Just Say My Name

“Now, make me proud,” Geoffrey, or Geoff as he preferred, grinned at me. He pointed to the pile of potatoes he expected me to peel with a knife in a buoyant boat. Not that it was the buoyancy that bothered me - I would rather be on a boat - excuse me, ship - that could float than on one that couldn’t. I shot him a pleading look, but he just kept grinning, so I was forced to step up to the potatoes and let them do their worst.

After fifteen minutes, I’d yelped and had to suck blood off my thumb twice and successfully - if clumsily - peeled four potatoes. Geoff, it seemed, was trying his hardest not to laugh as he took pity on me, wrapped my finger, and showed me that I could cut away from myself to peel it, rather than towards myself.

“You see, it’s not that hard,” he told me grinningly, showing me again. In the time it had taken me to peel half of a potato, Geoff had peeled a whole one, without hurting himself at all. “Just remember to cut away from yourself, got it?”

“Maybe,” I told him, taking the knife back and picking up another potato gingerly. Geoff turned around and continued mincing a few other vegetables and the five already peeled potatoes.

*

After an hour, I’d gotten the hang of peeling potatoes, and then I had to degrade whatever might have been left of my status to clean the kitchen. Geoff showed me the proper ways to wipe down his counters and clean his cooking utensils. We couldn’t exactly use very much water, on account that we were aboard a ship and needed the water in case we got shipwrecked or something or got lost at sea, so he used a pitcher of water that was heated for a while to clean everything with. A bit unorthodox…but in reality, isn’t that close to what the maids and cooks always used at home…? I decided it must be much the same, but was surprised to find myself not really feeling a pain of homesickness.

I liked this, I realized. I liked learning to do things for myself, seeing a bit of what was out there. Maybe I would learn more - I’d like to learn to cook for myself, if Geoff would teach me, and maybe even learn a bit of fencing, if Eli would consent to be my instructor. If I could show the rest of these thrice-blasted pirates that I wasn’t to be trifled with, I needn’t live aboard Sanctuary with such a fear.

“You’re doing good,” Geoff surprised me when he looked over my shoulder at how I’d progressed on cleaning the utensils. “You don’t have to be perfect, though. These louts don’t care if it’s perfectly clean, you know. Now, you might set aside the utensils you want to use and get them as clean as you want, but otherwise, don’t worry about getting them completely clean because that probably ain’t possible.”

I snorted, covering my mouth quickly and about to apologize for the unladylike action before once again realizing that I wasn’t at home and that there was no need for any manners of that sort. Some of these men really needed some manners, but that wasn’t likely to happen.
When half of the utensils and such were clean, Geoff pulled me away to reheat the water as he showed me how to slice the potatoes into chunks for the stew. Then he quickly did up the rest of the utensils as I clumsily cut up the potatoes and dropped them in the pot he’d designated for the stew.

I wasn’t going to be a master chef or anything of the sort, if my knew cut was anything to say about it, but I sucked the blood off and kept going without saying a word about it. I occasionally had to go back and suck a bit of blood away until finally it stopped bleeding. There was no need for another little bandage like the one on my other hand this time; I could suck it up.

“Yo, Geoff, what’s for eatin’?”

I jumped, hissing when the knife slipped and cut me again as the new pirate poked his head through the door. He had a week’s worth of hair on his face and was missing one of his bottom front teeth. He was one of the men who had that look about them - like a scoundrel, a man that women should be wary of. And oh, was I wary of him. I lifted my thumb to my mouth to stem the flow of blood.

“Nothing’s for eatin’, Jim, until dinnertime. Now off with ye!” Geoff waved his hand at him, finishing with scouring the pitcher in which he’d washed everything else in.

I snorted again and it caught the attention of the new pirate - Jim, as Geoff called him.

“Oi, princess, didja cut yerself? You know, the sharp end goes into the food and the other end is the one ye hold onto!” he laughed at me. I frowned and in a decisive motion I never would have used before, flung the knife in his general direction. It embedded itself, blade first, into the doorframe an inch from his hand.

“I know very well which end is which, thank you very much,” I retorted snidely, picking up another knife and adding, “and unless you want to be stuck with one, you’d better get your scurvy ass out of the galley!”

“Ye’re a crazy bitch, aren’t ye?!” he cried hoarsely, whipping his hand from the doorway and disappearing back into the rest of the ship.

“And you’re a bloody coward,” I grumbled as Geoff started laughing. “What are you laughing at?”

“You,” he said simply, using more proper language once more now that Jim was gone. “I didn’t think you had it in you! I thought you were throwing the knife at him, to be honest, and I thought you were going to kill him, and then where would we be?”

“We’d be one pirate down and I suppose I’d have to do more to make up for the extra hands we’d lost,” I shrugged. “What else was I supposed to do? He had the audacity to say that I didn’t know which end of the knife was which! Granted he was teasing, but I frankly don’t give a damn about that.”

“You surprise me,” Geoff shook his head, retrieving the knife from the wood and wiping it off. “Let’s just get back to work.