The Storyteller: The Pirate's Tale

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Ninth Birthday

Another year passed and still the Horizons didn’t pull up to Jita’s jetty. Sen thought she had learned all she could from the villagers and other passing ships, but she didn’t stop asking.

Whenever a ship came in, she and Kaiji raced to greet them on the jetty, then asked after the Horizons. The individual ships were becoming familiar to them now, the same ones coming through year on year. Every ship had their own theories, about the dragon storm or a pirate attack or even Tu turning pirate herself, but none of them sounded real to Sen. As Tu said, Sen knew her better than the rumours did. There was one thing that all the visiting ships could agree on: The Horizons hadn’t been seen in three years now. Sen might have been the last person to see it afloat. She desperately hoped not.

At the same time of year when Tu should have been visiting, a new ship pulled into the jetty. Sen hoped that maybe it visited different ports than the ships she recognised and could maybe tell her something new.

There were no children on this ship, she noticed. The youngest of them was much older than her, already a teenager. She had never felt nervous or scared talking to adults, but they always seemed to hold something back because she was a child. They didn’t know the sorts of stories Tu had been telling her.

She went straight up to the one who looked like the captain, a tall man with arms as thick as Sen’s waist but with a big, beaming smile. He was pointing things out to his crew, ordering some around, making sure the ropes were tight and that everything was in order.

‘Hello, little lady,’ he said, folding his arms and bending over a little to look down at her. ‘Who might you be?’

‘I’m Sen, daughter of Jin and Uti. And you?’

His smile broadened to hear her legitimacy. Such a thing was uncommon on land. ‘Well, I’m Captain Wik, son of Bo and Chi, and this is my ship, the Cibo.’ He grinned and smacked the hull affectionately.

Sen giggled at the name. She saw what he had done. ‘Do you know what happened to the Horizons?’ She asked. Captain Wik’s bushy blond eyebrows bounced up at the name. ‘Captain Tu is my friend and I haven’t seen her in three years.’

‘Well, now. A formidable friend you have, young Sen!’ Captain Wik rested his back against a pylon and scratched at his stubbly jaw in thought. ‘I did hear something a few months back, about her being holed up in the Pirate Isles without a ship.’

‘That’s just a rumour,’ Sen pointed out.

Wik lifted his huge shoulders in a shrug. ‘This sounded legit,’ he said, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the Cibo. ‘We’re a bounty hunter, too, you see.’

Sen’s eyes lit up. ‘Really?’

He nodded. ‘We captured a pirate ship a few months back, pretty small and leaky, half the crew with scurvy and the other half not much better, but they wouldn’t surrender. Anyway, one of them, when we were tying them up to throw into the hold, yelled out that we’d get what was coming to us when Captain Tu got her ship back.’ He shrugged again.

‘It was definitely her?’ Sen asked, fairly jumping on her toes.

The big captain nodded. ‘We all laughed at her, asking how she was going to salvage Horizons from the dragon storm. She looked like she was about to say something else, but her crewmates started elbowing her in the ribs and telling her to shut it. It was definitely your Captain Tu they were talking about. Never said another word about her the rest of the trip to Ryas.’

Sen jumped up and down on the wooden jetty. ‘Wait here! I’m getting Kaiji!’

She dashed away up the jetty with the biggest smile she’d had in years. She hadn’t realised just how scared she had been that the dragon storm had been true and that Tu was gone forever. Now she knew for sure that she was still alive. She even did a little skip across the sand.

‘I found her!’ Sen cried.

Kaiji sitting cross-legged outside their dome house with Sula. She was mending a hole in the knee of her pants, but she shoved it aside, her face lighting up at Sen’s words. ‘Where? Is she here?’

Sen shook her head and glanced at Sula, wondering how much she could get away with hiding. Sula had been much more compassionate lately, but Sen still wasn’t ready to completely open up to her. ‘The captain that just came in, Captain Wik, he said pirates took her to the Pirate Isles. And he said a real pirate told him that! Come on!’

She ran off without waiting, knowing Kaiji would follow.

Captain Wik had reached the beach by the time Sen reached him. He was giving instructions to a small group of his crewmates, and it was all Sen could do not to interrupt him. Finally, he stopped talking and the crew dispersed.

‘Back again?’

‘Can you tell us about the Pirate Isles?’ Sen blurted.

‘Well, sure, though I don’t know too much.’ He looked at Kaiji.

‘Oh, sorry. This is my best friend Kaiji, daughter of Sula and Nak. What do you know about pirates?’

Captain Wik laughed and shook his head. ‘Why don’t you get me a drink of water and something to eat, then I can tell you all I know?’

‘All right. Um.’ She couldn’t bring him back to their house—Sula was home, and she didn’t want her to hear Sen talking about pirates. ‘Can you wait in the square?’ she asked. It felt more like a meeting place now. It even had a bench. ‘It’s over that way.’

‘Sure thing, I’ll see you there.’

Sen ran back home with Kaiji. They had long since run out of the pickles and dried fruit Tu brought from her travels, but there was some dried fish hanging in the cool shade at the back of the house, just in case of a bad day’s fishing. She grabbed one of them while Kaiji snatched a filled water skin, then they both ran off to the town square.

‘Good luck!’ Sula called after them. Sen wondered if she meant it.

Captain Wik was waiting on the bench with his arms folded, looking up at the sailcloth overhead as it flapped in the breeze.

‘We brought dried fish and water,’ Sen said, shoving the fish at him. ‘Can you tell us about pirates now?’

The captain took a swig from the water skin and breathed out an ahh of refreshment. ‘Much better,’ he said. ‘Now, what do you want to know?’

‘What are the Pirate Isles?’ Sen asked. ‘Is it where pirates live?’ She had heard them mentioned plenty of times, but always dismissed them as being irrelevant. She just assumed it was where pirates lived, but now she knew Tu was there she wanted to know everything about it.

‘Sort of,’ Wik answered. ‘The pirates live on their ships, of course, but the Pirate Isles are their safe haven. They’re not marked on any maps, so nobody who isn’t a pirate knows where they are. Every new monarchy has always sent a fleet off to try and be the monarchy that finally finds them, but none have ever succeeded.’

‘Do you know where they are?’ Kaiji asked.

‘I think they might be way, way off the coast of Raykin, but I don’t know. It’s not somewhere I want to hunt down. Pirates attack honest, tax-paying ships and steal their goods, sometimes even the whole ship, then they take it back to the Pirate Isles to sell. There are sailors, then, who go to the Pirate Isles to buy their wares and sell them back out into the world, where they can get a better price.’ Wik shook his head with a dark look and took a chewy bite of the fish with another swig of water.

‘But what’s it like there?’ Sen pressed. ‘Is Tu in a pirate prison?’

Wik frowned as he chewed thoughtfully. ‘I doubt it,’ he said, shuffling on his seat. ‘I don’t think so. There are a lot of rumours about the Pirate Isles. Some say it’s a paradise, the biggest trading port in the world with all kinds of people. Swaying palm trees, fresh water, even some cattle and other farmed beasts. Others say it’s a place of torture and disease, every island with a different ruler and all fighting amongst each other, dragging the pirates into their own personal wars and taking all the profits of their island for themselves. My guess is that it’s probably somewhere in between, neither paradise nor prison. Nobody ever wants to admit to ever actually being there, of course. I just catch bits and pieces from the pirates we capture.’

‘But what about Tu?’

‘Look, kiddo.’ He sighed heavily. ‘How to put this? I don’t think your friend is entirely legit. The way the pirate threatened me with her… I think she’s on the pirates’ side.’

Sen’s smile dropped into a heavy frown. ‘She’s not a pirate! She got captured by them, that doesn’t mean she is one. You don’t know her; I do.’

Wik held his hands up defensively. ‘All right, all right. Maybe she’s one of the traders who trick themselves into thinking they’re safe, just because they don’t actually attack ships. But they still profit off of piracy.’

‘No!’ Sen jumped to her feet. ‘She’s an adventurer and a bounty hunter.’ She brightened as a theory came to her, one she knew was true as soon as she thought of it. ‘I bet she was looking for the Pirate Isles so she could take them down all by herself.’ It sounded like Tu. ‘And then the pirates caught her, and she has to pretend to be one of them so they let her go. Then she’ll come back to Ryas and tell the king and queen that she found the Pirate Isles, and then the king and queen will get a whole fleet of ships so Tu can lead them out to fight them away, once and for all.’

Wik smiled, but it was more like a grimace. ‘If that’s what you want to believe, if it helps you sleep at night, then you go ahead and believe that.’

‘She fought a leviathan!’ Sen shouted. ‘She can fight all the pirates, too. Just you wait.’

Wik slapped his thighs and pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. ‘Great, well, I’ve had fun, girls. Now I’m going to see what my crew is up to. Thanks for the fish!’

Sen sat down heavily on the bench, chin in her hands and eyes hot. ‘Nobody understands,’ she grumbled.

Kaiji shuffled over beside her, resting a hand over her back and a head on her shoulder. ‘We do,’ she said. ‘You found her! That’s a start, right?’

Sen shrugged. ‘No, I didn’t. I just know she’s in the Pirate Isles, but nobody knows where the Pirate Isles even is.’ She glared at the ground. ‘We don’t even have a ship.’

‘People know,’ Kaiji reminded her. ‘Captain Wik said it was the biggest port in the world, and not only pirates go there. He was just too scared himself to find out about it. He’s not a real bounty hunter, not like Tu.’

‘I bet he’s never even seen a sea dragon,’ Sen muttered. ‘Stupid dumb Captain Wik.’

‘He’s definitely never met Tu, not if he thinks she’s a pirate.’ She swung down onto the ground, kneeling in front of Sen so she had to meet her eyes. ‘Best of all, we know she’s not dead. Who even cares if she is a pirate?’

‘I do,’ Sen mumbled. ‘I want her to be a good person. I don’t want her to be a pirate.’

STUFF

o Aww, Sen, baby.

o South Africa have made a frigging huge total when we had them on the ropes, hence the disappointment.

o Cibo is an Adelaide-based coffee chain.

Comments

[drazzi.livejournal.com]

I hope the Horizons didn't sink D:

Wik sounds delightful and handsome and I love him.

yelled out that we’d get what was coming to us when Captain Tu got her ship back.
So more evidence on the Tu's a pirate line of things. Dun dn dunnnn

I kinda love how Sen has to go on little missions to get this guy to talk XD Ge Kaiji.... get food....

How to put this? I don’t think your friend is entirely legit. The way the pirate threatened me with her… I think she’s on the pirates’ side.’
THAT'S WHAT WE SAID.

I love your optimistic theory Sen <3

Well Wik you sounded great but you need to be better at indulging babies to have my love