Little Jane and the Nameless Isle
Page 20
“Just think, you could take on one of them orange birds as a pet,” suggested Bonnie Mary cheerily. “Train it up like that ornery parrot your mum used to keep. What was his-name?”
“Don’t even say it,” grumbled Long John.
“Captain —”
Little Jane heard her mother’s husky, muffled laughter as her father threw a blanket over her head.
Then all was quiet and still, except for Little Jane’s mind, which was suddenly running like a hamster on a wheel.
If this lichen trade took off, her parents might actually become legitimate merchants — a bizarre thought. Could they even take to that sort of life so late in the game? Realistically, Little Jane knew that day would still be a long time coming, if it ever came at all. Still, if the past few months had taught her anything, it was that strange things happened all the time.
The return of the new Pieces of Eight was occasion for much joy and celebration in Smuggler’s Bay. On the night of their welcome-home festivities, Jonesy told Jane that he couldn’t remember ever having been to a better party. Taking into account her cousin’s considerable expertise in this area, Little Jane thought this high praise indeed.
The next day she greeted the dawn from the porch of the Spyglass, where she’d fallen asleep on the old swing bench the night before.
The ocean was wondrously calm, like a misty silver mirror. Now and then shifting rays of light broke through the morning clouds to trace yellowy patches on the water below. The only sounds to be heard were the call of the gulls wheeling by in the sky and the scrip-scrape of her father’s carving knife, whittling away at a piece of wood. Sleepily, she listened to him whistling to himself, keeping time with the motion of the blade.
“What’chu makin’?” Little Jane asked, sitting up.
Her father jumped, startled by the sound of her voice. He’d been so engrossed in his work that he hadn’t noticed she was awake.
“Shhhhh.” Long John held a finger to his lips and gestured with a nod to Bonnie Mary, softly snoring at the other end of the bench.
Quietly as she could, Little Jane came over and climbed up beside him. He brushed some wood shavings aside and favoured her with a conspiratorial grin. She saw he held a fresh wooden peg leg in his hands, and that he had already started carving it.
“Well done,” she whispered, squeezing his arm.
He turned the wooden column around, secretly satisfied with her approval. He continued carving as Little Jane nestled into his side, absorbing the warmth of his body.
She watched the morning light shine through the tendrils of her mother’s hair as she slept, making a backlit halo of gold around her dark curls. Tucked up against her father’s chest, Little Jane scrutinized his carvings. She recognized the old sailor’s precautions against drowning; the proud rooster carved to match the pig tattooed on his ankle.
“Reckon it should keep me afloat a few years more,” he remarked.
“Capital rooster,” she complimented him, “but what’s this other design?”
“Look closer,” he said, eyes twinkling as she peered down. “Recognize it?”
Now she noticed a set of familiar jagged peaks etched in miniature around a little ring-shaped moat and finger-sized volcano; a precise, tiny map of the Nameless Isle. Skirting its edges were the words MASTHEAD EAST VERGALOO IN NAKIKA.
Little Jane frowned. She wasn’t certain she approved of making the directional code to the secret treasure cave so obvious that anyone could see it, but then the secret treasure cave was technically no longer a secret, nor did it possess any treasure, for that matter.
Plenty of fresh, yellow wood remained bare, still unmarked by the knife. “What are you planning for those parts?” she asked.
“Got to have me some new adventures to carve, I guess,” he said as he wiped the blade clean on his breeches.
“Or just think up more imaginary ones,” Little Jane suggested as she rummaged through her pockets.
Distractedly, Long John kneaded his half-leg between his hands. It was still splinted and lightly bandaged, but no longer pained him as it had before. He still had a few months to go before he would be done with the crutches. He’d got new ones, of course, to replace the pair that had undergone various transformations into rowing oars, floatation devices, and clubs back on the Nameless Isle. He was still occasionally startled when he glimpsed his reflection out of the corner of his eye in a mirror, thinking for a split second it was Old Captain Silver come back again; but the resemblance had begun to amuse rather than disturb him. Now he just tipped his hat in greeting to the old rogue when he sidled by in the glass.
Little Jane rifled through her pockets removing odds and ends until she found what she was looking for. “Ah, there you are!” she exclaimed as she produced her battered old exercise book for him. The title “How to Be a Good Pirate” was still mostly visible despite the grubby condition of the cover, so different from her pristine new leather journal. It had survived much, this book, even more than Little Jane knew. “I was thinking I lost it when the Pieces went down, but yesterday, at the inn, Mum gave it back to me. When I asked her where she found it, she said you was keeping it safe for me, holding it all them days you was locked up. With the party yesterday, I clean forgot to tell you.”
“Don’t mention it. I been meaning to give it back to you for a dog’s age,” he replied. “Kept me busy when I were in the brig on the Panacea, it did. Thankee for that.”
Little Jane cracked open the book’s sticky cover, surprised to find all the pages that had been blank before she lost it now mysteriously filled with writing. She peered at the illegible scrawl, unable to decipher a word, though she thought she recognized the large hand it was written in.
“You?” she asked, perplexed. “You wrote this, didn’t you?”
Long John nodded.
“Took up all me blank pages and wrote over the ones I wrote on, too?”
“Aye,” he muttered sheepishly. “Kind of took to usin’ it when I were prisoner. See, I were thinkin’ to meself, I don’t make it out, there’s a few things about yer old father you might be wanting to know someday.”
“What things?”
“Oh, just happenings and such,” he continued with a vague wave of his hand. “Things maybe I ain’t told you quite straight the first time round, you know?”
“Really?” Little Jane raised an eyebrow. She was sure she could fill several books with things he’d not told her quite straight the first time around.
“Had a chance to read it yet?” he asked casually.
“No. How could I?” She held out a scribbled page for his perusal. “Look.”
It was one of the pages he’d written on during his worst night in the brig, that awful dark night that seemed to last for days. It was also completely illegible, even to him.
“Is it in code?” Little Jane asked, peering more closely at the page.
“No, it ain’t code,” he groaned. He thought of all that effort he’d put into writing his great confession down that horrid night and the result he saw before him now in the light of day: indecipherable words scrawled over more indecipherable words. In short, an illegible mess.
“Then why —”
“I were writing in the dark. Guess I’ve made a right mess of things again. Sorry, love. This last while you ain’t exactly seen me at me best.”
“Rubbish,” she retorted. How could he forget that day on the island when he’d thrown the magistrate’s seal off the cliff? “You and Mum saved me,” she told him, “that day on the Nameless Isle. You was a hero. You saved us all.”
“No, Little Jane,” said Long John, looking her square in the eye. “It were you. You brought everyone together, went to call on the magistrate, scraped up all the money and rallied a crew to our cause. That were what saved us, Little Jane — and you should know there ain’t nothing I’m more proud of in this world than having such a brave an’ resourceful young woman for me daughter.”
Little Jane flushed
under this fulsome praise, not knowing what to say. Of all the remarkable things her father had told her over the years, this last was the most remarkable of all.
“I don’t need to read what you wrote, Papa,” she said softly.
“Oh,” he replied, disappointed. “I thought you’d maybe want to know —”
“It’s not that. What I mean is, we’re both of us here now. You don’t need to write it. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
It was true, Long John realized to his amazement. He really could tell her anything he wanted about his past now. Nothing would serve to contradict whatever fanciful heroic tale he spun. Fragmented fictions rushed through his mind, pliable shapes his nimble imagination could easily bend to whatever purpose he chose. He already had the beginnings of a cracking good yarn forming, a story of redemption and revenge, love and hate, pitched duels, witty jests and fair maidens …
He paused to look at Little Jane, his best audience, always. Expectantly, she gazed up at him, waiting for his story with all the patience her twelve-year-old body could muster. In the morning light he could clearly see each individual fleck of colour in the irises of her eyes. Somehow, despite all the slip-ups, mess-ups, cock-ups, and fess-ups, somehow, he realized, she was still willing to believe him. To believe in him.
Little Jane called him a hero and that was more than enough for him. He took a deep breath, still unsure how to begin. “For you and only you,” he said, “I’ll tell me tale straight as I meant fer you to know it when I wrote it down in the brig. But if it ain’t what you thought, don’t —”
“Wait.” Little Jane interrupted him. “Before you start, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“I want to change me name,” she announced. “I don’t want to be called Little Jane anymore.”
“But —”
“I’m a proper sailor, just as much as anyone else round here. I ain’t a passenger nor little girl in pants neither. I don’t want the rest of them thinkin’ I just be here on account of being the captains’ daughter.”
“What do you want then?”
“What I want,” she said passionately, “all I ever wanted, were to count meself a real member of your crew. Just like you and Mum and all the rest.”
“I don’t understand.” he narrowed his eyes. “Whoever said you weren’t?”
Words tumbled out of her in a rush. “Ned said … the accident with the cannon … it weren’t me … he just made it look like … the fabric-seller at the marketplace saying I’m just a girl in pants … those twins at the magistrate’s mansion what wouldn’t let me in, and made me go in a tub … looked at me sailor’s tattoos and laughed … told them you was a cannibal and….”
Suddenly, she stopped herself.
Who had said those things about her? Charity and Felicity Dovecoat? Ned Ronk? Some random fabric merchant? No one she’d ever held in high esteem, that was certain.
“Oh, Jane. You always been a part o’ this crew,” Long John said, his voice quavering with emotion. “You know you was born on the Pieces of Eight. Ain’t no one more a part o’ her than you. Now what tar round here can say they’s crewed a ship from that age? If you ain’t fond of your name, then you’ve long since earned the right t’call yourself whatever you please. That suit?”
Little Jane nodded vigorously. “It suits me fine.”
“Good. Now, you still wants to hear me story?”
“Come on, what d’ye think?” Little Jane poked him and smiled.
Then, as he began to speak, she edged in closer to listen.
Copyright © Adira Rotstein, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Allison Hirst
Design: Courtney Horner
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Rotstein, Adira, 1979-
Little Jane and the nameless isle [electronic resource] / Adira Rotstein.
“A little Jane Silver adventure”.
Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-4597-0422-0
I. Title.
PS8635.O78L57 2012 jC813’.6 C2012-900139-2
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
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