The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper
A. J. Fitzwater
Contents
Introduction
Young Cinrak
Perfidy at the Felidae Isles
The Wild Ride of the Untamed Stars
Search for the Heart of the Ocean
The Hirsute Pursuit
Cetaceous Secrets of the Jewelled Nadir
Flight of the Hydro Chorus
About the Author
About Queen of Swords Press
The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper
A.J. Fitzwater
Copyright © 2020 by A.J. Fitzwater
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020930232
Queen of Swords Press LLC
Minneapolis, MN
www.queenofswordpress.com
Published in the United States
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All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real people or current events is purely coincidental.
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Cover Design by Dian Huynh of RubyDianArts
Interior Design and Cover Lettering by Terry Roy
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“Wild Ride of the Untamed Stars” previously appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 252, May 24, 2018.
“Search for the Heart of the Ocean” previously appeared in Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) edited by Catherine Lundoff. Queen of Swords Press, 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-73258-337-5
For the wary, weary traveller
Rest a while
Introduction
Joy is political.
This is something I have come to understand as the political landscape has shifted in New Zealand and around the world, especially since 2016.
This is not a new idea, as all marginalized populations have found ways to continue despite the spirit being under duress, the body under threat, their words suppressed, their future in jeopardy. We tell joyful stories in times of fear to light the way in the dark, to document that history, to model the voices that need to be heard and the bodies that need to be seen, and to simply say no, you will not take our joy from us.
It has taken me a long time to understand why I write what I do. At first it was a simple human wish to find my voice. Then as my stories took a political and often very serious bent, it was about being part of reframing feminist and queer narratives for new generations and revisiting forgotten and neglected histories. Again, nothing new – staying on that learning journey keeps my soul nourished.
But what is new in the last decade or so is the propaganda landscape, the pace of news, a literal constant barrage in an information war that targets your empathy centre and punishes joy. Community and kindness, matriarchal, feminist, and indigenous frameworks that are proven strengths in the fight against the patriarchy, are weaponized by those scared of that power. ‘Why are you worried about this when women over there have it so much worse?’ ‘Be grateful we give you these rights, because queer people over there don’t have any.’ Shootings, attacks, threats, abuse, aggressions macro and micro, bills and hate groups chipping away at LQBTQIA and reproductive rights and bodily autonomy...the onslaught is supposed to be Too Much.
When we grow tired within the fight, we step back and let another step up until we’re ready to join the fight again. This is Cinrak’s moment to put her best paw forward.
When I would tell people what I was writing, their faces would light up, they’d laugh, they’d express what a cute and fun juxtaposition that was. Rat pirates are a thing in fantasy, but capybaras, known in the real world for their chill and respect for other species? That put a spin on things.
This all seems rather serious for an introduction to a collection of stories about a lesbian capybara pirate and her found family, but I had to come to a place of understanding that this book is serious about its joy. I was initially bemused my first published book wasn’t the srs bznss I’d originally intended when I started this writing journey years ago. Then I realized speaking to joy in times of turmoil, of being open about queer lives when others seek to supress those voices, is serious business when framed in terms of hope, respect, community organizing, and being able to see of oneself in the past, future, and present.
Come for handsome, huggable Cinrak in a dapper three-piece, stay for her becoming a house-ship Mother to an enormous found family, the ethical polyamory, trans boy chinchilla, genderqueer rat mentor, fairy, and whale, drag queen mer, democratic monarchy, socialist pirates, and strong unionization.
Because if the patriarchy is going to come at us for exposing their unearned privilege, for showing identity is political, we’ll make sure our joy—our stories, rise, uplift—is political too.
Young Cinrak
Tail the First:
In Which Our Hero Discovers the Price of Her Salt
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The fizzle started low in Cinrak’s stout belly. It wove around her ribs, along her spine, and ruffled the fur on the back of her neck.
Teetering atop the orphanage’s great oak, the capybara instinctively turned her broad snout towards the silver sliver of harbour glimpsed through the straight-backed buildings of Ratholme. The oak tried to be as tall and graceful as possible for its charge, revelling at being a stand in for a pirate ship.
Cinrak shaded her eyes like she’d seen captains do. Dolphins? Wrong. An oncoming storm? No. The steady, warm nor’east wind had no intention of giving up its turn to its siblings.
Ah! There! Cutting around the headlands.
“Ship ahoy!” whisper-cried Cinrak to her ‘crew’ of oak leaves, who all shivered with anticipation.
What a beauty. For the purple thistle on white flag to be seen, the masts must be the tallest in the pirate fleet.
The harbour horns honked welcome, a harmony to the hammering of Cinrak’s heart. She didn’t recognize the complicated cadence, but it sang of just the importance Cinrak sought.
Could this be her ship?
As she did twice a sun since she ticked over into her fourteenth star-turn at the orphanage, she assessed her memorized packing list. A well-read, clean and handsome pirate was a good pirate, in Cinrak’s estimation.
She wouldn’t pack any of those awful frilly dresses Helet made her wear.
It wasn’t running away to sea. Taking one’s dream by the shoulders, speaking the words of apprenticeship with a clear and fierce voice, was a plan.
The kitchen door smacked open and the oak winced in sympathy for the courtyard wall.
“Cinrak, sweetheart!”
Cinrak winced at the endearment.
Helet did not look up. She never looked up.
“Cinrak, darling. I need you to go down to the bookseller and the library.” The stout capybara matron stuck her head in the stables and the cool store. “Cinrak? Time to stop playing sillies now.”
Cinrak landed with a thump-clatter on the cobbles. Helet reeled back, forepaw to chest. “Cinrak! Dearest! Your dress! What would any of the anyone think if they saw you up there?”
Nothing, Cinrak presumed. Visitors to Helet’s orphanage weren’t interested in a loud voiced capybara who looked like a walking brick in a dress. All her friends of her age had already gone to apprenticeships or higher school. Some had even found families.
As Helet rattled on with her instructions, Cinrak rolled the word around in her mind
: Family. Hers had been lost to a terrible influenza which had overtaken Ratholme just before Queen Lyola took the throne. She had been just a kit in arms, and what did names and faces of her herd mean if she didn’t remember them? She preferred to dream forwards, not backwards, of her pirate family. They didn’t have to be capybara either. She liked all species. Unlike Queen Lyola, who favoured rats above all, making things difficult at court, in trade, and in the streets. Wasn’t that what a good pirate did? Fight for the downtrodden and meek as well as the strong and silent?
Helet said her family was her and the orphanage kits, but it seemed more like Cinrak was the one acting like a mother before she even knew what being a kit meant. While Helet was busy giving sermons or lectures on her theological pride and joy, the Great Capybara Mother, Cinrak was soothing nightmares and scraped knees. That felt more like work, especially when those young ones found a family and forgot her quick.
“Cinrak? Sweetie? Are you listening to me? Get your head out of the clouds.” Helet folded her arms across her barrel chest. How did she manage to make dresses sit so nice on her broad frame? Cinrak couldn’t understand how they were of the same species. “Did you get all that?”
Cinrak counted off on her claws. “Requests to the library. Payment for the bookseller, divided based on the rarity of the book. First dibs on whatever comes off the new ship. Apothecary for cough medicine, analgesic powder, and herbs for Marilette’s fever. And absolutely no detours past the docks.”
Ah, the exchange of information. Going to collect books. This wasn’t work. That was an adventure worthy of a budding pirate.
“Good.” Helet nodded stiffly, lifting her voice for the neighbours to hear. “No kit of mine will be seen near that den of dull-skuggery and delinquency.”
Cinrak grimaced into the ruffles of her collar and edged towards the gate.
“And change your shoes, for Mother’s sake,” Helet sighed. “Those boots have mud all over them, and they don’t go with that dress at all.”
“‘Come as you are, you fit and feeble, dirty and deterge, you are all welcome in my kenning’,” Cinrak muttered, but Helet chose not to hear that particular quote from the Mother’s Text.
Hunched in the overhang of the market arch—it had only taken two tries to hoist herself up—Cinrak stewed over the questions she didn’t have answers to, and might never.
Why had Helet chosen to be an orphanage matron? Was it the good stipend from crown and council? Rumour had it Queen Lyola disdained kits, more especially those who weren’t rats, but she kept up appearances. Kits had repurposed an old rhyme, chanting in the markets “Lyola, Lyola, Lemon Face, be so ugly even cats won’t chase.” But even though Helet spoke fondly of the rat queen, especially in earshot of influential neighbours, she had yet to be invited to deliver a lecture on the Great Mother at court.
Ugh, her lectures. Cinrak felt like her fur would melt from boredom. Perhaps Helet chose the matronage life to have a dedicated congregation. “Get them young,” as she said about pirates.
Cinrak wanted to talk about these Very Important Things, but Helet said she had to wait until she was grown up. On the other paw, Helet was always tasking her with Grown Up—boring—jobs, telling her to grow up, be a young lady, stop climbing the oak. Ugh. At what point was Grown Up enough?
She took a bite of her stolen green apple, and her spirits lifted. Today’s lightpaw attempt was a win! Foncruter had marked her a solid six out of ten when she went back to pay. The ex-pirate who taught her these tricks had never given her anything above a five before. Why anyone would give up piratry for selling produce, Cinrak did not understand, though she did enjoy the air of mystery around the old ferret.
As she left, Foncruter’s granddaughter Cassilly had blushed in her general direction. Cinrak didn’t know how she made young girls blush, but she did, and she enjoyed it.
The docks bustled to bursting point. People in frilly clothes conducted business discreet, frivolous, wanton, or intriguing depending on the agent’s intent. The fishmongers called barter shanties, throwing wrapped fish to customers. The taverns were already bursting with cheer, sea paws searching for a good meal and a bath. Shouts ahoy guided crates of wondrous stuffs from afar onto carts.
Somewhere in that mess must be the person who would teach Cinrak how to pirate, to fight and to curse.
Helet’s stockist of esteemed theological texts had not received their shipment yet. The ship had barely begun unloading, and non-perishables were well down the list.
What a shame, Cinrak thought. She would just have to find another way to procure Helet’s textbooks.
Ah, there!
A rat stood at the bottom of the gangplank, twirling their tail. Every now and then they’d toss an inventive curse at the handlers or squint at the frenetic activity surrounding one of the more salacious taverns, but otherwise boredom was writ large on their rusty brown features.
Cinrak triple-checked her garb. With her baggy pants tucked into boots, frilly, if frayed, shirt, and a belt with an oversized silver buckle (procured from the Theatre Rat-oyal’s scrap bin), she thought she made a passable cabin kit.
Cinrak scrambled down, stood as straight as the oak had taught her, took a deep breath, then sauntered into the crowd. Exhilaration bubbled in her belly much like her strange fizzle. She was one of them, a real pirate, blending like salt into the ocean!
The bored rat looked Cinrak up and down with one keen eye, the other a silver scar from hairline to jaw. Stripped of her fur, Cinrak shivered.
“Greets. Yer a bit young to be ‘round here.” Their voice was rough and warm like a summer storm.
All feeling left Cinrak’s tongue. “Old enough. Business. To be doing with. Likes of you.”
A knife-like smile slid across the rat’s face, twisting the scar. The sun hustled from behind a cloud, making everything too sharp. Shadows once warm with promise now were cold flashes with watchful eyes. The water slapped against the dock and ship impatiently. Ropes creaked warily.
The rat’s smile softened, and the world snapped back into a single frame. “Eh, alright smarty pants. I like a sharp tongue on a young ‘un. Shows they got wit.” They held out a forepaw. “I be Mereg.”
Sweet, delicious air flooded Cinrak’s broad chest.
The rat hadn’t given a gender signifier, so she switched her own dialect to Civil, to give her own gender signifier. “My name is Cinrak. Don’t have any other name.”
Having practised with the oak, she grasped Mereg’s paw firmly, but the pi-rat switched the greeting, clasping wrists.
“That be the pirate way. Cinrak, eh? No other name by design or because ye still choosin’?”
“Because I didn’t get one.” One could choose a name? Helet said names were ordained by the Great Capybara Mother, and stuck for life.
“Aye, understood lass.” Mereg wrapped their very long tail around their wrist. This close, Cinrak could see a light dusting of silver in their ear fluff too. “Now, what busy-ness you be wantin’ with the Cry Havoc, feared by many, home to the loyal, decent few.”
Cinrak loved pirate ship names, and this one was a beauty! The vessel was a wonder of rock candy, railings sunset yellow atop planks of midnight purple, doors and roofing blood red. The colours were not affectations of paint jobs renewed each season, but ingrained in the wood. A mer figurehead pinned the whole ship together, red hair whipping, green eyes shrewd and far-seeing.
“I have, uh, a client very interested in any books you have in your inventory. About theology. The Great Capybara Mother in particular.”
“The Great Mother, eh?” Mereg eyeballed Cinrak like they were stripping the meat from her bones. They rubbed the digits of one paw together. “An’ what sorta fee we talkin’ if I let ye be first to dig through them crates.”
Pirates will be pirates.
“Five percent above what you’d sell them to market.”
The words shot out like Cinrak practised. She marvelled at how the rat, someone low in the crew to b
e pulling watch like this, kept a sloth-face.
“Ten.”
“Six.”
“Seven.”
“Seven, with first look at your next shipment.”
Mereg smirked. “Ye pretty good at this for a young ‘un. Almost think ye got a bit o’ pirate blood in ye.”
Cinrak’s spine crickled as she stood tall.
“A’ight.” Mereg held out their paw again. “Ye have a deal. Come aboard, an’ let’s get crackin’.”
Cinrak’s rear paws tingled like the ship itself welcomed her on board.
“Ye ever bin on a pirate ship before, lass?” Mereg squinted as they descended into the gloomy hold.
Good pirates needed a little dastardliness. But Helet said good girls weren’t liars. She wasn’t a good girl for coming aboard the ship. She couldn’t imagine such regret. How could one know their truth until one experienced it? Grown-ups could be so stupid.
“Nay.” Cinrak gave in to her better side. “Treated with traders with my matron, but never been up close.”
Mereg nodded. “Second rule of the ship is honesty. I appreciate that. If yer ma wants to have at about it, she can come to the cap’n first.”
“Not me ma,” Cinrak muttered. Helet facing up to a pirate captain? That would be a treat!
“What that, lass?”
“I said, what’s the first rule?”
“Loyalty to yer crew.” Mereg adjusted some fairy-glow lamps to brighten their hue.
“Doesn’t that cause conflict because everyone has different ideas and opinions?”
“Yer a sharp one. Aye, it does. The cap’n appreciates that in the crew. We all have to work an’ live an’ sleep in the same space. Gotta be comfortable in consensus.”
“Queen Lyola could learn a thing or two from pirates,” Cinrak muttered.
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