| A Girl’s
Tale of Pirates, Adventure and The King’s Gold
Writing a pirate story along the lines of Treasure Island was
always on my bucket list. That book just seems to come to life
every time I read the first page. However, since I have daughters
and a niece, a story with a boy like Jim Hawkins would not be
as much to their liking as a story with a young girl.
So, I wrote this pirate story for my niece, about a girl, named
Anne Greene. It was meant as a story to be read by a teenaged
girl, around aged 12-14. The girl is taken mostly from my daughter
April, with some of her sister Rachel thrown in. Since they're
in their late 20s and out of the house, they can't punish me for
this by hiding the ice cream.
Further Out There,
Paul
*****
Annie and the King's Gold:
A Girl’s Tale of Pirates, Adventure
and The King’s Gold
ALONG THE ROOFTOPS
She stood at her upstairs window, staring down at
the schooners, square-riggers, and pilot ships in the harbor.
She was but a young girl, waiting for her father to come home
from his voyage in the Caribbean. Her father was a pilot himself,
commanding a commercial ship carrying lumber, cloth, and ironworks
to the islands in the warm waters. He always came back, she knew
he would, but every day she watched the horizon, hoping, holding
her breath, awaiting for those blue sails and gleaming white hull
to appear.
Her name was Suzanne, though all the folks along the harbor called
her, Little Miss Annie. She touched her fingers on the window
pane, letting the trace of her fingertips come down the glass
in a wavy pattern, like the wind on a cold night. Anne Greene
then gave up hope for this afternoon. She slumped on her bed,
wishing someone else would come in to help her make her bed. She
missed her mother so much, now that her mother decided to return
to England to inherit a fortune in Sussex. Her aunt came over
every night to make dinner and tuck Anne in, but it just wasn't
the same. Her father was somewhere out there, beyond the horizon,
her mother was somewhere out there in England so far away. Dusk
now crept along the harbor, with the ship masts and lines tossing
a complex of shadows crisscrossing the docks and lofts and the
sugar factory. Another night approached. The wind brought a chill
from over the sea, a vacant sarcastic chill like the laughter
of a thief. She didn't even notice the ship, Wicked Rover, anchored
a few blocks down from her house.
Strange-looking men got off her forward deck, pig-tailed men
with swords clanging on their hip, men with dirty yellow bandanas,
one with an eye-patch, and one evil-looking man on the deck, lashing
some poor sailor to a mast. They were whipping him, Anne heard
his screams, a screeching tear from his lungs she'd never forget.
The other men leaped off the gangplank, spitting and laughing
and shoving each other around, staggering off to the street where
the taverns were. She knew they'd be drunk soon enough, as long
as they don't come down her street. Why couldn't she just live
somewhere else?
Just then she saw some arm stick out one of the portholes of
the upper deck. Then someone grabbed the arm enough to strangle
it back into the hold. Anne could hear a beating take place. She
heard wood splinter, laughing, chains twist around a leg, wicked
pain cried out, the last breath of a hoarse exhale limped in the
air, falling for the last time. Anne turned away from her window,
shuddering, crawling under the covers, closing her eyes to hope
all this would just go away. She tried to imagine a nice garden,
and a soft warm breeze, and a happy puppy skipping alongside her
dress but she knew it was all a dream. Just then she heard a piercing
rap on the door below -
To read the rest of the story download
it here in pdf format.
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