In Which I Meet My First Ever Pirates And Get Made To Walk The Plank Six Times In A Row

The jangly woman wasn’t joking when she said we wouldn’t last an hour.

Barely twenty minutes into our flight, a bellowing horn blast rattled our ribcages and sent Margaret into a panicked bucking frenzy. Given that I’d only been mutilated half an hour earlier and hadn’t quite mastered the art of riding one handed, I was immediately slung from my sow and treated to a mouthful of hot sand.

Red-faced and angry, I struggled to my feet and shook out my glorious mane of hair. 

“What the blazes was that?” I coughed.

“Sire,” said Edgar, pointing away behind me with wide eyes. “Look!”

I turned, frowning – and gasped.

Crashing towards us over the endless dunes was a pirate ship. It was an enormous thing, towering and brawny and creaking, its sails and cannons and hull scorched stone-white by the beating sun; I could not fathom what strange force propelled it over the dunes as easily as if it were cresting waves on the ocean. As she passed the sun, the ship’s busied crew were silhouetted in the rigging, raising the sails and hauling the vessel around to us.

Gazing up at the sight, suddenly aware of my own powerlessness and meagre size, I felt my jaw slacken and my eyes grow wide in awe.

“Fuck,” I whispered in reverence.

Great swathes of sand were cleaved in two on its approach, and an unseen crewmember cast an anchor down from on high. It thudded into the sands and sank deep below their shifting surface.

The great white ship slowed alongside our small band, blotting out the bright morning sun and casting a cool shadow over us. Margaret let out an involuntary ‘oink’ in fear. For a moment, all was silent. Then came a cry within the ship, and every porthole was flung open at once. Cannons protruded from within each window, and all were aimed directly at us. From up on deck, a gruff voice called down.

“Ahoy there! Don’t bother trying to run, else we’ll cannon ye to bits,” the voice cackled, which I found rather exciting, because I’d never heard anybody say ‘ahoy there’ in real life.

As a young king I’d devoured story books about coal-hearted bastards rampaging across the high seas, and I had long harboured a passion for swashbuckling tales. To be in the presence of such a ship and her crew was, to be quite honest, brilliant. A very large grin spread across my face, even as a hundred cannons aimed right at it.

I could see no other option than to surrender, and so we stayed put while the brigands lassoed us one by one and hoisted us on deck, steeds and all. As my limp form was being heaved aboard, gently twirling and rebounding off the hull like a dangling sack of flour, curiosity got the better of me.

“I say, how the devil is thy ship able to sail the dunes?” I yelled politely.

“Magic,” called a gruff voice, unseen.

“Wow,” I replied, as I was winched gradually higher. “What kind of magic?”

“Pirate magic! Now shut up.”

“Wow,” I breathed again.

Once aboard, Edgar, Glob and I were shackled, roughed up a bit, and finally assembled in a line on the deck to await the captain. After several minutes, during which time the angry pirates flexed and growled at us and made threats of violence that were surprisingly well-worded and creative, the captain strode out of his quarters. The collective noun for a group of pirates parted in silent reverence as the captain moved through them, like a shoal of fish giving a wide berth to a shark.

The captain stopped before me with his hands on his hips, allowing us to revel in his dashing presence. His skin was dark and salt-worn, and stubble dusted his cheeks. He stood tall and strong, a flintlock-strapped, saber-slung, brow-hatted, golden-grinned, devil-eyed sea bitch.

A real pirate. A real life pirate! I was awe struck.

“Good morning to ye. My name,” growled the captain, “is Selladore.”

I stood in silence, equal parts impressed by his delivery and envious of his excellent name.

“And who might ye be – besides me latest plunder served up by yonder sands?” he asked, as a wicked chuckle rolled through his crew.

I was so in awe of the captain that I couldn’t form a sentence. I simply stared, beaming.

“What’s wrong with ye?” he asked. “Have your brains been addled by heat stroke?”

I shook my head.

“Then what the blazes be the matter with ye? And why’ve ye only one hand?”

I looked from the captain to my stump and back again, my smile never faltering.

“Right, if ye insist on acting all a-poxed and gumpy, you can walk the plank!”

My companions gasped with horror; I gasped with joy. A real life planking! The crew hastily extended the plank, and Selladore drew his cutlass. As my companions yelled in protest, I was prodded down the length of the wooden beam until I teetered on the very edge. Selladore gave one last jab with his blade, and I tumbled backwards off the side of the ship.

I landed face down in the sand with a dull thud. As a warm breeze dusted my hair with fine sand, I rolled onto my back and looked up at Selladore and the others on deck, who were gazing down at me in ponderous silence.

“Aye, and let that be a lesson to ye!” called Selladore. “Now someone hoist him up and we’ll try again.”

*****

It took six more plankings before I was able to subdue my wild nautical enthusiasms and give a coherent response. When Selladore learned that I was not mocking him, but rather that I was truly impressed, he took a shine to me and stopped booting me overboard.

He insisted on stealing my crown for his treasure chest (which I didn’t mind too much as there were plenty more back at the castle), then gave me a tour of his vessel. He informed me the ship was called ‘One-Ball’, as in, ‘we only need one cannonball to sink you’, which I thought was just splendid.

While I toured the ship, Glob and the others made friends with the crew on deck, and joined them in much rum-quaffing and game-playing. From the helm, where Selladore was teaching me the nuances of steering on the shimmering sands, I spotted Glob beat the ship’s chef in an arm wrestle, and felt a quiet swell of pride in the stable girl.

When evening fell, Selladore had his crew prepare a feast for us on deck, under the watchful moon and stars. Edgar, Glob and I, having been given a bowl of water in which to scrub the desert grime (mostly sand and tears and goblin blood) from our bodies, assembled on deck to await the captain’s emergence from his chambers. We watched as dish after silver dish of exotic delicacies was wheeled out and placed before us, until the entire table groaned under the weight of myriad cheese wheels and roasted chicken legs and juicy porkers and weasel feet and ostrich arms and googleberry pies, all accompanied with copious quantities of lovely wine. The captain had gone to change out of his daywear, and had requested we await his arrival to tuck in.

Our quivering salivations were interrupted by Selladore high-kicking his way out of the cabin. We turned in unison to behold the captain, and saw that the swarthy stabspleen that kidnapped us that morning had transformed. Gone was the leather, gone were the skulls and gone was the grog-soaked coat; gone was the tricorne, gone were the frills and gone were the billowing cuffs. Selladore was wearing a glittering yellow dress.

The dress clung to one scarred shoulder and tumbled over his muscular form, down to his matching six-inch heels. In place of his hat, he wore a spectacular wig, swept upwards into a staggering fireball bouquet, coalesced with streaks of red and orange like veins of magma. His cheeks were shorn of their stubble, instead adorned with bronze foundation and scandalous contouring. Selladore smirked at us with golden lips and pearly white teeth, winked, and blew a kiss. Edgar waved back. My mouth hung open.

The captain swept across the deck, pausing to bollock a young deck-hand who wasn’t scrubbing properly, and sat at the head of our banquet table. The ship’s chef filled his goblet to the brim with sloshing red wine, and he took a sip.

“Excellent wine, Matthis. Where did we acquire it?” said Selladore.

“Thank you, Cap’n. We robbed it from that convoy of Horizontal Monks, three weeks ago,” replied the chef.

“They put up a good fight, I recall. No wonder. This wine is delightful,” smiled Selladore, before taking an enormous swig and draining half the cup.

“Excuse me,” I intervened, “but what the piss is going on?”

Selladore cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Something the matter?”

“Well, yes. Thou art a pirate and also a man. Wherefore art thou dressed hence?” I said, gesturing to the gleaming ballgown that nobody else seemed to register. “Or do mine royal eyes deceive me?”

Selladore glanced down at his attire, then back to me.

“Alright,” he said, resting his goblet on the table. “Let me ask you a question first. Why do you speak like that?”

“Thou question mine utterances? What is thy meaning?”

“Thee, thou, thy – why? Why not speak like everybody else?” Selladore asked.

I struggled for a response, and felt my face grow hot.

“T’is only fitting for a king.”

“Because you like the way it makes you feel?” said the captain, with an eyebrow raised.

I turned this idea over in my head several times.

“Mayhap,” I replied, “but I don’t see what this has to do with thy dress.”

“Athelstan,” began the garish captain, “I dress this way because I like to look like this. I like the way it makes me feel. You have never before considered that a man might choose to decorate his body in this way?”

“I never gave it much thought,” I mumbled.

A witch that thought she was a wizard, and a pirate that thought he was a – I don’t know what. I could have sworn the world never used to be like this. At least, not back in Pugglemunt.

“You told me you loved reading about pirates as a child?”

I nodded, mute.

“All of the famed buccaneers of old that you admire so much – how did they dress? They wore gold-trimmed petticoats, jewelled necklaces, braided beards, earrings and eyeliner, every one of them. You were comfortable with that – but a dress startles you?”

I shrugged, staring down at my untouched plate of boiled parsnips and roasted otters’ pockets.

“Piracy is about the rejection of a normal life. It is about seeking adventure, seeking more. What on earth is the point of that if you’re going to go about your business looking just the same as everybody else?”

The pirate drained his wine and poured another glass.

“It is a very nice dress,” I murmured.

The others joined in, gushing with compliments for the sparkly garm.

“Thank you, Athelstan. Thank you, all of you. That’s very kind of you. Now, you poor sods must be starving. Let’s gorge until we burst.”

*****

Two hours and sixteen courses later, I was slumped low in my chair, groaning and gelatinous like a pregnant walrus, for I have precious little self control where food is concerned (read: none). I am a king; nobody has ever told me to stop eating for fear of losing their head, and thus I rather struggle with self-discipline. When I was a young kingling I remember sneaking into the great hall prior to the evening’s banquet. I found sumptuous heaps of roasted poultry and steaming hot vegetables with vats full of rich gravy, and I got so excited at the sight that I blacked out. When the guards led my guests into the hall later that day, they found me nude and unconscious, slumbering soundly inside a turkey’s ribcage.

Selladore had entertained us for hours with wild stories of his sandfaring adventures, of strange creatures and savage beasts, of buxom wenches and brawny, oiled men. Glob in turn taught us of the finer points of stable mucking, to which Selladore listened with rapt attention, asking questions at every opportunity. Then Edgar told jokes, which was excellent fun until he got too drunk and kept mixing up the punchlines of different anecdotes.

I told Selladore of our quest to save Astra, and to my horror and delight, he had news for us. The captain and his crew had seen a great galleon with glittering purple sails crossing the sands not three days prior. The ship was moving at speed, and armed to the teeth. At the mention of purple sails I tensed up and gripped my spoon like a snapping turtle, accidentally trebucheting an olive into Glob’s yawning mouth. 

The Prince had crossed this way, and only a few days ahead! Perhaps we could catch him before he reached his castle, if we hurried – and then I could shank him to death and save my beloved. Selladore was sympathetic to the plight of my Queen; so much so, in fact, that he offered to ferry us to the edge of the desert. From there we could enter the Mines of Mumblybum or whatever they were called; I lost the map when the weird bird thing was killing everyone earlier.

The captain barked an order, and the great ship One Ball changed course towards the western edge of the desert. As the crew cleared our table after the feast, I thanked Selladore for the hospitality and our company retired to the cabins below deck. There was not a huge amount of room; given my kingly status I was given a hammock, however Glob was required to lie atop a coil of hairy rope and Edgar had no choice but to clamber inside a half-full barrel of apple cider vinegar for some shut-eye. We were soon lulled to sleep by the symphony of the shifting sands outside. I dreamt of Astra once more.

*****

I was awoken with a start by the sudden arrival of a very big cannon ball.