By Hannah Christensen
Hyacinth was fed up with knights. She Would have thought they could at least tell the difference between Dame and Princess even if they couldn’t distinguish between a research center and a wild animal’s den. This time she swore if she rebuilt her dragon research center, she would do it someplace knights would never think to go. So she took herself off to sea.
The captain was thrilled to have a woman passenger. He set up a cabin just for her with his own hands, complete with polka-dot curtains and a crystal vase of flowers. Hyacinth raised an eyebrow at the lacy footstool, but used it to prop her feet up for her research that night.
The problems started that next morning when Hyacinth went down to the galley for breakfast.
“You like your shut-eye,” the cook said, his face as sour as a lime.
Hyacinth blinked and looked around. The entire crew seemed gathered here, holding empty dishes.
“Have you already eaten?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” said the cook. “Captain Stroud says a woman has a better touch at cooking than I ever could. So go ahead and start cooking.” Hyacinth decided she had better go ahead and make breakfast before a shipload of angry sailors lynched her. She would sort things out afterwards.
The captain’s quarters were locked, and a sign posted: “Quiet: Cartography in Session.” Hyacinth slowly turned away only to be met by the steward with his arms full of laundry. “None of them should need mending yet,” he assured her.
“I beg your pardon—” began Hyacinth. She tried to bristle, but found herself smothered in briny clothes and pushed backwards down the passageway.
The rest of the day went no better. The sailmaker was not allowed to do his own sewing without her supervision. She was made the chief of the swabbing crew. Then, as the cook came to escort her back to the galley to make supper, she spied the ship’s wheel being rigged up as a spinning wheel. She needed to talk to the captain now, no more delays. Turning on her heel, she abandoned the cook and strode back to the captain’s quarters, determined to hammer on his door until he came out.
The door sprang open.
“Ah, my precious passenger!” Captain Stroud beamed. “Is supper ready?”
Hyacinth pointed a finger at his nose. This was a strategy she had learned dealing with half-drugged dragons, though it had also worked with her son when he had been growing through those turbulent years between true childhood and full adulthood. “I paid for this voyage! What was wrong with my gold, that you’re making me work my passage?”
The captain clapped her on the shoulder. “Makes you feel right at home, eh?”
Before Hyacinth could gather up the right words to answer that, the bosun came running up, calling, “Pirates! Pirates off the starboard stern!”
Hyacinth followed Captain Stroud to the deck, where the crew milled nervously.
“What flag?” asked the captain of the watchman.
“Skull and Maracas,” he answered, keeping the spyglass to his eye.
“Oh, good. I was afraid we’d be dealing with the crossed swordfish of Quinlan. The Sea Spider we can do business with. Run out the guns!” he shouted.
The pirate captain chose that time to hail the ship. “Avast, Shore Crest! We have business aboard!”
“We’ve no time for your business! You’d best find another ship.”
“I’m afraid no other ship will do. Prepare to boarded.”
“Prepare to be thwarted!”
The gun crews had assembled, and the barrage began.
“Careful!” warned Captain Stroud. “If we blow out the Sea Spider’s stained glass portholes, I’ll never be able to look Captain Egil in the face again.”
Hyacinth looked around for something to do. Sneaking to her cabin and locking the door crossed her mind, but she wouldn’t be able to keep her attention on research with a battle going on. Besides, if she could do something especially noteworthy in a time of crisis, maybe Captain Stroud would take the time to listen to her complaints.
The sails curved, full of wind, reminding her of dragon wings. That gave her an idea and she went to find a small anchor. The masts were easier to climb than the cliffs where she lay in ambush for wild dragons, but harder to stand on. It took her several experiments before she found a position where she could firmly perch and still have the mobility to swing the anchor. Once she was settled, Hyacinth began swinging the anchor in steady circles. Slowly paying out rope, she looked for a reasonable target.
When you went for a dragon, there were several useful approaches. You could try to take out a tail, and render it unable to steer—difficult, due to the size and strength of those tails. You could go for the mouth, eliminating some attack while gaining some control. Typically this maneuver was saved for working alongside a partner, especially if your goal was to capture the creature, not escape from it. You could aim for the legs, hopefully wrapping them all together with the hook’s rope. Or you could go for the wings, a desperate measure, since damage there was easy, and you risked losing the dragon entirely.
Hyacinth did not think she could take out the pirate ship’s rudder, but she could try for a sail, or there was a small mounted gun on the bow she thought she could reach. She decided to try for the gun, before it began firing.
The strange movement of ships on the water meant she didn’t make contact until her third try. The anchor against the gun breech drew sparks, but it was tied down too well to move. Hyacinth tried one more time, hoping to use the rise and fall of the sea to pull it free. The anchor hooked on the gun breech, but this time the sparks hit the primed gunpowder and shot off.
The ball crashed through wood and made the ship shudder, but Hyacinth had no chance to see where the damage lay. Her line had been shaken free, and she was trying to recover it.
For a moment it looked like it would hook on the bowrail, but Hyacinth jerked it free. She hoped to scrape it along the bowlines and foul up or damage the bowsail, but instead it fell and dug into the maiden figurehead. She tried to pull it free of that, too, but only managed to pull the whole thing off. To her surprise, it sank rapidly, pulling so hard she had to let go of her rope to keep from falling, herself.
Shore Crest no longer moved with purpose, but began to list.
“Scurvy knaves!” roared pirate Captain Egil. “The thing that keeps every jack-man aboard your ship from getting himself keelhauled now is that I’m going to take your ship apart, piece by piece, starting with the keel!”
Hyacinth clung to the mast as the blast of gunshot increased. One of the sailors pried her off and pulled her along to Captain Stroud. He was pulling at his beard in distress.
“This is worse than the windows!” he moaned. “A figurehead is the life of the ship. You must appease him with your womanly charms.”
Hyacinth stared at him. She wasn’t sure she had any of those. At least, she had never seen any evidence of any, at home or about. All her mouth managed to say was, “I’d have thought the hull was the ship’s life. Ore maybe the flag.”
Captain Stroud untangled a hand from his beard enough to wave these words away. “The body. And the colors are more of the…” He turned around and considered the waving flags. “The spirit. He couldn’t keep up attack on a spiritless ship, and to come close enough to accept them, he’ll be close enough for your charm to take hold. Strike the colors!” he bellowed.
When the flag went down, the pirate captain grudgingly called a cease-fire and came over in a jollyboat. Hyacinth found herself pushed toward him by Captain Stroud. Captain Egil scowled, the sun glinting off his bald head.
“It’s past time to oil the waters with my booty. I’m past caring if I bring the Dame back for the reward or send her to the bottom with this scurvy bundle of termite-ridden planks.”
Hyacinth stiffened. Reward for her return? That sounded like foul play on her children’s part. They had argued with her for years about abandoning dragon research, and she had left without telling them any detailed plans. Snuck away, Goldy would likely say.
She missed Captain Stroud’s answer in her brooding, only returning her attention to the conversation when he gave her a subtle poke in the back. She suppressed her start, a skill hse had honed from years experience with dragon young. They were sneaky, and it never bode well to show a dragon anything that could be taken as uncertainty or fear, no matter how young it was.
She had considerably less experience with charm, which she suspected was what the poke was a cue for. Maybe if she did something with her hair? Flipped it around or smoothed it out? She pulled out one of the pins holding her gray bun in place.
“I had a woman for my ship, a real beauty of solid gold before someone on your bore-riddled bucket pulled her to the bottom of the sea.” Captain Egil scowled.
Hyacinth removed a second pin with a flip of her hand that sent the pin bouncing off the pirate captain’s ornate breastplate.
“Surely you can find some warmth of purpose in your heart when face-to-face with a living woman in the flesh,” plead Captain Stroud. The pirate tipped his head consideringly, then paced about Hyacinth, measuring her with his eyes. Hyacinth hated when people did that. It made her backbone feel like a highway for ants.
“I see your point,” he told Captain Stroud. “She could be an asset. Very well. Send her with us, and I’ll drop my charges and let you go.”
The captains shook hands on it, and Captain Egil called for a plank to be laid across the gap, smaller than ever, between the railings of the two ships.
Hyacinth made no move toward the plank bridge. “Tell Goldy I’m not coming,” she said
Captain Egil waved a hand impatiently. “She couldn’t make it worth my while any more—unless she traded places with you. No, you’re coming with me.”
Hyacinth doubted the pirate ship was where she wanted to stay, but she could get to a good place to slip away and look for dragons just as well on the Sea Spider as on the Shore Crest. Coming along quietly now would make slipping away later easier.
The plank plunged and swayed, but she made it to the far side safely. As she stood, catching her balance before her last jump down, the bald captain introduced her with a flourish.
“Mateys, meet Runa, our new and living figurehead.”
Hyacinth was about to protest that Runa was not her name when the second half of his sentence sank its tines into her.
“Living—?”
Oh, no. She was not going to stand in for the figurehead she had pulled off. She would rather take her chances with the sharks and dolphins. Hyacinth turned to jump off the side of the plank, but the pirates around her grabbed her tight and dragged her aboard. Before she could wiggle out the basilisk fangs she always carried with her girdle for emergencies, she found herself being forced out onto the bowsprit. Before she was clear enough of the ship to risk a slip off the spar, tarry hands pulled her below to the jagged tear where the figurehead had been. Ropes quickly lashed her in place.
“If you should consider fighting your way free, remember the ship would run you down before you could strike away. You life is bound with the Sea Spider’s now, so don’t be foolish.”
Hyacinth bit her tongue to keep in sassy comments about suicidal figureheads leading ships to their doom. Whether the pirates mocked or took her seriously, they would pay more attention to her than if she kept quiet.
Over the course of the day, Hyacinth managed to wriggle her hands free. Even then, she didn’t dare do anything with them. There was almost constant commotion above her. Even during the dogwatch it sounded as though sailors were standing behind her, visiting and enjoying the view. As the first nightwatch began, someone came down to feed her some hardtack and water. Evidently, no one thought that a living figurehead might have other needs, too, needs that required getting down off the front of the ship. If she had been planning on staying, she would have given them an earful about the new duties they had taken on, but she just needed to hold on a little longer. Under cover of darkness, even should the watch guard her like they had, she should be able to slip out her dragon flute. She had always thought sea serpents dragon enough to answer one, an now she would get the chance to test it.
“This is a ride you won’t track me on,” she whispered to her bossy children.
Hyacinth smiled. A research center for sea dragons sounded like a nice change of pace. She wasn’t sure where they nested, but she rather thought it would be a place free from visiting knights.
Octopencil 