Terese Svoboda - Pirate Talk or Mermalade

A nice warm gallows.

A lit fire under our feet. A map that shows where to go, not so much of where we’ve been. The next cove or the next.

Oh, for the navigator.

He could read a map and draw one too.

It’s not my fault he stepped into the first hole he found in his explore. A man has to watch his feet in the snow.

And not burn the map. At least we didn’t go in for that idea of his of roping us together. Where would that have put us?

I do heartily repent.

I repent I did so little mischief.

I was lucky to get a striped shirt to parade about the deck in — though it looked more like prison garb in advance to me.

Always the fashion with stripes.

My sacrileges, my beautiful sacrileges.

Six of them are mine.

Any fool going south will see them thirty miles away when the snow’s all melted.

There are no other fools. Besides, the snow will never melt.

You said Carnaby went this way.

Carnaby liked a mirage. Carnaby smoked mussels and hid them in his shoes. I would’ve liked to have eaten his shoes.

Carnaby never left the boat, the boat we’ll never find.

Did the ice eat it?

The ice or the wind or it sailed away.

It could’ve been in the next cove.

No.

Carnaby’d be the one to find the gold gods, if he were about.

Carnaby hated gold, he only took pearls. I heard him say so. Picky after all his years of plunder.

People coming upon our sacrileges will run to them. A mirage! they’ll shout. Like Carnaby.

Or they’ll walk the other way, afraid it’s the golden gates swung wide. Again I say — Farewell to the gods.

Straight on?

Straight to hell, that’s where there’s heat.

Where we left the treasure is a kind of monument to us.

We’ll be dead by the time someone finds it.

That’s the way of monuments. They don’t put them up if you’re still alive in the world.

Who’s to know it’s ours if we don’t mark it? If we’d made a map, at least we would have marked the booty like an owner with an X. We must go back and mark it.

“ Stiff ” it should be named on the map, after ourselves.

Let us turn around and put the X—

Ahead — there—

What-ho?

Whisper proper now, whisper. We don’t want to scare it.

I slaughtered it on the spot. With my cutlass drawn so.

It didn’t even lunge at you.

I held on. I put my pegleg into the ice, and held on.

It was sick.

I hacked its head off.

Bother your boasting. I’m going inside. Wake me before the slit freezes shut.

Wait — there’s room for two if we eat this or that and get rid of the offal, a little more room just there.

This bit’s good.

Too bad there’s no wood. It’s big enough inside for a fire.

Someone would find us if we had a fire.

Someone would save us if we had a fire. It’s the rule of the ice.

They’d just save us for later.

I’m colder than you. Pull your leg in and close the gap with the head.

You’ll have to unscrew the leg.

It’s off. We’ll have a nap. It’s warm through.

Into the belly of the beast, foot to head, the two of us about to be birthed into another world not half so—

That was quite a bear.

Not so much white as green. I thought it was a shrub come to life.

Not as green as that.

Mossy.

If you be the back legs, I’ll be the front and we’ll creep up to a pack of them.

The front paws are frozen dead to the drift.

Pull, pull.

No, sleep, sleep.

Sleep will kill us.

Sleep.

Open the wound as a window.

There. Now the snow is houses-high.

There be no houses here.

Some new snow, as I said.

You forget how much in your sleep. It’s no deeper.

We’ll sink and be swallowed, we’ll need a boat to cross it.

It will harden or it will melt.

What’s that coming? Another bear?

Quit your shaking, you with your mighty cutlass.

He wanted our bear.

He wanted a bit of talk.

He wanted to separate us and then slaughter us.

He wanted to get inside.

A South Seas whaler, can you imagine that? A man from the colonies is a rare enough but a whaler from such a place, coming all the way from what they call the Viceroyalty of Peru to here?

Must’ve been pressed.

Must’ve been hard pressed.

So all the time you had a paper.

Aye.

Kind of him to read it.

He thought it would save him, I thought it would save me. Baltrick wrote it out, the cur. But instead of it swearing I’d been forced—

It said to kill us.

It were the Black Spot, only with words. I could have read the Black Spot. At least I didn’t give it to the gaoler.

You get to your death and it says the same for everyone.

I should have learnt to read words.

And myself!

The paper was very complimentary to my bravery.

He read it wrong.

You’re a cagey brother. It shows we are not related, this caginess.

You were looking at me with eyes penny-size whilst his whale-lance whistled through the bear.

His face was at me so sudden.

We had the bear’s true likeness with that fur upon us so well and tight, and breathing hard with us going about inside. He was no fool.

Too bad you hit him so hard.

I didn’t think so quick as my cutlass.

We could have wanted more of a talk from him.

Aye. A bit more before the dying.

At least he read out the paper.

But he ate the paper.

Must’ve been hungry. All those weeks he had without what you need, food or a drink of water. Alone.

Put your hat on your head, your nose has gone black.

By the blood of the bear.

That whaler thought you were the almighty himself, with a pitchfork and tails, and that by reading he could get a berth with you, the devil-priest carrying the paper for our hangings.

You’ll not remember.

What?

He was our brother. See the ring on his last finger but one? A perfect emblem of the scar on your back.

You’ll be seeing brothers in bears next. You are saying we shouldn’t eat him?

I am not saying so much as that. I’m saying Brother!

A South Seas pinkie whaler? Ma could do better than that.

Brother!

He would eat you and then me if we had not been so fast. Better we drag the leg of the bear with us for food and keep watch for the boat he left behind him with others of his like. He’s not going to spoil.

I’ll keep my cutlass clean.

Let’s try seven paces forward and then seven west and seven north and fourteen east, each time forcing a distance away from them without returning.

I hope you prove better with numbers than with letters.

Seven’s the number, a lucky one. See, we’re moving directly in one direction even though we’re touching all four of them.

Seven, and seven, and seven. The seven seas. I can do sevens.

And fourteen. Oh, for a cove and the depths.

You did make a pirate, didn’t you, after all, brother?