by Cameron Jace
“Pirates always do what?”
“Pirates always send a mean pirate to tell another pirate that his blood would be spilled.”
The mother wanted to make a sound, but no words came out of her mouth. Geppetto’s assumption was plausible. So many times John had told her about some sort of law between pirates. They only killed each other with prior notice, whether be it punishment or something else.
“If so, then the stranger must have given John the warning,” she suggested.
“A black spot on a white paper,” Geppetto nodded. “That’s what pirates do, usually. But what if there was no paper. John is a feared pirate. They would not use the same law on him. Someone of higher rank in the pirate world, like the man who visited him, comes and tells him about him being executed, so John realizes he has a few years left, so he…”
“…decides to be a loving father and husband for the time left in his calculated life,” the mother followed. Even so, she’d still respected John for what he did. “Are you saying they gave him thirteen years from the day the man visited us?”
“That wouldn’t be correct, young woman,” Geppetto said. “Because they’re not just thirteen years, but thirteen years of snow.”
Now it made sense. Though Geppetto’s speculation was more of a hunch than anything, she realized what snow meant. It simply attached the timing to the day he arrived on the island.
“You mean thirteen years from when he married me on this island?” she asked, already expecting the answer.
Geppetto nodded. “John is in pain, though I still don’t like him. His transformation is based on the realization that he has none of the world on his side, but you and the children.”
“And he wanted to make the best of the years left in his life,” she mumbled.
Slowly, a single tear trickled down her cheek.
“Why are you crying, young woman? You should be proud of him — though I’ll be really happy when he dies.” Geppetto muttered the last sentence as low as possible.
“I’m crying because if you’re right, I’m never going to see John again.” She wiped the single tear away. “Last time he left, he said he’ll be back in a year.”
Geppetto understood. “My condolences, young woman, because that would be thirteen years of snow already.”
The months that followed was the hardest on the mother. She spent her days in a haze, limiting to her stay in her house among the children, and waiting for John to come back — if ever came back.
She counted the days, marked them with a sharp stone on the wall and prayed for a merciful fate for John.
And even though Geppetto’s theory was full of assumptions, she could not resort to another explanation. The man she’d come to love, the man who’d changed his life, the man who’d decided to spend the last years of his life good to his family, was about to die.
It baffled her how much she was in love with him now, when she’d hated him so much she could have killed him years before. But in these last years, what more could a woman have asked than a husband who cared deeply for his family.
Not only did she feel that way, but her daughter and son missed him so much, and two days were the most intolerable for them: when both of them stuck another carrot into the snowman. The girl had turned twelve, and the boy had turned ten. They missed him so much.
The day when her count on the wall showed her a year had passed, she sat with her children by the fire, anticipating John. In the mother’s mind it was a simple equation. If her husband didn’t show up today, then Geppetto was right, and the pirates had taken his life. It would have made sense that John had never told her. He wouldn’t want her to worry, and would have preferred the news delivered to her by one the pirates. They always did that. In those times, many women learned about their deceased husbands in war or at sea or to famines and diseases months later. It was just the norm. Some women had to wait years before someone knocked on their door and delivered the bad news.
She hoped she wouldn’t be one of them.
Evening dawned and crows crowed in the distance outside the house, but John had not arrived.
“Where is father?” asked the boy.
The mother held her tears and swallowed her pain. The boy’s concern showed her how much he loved the man who was not really his father, the man who had a heart big enough to raise a child that wasn’t his, so much that you’d think he was his flesh and blood.
She could only hug her children and send them to bed, telling them that she’d miscalculated the days. That a year had not passed yet. That they still had to wait a month more. She lied to them, but it was a conventional lie. Living isolated in a snowy island, far off from the world, time will steal your youth and you’d never even notice it.
Alone on the front porch of the house, she stood watching the white of snow, now glittering an ominous grey against the middle of the night. In the distance, she could see nothing else. No one was coming back.
She raised her head to the stars and remembered what she’d been told as a child. That stars weren’t stars, but wishes, waiting for you to grab hold of one and make a dream come true. Though she had a past of her own and wouldn’t want to remember it now, she still remembered the other children, tiptoeing and try to catch a wish.
Someone had told them in childhood that you can have only one wish granted, so you had to make it count. All you had to do was sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star when you were asleep. A song she could not fully remember, but did the best she could because it was time to ask for her one wish.
Pleas, stars up in the sky, make John come back. Make him survive the thirteen years of snow.
Then she fell asleep.
In her dreams the parrot showed up again. This time more insistent than ever.
“Why are you still wishing he’ll come back?” it said. “You should have prayed he’d die. You have no idea what is about to happen. Something terrible. Something terrible.”
A hand on her shoulder interrupted the dream and woke her up. Slowly, she fought through the blurriness of her eyes. A silhouette of a man stood above her.
“You shouldn’t have waited outside,” the voice said.
The mirth she felt inside was so overwhelming she fainted. It was a good faint because the man was Long John Silver.
For almost another year, a passerby would mistake the little house in the middle of the snow for being a part cut from heaven. The four members inside always laughed, always cheered, and always slept exhausted from the amount of happiness they’ve experienced.
John had been hurt on the sea, but not much. He didn’t like to talk about it, so he wouldn’t answer her when she asked him why he carved the phrase thirteen years of snow on his ship. The mother should have been wary again, because John never bothered to ask her how she knew. Instead, he asked what she’d promised him years ago.
“How much do you love your children?”
“Why ask?” she said. “I could tell you how much I love myself, or you, but never how much I love my children. You know why?”
“Why? I’m curious.” He seemed to listen to that part more than anything.
“Because I love them so much there is no way I can measure it or explain it in words.”
John smiled and tapped her on the shoulder. “You’re a good woman. That’s all I needed to hear.”
“Now it’s my turn to ask you again,” she said. “Are you going to die soon and leave us? Is that what it’s all about?”
John said nothing and walked out to play with the children.
That night she had to prepare for her daughter’s birthday the next morning. There was a lot to do. None of the few residents of the island had ever celebrated birthdays. They’d never heard of them. It was a custom that John had heard of while traveling. The children liked it. It made them feel special and optimistic about growing older.
As everyone was sleeping, she cooked and cleaned the house and adorned it with colorful cloths John had bought from faraway lands. They
were the finest of silks, probably Persian, a land he’d often spoke about. So lovely she couldn’t wait for the look on her daughter’s eyes when she saw her mother had made her a dress out of it.
Brushing the silk against her cheek, a darker thought shone in the back of her head. John didn’t buy this, you know it. He must have stolen it. That’s what he does when he’s on the Seven Seas.
How she wished she could just rid herself of those morbid thoughts.
But you can’t. It’s time to face the truth. John is a pirate. He may not only have stolen this beautiful silk, but killed for it.
She dropped the silk, imaginary red blood coloring her vision.
See? You can’t escape it. Whoever he is pretending to be, he is not who pretends. At least not wholly.
Prayer was her only way out of her dilemma. She prayed for an hour or so, trying to clear her head. She asked God to help her make up her mind, once and for all. Either she trusted John or she didn’t.
Her heart took over and she decided she did not care what her pirate husband did outside the island. A selfish feeling, but one that kept her sane. She only cared about the man’s love for his children, bearing in mind that one of them wasn’t his.
We all have sins of our own. Let’s not let the past grey the future of our beloved children, those we’ve given birth to and those we haven’t.
A serene wave of feeling ran through her body as she picked up the silk dress again and continued preparation for her daughter’s birthday tomorrow. The food had come out excellent. She’d finished cleaning the house. The presents had been readied.
Outside, dawn had settled and the soon-to-come twilight glistened off the snow outside the window. She wished it’d be a warmer day so her daughter would enjoy playing outside. Speaking of outside, the mother realized she’d forgotten something. A most important thing that her daughter would anticipate doing, now that her father was back.
The snowman.
Hurriedly, she put on her cloak and trudged outside in the thick snow with a carrot in her hand. She wouldn’t place in the snowman, but prepare it in a small basket and cover it with a blanket. It had to be ready so her daughter would celebrate by sticking it into the snowman, next to her twelve other carrots marking her years.
It suddenly dawned on the mother, and fear chilled slowly up her spine. This wasn’t a chill of cold, but of horror. Again.
Twelve carrots? Twelve years? Today her daughter would turn thirteen. Her daughter who’d spent every day of her life on the island. Here in the snow.
Was that what John had meant with thirteen years of snow?
Sinking to her knees and dropping the basket, she stared quizzically at the snowman. That rigid dead piece of hardened snow must have known the secret.
“Speak up!” She was losing her mind. “What are you going to do to my daughter?”
But the snowman was as dead as snow was. He’d not even moved the carrot he had for a nose. Just his blunt smile plastered at his face staring back at her.
With that smile a reel of memories attacked her…
The snowman was John’s idea. The carrots were John’s idea. The counting of the years was John’s idea. Even when their daughter had pointed out she was four years old when John first built the snowman, he’d insisted on sticking four carrots in it. He was simply counting the years.
“So what?” she reasoned with herself. “He is just a father celebrating his children’s year. So what?”
You know what. Think of the past, before John turned good. He would not speak to his daughter. He hated her. She cried for nights because of him. His change must be part of a plan.
“What plan?” It was exhausting talking to herself, but it was a mother’s brain, one that had to calculate all the odds to protect her children.
Whatever plan it is, it’s going to happen today, when your daughter is thirteen years old.
“This can’t be,” she tried to shush her overworking brain. “This just can’t be.”
Let’s see it that way. You may be overthinking it. You may be the one who is insane. And evil. But what if you’re right? What if?
It was then when the mother realized what she had to do. She ran back home, descended to the abandoned basement, fetched left and right for something. It was a rusty wooden thing that needed fixing. Fast. A rifle.
She made sure she had ammunition, because if John, or anyone else, will ever think of hurting her daughter today, she’d kill him in cold blood.
When the girl and boy woke up they spent most of the day with their father. The mother watched from behind the window, the rifle hidden underneath her thick winter dress.
No matter how many times the children asked her to come out, she refused, pretending she had more cooking to do. She watched them play in the snow. She watched them stick the thirteenth carrot into the snowman. She watched them happier than ever, thinking she is just mad and didn’t deserve to be a mother.
What do you have in mind, John? Did the pirates shame you for having a daughter? Are you like all those inhuman fathers we hear about, those who bury their daughter’s alive to rid themselves of the sin of giving birth to a girl? What’s on your mind.
…To my knowledge, as the Keeper of Books, the mother’s thoughts, though dark and morbid, hadn’t been far from the truth. In my studies I’ve come across ancient tribes across the world who buried their infant daughters because they thought they’d bring them shame? A historical fact no one wants to talk about.
But let’s continue the mother’s story…
The twilight turned into noon, and then to afternoon, then twilight again. The day was fading away, giving way to darkness, and still John hadn’t hurt his children.
The mother was seriously losing her mind.
Thirteen years of snow, she thought. Her mind reeled so far she thought of the man she’d bedded when John had gone sailing years ago. Could it be he knew John? Could they both have conspired against her and were going to hurt children?
“Nonsense.” She broke a plate by throwing it against the wall. “How would that be possible? It’s all in my mind. All in my mind.”
She ran to the backyard to clean her wounds with the water from the well, still thinking, still investigating.
“I think I should leave this house,” she told herself. “I have to ask John permission to leave for a year like he does or I will go crazy, and probably pass the madness onto them. I’m beginning to believe there’s never been a parrot. It was just my imagination. That of a lonely woman in the middle of the snow, burdened by the weight of raising two children on her own most of these years.”
The idea made sense to her. She should confess her inner struggle to John. If he was really the man she trusted now, he would understand. He’d said he wouldn’t go back to the sea before another year. She could use a break, visit her family, escape this terrible white snow everywhere.
Thirteen years? Why thirteen years?
Her mind wouldn’t shut up. But it was a plausible question. Whatever was going to happen, why thirteen years? What was the significance of this number? Her son used to say he’d read that thirteen was an evil number, bad luck. He’d even read that some people feared the number thirteen, whatever kind of books her son was reading.
To the mother, she’d never had problems with the number, nor had she heard stories about it when she was a child. Her mother used to tell her all sorts of folk tales though. Why thirteen years of snow?
Taking a deep breath, she realized that this was the key to her answer. If she knew the significance of the number, she’d solve the puzzle.
She collected herself, went outside, hid the rifle, played with her kids and buried the question in the back of her head. The night passed like a cool breath, and in the morning John told her he’d be traveling again. She didn’t mind. She didn’t feel like she would miss him much, though he’d done nothing wrong. His only sin was that his presence was driving her mad.
She kissed him on the forehead and w
ished him luck with his travels, prayed for him to find the boy named Peter Pan, who’d lead him to the treasure he’d been after for years, and that he’d find the whale who took his leg.
John made her promise him again to love the children and limped away in the snow. She’d not see him before another two years.
John’s time at sea slipped by as fast as sand through an hourglass. More killing, drinking, hunting, and chasing Neverland.
But it was all in vain. He’d accomplished nothing.
At the end of the first year, when his men asked to return home, he shocked them with extending the sail for another year.
“If you don’t like it, jump off the ship before I slit your throat with my knife,” he warned them.
The soldiers stared silently at his knife. It was the same one he used to carve his cryptic words Thirteen Years of Snow.
“Why snow?” asked a sailor, one night while they drank under a full moon. “I mean we’re in the middle of the sea. There is no snow here?”
“Who said it was about here?” John grunted, too tipsy to hold back the secrets he kept in his heart.
“Then where is it? Are you telling me Treasure Island is a snowy place?”
“What made you think it’s Treasure Island?”
“It’s all we think about. Either Treasure Island or Moby Dick.”
“Why do you think I’m after Moby Dick?” John was curious.
“To take revenge.”
John nodded agreeably. “And what kind of man hunts a whale in such an endless sea for so many years?”
“A man of dedication.”
“Dedication to what?”
“Again, revenge.”
“So you understand that, though I’m ruthless and hardly tolerant of others who stand in my way, I’m also patient in my own way.”
“Incredibly patient, I’d say.”
John gulped from his bottle and neared the soldier, then stared right into his eyes. “Why do you think I’m so patient?”
The soldier shrugged. “You don’t give up.”