Miya Black, Pirate Princess I: Adventure Dawns Read online

  "But you do not know, even generally, where they might be," said Sola.

  "That's true, but I bet Dad does. And once he hears this idea, he'll be sailing out to find them as fast as he can. Trust me."

  4

  Lost Relations

  Miya sat on the deck of her ship, knees tucked into her chest, her chin resting between them. She was staring into the water, watching as the dark waves warped and twisted the light of the moon. After several minutes of this Miya took a slightly shuddery breath, then she sighed, long and deep and heartfelt.

  Things had not gone quite as well as she had hoped. In fact, she could safely say that it had been one of the worst days she'd ever had. It had all started off so great, too, what with figuring out Pete's plans and having her great idea with Sola, where did it all go wrong?

  Well, Miya thought, to begin with, telling Dad about the plan could definitely have gone better.

  *

  "Dad! Dad. I had an amazing idea—"

  "Can it wait, Miya? I'm about to meet with the other captains," said Tomas, hurriedly pulling a tight black boot onto his foot.

  "Oh, can I come?" Miya asked automatically, then shook her head. "No, wait, I have an idea, your parents!"

  "What?"

  "Your parents, my grandparents, they're legendary pirates! If we could find them and tell them about Badger Pete I'm sure they'd come and help us defeat him—"

  "Miya, I don't have time for this."

  "But don't you see? It's perfect! We've been saying all the way through 'if only someone could help us', well they're the someone! Someones, even! And I know you must have some idea where they are, right? Right?"

  "Miya, my darling, I'm sorry. I don't know where you got this idea but it ... you have to understand, my parents ... their way of doing things, the way they ... we just have to find ways to solve our problems ourselves. Do you understand?"

  "No. Aren't you going to go fight Badger Pete? Isn't that what this meeting is about?"

  "Miya—"

  "So how's it different? Grandma and Grandad were great pirates, legends! They'd wipe their noses with an upstart like Badger Pete, I know they would. And, plus, it's like that saying, 'fight fire with fire', right? Set a pirate to catch a pirate, let monkeys fight monkeys, the left sock will overcome the right—"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Badger Pete's a pirate! A bad pirate! I don't mean bad like he's not good at pirating because obviously he's doing pretty well, but bad like ... wrong! Right?"

  "My darling, I don't know what to say to you. I don't know where my parents are or even if they're still alive. We parted on bad terms and I haven't seen them for many, many years. They're not a part of my life here with you and your mother, and sadly they never will be. It's a choice they made a long time ago. So please, Miya, my darling, my Coconut, just forget about them. Leave them in the storybooks. That's where they belong."

  Tomas tightened his sword belt around his waist, and put his favourite tricorn hat on his head.

  "Now I really have to go. I'll talk to you later."

  "Huh."

  "I love you, my darling Miya."

  "Huh."

  Tomas looked at his daughter, indecision in his eyes, then he turned and left her alone.

  *

  "He didn't understand," Miya muttered to herself. "Why couldn't I make him understand?"

  She was lying down now, on her stomach, on the stern deck of her ship. She idly flicked a stone into the water, making a little cannon noise as she did so.

  "Pow. Take that, Badger Pete. Oh, whoops? Did I just sink your flagship? With you on board? Captain going down with his ship? How noble. Well, that's that problem solved, thanks once again to Miya Black, pirate."

  Miya laid her head down, feeling the wooden deck beneath her cheek, the coolness soothing.

  "Miya Black, pirate," she repeated. "Pirate," she said again, louder this time, pushing herself up from the deck. "Pirate! PIRATE! PIRATE PIRATE PIRATE!"

  Miya stood as she yelled, fists clenched at her sides, screaming her frustration at the night ocean. She glared at the water, then turned her back on it.

  "I AM a pirate," she muttered. "And everyone would know that, if I had half a chance to show what I can do."

  In an instant she had her sword out, pointed at an imaginary Badger Pete.

  "Oops," she said, as her sword flashed in the moonlight. "Was that your belt-buckle? Just a little too quick for you, am I? How's your grip, Badger Pete?"

  Miya's sword flashed again, then again, quicker and quicker as she advanced on her enemy.

  "There goes your cutlass. There goes your dagger. There goes your shirt, you really should sew your buttons on better."

  Miya stood over the downed Badger Pete, her sword pointed at his heart.

  "Yield," she said. "Or you'll taste the steel of my sword. Of my father's sword," she corrected herself. "The sword of a pirate king."

  Miya held the position a moment, then laughed a little and sheathed her weapon.

  "Whatever," she said, flopping back onto the hard wood of the deck. She flicked another pebble into the water.

  "Why don't they understand?" she muttered, idly looking for another pebble. "And where did all these pebbles come from?"

  Miya rolled over to see if there were any pebbles to her left. As she rolled she heard the crinkle of paper from her shirt pocket, which brought a sudden heavy feeling of guilt to her chest. I shouldn't have opened Dad's old chest, she thought, as she pulled out the letter to read once more. His private, personal stuff, I'd kill him if he looked at anything in my room. Even though I found this ...

  *

  Miya didn't go into the attic much, it was filled with dust and cobwebs and spiders—not that she was scared of spiders, she just preferred to be where they weren't. It was also where her parents kept their old stuff, and she knew how guarded they both were about their pasts. Even being up here felt wrong, like being an uninvited guest. Miya had been taught about 'respect for the past' from a very young age, not least from the stories her father had read to her and the history lessons her mother had taught. Clover Island was, in part, a place for second chances. A lot of people came to the island with pasts they'd rather forget. Part of what Tomas and Lily had instilled within Miya was the belief that you should not delve too deeply into someone's past—not without invitation.

  But, Miya reasoned, this is important. Dad doesn't understand but that's because he's busy, he's got other things to do, responsibilities. He's worried, like we all are—that's why he couldn't listen to me properly. And I know he must have something that can lead to his parents up here, he's probably just forgotten about it, or he's too busy to think about that kind of stuff, or he doesn't want to tell me for some reason. He thinks I'm still too young, probably, he's always too protective of me. Also, maybe he just doesn't have the time to go scrounging around in a dusty old attic. So, I'll find it for him and save him the time and bother, and prove I'm old enough to do things for myself—and I'm sure once I get the time to explain things to him properly he'll thank me for it, and then we can go find my grandparents together.

  Miya knew exactly where to start looking—her father's old sea-chest, a big heavy thing in the back corner of the attic, made of weathered but tough old wood, black with age (and ash; at some point in its life the chest had survived a rather serious fire). It was surrounded by crates and smaller chests, and Miya had to spend some time shifting things out of the way just to get to it—she'd wrapped a bandanna around her mouth and nose before coming up here so the dust didn't bother her too much, although it did get into her eyes a little.

  After clearing enough stuff out of the way, Miya knelt in front of the chest and opened it, or tried to at least—upon attempting to raise the lid she found that it was locked. This may have discouraged some people, but to Miya it was just another challenge to be overcome. Locked treasure chests were a normal part of pirate life, to be prepared for and dealt with appropriate
ly. Miya's father had told her that so-called 'skeleton keys', said to be capable of opening any lock, weren't to be relied on. Rather, a good set of lockpicks was what you needed. On her eighth birthday, in private, Tomas had given Miya her own set; half a dozen small, strong steel tools in a roll of leather. (As well as the lockpicks and lessons on how to use them, he'd also given her a series of serious lectures about only using them in an emergency or when you knew—KNEW—that the person who owned the lock you were picking wouldn't mind you messing around with it. Miya hadn't enjoyed that part of the gift so much, but it had penetrated her thick skull eventually. That was part of the reason she felt so guilty.) Miya had practiced with her lockpicks for a little less than a year, until she could open most locks in a matter of minutes without any difficulty at all, after which, having mastered the skill to her own satisfaction, she'd lost interest. This was to her mother's great relief; she'd grown more than a little tired of all the doors in the house mysteriously locking and unlocking themselves.

  Miya knelt in front of the chest for a few minutes, running a hand over the dusty surface, chewing on her lip. Eventually, her expression hardened and she nodded, taking out the little leather roll and getting to work without further hesitation. The lock wasn't a complicated one, but it was old and clogged with dust—Miya had to spend several minutes just cleaning it out before she could even get started. After that, however, it was just a matter of time before she heard a tiny, intensely satisfying 'click' and felt the lock give beneath her hands. She put her lockpicks away, feeling a twinge of guilt at using the skills her father had so proudly taught her against him—but is it really against him? Considering I'm doing this for his benefit, I shouldn't feel guilty at all, thought Miya. That didn't really make the guilty feeling go away, but it helped her ignore it as she pushed the heavy lid up and looked inside her father's chest.

  The contents had been covered with a layer of fine dust, but aside from that seemed to have survived the years remarkably well. There was a small knife in a scabbard (probably his first weapon, thought Miya, remembering how her father had once told her he'd been given a knife almost as soon as he could hold it on his own), as well as around a dozen compasses (her father had collected them at one point, after becoming terribly lost thanks to a poorly-made compass failing him), a vicious-looking tooth that looked almost long enough to use as a dagger (Miya thought it was probably from a large shark), a long length of yellow ribbon, tied into a neat bow (it looked familiar to Miya, but she couldn't quite place it), a crude eye patch (but he has both his eyes, Miya thought), a bit of dry, rubbery, red skin (what the heck did this come from, Miya wondered, as she held it up to examine it, and why does it smell so bad?), a very small painting of a city skyline at night (having never been outside of the Rainbow Archipelago, Miya didn't recognise the city), an ordinary-looking arrow, broken in half (I'm pretty sure Dad never used a bow, Miya thought, so where did this come from?), a tiny, rather crudely carved wooden ship, missing its mast (Miya liked the blood red colour that parts of the toy had been painted), a bit of strangely-shaped iron (after examining it for a moment, Miya realised it was a broken-off hook from a grapple), a scrap of old, yellowed fabric (it looked like it'd been torn from a dress), two pieces of thin rope, one a faded blue colour, the other faded red, tied together in an intricate knot (Miya was fascinated by this but had no idea what it was supposed to represent, if anything), a bit of sharpened metal, one end wrapped in dirty cloth (after a moment Miya realised that it was actually meant to be a crude knife), a small, ragged bit of black shark's skin (maybe from a panther shark, Miya thought with a small shiver), a sword hilt with about two inches of blade left, the rest having broken off (Miya didn't know the story behind this one), the dried skull of some kind of weird-looking fish (it had dozens of tiny, needle-sharp teeth—privately Miya decided that whatever this fish was, she never wanted to meet a live one), a long, burnt splinter of wood (Miya looked at this a while but couldn't figure out why her father had kept it at all; eventually she decided it had probably ended up in the chest by mistake), a large piece of curved, slightly tarnished metal (maybe part of an old suit of armour, Miya decided), the old, broken-off heel of a boot (Black Boots, Miya thought with a smile), a bit of green cloth with a symbol sewn into it in gold thread (some sort of royal thing, Miya thought, probably Highland—but I don't recognise the symbol), a small carved wooden idol decorated with faded purple feathers (Miya felt oddly sad at this one, although she didn't know why), a few old charts (all quite out of date, from what Miya could make out), a number of shells and rocks, a jar of different types of sand ... and several bundles of letters.

  Fighting back the feelings of guilt, swearing to herself that if she so much as suspected that the letters contained anything personal or otherwise unrelated to her mission she would stop reading them immediately, Miya picked up the first bundle. She undid the old ribbon tying them together, unfolded the first one, and read the first word. It was 'to'. That seemed harmless enough, so she read the second word, which was 'my'. Although she was beginning to get a sick kind of fluttery wrong feeling in her stomach, Miya pressed on, but upon reading the third word ('darling'), she immediately refolded the letter, shoved it back into the bundle and tied the ribbon tightly around it, before exhaling sharply.

  "Okay," she said to herself. "Not that bundle."

  Miya glanced back, at the entrance to the attic, then picked up the second bundle. This one was tied with string rather than ribbon, which seemed a good sign to her, so she untied it and unfolded one and, with one eye closed, read the first word, which was 'total'. This seemed a little strange, so she read on, soon realising that this bundle was a bunch of receipts and trade records. She was puzzled as to why her father had these in the first place, let alone why he'd kept them. He'd certainly never been a trader. Had he? In any case there weren't any clues to be found there, so she folded up the letters and tied them with the string, and turned her attention to the third, most tatty-looking, smallest bundle. It was so tatty-looking, in fact, that it seemed as if it could fall apart at any moment. But, Miya thought, I'm not going to get anywhere by being cautious. To her horror, though, as she untied the bundle most of the letters actually did fall apart in her hands—the paper was cheap and dry and old, and despite her care she was unable to save much except for one, which seemed to be on better quality paper and was perhaps more recent than the others. Feeling intensely guilty about destroying the other letters, she unfolded it. Her heart did a little somersault as her eyes were automatically drawn to the large signature at the bottom—JB! Jonathan Black, she thought, this is a letter from my grandfather!

  Miya took a little breath, forced herself to be calm, then started reading from the beginning:

  January 30th, 1790

  Tommy Boy,

  Cheers for your letter, don't get much mail these days. Took two months to get to me, maybe a new record. World's moving faster and faster, hard to keep up sometimes. Wasn't surprised to hear about the state of things down your way, but then if you had any brains you wouldn't be either. You never were one to take good advice when it was offered. Still can't say I'm happy about what you're doing now, but good luck to you if that's your choice. Could always use a decent swabbie so if you ever change your mind about things seek me out. Just kidding. I know you've captained a ship yourself so taking orders wouldn't sit well with you I'm guessing. Especially from your old man.

  Still can't believe you've got a squirt of your own now, seems not so long ago you were toddling around with that wee blade of yours pretending to be a pirate king or some such nonsense. Makes things hard, don't it? Harder than they should be. I know plenty of kids done well with just their mother around to raise them, so don't let it get in your way.

  Speaking of that, I haven't seen hide nor hair of your mother since we met last year, heard a couple of rumours she was up around Spirea but you know how that manner of thing goes. I'm hoping to meet up with her sometime soon, even if it's a repeat of things b
etter left unsaid, you know what I'm talking about.

  Where was I last I wrote you? The Diamond Isles? Don't believe the name, lad, there's not a diamond to be found on any of 'em! Not that I was looking for diamonds. Most of the big countries have changed a lot of their shipping routes, it's exciting times if you find a good busy area but it means a lot of the old haunts aren't as fruitful as they once was. The Diamond Isles served me well for a long while but they're too quiet these days, nothing like the old times. Might try heading Bloodclot Reef way, heard it's a rough sort of place so it might suit me well, eh? Doesn't pay to get too comfortable, but you shouldn't need me to tell you that.

  Give my regards to your wife. As for your squirt, just you make sure she knows she's a Black. None of this bloody royal nonsense, can't see that doing a child anything but harm. She's got pirate in her blood, boy, and there ain't nothing that can change that.

  Better sign off here, pub's getting rowdy. If I can write again I will. If I can't I won't.

  Good sailing,

  JB

  Miya blinked, tears trickling down her cheeks as she did so.

  "Must be the dust," she murmured, then she read the letter again, excitement growing to replace the guilt. The Diamond Isles! Bloodclot Reef! Neither of those places are too far away, she thought, a week's travel if we push ourselves, maybe even less! And then maybe a day or two to track down my grandfather, and then maybe he'll know where my grandmother is, and then another week back here, what had Dad said? One or two weeks for Badger Pete to get here? But that was before we knew about his detour to Triangle Island, and also he's probably travelling slower because of his bigger-than-we-thought gang—