Chapter 7

The sun was low in the sky when Hailey and her grandmother finished at the market and began making their way up the winding road to their family home. As the last rays of light touched the leaves of their house, Hailey noticed that in her absence that her home had grown slightly.

The tree they had shaped over time into their home was already large and wide, but now the branches looked to be a little taller overhead. This homestead was once planted and trained by the first colonists, so it was one of the larger homes in the area. All of the tree homes grew very quickly when tended to by professional shapers like her grandmother, but they wouldn’t grow indefinitely. In time the tree would stop growing and fossilize, turning into stone as the shapers designed it.

Thinking on this, Hailey couldn’t help but feel the irony that her grandmother was trying to do the same thing to her as she did to the tree homes. Shape them until they no longer changed.

Sitting in the shade of the tree home, muttering to himself and struggling with a tangle of knotted ropes, was Hailey’s father.

Hailey was thankful that her father hadn’t inherited his disposition from his mother. Had her father turned out like Grandmother Rose, Hailey would have run away from home a long time ago.

She had been avoiding her father long enough. She knew she would have to talk to him sometime. In fact, she wanted to talk to him, to tell him what the book said, yet still she hesitated. A little part in her was afraid that he would be mad at her. That he’d dismiss her and wouldn’t want to listen. Regardless, she had to talk to him, and she may as well do it when he was in a good mood.

Hailey broke away from her grandmother and joined her father on the bench. Grandmother Rose was too preoccupied with all the thoughts of things that needed doing before the party to even notice Hailey’s absence anyway. He continued to struggle with the ropes, all the time watching Grandmother Rose pass into the house.

Orin leaned over and murmured to Hailey, “She looks like she’s in one of her moods. I think it might be a good time for you and I to go for a walk on the beach.” He set down the ball of ropes and got up.

“But Grandmother Rose told me on the way home not to go anywhere,” Hailey said.

He looked up at her for a moment. “Is that so? Well, on the boat I told you we needed to talk. My order was first.” He winked at her.

They both knew that if they stuck around, Grandmother Rose would find something for them to do, so they quickly made their way around to the backyard, past the kitchen house and to the well-worn path that led down to the ocean. 

Halfway down the path they could hear faint calls for them going unanswered.

They quietly walked side by side along the shore as the sun began to set, the only sounds between them the hushing sound of the waves crashing on the shore and the sand squeaking beneath their feet.

After the sun went down, he would occasionally stop and point out stars and constellations. Orin recounted stories about each of them and how they traced the path in the sky to where their ancestors once fell to this world. Hailey had heard these stories before, both from him and also at the church. She didn’t tell him or correct him when he missed a few things, just silently listened as though it was the first time.

The story of the original Ancestors was a tragic one that ended with a fall from great heights from which they could never reascend. All their descendants could do after was look up at the heavens they were once a part of. The hope was that the Ancestors would smile down on their achievements and raise them up into the heavens after they died as a new star in the night sky. Hailey wondered where her mother’s was and where her father’s star would be after he was gone. They both fell into silence.

There was one constellation in particular in his story her father would always neglect to mention, though it was fairly prominent and low in the sky. It was the one with two red stars that looked as though they were eyes looking down on them. It was the group that sailors used to navigate the northern waters. The constellation they called Ghost Pirate.

Hailey’s father broke the silence as they walked. “You know my dad used to take me for walks like this when I was younger. We would walk the shore for hours, without saying a word.”

Hailey looked over at her father as they walked. He just looked up at the sky, then continued, “I think it was because he was giving me room to talk. I always appreciated that. Growing up with your grandmother, always asking questions and demanding things, it was a nice change. It made me feel more grown up.”

He fell into silence once more. Hailey studied the sand as they walked. Her father patiently walked by her side. She knew that he wanted her to tell him about taking the book. She wanted to tell him, but she was still afraid. She wanted to pretend for just a little bit longer that it wasn’t real, but the book’s words flashed in her mind.

THIS IS REAL. THEY ARE COMING.

Orin looked down at her and, trying a different tack, started a different conversation.

“Did I ever tell you about how your mother and I met?”

He had, but Hailey always loved to hear it, so she shook her head as he sighed and fell back into memory.

“It was around a book, actually.”

Hailey’s head whipped up and around to look at him. He had never told her that before, and the statement caught her off guard. He looked back at her and chuckled. “Don’t be so surprised. You remember how much of an avid reader your mother was. I figure you’re old enough to know about it now.”

Hailey felt a twinge of excitement as he began to tell the story.

He’d been in Jakar looking for a boat. His father had sent him there because the boat crafters were said to be legendary. It was to be his first ship and Grandfather Angus wanted to be sure that Orin had the best. He put him in touch with one of the oldest boat-building families there and sent him to do a deal.

Arriving at port, Orin found that there was only one room available at an inn way on the other side of the city because there was some boat race that the nobles were staging.

He didn’t know the town too well, and he only had just enough to get the boat and pay for his room at the inn, so he spent a lot of time in the tavern reading. It just so happened that a beautiful woman with raven black hair worked there. She saw him reading and told him about her love for books.

Orin stayed there for several months as his boat was being built, and he and the girl from the tavern grew closer. They had a lot in common. A love of reading, collecting banned books, humor—she was wonderful. Everything he had ever dreamed of in a woman.

It was only after the boat was finished that he found out that she was the builder’s daughter. It turned out that she knew and asked her dad to take his time building Orin’s ship so they could get to know one another better.

“It worked,” Orin said, “because by the time her father was finished, I had asked her to marry me.”

Orin grinned to himself, warm in the memory of it.

“And?” asked Hailey.

“After her father christened the boat I thought of staying and setting up shop there, but something happened.”

Hailey kept looking forward, avoiding his gaze.

“She came to me one night, all in a panic, and said we had to leave Jakar right away. I couldn’t understand what would scare her so much and make her want to abandon her friends and family like that, but I was in love and didn’t want to question it. She told me that there was a book that we had to hide, that someone was coming for it, and for her. I don’t think I had ever seen your mother so afraid. We sailed out that night with a small crew that we gathered in the tavern and sailed here, never looking back.”

They walked on in silence, the shushing sound of the moving sand beneath their feet and the moist smell of seaweed and salt in the air. One question rolled over and over in her head like the surf churning off the shore.

“So what happened to the book?” Hailey finally asked.

Orin gave a slight grin. “That creepy thing? Well, at first we sent it away for a friend to hold on to. Your mother thought it important that she not be around it for some reason. That friend ended up trading it with someone else and we lost touch with it. Until recently.”

Her father cleared his throat, then continued. “My old friend and sailing partner, Seamus Pike, stumbled on it on a trip to Aibronne. He wrote me about it and we decided to meet up in Baron’s Bay. Your mother had asked me not too long before she died to get it to you if I ever found it. I don’t know what’s in it or why she sent it away, but it was important enough to her that you have it, so I got it for you.”

He stopped walking, and Hailey stopped beside him. With a sigh, he looked at her and said, “It’s a shame it disappeared.” He shrugged his shoulders and walked on, leaving Hailey there for a moment.

Hailey thought he obviously knew, but wasn’t saying anything. True to his word, he didn’t press her like Grandmother Rose. He was giving her space to talk after he presented the facts. Hailey felt a little relieved at the fact that her dad sounded like he was going to let the topic rest, especially since he had been planning on giving her the book anyway.

Hailey caught up with him and they walked on in silence. Off the shore, a mist began to build just under the two red stars that made up the Skull. Hailey suddenly felt a chill and decided to ask what he knew. 

“Dad, what do you know about pirates?”

She found herself staring over her shoulder at the two glowing eyes in the sky, almost as if the eyes were following her. Watching her. She shifted and felt the book still hidden in her waistband.

With every sailor, there were three things you never talked about: the Queen in the east, the storms to the west, or the ghosts of pirates waiting in the middle. They believed that the more you talked about something, the more you summoned them to you. Hailey wondered how right that was.

She looked at him apologetically as Orin stopped and gave the question quiet consideration. He turned and looked out over the ocean, its soft waves crashing in the moonlight. A slight breeze stirred his long gray ponytail as his eyes searched the water. He seemed to notice the mists gathering just off the shore.

“People say that they are just a myth. Boogiemen created to scare children into behaving. When the King was alive he would send out search parties for them all the time, but they never found anything. I never believed in them too much, though like any good sailor I try to avoid sailing in the mists if I can help it.”

Hailey thought about the warnings she had heard as a child.

Eyes of red

of the pirate dead

Are on the hunt for you.

Beware the mists,

And take no risks,

Lest you become a ghost pirate, too.

“I used to hear a lot of stories about the ghost pirates from my father and other sailors in port back then. Occasionally someone would tell tale of a black ship that could be seen in the mists for a moment and then gone the next. My father’s first mate swore he saw an ominous shadow of a ship on the water with no ship there. He was known to tell a tall tale or two over a few drinks in the tavern, though. They all did.” He shook his head. “I never took much stock in it.”

“Why not?” Hailey asked.

“Well, you see, not many who actually saw the ghost pirates lived to tell the tale. There are a few here and there that sound more convincing than the others, but not many. Your grandfather believed in them. Said he actually ran into them. He used to talk about it to anyone who would listen. I never gave it much attention until he disappeared not long after you were born.”

Hailey’s eyes went wide. She could feel the cold metal of the book pressing against her back. The more her father talked, the more it seemed to get colder and bite into her skin.

He turned from her and looked at the moon reflecting on the waves and noticed that the mist off the coast was larger and getting closer still.

“He would tell us that when he was younger there were many steamy nights like this, where the mists creep out of the cool water and dance with the warm night air. Everything off the shorelines would be covered in a thick gray blanket that ships would completely disappear into. They’d be found days later, lifeless and stripped of everything.”

Hailey gasped. “What happened?”

“At first the King and noblemen thought it was some local townsfolk privateering, but there was no way. Trade was too good and nobody was fool enough to risk sending their entire families, children and all, to the gallows for piracy. Nobody was that stupid. Dad and the rest of the people in town thought it was the ghosts exacting revenge for what the Crown had done to them.”

According to the history books of her father’s and what she’d learned in school, Hailey knew that the King at that time had hunted down every known pirate family two hundred years ago. No man, woman, or child was spared the Crown’s wrath. Even helping one of the suspected pirates was a death sentence. It was a lesson that the schools were quick to burn into the hearts and minds of its citizens. Piracy was a death sentence for you and your entire bloodline.

“More ships kept disappearing,” Orin went on, “so the Crown sent more ships to patrol the waters. The more patrols they sent, the more cargo ships would vanish into the mists without a trace. Your grandfather reckoned that there was no way any mortal ship could avoid one of the patrols. A boat would have to appear out of thin air.”

Orin paused, as if not sure whether to continue. “Your grandfather was on one of those ships that disappeared.”

Hailey gasped.

“Actually, way he tells it, the pirates sunk it. He was just a cabin boy on a ship with a family friend, Captain Stevens. They were off the northern coast of Arwend making the run to McKinnett when the wind died down and the mists rolled in and covered them completely. He’d traveled through mists and all kinds of weather before, but nothing like this. The fog was thick and looked like tentacles wrapping themselves around the ship. It clung to everything it touched and was cold and wet. Oddly, he said it left a taste in your mouth like sour grapes.”

“And then what happened?” Hailey asked.

“Once in the mists, their compasses and navigation equipment quit working. They were trying to get their bearings when all of a sudden there was the roar of cannons and an explosion of wood and metal on their port side. Their masts cracked and toppled to the sea. The whole crew was dazed and riddled with splinters from the shots. Then it got quiet again.”

Hailey stared out at the water, seeing the mists starting to reach the rocks just off the shore, making them look like teeth popping up out of the mists. He continued.

“Then the black ship appeared. He said it looked like it flew out of the mist silently, like an owl, and slammed into their starboard side. Your grandfather was beside the rail when it hit and was flung overboard. Fortunately he had enough wits about him to find a chunk of the mast floating in the water to hold on to and keep from drowning.

“He watched from the water as the dark figures with glowing eyes poured from the black ship onto the deck. He heard only a few cries from the crew, then it was quiet again. The ship began to smoke and burn. On the quarterdeck he saw Captain Stevens standing there shaking with his hands up in surrender. A dark figure stood there and asked him something that your grandfather couldn’t hear. He swore by the looks of it they were looking for something.”

Hailey flinched and went wide eyed. This is real. They are coming.

Orin stopped and turned to her.

“Are you all right?” He shuffled back towards her.

The blood had left Hailey’s face and she felt light-headed, but she waved him off. “Yeah, just…” She hugged herself and shifted uncomfortably as the book dug into her back. “Just scary, that’s all.”

He nodded.

“Well, poor Captain Stevens pleaded with the figure, but it did no good. It said not a word as it ran Captain Stevens through with its sword. The sight of it made your grandfather scream.”

She shivered despite the warm night.

“That’s when the thing turned its hateful glowing red eyes on him. It leaned over the rail and looked at your grandfather there, floating helplessly in the water. When telling the tale, he would go into eerie detail about every moment of that event. It used to scare me. He would talk about the creature’s glowing skull for a face or its ragged and torn dark clothes or the terrible black cutlass it held in its hands. He even talked about little things like the rings it had on its bony fingers.”

“Rings?” Hailey asked.

Orin looked at her for a moment, puzzled, and Hailey ducked her head a bit. She was slightly embarrassed asking him, but she had to know. “What did they look like?”

Orin paused and looked at her oddly. “If I remember right, he said that they had a silver weaving and in the center was a tiny skull with red eyes to match its owner.”

Hailey thought back to the boy in the market. Was it the same ring? Orin was still looking at her, then continued on, turning back to the sea.

“The ghost pirate just stood there for a long time on the deck, staring at him. Dad thought for sure it would jump over the rail and split him in two, but instead the ghost just turned and walked away and left him there to die from cold and exposure.

“Out of the whole crew of fifty men, he was the only survivor. His boat broke up and sank, and the black ship just vanished into the mists as quickly as it came, leaving him alone in the water holding on to only a small section of the mast that stayed afloat.”

“How terrifying. Poor Grandfather!”

“Luckily one of the Crown patrol ships happened to see him floating in the water the next morning and brought him aboard. He tried to tell them what happened, but they didn’t believe him.”

He turned back to Hailey, shaking his head.

“It wasn’t just the Crown, though. No one would believe him. They didn’t want to hear what really happened, no matter how many times he tried to tell them.”

They stood there quietly for a while until Hailey asked, “Do you think they’re still out there?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder. Your grandfather disappeared at sea when you were a baby. I always wondered if they had anything to do with it. You see, he told me that once a pirate sees you, they never let you go. I don’t know why he thought that. Oddly enough, his was the last ship to disappear into the mists.” He looked down uncomfortably. “Maybe they finally got what they were looking for.”

The mists had crept up a bit too close for either of their liking, especially given the story he’d just told. They both decided to head towards home.

They walked in silence. Hailey was lost in thought, thankful that her father had not called her out for taking the book. Instead he chose to let it go and tell her the story about the book itself and how it was meant for her anyway. After reading it, she now also knew why her mother wanted to get away from the book.

Her mind was awash with questions. Was that what they were looking for when they attacked her grandfather’s ship? Or did the ghost pirates take away her grandfather for seeing them? Had the ghost pirates been after her mother, too? If so, would they do the same to her if she had the book? Or worse? If her mother wanted to get away from it, why tell her father to get it back for her?

Orin turned to her and interrupted her thoughts. “It’s been a long time since I heard anyone ask anything about pirates. What made you bring it up?”

She shook her head slightly to dispel all the questions swirling around her. She then shrugged, and while doing so, reached back and touched the edge of the book in her waistband once more.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was something I read.”