How to Break an Evil Curse

by Laura Morrison

  The door was unlocked once more, and they both looked up to see their father being pushed into the room, balancing stick still in hand.

  About a minute later, they were then joined by their mother, who, not knowing her children were in the room already, yelled some inappropriate things at the pirates on the other side of the door before turning, seeing she had an audience, and joining her family in a short, awkward silence. The kids burst out laughing, she said it wasn’t funny, and then they were all silenced by a mighty crack of thunder which sounded as though it must be right above them. Seconds later, shouts of alarm and much scurrying from the deck suggested that something on the ship was amiss; a moment later, the mast cracking at its base and crashing into Captain’s quarters, bringing down the ceiling all around them and covering them in splintered wood, debris, and rain confirmed their suspicions that all was not well.

  When the dust settled and they’d all stopped panicking enough to take stock of the situation, it was discovered that their father, Bernard, had a cut across his forehead, Corrine had a pretty deep sliver in her left hand, their mom was okay if a bit flustered, and a bit of the harpsichord was smashed.

  Warren was pinned to the floor under a fallen ceiling crossbeam. His right arm appeared to be broken. Bernard and Emily stayed with him while Corrine scurried off to ask for help, but no matter how much she begged the pirates, they said they couldn’t help yet. They were all so busy with their own injuries or with discerning whether to save or abandon ship that they weren’t available to help move the beam, which was too heavy for the family to deal with on their own.

  “Get me the doctor!” Warren hollered, staring at his arm with horror. The pirates didn’t really have a doctor per se on board, more of a guy who had figured out through trial and error how to fix typical pirate injuries like stab and slash wounds and minor bone breaks. The pseudo-doctor was named Brock, and the Captain had christened him the doctor of the ship mainly because he thought it would be cool to be able to call him Doc Brock.

  “Honey,” said Emily as she sat beside her son, worriedly patting his arm. “That man is a quack. You don’t want his help.”

  “But we have to do something, Ma!”

  “Sweetheart, remember we’re not in the middle of the ocean. We are in the Bay of Fritillary. Your father can take a lifeboat to shore once the water has calmed down a bit and he can find a real doctor.”

  “I want help NOW!” he yelled, wild-eyed and panicky.

  Pacing around the rubble, Bernard said, “I don’t think we’re supposed to move the beam–I think it could make things worse. Son, we can’t help you–we have to get a real doctor.”

  “Dad, sit down,” Corrine said from her perch on some rubble nearby. “You’re hyperventilating. Put your head between your knees and take deep breaths.”

  He nodded and did as she suggested, then she said, “Guys, seriously, let’s stay calm. I think dad is right: we don’t want to move that beam until a doctor is here. And I think we are all in agreement that Doc Brock should be kept far away from Warren.”

  Her mother nodded at her, her father (with his head still between his knees) said some muffled thing that didn’t sound argumentative, and Warren looked at her beseechingly, hoping she was about to come up with some fabulous plan.

  “I think Mom’s right—the only thing to do is row to shore as soon as we’re able and get a real doctor. Dad and I can go, and, Mom, you stay here with Warren and make sure Doc Brock doesn’t come near him.”

  Bernard, Emily, and Corrine all concluded this was their only alternative. Warren was in shock at this point, so no one took it personally when he yelled at them and told them what a stupid idea it was. To the backdrop of Warren’s addled ranting and the crew’s yelling, the family sat back in the rain and made themselves and Warren as comfortable as they could as they waited for the sea to calm enough to row into the city.

  But after just few minutes of that trash, Bernard hopped up and said, “Come on, Corrine, let’s go. Those waves aren’t so bad.” But he wasn’t looking at the waves; he was looking at Warren, who had stopped ranting and was looking way too pale and still as the rain fell steadily down onto his vacant face.

  Corrine had been watching her brother the whole time too, getting steadily more and more concerned, so when her father suggested that they go she was on her feet in a moment, ready to put aside all reason and safety and row to the city even though the storm was still a’ragin’.

  “The waves will make it so we’ll barely have to row,” Bernard said optimistically, “and then if we can just get to the city, we can wait out the storm while looking for a doctor, instead of waiting here doing nothing while things calm down.”

  Corrine nodded and looked to her mother who sat with Warren, looking indecisive. Sure, the waves would do most of the work getting them to shore, but the real problem was how to safely dock the rowboat once they got there. “I—I don’t know…” Emily said, and bit her lip.

  “Mom,” Corrine said, looking significantly at Warren, “We don’t have a choice. We can’t wait.”

  After a long moment, Emily nodded a small, nervous nod. Bernard and Corrine gave her hasty hugs goodbye, and then they were off.

  Chapter Seven

  In less than a half hour, Corrine and Bernard were relieved and surprised to find themselves standing on solid ground with a mostly-undamaged lifeboat bobbing merrily away, tied to the docks behind them. “Yow!” Bernard gasped, “That went better than expected!”

  “Indeed,” Corrine responded, looking out at the rough sea they’d just crossed. They’d nearly capsized a half dozen times and had more smashed into the dock than rowed up alongside it, but what mattered was that it was done and they’d both survived. They gave the wild waves one last glance, then turned and walked down the road toward they knew not what. All they did know was that they were looking for a doctor and that there must be advertisements of some kind somewhere.

  They both found it awkward to walk on land. Bernard had not set foot on dry ground in many years, and Corrine had actually never been off a ship before. If they hadn’t been on a serious and time-sensitive mission, she would have liked to look around the city–she would have found even the scummy docks they were currently hurrying through quite fascinating after a life confined to one ship or another. She had been born on a ship and her family’s livelihood was on ships, so there had never been any need to leave the sea as long as they made enough money to get all they needed. Which they did, because they were a rockin’ traveling theater troupe, and one of the only ones that toured the ocean. When Bernard and Emily had become performers, it had been in the heyday of trouping, so it had been hard for a couple just starting out to get a gig. But Emily had always had a head for business, and so it didn’t take her long to realize that there were all sorts of cruise ships and merchant ships and other ships in the ocean that were full of stir-crazy folks who would pay an arm and a leg for some entertainment.

  Bustling through the city, Corrine and her dad inquired of everyone they could as to whether they could point them in the direction of a good doctor. However, the shady waterside characters who frequented the docks either couldn’t afford health insurance and so didn’t have a doctor, or were operating below the radar and had their own shady back alley doctors they didn’t want to name, so Corrine and Bernard were not getting nearly as much help as they’d have liked.

  In one neighborhood by the docks, they kept spotting flimsy signs posted at main intersections saying in a big, messy scrawl, “24 Hour Docktor. House Calls Available. 15 Pigeon Row.” If it weren’t for the fact that the docktor couldn’t spell ‘doctor’, they might have been desperate enough to resort to visiting a doctor whose advertisements were flimsy intersection signs, but that misspelling was just too much for them. So, they left the neighborhood of the docks and found themselves getting into a fancier part of the city.

  Unfortunat
ely, though, they were soon to find that fancy doctors weren’t inclined to climb aboard a pirate ship. The combination of the fact that they were already booked weeks out for first time patients and the fact that, not being in need of drumming up business, they saw no need to take the risk of going of their own accord under the shades of the Jolly Edmond, made it so Corrine and her dad found themselves–before the town crier had yet yelled noon–scouring back alleys for less savory physicians then they’d have considered even hours earlier.

  And when that search proved both fruitless and more dangerous than they felt comfortable with (Warren would have no way of getting help if they got themselves murdered by some filthy gang of toothless vagrants) they found themselves back at the docks, standing in the middle of a busy intersection, staring down at one of the flimsy “Docktor” signs.

  “Can’t hurt to check,” Bernard said. “A person doesn’t need to spell to fix a broken arm,” he added, as though he’d made a swell point.

  Corrine gave him a skeptical glance, but decided to try giving the ol’ man a break for a change and kept her mouth shut. Instead, she merely shrugged. After asking directions from a helpful old five-toothed crone, they found their way rather uneventfully to 15 Pigeon Row. It was a decrepit shack, of course.

  “Dude,” Corrine breathed as she raised a hand to knock on the door that had once been painted orange of all colors, “I can’t believe we’re really doing this.” But Warren was trapped under a crossbeam, and an injury like that needed attention as fast as attention could be obtained. This docktor at least couldn’t be worse than Doc Brock. So, in response to encouraging hand-flapping gestures from her forebear, Corrine gave the door a hesitant knock-knock-knock.

  A skinny lady with short black hair answered the door so fast that her hand had to have been on the doorknob already. The surprise on the face of the black-haired lady showed that she must have been walking out the door just as Corrine had knocked. “Oh!” they both said in unison and took steps backward. Corrine tumbled down the stairs and landed in a pile of muck. Her dad and the lady hurried to help, but she swatted them away and regained her feet with an “I’m fine, I’m fine. Back off.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” the lady said sincerely.

  “It’s no problem–”

  “Here, come in and let me make you some–”

  “We don’t have time,” Corrine snapped, turning down whatever the lady had been about to offer before she’d even heard what was on the table as a peace offering. “We need a doctor.”

  “What’s your trouble?” the lady asked, looking Corrine up and down in an appraising sort of way that indicated she must be the doctor.

  “It’s my brother. His arm is crushed under a beam on a ship out in the Bay. Are you the doctor?”

  “Yep,” the lady said, signaling for them to follow as she darted back into the little building.

  Inside, it was tiny and just as decrepit as the outside. But it was clean, and the bed that was presumably for the patients looked spotless, which was reassuring. From ceiling beams so low Corrine could have touched them without standing on tiptoe hung bunches of scrawny asparagus that looked like they must have come from a produce reject bin. As the short-haired lady grabbed a black bag off the rickety little table by the bed, she said, “My name’s Jane.” Then she grabbed a bundle of asparagus, tossed it in the bag, and snapped it shut.

  “Mine’s Corrine,” Corrine said, so happy to see that Jane was going to help that she was finding it difficult to mention that the ship Jane’s patient was on happened to be of the pirate variety. It would be wrong not to tell Jane at all, since setting foot on a pirate ship was quite risky, but it would also be wrong to let the only doctor willing to help Warren slip through their fingers. In the end, she decided to wait to divulge the information until they were rowing out to the boat and had had a chance to talk Warren up a bit; that way, Jane would be thinking of him more as a human being and less as a risk.

  “I’m Bernard,” said Bernard. He was also struggling with whether or not to tell Jane that they’d be taking her to a pirate ship, and his moral obligations took control of his mouth before his reason could shut him up. “Listen… the thing is… er… my son is on a pirate ship–”

  Corrine stared at her father in disbelief.

  Jane froze and shot him a suspicious look. “You’re pirates?”

  “No, just sailing with them. We’re a traveling theater troupe.”

  Jane was quiet for a while, opening up her bag and rifling through it, more to kill time as she weighed the pros and cons of the situation than to actually check on the contents. At long last, she looked up at their expectant faces and said, “I suppose I’ll still go… But only because I’m assuming you checked with every other doctor you could before you settled on me. I’m your last resort, right?”

  Corrine and Bernard nodded guiltily.

  Jane sighed. “Honestly, what will it take for people to be comfortable with a female doctor?”

  They walked out the door.

  Corrine said as Jane locked up, “Whoa there sister, you aren’t our last resort because you’re a lady. I can’t speak for all your potential clientele, but you were our last resort because you’re a doctor who can’t spell ‘doctor’.”

  Jane gave another sigh. She was one of those folks who was prone to sighing a lot. “Honestly, am I the only one in this city who has a sense of humor? I can spell D-O-C-T-O-R just fine! I wrote it with a ‘K’ on those signs because I am the doctor who works by the docks! DOCKtor!”

  Bernard and Corrine exchanged looks behind her back, but composed themselves before Jane turned around and strode to where they were waiting beside the pile of muck Corrine had become acquainted with earlier.

  “Right-o, lead the way,” Jane said.

  They walked toward the docks, dodging pickpockets and ticket scalpers and revolutionaries handing out trifold brochures about why the citizens should revolt against the Royal Family.

  Finally, they made their way to their little lifeboat, which had a parking ticket stuck to its bow. Bernard grumbled and moaned like a textbook caricature of a dad, then he remembered this was a pirate lifeboat and no way do pirates pay parking tickets. He had another internal struggle with his moral obligations, but his morality muscle was plum tuckered out after his earlier struggle with whether or not to tell Jane about the pirate ship. With only minimal guilt, he tossed the ticket into the sea. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand!” he said. How do they have popsicles in Fritillary, you ask? Good question. Icebergs are involved.

  They were about to hop into the lifeboat when Corrine noticed an ad nailed to a nearby post advertising harpsichord repairs and tuning. A strange place for such an ad, but she didn’t give it much thought. All she thought about was how, once her brother was patched up enough to notice that the harpsichord had been damaged in the storm, he would be heartbroken. It would be nice to be able to supply this name and address to him when he went ballistic.

  She tore a little tab off the bottom of the sheet and joined her comrades in the gently bobbing boat, the oars of which Jane had already taken, insisting that just because Bernard was a man that didn’t mean he was by default the only one capable of rowing a boat. She had been brought up by first-generation feminists who had joined the movement shortly after Queen Lillian had taken the helm as its spokesperson and declared the belief that women and men were equal was no longer grounds for being burned at the stake as a witch. Jane’s mother and father had raised Jane to believe that she could do or be anything. So, she had become a doctor who, among other accomplishments, also rowed her own boats.

  On the street corner across from them, a homeless guy who had been watching with interest as soon as he had seen Corrine looking at the harpsichord ad stood up, grabbed his hat full of change, and walked off with a purposeful stride.

  The one good thing about how long it had taken th
em to find a doctor was that the storm had abated and the sea had calmed to the point where rowing out into the bay against the waves wasn’t too difficult. Jane, Bernard, and a grudging Corrine (who only liked feminism when the boys still did the grunt work) all took turns rowing, and after just an hour in the boat they reached the pirate ship. Jane glanced at the Jolly Edmond as it flapped merrily in the wind, but then reminded herself that there was a patient in dire need of help, and climbed up without another moment of hesitation.

  Corrine and Bernard led her straight to Warren, who had gotten nothing but worse in their absence. Seeing at a glance the gravity of the situation, Jane got down to business, barking orders and doing doctorly things that I won’t get into the particulars of because it was an icky business. So, we’ll just pick things up again at the point a few hours later when all beam removal and bone setting and stitching without anesthetic were done:

  Jane put her hand gently to the forehead of a freshly patched up Warren and said, “Okay, that should do it.”

  Warren, who was pale, sweaty, and intensely cranky, couldn’t bring himself to say thanks to the lady who’d had four pirates pin him down while she thwacked his humerus back into alignment. His family, however, extended thanks on his behalf.

  Jane took their money and, with the invalid tended to, was more than ready to blow this popsicle stand...again. So, she asked Bernard if he’d be so good as to take her back to shore.

  He courteously obliged, and they made their way toward the lifeboat.

  However, they were halted in their tracks by Captain Maximus McManlyman (the pirate captain had had his name changed legally from Pervis Collins after being laughed out of the Pirate Staffing Agency when they’d read his birth name on his pirate application. In a fit of youthful overenthusiasm, he may have overdone it a bit).

  “Captain McManlyman!” Bernard gasped, alarmed to see the grizzled dude blocking their path with blade drawn. “I was just going to row her to shore.”