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“What have we here?” Madi's voice was rich and musical with barely restrained laughter. “Is this how the dreaded pirate is defeated at last?”
Spread before her on the floor of his hut, looking for all the world as though he had just been tumbled over, John Silver was positively overrun by kittens. One little ball of ginger fluff batted at his curls. Two more tugged at a sleeve of his coat, while a fourth curled napping on his stomach.
Looking down at Silver in the midst of this strange scene, Madi realized that she had never before seen him happy.
She was all too familiar with his pain and defiance, the way they tangled darkly with the loss he felt defined him. And it had taken her no time at all to see past his shell of forced brightness, the brittle, cutting humor he used to cover over the rest.
More lately she had seen wonder in him, seen him filled with awe and heart-wrenching gratitude that anyone could still see how beautiful he was. She had taken him to her bed and seen him wracked with pleasure, nearly undone. But that was complicated.
This was simple. Silver beamed up at her from the floor, proud and abashed at once, and shrugged as if he were entirely helpless in this situation.
Madi knelt by his side. “You are full of surprises,” she said, laughing, and scooped up a timid black kitten who had been nosing around the edge of the scene. “Now tell me, John Silver, how did you come to have kittens?”
Silver gestured at a sleek grey and white cat lounging on a cushion, looking as at least as imperious as Madi herself ever managed. “Ask her,” he said. “Damn cat never would leave me alone.”
***
John Silver did not want to be a cook.
He did not want to be on a pirate ship, or at sea in the first place. He didn’t much want to be John Silver, come to that, though he supposed the name had a certain ring to it.
It was better than being dead, so Silver shrugged, smiled, and resolved to get on with it. Once the big man who had introduced himself as Billy left the galley, Silver looked around and tried to get his bearings. Randall watched him from the corner, determinedly peeling potatoes.
“Right. Hello,” Silver said to him. “So what the fuck do I do now?”
“Feed Betsy,” Randall said, as if it made sense.
“Pardon?”
“Feed. Betsy.” Randall glared at him.
Silver leapt back with a yelp as something soft and sinuous wound its way around his ankles.
Randall looked victorious. “Feed Betsy.”
A small gray and white cat looked up at him expectantly.
“All right, all right. I do that, and you show me what to do with potatoes?”
Randall grunted assent. Silver searched the space, eventually finding a bucket of sea water containing a number of fish that must have been caught earlier in the day. He picked one up gingerly by the tail, wrinkling his nose at the slime, and threw it at the cat.
From then on, whenever Silver was alone in the galley trying to scrounge together something he could call a meal, she appeared. She would jump up on the counter and nudge at his hands, or slink around his feet, threatening to trip him.
“Stupid cat,” he groused as he fed her scraps. “Perfectly good mice to eat. You could do the smart thing and avoid goddamn pirates altogether. They’re dangerous, you know. Is it really worth it?”
She looked at him like he was the one being ridiculous, and set about eating a chicken gizzard he should have put in the soup.
John Silver did not want a cat.
***
“Fucking demon,” Silver muttered. He tossed the cat a fish head. “They’re right about you. I’ve seen it the whole time.”
After the ship came loose from its stays during careening, costing Morley his life and Randall his leg, there were those who blamed Betsy for the accident. Men whispered that she had lured Randall under the ship on purpose, said she was a spirit in cat form and would bring them bad luck. Sailors were an absurdly superstitious lot.
They had wanted to leave her ashore that day. Silver didn’t argue, but when he thought no one was looking he tossed her into the launch he was loading with cooking supplies. “Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped at her. “If I left you here Randall would skin me with the potato knife.”
Silver felt a prickle at the back of his neck and turned to see Flint a little way up the beach, watching him and looking amused. Silver met his eyes and shrugged, defiant.
When Betsy “mysteriously” appeared back aboard the Walrus, the crew began to cast her dark looks, and made signs to ward off evil when they saw her dart across the deck. Silver took careful note of which men aimed kicks at her, and made sure to give Randall a hand in preparing their food.
“Look at us,” Silver sighed, putting a little dish of goat’s milk down in front of the cat. “A boatswain they think is an imbecile, a thief they think is a cook and a cat they think is a devil.” He scratched her ears. “This better be worth it.”
Silver only wished a demon cat were the root of his problems. Ever since he’d set foot on the Walrus his life had become increasingly complicated, his simple plan to claim a share of pirate treasure now hopelessly entwined with the intrigue surrounding Captain Flint.
Now, on top of everything else, Silver had to play nursemaid to fucking Randall. He had never been particularly comfortable with the sight of blood, and hated tending to the gruesome remnants of Randall’s leg, which seemed constantly on the verge of infection. It didn’t help that Randall was irritable and demanding, an all-around terrible patient.
“Don’t think I forgot you tried to sell me out,” Silver grumbled at him, as he carefully re-wound bandages. “Don’t know why I bother.”
A squeaky little meow came from under the hammock, where the cat had stationed herself.
“Yeah, you too. I’m busy, go make yourself useful.” Silver dangled a spare length of cloth in front of her, and watched her pounce on it. “See? That. Try that, but with a mouse.”
She didn’t leave.
Randall’s pain seemed to worsen after dark. Their first night back on the ship his piteous moans kept Silver awake; they were accompanied by plaintive meowing in an awful feline harmonization. At last Silver rose in frustration, picked Betsy up, and placed her gently on Randall’s chest. There she curled into a tight gray and white ball, rising and falling with his ragged breath. He quieted.
The night of the storm, the last night before Flint needed to decide on a final course in his hunt for the Urca, Silver moved restlessly about below decks. He pretended to do one odd job then another, unsettled by the tension on the ship. He felt Captain Flint’s unhinged energy reflected in the storm, and couldn't shake the sense that the frayed bonds which held the crew together were on the verge of snapping.
The cat huddled inside a crate in the back corner of the hold, where Silver had dropped some old sackcloth the previous week to make a sort of bed for her. Her ears were slightly flattened, tail tucked snug around her body. Silver came to sit by her, pulling his knees tight to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.
“You don’t like it either, do you?” he asked. “Well, it’s your own fault for living on a ship, isn't it? Nobody’s keeping you here.” He scratched her behind the ears. “Look. I’m about to go do something extraordinarily stupid, and it's going to make me either very rich or very dead. So if I don’t come back, you take care of Randall, you hear?”
The next day he was neither rich nor dead, and he was no closer to finding a way out of the tangled net of conflicting loyalties and unknown motivations which dragged him further in the harder he struggled.
***
“Where’s Betsy?” Randall asked, for what must have been the tenth time in an hour. Silver didn’t answer, because answering didn’t do any good.
They were below decks on a new ship, the Spanish warship Silver had almost died stealing, and what the fuck was his life becoming that anything was worth that kind of risk?
He’d immediately claimed the galley as his own space, tacitly assuming the same role he’d had on the Walrus; he’d also resumed caring for Randall, who had finally turned out to be useful in providing bits of gossip about members of the crew for Silver’s addresses.
Flint was with them now as well. It made Silver nervous to have the Captain—for he could never truly think of Flint as anything else, whatever pretensions Dufresne might have—down here in what Silver considered to be his part of the ship. But Flint mostly just sat and brooded. He was less trouble than the damned cat had been, really, though he was also worse company.
“Where’s. Betsy?” Randall was getting surlier as the night went on, and it was wearing on Silver’s nerves.
Several times already, Silver had found himself holding out scraps and clicking his tongue for the cat, forgetting that in his absence no one had retrieved her from the beached Walrus.
“She’s not here, Randall,” Silver finally snapped. “What do you want me to say? I fucking swam here, I couldn’t bring her, all right?” He was dipping fresh water into a bucket, and kept his eyes focused on the task. “They wanted to kill us, you know. I think it's understandable to have been a bit goddamn preoccupied. This is why you shouldn’t get attached." It sounded peevish, defensive, even to his own ears, but he really couldn't have done anything differently. "She was just a goddamn cat!” His voice cracked a bit on the last word, and he slammed down the bucket hard enough that water sloshed over the sides.
Flint looked up at Silver and raised an eyebrow. Silver glared and stalked away.
***
Silver dreaded returning to the Walrus after Charles Town. Boarding the ship as Quartermaster felt like accepting the terms of a sentence, resigning himself to the reality of his new life. But he was nothing if not practical, and he knew he had to familiarize himself with the difficulties he would face aboard the ship, learn how to navigate them before there was an audience present to witness his humiliation.
So, while most of the men were still ashore, enjoying the comforts of land while they could, Silver took the opportunity to explore. He descended haltingly into the familiar space below decks, still awkward with the boot on stairs; he didn’t know what urge drove him to begin here, where he no longer had any place, but as soon as he made his way into the dim galley he was struck by a wave of memory so strong it felt like vertigo. He sat heavily on a crate, reliving the first day he had come aboard. The day he’d had the stupid idea to steal the identity of a cook, and could it really have only been a bit over two months ago? All the things he hadn’t known then pressed down onto him, a leaden weight in his chest, and he dropped his head into his hands.
Something bumped against his leg, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He looked down to see Betsy staring up at him. She meowed her squeaky meow and pushed her head into his leg again.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Silver asked in disbelief, a smile spreading across his face. “You been here this whole time?” He rubbed her cheeks, and behind her ears, eliciting a pleased little purr. She looked sleek and healthy as ever. “Guess you didn’t need me spoiling you after all, huh?”
She looked at him and meowed again, questioning. Oh. Silver’s happiness drained away. “He isn’t here.” Randall had asked about Betsy until the day he died. “He—he’s dead. He didn’t want to leave you though.” Silver felt his throat tighten as he remembered finding Randall’s lifeless body. He kept stroking her back, needing to touch her to confirm she wasn’t a ghost. “We didn’t mean to leave you.”
Betsy sniffed at the boot and rubbed her cheek insistently against it. “I know, I know. But it’s mine now.” Silver said, his voice a hoarse, sorrowful whisper. He fought off a wave of despair. Forever, he would be broken like this forever, and it was a cruel irony that had he become a leader of men with the same stroke of an axe that had made him a cripple, useless anywhere but here, trapped in this identity he had created for himself.
Betsy jumped into his lap, interrupting his desolate musings. She’d never done that before, but Silver remembered how she’d used to climb onto Randall, comforting him when he was confused or in pain. Back when Silver had still thought this would be merely a strange episode in his life, fodder for future stories. I served on a pirate ship once, and won a great fortune. Why, there was a one legged man...
“Goddamn cat,” he choked out, pulling her close and burying his face in her soft coat. “Why didn’t you just leave?” Before he could stop himself he was shaking, sobbing helplessly into her fur until it was soaked with tears.
***
After they set sail, off to deliver retribution to those magistrates who would punish piracy, Silver didn’t see much of Betsy. She skulked low in the belly of the ship, where she’d learned to live in the pirates’ absence and where Silver rarely had cause to go. When he did see her she looked leaner, more feral, a slinking shadow rather than the hopeful, meowing nuisance he had once known. She would still accept a few strokes to her fur when their paths crossed, but they both had enough to contend with in those days just seeing to the business of survival.
Once they were becalmed, drifting aimlessly on a sea smooth as glass, she began to pay him visits. The first time she came, he thought she was the wind returned; he lay half in dreams and heard leaves rustling in a country on the other side of the sea, felt a cold, dry breeze on his face before opening his eyes to the oppressive blanket of the Caribbean night. The sound didn’t stop, and he opened his door to find Betsy scratching at the wood planks. He hadn’t realized she knew where he lived.
After that, she usually arrived an hour before dawn, nosed about Silver’s cabin, and then lay down next to him. She would stay curled in his bunk while he went to oversee the daytime watches, tried to keep some semblance of discipline and routine on the ship. She slipped out again after he returned, off to hunt in the dark. That routine only lasted until everyone was too lethargic to bother doing anything that wasn’t in direct service of obtaining food or water; then they all stayed still in the shade as much as they could, gnawed by hunger.
Betsy brought Silver back a rat once. It was a scrawny, starved rat, which was probably the only reason the scrawny, starved cat had been able to catch it. Silver skinned it and put it in the soup, along with eels and seaweed and a few last bits of potato, and brought his allotted cup of broth to the cabin to share with her. She needed it. Her soft, sleek fur had grown dull, and she looked pained as she dragged herself out into the nights, her former sinuous grace reduced to a slow, defeated gait.
One evening, as he lay on his side next to her, coaxing her to eat from a dish of thin porridge—it had been boiled with fish bones and scraps of leather, so perhaps it would do something for a cat; he didn’t know, but there wasn’t anything else to offer her—Flint entered without knocking.
Silver braced himself for another round of biting remarks about weakness and sentiment, perhaps even an outright command to stop feeding her. Part of him hoped this would be the thing to finally put them fully at odds; it would have felt good to fight over something so simple as his right to share food with the cat. Something that would confirm to him the extent of Flint’s inhumanity.
Instead Flint’s face softened into an expression Silver barely recognized on him, one of deep sorrow and something akin to reverence. Flint watched them in silence for far too long, then turned and left without a word.
After even the mice and rats were gone, Silver stopped letting Betsy out at all. He had no illusions about what any sane man would do if he found a cat.
“I’m just saving you for myself,” he told her, as she rested her head on his bare chest. She hadn’t eaten in days, but his water ration was almost enough for both of them. “Don’t think I’ll feel bad about it either. And if I go first, you better do the same.”
***
When the island appeared on the horizon it seemed a miracle, a fulfillment of the promise made by renewed wind. Many of the men were barely able to walk by that time, dehydration having taken a toll that could not be undone by shark meat, and even those of them who had fared best were weak and emaciated.
Silver brought Betsy ashore with him on the first launch to the beach, tucked inside his coat. She was so thin by then that he barely registered her weight curled against his chest, but he felt her heat; she was far too hot, and had been for days, her eyes glassy and her fur brittle and patchy. When he had a moment to himself he walked a few steps into the cool shade of the jungle that edged the beach and set her down in a patch of soft grass. She sank listlessly to the ground.
He placed water before her as soon as it had been fetched from the stream, a shell serving as a makeshift dish. He let drops fall from his fingers to wet her nose and mouth, trying to tempt her to it. She blinked, but didn’t raise her head. “You have to drink,” he told her. “There’ll be food soon. Fish, all the fish you can eat, and eggs.” He imagined it himself as he spoke, his stomach cramping with hunger. “And whatever you can catch, cause you’ll go hunt again.” He wanted to crouch down beside her, but doubted he would be able to pull himself back up from the jungle floor if he did, and he needed to tend to his men. “But you have to drink. Just a few more minutes, I’ll come back once there’s food, I promise I’ll come back.”
***
Silver didn’t come back.
It was the one promise he knew never to trust, the one thing no one could guarantee. What had possessed him to say it to the goddamn cat?
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if she had understood. She probably would have died anyway. It wasn’t his fault they’d been captured, there was nothing he could have done.
When, almost a week later, the pirates were finally allowed their freedom, Silver stayed on the beach for hours. He claimed to be overseeing the unloading of supplies, which of course as quartermaster was exactly his charge, except there wasn’t really much to unload. He kept glancing at the edge of the trees, toward the now-empty clearing where he’d seen her last.
He hadn’t really thought she’d be there. She’d been weak and starving in a jungle full of predators when he left, and as far as he knew she’d never fended for herself on land. He tried not to think of how confused she must have been. Whether she’d looked for him.
As afternoon drew toward evening and men departed for either the ship or the camp, Flint found Silver sitting at the top of the beach. “You coming back?” he asked.
“Soon.”
Flint sat beside him without a word. Their shoulders just barely touched. Silver shifted into that touch, and felt Flint do the same, so that they leaned against each other. It was a small, rare scrap of comfort, a habit they’d picked up in the cages. Eventually they spoke a little, of Flint’s plan to sail to Ocracoke, and of their uneasy alliance with the Maroons. As the sun set, they lapsed back into silence.
“I’m sorry,” Flint said at last, very quietly. Silver nodded. It was almost full dark, and he was glad of it; otherwise the tears shining in his eyes would have been all too obvious.
Flint stood and offered a hand, and Silver let himself be pulled up. He looked around one last time before setting off for the camp, hoping against hope to see the glint of feline eyes in the night.
***
At first, after the doldrums, Silver had been too sick and weak to take much notice of life on Maroon Island beyond what was necessary to get through each day. Afterward, he was swept up in the whirlwind of activity surrounding the cache and the preparations to begin Flint’s war in earnest. Though it was strange to be back on the Walrus without Betsy, Silver had endured enough loss in his life that the ache of it was familiar, something he knew how to manage. It was only in the predawn hours, when he was half asleep and his thoughts were unguarded, that he imagined he heard scratching at his door and was surprised to wake and find there was no small, furry body curled against him.
By the time the battle on Maroon Island was over, Silver began to adjust to life in the settlement, and he no longer thought about Betsy much.
The days had taken on a soothing rhythm; he woke early and met Flint on the cliffs, where he lost bout after bout but felt himself growing slowly stronger. While many of the Walrus men slept aboard the ship, Silver lived amongst the Maroons and was surprised to discover that, while at sea he found forced proximity and communal living suffocating, here there was a kind of peace to it.
He gradually let his guard down, as he realized he had nothing in particular to hide. When Madi made it clear that his interest in her was returned, it took him a long time to believe that he wasn’t somehow tricking her into wanting him, that she wasn’t coming to care for an illusion, though by that time he didn’t know what else he could have been. She was open and steady in her affection, and eventually he began to trust it.
Slowly, along with the rest of it, he began to sleep better. He’d never been able to rest easily, but between the physical exertion and the dark, still nights of the island, he found he slept soundly almost as often as not. So, when he sat bolt upright, wide awake and sensing danger without knowing why, it came as almost a surprise. He probed his memory. What had there been just a moment before?
...Scratching.
Oh. He still dreamed of the cat sometimes. That was all right. He made himself take a deep breath.
Eyes glinted by the door of his hut.
Silver did not believe in ghosts. Absolutely not ghosts of cats. But the mind could be strange, and the jungle at night even stranger, and he had seen eyes. He looked around again and saw nothing, but had a strong sense he was not alone. Silver certainly did not believe in God, or any holy offspring, and when he crossed himself he was at least aware that it was a foolish gesture.
A shadow leapt gracefully onto the foot of his bed, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
The shadow dropped something out of its mouth, and meowed.
“Jesus, Betsy?” Silver’s heart was still pounding as he felt around on the table beside his bed and struck a light. “What the fuck is that?”
A furry little mass wriggled on the bed. At first he thought it was another rat, a suspicion strengthened by the squeak it emitted. But as his eyes adjusted he saw that it was the wrong shape. Betsy looked at him proudly. A disbelieving smile spread across his face.
“You… had a baby?” He scooped her up in his arms, grateful to feel her back at a normal weight, and nuzzled his face into her fur. “You’re here. You had a baby!” He continued to say obvious things to her in a more and more excited tone until she interrupted his stupidity by squirming from his arms with an affronted meow. She dropped to the floor and walked out the door, head and tail held high.
“Hmpf. Fine then, goodbye to you too,” he muttered, still grinning, and turned his attention to the grey and white kitten on his bed, touching it gently with a forefinger. “Hello there,” he said. Its eyes weren’t yet open, but it turned toward the contact and mouthed his fingertip. It looked so fragile he was almost afraid to move.
Betsy jumped back onto the bed and deposited another kitten, this one a brindled orange.
“What, more? I should have known. Here I thought you had starved, and instead you were off having a grand adventure. And you bring the results to my doorstep, as if I’m not responsible for enough already.”
She continued her trips until five kittens were piled on the coverlet, then sprawled beside them, confidently claiming her place. They nosed toward her and began to nurse.
Silver rose from the bed carefully so as not to disturb the little family. The first light of dawn seeped through the windows, and the village would be starting to wake. He thought he had probably curried enough favor with some of Madi’s older aunts that they would spare him scraps from the morning cooking, and Betsy would need everything she could get to keep up her strength with so many kittens to feed.
“Fucking cats,” he said, scratching Betsy’s ears on the way out the door. “Now I’ll never have any peace.”
***
Madi hadn’t spent much time in Silver’s hut. When the nature of their association changed, it was generally he who went to her.
It was a pattern set by their first encounter. After weeks of cautiously paying her court, he’d received word one night that she wished to speak to him in her house. He’d entered to find her waiting, resplendent in the candlelight, wearing only a short robe of fine ivory silk. Without a word she had let it fall to the floor and, full of regal confidence, beckoned him forward. With a playful gleam in her eye, she asked him how he thought a pirate might best serve a princess. He had knelt before her eagerly.
There was something deeply appealing about being wanted that way, being at her beck and call, summoned to serve at her pleasure. It allowed him to quiet the voice in his mind that insisted he had no right to her, that she was another treasure he would steal and sully. She was clearly no one’s to be stolen; if anything it was she who laid claim to him, and he surrendered himself willingly.
But after she found Silver with the cats, Madi became a more frequent visitor to his hut. Although Silver lost none of his reverence for her, it was in those days that she began to feel like a real friend, a partner in crime even. She would return with him after the evening meal and sit on his floor amidst the kittens, feeding them choice morsels stolen from the table and rolling little beads across the floor for them to chase. Soon they viewed her as just another plaything, climbing over her enthusiastically and hiding themselves in her long skirts. Silver would lie on the bed, with Madi curled in his arms and Betsy resting contentedly alongside them, all three watching the kittens scrap and tumble. It was the closest thing to contentment he had ever known.
***
Flint had naturally assumed military command of the pirate resistance, a role which from time to time necessitated his absence from the island. Lately, he had started to look forward to returning. For long months following Charles Town, the ship had been his only home. Now, walking up the path to Silver’s house, he couldn’t help remembering how it felt to return to Miranda.
That wasn’t a thought that did either of them justice. Still, he longed to simply be in the presence of someone who knew him. Perhaps the last person in the world who did.
This time, as he approached, he heard voices. A woman’s laughter. His chest tightened painfully.
He’d never been a jealous man, and anyway, there was nothing here over which to feel jealousy. The fact that his loves were gone didn’t mean he would begrudge Silver a chance for the happiness he had lost, and as much as he felt drawn to bask in the glow of what was growing between Silver and Madi, he wouldn’t intrude.
He started to turn away, loneliness settling over him like a blanket of fog.
“Captain!” Flint looked back to see Madi calling out to him from the doorway. “You’ve returned!” She glanced behind her, presumably at Silver, and then an uncharacteristically impish smile spread across her face. “Please, come join us.”
He almost refused, but while his relationship with Madi and the Queen had been growing somewhat warmer of late, it was still tenuous. Her invitation seemed genuine, and he couldn’t risk rudeness.
Flint glanced at Silver when he entered, meaning to communicate apology for the interruption, but he was surprised to see that Silver—for some reason seated on the floor—was looking up at him with tentative hope. As if waiting for his approval.
He took in the rest of the scene. Silver had one kitten curled on his lap, and another chased a string tied with chicken feathers which he dangled before it. Sitting on the room’s one carved wooden chair, holding herself above it all—
“You found her?” Flint’s face split into a wide smile when he caught sight of the grey and white cat that had been Silver’s companion. Though they didn’t talk much about the things they had lost, and weren’t any good at it when they tried, they both knew intimately the landscapes of the other’s pain. It seemed a miracle that something lost could have returned. Flint felt a pang of unaccustomed joy.
Silver looked up at him, grinning back, his eyes sparkling like Flint hadn’t seen since their earliest acquaintance. “She found me, more like. I—”
From nowhere a kitten launched itself at Flint, climbing most of the way up his leg in a few determined leaps and clinging to him with ears flattened and tail twitching, an orange striped caricature of feline ferocity.
Flint started backward in surprise, glaring down at the little menace digging its claws into his thigh. “What the fuck?”
“We...” Silver glanced at Madi, and they both burst into helpless laughter. “We call that one Captain Flint,” Silver managed to get out between giggles, as Flint pried tiny paws off of his trousers one at a time.
Flint snorted, finally managing to detach the kitten and set it back on the bed. “Yes, you’re very funny,” he said gruffly, but couldn’t help laughing himself as he watched the disgruntled orange kitten, who looked to be preparing for another attack.
"Here, come," Madi said, and to his surprise caught his hand in hers and pulled him down to sit. She acted as though this was the most natural thing in the world. As though he sat between her and Silver on the floor every day. As though they touched easily, although they certainly never had. He followed her lead, settling himself against the bookcase.
“Anyway don’t worry,” Madi said, sinking down next to him. “Yours is not the only name being appropriated.” She picked up a sleek black kitten and held it out to him. “This cunning little fellow, who is too clever for his own good and always finds his way into mischief, I have named John Silver.”
Flint took the kitten gingerly, raising an eyebrow at Silver. “Is that so?”
Silver shrugged, a smile still quirking his lips. “They’re good names.”
It could have been a joke, but it felt more like a tacit acknowledgment. He knew that Silver wasn’t this man’s name, any more than Flint was his, but there wasn’t anything else they could have called the kittens that would have had meaning. He felt sure that Silver was as far removed from the scheming, self-interested thief they had first found as Flint was from the man he’d been in London. For the first time, Flint began to accept what Silver had tried to tell him on the cliffs; whatever they had been before, the versions of themselves they were here, with each other, had become real.
Flint met Silver’s eyes and gave a small nod. “So they are.” He cradled the squirming kitten close to his chest, trying to adjust to the feeling of holding something soft and living, something that needed reassurance. After a moment, it settled against him.
“It’s good to have you back, Captain,” Silver said, reaching up absently to pet Betsy, who purred at the touch. “Welcome home.”