by Arthur Slade
“Could this have been faked?” I asked.
“Everything can be faked,” Mrs. Pandora said. “But I am certain this is the royal seal. I’ve seen this skull-and-crossbones insignia several hundred times. I’m a kindergarten teacher, don’t forget. I recognize these things. It’s my job. The stamp is real.”
Well, this would take some thinking to figure out. “And how were you paid?”
“The payment came by royal carrier pigeon.” She looked at me. A mysterious glance. “What is with all these questions? Is there something I should know, Conn?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Family squabble.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, those are not all that rare, are they?”
She was right about that. My father had wrested the throne from my uncle Boris, who had wrested it from his own father. So far, we siblings had been doing our best not to do any wresting. Maybe Dad was trying to make sure that didn’t happen. He was a friendly old cuss as long as you followed orders.
Unlike his sister, Zeba—my aunt. Now she was a piece of work. A one-eyed pirate who had tried to take the crown from Dad, and by that I mean she blew up half of Skull Castle with her ship (which has the aggressive name Die! Die! Die!) and stormed the top keep with a hundred hired Amazon pirates (they come from Amazon Island and tend to keep to themselves unless you pay them enough gold). Aunt Zeba had come close to winning that day. But at the last moment my mother had swooped in, blasting Aunt Zeba’s ship with her mighty guns. With well-aimed shots Mom knocked over the mast, punctured the balloon and cracked the rudder.
The Die! Die! Die! had limped away with Dad in pursuit. The ship crashed into the water and exploded with the loudest BANG I’d ever heard, and my aunt Zeba, her daughter and the Amazon pirates drowned in the deeps. This all happened on my fifth birthday. All I remember thinking was that there were a lot of fireworks for my birthday.
“What are you thinking about?” Mrs. Pandora said.
“Oh, just fondly remembering our family get-togethers. We don’t have enough of them.” I threw back the last of my lemonade. “Thank you, Mrs. Pandora. It was nice to see you, but I really should be going. There’s loot to get. Ships to seize. The usual.”
“You have a good work ethic,” said Mrs. Pandora. She always was such a positive teacher. “Wait, I have a gift. I’ve been meaning to give it to you since you got your first ship. Actually, it’s for your crew too.”
She went into a back room and returned with a sack. I looked inside.
“Wow. This is very kind of you,” I said. “Extremely kind.” I closed the bag. “I’ll wait for just the right moment to give this to the crew.”
“Actually, I hope you never have to,” she said. She took my hand, then wouldn’t let it go. Her hand was warm. And strong. “Is there anything else you want to tell me? Perhaps I could be of some help. I don’t mind giving my students advice.”
I shook my head. I really didn’t want her worrying about me. “It’s okay. I just wanted to pop by and say thanks for the flags.” I hoped she would forget my comments about fake documents. “My birthday celebrations are going to be amazing. I can’t wait.”
I had just lied to my kindergarten teacher. You shouldn’t be surprised.
I am a pirate, after all.
Chapter Six
Cindy rose up into the sky with all the smoothness of a bucking moose. But we were off. And I trusted her to get us to our destination. I’d taken the bag Mrs. Pandora had given me and put it in the cabin behind my treasure chest. I was hoping I’d never have to open it again.
I stood in front of the steering wheel and stared at it. It was time to make our way to our destination.
If only I knew what that destination was.
“Where we be going, Captain?” Bonnie asked.
I’d told her everything I’d learned from Mrs. Pandora, though I skipped the part where my kindergarten teacher had bested me in battle. To explain the bruises I told Bonnie I had slipped and hit my head.
“Well, if my father is somehow behind the attack on Bartha and the deaths of Tressa and Clint, our best bet would be to get a load of coal, fire up the steam engine and sail as far away as we can.”
“That be running,” Bonnie said. “That be cowardly.”
“That be exactly what it is,” I said. Part of me wished she’d just said, Good idea, Captain Conn. “You’re right. You’re right. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that Dad wouldn’t bump off his kids. He’s mean. But not paranoid. And he’s so strong, everyone is afraid of him. Besides, I’m his favorite.” I paused, remembering the time he’d shot me with the salt gun. “Well, I think he has a soft spot for me, at least. He’s only shot me once.”
“But they be using the royal seal. It be a palace plot.”
“You’re right. That means someone in the royal castle is involved. They’ve stolen the seal. Or are making orders without my dad knowing. It might be Mom. She’s shot me twice and even poked me with her cutlass.”
“You think she be planning this?”
“Well, she does have a temper. And Amber is her favorite, so Mom might be gunning for her to have the throne. Amber is sixth in line.” Then I paused and counted on my fingers. “No, she’s fourth in line. That’s still a lot of gunning to get her to the top.” Then I remembered my mom stroking my hair when I was frightened. One time she’d given me a teddy-bear pirate when I’d had a nightmare about my ship crashing. Or maybe it was about skeletons attacking us with swords. Anyway, the usual pirate-kid nightmares. “But Mom really doesn’t seem the type. And she does love Dad. And most of her children.”
“So who be it then?”
“I guess it could be Brutus. He’s always been so loud. He likes owning things. But the only thing he seems really passionate about is hunting Imperial ships. And Reg is already first in line, so what would be the point in implicating me?”
“Well, I be stumped,” Bonnie said.
“Whoever it is, they’re a good planner. And great at keeping secrets. Maybe it’s one of Dad’s generals.”
Just then a dove landed on the main sail and cooed. My heart leapt at the sight of it.
Swandiver appeared in the sky again.
Fireworks went off in my heart. Oh, wait, never mind. It was some of the men testing the cannon. The others lined up as Crystal boarded the vessel in her white gown. Except Bonnie. She backed up. I had seen her do that before. But I ignored her. She was probably trying to give us our privacy. Well, as much privacy as you can have with your whole crew around you.
“You’re safe!” Crystal said as she rushed toward me and gave me a big hug. “I heard about your sister. And your brother, and your other sister, and your other brother.”
I did the math. I broke the hug. “My other brother?”
“Yes. I must admit my mom is a bit of a gossip. I came as soon as I heard. I’m talking about Brutus. Didn’t you hear? He has fallen into a volcano.”
“A volcano?” I said. “But Brutus is the best pilot of all the princelings and princesslings!” He is my second-eldest brother. And he is built like a brick outhouse. But he doesn’t smell like one. I just want to make that clear. And he is smart. He is a fox in the sky.
“I-I don’t know much about your… business in the skies. But the Imperial Navy tracked him down and chased him. Right into the volcano. His ship exploded. All crew lost.”
“But he was the best at hiding. He knew every airship-sized cave in the One Hundred and One Islands. How could they ever find him?”
“There is a rumor going around that someone put a smoke marker in his ship. Easy to follow. Hard to hide. It let out a pickle-green smoke.”
“Pickle-green smoke?” My mind whirled. Someone was still trying to frame me! “I can’t believe it.”
“I am so sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Here. I brought you some more fruit. And cookies.”
The pirates let out a cheer. They had heard every single thing we’d said. There’s no privacy on a pi
rate ship.
“Oh, and a gift just for you,” Crystal added. She pulled something out of the bag she was carrying. It was a shirt made of green silk. The color of a pickle. With the wide collar and puffy arms that all pirates love. I nearly wept at the beauty of it.
“You are so kind,” I said, a bit overwhelmed. Then Crystal leaned toward me. I thought we were finally going to kiss. But at the last moment she kissed her own palm and put it on my cheek.
“Awwww!” one of the crew yelled. I couldn’t tell which one, but I’d figure it out. He would soon be swabbing the latrines until his nostril hairs burned out from the stink.
My cheek was on fire. “You take good care of yourself, Conn,” Crystal said. “I don’t know what I’d do without my pickle-pirate hero.” She whispered this last part so no one but me could hear it. Never had I heard such a lovely turn of phrase.
“Yeah, you too. Bye,” I said. Ugh! I am so bad at this sort of thing.
She turned and floated toward her swan ship (or, at least, it seemed that way, because her dress covered her feet). The wings of the ship spread, and then Crystal was gone.
Pickle-pirate hero. I would be dreaming about that phrase all night.
Chapter Seven
I snapped out of my fog when I remembered that another one of my siblings was dead. Brutus hadn’t been the kindest of brothers, but he’d been tough and he’d been my hero. I couldn’t believe that the Imperial Navy could even catch up with his ship, The Majestic Grouch. (That was Mom’s nickname for him when he was little.) And now he and his ship and crew had all gone up in flames.
Bonnie was at my side again. “What be your orders, Captain? Where are we headed for?”
I only paused for a moment. Bravery and a bit of anger were making my heart and my head strong. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this by going straight to the top—right back to the palace. Set coordinates for Skull Island. Full speed ahead.”
“It’ll be pushing her to the limit,” Odin said. He was playing with one of the knives in his beard. “But the steam engine can take it, sir. I’ve tightened all the quadulators.”
Sometimes Odin just makes things up. I made a mental note to look up quadulators in my Pirate’s Guide to the Guts and Bolts of Your Airship.
Bonnie barked a few orders at the crew. Her voice was louder than thunder. Then she turned and said in her quiet voice, “We don’t know what we be finding there.”
“There will be great danger,” I said. Oh, and I said this bravely. “But we laugh at great danger.”
“Oh, the great danger it be left the boat,” Bonnie said.
I looked at her with confusion. “The only person who left the boat was Crystal.”
“I be saying nothing more.”
“You don’t like her?” My voice squealed a bit when I said this. Puberty!
“Oh, she be a delicate flower. I be not mattering about her. But I be not liking how you act around her. It be un-pirate-like.”
Bonnie is old enough to be my mother. She comes from the old stock of pirates. A long line of quartermasters. Her father was my father’s quartermaster before an octopus pulled him into the ocean. He went screaming, “I can’t let calamari kill me!” But it did. Which is funny and sad at the same time. He did manage to poke out one of its eyes though.
Anyway, there are specific ways we are supposed to act as pirates. One is to not show any emotion.
I let my little toe deal with the emotion.
“Well, I don’t want to hear that kind of talk again,” I said. “That’s an order. And I’ll have you know that I’m always pirate-like.”
“I be quiet, Captain Conn, sir,” she replied. Bonnie almost sounded bitter. Maybe she was getting crazy. Or scurvy. I noticed she hadn’t eaten any of the fruit. I offered her a cookie from the bag.
Bonnie put up her hand. “I be gluten intolerant,” she said. And off she went to do her quartermaster duties. Which was yelling at pirates to swab the decks. And picking who was on latrine duty.
I went to the wheel, opened my compass, looked at the sun and set our course at heck bent for leather toward my father’s palace on Skull Island.
We were currently well east of that place. Each of King Jules’s children had been given their own territory in the One Hundred and One Islands to patrol. Mine, of course, was the farthest away and the least populated. There wasn’t a lot of trade in the area. That meant not too many merchant ships to pirate, so I didn’t have much treasure in my hold. Dad always asked, How’s the ship? Anything in your hold?
I had a more pressing problem than disappointing Dad. I’d be crossing the territories of my siblings, and that was like racing through a crocodile pit.
“Put up the green flag of friendliness,” I said. Bonnie echoed the command. It’s fun to give out commands. Though some commands, like “Scratch my stinky feet,” don’t seem to work. There are some things a scurvy crew just won’t do. Once the flag was flapping, I felt safer. It’s a sign to all pirates that our guns will be silent and we won’t be pirating their skyways. They get sensitive about that.
We crossed my sister Morgana’s territory, and I held my breath in fear. Her ship is called Sharkeater, and she is particularly accurate with her long-distance cannons. She also has a grudge against me. You see, as a child I once stole her toy pirate doll. She mentions that theft every time we meet, but insists she’s forgiven me. Odd thing is, every Christmas I find each of my presents has been pinned to the floor by a dagger. Thankfully, no one’s given me a puppy.
I breathed a sigh of relief when we were out of her airspace. I stopped glancing left and right and up and down like a turkey looking for the ax-wielding farmer.
As we sailed through Brutus’s airspace, I felt a sadness in my heart. There were black sky rowboats of mourners already gathering to grieve. There would be an official funeral in three days. Three funerals coming up. Maybe more.
When we were past his section of airways, I let one tear run down my cheek, thinking of my lost siblings. Brutus. Clint. Tressa.
And then a cannonball went clear through our deck. Alarm bells rang. It was Bonnie ringing them. “Get to your battle stations, you scallywags!” she shouted.
I stared at the smoking hole. It was only a few feet away from my toes. From me!
I raised my spyglass and looked out into the skies. It’s the oldest trick in the book to come out of the sun.
Just to the left of the sun (pirates are smart enough to not look directly at the sun—except for Blinky Bill) I spotted it. A huge shadow of a ship. Its guns were blazing.
I nearly started crying again.
It was the Vengeance. My mom’s ship.
And through my spyglass I could see very clearly that she was the one standing at the wheel.
Chapter Eight
“It’s Mom!” I shouted. “It’s Queen Athena!”
“We be doomed,” Bonnie whispered. For she knew as well as I and the rest of the crew that my mom, Athena, has the second-biggest and baddest ship in the whole pirate kingdom (Dad’s ship Goliath is first). And her crew was firing all guns at once. Heavy-metal thunder was coming toward us.
“Incoming cannon fire!” I shouted. A ball tore through the sails. Another knocked our rowboat out of its moorings. And the third punched another hole in the deck. Fortunately, none had hit the giant bladder of hydrogen above us, or we’d have been diving earthward.
I just like saying the word bladder.
Anyway, I had some barking to do. “Evasive maneuvers!” I shouted, which translated to Odin putting more coal in the fire. I grabbed the steering wheel, turning us this way and that, watching cannonballs fly over us, fore, aft, port and starboard.
The Vengeance is much, much bigger than Cindy. She has about a hundred more guns. And with two giant steam engines, an air paddle and sails made of non-rip silk, she can travel a lot faster. We were doomed. Doomed. Doomed!
But we continued to dodge most of the cannonballs. The crow’s nest was knocked askew a
nd stood at an angle. Our spotter was barely hanging on. “I be fine!” he shouted.
“She be gaining on us,” Bonnie said. “And she be looking steaming!”
I glanced back. The Vengeance was now directly behind us, not falling for any of my maneuvers, and Mom, dear sweet Mom, was clearly aiming right at me.
I’d never seen her this mad. Even when I scribbled on her favorite treasure map. Which, um, meant she never found that treasure again.
I saw her raise a bullhorn to her lips. “Stop your boat!” she shouted. “That is an order from your Queen. And prepare for boarding, you traitorous killer scum.”
“Should we be stopping?” Bonnie asked.
“No! She looks too mad,” I shouted, continuing to turn Cindy this way and that. “But maybe, maybe I can talk her down. I’m good at that.” Actually, I’m not, but I didn’t want to admit to the crew that I had no other plan.
“And prepare for a summary execution,” my mom added.
Gulp. Even though summary made me think of schoolwork and essays, I knew she meant the deadly way. The off-with-his-head way.
Me. Her ninth child, her baby boy. Cute little Conn.
Mom never messed around when it came to executions.
“Stop the ship or you will all soon be dead!” she shouted.
“I be thinking she means it,” Bonnie said. “What be your orders?”
“I am not sure I can talk sense into her. She’s super mad at me for something,” I said. “Do you remember me doing anything wrong?”
“I be not remembering that. You be not sending a birthday card. Maybe that be it.”
“That doesn’t deserve an execution! Or being tagged as a traitor!”
“You have ten seconds to stop the ship!” Mom began to count, lightning fast. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six…”
“What be your orders, sir?” Bonnie shouted. “Orders!”
I couldn’t think of any.
“Five, four, three, two, one. FIRE!”
“Dive!” I commanded. And we dived.