‘Where’s your mother, anyway?’ Harry shouts, voice more tearful than not.

‘My mother’s too miserable to work out how to feed me,’ Uma says.

‘Hah! At least my dad told me what to do. He told me to come down and see if the barge had washed up anything to drink.’

‘Well, he’s got his priorities all wrong,’ Uma scoffs, but she’s thinking. No, her mother hasn’t told her what to do, but she’s given her enough examples. Uma can figure this out for herself. She glances down at the too-big sword, then up at Harry’s face. He’s spoiling for a fight. He might be exactly the right person for the idea she’s got forming.

‘I’ll make you a bargain,’ she says.

‘Huh?’ Harry stares at her suspiciously. ‘What kind of bargain?’

‘You’ve got a sword. So you go round to the main approach, run at those people picking over the barge and act like you’re attacking them. You don’t have to win or fight them off or anything, just get them angry enough so’s they chase you. As soon as they’re distracted, I’ll run in and grab some supplies. Whatever I get I’ll split with you. Deal?’

‘I can’t run fast,’ Harry says sullenly. Uma sighs and points across the street.

‘You see that building over there? Right round the corner of it, there’s a hole in the wall, hidden behind the dumpster. Mal and I used to use it as a den. Wriggle in there and nobody’ll know where you’ve gone. And even if they do, they won’t be able to fit through after you.’

‘Hmph.’ He chews it over. ‘How do I know you won’t just scarper with the loot?’

‘You’ll just have to trust me,’ Uma says coolly. ‘Either we try this, or we both go hungry. What have you got to lose?’

They pull it off at the exact right time.

The scavengers on the docks have got enough useable things separated out into piles that, once Harry’s created their distraction, it’s easy for Uma to just grab things at random and run, reasonably sure that she’s got something useful. But she almost forgets to run because she’s so busy watching Harry and wondering how he’ll ever escape.

The other scavengers laughed at first when he set on them, barely coming up to their waists, but Harry’s angry and loud and crazy as a hornet, and that sword gives them something to think about even if it does throw him off balance every time he swings.

And finally villainous tempers crack and they’re all chasing him, and Uma’s crouched in the middle of the salvage with parcels spilling out of her arms, convinced that she’s about to witness a murder. Is Harry going to be able to find the hole in the wall? Is he even going to be able to make it there in time? One of the villains is snatching at his heels, and Uma blinks, and Harry’s vanished. Just like a magic trick, if magic worked on the Isle. Quick and slick as a real wharf rat.

The winded villains turn and see her, and she spends the next few minutes running for her life as well.

When she’s finally shaken off pursuit, she spreads out her haul. There’s non-perishables: cheese and some battered tins that she’ll be able to claw her way into. There’s lumps of paraffin and nails as well. Uma’s got nothing to build and she’s used to the dark, but she can trade those things with somebody who expects a higher standard of living than her, and get some more food in return.

She can trade what she hasn’t split with Harry, that is.

Uma crouches in the dirt in the corner she’s squeezed herself into and argues with herself. No true villain would bother to keep a promise like the one she’d made with Harry. He’s taken all the risk and let her walk off with the prize; more fool him.

But if she back-stabs him now, he’ll never work with her again.

He’ll probably never work with her again anyway. She’s letting her imagination run away with her, telling a story where this is the start of something, and tomorrow they pull another trick like this one, and the next day, and the next. Where the two of them make a bargain with someone else, and keep their word to that person too? What if she could have a whole group, a whole crew, of people, who owed her, so that she wouldn’t have to go foraging alone?

Stupid. Nobody on the Isle has that. And if they did, they’d forget she’d started it and kick her out, just like Mal.

‘Good haul,’ she says, when she finds Harry curled up in her and Mal’s old hiding place. She tosses him a package: half of what she stole. ‘There’s cheese in there, y’know.’

Uma isn’t much older when Harry comes begging at the back door of the Chip Shop.

‘Uma! Uma!’

‘What are you doing?’ she hisses. She’s shutting up shop. She’s tired. She doesn’t want any trouble.

‘Relax, it’s no big deal,’ Harry says, trying to sound like he’s older, relaxed, not crying. ‘I just need to lay low for a little bit. And a bite to eat.’

‘Go cry to your father,’ Uma snaps, trying to haul the door shut. Harry puts his foot in the way.

‘I can’t! I – you know why!’

‘And you think my mother’ll be a bundle of laughs if she catches you here? Why would I help you anyway? Do you think I’m soft?’

‘We worked together that one time…’ Harry pleads.

‘And that makes me the best ally you have?’ Uma scoffs. It certainly makes him the best ally she has, since she lost Mal, but she’s not going to point that out. ‘I helped you because you had something I needed. You can’t get something for nothing, you know.’

‘Alright,’ Harry says, voice turning sullen. ‘Do you know how debt works?’

‘Of course…’

‘My Da has me man the fishing nets. When he’s not throwing me out on my ear, that is. Next time I’m in charge of the fishing, I’ll bring you part of the catch.’

‘And how do I know you’ll actually do it?’

‘You’ll just have to trust me.’ Harry echoes her earlier words. ‘I trusted you, didn’t I?’

‘What are you going to do if Hook catches you stealing fish for me?’ Uma asks. ‘You’ll just get in trouble again, and then you’ll be asking to hide here again.’

‘Yes, I know once you’re in debt you don’t get out of it,’ Harry snaps. ‘That’s what makes it a good deal for you. Now let me in.’

Uma lets him in.

The dining room feels lonely and haunted without its crowd of patrons. Harry heads immediately for the fire, which is mostly burning fish bones, but which is at least warm. It’s worth them having a fire going all the time because they make their living selling food. Uma knows not everybody on the Isle has as much. And with her mother spending more and more time brooding and less time fishing, maybe soon they won’t have a fire any more either.

Harry looks down warily at his feet. He’s heard the water sloshing under the floor boards. The shop’s right on the shore, half of it built out over the water, so that Ursula can open up the trapdoor in the kitchen and cook submerged up to her waist, and swim under the dining room to eavesdrop on the customers. She says that if you dive down far enough, you can’t feel the barrier itching your magic any more. It’s all just ocean down there, though you still can’t swim out. Uma wouldn’t know either way.

And speak of the devil, a pair of black tentacles appear through the kitchen doorway, questing about as if with a mind of their own before they haul her mother after them.

‘Who’s this little one then, daughter dear?’ she asks. She sounds like she’s eyeing a particularly juicy shrimp.

‘We’re negotiating the price of fish,’ Uma says. Her heart is pounding.

‘Hmm,’ Ursula says, and then lets it go. ‘That’s good.’

They need fish to run the shop, after all. Ursula decides Harry’s more use as bait than catch, and returns to her wallow under the kitchen floor.

‘You can sleep on the hearth,’ Uma tells Harry brusquely. ‘And there’s nothing worth stealing, so don’t bother looking.’

When she comes downstairs in the cold grey light of the next morning, Harry’s gone. He comes back three days later with the promised fish.

Uma is eight years old when Harry and she make their first permanent deal.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ she tells him, gutting his latest catch of fish. ‘Let’s make this a regular thing. You can come get a hot meal here whenever you like, as long as you bring me fish and potatoes, oh, let’s say twice a week.’

‘Y’know I have to steal the potatoes, right?’ Harry says. He sprawls on a footstool and watches her work. 'And people try to steal the fish off me. Why should I go to all that trouble just for a meal?’

Because you’d trade anything to eat somewhere that isn’t your father’s ship, Uma thinks, but she knows that if she says it he’ll get angry, so she bites her tongue and thinks of an offer he’ll actually accept.

There’s only one way to get close to safe when you’re a villain kid. Stay on your parents’ patch, and hope your parents are dangerous enough to scare your enemies off it. And that doesn’t keep you safe from the parents themselves. Something Uma knows Harry knows all too well.

But if your parent has a territory, and they’re allied with someone else who has a different territory, suddenly you’re twice as safe. You can come and go between two places without worrying. The only problem is that villains don’t usually manage to sustain that kind of alliance for long.

She doesn’t know how long she can sustain this alliance, and anyway the Chip Shop is her mother’s territory, not hers, but…

‘Tell you what,’ she says aloud, ‘as long as you bring me ingredients, you can eat here whenever, and if anybody comes after you, I’ll tell them you’re under my mother’s protection. Nobody’ll be able to get you for anything while you’re on her patch.’

Harry’s eyes gleam thoughtfully. ‘Will she uphold that?’ he asks. He looks hopeful. He knows what it’s worth to be able to walk unmolested down a whole new street.

‘I doubt anybody’s going to dare ask,’ Uma says.

Her stomach squirms as she says that, because she knows that her mother hasn’t been seen outside the kitchen in days, hasn’t been in a skirmish in weeks, and there’s only so long a villain can go on trading on their reputation before they have to back it up.

Uma squares her shoulders. If her mother won’t defend their territory, then she will. In the meantime, Harry’s nodding agreement to her promise. He’s not as good at bargains as she is.

They shake. He brings her fish and potatoes twice a week, and he eats in the Chip Shop more often than not.

Uma is thirteen years old when she makes good on her promise.

She’s in the kitchen at the Chip Shop, dishing up an order of fried clams, when a frantic tapping sounds on the window frame. Uma hauls the window open and Harry scrambles through without a word of greeting, wriggling head-first into the room and nearly braining himself on the counter edge before Uma grabs him and helps break his fall.

‘Harry – ?’ she demands.

‘Gaston!’ he whispers. He’s wild-eyed with fear.

Of all the villains on the Isle, Gaston is one of the worst towards kids. He doesn’t think it’s beneath his dignity to chase them. He’s vicious when he’s been slighted. And he starts fights without giving thought to the danger.

But Uma doesn’t hesitate. She promised.

‘Hide here,’ she says.

‘Uma, he saw me head this way!’ The confession spills out of him like he can’t help it.

‘No matter.’ Uma pulls him behind the counter. There’s a trapdoor set into the floor, and she hauls it open. Underneath the floor is black sea water. This is where Ursula wallows while she cooks and washes dishes – or at least it was, back when she bothered to come to work every day. Today, Uma’s thankful that running the shop has been dumped on her. Ursula would have handed Harry over to Gaston, and she’d have enjoyed it, too.

‘Get in!’ Uma gestures. Harry stares in alarm at the water. It slops and gurgles with the motion of waves somewhere further out to sea. ‘There’s a few inches of headroom,’ Uma adds. ‘Float on your back. I’ll cover for you. Get in; go!’

She takes Harry by the shoulders and urges him down into the water. He slides under with a shiver. She closes the trapdoor on his white face and picks up the dish of clams, sauntering out into the restaurant just as Gaston bursts through the front door.

‘Where’s Hook?’ he demands of the room in general. His eyes lock on to Uma. ‘You, wench! Where’s Hook?’

‘Can’t you see I’m serving a customer?’ Uma asks insolently, dropping the clams in front of the hag who ordered them. ‘Will that be everything, ma’am?’

The hag glowers at her, because every patron in the shop knows that Uma doesn’t give a damn about customer service.

‘You there!’ Gaston turns to the nearest table. ‘Seen him?’

‘Hook?’ It’s one of the Stabbington brothers, Mother Gothel’s old henchmen, who answers. ‘The Captain never eats here. Doesn’t trust sirens.’ He bites down on a chunk of fish.

Gaston breaths out hard through his nose. ‘I mean Hook Junior!’

‘Oh.’ The thug pauses to pick at his teeth. ‘No, ain’t seen him come through here today.’

‘What do you want with him, anyway?’ Madam Mim asks from another table.

‘The little rat stole from me!’ Gaston says. He stalks further into the shop, towards Uma, swishing back his coat to reveal a heavy hunting knife. ‘Alright, girlie, put down that rag and answer me properly. Where’s Hook?’

Uma tosses the rag aside and faces him. ‘Check your knife,’ she says.

Gaston halts. ‘Beg your pardon?’

‘Sign’s in plain English.’ Uma nods towards the bin full of swords. ‘Any weapon longer’n a hand, you check it before you come in.’

Gaston comes closer still. Uma squares up, plants her feet, gives him a flat, bored stare. Her heart is racing a mile a minute. She’s thirteen. She’s skinny. She’s almost nothing. But if she lets slide the rules in her shop, or if she grasses up one of her only allies, she’ll be less than nothing. All in all, it seems better to square up.

‘Wasn’t aware you were the proprietress,’ Gaston says. ‘Think it’s your place to give the orders?’

‘Well, it sure as fuck ain’t yours,’ Uma says.

‘Curse at me again – ’ Gaston says, putting his hand on his knife.

The Stabbington brothers grab him from behind, one shoulder each.

‘Hey!’ he shouts.

‘Here’s the thing, friend,’ one of them says quietly. ‘Chip Shop’s a place where a man can eat without getting cut up. That’s a state of affairs we’d like to continue.’

‘If the house rules don’t suit you, the door’s right there,’ his brother adds.

Gaston shakes himself loose and turns to face them. It takes everything Uma has not to take a step back out of the way, now that his attention is off her, but she forces herself to stand still, uncomfortably close. He and the brothers can move if they want; she won’t.

‘It seems to me,’ Gaston says, ‘that that’s the kind of rule that’s hard to enforce. Seeing as how anybody who obeys it has to be unarmed.’

The Stabbington brothers look at him. Then they look at each other. Then they look at the other patrons of the Chip Shop. Who, although they’re sitting scattered across a dozen different tables, are managing to give the impression of a solid wall, all glaring at Gaston.

‘Easy, boys!’ Gaston throws up his hands with a forced laugh. He steps away from the brothers, almost falls over Uma, and has to skip awkwardly sideways to avoid her. Uma folds her arms. ‘I was just asking the girl a question; no need to take offense.’ He lets his coat fall back over his dagger and clears his throat. ‘Uma? Seen Harry Hook?’

‘I’m not your pointer dog, Gaston,’ Uma says. ‘You want him, you keep track of him. Now, can I cook you something to go, or…?’ She looks pointedly at the door.

‘I’ve got my own dinner cooking.’ Gaston shuffles a half-step backwards towards the door. ‘If you do see him, you let me know, alright?’

‘Not your pointer dog,’ Uma repeats. Gaston’s jaw works furiously, but he doesn’t say anything. He throws one last raking glance around the shop, looking for Harry, or for a single helpful patron, then turns on his heel and stalks out the door.

‘Thug,’ the elder Stabbington mutters, turning back to his table. He picks up his fish and stabs a chunk.

‘You’re one to talk.’ His brother jogs his elbow.

Uma grabs a dish of winkles from the service hatch and saunters over to their table.

‘Appreciate your respect for the house rules, boys,’ she says, dropping the dish between them. The two men only grunt in response, but they’re rather warm grunts. Uma makes her way back through the connecting door to the kitchen, trying to move casually, as if she’s in no hurry at all. Then she drops to the floor, crawls behind the counter and hauls open the trapdoor.

Harry is floating on his back in the wallow, wide-eyed and white-faced.

‘Coast’s clear,’ she mutters, reaching in and grabbing his hand. It’s ice cold. ‘Alright, try not to splash the whole sea over my floor, will you?’

Water pours off him as he scrambles out of the hole. He’s soaked from his innermost layers to the crown of his head, and shivering.

‘G-Gaston gone?’ he manages.

‘Took a look round and left.’ Uma tugs at his too-big woollen jacket. ‘Come, on, get this off you…’

He wriggles out of the jacket, and she slings her own around him in its place. Then she shuffles him towards the cooking stove and wraps her arm around him.

‘W-w-w-what about your c-c-customers?’ he shivers.

‘Let ’em yell.’ Uma shrugs. ‘I can take five. What happened?’

‘Nicked something off of him.’ Harry finally manages a smile. He fumbles one numbed hand into his shirt and pulls out a battered leather case.

‘You stole from Gaston?’ Uma demands. ‘Harry, that man’s a mad dog. This had better be good.’

‘It is,’ Harry assures her. He unzips the case – that’s Auradonian make right there – and holds it up for her inspection.

It contains a variety of little jars and tubes. Medicine, she wonders, her heart leaping briefly, before she recognises one item that’s definitely a pencil. There’s a tube whose golden colour makes her wonder if it might be valuable, and a couple of jars of brightly-sparkling dust, and…

‘Are these cosmetics?’ she demands.

‘Yup!’ Harry grins his bright, crazy grin. ‘None of your soot-and-tallow.’

Uma gapes at him.

‘Can you believe somebody in Auradon threw out the whole thing?’ he continues. ‘Spoilt little – ’

‘What were you thinking?’ Uma shouts. She briefly wonders if she should keep her voice down, but decides it doesn’t matter. The whole restaurant can guess she was hiding Harry in here. And she’s angry.

‘I thought you’d like it!’ he says in surprise.

‘Is this worth getting knifed over?’ She smacks him in the chest. ‘Idiot!’

‘He didn’t even need it,’ Harry protests. ‘What’s he going to do with it? He only wanted it because it was intact.’

‘Oh yeah? Why don’t you go and tell him that; I’m sure he’ll see your side. If you come hiding here over something this stupid again, I’ll kick you to the curb.’

‘I thought you’d like it,’ Harry mutters again, crestfallen.

Uma struggles to collect herself. It won’t do to make him too upset.

‘I suppose you got away with it,’ she says cautiously.

‘Yeah.’ Harry brightens at once. ‘And you know what? This could be good. I got away with stealing it, and you got away with hiding me. That makes us look good. Power’s all about what people think.’

‘Not all power,’ Uma says. ‘A knife in the ribs certainly ain’t. But I take your point.’ She thinks about telling Harry how her patrons all but threw Gaston out, but she can’t bear to put it into words. It was just the once. She’s not going to count on it. ‘Let’s think about how we can use this stuff,’ she says instead. ‘You know what? I bet the Evil Queen would trade for some of it. You know she’s obsessed with her and her daughter looking beautiful. Or Lady Tremaine as well. Take them one jar each at first, show ’em it’s the good stuff and see who makes the better offer.’

‘Can I keep one piece at least?’ Harry wheedles.

‘You want to look like them shiny people on TV?’

‘Nah, I want to wear it better.’

‘Alright then.’ Uma nudges the case towards him. ‘Pick your poison.’

‘Yes!’ Harry pores over the contents of the case and finally selects the long, black pencil. ‘It’s plain, but I think it’s the most versatile, no? And for you…’ He plucks out a tube of something that shimmers metallic blue.

‘I don’t need to wear that shit,’ Uma snaps.

‘Aww, c’mon, don’t you want to be shiny?’ Harry coaxes. He opens the tube and dabs a little of the blue paste on the back of her hand, where it flashes so brightly against her skin that she can’t take her eyes off it. ‘Go on, wear it in front of Gaston, I dare you.’

‘Harry!’ She gives him a shove, but she can’t help but laugh.

‘Come on, put this on me,’ he says, holding the black pencil towards her.

‘Dry your face first, or it won’t stick,’ Uma says.

They go out with their faces daubed in black and bright blue, and Gaston doesn’t say anything. And people always check their weapons when they come and eat in the Chip Shop.

Uma is fifteen years old, and she’s sponging blood off Harry’s back.

‘Uma!’ Ursula shouts from downstairs. ‘Get that wharf rat out of here! Sharks smell a dying fish! Get him out!’

Uma props a chair underneath the door handle for a barricade, just in case her mother can be bothered to slither up the stairs, and ignores the shouting. Harry’s back is a mess. She’s seen people get flogged before, and it’s been nicked skin, drops of blood. Nothing like this. She mops at him with a wet cloth, trying to clear away enough blood to see what the damage actually is, but every bit of fabric she’s got is already sodden and bloodied, the bowl of hot water is turning red, Harry’s in pain and she doesn’t know what to do.

‘What was it even about?’ she asks in bewilderment.

‘I don’t fucking know,’ Harry groans. ‘Christ, she’s right, I shouldn’t be here – ’

He tries to rise, to get up off the mess of blankets that she calls a bed. He’s been crying, and he looks like he’s about to be crying again, and all villain kids hate to cry; Harry looks like he wants to hit someone to show that he’s not crying, but he can’t swing his arms without jagging his back, and anyway the only person there is Uma, whom Harry hasn’t threatened to hit since they were seven years old.

Uma grabs him by the shoulders and shoves him back down onto the bed.

‘Harry, stay – ’

‘Get out, your mother doesn’t even want me here, I’ll just – ’

‘Stay!’ She shouts so harshly that he stops struggling. ‘Lie down. On your front. Don’t touch it till the bleeding stops. I think we’ve got a bottle of the strong stuff somewhere. You can drink it for the pain or put it on the cuts; whichever.’

‘You’re not wasting your hooch – ’

‘Damned right I’m not!’

‘ – on me! My own Da knows all I’m good for is – ’

‘That’s what all our parents think!’ Uma’s found the bottle of strong alcohol rolled up in a jacket in the corner. She’s taken to keeping everything valuable well out of reach of her mother’s tentacles. She turns back to Harry, who’s got his face hidden in her pillow. The light of their one candle glints wetly off his back and makes her stomach turn.

‘Your mum doesn’t,’ Harry says thickly. ‘When’s the last time your mum beat you half to death?’

‘The only reason she hasn’t yet is because she can’t be bothered,’ Uma says. ‘We’re neither of us good for anything, so we might as well take what we can steal. Now shut up.’

She fills a beaker with the hooch and makes him half-sit up to drink it, and while he’s still grimacing at the burn she wets the last clean bit of cloth in her room and applies it to his lacerated back.

‘Jesus fucking Christ in a crow’s nest!’ he groans.

‘Curse me all you want; you’re still not getting sepsis on my watch.’

Harry grinds his teeth till they creak. His eyes are full of tears. Uma ignores them and tries to make it better the only way she knows how; by disinfecting every cut until the harsh smell of alcohol overwhelms the stink of blood in the little room.

‘You’re not good for nothing.’ Harry, quiet with exhaustion now, mumbles the words into the pillow, so softly that Uma can hardly hear him.

‘Well, thanks,’ she says, tucking the covers over his legs while leaving his back bare.

‘You shouldn’t waste your effort on me – ’

‘Shut up. We do this for each other. We have a deal, remember?’

Harry rolls his head to the side, glances at her through his lashes. ‘Why you still keeping the deal when it’s this one-sided?’

‘Because I’m not a two-year-old and I know that sometimes you have to wait for things to pay off.’

‘Don’t know when I’m ever going to pay this off. You just want to own me.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe I do,’ Uma says loudly, ‘and if you weren’t still sore about getting licked maybe you wouldn’t mind either. We’ve all got to get along somehow. If you can’t get along without my help, shut up and take my help.’

Harry goes quiet. His eyelids flutter almost shut, just a sliver of white showing under their dark lashes. Uma hopes that he’s drunk and exhausted enough to get some sleep despite the pain. She takes a swig from the bottle herself, grimacing at the burn, and then again at the thin sloshing sound it makes. Almost empty. Add scaring up some more to the never-ending list of things she’s got to do. There’s never enough of anything on this island, apart from cold salt water to soak bloodstains in.

She sits close against Harry and plants her hand on his other side, leaning over him, looking down at him. A broken excuse for a side-kick that she’s trying to keep in working order, just like her broken excuse for a first-aid kit and her broken excuse for a bed and her broken excuse for a home. All this effort and they’ll never amass anything worth having, here on this Isle where they’re imprisoned from the moment they’re born.

A broken excuse for a sidekick. The other angry thoughts come naturally, but that one doesn’t. She has to think it through as a complete sentence in her head, on purpose, and even then it won’t stick. She tries to work up a stab of anger, but her feelings stay soft and heavy, as if her heart were a weight in her chest.

She doesn’t want to think about it. She’s decided to help him, so she’ll focus on that, and never mind why. She undoes her jacket and lies down on her back, working her arm and shoulder under Harry’s body.

‘What you doing?’ he mumbles.

‘Keeping you warm without touching your back,’ she replies.

He grumbles and pulls himself properly onto her chest, burrowing his head under her chin. She tugs her jacket up around his sides.

 ‘Uma!’ Ursula shrieks again. ‘Is that boy gone?’

‘To sleep, maybe.’ Harry giggles very faintly into her neck. ‘Your ma is loud.’

Uma glances at the barricaded door. Probably her mother will be content just to yell. Probably.

‘You know what we need, Harry?’ she says. ‘We need a lair of our own. Somewhere to sleep safe without our parents taking a swipe at us.’

‘You dream big, Uma,’ Harry mumbles. ‘Now, where are we going to get one of those?

When Hook announces his contest – a race to win the Lost Revenge – that’s what Uma sees. A lair of their own, even if it is taking on water. What Harry sees is proof that Hook rates him at less than nothing, if he’d rather hand his inheritance off to a stranger. He says he’s not going to compete for what ought to be his. Uma says she’ll throw his hook in the ocean if he doesn’t.

And then of course, they win.

Any doubts they’d had about the value of the prize are quashed by the number of volunteers they get to help crew it. Uma has to make a lot of tough decisions, picking out enough likely-looking kids to make a decent gang, while rejecting anybody who looks like they’ll try to take over straight away. Gil, strong but pliant, is a particularly welcome recruit. She tells all her chosen volunteers to bring some kind of victuals to the ship’s christening, as a show of good faith. She’s determined that they’re all going to be breaking bread as crew, not serving their families first and using the ship as a refuge of last resort.

Before she’ll let any sort of celebration take place, she parcels out the jobs that are going to start straight away from tomorrow to fix up the decrepit old vessel. Maybe she’s never going to set sail, but at least they can make sure she doesn’t sink to the bottom of the harbour at the first storm, or let in every gust of wind. Then she lets Harry smear every crew member with their blue eye shadow as a sign of belonging, and they crack open the whole keg of beer that Gil rolled over from Gaston’s house.

When Gaston comes roaring that his son’s a thief, they kick away the gangplank and ignore him. They dance until the deck creaks, a ragged band who barely trust each other, but Uma’s got Harry beside her and water between herself and all their parents, and she feels as safe as anybody can. Any safer and she’d be bored. Frollo comes slithering out of his bolthole to complain that their sinful carousing is so loud he can’t think, but he has to shout across the water and they pretend not to hear. Hook arrives to give his son some advice on running his own ship, but Harry can’t come to the rail to talk to him because he’s busy playing a hornpipe on his accordion for the crew to dance to. They keep the same dance up for what feels like an hour, until Hook gives up and goes away. They’re so giddy with rebellion that any mistrust is temporarily forgotten. Maybe the ship’s never going to set sail, but at least they’re out from under their parents’ roofs. Right now, it almost feels like enough.

The belly of the ship is too full of slime and wet to contemplate, so they spread out their blankets on the chilly deck.

‘Harry,’ Uma says quietly as they settle down side by side, ‘you wouldn’t be thinking about trying to become captain of this vessel, would you?’

‘You questioning my honour, Captain?’ Harry asks. Uma likes the way that word sounds in his mouth. He says it like he likes it too.

‘I question everything,’ she replies.

‘Why would I have people say, “there goes Captain Harry Hook, mutineer,”’ Harry says, ‘when I could have them say, “there goes Harry Hook, most dread first mate in this Isle’s short history,” with nothing after it? Besides, this way I just get to dish out violence and you have to handle all the hard decisions.’

‘So what you’re saying is, I get to make all the decisions and you’ll handle the violence?’

‘Yes I will.’ Harry flourishes his hook at her and she only flinches a little. Then he sets it down by his head, rolls himself in blankets and falls asleep.

Uma thinks about setting him on her enemies – on whoever she decides – and it makes her heart feel hot and heavy instead of soft. Tomorrow they’ll let the whole Isle know that they’re not just playing at being pirates.

Beside Harry Hook, afloat on a lair of her own, she sleeps more soundly than she has in years. 

Uma is sixteen years old, and she’s hungry all the time.

She’s becoming a woman. Her bones grind and itch, trying to grow, but they’ve got nothing to work with. She stays small. Harry and Gil overtop her – they overtop her by a lot – but neither of them reach their fathers’ heights either. Harry shoots up the furthest, and looks like a gust of wind would blow him away. They go scrounging around their parents like alley cats; they loiter in the street and try to steal from the pie-seller; they drink hot water and pretend to feel full.

‘We’ve got to do something about food,’ Uma tells her crew, as they sit in one of the cabins they’ve cleaned out and try to make a plan.

‘I’m sure nobody’s disputing that, Captain,’ Bonny says, ‘but what?’

‘When our parents were carving up this island, my mother laid claim to all the fishing. Said nobody could do it without her permission. But she hasn’t enforced it in years. Maybe it’s time to pick it up again.’

‘A monopoly,’ Harry says, sitting on her right side.

There’s a moment of silence.

‘A what?’ Uma prompts him.

‘It’s a merchant thing,’ Harry explains. ‘Only one person’s allowed to trade and sell some type of thing, and so they control the asking price.’

‘Alright,’ Jonas says, ‘but even if we could get a – a monopoly on fish, how does it help us to stop everybody else from catching them? We can only catch so much.’

‘We don’t stop other people from catching them.’ Uma smiles. ‘We make them bring their catch to us. Anybody who wants fish will have to get it from us, so, like Harry says, we can trade whatever we want for it. Other kinds of food. Useful things.’

‘Fish is the only fresh food people can get around here,’ Gil says. ‘They’re not going to like us taking control of it.’

‘No they’re not,’ Uma agrees. ‘We’d best get ready for a fair few fights.’

As it turns out, it takes three months of fighting to make the Islanders accept that it’s less trouble to get their fish from the Chip Shop than to keep tussling with the crew. Uma hands out the rights to the best fishing spots, mostly to weedy kids who appreciate her protection and make no fuss about giving her first pick of their catch. She teaches them to fish in the best spots, at the best times, with the best hooks and baits, and the size of the total catch increases.

Soon every member of her crew is eating fish two times a week. Harry gets some colour back in his cheeks and a swagger in his step. Gil fills out so much that he can practically haul a barge of salvage ashore by himself. And Uma finally manages to put on some weight.

She puts it on mostly around her hips and on her chest, which had always been flat before. Her body even finds the energy to bleed every few months, which Uma thinks is a shocking waste. Looking at herself in her spotted old mirror late at night, she’s dissatisfied. She’s no longer a scrawny child, too small for the dangerous people to notice. She’s almost an adult, a fully-fledged villain, and soon other villains are going to start treating her that way. But at the same time, she’s never going to get big and burly like Harry and Gil. No matter how lethal she is with a sword, she’ll always have to prove it before people will fear her. She wishes she could be either a little child or a tall man, and not this dangerous in-between.

Very briefly, she wonders if anybody on the crew might find her new shape pretty. Then she squashes the thought. It’s only fairytale princesses who can get by on the looks nature gave them. If she wants to impress, she’s going to have to work at it.

She takes to training with her blade every night, hungry or no, and one day she takes a whole string of fish over to Curl up and Dye. Lady Tremaine spends the whole morning twisting her clouds of hair into dozens, hundreds of tiny braids, and when Uma looks in the mirror this time, the effect is well worth the expense. The braids flare out around her when she moves, like the display of a mimic octopus. They make her movements look bigger than they are. They swish.

‘Captain!’ Gil exclaims when she sets foot on deck that afternoon. ‘Your hair! Oh my gosh, they’re so swirly!’

‘Give us a twirl!’ Harry urges, and when she does the whole crew cheer. They don’t begrudge the expense. They want her to represent them well, because, Uma realises, she really is the leader now. She rests her hand on the hilt of her sword and stands tall, relishing her new adult stature, her new adult hair. But when Harry goes to brush his fingers admiringly through the braids, she smacks his hand away and tells him brusquely to get on with his work.

Harry complies, just like a proper seaman obeying his captain, but he glances sideways at her now and then. Or at least she thinks he does. She can’t tell. She tells herself to stop wondering. So the new hair went down well; no need to get vain over it.

And then Harry lifts up a big crate as if it’s light as a feather, and every single muscle in his arms stands out like he’s a diagram in a book of anatomy, and suddenly Uma’s not wondering whether he’s looking at her. She’s far too busy trying not to look at him.

Uma’s sixteen years old, and she’s hungry all the time.

Uma’s seventeen years old, and she’s lost count of the number of times Harry’s defended her flank in a fight. Their old alliance is paying dividends, that’s for sure. She doesn’t like needing his help, but she likes being able to trust that she has it. Even though trusting anything is stupid.

They spar together with swords daily, and Harry wins maybe three bouts out of five. He’s got the edge on her, Gil’s got the edge on them both, and Uma hates them for being so much stronger than her, but when they knock her down she takes it for granted that they’ll let her get back up again. She forgets to be afraid, even when she’s on the end of their swords. Stupid.

But then again, is it really stupid to trust them? Their parents’ wisdom says yes, but their parents’ wisdom is what landed them here in the first place. She decided long ago to ignore it. She’s just not sure what that looks like.

Maybe it looks like trusting her crew.

After all, the first thing that started her towards having a crew was when Harry decided to trust her, back when they were seven years old and she promised to split whatever she stole with him.

She and Harry are fencing on the quarter-deck of the Revenge, well positioned to see anything important going on on the main deck below them, or on the docks. Harry lunges at her, a far cry from the little boy who’d rushed at their enemies with a sword he could barely lift. Uma’s just a split-second too slow. He body-checks her, a wall of hard muscle, and she loses her footing and goes down on one knee, her sword swinging uselessly to the side.

‘Point,’ she concedes, and he backs off to let her rise.

‘Breather, Captain?’ he suggests. He’s panting, red leather coat swinging open. A prize won in a gang fight, that. She’d draped it round his shoulders herself. Hopefully he’ll remember who clothes him in good sturdy leather, and stay loyal. And even if it doesn’t in the end, she likes to see him striding down the docks in his eyeliner and coat tails, grinning like he owns the place. Or, well. Like he works for the woman who owns the place.

‘Not yet,’ she answers. ‘Gotta be the best.’

‘What for?’ Harry asks. ‘You’ve got me and Gil to win fights for you. You’ve just got to be the best at leading.’

That would make sense. Be a jack of all trades herself, command a master of each one. If she could trust them.

Harry’s still catching his breath. On impulse, Uma lunges at him again. He scrambles to react – he’s sharp as anything, he almost makes it – but she gets in under his guard, gets her blade poised under his chin.

‘Point,’ she says.

‘U-ma,’ Harry complains, but he doesn’t look worried that she won’t let him back up again.

‘Real enemies won’t give us warning,’ she says.

‘Right you are, Captain,’ he agrees.

She’s never insisted on that title, but he seems to say it every chance he gets.

He takes a step away from her blade, and she lets it waver and drop. Immediately he spins out of her strike zone – showy, coat flying – and gets his blade under her chin.

‘Point.’

‘Nicely done,’ she says. She doesn’t feel as worried as she ought to feel.

Harry steps away with a grin and wipes the sweat out of his eyes.

‘Harry,’ she asks, ‘does it make you nervous, being held at sword-point?’

He bounces his eyebrows at her. ‘Of course.’

‘Be serious, please,’ she says. He sobers.

‘No. After all, I’m used to you having the edge on me.’

‘You’re the better swordsman.’

‘But you’re better at bargains.’

‘True.’ She tosses her long blue braids. ‘I helped you out a few times and now you owe me your life.’

‘Loan shark,’ he teases. His eyes are always so sly and searching. They make her uncomfortable. It’s stupid to trust him. She doesn’t even think he does it on purpose.

‘I’ve been doing some thinking about the crew, Harry,’ she says, changing the subject, ‘and I’d like your opinion.’ One good thing about being Captain: when she feels awkward she can just start talking business.

‘Go on, then.’ He sheaths his sword. His eyes leave hers. She breathes.

‘Trust is a dirty word around here, but, well, you and I have counted on each other, haven’t we, and it’s got us this far. The more successful we get, though, the more I’m going to have to start delegating control. And when you give the wrong person a little bit of control, they decide to try and take over. People break into factions, and the whole thing collapses.’

‘So, you’re asking who on the crew you can trust with that little bit of control?’ Harry suggests. Uma winces. She’s been rambling.

‘I suppose I’m asking you about trust as a notion. Ought I to be trusting any of them, at all?’

Harry frowns thoughtfully. ‘You picked a good bunch. Some of them might try to take over if you led us wrong, but they wouldn’t do it for pride or spite. Take Bonny, for example. She knows which side her bread’s buttered. Now Gil or Mathilde, I’m pretty sure they’d follow wherever you led, right or no.’

Uma laughs. ‘True, but I wouldn’t delegate control of a patch to Mathilde, either.’

‘Right enough,’ Harry agrees. ‘Well, if there’s ever a job you really don’t trust the others on, you’ve always got me.’

Is it because she trusts him, Uma wonders, that she finds him so pretty to look at? Has trust quieted down her fear enough that she can hear her own attraction? Or would she find him attractive no matter how dangerous he was? She doesn’t like the idea of an emotion that could tempt her to throw caution to the winds, but it seems that her emotions don’t care whether she likes them or not.

‘You can get these stowed away for starters,’ she says, offering him her sword. He takes it together with his own and heads for the weapons chest they keep at the edge of the deck, while she leans on the ship’s rail, turning her unarmed back to him almost without thinking. She feels a glow of pleasure whenever a member of her crew smartly obeys her orders. She knows perfectly well that the pleasure she feels watching Harry obey is different.

But what should she do about it?

He’s your first mate, a lot of her elders would advise. You can order him to do whatever you like.

Well, they can keep their advice. Uma orders her crew around, it’s true, but she’s also careful to stay within the realm of orders they’ll accept. If she’s going to order Harry to her bed, she’d better find out how he feels about it first.

Besides, the thought of him only being there under sufferance? Or preferring to be somewhere else? It makes her want to die.

‘Harry,’ she says. She pitches her voice loud and deep, and it doesn’t tremble at all. ‘I’ve got one more thing to talk to you about.’

‘Aye, Captain?’ Harry says at once. He looks ready to jump to whatever she asks.

‘I’m not talking to you as your captain right now,’ she says. ‘Just…person to person, tell me what you think.’

‘Alright…’

I should have sat down for this, Uma thinks. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She folds her arms, which looks defensive, so she squares her shoulders to compensate. Now she looks like she’s giving orders again.

‘I – ’ Her mouth is dry. She swallows. ‘I’ve got a job I only trust you on. Not a job, that is. You don’t have to do it.’ The only way to stop herself from saying nonsense is to just come out with it. ‘I like the look of you, Harry,’ she says. ‘How about a kiss? And…a bit more after, if we both like it?’

Sometimes, at sunset, the sunlight glances in under the Isle’s covering of cloud and turns the ocean silver, right at the horizon. That’s the colour of Harry’s eyes as he stares at her. She can tell he’s surprised, so maybe she hasn’t been as hopelessly transparent as she’d feared.

Or maybe it’s just never occurred to him to see her that way at all.

Say something, she begs internally, somehow keeping her face smooth.

‘Am I the preferred option?’ he asks at last, ‘or just the safest one?’ His mouth smirks, but his eyes do something else.

There’s nothing safe about you, she thinks, and runs her mouth. ‘I think I’d have to have you whether you were on my crew or not. It’s just convenient that I don’t have to track you down and disarm you before I ask.’

‘You always disarm me,’ he says quietly.

‘Alright, very smooth. Is that a yes?’

‘It’s a yes.’

Sometimes broken is better. Broken edges can be weapons. He’s all jagged pieces, but she can’t see a single thing wrong with him. Sometimes she wonders why she drives her crew to such efforts for what’s hardly worth having; for control of a slum and a ship that’ll never set sail, but Harry…

He’s worth having. It can’t be safe to want anything this much.

She sits down heavily on the bench that runs round the edge of the deck, before her knees can betray her. She slaps the wooden seat beside her and says,

‘Well, come here then.’

He crosses to her at once, and Uma’s wariness increases. There’s all sorts of ways this can go wrong, starting with him taking liberties here and now and going right the way up to flouting her command. If he thinks she’s soft on him he might try it.

‘Stop,’ she says, holding up a hand as he sits beside her. He goes still instantly. ‘You only touch me how I say, when I say. Understood?’

‘Understood.’ He folds his hands away into his lap and looks at her expectantly, the laughter in his eyes banked almost to nothing.

This feels like her first time cracking open a crab. She’s got absolutely no idea where to start on him.

‘Had much practise at this, Harry?’ she asks.

He blinks.

‘Once or twice. I wouldn’t have if I’d known you – ’

‘Hush. I never told you who you could and couldn’t tumble with, did I?’ Uma reassures him, and feels a little better. She feels proprietary. He’s her first mate after all; she shouldn’t forget it.

‘What about you?’ Harry asks. She finds a way to put a positive spin on no.

‘Think I’d settle for just anyone?’ she asks. ‘I want you.’

Harry swallows visibly. He’s as nervous as I am, she realises.

To reassure him, she gives him an order.

‘So you’ve had some practise, have you? That’s good. Show me what you can do.’

And now she really has given him an open invitation. Uma tenses. She’ll like whatever happens next, as long as it’s with him. She’s pretty sure she’ll like it.

What Harry does is almost nothing. Watching her with those silver eyes, he leans in fractionally and tilts his head to the side, and now she can see where to start, how they might fit together.

She brings her hand round the back of his head, sliding her fingers through his hair to hold him still, and leans in.

‘Captain?’ Harry says.

Uma pauses. ‘Yeah?’

‘Remember that time when we were kids? And I lifted that make up case from Gaston?’

‘How could I not?’ Uma sighs. It feels silly to be holding him in readiness when he’s apparently got something to say, so she lets her hand fall out of his hair and land on his shoulder. She finds that she’s not impatient. She likes leaning close to him while she listens to him talk.

‘I stole it for you,’ Harry says. ‘It was a, ah, a present.’

‘You trying to tell me to freshen up my look?’

‘No! I – ’

‘I know,’ Uma relents. Harry’s flustered, trying to look away; it feels like the most natural thing in the world to wrap her hand soothingly around the back of his neck, and hold him in place until he settles. Their foreheads are almost touching.

‘Wanted to, um.’ Harry clears his throat. ‘It’s hard to give presents. Here.’

‘You’re a present,’ Uma says. Harry laughs that sharp-toothed, sultry laugh of his, but he can’t meet her eyes while he does it.

‘All yours, Captain,’ he says.

Uma likes the sound of that.

She kisses him, and for a moment it’s the opposite of how she expected. It doesn’t feel scary, but familiar. They used to touch all the time when they were kids, and then they both got so fierce, and he got so pretty and she got so shy, that they stopped. She’s missed this. She’s missed his face close to hers and his hair slipping through her fingers.

‘Uma,’ he says against her mouth. She takes his face in her hands and kisses him harder.

He breathes in, and his hands flex in his lap, but he doesn’t reach for her.

‘You going to touch me?’ she asks.

‘You said to only touch you how you told me.’

‘So I did.’ I didn’t mean literally, she doesn’t say. If he’s going to let her call this shot by shot, she’ll feel so much the safer. She laces her fingers with his and draws his arm around her waist. He squeezes her gently, then harder, and suddenly it doesn’t feel familiar at all any more. Uma wants. She wants, and it frightens her, because she knows that no matter what their parents say about controlling people through trickery and fear, she’ll never be able to make him be hers in the way she wants him to be. She can only kiss him and hope. But when she parts her lips against his, he says her name again.

‘Uma…’

‘Hold me tighter if you want,’ she says quietly.

‘Can I touch your face?’ he breathes. ‘Can I touch your hair?’

‘You can,’ she says. Part of her likes the idea of telling him that he can do whatever he wants, but another part of her likes him asking permission. Maybe later she can instruct him to do whatever he wants, have her safety and danger all at once. People don’t get to have their cake and eat it on the Isle, but somehow she’s having this.

Harry cups her cheek, brushes her braids behind her ear, cradles her face in his hands like he thinks she’s pretty. He’s gentle, and it makes her feel more urgent than if he’d been rough. Her body acts faster than her nervousness can follow, raising her up onto her knees so that she can press against him and lean over him, bringing her hands up to curl in his hair. She’s being much more forceful with him than he is with her, but apparently she’s doing something right, because when she licks at his mouth he shudders, full-body against her body.

‘Wanna see more of you,’ she murmurs, and he lets go of her and slips his red jacket off his shoulders, letting it slide in a heap on the bench behind him. Underneath he’s hardly wearing enough shirt to deserve the name. It’s a wonder she can ever think straight, working next to him.

‘You really just walk round like this, huh?’ she says. Harry grins.

‘Got to let the whole world know that you get the best of everything.’

‘So you think you’re the best, do you?’ she asks, sliding her hands boldly up his arms. It’s so much skin. Her stomach’s turning somersaults.

‘Will I do?’ he asks. He’s looking up at her as she kneels over him. Her right hand reaches the curve of his bicep. She wants him so much she can’t think of an answer. Surely he doesn’t need to tilt his head that far back, exposing the whole sleek plunge of his throat. His hair swings loose off the back of his head, inviting her hands. When she winds it through her fingers, his eyes flicker shut.

Pull, a voice in her head said. She does. Harry moans.

He moans, and his head falls right back, and she finds her mouth going to his neck. His skin is so soft against her lips. Her head is full of his warmth, of his scent. She burrows into the crook of his shoulder, and he raises his chin and lets her. And Uma supposes that she really must be wicked, because all that she wants now she’s got hold of him is to grab him, scratch him, pull his hair –

‘Bite me,’ he says in her ear. ‘Uma, bite – ’

She does. He cries out. They’re far from in private, and anybody could hear, but the thought fills Uma with fierce pleasure, not with worry. Let the whole Isle come running and see that he’s –

‘Yours, Uma, make me yours – yours – yours!’

She releases her teeth with a gasp. They sit back and stare at one another, becalmed for a moment. She looks at Harry’s neck, and sees a ruddy mark already blossoming where her teeth were a moment before.

There’s an uneasy twist in her chest. Suddenly she doesn’t want to hurt him so much after all.

‘Sorry,’ she says, putting her hand to the mark. ‘That’s gonna bruise…’

‘Fuck, Uma,’ Harry says. His eyes fall shut for a second. His weight leans into her hand.

‘Do you mind it?’ she asks. Harry blinks at her, shakes his head.

‘No.’

‘Good.’ There’s a new fear suddenly uncurling in her mind, the way the Isle always has new fears for its residents. Not the fear that he won’t want to be hers, but the fear that something else might take him away from her. Somehow, all the time she was scrounging up food or racing ships or mopping blood off his back, she’d only ever thought about the current crisis. She’d never imagined him gone.

‘Harry,’ she says. She moves her hand up from his bruise to loosely grip his throat. ‘What would you do if I gave you a treasure of mine to take care of?’

‘Um.’ He looks a little wrong-footed. Maybe his mind is still on kissing. ‘I suppose I would, well, treasure it.’

‘Right. And what do you think I’d say if you lost a treasure of mine?’

‘I don’t think that would be a matter of just saying, Captain.’

‘Correct.’ Uma squeezes lightly. ‘Well, if you want to be mine, you know what to do. You’re to look after yourself.’

‘I always do, Captain.’ His voice is casual, but she feels him swallow under her hand.

‘Liar,’ she says. ‘You’re reckless.’ She remembers that flogging again; him lying all bloodstained in her bed, talking about all I’m good for. ‘You’re – ’ She looks for a safe way to say it, a way that won’t offend him, or make her sound weak. ‘You’re valuable to me. So act like it.’

‘Aye, Captain,’ he says. There’s a brittle look to his face, as if he’s understood more than she’s said.

‘I don’t know how much good it’ll do, just telling you to be careful,’ she says, ‘but it’s something. I’d like to keep you.’

‘You would?’ Harry asks. She remembers that she’d said maybe more, if we both like it. Had he actually believed she wouldn’t like it?

‘D’you want to…kiss me more?’ he asks.

‘Come below,’ she says.

The cabins are all scrubbed out and clean now, and hers even has a bedframe. She grabs Harry by the wrists and pushes him backwards onto the blankets.

‘Is that alright?’ she asks, letting go as soon as she’s done it.

‘Yes…’

‘Tell me if I do anything you don’t like.’

‘I like everything you do.’

He sinks into the bed, loose-limbed, as if he’s just waiting for her to take control, so she grasps his wrists again and pulls his hands up above his head, repeating her first instruction.

‘Only touch me how I say, when I say.’

His face twists with pleasure. It’s the order he likes. Uma’s heart burns hot and heavy, and she bends down and kisses him, kisses his lips, kisses his neck, works his shirt all askew to get her mouth on his collarbone and chest. His hands open and close like sea anemones. She can feel how he wants to touch her. Their bodies are two singing strings of want.

It goes on for a long time, until she finally orders, ‘take hold of me.’ He twines his arms tight around her and she rolls and pulls him on top of her, revelling in his strength, his weight. And then they stop.

He’s breathless. His hair’s in chaos, sticking up every which way. He looks at her with longing. Uma can hardly find it in her to be afraid that he won’t let her up.

‘What do you think?’ he asks.

‘I’m pleased with you, sweet thing,’ she says. She’s more than pleased; she’s helpless. She’s forgotten to feel resentful of the Isle and its pointless scramble to achieve nothing. She feels like she’s stolen all the treasure in the world.

‘We’ll do this again, I think,’ she says.

‘Uma.’ He ducks his head, drops a kiss on her belly. ‘I can do more, if you want. I can make you feel good.’

She thinks she knows what he means. The nerves flare all down her back and thighs and between her legs with want.

‘Another time, maybe,’ she says softly. ‘You don’t sail into a hurricane on your first outing, after all.’

‘Aye, Captain,’ he says, and he lets her up.

She kneels face to face with him and wraps him in her arms. He hugs her back. She trusts him. Their bargain is knitted together with so many back-and-forth ties that it hardly feels like a bargain any more. The barrier can’t put a lid or a limit on everything she’s feeling.

‘Another time,’ she says in his ear, ‘but another time soon.’

Uma is seventeen years old, and she’s got a whole crew, and she’s not alone.