The Morrigan rocked back until her sailors scrambled for footholds and rigging, clinging to the rain-slicked deck which was rising into a slope, threatening to toss any unsecured seaman into the sea.  The groan of the main mast became a crackle and then a splinter, and, though the sheets were drawn, the whole timber came crashing down, its crossbar lodging into the quarterdeck just feet away from Lor.  He shielded his eyes from the slivers of wood which shot out from the impact.
    “The witch!” Lor shouted. “Where’s the witch?  Get that cursed woman up here!”
    The command could barely be heard over the squall, but those who did hear it shouted “Witch!” down from the quarterdeck and from there down to the forecastle, then to the gun deck where the lamps were extinguished and debris tossed about.  A cannon snapped off its yoke, and men dove out of its way as it careened across the floor and barreled straight through the far wall, dropping into the sea, taking with it an unfortunate sailor.  The seamen scrambled to throw a tarpaulin over the hole out of which poured rain and wind, but it was wrenched from their hands and cast into the storm.  A sailor pounded on the door of the witch’s cabin and shook the handle shouting “Witch!” but it held unnaturally tight and glimmered with some wicked magic—a spell meant to keep sailors out.
    “Witch!”
    The door came unlatched and sprung open and inside the sailor saw the witch’s evil scowl and darkly glowing eyes underneath her hood.  She was wrapped in an infinitely black robe which flowed from her shoulders to the ground like a waterfall of inky blackness.  Its shape was so dark that the sailor could barely make out the folds in the fabric, and her edges started to blend with the dimly lit cabin as he looked at her.  Behind her, neither the alchemical glasses nor the divination bones nor the summoning bells seemed disturbed by the storm, fixed in place by wizardry of some kind, as if the room weren’t connected to the boat at all.
    “Who comes banging at the witch’s door?” she hissed.
    “The Maelstrom is upon us—it rose suddenly and fiercely.  We need your power, or the whole ship may go under!”
    The sailor grabbed the witch’s hand, fearing more the storm than her wrath, and pulled her into the gun deck, where rain and wind forced themselves through the gap in the wall.  Her scowl faded into an earnest frown, and she grabbed her robe with her free hand and hitched it up, stumbling behind the sailor who, in his panic, pulled her arm until it hurt.  The witch began her spell by whispering its ancient words and twice was forced to start over, stumbling in the dark and tripping up the stairs—on the deck, the wind whipped her robe about and pulled down her hood.  Rain soaked her through until her unruly hair lay flat.  But soon, the spell began to take, and lightning crackled around her, flowing from her fingertips and wreathing her face in electric light.  The sailor pulled her along to the bowsprit, holding her firmly around her waist.  Electricity licked out at him, singeing his knuckles and snapping at his nose, but he steadied himself against the forestays and held as tightly as he could to the witch, who now was consumed entirely with the manifestation of her magic.
    Lightning sprung forth around her and curled and elongated into silver strands which writhed and then were plucked and stiffened into the skin of a barrier that expanded slowly first and then quickened until the entire ship lay within it, the threads lacing together into constellations, against which the torrent beat but could not penetrate.  Inside the bubble, all things ceased.  Lor could still hear the storm, but it seemed to be a hundred miles away then, drowned out even by droplets shedding from their perches—even by his own breath.  He pulled at the knot which tied him down to the deck, but it was swollen with water so he cut it loose.  The spots where the rope wrapped around him stung as he peeled it off.
    The Morrigan relaxed into the calm waters that settled below, and her crew collapsed in relief, panting and watching the witch as she held the spell, entranced in her communion with magic.
    “You can let her go,” Lor called down to the sailor still grasping the witch’s waist.
    “Aye, captain.”  The sailor carefully released her.
    “Leave the gawking to the seabirds, boys.  Get to work!  Toss any scrap wood overboard shorter than a foot.  Where’s the carpenter?  Get up!  Mr. Cooper—Mr. Cooper, how soon can we make land?  I don’t care if we have to push!”
    The sailors groaned, their respite cut short, but set about clearing the deck.  The captain scratched his beard and watched as the witch tugged at invisible strings, plucking and rearranging ley lines only those attuned to magic could see.  At the nape of her neck, when her arms raised and the fabric shifted, he caught glimpses of a glowing symbol that reminded him of those markings hammered into his sextant and compass, those tools by which he navigated the globe, and he thought quietly that his sailor’s knowledge was like magic, in a way.

Tobin walked by the witch’s cabin again which had been locked since the storm passed and she retired to its dim comfort.  On his mind was a fact that seemed obvious now that he had considered the possibility: that underneath the witch’s infinitely black robe was a thin, feminine body.  It wasn’t that before he thought she was formless, or gaseous, or cloven-hooved, or anything like that—only that he hadn’t given it any thought at all.  He knew that he should fear the witch—and to be sure, he feared her greatly still—but so too other sensations began to tickle at the edges of his merited unease.  And yet, when he held her, she felt delicate.  “How old is the witch?” he asked his fellow sailors, but no quorum could be achieved.  One said sixteen and another said fifty-five and the rest of them filled in the middle with aimless stabs based on little more than the scant glimpses they’d gotten of her hooded face.  Tobin himself couldn’t peg for certain her age or from where in the world she hailed from—whether it was Java or America or Argentina—the only thing he could say in honest terms is that he found her beautiful.
    “Toby,” a sailor called to Tobin from a corner of the gun deck, “come here.  Com here!  What do you make of this?”
    He held up a dull, purple stone with a symbol like an eye carved into it.
    “Must have fallen off the witch when I dragged her up top,” Tobin said. “You should bring it to the captain.  Or I’ll do it if you won’t.”
    “You’re a good kid, Toby,” the sailor laughed, “a fine boy!  But you know me, don’t you, Toby?  We’ve been sailing together for three years!  So I catch a lucky break and you want me to throw it away for the sake of the witch?  Toby, young man, let me educate you in the ways of the world.  When you come across something of value, you grab it and you hold onto it and you don’t let it go until somebody gives you what it’s worth in exchange.  This stone has powerful magic, I can feel it.  Maybe it turns water into wine.  What do you think about that?  I could make a fortune off of something like that.”
    “Or maybe it will turn you into a frog.”
    The sailor put a hand on Tobin’s shoulder and glanced around nervously.
    “I trust you, Toby, otherwise I wouldn’t have showed you.  Do you trust me?”
    “I suppose.”
    “Good lad.  Toby, I’ve got a business proposition for you.  I want you to go to the witch for me and find out as much as you can about this stone.  The word of the wise is that she has methods of compelling a body to give up its secrets—what they are I cannot say, but I know that I can’t rightfully waltz in there asking questions myself.  But you, Toby, if you go there and she asks you ‘do you have it?’ or ‘do you know where it is?’ then rightfully you can say ‘no ma’am’, can’t you?  And this ain’t no favor either, I want to cut you in on an eighth of whatever this thing buys us, right?  Just for asking a few questions is all.  Because I like you, Toby.  And I trust you.  You’ve got an innocent face.  Now I’m going to hide this somewhere nobody would find it, especially not you, and you won’t have nothing to worry about.  I won’t say any more so’s not to fill your mind with anything she can use against you.  I trust you, Toby.”
    He winked at Tobin and began to waddle off.
    “Wait!” Tobin shouted after him, “I don’t—I wouldn’t even know how to ask!”
    “Ah, you’ll figure it out.  You’re a good kid, Toby.  I trust you!”
    The sailor disappeared behind the bulwark.
    Tobin looked back over his shoulder to the witch’s cabin door which even in the dim light glimmered tantalizingly.  His curiosity gripped him.  He was curious as to what the purple stone was, what it did, and if it could indeed make him rich.  He was curious about the truth spell and the possibilities of magic, limitless as they seemed.  Chiefly, though it brought color to his cheeks, he was curious what the witch looked like under her robe.

Lor stood at the window of his cabin and watched the now-distant storm clouds disappear over the horizon.  At the table, Mr. Cooper hunched over a map and used a length of string to measure distances, muttering to himself about currents.  The hole in the ceiling of his cabin had been patched, but it leaked water into a bucket on the floor.
    “Mr. Cooper,” Lor said, “it breaks my heart to be this close.”
    “Close, and yet so far.  We can make Portsmouth in two weeks, but it’ll clear the coffers to get her fixed.  We won’t be able to pay the witch her compensation for this trip, let alone put down the upfront for another.”
    “Aye, the witch.  Thorn in my side.”
    “Her reclusiveness proved to be a fatal flaw after all.  Pity as her magic may be the strongest I’ve ever witnessed.  But they are a gamble, you know, witches.  You ask around to gauge their reputation and certainly you’re told they wield terrible magics of great power, but what of their work ethic?  Their punctuality?  When we make port I plan to devise a method of testing not only capability but reliability for the next one.  If we can secure funding, of course.”
    “Of course.  Of course.” Lor scratched his beard. “Mr. Cooper, I’ve developed a theory.”
    “A theory?  Do tell.”
    “I propose—and, of course, this is a mere hypothesis—less; a hunch, perhaps, a suspicion—but it occurs to me that magic, being a godless practice, ought to take on material qualities as opposed to the spiritual ones we might think of with the miracles of saints.”
    Mr. Cooper’s mouth hung open and he squinted his eyes.
    “I suppose,” he said.
    “Mr. Cooper, I believe that underneath her robe she’s hiding the source of her magic, and it’s something she’s got to hide because otherwise we’d see that it ain’t so complicated.  That we could have it and use it ourselves if we wanted to.”
    “I see, I see.  A totem.  Some artifact imbued with power.”
    “Not quite.  I”—Lor turned to Mr. Cooper who watched him carefully behind a pair of spectacles—“I’ve seen something on her neck.”
    “Her neck?”
    “Some symbol—a tattoo—which glowed as she were casting her magic.  It seemed as though it carried down her back.  Maybe even covers her whole body.”
    “A tattoo.”
    “Aye.”
    “I don’t see what good that does us.  If it were a totem we could steal it, but a tattoo?”
    Lor smiled and unsheathed a dull blade from his belt.  He twisted it and watched the room reflect through its cloudy metal.  Mr. Cooper winced.
    “I was a butcher’s apprentice when I was a lad,” Lor said. “Never thought it’d come in handy.”

The Morrigan turned northwards, beginning her trek back to port, limping without her main mast.  Lor sat in his cabin and sharpened his blade with a whetstone.  Sailors ran about under barked orders of the quartermaster and quickly the deck was cleared of debris—the spar where the main mast stood was now a stump upon which at night a fiddler danced and played for his crew.  And they clapped and sang along in equal proportions to the anger and fear and superstition that rippled among them, that could be seen in their tired yet watchful eyes, and their agitated dances mixed with alcohol into brawls and further mistrust among them.  The dance became a ritual by which their angst manifested, and when Lor looked on he saw evil forces at work among his men.  On the fifth day, the wind died.

Tobin walked by the witch’s cabin for the thousandth time, and once again his heart pounded, but its shimmering lock hadn’t faded.  He had mulled over what he would say to her when it did fade, but his inexperience in such matters—both matters of romance and of guile—left him feeling unsure as to how the witch would react.  Tobin wondered what kind of man the witch liked, if any at all.  Nobody dislikes a grateful man, he thought, although women already have a paranormal sense for when a man tries to ingratiate himself to her—no doubt a witch would have supernatural senses, well beyond those of average feminine instinct.  She’d know right away what he was trying and it would sour the entire thing.  But truthfully he was grateful.  Perhaps he ought to—
    The glimmer of the cabin door faded with a crackle.  Tobin froze.  The door slowly creaked open, pulled along by a magic thread.
    “Enter.”
    Rather than light filling the cabin, darkness poured out of it.
    “Enter!”
    A chill ran its course through his veins and snapped him out of his stupor.  He took heavy steps into the dim room and the door snapped shut behind him.  When his eyes adjusted, he saw the witch sitting in the center of a circle of ancient tomes.  Her hood was down and Tobin could see her face clearly—and she was beautiful.  She had green eyes and long lashes and her black hair curled a bit at the ends.  She seemed to Tobin at most a decade older than he, only a hint of lines under her eyes.
    “How do you do?” Tobin said.
    “We’ve stopped moving,” she said, “why?”
    “The wind.  The wind died.  And—by the way—I wanted to thank you——”
    “It is understood.  The witch shall be on deck soon.”
    “Good.  Very good.” Tobin coughed. “But, yes, I wanted to thank you.  The captain never seems to express his appreciation for what you do for us, but I want you to know that I appreciate it—we all do.  You’ve saved our lives on more than one occasion, but nobody ever thanks you so I wanted to thank you and make sure you know you’re liked here—by the crew, I mean—and if not liked, then at least appreciated.”
    Tobin’s nails dug into his palms.
    “And,” Tobin continued, “and anyway, since we appreciate you so much, I wanted to ask if maybe there’s anything you’ve lost recently.  I don’t know what kind of thing it would be, but I know this ship like nobody else and if you’ve lost something then I assure you I can find it.  I’m like a hound in that regard—in that regard only, you see.  In other regards I’m perhaps more like a kitten—not a kitten, but something grand and gentle—an orangutan?”
    Tobin’s eyes were fixed to the wall.  The witch hadn’t moved an inch in his periphery, but suddenly she stood and he raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if magically repelled by the sight of her, though certainly it was a biological response.  He noticed, out of the corner of his vision, that she reached up for a vial on a tall shelf.  She shook the vial, tore the cork off, and shoved it under Tobin’s nose.
    “Inhale!” the witch said.
    Tobin breathed in out of shock at her sudden proximity and the mixture’s vapor filled his nose.  He was petrified once again, though this time by magical means.  The witch gently pulled his chin down until their eyes met.  Her pupils were so large that her eyes looked nearly black.
    “Now, young man, you will answer the witch’s questions.”
    “Of course,” Tobin said, though it felt as though some other force was answering through him.
    “The eye—where is it?”
    “Foster, the bosun’s mate, has possession of it, though he has hidden it somewhere on the ship.  Where, I do not know.”
    “And what are his intentions?”
    “He intends to use it for personal gain.”
    The witch snorted.
    “Foolish seadog.  What has he shared with you?  What does he know about the eye’s purpose?”
    “Nothing.  He asked me to attempt to retrieve that information from you.”
    The witch broke out into a fit of snorting laughter.
    “The Bosun’s mate.  Delightful.  Does he know what curse forbidden magics bring?  Do you?”
    “I don’t know anything about that.”
    “Ah, who is the witch to deny the curious their peak into the unknown?  She will see to it that your pact with the Bosun’s mate is complete.  The eye, yes.  When joined with its pair,”—the witch pulled out an identical purple stone with a carved eye—“you may peer through the eyes of a dead man’s final moments.  Alone, however, it is worthless.  You need only invoke the name of a demon to use it.  Would you like to know the name?”
    “I would.”
    “Let’s be certain.  Think carefully, now.  Are you sure?”
    “I’m sure.”
    The witch leaned close until her breath felt warm against Tobin’s ear.
    “Adrammelech,” she said and once again she reeled back with snorting laughter.
      “Now, boy,” she continued, “the witch shall tell you another secret.  You would like to know, wouldn’t you?  You can’t resist the pull of secrets.”
    “I would like to know.”
    “Of course you would, curious boy.  Boy who cannot resist the wonders of magic.  The truth!  The truth is that arcane knowledge is too heavy for the soul.  You’re cursed as I am to forever walk this plane, neither hell nor heaven take ye.  Welcome to the court of the witch.  Was it worth it?  To give up your seat at the table just to sate your curiosity?  Was it worth it?”
    “It was worth it—it was worth it to look into your eyes.  If my soul is bound to this world, it means I never have to leave you.”
    The sailor and the witch were still for several minutes, shaking, and at some point the spell wore off, but Tobin did not budge, only paled and dug his nails deeper into his palm.  A knock came at the door.
    “Witch!  Open up!”

When Lor entered the witch’s cabin, she had her back turned to him and her hood up and struck a dark figure against the wall, flickering under lantern light.  He closed the door behind him.
    “The wind has died,” Lor said, “we’re dead in the water.  It’s time—prepare your ritual.  Now.”
    “Very well.  Leave and we shall make the preparations.”
    “No.  I will entertain no more games, witch.  Do not forget for one moment that I captain this ship and my word here is law.  When I say now, I mean now.  We’re heading back to port—the sooner you begin, the sooner we can be rid of one another.  Now!”
    “As you command, captain.”
    Still with her back to Lor, the witch began chanting and rose her arms, electricity again forming at her fingertips but this time subsumed into wisps of smoke.  The ship lurched as wind of unnatural origin filled its sails.  Lor unsheathed the knife from his belt.
    “You won’t feel a thing, love.  Better than you deserve,” Lor said, now sure that the witch was firmly entranced in her spell-weaving.
    “’Tis almost a shame,” he continued, “it seems such an easy thing—pierce the Maelstrom, follow the wandering star, find the island, get the treasure.  And yet, once again we fail at the first step because you insist on locking yourself away.  It could have been a profitable relationship.  Doesn’t matter, anyway.  I’ll figure out how to get it done without you.  I don’t imagine you’ll be going to heaven, so I won’t spare a prayer at your expense.”
    Lor lined up his knife, staring down the blade, so it would strike right at the base of the witch’s skull.  Static bounced off the tip of the dagger.  The room pulsated in a blue glow which snapped from each strike of electricity and too seemed to come from the witch’s sleeves, her sigils now filling with light, coursing with magic.  Lor breathed in.
    “To hell with ye, then.”
    A length of wire wrapped around Lor’s neck.  He sputtered and dropped the knife and frantically grabbed at his throat, but the wire sank into his flesh and he couldn’t get his fingers underneath it.  He stomped his foot and grasped at the pant leg of his assailant.  Spittle flew from his mouth.  His eyes bulged.  He twisted and clawed and flailed.  Quicker than Tobin thought he would, Lor stopped moving.