Little Jane Silver

by Adira Rotstein

  “Little Jane. Why does everybody have to call me little?”

  “Well, you are the smallest one aboard,” her father would point out helpfully and Little Jane would make a very frustrated sound in the back of her throat and say, “I’m not little anymore. I’m nearly as tall as Ishiro! Can’t you command them to call me something else?”

  “What? Like Turnip?” her father innocently inquired.

  “Colin the Cornish Dachshund?” asked her mother with equal aplomb.

  “You’re not taking this seriously at all!” Little Jane would snap at them.

  “Hmmm … Did I ever tell you the story of what happened to the little village of Cheesestink-on-the-Thames when its mayor decided to change its name to Happy Cottage-on-the-Wold to attract more visitors?”

  “NO!” Little Jane would shout before stomping off to their quarters.

  Whenever she brought the subject up, even if her father did not by some miracle have another unlikely story about the bad luck of changing one’s name to tell her, there always seemed to be some work or disaster that needed immediate tending to. “I’m sorry, love, the parrot’s thrown up on me coat again,” her mother would say, or “what are you doing yammering around here when that spanker sail is loose and like to go overboard if no one tends to it,” or “Oh my! I think we’re being fired on by the Dutch Navy!” and any other manner of silly things which Little Jane saw as blatant excuses for them to avoid the subject.

  Then some annoyingly precise person might point out that Little Jane wasn’t the only one onboard with a nickname. There was “Sharpeye” Sharpova and “Lobster” Duncan and, of course, Long John and Bonnie Mary themselves.

  However, Little Jane knew for a fact that Lobster Duncan had been a real lobster fisherman before taking up piracy. Sharpeye Sharpova was the lookout, which explained his moniker. As for Long John and Bonnie Mary’s nicknames, they were misnomers anyway.

  She knew the name “Long John” had really been her grandfather’s name to begin with. Her own father wasn’t particularly long or tall. He had taken the name because of the notorious enemy-scaring reputation that came with it. Her mother simply called him “Jim,” which Little Jane supposed was his real name.

  As for Bonnie Mary, stopping a scimitar’s stroke with her face fifteen years ago had not endowed her with the sort of conventional good looks one saw among the fashionable ladies of London, but as a youth she had indeed been quite a “bonny” or beautiful young woman, and charmed many a dashing young sailor, Little Jane’s father included.

  Little Jane, on the other hand, really was little: little in size, little in years, little in experience, but worst of all, little in the respect and estimation of the crew. She was twelve years old now, but still no one treated her like much of a real pirate. If only someone would give her a chance to prove herself, she thought, she’d show them what a true buccaneer she was! Too bad her parents were unreasonably disinclined to give her a taste of anything even remotely fun or dangerous. Whenever it even looked like they might come under attack, it was always “Down below, Little Jane, and don’t let the door hit you in the bum on the way in!”

  Despite her frustration with their too-cautious nature, she knew enough about her parents to realize that they had a few solid reasons for their hesitation. Her mother Bonnie Mary had not been young when she’d had her only daughter. Such was the capricious nature of life at sea that Little Jane was the only one of all Bonnie Mary’s pregnancies to survive the womb. To her parents, Little Jane’s survival was considered a precious miracle. She was a precious gift to be treasured and protected. It was just her misfortune that in their line of work, there was such a lot to protect her from.

  It is well-known that the environment an individual grows up in is what he or she will simply assume to be the norm until the rest of the world proves otherwise. Even if, for example, you were raised in a flying soup tureen by a gaggle of performing geese, it might take years for the realization to dawn that you might have been raised in a highly unusual fashion indeed. In fact, you would probably assume such a life was yawningly ordinary, at least until you were older and had tasted a little of world outside.

  By the same token, knowing little of life outside the Pieces, it was quite some time before Little Jane came to realize how truly singular her upbringing had been.

  In Little Jane’s world, work and play followed the passage of the seasons, with the temperate and unhurried nature of much of life in the Caribbean. Her family spent the warm, sunny months pirating and smuggling, and the cold, rainy season on Smuggler’s Bay refitting the ship.

  Upon their return, the captains of the Pieces of Eight would only ever bring a small part of their loot back to Smuggler’s Bay. They didn’t need much to live on in the chilly months of squall, and they were smart enough to know that any surplus of gold they brought with them to town would most likely end up squandered on trifles. In common with many pirates, Bright and Silver had an embarrassing weakness for shiny objects.

  As they held no truck with banks (they had robbed the ships of such institutions enough over the years to learn that much), they preferred to secret away the year’s ill-gotten gains in a carefully hidden spot before heading back to Smuggler’s Bay for the rainy season. Thus, all the loot that could be spared, all items that would not run, rot, fade, or fly away, were secured in a cave upon a tiny island with no name, some eighty-eight leagues distant from Jamaica.

  Something must now be written about a certain location that shall feature prominently in this tale, mainly because, while there are thousands of books on the history of Habana, thousands more on how to play the fiddle in ten easy steps and nearly thirty-three volumes written on edible lichen, the book you now hold in your hands is the only book in the world that can tell you anything about the “Nameless Isle.”

  There are many perfectly good reasons for this dearth of information. First of all, the Nameless Isle appears on no recognized naval charts. What’s more, the island bears no trace of even the most ancient human habitation. As far as anyone can tell, no person had ever set foot on it until the Pieces of Eight ran aground upon its shores in the midst of a tempest back in the days of Old Captain Thomas Bright, Bonnie Mary’s father.

  The island was so completely desolate that its only native animal was the Peculiar Orange Bird, a species of fowl of most unique appearance, possessing stubby wings and lurid plumes of orange feathers that bloom like saffron geysers from their bulbous tangerine heads.

  Their cries were always so loud that the sailors could hear them long before the Pieces of Eight was within a mile of the shore. The irritating birds yammered away to each other all the live-long day in cacophonous honks and shrieks. They had long ago lost the ability to fly any great height or distance, but could still manage, with much flapping, to visit the Pieces of Eight when anchored close enough to shore. It must have been worth the effort, for the birds came back every year and seemed to take pleasure in perching hidden on the spars among the sails to pelt the crew with evil smelling droppings.

  Mostly, though, they employed their stubby orange wings to shoo away the extremely large mosquitoes that also called the Nameless Isle home. After subsisting on a steady diet of orange bird blood for thousands of years, the mosquitoes took to human flesh with an enthusiasm unmatched by even their most tropical brethren, raising horrendously itchy bites like small anthills on all body parts left uncovered.

  Even so, why did the sailors fear this small island with greater terror than the Bermuda Triangle? It wasn’t the massive mosquitoes and their itchy (not to mention easily infected) bites. It wasn’t the peculiar orange birds that caused gut-searing stomach pains if cooked and eaten. It wasn’t the fact that those who ate the remarkable orange birds often lost not only two days’ worth of the past contents of their stomachs, but two days worth of the future contents, as well. It wasn’t the peculiarly smelly, not to mention peculiarly slippery, black and white droppings the birds deposited on every conceivable surfac
e. It wasn’t that such a surfeit of bird droppings caused so many near-fatal falls upon the guano-encrusted rocks. It wasn’t the fact that whenever the Pieces of Eight came to the island half the crew would fall ill with raging fevers, despite never having left the ship. No, the reason the sailors distrusted the island was the undeniable fact that it was just plum cursed.

  Some hands claimed it was by the spirits of drowned sailors. Still others muttered darkly that it was the fault of those peculiar orange birds. Sailors whispered that they had a sort of wicked intelligence in their glinting black eyes, yet none could swear proof of anything especially intelligent they had ever done, save defecate upon the head of Ned Ronk, the disagreeable boatswain of the Pieces.

  Others said the ghost of Old Captain Thomas Bright haunted the place, allowing no foot to tread upon his sacred isle except that of the daughter of his blood, Bonnie Mary, and her chosen consort, Long John. Even he, it was rumoured in hushed tones, had been forced to sacrifice a little more than the standard “pound of flesh” for the dubious honour of an unmolested visit on the Nameless Isle.

  Most frightening, however, were the mysterious cackling cries that rose at night from the deathly black cone of the extinct volcano at the island’s centre. It was rumoured that the hole led deep into the bowels of the Earth, straight into the centre of hell itself.

  But whether or not the island was truly a cursed entrance to hell, as some believed, the crew of the Pieces had taken a stand long ago. While they would consent to sail the ship within a mile of the island, all hands refused to go ashore. This clause in their naval contracts had been in effect for nigh on eighteen years. Though few members of the original crew remained, old sailors were always quick to inform new recruits of the island’s reputation, and so the legends grew unchecked.

  Characteristically undeterred by the crew’s lack of co-operation, Captains Bright and Silver travelled alone to their secret hiding place on the island every year, awkwardly trundling a big sea chest of coins and jewels between them. They always packed a large hamper of their own food to eat on the island when they went and they always returned to the Pieces of Eight after exactly two days, flushed from exertion, but none the worse for wear.

  Once the loot had been deposited, it was a short three-day sail to Smuggler’s Bay, where Little Jane and her family would again take up residence at the Spyglass Inn, spending the rainy winter refitting the ship and consuming conspicuous amounts of grog in the place the Silver family had called home since the days of Long John’s mother and father.

  The day-to-day running of the Spyglass fell to Little Jane’s cousin, Jonesy, a recent (by Smuggler’s Bay standards, anyway) import from Britain. He was a brawny man with a belly like a big sack of mead, forearms four times the span of Little Jane’s hands, and the misshapen nose of a professional pugilist. Although not a sailor, he reckoned he had lived by one sea or another his whole life, and had a repertoire of off-colour jokes to prove it. Although older now, he had spent a wonderfully feckless youth in the streets of London as a dock worker/musician/pickpocket/theatre bouncer, and despite having quitted the place some twenty years previous, had kept his East-End accent proudly intact.

  Jonesy and everyone else at the Spyglass always looked forward to the return of the Pieces of Eight and her crew.

  In the evenings, when all the work on the ship was done, Little Jane’s parents would slog home to the inn through the seasonal downpour to share fish and mugs of warm ale by the blaze of the fire.

  Some nights, after a nice hot supper, Bonnie Mary would pick Jonesy’s old battered fiddle off the mantelpiece. The bow would slide languidly across the strings at first, with a lazy, wandering sort of tune that gradually quickened to a frenzied staccato beat. Then up from the fiddle she would coax the liveliest of jigs, and soon the entire place would tremble with the stamping of feet, the clapping of hands, and the smacking of tabletops. The ruckus was deafening, but as the neighbours were always down at the Spyglass, too, there was no one to complain of the noise.

  Oftentimes, when they were not busy working, the gang at the Spyglass would sit by the fire, swapping tales of distant voyages and dangerous exploits. Although Jonesy, with his delightfully bawdy turns of phrase, was an accomplished master of the tale, the greatest storyteller to grace the inn had always been Little Jane’s father.

  When Long John told one of his yarns, a hush would fall upon the room, broken only by the squeak of the floorboards and scrape of chairs, as each patron leaned forward to better absorb each thrilling word. None of the stories were ever half as good when retold by another person and no story Long John told was ever the same twice.

  In this fashion, Little Jane’s world continued to unfold with a certain amount of predictability until the winter of her twelfth year. It was at that point that a simple comment, uttered from the idle lips of a thoughtless fabric seller, changed the course of her life forever.

  Chapter 2

  The Comment

  On the surface of it, “The Comment” was really a simple thing, but like a single pebble ripples an entire pool of still water, sometimes a comment made thoughtlessly in passing can have the most astonishing effect on a person’s perception of the world, altering it much more than the speaker ever meant it to.

  The rainy season blew fiercely through Smuggler’s Bay that year, wild and torrential. Little Jane strutted about the docks on errands for her parents, pleased with herself and the mighty ship she belonged to.

  At home in the Spyglass, all was warm and cozy. She lent Jonesy a hand when she could, waiting tables or cleaning up. There were many trinkets and pieces of bric-a-brac in the inn’s tavern room in need of dusting — souvenirs from distant lands, trophies of notorious provenance, and odd, elaborate crafts fashioned from bits of ship’s equipment by bored sailors during long months at sea. Each one had its own story and there was always something new to amuse her and attract her eye.

  It was a rare rainless day in Smuggler’s Bay, the first market day of the season, when Jonesy took Little Jane to the village to restock their supplies. With the Piece’s crew entirely occupied with shipboard repairs, Little Jane was the only one who could make the trip.

  The weekly market in Smuggler’s Bay was a colourful thing. Within an hour of sunrise, the sandy village square would be nearly full to bursting with craftspeople, musicians, and foreigners. Many of the stalls belonged to villagers Little Jane knew. They traded their fish, livestock, crops, spirits, and handicrafts to visiting sailors. Some foreign merchants were regulars to the market, too, and Little Jane recalled their wares from years before. There were always a few new stalls at the market for Little Jane to look forward to, some featuring peddlers of exotic goods from places so distant they were unfamiliar even to a well-travelled young salt like her.

  As Little Jane bounced along in Jonesy’s rickety cart, she held the two copper coins her mother had given her tightly in her hand, dreaming of purchases yet to be made. Before long the smell of food was drawing the donkeys by the nose and Little Jane knew they had arrived.

  Little Jane left Jonesy absorbed in some tedious haggling over a cask of wine and scampered off on her own to see what she could buy with her two precious coppers.

  She strolled by a man selling keepsake boxes made from shells and past a group of girls peddling fish-bladder perfume. She chatted with the old parrot woman, danced with the drummers, had her palm read by the wizened tarot card master, and sampled some barbequed squid tentacles before discovering a new stall filled with bright fabrics, fluttering restlessly in the breeze. Little Jane wandered among the curtains of blowing cloth. Woven through the most expensive samples of the material were threads of silver and gold that gleamed like rays of pure sunshine. She held the shimmering material up against her cheek, entranced.

  Suddenly, a large hand clamped onto her wrist and yanked her forward.

  “Hey-yah! Watcher’ doing there?” growled its owner.

  “Just looking at your wares,” said Little Ja
ne, extricating herself from the man’s hard grasp. “I … I didn’t know you ain’t supposed to touch ’em.”

  The fabric seller scoffed, showing just what he thought of that claim. “Well, you just skedaddle, girl! Likes of you kin’t afford ’em, anyhows. Can’t have no urchins about driving off legitimate business! Now, scat!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Little Jane paused, confused, wondering if she’d heard correctly.

  “I said, get outta here, ’fore I call the magistrate on ya for stealin’,” sneered the man.

  Her honour inflamed now, Little Jane drew herself up to her full height. When she spoke, it was in imitation of how she had once heard her mother talk to a truculent American naval captain.

  “Do you know to whom you speak, sir?” she demanded, blasting the impudent gentleman with such a show of contempt she wondered that he didn’t shrink into the very folds of the fabrics he sold.

  The merchant remained unfazed. “A girl in pants,” he said, smirking. “And dirty, patched pants at that.”

  “I,” said Little Jane, “am a crewmember of the Pieces of Eight. The most frightsome ship to sail the seven seas! The buccaneer scourge of the Royal Navy! The piratical colossus of the ocean tides! The Minotaur in the maze of the naval brigade! The jewel in the belly of the titan of—”

  An odd sound made Little Jane stop in the middle of her speech. She listened, with growing confusion. She opened her mouth to speak again, but the sound continued.

  Now, Little Jane had heard many unpleasant sounds in her life, but neither the crack of a beam of wood as it connected with the head of a hapless ship’s carpenter, nor the shriek of a purser’s mate when a parcel of gunpowder exploded in his hand, had so much power over her as the sound she now heard.

  Can you guess, gentle reader, what the sound was?

  It was laughter. The fabric seller was laughing and he was he was laughing at her.