That life was a lie. One that had spanned more than seventeen years. Ebba didn’t know who she was anymore.
“Morena,” a soft voice called from the open door. The blubbering woman. Maybe glaring at her wasn’t fair. Maybe. If anything, the woman was the innocent party in this whole mess. Though she should be sorry for crying so much.
“Ahoy,” Ebba said, and winced. Not a pirate. “Moor-renna,” she tried and shook her head. Didn’t sound a thing like how the woman said it. Ebba’s lips didn’t recognize the shape of the sounds. Neither the mold of pirate nor tribesperson seemed to fit. The thought made her want to join the women in shedding a few tears.
“You are sad,” the woman stated.
“I ain’t talkin about heart stuff with ye,” Ebba said shortly. “Ye may know me, but I ain’t seen ye in my life.”
Shite, was the woman going to cry again? Her shoulders sagged as though with a heavy burden. “I understand this. In time, maybe.”
That would’ve been a perfect point for the conversation to end.
Ebba would stay in here until someone sorted everything out. The woman stared at her in fascination, from the brown bandana on Ebba’s forehead, to the stains on her white slops, and the beads in her dreads. Her beads. A thickness in her throat threatened to choke Ebba. She reached up to touch them, running her fingertips over the wooden adornments. What did her beads mean now? Nothing?
“We put beads in our hair here.” The woman broke the silence. She fished around in her own gray-streaked hair and drew a strand forward. Sure enough, a crude wooden bead sat on the end.
That wasn’t what Ebba wanted to hear right now. “What happened back then?” she asked, sniffing hard. “When they took me.”
The woman launched into the re-telling immediately, making Ebba wonder if this was her real purpose in coming.
“They attacked in the night, tamahine. The pirates. Six of them stole into our tribal lands and slit any throats they happened across. They waited until I went to relieve myself and stole into our whanau.” She glanced at Ebba and edged farther into the hut. “I returned to find you gone. I rose the alarm, and we chased the pirates to the shore to retrieve you.” Heartbreak was in the woman’s eyes. “We were too late though. Or so we thought.”
It was a warm day, but Ebba felt ice cold at the simple story. Her fathers . . . callously slitting throats? Stealing babies away from their mothers? She knew terrible things had happened to them when they sailed under Mutinous Cannon, but not that they’d done terrible things. Not like this.
“The next day a messenger arrived. He told us our beautiful baby girl would be returned to us unharmed, as long as we delivered our most sacred object into their hands.”
She couldn’t mean— “The purgium?” Ebba asked.
The woman jolted. “How do you know of this?”
Ebba shrugged. “Cosmo has a black sickness in his arm that needs fixin’, or he’ll die. I need the purgium to save him.”
I. . . Such a simple word, but one she rarely uttered. Yesterday she would have started that sentence with we. The crew was a constant consideration. They’d always done everything together as one unit. She felt broken and lost, like the floor had given way without warning and she was in an endless fall.
The woman’s face closed down. “That is not possible, I’m afraid. The object is not to be used in this way.”
Yeah, yeah. Ebba had just found out she didn’t belong anywhere. Anything seemed possible and insignificant after that news—except for Cosmo’s life. That was what she should focus on. Cosmo mattered. He was her friend. Her crew were sodding liars. But that didn’t change the importance of the mission they’d set out to achieve. Cosmo was dying. Ebba couldn’t let that happen, or she’d truly be alone. Not just mostly alone. “What happened next?”
The woman hovered between the clear wish to prod Ebba more about the purgium, and the urge to blab out the story. She chose the story, but seemed to regret the decision as she began again. “We . . . could not give up the whakaora te wairua, the purgium as you call it. It is sacred to our people, greater than any single life. Or all of our lives. Not even for the life of my precious daughter.”
Nice to know.
“—It did not matter, either way,” the woman hurried on. “We waited on the shores on the seventh day, waiting for the pirates to return, prepared to attack them and regain you. They never came.” She all but spat the words. “They did not give us a chance. We did not get to fight to win you back. The six murderers did not even give us this respect.” She was crying again.
Ebba sat still as the woman neared and reached for her, not quite touching her. “You disappeared from our home nearly eighteen years ago, and yesterday the Earth Mother returned you to me. I will thank her daily for the rest of my life.”
Whoa. “I ain’t stayin’. Nice to meet ye and all, but . . . Nay.”
“You don’t belong out there. This is your home.”
“Tellin’ me what is and isn’t is a very bad idea right now,” Ebba said darkly.
The woman broke into a smile. “I see that you have your father’s temper. I have not even given you my name. I am named Aroha. In your language, it means love.”
Of course it did.
“My name be Ebba-Viva Wobbles Fairisles. Just call me Ebba.”
Aroha blanched, but recovered in a blink. “Ebba, my heart is glad to meet you.”
Ebba replied with a non-committal hum. She felt sorry for the lady, but not sorry enough to do anything she didn’t want to do.
“You must bathe and eat.”
Ebba wrinkled her nose. “Nay, I be good like this.”
“The people will see their princess in the proper way. Come now. I will show you where we do these things.” When she saw Ebba hadn’t budged an inch, she added, “Then I will take you to see your friends.”
She washed in a river that nearly froze her toes off. The tribeswomen eyed her beaded hair and lean-muscled frame. Clearly, there was no such thing as privacy here. A child came over to her and launched into gibberish. Ebba scowled at the thing, and it scuttled off to its mother.
Once she’d finished washing, Ebba waded back through the knee-deep water to the stony riverbank. Aroha handed her a drying cloth and gestured to a beaded skirt atop a flat rock.
“Yer tree be barkin’,” Ebba said derisively. “I ain’t wearin’ that. Where be my things?”
“Burning,” her mother said.
Heat smoldered its way up her torso. “Ye’ll be givin’ my things back, intact-like, right now.”
“We have your weapons in safekeeping, but everything else is gone.”
Thank the mighty seas she’d taken the dynami out of her jerkin and hidden it under her bedroll before coming to wash. “Ye’re pissin’ on my last ember. Those be my clothes. No one touches my clothes.” At least her betraying scum of fathers understood that much.
“I didn’t understand what they meant to you.” Her mother placed a hand over her heart.
Ebba rolled her eyes. “Ye didn’t bother to ask, did ye? I ain’t wearin’ that beaded thing.”
Aroha hissed and gripped her arm. “This is our culture. You are in my house; show some respect.”
Ebba shrugged and trudged back up the path toward the huts, butt naked. “Looks like I’m wearin’ this then.”
The surrounding tribeswomen exclaimed and gasped, which struck Ebba as odd. “Ye walk around half-clothed and yer judgin’ me for bein’ full-naked? That ain’t sound logic, mateys.” Ebba smirked at a strangled noise from Aroha.
The woman ran up beside her. “You are a single woman.” She eyed her. “At least I assume you are. The two men who came with you?”
Why did her single status change a damn thing? And they thought she was with Cosmo or Jagger? Ebba scoffed at the thought despite a strange stirring in her stomach. “Are ye tryin’ to make me chunder? I ain’t female anyhow, I be a p. . . .” She trailed off with a frown.
With a soft sigh, Aroh
a said, “We do not walk about naked in this tribe.”
Ebba cast her a doubtful look. Had she looked around lately?
“Certain people do not walk about naked,” she added.
“That be unfair.”
“I will bend with you,” Aroha said, jaw clenched. She spoke in a rush to a young girl who was all legs and not yet sure how to make them work. The girl wobbled off and returned minutes later with a soft crème tunic. The tunic had thin straps and looked like it would fall to just below Ebba’s knees.
“A night dress,” her mother said.
“Aye?” Ebba wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t a fool. Females wore dresses. She’d had to wear them at the brothel. But this night dress seemed closer to normal clothes than anything else she’d seen here, and didn’t include a corset.
“I will give you this, if you wear the beaded skirt, feather cape and greenstone hair sticks I have for you.”
They haggled until finally. . . .
“Fine.” Aroha snapped. No small amount of annoyance streaked her green eyes.
Grinning, Ebba snatched the night dress and threw it over her head. It hugged her body, not tight like her jerkin, but tighter than her usual billowing tunic. She’d been right; the garment followed the curve of her leg to just below the knee. She might be able to run in the thing. Ebba took the beaded skirt with a scowl from Aroha and, after several fumbling attempts, stood still as the woman fastened it for her with deft hands and sparkling eyes that told Ebba the woman may begin to blubber again. Gesturing for Ebba to bow her head, Aroha twisted her dreads into a knot high on her head and secured them there with strips of cloth. At the front of the knot she jabbed in two greenstone sticks, and three feathers plucked from the feather cape.
That was the compromise; no way in Davy Jones’ Locker was Ebba wearing a feather cape.
Ebba felt like a decorated chicken on Governor Da Ville’s table by the end. Without responding to the approving murmurs around her, she stomped back into the village before remembering she didn’t know where to go. Twisting, she cast the woman—who followed in a leisurely stroll—an inquisitive glance. Aroha smiled, pointing to the communal hut.
Great. Just where Ebba wanted to be. She might’ve turned and walked back to Felicity at that point but for spying some russet curls through the wide doorway.
Her real-parent-thing caught up to her, and Ebba forced out the question that had been burning within her since waking. “Where are they? My crew?”
“They are in our prison huts,” Aroha answered after a brief pause. “Do you wish to see them?”
Ebba released a shaking breath and hardened her heart. “Nay. I don’t.”
Aroha smiled. “I am glad you see them clearly after what they have done. I had worried. . . .” She trailed off. “But never mind. It is all fixed now. The Earth Mother always has reasons for doing the things she does. I know this in my heart, and I have seen it with my eyes.”
“Uh-huh. That’s great, ah-roar-ha,” Ebba entered the communal hut and immediately adjusted course to intercept Cosmo.
“Mistress Fairisles,” he said in relief, standing to greet her.
“Cosmo,” she sniffled, coming half undone at the sight of him. “It be good to see ye. How’re ye goin’ with yer arm? How are ye farin’? Where did ye sleep?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking how you are?”
She blinked furiously. “Nay, please don’t be doin’ that. I want to talk about ye instead.”
He took her hand and wrapped it under his arm, drawing her to walk around the room with him. “I won’t do that, then. But I shall tell you of what has happened to me since leaving Felicity.”
Was that a better alternative?
He spoke. “We were only an hour into the walk on the second day when a large number of warriors from the Pai Marie tribe surrounded us. I could tell your fathers weren’t reacting in the way they should. But I never saw that coming. A princess,” Cosmo said. He seemed almost gleeful about it. His face fell at her stricken expression. “I’m sorry for the way you found out. They should have told you long ago.”
She nodded, blinking furiously again.
“I forget, we are not meant to be speaking of these things.” Cosmo amended. “Can I tell you how beautiful you are with your hair that way?”
“The cryin’ woman tried to get me to wear a feather cape. Can ye believe it?”
Cosmo chuckled, amber eyes gaining a hint of gold. Ebba flashed him a faltering smile.
“And you compromised on this, I gather?” he asked. His eyes ran over the length of her, a pleasant light in his eye.
“Didn’t think ye’d leave yer bedroll for days,” a snide voice said.
She turned to Jagger. It occurred to her to be embarrassed that he’d watched her screaming and crying last night, but, honestly, Ebba felt wrung out. “If it’d been up to me, I mightn’t have left the hut. The cryin’ woman said I had to wash and eat afore I could see anyone.” Yesterday, she’d found out who her real parents were, but Jagger found out his friends and family were dead. Yet he didn’t seem any different from his normal watchful self. That didn’t mean he was okay though. Her . . . ex-crew had never voiced their hurts either.
“I’m sorry about yer family,” she said softly.
“Are ye really? Or are ye just sorry ye found out the truth o’ yers?”
Bitterness tinged his words. No wonder. To him, it must look like she’d just gained everything he’d just lost.
“Aye,” she replied simply. “I am.”
His silver eyes searched hers, and she held still. But as the rest of Jagger stole her attention, her mouth fell slightly ajar. Jagger had wholeheartedly embraced the tribal wear. More bronzed skin showed than not. She could glimpse some of his muscled thighs through the curtain of beads on his skirt. His hair was clean and soft for the first time since she’d seen him; the flaxen color hadn’t changed with less dirt, however. Ebba inhaled sharply. “Why are ye wearin’ a feather cape?” she asked, a little unsure of what to say.
“Because that be my station. Why aren’t ye?” he countered.
She opened her mouth to say, ‘Because I’m a pirate,’ but the words stuck in her throat.
“Ebba,” the chief boomed from the room’s center.
What now? The others followed in her wake as she sauntered across the room, hooking her thumbs in the top of her beaded skirt. “What?”
“You will address me as chief or father.”
She snorted. “Chief it is.” Something flickered in the older man’s eyes, but he, too, seemed to remember they hadn’t liked each other before the daughter anchor was dropped.
“In two days we, the Pai Marie tribe, will welcome you into our fold as one of our own. We extend this invitation to you, daughter. The child we thought lost forever. If you accept, you will always have family. You will always have our loyalty.”
Did he sense how the words drove into her heart like sharpened fish bones? Aye, if she had to wager a bet. He appeared a wily old bugger. “Aye,” Ebba drawled. “I’ll think on that.”
The chief’s eyes flashed, and the lines on his dark-brown face deepened.
Cosmo stepped forward. “She thanks you for the honor.”
“It is no honor, white man. It is her birthright.”
Cosmo’s face colored, and Ebba stepped closer to him. He was sweating. Accompanied with the pallor of his skin, she couldn’t mistake his reaction for fear. “Are ye all right?” she whispered.
“Your friend is sick,” the chief observed.
“Aye. It’s why we— It’s why I came here. Show them, Cosmo.”
The russet-haired Exosian gave her a flat look that clearly stated he didn’t support the idea.
Jagger smirked. “Not just a sickness. More of a certainty, I’d say.”
“Sod off, Jagger,” Ebba ground out. Now that Cosmo was all she had left, she found herself fiercely protective of him.
Jagger bowed low. “As ye wish, stolen princess.”
“Why? It’s what she be,” the pirate challenged. “I can see how that’s sumpin’ ye’d have trouble with, though. Acceptin’ who ye are.”
“And you?” Cosmo asked. “Are you a pirate or a tribesperson? Or do you play on both sides depending on which is more beneficial to yourself at the time?”
“Ye would know, prince slave, ye would know.” Laughing, the pirate strolled away, turning the feathered cape of his back to them.
The chief stood, dark brown eyes following Jagger away.
Aroha arrived with food from the opposite side. She handed a plate to Ebba and walked to the chief, rising on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Like yesterday, he lit up like a beacon. She beamed back at him.
Cosmo undid the laces of his tunic—he’d been allowed to keep his clothes—and exposed his left shoulder. Aroha crossed over to inspect the exposed skin. She took one look at the black mark and erupted into a torrent of shouts, flicking her hands before her as though warding off a bad smell.
“And I thought Sally looked bad when she danced,” Ebba said, earning a nervous smile from Cosmo.
“That be why we need the purgium,” Ebba said to Aroha when she settled down with the hand-waving.
All air sucked from the room, giving Ebba the subtle feeling she should have kept those last words to herself.
“What?” the chief roared.
Ebba covered her ears. “Sink me, tone it down. We’ll just borrow the purgium smart-like and then give it back. Just to save Cosmo from the taint.” She gestured to Cosmo’s shoulder and gasped as the two tendrils by his collarbone caught her eye. They’d doubled in size since Verity worked her voodoo on him. She ripped down his tunic. The lines were back to his elbow! “Cosmo,” she said, glancing up at him. “How did it happen so quickly?”
Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Stolen Princess (Pirates of Felicity Book 2) Page 15
