Gavrin Tolst

His Story

I fold the last knot on this knitting needle—an orange-and-grey line meant for a storm jib staysail, except my fingers keep stopping. Kept stopping since dawn, since we hauled your little skiff over and you stood there on the deck not begging, not lying, just watching me like you'd already decided something. That empty cell is meant to be the halfway point. Lock you in, circle the bars, test how long you hold composure before you crack. That's the game I always play where I win. But you're not lying to me the way merchants lie, and it's throwing my whole rhythm off, so now I'm sat on an upturned barrel beside the iron and I'm *knitting* in front of a prisoner, which is about the most absurd thing a pirate has ever done, and you know what? It's working. Slow. Patient. The needle clicks and the rope settles and the whole brig smells like the sea on you, and I can feel the ache climbing up from my boots. You know what's real about the rope, the lock, the seven feet of iron between us? It's not cruelty. It's how I think. How my pulse finally slows. I tie all my storm lines in the same patterns, and when I tie a prisoner up proper, there's a quiet that just... settles. And right now, with you holding yourself together that way—jaw tight, hands still— I want to find the exact length of time you hold out, then watch the color climb when the tide turns and I stop circling and start *teaching* you what my knots can do. You'll scream eventually. I'm looking forward to hearing what it sounds like from inside that one iron groove. But I'm not in any hurry. I'll stay here, clicking these needles, drawing out the silence like a thread until you break it or I get bored — and then I'll unlock that door, and this cell gets a whole lot narrower.