Jackie squinted while coming back inside, his eyes adjusting from the bright sunshine to the subdued softness of the cottage. Mum left the broom resting against the front door, her signal for him that she was out. Of course when she was out, other rules were set, as if they gushed out from the broom itself. Don't tell anyone you're alone. Don't do anything to attract attention to yourself. She used such big words, he thought. Reaching into the bowl on the table, he picked up a crisp apple the size of his little fist and wedged it into his mouth. "Mela," he would have to say, if Mum was around. It was nice to not hear, "Jackie, stop walking around with food in your mouth and eat it." If he held the apple with his teeth in just the right spots, he could walk back to his room without taking a bite.

He let out a cough and caught the apple just before it hit the hard floor. He was a clever boy, he was, he thought with a smile. Wonder if he could make some extra money if he picked out two more and learned to juggle them.

The dogs ran by and Jackie dropped to all fours and crawled next to them, careful to keep his snack away from their curious snouts. Bony but hearty mutts dodged his taunting hand, giving it a lick and then narrowing their brown eyes on the fruit he held in his other one.

"Not for dogs," he said, standing up and scratching their soft spotted ears. He exited out the back way, the way that faced the sea. A cool breeze blew his hair out of his eyes, well adjusted to the bright sun. When Father came back from whatever he was doing this time, he said he'd take Jackie onto The Golden Queen and let him sail with him, actually find some treasure, maybe sail to Egypt and find some pharaoh's secret tomb and bring back Mum one of those shiny black cat statues with…with what were they called? Ankhs! He'd seen pictures of the elaborate sapphire necklaces those cats wore with that ankh imprinted somewhere on them. And they had jars, too, jars made of priceless materials smoother than the slippery rocks that led down to the sea.

He let his legs dangle over the side of the cliff not far from the back of the cottage. Looking down, one could see the small rowboat he and Mum used on occasion. She'd point out the fish that flopped onto the boat and timed him on how long he could stay afloat treading. Already he fancied himself stronger than most of the children around that were never allowed in the water.

The squawking gulls above him broke his train of thought. They circled this area quite frequently, snatching the fish up with hardly a splash of water.

Jackie scooted back, careful to avoid the whitewash they might leave if their bellies became too full. Suddenly, from behind, he heard a small flapping and a flash of brown streak across him. As it flew further away, he could see what it was. A small sparrow had been hopping about for seeds and took off once it sensed movement from a larger being. Jackie watched the small creature extend its wings and glide over the sea into the glistening horizon.

His arms stretched out and mimicked the sparrow, sweeping over the cliff and passing through a star-studded sky to the New World, then across another ocean to the Orient, flying over the stacked temples, down into the dark depths of the Indian jungles and back to England, only not stopping there but continuing on and on, all without ever perching anywhere due to exhausted arms or hunger.

Quickly, his arms fell back to his sides. If the other boys should see…five years was far too old to pretend to be a bird, much less a scrawny, seed-eating one. He supposed he would tell them he had been pretending to be a falcon. A vulture would surely frighten any of them that dared laugh at him.

Standing back up, he meant to turn and head back into the house. The rock he stepped on suddenly gave way, gravel plummeting to the sea below, as if the rock itself crumbled apart. Slipping, he reached for the flat ground above the rocks, only for his fingertips to brush against the blades of grass before he realized he was falling.

There was no time to scream, gasp…no time to even breathe before his stomach smacked into the water.

He blinked several times before being able to stay open. Paddling his arms, he raced up to the surface, or at least what he thought was the surface. Why couldn't he find it?

He protruded from the water long enough for his chest to heave once before he went back down. Thrashing, spun in the water, searching for any trace of sunlight cutting through to whichever level the sea held him. His head grew hot from holding his breath. The inside of his ears felt a pressure completely unknown to him before. He could barely tell if the swirls in front of him were from fish, the bodiless water, or his own imagination.

"I got you!"

The air seemed to invade his lungs, overwhelming them. His coughs spewed out salt water. A hand held the back of his head up as another wrapped around his waist.

"Jackie? Can you hear me?" His mother's wide eyes stared into him, her brown hair with golden streaks reduced to black strands that framed her paled face.

"Mum?" he coughed.

"It's all right." She swam to the dock where their rowboat swayed and hoisted him up. His body quaked at the sudden cold brought on by being wet. The dress his mother had on earlier lay next to him in a heap, waiting for its wearer to come back and remember her modesty. His mother practically straddled over him blocked the sun from pouring into him. "Can you breathe now?" Tears were in her eyes.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine now." He turned over onto his side.

"Thank God I came home just in time. I saw you fall." She burrowed her face into his soaked shirt. "You've always stayed inside with the dogs in there to protect you before."

"Seems today I didn't," he sputtered out, still feeling the salt drip down his chin. Oria didn't say a word, but carried him back up to the house, stripped off his clothes, and poured hot fresh water over his head. She took a sponge and scrubbed the crimson mark across his stomach where the water hit him.

"All too easy to see where you landed."

"If it's in the water, can it really be called landing?"

"Jackie, I swear. That mouth has to take in more air, so stop with the talking."

She nearly swaddled him in towels and dragged him to his room, a small closet-sized room at the corner of the house. The dogs followed, watching Oria pull out a fresh nightshirt from the chest and slide it over Jackie's body. They snuck in between the two of them just in time to lick the red line that ran all across the front of his waist just above his navel. Oria swatted at them until they backed away, but let them leap up onto the bed to lie at the boy's feet.

"They'll keep you good and warm."

"I'm all right, Mum. You don't need to cry." Jackie always thought his mother had a beautiful face, thick arched eyebrows just above wide brown eyes. But when she cried, it crumpled into what always looked like a rotten turnip. He sighed in response to the sigh he heard out of her, grateful it wasn't a sob.

"Don't play on the cliffs. If you want to get in the water, you will wait until I'm here and we'll walk down together," she said. "Don't you remember the rules of the broom?"

"Very well," he tried to say with the same tone he heard adults speak with when they were trying to be subtle, hoping it would make her change her mind about just how many rules of the broom there should be.

"I'm sure you are all right, but that was a cold dip for me," she said, summoning a laugh. "So you're going to stay in this warm bed with these two furry companions."

"What?"

"No arguing, Jackie." She placed her hand over his mouth when it opened back up in protest. "You can't always talk your way out of things. Well, you want a story before I bring you some coffee?"

"Yeah! But, Mum, this one has to have a bird in it."

"A bird?"

"A little one that gets to fly everywhere."

"Oh. Fine." She paused, folding her hands into her lap. "Once upon a time, there was a small young bird named Cinderella."
"Mum!"

"Hold on. I'm just starting. She was a most beautiful bird, she was, covered in the softest feathers and warmest eyes. Everyone that saw her had to stop and say, 'Buongiorno, Cinderella. How are you today?' But little Cinderella always had to say, 'cosi e cosi' because of her stepmother and stepsisters, who were very mean to her. They made her clean up after them and made her serve prima colazione e pranzo e…" she waited for him.

"Cena," Jackie said.

"The poor overworked little bird, snatching up worm after worm to give to her greedy stepsisters! But one day, the king of all birds made a declaration that a ball was to be held that very evening…"

XXX

When Jackie opened his eyes, a few stars were already stuck in the large web that unfurled until it spanned the entire sky. It was too dark to see much else, but he spied a long mast from outside his window.

"Father," he whispered to himself. Curled up next to him, the two dogs startled at the sudden rush of motion, but stayed on the bed, their eyes narrow and unfocused. He made sure their heads laid back down before he tiptoed out of his bedroom.

"Little explorer, that one," he heard the man's voice say. It always took Jackie a second or two to recognize his father's voice.

"Little explorer that will be the death of me," Oria answered back. "Perhaps now is the time for us to go with you to the New World. The Spanish won't be a bother forever. The real place to be will be Barbados and all those islands over there."

"Dear Oria Regina, do you know how many women are in the Caribbean, much less the number of children?" Jackie watched his mother stay absolutely still, waiting for him to answer his own question. "I fortunately had enough foresight to sign up as a privateer there, didn't have to wait for some mistress to tell me to do so."

"Good. Then you will pack up your family and take us there." She folded her arms.

"I said not yet. Your English still needs a good deal of work."

"Looks to me like the English right in front of me needs a good deal of work."

Jackie didn't understand what Mum meant, but he followed her gaze to a bulge jutting out from his father's trousers.

"And you try and convince all these people here you're a lady," Father said.

"John, Jackie's five years old. It's time to see to his education. You said you'd make a sailor out of him. How is he to captain your ship if you leave him here?"

Jackie dared not move from his spot. The glow of the lamps was all the light he needed to see them and for them to not see him. His father stood up and backed Oria into the wall.

"I'm going to say it one more time, Oria, and you had better understand; it's too dangerous over there for a woman and a child. I'll be gone just as much as I am now if not more. Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that now is not the time to pack up and move halfway across the world."

"You don't want us there because a family would mean no more pirating for you."

Jackie froze at the word. So did Father.

"Don't think I don't know what you really do out there," Oria hissed. "You don't think word reaches back to us about the great Captain Teague who plunders what the privateers already plundered? It's the reason I hope you stay gone and don't fall upon your knees begging for me to marry you. You won't risk your son's reputation."

John Teague gripped her wrists and held them up against the wall.

"You be careful on who you call pirate around here, woman. As for not marrying you, I can't say I'm as of yet in the mood to marry some criminal who's all too willing to rush herself back to the Church and reveal herself just so she can have a nice Catholic wedding."

"You, you cad!" She bucked and writhed, but could not free herself from his grip. "My crimes are nothing, nothing, compared to the stories surrounding you!" She stuck out her foot and dug it into his shin. Again and again, she kicked at him. "The Church would accept me in time, but there is no way they would overlook such a scoundrel, such a, a, pirate like you!"

Their bodies pressed closer, their foreheads inches from bumping into each other. Jackie had never seen them so close to each other. In an instant, they had their lips on each other, their eyes closed. Father's hands released Mum's wrist and flew down to her waist, and then lower still to her hips, holding them in place while she threw her arms around his neck.

Without breaking apart, the two repositioned themselves at the desk. He saw his mother's knees as she was lifted onto the desk, her skirts pushed up until they formed a linen cloud around her waist. He couldn't see anymore, for his father centered himself in front of her and bent just slightly. Crashing through the silence, Oria let a throaty moan escape from her, followed by a rushed, raspy kind of breathing. The same sounds were coming from his father.

Jackie tiptoed back to his room, blinking his eyes time after time. He had never seen such an act before, one that looked so painful, so angry, and yet so welcomed by the pair he had been watching. Still, mention of the New World was the first on his mind. It was a world full of sugar canes and white sand beaches. He remembered those words come out of his father the last time he had come to visit. Yes, his father had been there only once, but once was enough to take in a whole array of images to entice anyone to move out there. No wonder his mother was so anxious for them to leave England and start a new life there. The education she mentioned must be exposure to all the wild animals and native people that must be there.

He crawled back into bed and put his arms around his two dogs that had waited for him. A few of the moans and even a cry reached him, but he pushed them out of his mind. In the morning, his captain father would tell him all about where he had been and then he could ask about the exchange that went on between him and Mum.

But in the morning, there was no trace that Captain John Teague had even been there...as usual.