The Princess Beard

by Kevin Hearne

  The object in question was mostly see-through and slightly dripping with ectoplasm, so she merely nodded and made an appreciative ooh noise.

  “Failed a PSAT, I assume,” the ghost said knowingly, awkwardly squatting on a box nearby as if trying to sit and somewhat failing, as he was incorporeal. “I remember when I failed my first PSAT. I can still taste the grog in my dunce cap.”

  “S’a goat horn. S’name is Mr. Goatly,” she corrected, taking a deep swig.

  “No, my dear, I’m afraid that’s a dunce cap. Most captains learn to drink deeply from it before they ever earn their hat.”

  Morgan held out the black cone, saw the truth of it, and nearly dashed the dratted thing against the wall. But…grog. So she kept sipping.

  “Just wish I knew what I was s’posed to do wif my life,” she said, half to herself and half to Mr. Goatly the Dunce Cap and half to the ghost pirate politely picking his nose as he watched her, and she was so deep in her cups that the math made sense. “Didn’t wanna marry the Taynt. I mean the Vas Deference. Who’s a lord. Or somethin’. Was cursed ’n’ hairy ’n’ woke up ’n’ left. An’ now I’m a pirate. Sailor. Thought I was meant to be a captain. But Arrrrgh!”

  The ghost startled and stared at her with concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “S’the grade I got. Arrrgh. Nowhere close to a Yarrr, even if they sound about the same right now. Arrrghyarrr. Yarrrrgh. But if I’m not s’posed to be a pirate, what’m I supposed to be? Prolly not even good enough to save the otters.”

  Davey stood and paced a bit, but with far more gravitas than Skullbeard had ever shown. Morgan prepared herself for a lecture on navigation or maybe a whine about the number of spoons in the mess, which Skullbeard had found offensive; as Skullbeard was the first ghost she’d ever met, Morgan assumed they were all boring and pedantic. Instead, this ghost tried to put a hand on her shoulder and make eye contact for an uncomfortable period of time.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m giving you a Look of Great Import,” Davey explained.

  “Well, blink or somefin. It’s uncomfy.”

  He drew back. “Look here, my lady. Just because you fail at something doesn’t mean it’s not your destiny. Do you think Pangolini, the great violinist, played perfectly the first time he tried? Do you think Pickleangelo picked up his first paintbrush and created a masterpiece?”

  “…Yes?” she said, knowing she had a 50 percent chance of being right.

  “No. Everyone has to wallow in failure for a while. And if you keep at it, you get better. That’s what makes great people great. Not that they were born with great talent, but that they stuck with it, kept on with it, even when it got hard.” He leaned in so close that Morgan could smell the ghost of failure grog. “I myself was not so great a ghost when I first began. If I’d properly scared off Skullbeard when he was alive, my afterlife would’ve been far more pleasant.”

  “But were you a good captain?” she asked.

  He raised a ghostly eyebrow. “Well, I’m dead. So probably not. But I was an amazing mime before I lost my hand.”

  Davey looked like he was about to walk back through the wall, but Morgan suddenly didn’t want to be alone.

  “Wait! Mr. Beardbones! Skulllocket! Davey!”

  The ghost turned around, head cocked. “Yes?”

  “Lessay I stick with captaining. How do I know that’s what I’m s’posed to do?”

  He did the unblinky stare thing again. “There is no ‘s’posed.’ You simply pick something to do. And then you do it until you’re not terrible at it. That’s the secret. But if you’re looking for outside confirmation, you might try visiting the Oracle of Pellanus on Mack Enchiis. Although I have not visited the oracle myself, my predecessor Bluebones did.”

  “And did th’oracle help him?”

  Davey shrugged. “I don’t know. He died before I could ask. That’s how I got the ship.”

  The ghost disappeared, and Morgan tried to put down the dunce cap but couldn’t figure out how to do so without spilling grog. She felt her will coalesce and at least knew her next step: She would go to see this oracle and find out what the future held. And she wouldn’t die doing it either. If there was one thing she knew she didn’t want to do, it was to be yet another annoying ghost on The Pearly Clam. Holding Mr. Goatly, she did her best to sloshily stomp up to Captain Luc’s quarters.

  “I want to see the oracle on Mack Enchiis,” she said with true captainlike command.

  But then she ruined it by exiting in a hurry to yark over the rail.

  * * *

  And that was how, one week later, Morgan came to be standing alone on a black-sand beach, her hands blistered and dry from rowing the smaller dinghy out to the least popular part of the island called Mack Enchiis. It wasn’t going to be an easy trip, Luc had told her—and which maybe Davey Bones should’ve mentioned while giving her a speech she’d mostly forgotten but was sure she’d taken to heart.

  First, she had to climb the Cliffs of Inanity, the bottom portions of which looked stark and forbidding until she put her hands on the frayed rope and realized it was super easy to climb, all while adorable puffins flew and danced and sang around her. The tough part was not laughing so hard at their antics that she fell off the rope. Once she’d pulled herself up onto the plateau above, a sign told her to walk the labyrinth, but it was actually one of those labyrinths made of small stones and was very easily traversed. Lastly, she had to answer the Questions Three to earn the right to cross a bridge, but as it turned out, the questions posed to her by a disconsolate guard were pretty simple.

  “What’s your game?”

  “Dungeons and Flagons.”

  “If you could pick any nose, whose would you pick?”

  “Mine.”

  “Do you have any hardtack? Because I don’t get paid good for guarding this bridge, you know.”

  “Sure.”

  Morgan was once again glad that she always carried extra snacks. After that, it was a short jaunt to the crumbling stone temple. As she walked up the path, she wondered if this was how Vic had felt, approaching his Temple of Woom; perhaps, like Dinny’s, this was some sort of franchise? She was excited that she might get answers but terrified that they might not be things she wanted to hear. It reminded her of how she’d felt right before opening the PSAT, which was a bad sign. But she was committed, and she would walk through that grand door and discover her future even if it destroyed her.

  As she stepped inside, she felt as if she were crossing over from one life into another, as if the next stage might begin within, when she learned her destiny. The soaring ceiling was painted with visions of Pellanus and the myths, and torches burned in sconces, and a bored guy in his twenties sat at a desk.

  Morgan did a double take, but that’s exactly what she saw. No mystical pool, no fountain, no maidens in long white dresses, no old blind seer with one of those stick things. Not even a knitting chinchilla.

  Just an exceedingly normal guy at a desk.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, looking up as if she’d interrupted something desperately important, even though he was clearly doing a word search in which he had found exactly one word.

  “I am but a humble pilgrim seeking the wisdom of the oracle,” she said in the proper sort of mystical, committed tone.

  “Okaaaay,” the guy said, still staring at her.

  A few beats passed before she asked, “So how should I go about doing that?”

  “Just ask me whatever.”

  Morgan looked around for someone else, for some trick—or at least for a visitor’s chair, as she’d gone through quite a lot to get here and was excited about the prospect of sitting. But the temple was clearly empty other than the guy at the desk, who was now tapping his finger in a pointed sort of way.

  “Uh, okay.” She took a deep breath. “What a
m I supposed to do with my life?”

  The guy was now doing that half-squint thing that suggested she was an idiot and he was already bored.

  “How the Pell should I know?” he asked.

  “Isn’t that what oracles do? Tell you the future?”

  The guy chuckled and leaned back in his chair, putting his dirty bare feet up on the desk. “Oh, sorry, no. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m a boracle. And I can only tell you your past.”

  “How,” Morgan asked, trying not to shout, “is that helpful to anyone ever?” But seeing his sneer, the shouting happened anyway. “I was there for my past. I lived it!”

  “But you didn’t understand it. You clearly know nothing about this sort of thing.”

  “Clearly.”

  For a long moment, they just stared at each other, arms crossed.

  “I can see you doubt my powers,” the guy said, nose in the air.

  “I’m not seeing you exhibit any powers,” Morgan shot back.

  The guy put his feet down and shifted forward in his chair, steepling his hands on the desk. “Oh, because I’m here to show off for you? Because, what, I’m like an animal in the zoo? Because I’m some dancing monkey?”

  “Because I guess this is your job, and you, I don’t know, want to do it? Or help people? I mean, I could accept you being cryptic. I was expecting cryptic. But rude is uncalled for. Forget it.”

  “Forget what? I never offered you anything. You clearly have no interest in my work.”

  “What work? A word search? In which you’ve only circled boobs? What a phony.”

  As Morgan stomped off toward the door, infuriated with him and with herself for thinking she was going to have some life-changing experience based on a ghost’s recommendation based on his dead boss’s probable cause of death, she heard the man’s chair scoot back.

  “Dueling curses,” he said.

  Morgan turned around slowly. “What did you say?”

  She’d expected the man’s eyes to be all white, or for a vapor to surround him and lift him into the air, or for there to be some sign of the gods’ interference and more-mystical qualities, or at least the creative and humane use of theatrical snakes. But he was just standing behind his desk, leaning aggressively forward on it like he was daring her to ask for a manager, and there was a ketchup stain on his jerkin.

  “Dueling curses,” he said with a grin of triumph. “The most recent curse put you to sleep. But the first curse? That one set you on the path to being a pirate. The sleeping curse was trying to stop the first curse.”

  The world tilted under Morgan’s feet, or perhaps she wasn’t dealing with the elevation well. All of this information was news to her.

  “Please tell me more,” she said.

  The man sat down and interlaced his fingers. “Oh, so now you’re interested in what I have to say?”

  “I was always interested! But this is the first thing you’ve actually said that was about me.”

  “Well, you haven’t even asked the first thing about me,” he snapped. “My name is Roy, in case you were wondering; I’m a pretty good cook, and my favorite color is evergreen.”

  Morgan’s heart was beating like crazy, but she was beginning to see how things were going to go, so she put on her most polite, patient smile. “Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Roy. What you just said was really interesting. All I knew was that someone had cursed me to sleep. Is there any way you would use your impressive skills to tell me more about that other curse, the first one?”

  Roy preened a little, pleased at her flattery. “What I’m seeing indicates that the first curse was laid at your baby shower. Your mom’s ex, some Dark Lord wizard dude named Timmy Fitzherbert, was angry that he wasn’t invited to the shower, so he showed up and cursed you. Said that you’d grow up to be a pirate, thereby destroying your father’s shipping investments and the chance of a political alliance with some wealthy nobleman in Taynt. And then the second curse was laid to stop the piracy curse.”

  Morgan finally found her breath to answer. “No. That can’t be right. I was there when the second curse was cast. It was because Grinda the Sand Witch was mad that she wasn’t invited to my sixteenth birthday party.”

  Roy sighed and rested his chin in one hand. “Witch, please. Grinda was protecting her own shipping interests and trying to maintain political equilibrium. A bit of advice: Never trust a sand witch.” And then, when Morgan stood there agape, he added, “And maybe don’t have parties anymore. They don’t seem to end well for you. Not that the baby-shower thing was your fault, but still.”

  “So you’re saying…I was cursed to be a pirate.”

  “Yep.”

  “And the second curse was to stop that, but it’s broken. So the only curse I’m currently under is the pirate one.”

  “Supposedly.”

  Morgan’s head was spinning. All this time, she’d thought becoming a pirate was her first original venture, the very first path she’d chosen for herself. Learning that it was the very path she was cursed to tread was making her brain short-circuit. She’d come here with the hope that the oracle would tell her that she would eventually become a world-class pirate captain, that she’d rule the seas and ensure the safety of every mustelid in Pell. But instead, the future was still nebulous, and the past was more tangled than ever. If she was doomed to be a pirate, why had she failed the stupid PSAT? How could she be bad at the very thing she was cursed to do?

  Or…wait. Maybe she was meant to be a pirate.

  Not a captain. Not a great pirate. Not anyone special. Just a regular ol’ deck swabber.

  Maybe she was supposed to grow old and take over for Milly Dread, doling out grog and hardtack and singing shanties about the supple glutes of dwarvelish tampoonists. Maybe she was destined to take the PSAT again and again and fail every time.

  “Thanks,” she said, but it was an empty word.

  Dropping her gold piece into the bowl on Roy’s desk marked PUT GOLD PIECE HERE WHEN DONE; NO CHANGE OFFERED; NONE OF THAT HAVE-A-FICKEL-LEAVE-A-FICKEL SHITE, she headed back out into the balmy afternoon, feeling empty and raw.

  “Wait!” Roy called behind her. “One more thing!”

  Morgan turned around in the doorway, holding in her tears. “What?”

  “I thought you should know that while you were asleep, there was a dead farm boy rolled up in a tapestry in your closet. Decomposing and getting seriously gross.”

  Morgan stared at Roy. “How is that helpful?”

  “Didn’t say it was helpful. Just said I knew your past and I thought that bit was interesting, since that farm boy’s death eventually led to King Gustave taking the throne. Also, you’re looking a bit rashy. Good luck!”

  She didn’t remember much about the walk back to the ship. Tempest touched her shoulder, and Vic offered her a cake, which she refused, and Al called down a welcome, which she didn’t return. And then she curled up in her bunk with Otto and cried.

  Alobartalus didn’t want to come down from the crow’s nest. Not that he was making much progress on his project, but he liked it up there. The sway of it, the sparkling ribbons of sun-kissed foam on the sea winking at him, the creak of boards and the clap and whip of sails and ropes—yeah, no, he actually loved it up there. It was like being in the Proudwood Lighthouse without the tourists or the passive-aggressive memos from his uncle, with the added bonus of outstanding tea and cakes from Vic. But he did need to come down and use the part of the poop deck set aside for the actual deed.

  And as he did, his elf butt dangling over the sea, he circled back again to the perplexing problem of the Sn’archivist, who was supposedly inspired by Pellanus to write about butts like his, for no discernible reason. Unless Al was to believe the Sn’archivist when he said that elf butts and otter balls would somehow save them in their hour of need.

  But Al had so many proble
ms envisioning how this could be true and wondered if it was a failure of his imagination. Supposing that their hour of need would come at Mack Guyverr—a working theory, since that was where there would presumably be otter balls because so many otters were being horribly turned into EATUM for Dinny’s—how in Pell would elf butts figure in their salvation? And was the plural significant? Was Al’s own butt to be counted among the elf butts of note in this scenario? What if Al was the only elf there? Did that mean Pellanus had inspired a prophecy referring to both of his cheeks as an individual butt, thereby making up the requisite minimum of two for a plural? Was Al’s butt, in fact, a Butt of Destiny? A Butt of Action? He felt it was inadequate, if so. And if there were going to be additional elf butts on site at Mack Guyverr, why were the owners of said butts involved in such a shady operation as the processing of otter meat for consumption in greasy diners?

  And then he had to doublethink his doubt. His shipmates, after all, were proof that strange destinies happened all the time. Luc was a one-eyed parrot who had somehow become one of the most feared pirate captains of the western seas. Vic was an emotionally scarred swoleboy who could conjure the most exquisite tea and cake out of nothing. Tempest was a dryad learning how to be a lawyer, and Morgan was a proper lady learning how to be a pirate and navigate the hairy rules of beard care. They were all extraordinary beings behaving contrary to expectations. So why, when the moment came, could not his butt perform an extraordinary act of heroism?

  He supposed it just didn’t feel possible. Al flexed one cheek and then the other experimentally to see if they felt heroic. They did not, but perhaps they would with training. He should practice: one and two, one and two, one and two.

  “Hey, Al, could you cut that out? It’s really distracting.” Al swung his head around and saw Feng staring at him from near the wheel, but without the captain perched on his shoulder. “Not that I object to the maintenance of a firm backside, you understand. I encourage it! But maybe you could do that where the crew won’t see it and forget what they’re supposed to be doing.”