You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Keeva
I have gotten used to the stagger of the ship. After days of sea sickness, the mellow motion started to feel calming. I was swaying around like a babe in the womb, yet I had lost all sense of what it was like to have a mother.
I have spent little time on the sea, but I could have befriended the idea of staying here for a little longer, if I wouldn't spend my days in a dusty dark pantry on the tween deck and the only conversations I wouldn't have with a tense young pirate, who turned out to be responsible for the sustenance on board and had decided to bottle me up inside here.
Once a day he came took the food for his fellow comrades and left me a bottle of stale water. Food I was able to acquire myself, I slept on a straw sack that the young pirate so charmingly had described as a donkey's breakfast. After I had demanded some sunlight he had told my deadlight, my small thick window, was enough.
With the word deadlight I felt more comfortable with, it had a poetic melodramatic touch to it that I highly supported. The only light I truly got was, the one, who broke in the waves of the sea. It was lenient and admiral blue. It was a reminder on how far away we were from Melar.
Rusk was the only nutrition I allowed myself. The cautiousness of my pirate had me alarmed, I couldn't catch attention from the others, though I tried every day to convince my pirate to take me to the promenade deck, so I at least once could stride over the wobbly wooden floor with my eyes fixed on the horizon. I didn't think that my freedom had led to another days of captivity, although this time my restrained freedom had been my own decision, this was my own mistake and paying for it felt oddly good.
.
After a week of lonesomeness the ship hadn't stopped once. However after exactly seven sunsets the crew had decided to drop the anchor. From my deadlight I was able to see the sand of a nearby island. I could hear muffled voices and footsteps. What were they doing?
Are we robbing a poor island or what?
A spell later the sounds disappeared and calm had been restored. I was sitting on my straw sack, still wearing the same clothes I had on when I left Melar. I was glad that I didn't own a mirror, because I was sure of the fact that I looked like a mess. My hair hadn't been brushed and the color with which gave it it's reddish touch had started to fade. I blamed the humidity, or maybe that the color had come from an old mignonette tree.
I heard subtle footsteps near the pantry and jolted up. My eyes were riveted on the door, any second the beech-wooded door handle would be pushed down. I imagined all the scenarios that could happen. A drunken pirate returning earlier while his friends were still exploiting the island or an islander who wanted a snack after successfully beating ever single pirate on this ship in battle. Paranoia wasn't a good look on me. Being worrisome had never been one of my characteristics, Edan had been the one who had taken care over both of us.
But when the door opened two familiar eyes, resembling polished aquamarine, twinkled into my direction. The pirate whom I never had dared to ask his name had appeared. His clothes were mismatched, he was wearing a oxide red shirt, dandelion yellow pants and a black taffeta vest, which I assumed he had stolen from a very wealthy man. Over all his clothing was over sized and dirty.
"Why have we set anchor?", my voice was serene, yet I noticed the vibrato that made my words wobbly.
"You can speak of purest luck tonight. We are staying in Sligeanach, everyone has left the ship already.", he informed me, a wide wild grin on his face.
Sligeanach, the notorious pirate island. A place for them to gather, drink, gamble and exchange highly important information. Knowing that I was at the major center of piracy, the major center of crime, sent shivers down my spine. I was at their home, I had reached their core. For the pirates Sligeanach was an invulnerable shelter, they lived after strict rules there. And any violation of a pirate accord meant death.
My glance was fixed on his face, I wasn't smiling. "Why are you saying I'm in any way fortunate? I cannot set my feet on pirate ground"
"Conceivably, that can be true. But you can set your feet onto the promenade deck, which had been your greatest wish since you have started inhabiting our pantry. It's the only thing you ever talk about when I come to see you. I don't understand how a small jewel thief out of Melar bay would be so eager on standing on a ship.", he raised his eyes questioning.
"Asking questions was never part of our deal. But do not blame me for not putting trust in your hearties, aye", I replied.
I was faster on my feet than my brain could process, therefore I nearly lost my balance. My steps were rushed, I was trembling with excitement. He lead me out of my small pantry. I knew that I was being unreasonable with him, that not to trust his comrades was the smartest thing to do. Still I was leaning towards being unreasonable, and in this case my whining about getting out of the pantry had worked.
"Getting you out of the pantry and making sure you stay alive on board was also never part of our deal, yet here I am. Not going for a drink with my hearties, but accompanying you. A little bit of gratitude would be appreciated.", his eyes rested on me.
He walked over the wooden floor, his steps confident and graceful. If he had been born at a different place into a different family, he would have made an excellent guard or an even better knight. He was fast and strong, and above all had his head held high. Captain Adalsteinn solemnly had trained folks whose pride swelled in their chest. It was part of her method to break their superciliousness and transform it into membership to the crown. It was fair to say that the boy, Edan had been, before he was taken under her wings had been an entirely different one.
My voice was more sardonically than I had intended it to be, "I'm forever thankful for your sacrifices, they truly mean the world to me". Well I wasn't lying they did.
We walked up a ladder, I felt the whole ground alternating under my feet, yet I didn't lose balance like I had did before. After a brief moment of numb darkness, I finally had reached the deck and my eyes tacked on the horizon. I felt the feeling of triumph bubbling up inside of me. I had won. I was on a ship to a strange foreign place. Well actually all I could see where the crooked palm trees of Sligeanach and the same deep marine color that cloaked the light of my room.
Since I had been in the pantry, the whole voyage hadn't felt real. It had felt like a dream. But now I saw the decision I had made. I had evidence for my freedom, and the fact that I would have return back to stale bread, rusk, dried fruit didn't matter that much anymore.
I raised my hands into the sky as if I wanted to catch the breeze, I would have yelled out elated, but that would have raised some unwanted attention and my trip out of the pantry would be ended very quickly.
"The whole crew is gone? All your hearties are away? Does that mean we have the entire ship to ourselves?" I bombarded him with questions.
"Well the whole crew is gone, but me. Which mean they have given me the authority to look after it, in case you wanted to trash the room of the shipmaster.", he replied.
He looked at me, a smile on his lips, but still I could detect something in his eyes that surprised me. It was fear. He glanced at me that way someone would look at an untamed beast, as if I would be a regal lioness. Perchance I had read him wrong before, when he turned his back on me at the port of Melar, perchance he wasn't underestimating me.
"It would never be my intention to trash anything", I replied a sweet smile on my lips.
I walked over the wooden floor and the felt the energy of a pirates life. Piracy was one of the crimes, where the council had fought over for years. What would be the punishment freebooting their goods? Under the reign of my mother, there were no executions, which meant that if one was convicted for piracy one would spend ten years somewhere in a cold cell. What my uncle's rules were I wasn't sure, supposedly something harsher. Edan would have know the answer.
The pirate followed me. I was wondering why exactly he had decided to stay here with me, what he was getting out of it. I think it was the word that every master and every teacher I had had used to chide me for: curiosity.
"You ain't a regular lass from Melar bay. You ain't a jewel thief either", he stated after a while.
I turn my face to him completely motionless, though I could hear my heart pounding in my chest. "What does make you think I'm not one?"
The laugh he let loose was somewhat sulky. "Your hair isn't copper, it's ash brown. At first I thought you looked like a young sailors girl with reddish hair, but there is no sign of a freckle on your skin, there is no tan from the hard work. Now the roots of your own hair color is showing. Not mousey brown, more of the color of a linden tree, as if the beach of Melar had decided to kiss your hair. You must have been dying it, which concludes that you must have been able to afford that. A sailors girl isn't able to afford hair dye. The whole story with the jewel thief doesn't add up either. If you would be one you simply could half sold the jewels on the black market you, could have been able to buy yourself a ticket for a proper ferry to Teliassen. No, you didn't do that. Instead you showed up in the middle of the night and leave with a pirate ship. It wasn't a planned decision that is what I can tell. But who are you? What made you leave out of the blue?"
My name is Keeva Doughlas, I'm a princess and should have been crowned queen of the realm, approximately a week ago. I ran away and now I'm getting on your nerves. The little bit of family I have left is going to kill me when I return, if I return. Nice to meet you.
But that wasn't the story, I was going to tell him. The truth was so dangerous that I knew it would break my neck. I decided to change the topic as fast as I could.
"The entire theory on who I am is based on my hair?" I asked him.
I didn't blame him my entire theory on who he was was based on his flawless teeth.
"You are not going to tell me are you?" he countered.
The entire truth? Oh, no absolutely not.
"I was born in an insignificant town with an insignificant name. When I was five years old both of parents were murdered by a northern wildling tribe. So I lived with my uncle. But my uncle has expectations in his niece, why wouldn't he? She would be an ungrateful bastard, if she wouldn't try to make him happy. But you have to know that I was born with this incurable disease called selfishness.", I explained to him, my words weren't even a lie.
His eyes were fixed on mine. The was he had been staring at me felt oddly intimate, as if he was trying to see the deep dark secrets of my soul. I didn't like it, so I turned my back on him.
"Northern wildlings. They destroyed half of Melar bay when they attacked. I wasn't here. I was eight years old when the massacre happened, I assume your parents have died around that time. I was on the sea, when I saw the emblem of the crown burning down, taking the color of melarian sand. We didn't approach till the the smoke of the burning buildings had completely vanished. The population was miserable as we set ground. I will never forget their faces. They had lost everything their homes, their children and then even their queen with her dragonfly crown.", the pirates glance was taken of me and he raised his chin into the direction of the sea.
I didn't correct him, although some of his words were erroneous. I crossed my arms over my chest. I couldn't construe his emotions towards the wildlings. Whether he was feeling hatred or admiration. The North had thousand of names, that everyone was too scared to pronounce.
"People say that the northern tribes are faithless. I highly disagree. Some of them are ruthless, some of them are murders, but holding an entire region against mistakes of turncoats is not correct.". I didn't mean to defend the people who had mercilessly murdered my family, but I know that my words withheld strength and verity.
"Every man and woman I have met from there there are the most devout people I know. Their gods and goddesses varied maybe, but the real place that doesn't serve any god is Melar.", he replied, with his fingers he traced the blade of one of his daggers, which were stuffed into his vest pocket.
Lost in thought I had stared wrapping one of my loose hair strands around my finger. "What about the people on the sea?" I asked him.
"Oh, pirates believe in Arnemetia. A goddess who was birthed in a spring entering a river. With all her power she had flooded every ground the first humans have put their feet on. Only leaving Melar, Teliassen, the North and some small island. These should be the places to find nutrition, but the real life is on the sea. It was made for people on the sea. It legitimizes their wish to let anarchy rule humankind's life.", he said his voice stern.
"It legitimizes their wish? Not yours?" was my follow up question.
He had a frowned as he looked at me. "Do I seem like a person who believes in fairytales?"
"You cannot paint all religion as fairytales. I mean I don't believe in any of it and neither do you. But some people do and their thoughts are as valid as ours.", I informed him, sometimes I did forget that I wasn't a princess anymore, that I had to play a common girl.
Somehow my comment had made him laugh"I'm not really in the mood for a lecture, I mean if you begin you would never end. I steal other peoples belongings, having a negative attitude towards something that people use as an excuse to kill for is one of my lesser flaws."
I didn't reply. Making someone constantly aware on how dangerous you are also could be added on the list. Repeating your title at court was ridiculed, it made you lose value. If you are something, people should know and you wouldn't have to make them aware about it.
Abruptly he grabbed my arm and leeched his fingernails into my skin. It was the first time we had physical contact after he had lifted me on board. "I hear voices", he hissed at me.
So much for my little trip on the promenade deck.
He dragged me back into my pantry and shut the door behind him. I heard his voice greeting his follow comrades. My pirate didn't return for two days.