Their cries were always so loud that the sailors could hear them long before the Pieces of Eight was within a mile of the shore. The irritating birds yammered away to each other all the live-long day in cacophonous honks and shrieks. They had long ago lost the ability to fly any great height or distance, but could still manage, with much flapping, to visit the Pieces of Eight when anchored close enough to shore. It must have been worth the effort, for the birds came back every year and seemed to take pleasure in perching hidden on the spars among the sails to pelt the crew with evil smelling droppings.
Mostly, though, they employed their stubby orange wings to shoo away the extremely large mosquitoes that also called the Nameless Isle home. After subsisting on a steady diet of orange bird blood for thousands of years, the mosquitoes took to human flesh with an enthusiasm unmatched by even their most tropical brethren, raising horrendously itchy bites like small anthills on all body parts left uncovered.
Even so, why did the sailors fear this small island with greater terror than the Bermuda Triangle? It wasn’t the massive mosquitoes and their itchy (not to mention easily infected) bites. It wasn’t the peculiar orange birds that caused gut-searing stomach pains if cooked and eaten. It wasn’t the fact that those who ate the remarkable orange birds often lost not only two days’ worth of the past contents of their stomachs, but two days worth of the future contents, as well. It wasn’t the peculiarly smelly, not to mention peculiarly slippery, black and white droppings the birds deposited on every conceivable surface. It wasn’t that such a surfeit of bird droppings caused so many near-fatal falls upon the guano-encrusted rocks. It wasn’t the fact that whenever the Pieces of Eight came to the island half the crew would fall ill with raging fevers, despite never having left the ship. No, the reason the sailors distrusted the island was the undeniable fact that it was just plum cursed.
Some hands claimed it was by the spirits of drowned sailors. Still others muttered darkly that it was the fault of those peculiar orange birds. Sailors whispered that they had a sort of wicked intelligence in their glinting black eyes, yet none could swear proof of anything especially intelligent they had ever done, save defecate upon the head of Ned Ronk, the disagreeable boatswain of the Pieces.
Others said the ghost of Old Captain Thomas Bright haunted the place, allowing no foot to tread upon his sacred isle except that of the daughter of his blood, Bonnie Mary, and her chosen consort, Long John. Even he, it was rumoured in hushed tones, had been forced to sacrifice a little more than the standard “pound of flesh” for the dubious honour of an unmolested visit on the Nameless Isle.
Most frightening, however, were the mysterious cackling cries that rose at night from the deathly black cone of the extinct volcano at the island’s centre. It was rumoured that the hole led deep into the bowels of the Earth, straight into the centre of hell itself.
But whether or not the island was truly a cursed entrance to hell, as some believed, the crew of the Pieces had taken a stand long ago. While they would consent to sail the ship within a mile of the island, all hands refused to go ashore. This clause in their naval contracts had been in effect for nigh on eighteen years. Though few members of the original crew remained, old sailors were always quick to inform new recruits of the island’s reputation, and so the legends grew unchecked.
Characteristically undeterred by the crew’s lack of co-operation, Captains Bright and Silver travelled alone to their secret hiding place on the island every year, awkwardly trundling a big sea chest of coins and jewels between them. They always packed a large hamper of their own food to eat on the island when they went and they always returned to the Pieces of Eight after exactly two days, flushed from exertion, but none the worse for wear.
Once the loot had been deposited, it was a short three-day sail to Smuggler’s Bay, where Little Jane and her family would again take up residence at the Spyglass Inn, spending the rainy winter refitting the ship and consuming conspicuous amounts of grog in the place the Silver family had called home since the days of Long John’s mother and father.
The day-to-day running of the Spyglass fell to Little Jane’s cousin, Jonesy, a recent (by Smuggler’s Bay standards, anyway) import from Britain. He was a brawny man with a belly like a big sack of mead, forearms four times the span of Little Jane’s hands, and the misshapen nose of a professional pugilist. Although not a sailor, he reckoned he had lived by one sea or another his whole life, and had a repertoire of off-colour jokes to prove it. Although older now, he had spent a wonderfully feckless youth in the streets of London as a dock worker/musician/pickpocket/theatre bouncer, and despite having quitted the place some twenty years previous, had kept his East-End accent proudly intact.
Jonesy and everyone else at the Spyglass always looked forward to the return of the Pieces of Eight and her crew.
In the evenings, when all the work on the ship was done, Little Jane’s parents would slog home to the inn through the seasonal downpour to share fish and mugs of warm ale by the blaze of the fire.
Some nights, after a nice hot supper, Bonnie Mary would pick Jonesy’s old battered fiddle off the mantelpiece. The bow would slide languidly across the strings at first, with a lazy, wandering sort of tune that gradually quickened to a frenzied staccato beat. Then up from the fiddle she would coax the liveliest of jigs, and soon the entire place would tremble with the stamping of feet, the clapping of hands, and the smacking of tabletops. The ruckus was deafening, but as the neighbours were always down at the Spyglass, too, there was no one to complain of the noise.
Oftentimes, when they were not busy working, the gang at the Spyglass would sit by the fire, swapping tales of distant voyages and dangerous exploits. Although Jonesy, with his delightfully bawdy turns of phrase, was an accomplished master of the tale, the greatest storyteller to grace the inn had always been Little Jane’s father.
When Long John told one of his yarns, a hush would fall upon the room, broken only by the squeak of the floorboards and scrape of chairs, as each patron leaned forward to better absorb each thrilling word. None of the stories were ever half as good when retold by another person and no story Long John told was ever the same twice.
In this fashion, Little Jane’s world continued to unfold with a certain amount of predictability until the winter of her twelfth year. It was at that point that a simple comment, uttered from the idle lips of a thoughtless fabric seller, changed the course of her life forever.
Chapter 2
The Comment
On the surface of it, “The Comment” was really a simple thing, but like a single pebble ripples an entire pool of still water, sometimes a comment made thoughtlessly in passing can have the most astonishing effect on a person’s perception of the world, altering it much more than the speaker ever meant it to.
The rainy season blew fiercely through Smuggler’s Bay that year, wild and torrential. Little Jane strutted about the docks on errands for her parents, pleased with herself and the mighty ship she belonged to.
At home in the Spyglass, all was warm and cozy. She lent Jonesy a hand when she could, waiting tables or cleaning up. There were many trinkets and pieces of bric-a-brac in the inn’s tavern room in need of dusting — souvenirs from distant lands, trophies of notorious provenance, and odd, elaborate crafts fashioned from bits of ship’s equipment by bored sailors during long months at sea. Each one had its own story and there was always something new to amuse her and attract her eye.
It was a rare rainless day in Smuggler’s Bay, the first market day of the season, when Jonesy took Little Jane to the village to restock their supplies. With the Piece’s crew entirely occupied with shipboard repairs, Little Jane was the only one who could make the trip.
The weekly market in Smuggler’s Bay was a colourful thing. Within an hour of sunrise, the sandy village square would be nearly full to bursting with craftspeople, musicians, and foreigners. Many of the stalls belonged to villagers Little Jane knew. They traded their fish, livestock, crops, spirits, and handicrafts to visiting sailors. Some foreign merchants were regulars to the market, too, and Little Jane recalled