Hey Guys!

This is just a teaser to see if I would actually get any readers if I posted this, plus it's a good chance for feedback before I finish the first chapter… But anyway, here is a sneak peak at my new KIDDWAY Story, "A Pirate's life for Me."

PLEASE REVIEW (FEEDBACK/CRITIQUE IS GREATLY APPRECIATED) SO I'LL KNOW WHAT TO FIX IF I POST!

Sunday, November 3 1709. England, Great Britain

"Of all the money that e'er I had, I spent it in good company,

And of all the harm that e'er I've done, alas it was to none but me…"

With large, brown eyes she watched the storm rage outside through the cracks in the walls of the shanty that she called home. She watched the lighting, blue and white and sizzling with power, light up the sky for just a moment, before it all went dark again. This storm was bad, the worst she'd ever seen, and as she watched it terrorize the cobbled English filth beyond her door she hoped that just maybe it would wash away all the ships, so that she might not have to do the work of ten men on sea licked decks the next day. So that she might be able to do as she pleased, perhaps even be a girl again, instead of toil in the cold wetness like a slave under the stony eyes of that old British captain. She had just gotten the job today, on a stroke of luck at that, but she was now a cabin boy on The Lions Pride, and maybe now they would have enough money to eat every day for a week straight. It would be bitterly cold outside, and she'd be lucky to come back home to her shanty with all ten fingers and toes intact – Lord knows her mother wasn't that lucky. She knew that it would be cold, but she also knew that here, now, in the arms of her mother she was warm and safe.

"And all I've done for want of wit, to memory now I can't recall,

So fill to me the parting glass…"

Mary sat still, swaddled in the warmth and comfort of her mother's body as she listened for the next line to the melody that her mother had sung since before she could remember.

It never came.

Suddenly she was pushed gently from her mother's lap onto the soggy straw floor. Lightning cracked in the sky again, and for a moment it lit up the form of her mother, doubled over and coughing harshly into a tattered sleeve. Mary's young heart started pounding, and something like fear twisted in her gut as she glimpsed the morbid red spots on her mothers sleeve in the last bits of blue light.

Scared, she sidled up to her mother, and tried to find her glinting hazel eyes in the darkness of the storm. She couldn't, they were too dark, and the haze of exhaustion had clouded out the sparkle in her mother's eyes."Mum?" she called, her childish voice tinted with fear as she did.

"Captain Kidd! Ser!"

Mary, her knife already in hand, shot to her feet as she prepared to face the intruder. Little droplets of sweat trickled down her pulsing temple as she fought to steady herself against the rolling floor beneath her. The boat rocked harshly once, and in an instant her knees buckled sending her bandaged shoulder straight into the groaning walls of the Jackdaw's cabin.

"Shit!" She hissed and immediately dropped the knife in favor of grabbing her wounded shoulder. It felt like it was on fire, like she could still feel the burning bite of the bullet as if it were still tearing its way through her own sea-wizened flesh. She had been shot before; no doubt probably more than her fair share of times, but never in such a place as her shoulder. It was always the leg, or the arm; perhaps the scariest time had been when a bullet licked the back of her neck. Even then though, the pain could not compare to this, and Mary decided that people did not give shoulders enough credit. Again a flash of pain rocketed through her body, and as her spine quivered she bit her tongue so that she wouldn't moan. Weakness would do her good only as long as she wished to be dead, for the sea was cruel and merciless, but Mary had no intentions of visiting her stony depths. Not yet.

Through her pain, she registered the singsong gurgle of rum as it was poured into a glass, and unconsciously, she reached out with her injured arm, accepting the cup and downing it's contents in one hurried gulp.

LEASE REVIEW (FEEDBACK/CRITIQUE IS GREATLY APPRECIATED) SO I'LL KNOW WHAT TO FIX IF I POST!