The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper

by A. J. Fitzwater

  “Aye, she could.” Mereg chuckled, making notations in a ledger as Cinrak chose from the crates. “But Lyola ain’t on these ships. This here is our domain. An’ if she don’t like the way we work, then she ain’t getting any o’ the spoils.”

  Cinrak planted her rearpaws against the slight at-rest roll of the boat. The planks felt more solid to her than land, though they’d only been acquainted for a short time.

  “This is not what I’ve been taught about piratry.”

  “Some folks be havin’ strange notions about us. Can be a headwind into a hurricane, lass.” Something deeper than the ocean settled in the dark pool of Mereg’s eye. They blinked it away with a smile as wicked as the rapier strapped to their hip. “Ye sure ye not from another boat? Not one of them spies from the anti-unionists, eh? Wouldn’t put it past them to try evil on someone so young.”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes, never been on a ship. No, I wouldn’t know how to be a spy, let alone a pirate. Why do you ask?”

  Mereg raised then lowered her whiskery nose as she gestured Cinrak to lead the way up the stairs. “Fer a first timer on a ship, yer doing ackseptshunally well. Tell ye what, lass, ye keep that seven percent fer yerself.”

  Cinrak’s hackles bristled. “Whatever for?”

  “Settle yer fur.” Mereg patted the air. “I jus’ saying ye ken yer stuff. Crew always trips down these hold ladders first time.” Mereg gestured rearpawwards as they headed up. “An’ ye know ye way round them books, theology an’ nowt. I see ye got yer eye on that one o’ human tales. Not many cabin kits ken haggle e’en in their first star-turns. That deserves acknowledgement. How many star-turns ye have on ye?”

  Cinrak blinked in the sunlight and raised her blunt snout. “Sixteen.”

  Mereg laughed. “Good eye, but not a very good tongue fer lies.”

  Cinrak sniffed. “Fourteen.”

  “Better. On the young side, but we seen younger here onboard.”

  “What d’ya mean by—”

  Cinrak swung her face ocean side, eyes narrowing until the bay became a silver-blue blur in her vision.

  A sly smile twitched Mereg’s scar. “What it be, lass?”

  “Wind coming,” Cinrak said. “Not till after dark. You’ll be wanting to loosen the rope...thingie...there, tighten at that end. Lash down that...thingie...there.”

  “Ya mean to make sure our good girl here don’t turn an’ bash the dock. An’ there’s no fancy word for the wheel.” Mereg sniffed the air and nodded. “Ye can smell it, aye?”

  Cinrak shrugged. “Can always tell the tides and weather change without looking. What does that mean?”

  Mereg’s teeth flashed sharp and shining. Even with their good eye closed, it seemed like they could see everything. “Got that pirate salt in yer blood.”

  A shiver danced down Cinrak’s spine.

  Stammering her thanks and regards to Mereg’s captain, Cinrak barely remembered to breathe as she pounded down the gangway and back to the safety of home.

  Cinrak embraced the oak as it gave her a protective cloak of shadow.

  “You’ve been a good vessel,” she murmured into its trunk. “Stay strong and sturdy for the next kit who needs you.”

  The lowest branches seemed to curl in around her. The predicted wind-storm or whimsy?

  Helet was hosting the tri-tide orphanages’ meeting in the front parlour. A neighbour was watching the still sickly Marilette, and the other three kits, all much younger and cuter, sang and recited poems to entertain the committee members. Cinrak had promised to study to get out of the party.

  There would be no night like now.

  If she started thinking about it, she never would stop, the star-turns would pass and she would be an old maid under Helet’s paw, looking after kits for the rest of her suns.

  The back gate did her a favour by not creaking as she crept out.

  The Paper Moon fluttered nervously behind scraps of clouds as Cinrak followed the back alleyways. She felt very pirate-ish with her duffle slung over her shoulder and a long red feather she liked to imagine once belonged to a phoenix poked into her hat.

  Her eyes grew unexpectedly damp as she neared the docks. She just had to touch her favourite city places goodbye: the lower market where she and her friends had spent hours making up stories about the people; the Theatre Rat-oyal, where she used to sit on the fire escape to listen to the operas and plays Helet refused to take her to; and the sewer access door where she used to play ghosts and krakens.

  She wiped her eyes clear. Must stay alert for those pirate spies Mereg alluded to! They wouldn’t say such a thing unless they trusted her with the secret.

  Cinrak paused under the market arch, chewing her underbite, sniffing for trouble. Hmmh. The air tasted normal, except for the increasing wind. This salt thing was unpredictable. Come on, the oceans inside mammals, speak to me!

  A paunchy porcupine held watch at the Cry Havoc. The docks were darker than Cinrak expected. What to do, where to go? Should she wait, or sneak aboard? No, Mereg had preached honesty.

  The tavern. Mereg had kept their thirsty gaze on it, watching crewmates with big mugs of cider. A wombat and beaver lounging outside had followed their progress all squidge-eyed. Still, if Mereg went there, it couldn’t be all bad.

  Having chased everyone inside for the night, the wind whistled around Cinrak’s head like a warning horn. The windows were thick with smoky grime. She could discern only shape and shadow.

  Cinrak took a deep breath and pushed open the tavern door.

  A mug flew passed her face, trailing foam. Raucous laughter broke along with someone’s nose. Someone sawed badly on a fiddle, backed up by the off-beat honk of a pipe. A green fairy danced on the wide mantle. Groups huddled over dice and furtive conversations in a variety of tongues. Bowls of soup and stew on the waiter’s tray looked thick and dreadful.

  It was all Cinrak had imagined a pirate’s enclave to be, and more.

  With a casual forepaw in pocket grasping her few coins, Cinrak slipped through the crowd.

  Don’t hold gazes too long. A smile? Yes. No. Not too bright or childish. Try a half smile. A smirk. Yes. Like that ferret over there. Ah, that fit her face well.

  A large wooden bar went from end to end of the long room, held up by sailors rolling like they were still upon the ocean.

  “Yer too young for ya liquor,” the honey badger bartender said before Cinrak had a chance to speak. She pulled hard on an ale handle and malt frothed into an enormous glass.

  “Sarsaparilla then, and a tip for some information, if y...ya please,” Cinrak said.

  “Ooh, we have lady muck in this here place,” Honey Badger snorted. Nearby shore rats chuckled. “What can I doo fer yooou?”

  Cinrak slapped a coin on the bar and pocketed her shaking paw. “I’m lookin’ for Trader Mereg. We have...an appointment.”

  Honey Badger bit the coin, nodded her satisfaction, and poured Cinrak’s inky drink. “Trader Mereg, is it now? Ha. And an appointment, eh?”

  Honey Badger winked at the rats. Cinrak took a step to her left and bumped into a belching beaver. She stepped back, but now there was a hustle of squirrels and chipmunks pushing forward for refills.

  Honey Badger held Cinrak’s glass just out of reach. “I could tell ya where Mereg is, but then I’d expect something a wee extra outta ya.”

  “But I gave you a tip!”

  The rats guffawed.

  “In this bidniz, girly, sometimes money ain’t effrythin’,” said one of the rats, scraping his stool closer. “Bidniz with Mereg ain’t undertaken lightly.”

  This was the pirate life! The salt flying left and right! Just like an adventure from her books. Time to put into practise what she learned from them.

  “My b...bidniz with Mereg is none of yours!”

  A chorus of ‘Ooh!’.

  “Listen to this here queen o’ the fur,” snorted Honey Badger.

  Paws clamped on Cinrak’s shoulders.

  “We a
ll have bidniz with Mereg, whether they likes it or nay,” someone growled in her ear.

  Before Cinrak could yell, a fist stuffed into her stomach and her back paws left the ground.

  A dark maw swallowed her whole into a dank hallway. Head spinning, Cinrak lost all sense of direction.

  A gritty floor accepted her face dispassionately. No sound of protest or fight followed. It had all happened so swiftly, obscured by the roil in the main tavern.

  She was, desperately and suddenly, rather alone.

  A different kind of alone. Not she and the oak, sailing the sky blue. Not she and a book, tripping the imagination wild. Not even alone in a crowd, learning faces, trying on clothes in her mind she could never afford.

  Alone with bared teeth, bared knives, and bared souls.

  A candle loomed close. Cinrak yelped as the scent of singed fur wafted from her cheek.

  “A’ight, girly,” said Honey Badger so sweetly. “I recognize ye now. Yer one of Helet’s. She been known to associminate with the odd pirate. An’ now she pretendin’ she all retired from that travellin’. So spit it. Which ships be turnin’ coat an’ who at court support them irritations?”

  “Irate,” growled the rat with the knife-like front teeth. “Them all bein’ irate.”

  “Same difference. Well? Don’t be coy with us, decoy. If ye be treatin’ with Mereg, then yer irate too.”

  Helet working with pirates? It didn’t make sense! “I...I’m capybara. It takes a bit to make me upset.”

  The room rustled with ugly laughter.

  “Ooh, she a funny one,” slurred the beaver.

  Words were flung at Cinrak’s head and she could find nothing on the floor worthy to throw back. Was she sent to stir up trouble? Was Lyola irate? Were those tree-hugging ogres in on it? Them puffer fish kissing mers?

  All this talk about upset people and ships. Confusion roiled with the heat and stench in the room. This posse was playing it big, but Cinrak could smell their fear. Was that her salty magic at work?

  “I know nothing of what you’re talking about. I only came to...I’m a new recruit on the Cry Havoc, that’s all, I swear!”

  Another little lie shouldn’t have hurt, but the moment the words left her mouth Cinrak remembered the First Rule: Honesty. Pirates were trained to spot falsehood.

  The rabble growled. How many were there? With the candle and the dull shape of the door the only light sources, it was hard to tell.

  “She be playing coy,” snarled Toothy Rat, a knife appearing in his forepaw. “Let me have some fun. Send a nice warm message to Mereg. That’ll get them talkin’.”

  The fizzle in Cinrak’s belly drained away, leaving her stiff and cold. The fear pressure in her head squeezed away all ideas of fight or escape. How would she fight, anyway? Her entire experience had been with stick-swords and lines from “The Fancy Pirate” operetta.

  Only one thought remained: she was a fool to think she could be a real pirate.

  “‘From whose perspective is the truth?’” Quoting the Great Capybara Mother again, “How can I tell the truth when I don’t know anything?”

  Honey Badger and Toothy Rat crowded in as Drunk Beaver held her arms.

  Shadows splintered apart with the singing of glass.

  The candle went out

  The shing-sheen of steel upon steel. A few quick, wet thumps. The sting-scent of iron and salt.

  Cinrak slipped as she scrambled backwards. Blood. There was blood on the floor.

  “I yield!” shrieked Honey Badger.

  Groans from the shore rats.

  “I told ye to leave me people alone!”

  Mereg’s voice.

  “I sorry, cap’n, I sorry.” Toothy Rat blubbered.

  “This ain’t a war, ya cretins,” Mereg growled. “Ya want to talk to me, then just talk. Threatnin’ mah young ‘uns is low. We be pirates. We workin’ to be better than our elders. If ye dun want any of that, then ye not be pirates.”

  A soft paw took Cinrak’s shoulder and led her out of the darkness.

  Mereg didn’t sheath their rapier until they were in a quiet back alley. The wind breathed a sigh of relief.

  What had been clear and bright and adventure only moments ago slapped Cinrak upside the head hard as a big wave. What if Mereg hadn’t known her silly mind? What if they’d been too late?

  Her legs turned to jellyfish and her large rump hit the cobbles. One of her boots had a spot of blood on it, and she tried to clean it away with spit on claw. “Th-thank you.”

  “It what I have to do these suns.”

  Mereg passed back her duffle. Cinrak’s belongings were mussed but only her money was missing.

  “Did they...call you captain?”

  “Aye. Cap’n Mereg the Sharp, o’ the IRATE vessel Cry Havoc, at yer service.”

  They shook pirate-style, meeting anew. Mereg patted Cinrak’s shaking forepaw, parental-like.

  “But...”

  “I like to get the way o’ the winds in town as soon as we dock. Give the girls a chance to see their families an’ a bit o’ fun, so I take first watch.”

  Cinrak took a deep breath, then another. Her brain felt too big for her skull, all squished with new things...and how close she had come to being hurt.

  Mereg helped Cinrak stand and tucked her paw into their elbow, like two friends strolling home after a night on the town. “What in all Ratdom possessed ye to go into the Bloody Mary?”

  “Ye...you kept looking that way yestersun, and I thought—”

  “—ye thought that’s where I wanted ta water or had bizniss,” Mereg sighed. “Yer an observant soul.”

  “Yes, captain. Keeps me outta trouble. Usually.”

  “Hmm. You'd have to be, if yer Helet's kit.”

  “You do know her! The other pirates said as much. Why didn’t you say before? Hey...where are we going?”

  “I be taking ye back home.”

  Cinrak pulled on her paw, but Mereg held her strong, forging through the tragically familiar lanes, saying nothing the rest of the way.

  The courtyard gate betrayed them with a creak; the wind had forged ahead with the gossip. The oak cowered as Helet burst from the kitchen, shouting.

  The ground’s pull turned up and Cinrak’s heart tumbled down.

  Once Helet ran out of steam—quickly because what would the neighbours think—she bundled them into the kitchen and brewed a fresh pot of tea because manners. All through the tea ritual, Helet would not look at Mereg, because Helet.

  “Been a long time, Helet.”

  The matron set the cups on the table just so. “Not long enough.”

  “Like that, aye?”

  “I told you I was done with all that.”

  Done with what? Cinrak looked between the two, tongue and throat and stomach so tight she couldn’t swallow her tea.

  “An’ I said ye had a one with salt in her.”

  She’d met Mereg before? It must’ve been when she was very young, when Helet still dealt with the pirates in the market.

  Back and forth they went, speaking in Adult: icy with disappointment, melting with disdain, refreezing into silence. It was all such an inefficient energy exchange, one Cinrak was determined to remedy when she was grown up.

  But why wait? Helet and Mereg were talking about her as if she wasn’t there—how stupid she was, nay, how clever—and things hurt. Her backside, her stomach, her pride.

  A pound of fists and rattle of teacups. Helet performed startlement. Mereg smirked.

  “I’m right here! This is about me. Not...whatever you two are still bickering over star-turns later!”

  “Disturbin’ fairies,” Mereg muttered into their teacup.

  “Lack of faith,” Helet muttered back.

  “You’re both acting like you’re in charge of my life. But you’re not. I am! All my friends are gone to whatever pleases them, why can’t I?”

  “Who’s going to help me run the orphanage and start my library for the Great Mother?” Helet wib
bled.

  “I want to be a pirate. See the world. Meet people. Have adventures. I’m old enough to apprentice. Old enough to choose an academy. I’m old enough to choose to be a pirate.”

  “Adventure! Pah!” Helet curled her lip. “Disregard for property and life. All these mutterings lately, ship against ship, friend against friend. You’ll bring civil war down on us all!”

  Mereg scratched the bridge of their nose. “The last time pirates went to war was before my time. Looting and pillaging? Please. A thing o’ the past. Our current intership troubles are not without warrant. We’re trying to make change for good—”

  “Yes, yes, the IRATE.” Helet waved the name away. “Pirates and unions. Ha! Go together like a fish and a hook.”

  “Proper trade, through proper channels, has brought you those books about the Mother. Not that black market extortion and fakes!”

  “Wait on,” Cinrak demanded. “IRATE isn’t some piratey stoush, it’s the name of a union?”

  Helet’s eyes went so narrow they could cut a pumpkin, but Mereg held that gaze without flinching. “Stands for International Rodent Aquatic Trade Entente. The dream o’ my old mentor, Wautseaster the Fierce. She said the world be a lot bigger than you can imagine, an’ we have to be ready to face any an’ everything.”

  Cinrak swallowed a gasp. The legendary Wautseaster the Fierce had lead the War of the Felidae Isles to the uneasy truce that stood to this sun. She had disappeared long ago. Her old crew didn’t even know what had happened, preferring to spread the rumour she died in a glorious shark riding accident.

  “I’ve heard enough. It’s well past your bedtime, young lady—”

  “Captain. You showed me a taste of a life I’ve been dreaming about, and then you snatch it away? Why would you deny someone with my obvious talent?” Cinrak punctuated her argument with quick thumps of the table. The cups murmured agreement into their saucers.

  “I didn’t say I were bringin’ you home,” Mereg said, steady as a rock. “I jus’ wanted to show ye how to run away to sea properly.”

  “Eh?”

  “First rule o’ the ship.”

  Oh.

  “Honesty. Uh. Alright then. Helet.” Cinrak sat up as straight as her sore back allowed. “I want to—”