Prologue
Pre-WWII London
This was not Wendy's first visit to Ms. Franklin's office and it would not be her last. As she waited, the echo of her tapping foot resounded through the cavernous hallway of the empty schoolhouse. Her impatient taps grew louder by the minute, in hopes of concealing the angry cries of her daughter's tyrannical headmistress.
Poor Jane had persevered many stays in the office across the hall and now, another young girl was enduring the same fate. With courage, I might add. Her last victim, who made her leave just as Wendy arrived, exited the room in a shroud of tears. Wendy had yet to hear a single sniffle from this girl- thus far.
When the muffled yelling subsided, the door cracked open and a young girl raced to her freedom without a second to spare. Wendy looked on as she sprinted down the hallway, a brown cluster of perfectly permed ringlets trailing behind her like the tail of a shooting star. She turned a corner and was gone in a flash. Not a moment later, Wendy received her summon.
Her office was dark, cool and entirely immaculate. Not a single sheet of paper on her desk nor book along the meticulously papered wall was out of line. Several windows could be found between bookshelves and those inside of the office would have looked out on a snowy courtyard below, had Ms. Franklin not covered them with thick fabric. Wendy observed the gold-leaf writing on several of the books' leather spines as she passed. Her two hands nervously kneaded the lavender threads of her winter scarf. Mrs. Franklin scared even Wendy herself and she hoped to never let it show.
"Tick, tock." Ms. Franklin droned, clicking the crystal of her watch sharply with her fingernail. "Mrs. Bird, if you have come only to gawk at my Greek tragedies, might I suggest paying the library a visit instead?"
Wendy picked up her pace and took her seat in a lonesome wooden chair at the center of the room. It had been placed several feet from its owner's desk, as if to make a point; as if to make whoever sat in it feel as though they were in an interrogation room rather than in the office of an educator.
She spoke again, clasping her long, narrow fingers on the desk's brightly polished wood, "You wish to speak to me about Jane?"
"You are cruel to her." Wendy said simply. Despite the spike in her heartrate, it felt good to get that out. "Now, I know that she can be stubborn. But having to deal with a crying daughter each evening destroys me as a mother. She'll stay until classes end for the holidays. After that, I'm going to have her transferred."
As ever, the wicked headmistress remained unaffected. Threats and insults broke against her like waves against a seaside cliff. She rolled her shoulders and straightened her back, preparing herself for whatever else her visitor had to say. Wendy's hands returned inadvertently to the scarf, indicating that she'd spoken her part.
"Is that all, Mrs. Bird?" Her eyes, the same pale blue as shallow water, narrowed into two thin tidepool-like slits. "Very well. I'm certain that you know of your daughter's grade point average? Mrs. Bird, the majority of girl's programmes in this city don't take kindly to late arrivals, as I'm sure you know. Late arrivals with GPA's that are severely lacking, well… you can connect the dots. In addition, your daughter's interests are, frankly, useless to her cause."
"I'm afraid that I don't understand your reasoning, Ms. Franklin." Wendy stated with courage. "How can a woman who owns such a vast collection of literature think lowly of storytelling?"
"There is good storytelling, Mrs. Bird, the kind that cuts to the core of the human condition and exposes the raw, ugly truths that lie therein… and there is poor storytelling, the kind that riles up my students and compels them to slide down the banisters of my beautiful building with makeshift swords. Do you follow?"
Wendy withheld a smile and choked back a laugh. Jane had inherited her gift to entice nearly any audience with tales of pirates, princes and detailed swordplay. Perhaps "plague" was a better description than "gift", given the circumstances… "I'm afraid that I do. But surely there is some merit to be had in-"
"Behaving like a complete heathen?!"
"Entertaining," said Wendy with calmness. "Surely, you enjoyed similar tales as a child…"
"I was not given that luxury. Now, you have voiced your concern and I have listened. Would you please send Belinda in on your way out? You'll know her when you see her. She carries a ridiculous pink teddy bear."
Like before, Wendy dawdled on her way to the doorway. The idea of Mrs. Franklin shouting across her desk at a little girl with a teddy bear cramped her heartstrings. While she pushed this unpleasant idea to the back of her mind, the bookshelf that stood nearest the door caught her eye. The reason for this being it contained no books at all. Just several pictures with a recurring character in them who Wendy recognized as a young Ms. Franklin.
Now, Ms. Franklin was not an old woman. Although her occupation and stern disposition very well may have conjured up such an image in your mind. If that is the case, it might surprise you to know that she was around Wendy's age.
Behind her thick glasses and frown, she was still very much the young girl in those photos. The man and woman who accompanied her in nearly all of the images were her parents and the mighty fishing boat, The Franklin, that the three of them were either in front of or behind, belonged to her family. All other frames in this small collection held old autographed portraits from 19th Century British explorers. Most of them were made out to her father; but they appeared to be cherished all the same.
"I see what you mean, now. You didn't need stories as a child! You practically lived inside of an adventure!" Wendy exclaimed.
Ms. Franklin's round face rose like the moon from behind her paperwork. "I'm sorry, I thought you'd left."
"You know, Jane is very interested in exploration. Perhaps you could use your knowledge of the subject to bridge the gap."
One shake of her curly blonde head later, Ms. Franklin returned to her notes. "If you don't want me disciplining your daughter, Mrs. Bird, do it yourself."
During her cold walk to the bus stop, Wendy weighed her options. This was her daughter's second transfer in three years, after all. She remembered the dreadful Miss Fulsom who had challenged her curious spirit when she was around her daughter's age.
"Perhaps it is time for Jane to grow up," she thought. Those words troubled her. Because they were so familiar.
Before long, the bright red double-decker that would carry Wendy home came shooting around the corner. Once she was comfortably perched inside its metal frame, she shuffled through her briefcase and pulled out the means to write with. This was a habit she'd had since her childhood days, back when she wanted more than anything to be a novelist.
"Grown-ups aren't all that bad," she speculated, watching a peppering of snow twist and turn against the grey landscape. Her mind wandered to her soft-spoken father. He loved his children more than anything in the world and yet, she conjured up the antagonist of her favorite childhood story in his image. "Having been one for a while now, I have a deeper perspective of them. Even the ones that we believed to be the most wicked of villains."
Wendy imagined Ms. Franklin, surrounded by nothing but books and memories in her dark office. "What should I call her, I wonder?" She scribbled a name and took a moment to observe it.
The Dread Pirate Read…