The Pirates of Fainting Goat Island

by Teresa McCullough

  “Do you need any help?” I asked.

  “No,” Milea replied. Not no thank you, just no. It seemed abrupt.

  They were all barefoot. “I could warm the floor,” I said.

  Milea exchanged glances with the group of women and said, “Do it. We’ll go into the main room until you’re finished.” They stopped what they were doing and went to the main room. When they reached the warm stones, one of them said, “Oh, that feels good.” I thought it odd that Milea was clearly in charge, yet she was dressed poorer than the others.

  After I warmed the floor, they returned to the kitchen. No one thanked me or said anything to me. I asked Milea if she wanted me to warm the floors of anywhere else. “Don’t go in the hallways with the men’s rooms unless you have an escort.”

  “What about the cottages?” I asked. “I can use the fire here to warm the floors.”

  She thought a second and responded. “Knock. If they let you in, warm the floors. You can try again after dinner.”

  Not every cottage let me in. Sometimes, they said no, and sometimes, no one answered my knock. I came back to The Lodge and warmed the floors again. I checked my room, and my possessions appeared untouched. I mentally reviewed the people I saw in the cottages. There were no men and the only children were infants. What was going on?

  CHAPTER 4

  Everyone gathered for dinner, sitting at the long tables. Milea and a larger group of young women served, giving food to Merko first and Jerot second. I noticed that many of the men reached out and grabbed the women, who ignored their pawing. Milea seemed immune. Amapola and Lina sat at a small table in the kitchen with their food.

  I wasn’t used to sitting and being served, so I grabbed a couple of bowls and started into the room. One man playfully reached for me, and I took some of the cooking fire and burned his hair. It was just a tiny sizzle, but he jumped back. “Do that again and I’ll burn you more seriously.” Suddenly the room was quiet with everyone looking at us.

  He looked at me and said, “There isn’t always a fire.”

  “No, there isn’t. That means I’ll have to save it up and burn you later.”

  “You can’t do that. If you don’t use your enhancing in an ethical way, you’ll lose the ability.” I was surprised he knew that much about enhancing.

  “I believe it is ethical to teach men to keep their hands to themselves. And if Ezant disagrees, it will be worth it.” Ezant was the god that gave my mother’s ancestors enhancing, and he kept people from using it irresponsibly by taking the power away from anyone who didn’t use it ethically. It was comforting to worship just gods. It was my mother who taught me about Ezant and enhancing, but it was my father who told me that if I were unwilling to use my enhancing to protect myself, I might as well not have that ability. I ignored the pain of this tiny memory of my parents. This memory of his good advice should not be painful, but pleasant.

  “Leave her alone,” Merko said. That apparently settled it.

  I continued serving until all men had food. The women each sat down at a table, next to a man. I realized their places were predetermined. Milea sat next to Merko, who put his arm around her and kissed her almost absently. He looked at her again, saying “Why are you dressed like that?”

  “I didn’t have time to change,” she said.

  “You know I prefer you dressed up.”

  “I think you prefer me not to dress at all. I’ll dress better tomorrow.”

  There was mild laughter and Merko smiled and returned to eating.

  While this happened, I stood with my bowl, wondering where to sit. Roddy was at a table, but he was wedged in too tightly to let me sit next to him. The kitchen table didn’t have space. I walked over to a table where the men were spread out more than the others and said, “Move over, please.”

  “There’s room right next to me,” a sailor said, pointing to a tiny space where I would be squeezed improperly close to him. I thought of my father, who never would tolerate keeping a woman standing. I missed him so much.

  I had to cope without him. I addressed the room in general, saying “Will anyone clear a space for me?” At another table, some men scooted over, and I sat there. When I tasted my meal, I wondered if I would have to put up with poor cooking for the rest of my time here. No one complained, but I wouldn’t serve Pelican’s customers something so badly cooked.

  I knew from my experience in Ship Town that unloading a ship normally took days, and with the distances involved, it would take longer. The sailors grumbled, but every man was expected to take four trips a day, but that allowed them plenty of time to play dice. They first brought up supplies for The Lodge. Only about half the men in The Lodge were on the Bat Bell, which made sense, since there were two ships.

  I took three trips up and down, but it wasn’t expected of me. I cycled through the cottages, warming the floors and kept the main room and the stone stairways warm. Milea asked Roddy to escort me and we went up and down the halls, warming the floor and the rooms of the men who answered my knock. The rooms varied considerably in size, with Merko having a suite and Roddy having a room so tiny that there was hardly space to stand. I didn’t need an escort to warm the bedrooms of some of the women, which were near mine.

  Amapola used a table to spread out fabric and was cutting out clothing for the men. Lina, to my surprise, took some lumber and was using it to make repairs to The Lodge. She worked on repairing a broken banister.

  Roddy took a trip, then he asked me if anyone needed water. I asked Milea, who replied, “Fresh water for washing? Yes, as much as I can get.” She was better dressed than the day before, with a dress that fitted, and with sandals. Her hair was up in elaborate braids. The style suited her, and I realized her curly hair would stay in braids better than my straight, blonde hair. Before she looked like a peasant, but she appeared upper class, despite the simple linen dress she wore.

  Roddy supplied water allowing Milea and her crew to do an orgy of cleaning. She washed everything that could be washed. Roddy took three more trips, sitting and supplying water between each trip. I used enhancing to heat the water. The women didn’t talk to me, except about their work. Not particularly enjoying the cleaning, and tired of being ignored, when they turned from washing clothes to scrubbing floors, I offered to make dinner.

  “By yourself?” Milea asked. Her tone was full of doubt.

  “Yes.”

  “Feel free.”

  I went up to my room to get my familiar equipment. I brought some spices with me and took the goat meat in the kitchen and made stew.

  While it was simmering, I made my rounds to warm the cottages. When I was finished and walking back toward The Lodge, I saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow. The man walked with a limp and had kind of a vacant look in his eyes. He was the hairiest man I’d ever seen. He had long curly hair that had white streak at the back of his head. The hair was totally unkempt, and half fell over his forehead. That and the bushy beard meant there was little face to see. I looked more at the straw in his hair, not remembering seeing straw on the island. His clothes were tattered and mended with odd patches here and there.

  He was muttering to himself in a high-pitched voice, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then I looked into the wheelbarrow and saw it was full of vegetables. There were cabbages, carrots, garlic, and onions. They weren’t fresh; they were probably from a root cellar, but they would make the meal better.

  Merko was walking by, and I asked him, “I don’t know who this is, but can we get some of these vegetables?”

  “We can get all of them,” Merko said. “They’re meant for us.”

  “Do you pay him now?” I asked. I wondered when Merko would pay me. He promised me pay plus room and board and that was just for enhancing.

  “We pay by protecting the islanders.” Merko turned to the man with the wheelbarrow and said, “Vlid, follow Heleen with the vegetables. After they’re delivered, Jarot needs some help with repairs on the Manta Ray.

  I a
dded vegetables to the stew and heated the cottages again. I only left the cooking fire going, since I didn’t need more. The women were on the third or fourth floor, scrubbing everything, although it was almost sunset, which was the time to serve. I used enhancing to light the candles in the hall. A bit of the heat from the kitchen fire could be reproduced at the end of each candle, saving me from the tedious task of lowering each chandelier and lighting the candles. I warmed the floors in the main room and the kitchen.

  Vlid came in with Jerot. Both were carrying sacks of flour. One of Merko’s sailors said to Vlid in a joking tone, “Are you here to serve us?”

  Annoyed at the sailors wanting to be served after working only half a day, and spending the rest of the day rolling dice, I said, “No. He’s here to eat.”

  Vlid shrank back and I said in my most authoritative tone, that I used for drunks in the tavern, “Sit down here!”

  He did, and I served him a bowl of stew. He ate it quickly, while the men joked about having to wait for Vlid. He was just finishing when Merko entered. That was the signal for the meal to be served. I dished out a similar portion and handed it to Merko. He looked around, seeing Milea and her crew weren’t here, he took his bowl to his place. When I went back to the pot, I saw Vlid filled two bowls. Between the two of us, we served the men. This seemed like a better system than having the women serve them.

  The women came hastily downstairs and were met with some teasing. “Did you work hard enough to have a meal?” Kalten said. Knowing the women spent the day working, I wondered they didn’t object, but they came and got their meals without comment.

  Jerot commented, “This is good,” after taking a bite. I ate quietly and listened to the approving comments about the food.

  When the meal was half over, Merko stood up and asked, “Should we promote Heleen to cook?” There was general approval. I didn’t think it was a promotion.

  I got up early the next morning and made bread. Milea came into the kitchen and started the porridge, which was available all day for anyone to eat. A while after she left, Vlid came with a load of fish for the evening meal.

  “Sit down,” I said to him. “Have some fresh bread. I put a little cheese in this loaf.”

  He obeyed and smiled when he bit into it. “No one is talking to me, so I’ll just have to talk to you. Do you talk back?”

  He stared at me but didn’t respond. “I guess not. I’m not certain what’s going on here, but this isn’t what I expected. I thought if I could leave Ship Town, I would leave my grief there. I was wrong. When I use this pan, I think of my mother. I remember her taking it out of the oven and the warm smell of fresh bread. I remember her teaching me to cook.”

  I talked some more, and he watched me. I told him about my parents and the Pelican Tavern. He listened intently, but never responded.

  Merko came in the kitchen and grabbed some bread. “This is good!” I found his surprise a bit insulting. “We’re going to be trading again as soon as the Bat Bell is unloaded. What can you use to make better meals?”

  “Almost anything edible,” I said. “I would like more variety of cheeses. I’m using the goat cheese, which you seem to have a lot of. I assume that’s local?”

  Merko nodded.

  “Fruit. Apples or peaches can add to a meal. Anything that will keep for the voyage. Nuts. Dried fruit. I don’t know what’s grown on the island. Vegetables we can’t get locally.”

  “I’ll ask Milea what’s grown. I told her to continue to do the porridge, but you would cook dinner.” He reached for some more bread. “Vlid brings the food. It’s supplied by the local people. I wouldn’t bother to talk to him. I don’t think he understands one word in ten, although Jerot seems to get some work out of him.” When I talked earlier, Vlid stared at me. Now his eyes were focused on the far corner of the room.

  “I like to talk when I work,” I said.

  “Well, you have a listener who won’t take over the conversation.” Merko took more bread and left. Vlid muttered something unintelligible and left also.

  A few days after the ship was unloaded, Merko told everyone they would be leaving in four days. He told me he wouldn’t need my enhancing because the two ships would stay together. I tried to tell him I could enhance the other ship, but somehow, he didn’t believe me. Merko asked me if I knew where Roddy was, and I told him honestly that I didn’t. Just before the ship was unloaded, Roddy told me he was going to disappear and explore for a while. I didn’t think the island was big enough to warrant days of exploration, but I hadn’t seen him since.

  The next few days were a flurry of activity. Trips were made up and down to the ships. Both ships were loaded with supplies, but there was no cargo added to the Bat Bell. Jerot was captain of her.

  Life settled down to a quieter pace after the sailors left. All the women left except Lina and Amapola. Even the cottages were emptied. I didn’t know where the others went. The weather was getting warmer, and neither my enhancing nor my cooking took that much time. I warned Lina and Amapola that I would be gone all day and packed some bread and a skin of water and decided to explore.

  I’d seen the stone fence on the edge of the village, so I walked to a gate and went through it and saw some small goats grazing. Spring was coming and, after walking an hour, I found a village. They had gardens with onions peeking through the soil. Although I was a woman alone, the people I saw looked at me warily and wouldn’t talk to me. I continued through the village and walked a second hour. I saw many more of the goats, along with gardens that were fenced in the ever-present rock that was all around us.

  At the second village, I saw a familiar figure working alongside an old man in a field. “Roddy!” I said. “I wondered where you disappeared to. The ships have left.”

  “I know. The tarts returned home.”

  “Tarts?” I said.

  “Noble women who are keeping the men from coming to the village to rape and plunder,” he said grimly.

  Suddenly, everything fell into place. There were few women in the village because there were no families. I realized with horror I was working for pirates. “Pirates,” I whispered.

  “I wondered from the first. Something about them suggested pirates, but there was nothing I could point to. I couldn’t understand women being with them and thought I must be wrong. Lina’s presence doesn’t make sense, and Amapola doesn’t act like a tart. She was Merko’s mistress for a while, but not anymore.” Now Milea had that position. I wondered that I never saw enmity between the two women.

  “Why does he want me?” My enhancing skills couldn’t be that valuable.

  “I don’t know,” said Roddy.

  “Why don’t the locals just fight the pirates? It shouldn’t be hard to defend the entrance.”

  Roddy repeated my question to the old man, who had moved a bit away to give us privacy. I was pretty certain Roddy knew the answer already.

  “There are dozens of ways a man can climb up the cliffs with a sword strapped to his back on the harbor side. It isn’t fun, but Merko knows most of them. He has his men practice them. It’s worse on the other side, where there are trails down to the beaches. Only a small boat can get close, but the pirates have small boats. We tried defending when they first took this island two years ago. They killed most of our young men.” He moved away from us and went back to digging. So, it was only old men and people like Vlid left.

  I pulled out my bread and gave half of it to Roddy. He shook his head, but I insisted. “You know you’ve done more for me than I for you,” I said gently.

  He shrugged and took the bread. “How are you coming with Merko and his crew?”

  “I haven’t accomplished much,” I said. I didn’t pretend to misunderstand that his question was about my Controlling magic. Through my father, I was a Controller. If I did something for someone and he didn’t pay me back, I could order him to do something for me. Parents couldn’t use the magic on their own children when they were small. My father deliberately let me be
lazy for a few months when I was sixteen and then forced me to help care for an ill neighbor. I hated every minute of it but did it.

  He did it partly so that I would understand that people who were Controlled resented it. I was angry with him for months but realized that it was time to earn my keep. I started working long hours in the Tavern or using enhancing to help various people in Ship Town. I was rarely paid what it was worth, and that meant many in Ship Town were in debt to me. It wasn’t a debt that I dared call upon, because of the resentment it would cause.

  Controlling only worked when the person using the magic actively did a favor. I couldn’t Control just because someone did something bad to me; I had to do something good for him, something good that wasn’t reciprocated.

  Just as enhancing was limited to using it for ethical things, Controlling had a limitation too. If the Controlled person felt either the person Controlling them or the act they were asked to perform was immoral, they were no longer Controlled. It wasn’t enough to object to being Controlled. As my father described it, no one could use this magic to commit theft or murder.

  Roddy was the only one in Ship Town who knew. Actually, he was the only one anywhere who knew, now that my parents were dead. I tried not to think about them, but they came to my mind so often. Although I knew I wouldn’t accomplish anything by dwelling on their deaths, I frequently wondered if I had tried to get around Merko if I could have saved them.

  I thought for a few minutes while we ate our bread. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Merko shouldn’t owe me anything, but I think I accidentally Controlled him,”

  “When?”

  “People were taking my possessions when we first arrived, and I asked him to stop them. He did and looked angry. At the time, I thought he was angry at them, but now I think he was angry at himself for doing something he didn’t want to do.”