The Princess Beard

by Kevin Hearne

  Vic looked closer and saw that it was batter. Pancake, by the lumps.

  “I wish I was normal,” his father said.

  And then Vic was tumbling through the red glop again, the tepid liquid washing away the tears that had somehow formed on his cheeks. When he opened his eyes, he was in his home pasture, and he saw his parents curled together in the deep grass.

  “Would you look at that!” his mother said, holding up a wobbly cupcake.

  His father dashed it out of her hand, and Vic’s heart seized in his chest when he saw a foal version of himself, lip quivering as the cupcake hit the ground.

  “No son of mine should do such things,” his father said gruffly.

  “But it was beautiful,” his dam said. “It was, my little Pissing Victorious. Beautiful.”

  His father stood and stamped a plate-sized hoof. “He’ll never live up to that name. Don’t encourage…that.” When he galloped away, Vic’s mother scooped up the sniffling foal and cradled him to her chest. “He’ll come around, love,” she said. “You’re so special and precious.”

  “He don’t like me,” Baby Vic said.

  But his mother didn’t deny it. She just pulled him closer, and fat tears plopped into his curly hair.

  Vic tumbled through the dark water again, and when he opened his eyes, he saw himself standing on the deck of The Puffy Peach, smiling, fishing. He had a barrel of caught fish by his side, and as he pulled in one more wriggling silver tarpon, he laughed and tossed it on the deck for Brawny Billy. When he was sure no one was looking, that version of Vic made two teacups filled with tea and clinked them cheerfully, drinking down both before throwing them overboard.

  “That’s good tea,” he said. “Darned good tea. The sea and tea for me!”

  The next time Vic opened his eyes, he stood on the reddish stones of the Temple of Woom, slick and wet with red muck, hands in fists. His father stood before him, a hand taller and a good bit more swole.

  “Pissing Victoria,” his father said with a sneer, putting emphasis on the cruel jab.

  “Sucking Fabulous,” Vic said, trying to keep his hocks from shaking.

  “Are you still making your dainty little tea cakes with their pwetty wittle fwowers?”

  Vic’s instinct was to put his head down and mumble, “No, sire,” as experience had taught him that that was the best way to get through life with his father unscathed. But Vic had been through a lot, and the scenes he’d recently witnessed had enlightened him on parts of his father’s own history left undiscussed, and Vic reckoned that his sire had to be at least thirty-two and therefore no longer strong enough to push him around.

  So he puffed out his chest, stomped a foot, and said, “Yes, as a matter of fact I am still making tea cakes. Chocolate or pistachio?” He did jazz hands and ended with a beautifully decorated tea cake on each hand, bowing to his father in a mocking sort of way.

  “Why can’t you be more like your brother, Crapping Fantastic? You disgust me,” his father said with a snort, knocking the cakes to the ground.

  Vic looked down at them, both broken to show thoughtful layers of filling inside, their pretty sugar-work decorations crushed. Rage flared, but then he felt only…pity.

  “You just make me sad, sire. Who hurt you? When did you stop using your magic? And doesn’t it hurt you to hurt me?”

  “You’re talking like a mare. Humph. Feelings. Be a stallion.”

  “I am a stallion, sire. But there are different kinds of stallions.”

  “No. There can be only one.”

  His father turned his back and was suddenly clad in black robes that flowed from his human form down over his horse rump to the ground. When he spun around, his face was hidden by a deep cowl, but from it grew a long unicorn horn that lit up a violent, glowing red.

  “What is even going on?” Vic asked the darkness.

  His father—the robed unicentaur with the fire horn—slashed at him, and Vic leapt back.

  “Uh, chinchilla lady? Things got really weird.”

  But no comment came from the darkness.

  Without a word, without a single hoof clomp, the robed unicentaur/dad thing stabbed at him, driving him back, and Vic realized that he, too, had a horn coming out of the center of his forehead, but his was a clear, pure blue—even bigger than his father’s—glowing with optimistic energy and self-love, and he reared to strike at his unicentaur/father’s heart, and—

  Then he realized it was basically the stupidest, most obvious dream metaphor he’d ever experienced, and he shouted out into the void.

  “Fine! Fine! I don’t want to give up my magic. I just want people to like me.”

  The moment the words left his mouth, Vic rose, sputtering, from the pool at the center of the Temple of Woom. Slick red liquid sloughed off his coat, leaving a sheen like warm coconut oil. Although the pool had seemed endlessly deep, he was able to step right out of it to stand on the dry stone. The chinchilla lady was grinning a puffy-cheeked grin as she stared up at him.

  “There now. Took you long enough. Wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “That was completely barmy. I mean, glowing head horns? Robes?”

  The chinchilla giggled into her hands. “Look, kid, I don’t come up with this stuff. You see what you need to see. And you’ve been granted your greatest wish.”

  Vic looked down at his hands, focused, and conjured an exquisite bear claw.

  “How do you know?” he asked, gently dropping the bear claw in front of the chinchilla.

  She began nibbling it and gave him a tiny thumbs-up. “Well, I already like you, so that’s one person. Now, get out of here and—”

  “And?” Vic asked, anxious to receive more wisdom.

  The chinchilla burped into a fist. “And do whatever you want. You’re free. Nothing stopping you. You got your wildest dream, and now you’ve got to figure out how to go on.”

  Vic took a nervous step toward the pool. “Maybe I could just go back in and…?”

  “Nope. From here on out, you figure it out yourself. But believe me—choices are a lot more fun when they’re all your own to make.”

  With that, she shooed him away, hopping along the stone behind him. Vic turned to wave goodbye, wishing he could stay for a while longer in the peaceful, contented Woom.

  But his next step landed on white sand, and then he was on the beach again.

  When he approached the dinghy, both of the red shirts were staring at him, agog.

  “What, didn’t think I’d be back so soon?” Vic asked.

  “No, it’s just that you’re covered in blood,” one of the men said.

  “Oh, don’t mind that.” Vic grinned and offered them each a bracing éclair. “Placenta is good for a shiny coat.”

  “Ye got an A,” Luc said, pinning his eye on Morgan.

  She sighed in relief and went a little boneless, at ease for the first time in weeks. She’d been dreading the PSAT—the Pirate Studies Aptitude Test—and she hadn’t been feeling good about her first attempt at the practice test, which Luc had just graded.

  “An A? That’s great!” she said.

  But he shook his head. “No, lass. It ain’t. The A is for Arrrrgh. Ye wanted a Y for Yarrrr! I’m sorrrry to say ye’ve failed.”

  Feng placed the test on the scarred wooden desk nailed to the floor of Captain Luc’s quarters. Scratched in blood-red ink, it said 50/100 and, again, that word: Arrrrgh. Morgan flipped through it and was crushed to see Luc’s little red footprints marking Xs—well, actually, Ys—over many of her answers. Her essays ran red with ink blood and white with a few parrot plops. For all that she felt at home on the deck and comfortable performing almost every duty Luc had thrown at her, the intricacies of official piracy were maddeningly…intricate. From the recruitment of crew, to the twisted tax and bribe rules in port, to which flag to use when,
to how many weevils were acceptable in hot dog buns, her head felt like a chum bucket swimming with useless answers.

  “So what happens now?” she asked quietly.

  Luc gave an avian shrug. “It’s like anything else, lass. You take yerrrr licks, study what you got wrrrrrong, wait a week, and trrrry again. Oh, and tonight you get a full horrrrn o’ grrrrog.”

  “Getting drunk after an awful disappointment is always fitting,” Morgan quoted from the manual, but she didn’t sound happy about it. She looked up at Luc and cocked her head. “Captain, have you ever failed the PSAT?”

  Luc glanced away, preening the feathers on his back for a moment. “Parrrrots got a long memorrrry, lass. Just how I’m made. You’ve a good hand with rrrreal-worrrrld solutions, so I’m surrrre this was just firrrrst-test jitterrrrs. Don’t take it too harrrrd, aye?”

  She couldn’t stop her shoulders from sinking. “Aye, Captain.”

  “And don’t forrrrget, lass—ye don’t need to pass the test to save them otterrrrs. A courrrrageous hearrrrt is worrrrth morrrre than cerrrrtification. Now, go see yourrrr shipmates. Vic and Tempest have both come back, and Feng says they look like they’ve seen some shite.”

  Morgan picked up the hateful test, and as soon as she was on the deck, she sadly galumphed to the rail and threw it overboard, watching it sink into the sea before a pod of chattering dolphins arrived to playfully tear it to shreds.

  “What was that?” Tempest asked, nudging her gently with a shoulder.

  Morgan turned to her friend, and she did indeed look like she’d seen some shite. The brown splotch of tree bark on her arm was much bigger than before, for one thing. But she’d asked Morgan a question, so Morgan started there.

  “That was my first PSAT. Practice PSAT, technically.”

  A dolphin horked and vomited up a red-splattered page, chittering angrily that anyone would serve up such tasteless fare.

  “I guess it didn’t go so well?”

  Morgan looked around the ship, cataloging everything she could’ve actually gotten right on the test. She knew every knot used. She knew what was in the hold. She knew the names of the crew and the contents of every treasure chest, but that was a drop in the swabbing bucket compared to a world the comparative size of the sea.

  “I failed.”

  Tempest smothered her gasp in a cough and did that thing where people act five times as perky to cover up their horror. “Hey, no big deal! It was only a practice! Now you’ll know better! You can take it again! That didn’t count! Hey, I’m using way more exclamation points than anyone uses in real life, aren’t I? That’s so weird!”

  “Yeah.” Morgan slumped against the rail, and Otto waddled in from somewhere and climbed up to pat her cheek with his paw.

  “Anything I can do?” Tempest put her hand on Morgan’s arm, and Morgan studied her friend. Tempest looked the same, really, but there was something new there, besides the bark. Morgan couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  “No, I just need to feel my emotions right now,” she said. “But what about you? You seem…different.”

  Now it was Tempest’s turn to look away.

  “Something happened on the island. I’m fine, but…”

  “But?”

  Tempest gave her a brave smile, the sort that has nothing to do with happiness or amusement but is intended to be an aegis against pain. “Brawny Billy died and it rattled me.”

  “Oh, no! I really liked him.”

  “Me too. And the ding gulls…Morgan, they are so terrible and beautiful at the same time. And that’s what people say about dryads, you know? Terrible when we’re trees, beautiful when we’re bipeds. It’s given me much to think about.”

  The ship shuddered under their feet, and both women turned in time to watch the crew undo the pulley straps around Vic’s belly and hindquarters. The centaur also looked…different. His shoulders were back, his chin was up, and he was actually smiling. And handing out cookies as he thanked the people who’d heaved him up onto the deck. Seeing Morgan and Tempest, he waved and clopped over.

  “Where’ve you been?” Morgan asked, knowing from experience that the only way to get anything out of the centaur was to ask very pointed questions that couldn’t be answered with shrugs and sure, bruh.

  “I made the pilgrimage to the Temple of Woom,” Vic said, offering them each a lovely tea cake with a mermaid theme and little gold curlicues of fondant. He conjured a teacup for himself and, for the first time, drank it in full view of the entire ship, without turning his rump and hiding his sipping behind his massive shoulders. He even let his pinky stick out.

  “The Temple of Woom? I haven’t heard of that. What is it?”

  Vic smiled a dreamy, satisfied smile—another very new expression for him. “It’s a spiritual experience. The journey there is…” He trailed off and his eyes focused on the distance, recalling something, but he resumed his story further along. “And then you get there and…” He snorted and leaned down conspiratorially. “Right? And the mystic chinchilla rolls up and says—well, nah. I think it’s a very personal thing. I can just tell you that it was good for me.”

  Morgan and Tempest looked at each other, dumbstruck. It was the most Vic had ever spoken in one go, and he hadn’t used the words bro, bruh, dude, or sup a single time. He looked relaxed and contented, and Morgan bit into the tea cake and nearly exploded with sensory bliss.

  “That tea cake is amazing,” she enthused after shoving the whole thing in her mouth. “Did you use new ingredients?”

  But Vic only smiled and gently patted her shoulder. “The secret ingredient is love. Self-love.” He began to walk away and then turned around to hurriedly assure her, “Not in a gross, creepy way. I just learned not to hate myself, and apparently that makes the magic more powerful. Pretty cool, right? Now, let’s get sailing and save some otters!”

  With that, he headed toward a group of red shirts, whom he relieved of swabbing duty.

  “That was a surprise,” Tempest said.

  Morgan slumped down until her chin was on the ship’s railing, wishing she had two dozen of those mermaid tea cakes and a big bottle of wine and could binge-watch some of the more romantic Sharkspeer plays at a festival somewhere. “Maybe I should visit that temple of his. I feel like I need a spiritual experience.”

  Tempest rubbed the brown spots on her arm with her thumb. “I think that with that sort of thing, you don’t so much go to it expecting to be remade. It comes to you when you need it, and you do the work, and then it takes root.”

  With their centaur on board, the ship set sail. Morgan looked longingly at the now receding island, wondering what had happened to Vic and Tempest there. Mack Guphinne was surely more powerful than it appeared from out here on the ship. And instead of going there and having an adventure, she’d stayed here and failed a test. And now they were sailing away, shortly to bury Brawny Billy at sea. Morgan looked up at the crow’s nest, where Al’s red hair was billowing in the breeze. Everyone seemed to know where they belonged, except her. She’d been so certain before that test, but now…

  She’d never failed at anything before.

  And it sucked.

  “Where are you going?” Tempest asked as Morgan slumped away.

  “To retrieve my failure grog and get drunk.”

  “Do you want company?”

  The answer should’ve been yes, but it was no. Morgan wanted to marinate in her embarrassment and disappointment without anyone studying her, trying to fix her, saying they were sorry, or mentioning that when she got upset, her face got rashy.

  “Just take care of Otto for me, okay? I don’t want him to see me like this.” She handed over her otter and went to find the grog.

  As she walked away, she heard Otto chittering nervously.

  “I know,” Tempest said, as if she understood everything he said. “Sh
e is starting to look a little rashy.”

  Alone it was.

  * * *

  The main problem with being really, truly drunk for the first time, Morgan reasoned, or tried to reason, was that everything got wobbly. Right now the ship felt like it was upside down, which was not a problem covered by anything she’d read in any of the pirate manuals.

  “Profably get that one wrong on the test too,” she muttered to the huge black horn of grog Milly Dread had given her. “Know what I mean, Horny? Wait. S’not a good name. Whassa good name for the chopped-off body parts of goats? Goatly?” She took a deep, comforting swig. “Yeah. You get me, Mister Goatly. We really get along.”

  The ship was at full speed, which she knew because everything was sloshy. And the sea was being more sloshy than usual, as walking caused her many problems. The floorboards, it seemed, were out to get her. And the crew had so very many questions, like “Hey, are you okay?” And “Where can I get one of those giant dunce caps full of grog?” And “Is that vomit?” That’s why she’d flopped down into the hold, where things were nice and dark and quiet. Now it was just her and Goatly.

  Or so she thought.

  “Young bearded woman, what are you doing?”

  Lifting her head, she saw a very stern-looking ghost aiming his ectoplasmic hook right at her.

  “Oh, grah! Grossbeard! I mean, Beardskull! I mean…hey…you,” she answered, nearly falling off the chest upon which she was splayed. “Thought you got…” Her muddled brain struggled for the right word. What had the Cinnamonks done? “Thought you got some exercise.”

  “I,” the ghostly figure said, drawing itself up firmly, “am clearly not Skullbeard. That boring fool got himself exorcised by those meddling monks. Glad to have him gone from my ship, finally. I am his predecessor, Davey Bones.”

  “The guy with the locker?”

  The ghost, who she now realized was wearing an older version of a pirate’s costume, pulled an ornate necklace out of his fluffy jabot and draped it over his sharp hook. “It’s a locket, actually. Lovely, is it not?”