CW: Talk of gender norms, death, and suicidal ideations
Cover Photo by Benjamin Elliott on Unsplash
Before
I can still recall the taste of salt water on my face. Bitter and hot as it leaked from my eyes, so different from the sea spray I preferred to catch as the wind ripped over the ramparts.
At sixteen years old, the daughter of an English noble, there were expectations of me. I was to be kind and quiet, keep my errant thoughts to myself, and to stay inside unless otherwise accompanied by my father or my husband. The latter of which I had just been introduced.
None of this fit what I wanted out of life. I dreamed of the open sea, foreign lands, and eye-opening adventures. What did I have to give to a man that he did not already have for himself?
Children?
He’d have those whether he was married or not. I knew this – so did the world – and yet it was still expected that I should comply. To set aside my dreams as easily as I could set aside my embroidery.
And what could he possibly give to me that I would be so desperate to concede?
A home? A title? Food on the table and gold in the coffers?
I wanted none of that, so why!
I stood in the biting wind, it ripped at my skirts, tangling them around my legs as the crashing sea in the distance swallowed up my sanity. There was a voice in the distance, calling out to me by name, imploring me to come inside.
“Lady Davina, please let me take you back inside. Your father is furious. Your mother is upset. Your betrothed–”
I let the sea carry that away too as I watched the sun slowly sink into its watery depths.
People who live in castles by the sea know of its corrosive power. With every passing year, it chips away at the cliffs, or the salt air peels back the stone walls. I’ve come to believe my life was like those walls. Every year my longing took part of me away. Oh, I hoped and prayed to whoever was listening that it would.
Closing my eyes, I gripped the stone in front of me. My hands turned white with the effort as I flung this last hope into the world.
Please free me from this place. Let me know true freedom from my station and the confines of my gender…
Another plea from my guard as they inched closer. I turned to look at them and noted the sense of unease in their eyes. Their gaze kept flicking between me and the edge of the rampart as if I might fall off. I looked then too, and laughed. There was nearly four feet of wall to climb over if I was to fall, I’d have to be trying very hard…
Then it hit me, the only way I would be free of my station and birthright: I had to die.
The guard made it to my side, extending their hand to steady me. I refused it.
“I can walk on my own.”
“Of course, my lady. I only thought you might have been frightened by the storm setting in.”
I wanted to scoff at them, to scream that the only thing I was frightened of was a future in these halls. Instead, I sighed, gathered myself with the wind teasing my hair free of its bands, and walked back towards the stairs to inside.
I had to die, but I did not have a death wish.
The Captain’s Log is a fictitious epistolary retelling of the myth of Davy Jones and their infamous Locker. A new chapter will be released each week.