Here's a third vig. If you enjoy, please take time to leave a few kind words.
Disclaimer: I don't own POTC, even if I wish I was part of it, and I certainly am not making any money whatsoever by writing this.
…And Really Bad Eggs…
Adventure 3: Sparry Tate Needs Some Mothering
The collective scourge of the Tortuga Gutters, normally known as Will Turner the Third and Sparry Tate, had struck gold. Well, not literal gold. Figurative gold. Figurative gold that very well might lead to literal gold, though, so it was all good. Earlier that day they had found an abandoned fishing dingy still in seaworthy shape and now they were pouring over Will's mother's map of the island of Tortuga.
"I think there's a cave there I heard of once," Sparry said, pointing to an inlet on the far side of the island. "The smugglers used to hide stuff there. Some men in mum's bar were talking about going and finding it."
"How long ago was that?" asked Will, reading the key on the map to figure the distance between the bay and the cave.
"Um, week before last," answered Sparry, looking crestfallen. "It's probably empty now."
"It's too far away to get to in the dingy, anyway," shrugged Will.
"What are you two up to?" asked a third person that the two children were previously unaware was even in the room. Sparry coughed nervously as she watched Will's mother, otherwise known in more dignified circles as Captain Elizabeth Turner, fold up the sea chart she had been hiding behind. Now why hadn't that looked fishy before?
"Nothing," said Sparry quickly. "We're not up to anything. Just looking at maps." Technically, that wasn't lying. That was, after all, what they were doing. It just wasn't the whole truth.
"We found an old dingy today, mum," announced Will. Sparry rolled her eyes.
"You're not supposed to tell her that," she said, banging her palm against her forehead.
"I wasn't?" Will asked, looking curiously at Sparry.
"No, you weren't," Sparry replied, "But that's ruined now."
"Oh," said Will. "Mum? Can me and Sparry take our dingy out exploring tomorrow?"
"First of all," began Elizabeth, setting her map back on the pile it had come from, "The phrase you are looking for is 'Sparry and I', not 'me and Sparry,'"
"Okay, can Sparry and I take our dingy out tomorrow? Please?"
Elizabeth looked like she was considering it, and the children felt a glimmer of hope. "Yes," she said finally, "But only because you asked so politely."
"What do pirates need manners for?" scowled Sparry.
"Oh, they're rather useful for talking your way out of trouble," replied Elizabeth, who the girl knew spoke from experience. That shut her up rather quickly.
Their plan approved, Sparry and Will went back to plotting their adventure. Finally, they settled on a cove not too far from the main harbor. After agreeing to meet at the docks the next day, they shook and Sparry began to roll the map back up. Elizabeth couldn't help but notice her fingers left a faint trail of grime wherever they touched.
"Sparry," she asked, "When was the last time your mother made you bathe?"
Sparry looked dumbstruck.
"A month ago?" asked Elizabeth
Actually, two months, thought Sparry, but let's go with that. "I think so."
"Stay right there," ordered Elizabeth, who stepped out into the hall and called for the maidservant to draw up a bath. Sparry scowled.
"I'm not taking a bath. I'll get sick." Last time she had taken a bath, she'd been sneezing for a week. She did not care to repeat the experience. She mouthed the words "help me" in Will's general direction. He shook his head helplessly.
The next thing Sparry knew, she was being ushered off to a washroom somewhere and Will was being shooed off somewhere else entirely.
"Why do pirates need baths?" she asked as she made her best effort to make getting her out of her salt-stiffened clothes an impossible task in and of itself. "We just wind up back in the water anyway."
"There's a little thing called personal hygene," replied Elizabeth, who was presently occupied with getting Sparry's hair out of its nearly perpetual ponytail. She paused and called out to the maidservant to find some scissors.
"What're you gonna do with those?" Sparry asked warily as she lost the battle with her clothes and was dunked unceremoniously into a tub of steaming water. "Yeowch!" she exclaimed, "Water's not supposed to be that hot!"
The maidservant came in with the previously requested scissors and was given Sparry's clothes and the instruction that they be washed and scrubbed thoroughly. Wielding the scissors and a comb, Elizabeth began to work through the girl's now sodden hair.
"Hey, I like it tangled like that," protested Sparry as a cluster of knots was cut out. She continued to protest loudly every time the comb snagged on another proto-dreadlock. Looking ruefully down at the growing pile of hair on the floor, she claimed, "I'm gonna be bald if you keep it up!" However, she didn't dare struggle as the scissors were dangerously close to her ear.
When what looked to be an entire dreadlock fell to the floor, Sparry had had it.
"Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it!" she wailed, pulling away.
Miraculously, Elizabeth stopped, ran the comb through Sparry's hair again, seemed satisfied enough, and took up a rag and a bar of soap with which to scrub the girl's arms. Immediately, the protests began again.
"That hurts!"
When it became clear that one did not become pirate king by relenting every time someone claimed whatever you were doing to them hurt, Sparry gave up and instead stared down at the rapidly cooling bathwater, now dark with accumulated dirt and salt that had, she supposed, been congealed to her body until half an hour ago.
"Is this normal 'mother' behavior?" she asked. It certainly wasn't normal pirate behavior, after all.
"No," shrugged Elizabeth, "I scrub my crew members on a regular basis."
Sparry turned around and gave her a wide eyed stare. Was the woman mad?
"I suppose you're too young to understand sarcasm," the woman sighed.
"So, you don't really do that?" asked Sparry, just to be certain.
"Of course not." Laughing, Elizabeth got up and brought Sparry a towel.
"Where are my clothes?" Asked Sparry with a frown as she got out of the tub and pulled the towel around herself.
"On the line drying," came the answer.
Then Sparry was left alone, sitting on a stool, wrapped in a towel, in one of the nicest houses in Tortuga. And all she could think of as she stared at the scrubbed-clean skin of her hands, and feet, and arms, and shoulders, was how nice it would be to have a mother who actually bothered to care.