Chapter 1: A Dark And Stormy Night
I see that after all you want to listen to this story. And now that I have my rum, *Takes a sip from the bottle* I think I can start.
Let's see... I talked much about the happenings that signs the beginning of this story, but it's not easy to actually decide where start from. Should I talk about François before? Or Arthur? *Takes another sip with a thoughtful expression*
All right, let's start from the beginning, then! As this is a pirate story, let's do things the right way, so sticking to the tradition I'll tell you that everything began on a dark and stormy night.
Even if, to be sincere, the storm unleashed just a little before dawn and lasted just until mid afternoon, the only proof the inhabitants of that little village on Normandy's coast had of the night's coming, were the lonely rays of the sun setting in the west they managed to catch among the dark clouds heavy with rain. So yes, it was a dark and stormy night enough.
François Bonnefoi had spent the first part of the day helping in the inn, looking with desire at the stormy sea from a window, and the afternoon on the beach wedged among in the high cliffs, covering it far and wide looking for useful wrecks thrown on the dry land by the billows.
Even if he liked watching the sea howling and raging during a gale, he couldn't stand the long storms that often plagued that coast of the Atlantic, but that night his heart was light: his unerring instinct was telling him that the next day was going to be a sunny day, and obviously his instinct never failed when it was about sea.
I can see some confused stares... You're right, maybe it's not that obvious, as I just told you François is half merman, without specifying what that means.
You all know what a siren is- No! Be silent! I'm the one telling this story! If you know everything I can as good as go away...
No? I thought so. So now, shut up!
I was saying: sirens. Sirens are considered almost mythical beings. Why so, in your opinion? No, not because they're the result of drunk sailors' hallucinations... Well, also because of this, but the real reason is 'cause you don't see them often if you don't know where to look for, and also 'cause usually they stay in high sea or in the deeps. They don't need getting to the surface to breathe like dolphins do, so it's more like an exception than a rule to see them out of the water... But I'm straying.
Sirens can be referred to as hybrids, as they are half human and half fish. Whether they are the result of ancient breed crossings or have always been a race on their own, we can let the scholars discuss about it: what means to us, is that they are fishes from waist down, with fins and scales as well, and from waist up they look just like men, or women... Very gorgeous men and women, I'd add.
Exactly because his mother was a marine creature, François felt a natural love for the sea, and was gifted with an incredible sixth sense which allowed him to guess how the winds, the drifts or the tides would change better than a sea dog, and those abilities pretty much decided since the very start what his future in that village would be.
To describe his life a little better for you, let me go back in the time a bit to tell you how François was found by a fisherman, drawn by the cry of a child, in one of those little natural pools typical of rocky coasts, which the sea provides to fill every high tide.
The fisherman expected it to be the lost son of some woman of the village, or maybe a young desperate mother's attempt of getting rid of an unwanted child, and instead found a toddler not even one year old, who obviously didn't have much human blood in his veins.
He immediately took him to the village, provoking the whole community's interest and wonder, but a problem had immediately come up: what to do with him?
As one man, quoting those old stories which had survived generations of fishermen, everyone agreed that a mermaid had conceived that child with a sailor she had fallen in love with, but as he had sadly died in a shipwreck, she couldn't trust her son to his father and thus decided to leave him by their village, for them to raise him.
They also agreed on the fact that being chosen must have been a sign of good luck, but "strangely" they didn't agree on who of them should adopt that "François Bonnefoi", as it was carved on a coral pendant at the child's neck.
At the end it was the other thing hung to his neck that decided his custody: in exchange of that little bag of rare black pearls, obviously put there by the mother in that case, the same fisherman who found him would have been his caretaker.
So François grew up helping his foster father with his job with the rest of the family, in which he had been welcomed willingly but never really considered part of, using his natural gifts: the gills, the fins and the web hands and feet made him perfect to arrange the fishnets, go crab and octopus-hunting on the cliffs, set the lobsters traps and so on.
But those jobs didn't weigh on François at all, as something inside him wanted him to be always in contact with the ocean, so much that if he didn't dive even also for a couple of days, he became frenzied and annoyed at everything and everyone.
And thus his relief that fateful night, when some old sea dogs at the inn confirmed his feeling about the sea calming down: even if he was a good swimmer and was sure that in high sea he wouldn't have any problem despite the storm, he also knew that the waves of the backwash would have likely smashed him against the cliffs if he only dared to get near.
The dark and stormy night on which my story starts, François was working at the village inn, where he had been assumed a couple of years before out of pure pity for his loneliness by the owner.
But that night there were no girls to flirt with at the inn and François was growing bored, as there was little to do: the only customers were some groups of fishermen, keen on drowning their irritation at not being able to go out fishing in their beers, and François was expecting the innkeeper to send him home sooner or later.
A sudden chatter outside the door caught everyone's attention: as if by magic a moment after a flow of people started filling the room, and as much abruptly François found himself too filled with work to even remember his own name.
He had time to think about the unexpected costumers only when he got a moment of "rest" (which consisted in going down in the tavern to get a new barrel of beer, as the ones behind the counter had been drained in record time), getting to two conclusion.
The first was about their identity: with their worn and faded clothes, complexion tanned like old leather, knotty and chapped hands, thundering and coarse voices, they could only be sailors. If they weren't, he was a sheep.
The second was about their provenience: the ship that had docked in the gulf of their village to find shelter from the storm had been the news of the day.
Considering it an irrevocable right of any worker in an inn, François took his sweet time to draw himself a jug of beer from the barrel he would have to take upstairs: less weight to carry up the stairs, isn't it? And since we are at it, would you mind handing me another bottle of rum, please? Thanks, dear. *Uncaps the bottle and drinks a sip*.
I was saying, François drew himself a jug of beer and drank it sitting on said barrel, and kept his mind occupied with a new riddle: those was something strange about those sailors.
One: the ship had dropped the anchor very far from the village. It was true that the seabed in their little harbour was too low to let them dock at gangplank-length, but it was also true that nobody had lowered any longboat to reach the dry land.
And two: even if the ship was flying a French flag, he had heard them talk among themselves only in English. They had anyway proved to know to be in France, as at the beginning a man per table had gathered all the group's orders and had conveyed them to François in poor French with visible effort.
At least until they had realized their waiter understood English: since that moment they hadn't stopped to throw single calls in that language to the young for him to take them this and that, making him go back and forth like an ant.
And talking about work, François realized the innkeeper was calling his name from the top of the stairs, so with a sigh he took the barrel on his back and carried it with difficulty behind the counter, only to be immediately sent to ask some new costumers what they wanted.
Tying his hair with a leather lace to keep it from falling in his eyes, François moved in the crowd towards the given direction, noticing three men and a woman sitting at a table, standing out among the sailors.
Two of the men were both very tall, with short platinum blonde hair and icy blue eyes: one, with sharp and strict features, was wrapped in an air of superiority and power; the other, with broad shoulders and a strong build, had the behaviour of someone who's always got the situation in hand, even with violence. And they book reeked of danger and slyness.
However the ones who caught François' attention more, as he got nearer, were the other two, in that moment engrossed in a discussion filled with coarse laughs and curses with several tables of sailors.
The man was slouched over his chair, with his feet crossed on the table in a relaxed and in the meantime arrogant posture, at a jug of beer he had already somehow got in possess of in one hand, and trying to get the woman's attention with the other, by pulling at her sleeve.
For a second François believed the girl to be a prostitute, typical companion of sailors on dry land, but he corrected himself when he casted a glance at her clothing: if the two blondes were already dressed well enough, the other man and the woman wore fabrics of excellent quality, too rich for a simple prostitute.
The woman in particularly, François couldn't help but notice, wore bright-coloured but male-designed clothes, which even emphasizing her curves looked very practical: if she was part of the crew, of even just voyaging with them, François had to admit that shirts and trousers must have been more comfortable than a dress.
"What shall I bring you?" Our waiter asked the four, earning immediately the two blondes' attention and orders, but the third man barely took notice of him, doubling his efforts to make his female companion turn towards him. At the end he fulfilled his task only by stealing her hat (some kind of black leather beret) and keeping it over his head where she couldn't reach it.
François muffled a chuckle when the woman mock-punched the culprit (and thus took her hat back), and clearing his throat he repeated his question: "What shall I bring you, sirs... And lady?"
His alluring tone, if nothing else, attracted the woman's attention on him, and François immediately defined her a real beauty: short and curly black hair framed a tanned visage made to laugh, with two eyes of an unusual amber-like colour reflecting the lanterns' light. A wild beauty, really.
The girl completely ignored his question, instead submitting him to the same exam he had put her under, and suddenly François felt very awkward in the clothes he wore to cover his lack of humanity: a blue turtle neck shirt to hid his gills, a beret to hide at least partially the seaweeds in his hair and tight-fitting trousers to press the fins against his body not to show them.
"Oi there, don't you have nice eyes? What d'ye think, Cap'n?" She asked her companion mischievously, who hummed curious in return.
The young man put his feet back on the floor and pushed his cocked hat back, stretching towards François; exposing that way to the lanterns' light two green eyes, shining like emeralds, surmounted by thick eyebrows.
Our young Frenchman was bewildered by this exam, but even more by the title the lad in front of him had been called with: could he really be the Captain of that foreign ship? He couldn't be past twenty five, not at all: wasn't he a tad too young for the role?
But his clothing seemed to confirm the theory: hardly a simple sailor would have worn such leather knee-high boots, dark-brown leather trousers, an ivory shirt with its purple cravat put in place with a big shiny brooch; but overall he wouldn't have worn that coat of thick blood-red fabric with golden frogs, typical sign of the Captain rank.
"What a nice sight! Out o' all places in the bloody world, a 'alf-mermaid is here, in the bloody middle o' nowhere! What a stroke o' luck!" The young man said with a lopsided grin, taking off his worn out three-corned hat, thus revealing rebellious and ruffled blonde hair.
François usually cared about those details, but this time paid little attention to them, too astonished by what the other had just said: with just one glance, that man had understood what he was, while usually people had to see his gills or fins to guess his parentage.
Most of the times, basing only upon his eyes lined by crests of foam or his seaweeds-hair, people considered him a freak of nature, but not this man: François felt like the other wasn't just looking at his sea-blue eyes, but he could see through them, as if he could see his soul, naked in front of those bottomless green eyes.
"Indeed, me dear Márcia, this be a fine half-blood specimen. Where d' ye think the ot'er 'alf come from?" The young Captain asked the girl without looking at her: his stare was still fixed on him as he took François' hand in his own with unexpected care, so much that the Frenchman barely felt the calluses on the other's palms.
"Hummm... From a 'uman? It wouldn't be a new story..." The woman suggested with a thoughtful expression, making the other two blondes nod, but the green eyed man shook his head.
"Methinks not. He's much too fair to be a 'alf human." He said with conviction, lifting François' hand to his lips. But instead of kissing its back, he turned it and licked the palm, slowly, more similar to a lover than a cat, to which François had instinctively compared him.
Feeling his hot tongue, soft and wet, tasting his skin from the wrist to the base of his middle finger, made the Frenchman shiver, not knowing whether out of disgust or pleasure, but anyway finding himself somehow unable to back away.
"I know this taste... Just one time, but..." The young suddenly widened his eyes, letting the other's hand go for the surprise. "Fae! He's half Fae!"
"Whaaat!" The woman shouted, turning abruptly to look at her mate's face, trying to guess whether he was joking or not, but he confirmed:
"Son o' a mermaid an' a Fae! Well, this be something I sure as hell never expected, I tell ye!"
The woman chuckled, a malicious light in her golden eyes. "He's far too interesting to leave 'im here, don't ye think?"
In any other case, you can be sure François wouldn't have let anyone talk about him as if he wasn't even there (actually it felt like they were praising a horse they wanted to buy), but you have to understand that the last statement had thrown our poor half merman into a state of total confusion.
You do know, because I told you so, that his father was a fairy, or a Fae, or whatever you want to call a creature belonging to the world of Faerie; but you have to remember that François didn't know that.
In that village of fishermen, nobody had ever seen a Fae, nobody believed in their existence outside from children's stories. That's why nobody had ever thought François' other half could be less than human, and that's also why he was so shocked someone could say the contrary, when he himself had always known to be a half merman just because he had always been told so... It wasn't as if he had ever met any merfolk to ask their opinion, after all.
But the Capitan's answer shook him from his lethargy.
"Oh, hell, yeah. Leaving 'im here to rot in this hellhole would be a bloody pity. It's been a while since I met someone who piqued my interest, anyway."
The green-eyed man came back to leaning against the backrest of the chair and took his forgotten jug, smiling to François' address.
"Lad, as soon as I finish me beer ye'll come with me, so ye'd better go pick yer things up, and quickly."
To give you an idea of what was going on inside François' head, I could sum his thoughts up with "WHAAAAAT!"
For a moment he looked like a goldfish out of water (ah, the irony! Don't you think?), but then he got a grip on himself and, forgetting to be in front of a man who probably didn't reach the Captain rank just by chance so young, François burst out laughing for the incredibility of the situation.
"Why should I come with you, if I may ask? Just because you told me to?"
The Englishman's smile became dangerous, almost predatory.
"Because" He said, idly playing with his cravat "I fear ye misunderstood me, lad. We're merchants o' a special kind: we trade only what we want, and meaning we take only want we want, if ye get the idea..." His long fingers partly untied the cravat, and François felt himself going pale enough to give a ghost a run for its money when he saw what the folds had been hiding: the infamous Jolly Roger, a skull upon two crossed bones.
"Pirates!" The pale Frenchman hissed, not finding enough air in his lungs to shout the warning to his fellow countrymen.
As the village had never suffered any pirates' attacks, or at least not after his come, all François knew about pirates came from the stories he heard, but he hadn't missed to notice that they all had a very bad ending.
"Pfft, don't get yer pants in a twist, pussy." The woman mocked him, raising her eyes not unlike an aristocrat in front of a peasant.
"Be gentler, Márcia, don't ye see he's terrified?" The Captain said in a mock tone of scolding.
"Calm down lad, we don't have... Ah, business here. What would we get from plundering this stinky village? We anchored here just to get away from the storm." He said with a bored but practical tone, pushing away François' fears with a lazy gesture of the hand.
François had enough sense of self-preservation not to comment the sentence by defending his village.
"And what does that have to do with me?" He asked instead, partly kicking himself for the simple fact of talking with a pirate, and partly almost curious of that proposition.
"Oh, think o' it as a voyage. I bet ye've always lived here... Wouldn't ye like to see new lands, unexplored ones? To go where no man has ever treaded before?"
François forced himself to look astonished at the man, putting up an air of superiority, but the other's words were slowly sinking deeper and deeper in his mind.
"If you like the pirate's lifestyle so much, why share it with me?"
The pirate's smile widened, showing too many sharp teeth, feeling that the Frenchman was slowly giving in.
"In me own I'm a... Collector. I like strange and rare things, and ye happen to have a pedigree few can brag about, I assure ye. This, and the fact that another pair o' hands' always useful on board."
François hesitated, his rational mind screaming at him that it couldn't be so simple, that this couldn't possibly be the way out he was looking for... But those greens eye were so entrancing...
"And also, can ye really tell me a 'alf-blood like ye has something worth staying for, in this wretched village full of superstitious fools? What d'ye have to lose?"
The woman observed with approval her mate's moves, shaking her head with a smile noticing his childish entertainment in exercising his persuasion skills.
It was then that the pirate had a flash of inspiration, and his eyes sparkled with it, pleased.
"While we were coming here, I 'eard the sound o' a siren's lure. And I'm ready to bet ye were the one who made it." He said, and...
Oh, right, sorry: you don't know what a siren's lure is. A siren's lure is a mass of little bells, spiral shells filled with pebbles and tiny bits of metals tied together, which hung on the cliffs, is said to, well, lure sirens when the winds play with it.
And actually François had built one years before, when he had heard of it, and had kept on attaching other pieces with the hope to really attract a mermaid.
"If ye come with me" The Captain said clearly and sweetly, knowing to be using his last card to make him come willingly "Ye'll be able to meet merfolk. Wouldn't ye like to meet someone of yer blood, lad?"
François raised slowly his stare from the floor, trailing it over the two blondes and the woman, stretched towards him to hear his answer, and then fixed it over the pirate, smiling.
"My name's François Bonnefoi, sir. Give me just two minutes to collect my belongings, sir. "
The pirate burst out laughing, tilting his head back and attracting all the sailors' attention.
"That's a man!"
He then stood up, holding his hand out. "I am Captain Arthur Kirkland, fear and nightmare o' the Seven Seas."
François shook it, with a grin of wild excitement equal to the other's.
"It'll be a pleasure to be part of your crew... Captain Kirkland."
And so for this night my story ends here.
What will François do? What will his role on the pirate ship be? And moreover: is Arthur tricking him? And what for?
Come back another night, children, and you'll know.
No, I don't want to hear excuses, go! Come on!
It's late! Don't you hear the chimes? I didn't count them, but it must be at least eleven. Maybe even midnight.
Tomorrow I'll have to come back to my usual life, and you'll have to go to school or work, or wherever you go every day.
But if you come back every night to this inn, probably sooner or later you'll find me sitting here, drinking my rum and wanting to tell a story as much as you want to hear one.
So for now, go, kids. Go, and don't forget my stories.
So they'll keep on living.
Aaaand... Stop.
Wow, I really didn't expect to write such a long chapter. Really... And sure as hell not so quickly!
Narrator: It's the second time you update so quickly. You ill, parhaps?
Author: *jumps up* But... What the hell are YOU doing here! You got the wrong story! I'm going to update Theatre Of Dreams next week (probably)! ^^'
Narrator: I know that. I saw you sweating and swearing over the third chapter.
Author: ... You saw me suffer and you didn't do the slightes effort to help me? -_-'
Narrator: I didn't feel like it. U_U
Author: You fucking...! * deep breath* Better, are you going to tell me why the heck did you invite yourself in a story that's your own, noisy Narrator?
Narrator: Because I felt like it. U_U
Author: ... I swear, sooner or later I'll strangle you in your sleep. I swear it.
Narrator: Try me.
Author: *pulls out an axe out of thin air*
Narrator: ... Daaaaarling, what about thanking your reviewers? It's not polite to ignore them, you know!
Author: *axe vanishes* You're right! I forgot it! ^_^
Narrator: ^^'
Author: Sooo... I wanted to thank everyone. For reading my story, for adding it to your favorites and alerts, but above everything for reviewing. I love you all!
Narrator: And also for the rum.
Author: And yeah, obviusly I thank you for the rum- Hey! How do you know about MY rum?
Narrator: ... You've got a full liquor cabinet since FOREVER?
Author: That's MY rum! Mine and mine only! Savvy? *axe re-appers*
Narrator: ... O-okay. Your rum. Look, I'm not even looking at your rum, see? *turns around* I don't even know it exists.
Author: Good. I need that to write. I think I now have enough for two more chapter!
Narrator: ... I think we all understood that by now, dear.
Author: *glares daggers at her* What do you mean by that...?
Narrator: Nothing, why? *smiles innocently*
Author: *snortes* Good.