Miya Black, Pirate Princess I: Adventure Dawns Read online

  "He did go down the cliff path," said Sola.

  "What? So why did you tell Mum?"

  "Because ... because she was looking for your—our—father?"

  Miya gave a big, exasperated sigh.

  "Come on, Sola, this is basic stuff! Okay, I guess you haven't been around long, you don't know how things work here ... I'll explain later, right now we have to go rescue Dad!"

  "From your mother?"

  "Exactly!"

  Sola looked confused.

  "Look. Sometimes ... oh, it's too complicated. Just ... if Mum's looking for Dad, don't tell her where he is. Okay?"

  "Lie?"

  "No! No no no no no no. Well yes. It's just ... sometimes Dad needs to do something because it's the right thing to do. And sometimes Mum needs to stop him from doing that because it's not the smart thing to do. Understand?"

  "No," said Sola.

  "Just ... just forget it. I hope Dad's okay."

  "He's over there, should we ask him?"

  Miya looked where Sola was looking and saw her father, walking quickly up the path from town. She jogged over to him.

  "Mum's looking for you," she said. Tomas stopped and glanced at his daughter sideways.

  "Where is she now?" he asked.

  "Family dock."

  "You send her there?"

  "Sola did."

  "Good lad. How long ago?"

  "Not long. Where you been?"

  "Arranging."

  "Getting ready to go after a certain pirate menace?"

  "Could be."

  "Need a lieutenant?"

  "You're not coming."

  "First mate?"

  "You are not coming, Miya."

  "We can discuss that later."

  "Can we?"

  "We certainly can."

  "Oh."

  "Good luck with Mum."

  "Thanks."

  Father and daughter nodded at each other, then Tomas stole into the house and Miya returned to Sola.

  "I think I sorted that one out. Honestly, nothing would ever go smoothly around here if it wasn't for my good influence. I don't know what they'd do without me."

  "I imagine that they'd be very sad and lonely for a long time, should anything ever happen to you," said Sola. Miya shivered.

  "Okay, well, thanks for bringing me down," she said. "Do you want to go and see my friend Penny with me now?"

  Sola looked down at his feet.

  "Come on, she's super nice. Look at it this way, if you don't start meeting people around here you'll never be any better off."

  Sola raised his head to look at Miya. "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "Well, you said you knew everyone in your village, right? So, you'd better start getting to know people around here! You already know me, Miya Black, AKA the greatest girl on the island, and my Mum and our Dad, so you've got kind of a lot of people to get to know ... like a thousand, actually. To be honest even I don't know all of them, and I've lived here my whole life. But if you tried I'm sure you could meet at least five a day—I mean meet them good enough to learn their names and get to know them a little bit. So that's ... um ..."

  "Two hundred days to meet everyone on the island," said Sola. He smiled, then shook his head. "I'm not sure."

  "Oh, come on, don't be such a wuss! Come and meet Penny, anyway, and her mum, and I guess her little brother. If you're going to start with anyone, start with them. They're excellent."

  *

  "Penny! Penny Buck! It's your bestest friend Miya here to see you! And I brought your favourite cinnamon buns! And my really, really big brother!"

  Miya waited a few seconds, then frowned.

  "Penny, I'm sorry about being rude this morning, I was kind of annoyed but I had a good stomp and thought about it and I'm okay now!"

  She waited a little longer, then gave a melodramatic sigh.

  "Guess they're not home. Goodness, how inconvenient of them. I wonder where they are?"

  Sola shrugged and shook his head slightly. He hadn't said anything since leaving Miya's house, and the further they'd come into town the more he'd seemed to shrink into himself, his head lowering, his posture stooping, his gaze fixed firmly on the ground.

  "Well, we're not doing any good standing around here. Hum hum hum. She's not at the stables because we would've seen her on the way down here. Are you okay?"

  Sola shrugged.

  "What's the problem?"

  Sola shrugged again and made a little 'all of this' gesture.

  "Oh help, I'm sorry, your townaphobia. Peopleaphobia? What is it that you're scared of, exactly? Is it the buildings?"

  "No. I am not scared. I am uncomfortable."

  "Would you feel better if we went back to the house?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay, let's go then. Maybe we can find something to do around the upper fields. Or the house. Oh hey, do you like books?"

  Sola looked at Miya. "Yes. Do you have one?"

  "One?"

  *

  "It's just in here. You should have said something earlier, I didn't even think—okay, here we are."

  Miya opened the door and Sola stepped inside slowly, looking around at the tiny paradise he'd just been introduced to. It wasn't a large room, just a little nook that caught a lot of light really, with a couple of old overstuffed chairs and a small table in the middle, and a large bookshelf on each wall. Sola walked slowly to the closest bookshelf and stared at the books on it, the expression on his face somewhere between awe and disbelief.

  "So many," he murmured.

  "Yeah, it's pretty special, Dad's kind of a book nut, collects them from all over. Whenever he goes away he usually comes back with at least one. That shelf's stories and stuff, you know, adventures and mysteries and myths and legends and plays, and some, um, stupid romantic rubbish."

  Sola nodded, not really listening to anything Miya said, reading each book's title carefully, stooping to look at the books on the lower shelves.

  "So just, you know, read whatever you want, make sure you bring 'em back when you're finished, though, Dad gets really funny about that. He's usually pretty laid back but books are his, what do you call it, his weak point or something."

  Sola slowly pulled a book from the shelf and opened it.

  "Or you can just sit in here and read. It's pretty nice, means you don't have to worry about forgetting to return a book like ONCE and Dad giving one of his little speeches that start with 'I'm just a little bit disappointed in you, Miya'. Ugh. I hate those. Um."

  Sola stood in front of the shelf, perfectly still, only moving to turn the page.

  "I'll ... just leave you to it. I know what it's like when you really get into a book. Uh, maybe I'll go try to find Penny, apologise for this morning. Are you okay here? Do you want a cinnamon bun? Y'know ... to be going on with?"

  Sola nodded slowly, still reading.

  "Okay then."

  Miya put a cinnamon bun on the little table between the two chairs, looked around the room, put her hands together, and then left, closing the door quietly behind herself. In the corridor outside, she allowed herself a brief triumphant smirk.

  "Mission: Make Sola Happy ... huge success!"

  *

  "There you are! I've been looking EVERYWHERE for you, literally EVERYWHERE."

  "Did you check the northern jungle? Inaccessible Bay? Did you travel to Paradise Island and the Highland and to Al-Rhal and Spirea?"

  "Well, no, but—"

  "Then you didn't look literally everywhere," said Penny, smiling at her friend.

  "You and your fancy talking!"

  "Do you want to come in now?"

  " 'kay. I brought you some cinnamon buns. Some of them accidentally got eaten, though."

  "Oh, thanks Miya. It's a bit close to dinner right now to have them, though. Maybe for afters."

  "You're always so 'proper'!"

  "Come in, anyway."

  Miya followed Penny into the little cottage. It was small but densely furnishe
d, shelves and cabinets and cupboards crammed into the hallway and kitchen, and almost every free bit of wall had something on it—paintings and carvings and decorative wall-hangings, mostly.

  "Where's your mum?" Miya asked, looking at a framed painting of a town nestled amongst green hills.

  "Out with Bradley, getting stuff for dinner. Want some tea? I have to light the stove anyway."

  "Sure! Um, I'm sorry about being rude earlier, I didn't mean to be, I'm just really—"

  "It's okay. I know what you were trying to say."

  Miya flopped into a big, comfortable kitchen chair.

  "It's all just so complicated," she muttered.

  "If only we had a bigger navy, right?" said Penny, making sure the stove was properly lit, then closing the iron door and straightening. "Or someone that would help us."

  "Yeah ... too bad everyone hates us."

  "That's not entirely accurate," said Penny, as she filled the kettle.

  "Are you saying there's someone that doesn't hate us?"

  "No, you said 'too bad everyone hates us', but you should have said 'too bad everyone hates ... me'."

  Miya's jaw dropped in mock-shock.

  "Ouch!" she said. "That's kind of mean, Penny!"

  "I know. It's sort of like revenge for you being rude this morning."

  "Oh. Well, that's okay then."

  "It'll take a while for the stove to heat up. Wanna split a cinnamon bun while we wait?"

  "I knew you were going to say that. Before I said 'you're always so proper' but that wasn't entirely accurate, actually I should have said 'you always PRETEND to be so proper'," said Miya, tearing one of the buns in half. "You can have the big bit."

  "That's unusually generous of you," said Penny, accepting the half and taking a very large, very unladylike bite out of it.

  "It's only because I've already eaten like three this afternoon already."

  "I figured as much. Hey, how are you getting on with your new brother?"

  "Oh, great!" said Miya, nibbling at her half. "I mean, pretty good. I wanted to bring him around to meet you earlier, actually, but you weren't here."

  "What's he like? I haven't really met any northern islanders before."

  "I have, but he's kind of different to the ones I've met—you know, usually they're all, I don't know, big and friendly and smiling and laughing all the time. Sola's kind of serious."

  "You think maybe, just perhaps, I'm just making a guess here, a stab in the dark, you think that's because his entire village was enslaved?"

  "Penny."

  "Sorry. But that must have something to do with it."

  "I think mainly he's lonely and kind of uncomfortable because this place is so different to his home. He came from a village of just like seventy people and he knew all of them, he's not used to being someplace where he doesn't know everyone."

  "Hm. I guess it was kind of the same for me when we first moved here ... but then again maybe not."

  "Can you imagine losing your entire home? And everyone you know, just taken prisoner ..."

  "I can't. I can't even imagine," said Penny.

  "Every time I start even trying to imagine I have to stop because it makes me feel so empty, and sad, and angry ... but, at least I made him a bit happy today."

  "What'd you do? Oh, take him horse-riding?"

  "That's your answer for everything! No, I showed him the library, apparently in his village there were like six books total, and he read them all about a hundred times each. He's totally nuts for books, even more than my dad maybe."

  "Wow. You wouldn't think so to look at him. You'd think he'd be more into, y'know, hunting, fishing, outdoor stuff," said Penny. She popped the last morsel of cinnamon bun into her mouth, leaned over and checked the fire, then shook her head. "Not even warm yet."

  "Well, he's pretty into that stuff too. I mean, he paddled all the way here from Tonfa-Tonfa just in his canoe, that's like ten days paddling."

  "I didn't even think about that, pretty amazing."

  "I'll say."

  Miya finished the last of her cinnamon bun half. "How do they make these so good?"

  "I don't know," said Penny. "But they're pretty much the only reason I let you hang around me."

  "What, because I bring you cinnamon buns?"

  Penny shrugged with a cheeky little smile. "Pretty much."

  Miya considered this. "Well, that's fair," she said. "Oh, but you know who's, like, totally addicted to them?"

  "Who?"

  "Lars."

  "Lars your fake uncle Lars? Lars the super-amazing sword guy Lars? No way."

  "Yep!" said Miya, delighted at Penny's reaction.

  "That's so weird, he seems like the type of guy that doesn't even like sweet stuff."

  "He buys like a half dozen at a time and just gromps the lot. It's true! I've seen him do it!"

  "What, you like followed him and hid and watched him eat six cinnamon buns in a row?" asked Penny.

  "Well ... kind of. It was, like, fascinating!"

  "And then what, you jumped out and said 'Surprise! The jig is up, fatty!'?"

  "Huh? What? No, I just kind of crept away again."

  "I would have jumped out," said Penny.

  "No you wouldn't, you wouldn't even have followed him in the first place because you're a complete wuss," said Miya, laughing.

  "I am not!"

  "You are! You so are! Like that time we went exploring up the western side of the island? And we found that sea cave and you wouldn't go in?"

  "You mean the time that we found a sea cave and I warned you about how dangerous they are, and you completely ignored me and went in and got trapped when the tide changed, and I had to go get help and you almost drowned?"

  "At least I didn't wuss out!"

  "Miya, Miya, Miya. Princess Miya Black. Just sometimes I'd like to know exactly how you think."

  "Hey, a lot goes on in my head. My brain goes so fast sometimes I amaze myself."

  Penny looked at Miya, disbelieving.

  "You have a brain?"

  *

  The kettle did eventually boil, and after a cup of tea and another shared cinnamon bun Miya accepted Penny's invitation to dinner. She helped prepare the food and chatted with Penny's mother, who was a small, defiant woman who Miya was secretly just a tiny bit scared of, and her little brother Bradley, who was as annoying but oddly endearing as ever, and after a fun meal and some talk and some laughter, and after making a promise to visit more often, Miya left the little cottage and headed for home.

  The sun was just beginning its slow descent, bathing the island in a kind of golden-orange glow that Miya wanted to wrap herself up in. She ran up the path to the lower fields, twirled a few times, then made her way up the cliff path to her house, stopping every few steps to admire the view.

  "It's magic outside right now, you should come out and look!" she called out as she burst through the front door, but the house was quiet. She checked her father's study but it was empty, as was the front lounge, the nice lounge, and the evening lounge. There was nobody in the kitchen and the stove was cold, and there didn't seem to be anybody upstairs, either.

  "Mum? Dad? Sola?"

  Miya made her way through the house but it seemed empty. One of the last rooms she checked was the library, and after opening the door and glancing in she was about to discount that as empty too, until she looked again and realised Sola WAS in there—in the same spot she'd left him, in fact, standing there almost as still as a statue, moving only to turn the page of the book he was reading. She looked at the little table between the two chairs and saw that the cinnamon bun she'd put there was untouched.

  "Sola! Have you not moved from that spot in all the time I've been away?" Miya demanded. Sola didn't move for a few seconds, then slowly he raised his head and turned to look at her.

  "This book is very interesting," he said, after a moment.

  "It must be, you've been standing there reading it for like three hours!"


  Sola looked around, out the window at the evening light.

  "I didn't realise," he said. "Sorry."

  "You should be! Well, actually, I guess there's nothing technically wrong with just standing in the same place reading for hours and hours and hours ... but wouldn't you be more comfortable sitting? Don't you get tired or like cramp from standing like that?"

  "I'm used to being still," said Sola.

  "Well, okay, I suppose, if you're fine with it. Um, so I guess you haven't seen Mum or Dad around?"

  "I've just been here reading."

  "Okay. Um, could you maybe sit down when you do it? I just ... I don't know, it's just kind of creepy thinking of you standing there reading like that."

  "All right," said Sola. He moved to one of the chairs, sat down carefully, then focused on the book again.

  "I'll, um, leave you to it. Once the sun goes down you can use that lamp over there for light. Or you could take the book upstairs to your room, or, y'know, maybe to one of the lounges, the one upstairs right beside the stairs is where we usually sit in the evenings. We call it the evening lounge. You know. Because of that."

  Sola nodded.

  "Okay, well, anyway, I'm gonna go look for Mum and Dad. It's kind of strange for them not to be here, so ... yes. See you later, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "See ya."

  Miya left Sola to his book and then stood outside the library, thinking. After a moment she gave this up and headed for the front door, intending to check the family dock.

  "Oh, hello Miya, I didn't know you were home."

  "Mum!" Miya spun around, surprised by her mother's sudden voice. "Where on earth were you?"

  Miya's mother looked at her. "I was just here. In the occasional lounge."

  "Oh," said Miya. "I forgot about that one. Didn't you hear me calling?"

  "I was crocheting. You know how I get caught up in it."

  "Huh. Um."

  "Something the matter?"

  "I know we made a promise not to talk about, y'know, 'kingdom affairs' together—"

  "After The Incident I really do feel that's best," said Lily.

  "But—"

  "Miya ..." Lilith's voice held a warning tone.

  "I just—"

  "Miya, think carefully."

  Miya looked at her mother helplessly, then sagged.

  "What did you crochet?" she asked, weakly. Her mother smiled.