Read Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 26 for Free Online

caress that hand as she dangled out over the hull, her feet barely on the deck.
    She stared straight into the figurehead’s visage. A dainty smile. Rouged skin and tumbling yellow hair, barely marked by storm—it had been cared for, lovingly repaired and repainted over the years.
    “I remember ye,” the Ship purred. “Ye were one of those who didn’t respect beauty.”
    “Oh, I respect beauty,” Settle said, then spat into the Ship’s eye, “when I see it.”
    Settle’s spit was lost in the wind. The Ship’s flat eyes twinkled with reflections from the foam below. “Then look deep, for this is the last beauty ye’ll ever see. Ugly things are all ye’ll have to look at now.”
    “Not just ugly things,” Settle said.
    One hand released the edge of the staysail and reached into her shirt. Settle flicked the necklace over her head and held the pearls between her and the Ship.
    The Ship quivered, a spasm that almost made the Captain let her go. “What dickery is this?” the Captain whispered.
    The pearls caged the moment and allowed Settle to inspect it. The feelings of all three were transparent in their light.
    The ache of the Captain, who had travelled the globe for so long she had exhausted everything that could fire her heart—
    The weariness of the Ship, which had birthed her own monsters and treasure to chase because there were none left in a world she had exhausted so long before—
    “The final wedding gift,” the Ship sighed.
    “Aye,” Settle said, loudly enough for the whole crew, “but for my wedding to the sea.”
    Settle let the pearls drip through her fingers. The Ship’s groan of horror was so deep that the Captain lost her grip as well. Settle yelled as air and gravity separated her from the beautiful Captain. She floundered for a few seconds, then plunged downwards with the pearls, into the churn below. The Ship’s stem clipped her and she fell on through the water, her wits slipping, her only wish that if the great white things in the water came to her now, they would swallow her whole.
    But the cold was its own shock and Settle gagged for breath and kicked away from the drag of the Cruel Ship’s passing. The tow tossed her playfully and her lungs were swollen to bursting but she kept scissoring and pulling towards the air. A huge shadow flew across her—the Ship’s rudder to her port, and then nothing, only a cloud of bubbles and a clear direction to the surface.
    Settle gulped air and sea, coughed out both, took in air again, and again. When she looked up, she still wondered if the water was pulling her down again, so high was the Ship above her, the white speckle of the barnacled keel looming like a new night sky overhead. But Settle was not sinking—the Ship was rising.
    There was something special about the pearls. The ship had fashioned them to break the anchor lodging it to the world, but had needed them to be discovered, won through adventure, prised from danger. And now, as they touched the sea, mixing with the medium in which the ship had vested its hopes, a miraculous reaction occurred. The pearls were still falling slowly through the air, vanishing into smaller and smaller winks in the world. But they were ascending too, up into the constellations, expanding in larger and larger globes until they sparkled in the night sky. All were joined in a single silver loop, a bright band of marvel that led to new worlds, inside and outside of this one.
    The Captain held tight to the figurehead. “Where do ye want for yer honeymoon, my love, the foam or the void?” he cried out.
    And she answered, “The stars!” and the crew cheered in approval.
    The Ship snatched a wind hidden in the world. The sails blossomed out. The compass called out new directions. The Ship floated into the sky, tacking once before she pierced the low cloud floors. The band of pearls became a river and the Ship sped upwards, disappearing with a storm flash, another twinkle in the heavens.
    When the