Chapter 1 ~ Ye Little Idiot

Shipwreck Cove, 1682

3 Years of Age

Shipwreck Cove was the worst place in the world to raise a family. Despite this, many pirates did. There was one main reason for this - It was nigh on the only place where a pirate could be safe from the Royal Navy and the East India Trading Company.

Ananya Sparrow, whose name had been shortened to "Anne" when she had married a man from the Caribbean and gone away from India with him, knew that Shipwreck Cove wasn't exactly child-friendly. Her husband, a pirate lord known as Teague, didn't seem to know that, though. What Teague, and most of the other pirates, didn't seem to understand, was that the rough-and-rumble residents of Shipwreck could prove as dangerous to unwitting children as the Navy and the Company could to pirates. The only way for children to survive in such an environment was to adapt and be as rough-and-rumble as the pirates they grew up around.

Anne knew this well, and thanked her lucky stars that Jasper, her seven-year-old son, and Reese, her five-year-old daughter, had managed to do just that. She was, though, a bit worried about her youngest child, Jack, a boy who was the tender age of three.

Jack had been lucky enough just to survive being born. The captain's quarters of a pirate ship really don't make that good of a birthing room. Especially when the ship those captain's quarters belong to is being tossed around in the middle of the Indian Ocean by a hurricane maelstrom of unheard-of magnitude. Not a pleasant experience, by any means.

But it seemed that Jack did everything in his power to push his luck, even though his power wasn't too great yet, thankfully. He'd always had a natural talent for getting into and/or making trouble. Luckily, he had yet to do anything that caused any real harm.

Thinking of Jack, Anne suddenly realized that she hadn't seen or heard from the boy for the last hour. That couldn't possibly mean anything at all good.

"Jack!" she called out, "Jackie, where are ye?" There came no response. He wasn't in the house then. This was starting to turn into something very bad.

"Jasper! Reese!" Anne called for her other children. After a few moments, her daughter and other son came in. "Have either of ye seen yer little brother about anywhere?" she asked, looking at their faces searchingly.

Jasper shook his head right away, and said very fast, "Nope. Haven't seen 'im. Can I go now, Mum?" He was eager to get back to a game of pretend pirating that he and his friends had been playing, so ran full speed out the door without waiting for a response.

Reese was not in quite so much of a hurry, she'd just been climbing a tree when her mother had called. "I saw 'im, Mummy," she said, helpfully.

"Where?" Anne inquired. She didn't much care where exactly he was, so long as she knew and he wasn't in any immediate danger.

"By the beach," Reese answered, pointing out the porthole window, " 'E was gonna go swimmin'!" Then she giggled and skipped off to go play somewhere.

Anne looked out the window. The Sparrow household was very near the beach, due to the family's general love of the sea. Anne squinted and peered out at the ocean. She could see a dark figure floundering about in the water. It couldn't be... Could it?

"Jack!" Anne shouted, her voice a mixture of worry and motherly anger. She ran out of the house, really a large, wrecked ship converted into a land residence, and down to the beach. The figure drowning beneath four feet of water was now unmistakably Jack. He lay still and pale underneath the water, the water currents playing about with the toddler's shaggy hair.

Anne made no hesitation in running into the water, though she grumbled angrily the entire time. (Spewing some... strong words about Teague's... questionable parenting skills, in particular, as he had been supposed to be keeping an eye on the children while they played outside.) Anne took a breath and ducked under the water.

Her fingers closed around one of Jack's arms. She pulled him to the surface, but he made no reaction. That definitely was not a good sign.

Anne dragged her son to shore, where still he made no movement. Not one muscle quivered, not one eyelid fluttered, not one breath moved through his chest.

Luckily, Anne, living so close to the sea and being married to, and technically, a pirate, had at least some idea of how to save a drowning person. She sat Jack up, positioned so he leaned forward over her arm, and used her other arm to gently pound, if such an action was possible, on his back.

After a moment or so, Jack began coughing violently. Anne waited and held him there until the toddler had coughed up more water than it seemed such small lungs could hold.

Jack looked up at his mother and smiled what would, later in life, become his signature smirk. In as much of a drawl as a three-year-old could manage, he said smoothly, " 'Ello, Mummy."

Most women would have immediately gripped their child in a smothering hug, tears flooding their eyes. But Anne wasn't most women. She was a pirate. As such, she slapped Jack upside the head. "Jack," she reprimanded sternly, "Ye could've drowned, ye little idiot."

Anne was still a mother, though, pirate that she was, so she held her child close in a relieved embrace. He may indeed have been a "little idiot", but she was obligated to love him anyways.