Sailing by Orion's Star by Katie Crabb

Author:Katie Crabb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kathleen Crabb
Published: 2022-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

Interlude VIII: The Naming of Robin Hood the Merciful

The Atlantic Ocean off the Coast of Massachusetts. February 1702.

Danso spots the English flag as soon as he looks through the spyglass, the cross of St. George stark against the white background.

“Asante says we’ll have them in three-quarters of an hour,” Abeni whispers in his ear as she comes up beside him. “They’re bulkier and we’ve got the weather gauge.”

“Is Flora safe in my cabin?” Danso asks, lowering his spyglass. He reaches instinctively for his cutlass, his eyes still trained on the ship in front of them. The Spica, no doubt named after one of the stars in the constellation Virgo. “And Jahni?”

“They both are,” Abeni answers, pressing Danso’s shoulder. “Robins and Collins are in there with them. Jahni argued a bit, said he was old enough to at least tend to some things if there’s a fight.”

Danso shakes his head, laughing a little. “We agreed on sixteen, so he has a year to go. If it were up to me it would be never, but I know that’s not fair.”

“Believe me,” Abeni says, “I know the feeling.”

Danso sat with Ebele on the deck of this very ship night after night as his mentor taught him about the stars, telling him about the legends behind them and the ones sailors were most fond of, the sky dark and infinite above them. In those days, he worried he had damned his nephew, his whole family, by getting caught stealing that fateful day, and that Jahni, the only one left, would never have a chance. But Jahni is here, now, learning about sailing and holding on to a new life.

When this ship was still a slaver, the captain pulled me out from the hold and had me work in the cabin as a personal servant, Ebele told Danso one such evening. I was never sure why. Perhaps because I was quiet, he thought me dumb. Perhaps he took it as a sign I wouldn’t rebel. What he didn’t know was that I listened as he talked with his sailing master, because I learned English when I was brought here as a boy with my mother. I learned about navigation without them ever realizing. And then I sparked the mutiny against them. The stars don’t just belong to men like them, Danso. They belong to us all.

Danso never looked at the stars when he was young in Barbados. He was always looking at the ground, at his work, at his empty plate—constantly weighed down by trying to survive one day to the next, especially when he had to leave his farming behind to work at the docks for more money. But things are different now.

Abeni fingers the dirk Robins taught her to use, and Danso almost laughs at the memory of once worrying how she might fare in a fight.

After Ebele passed on, they continued his work of going after slavers, but at the men’s urging they’ve started going after even larger merchant ships. Their

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