Chapter 1
"Come on Isabella." Said my father, the captain of his fine merchant ship,
la sugar.
I in my entire six years of life have told him several times to rename it, and all of my strong willed attempts have been shot down. He says it reminds him of my mother, who I never met because she died in childbirth.
"But daddy. I am big enough." I pout and I look up at all the ropes and attempt to drag a long one over to a huge hook on the side.
"No. No." He looks at the rope and snatches it from my hand, "Once you know what the rope does you can move it."
I look up and point at the huge white sails. "But daddy I do know what this one does. It makes that big one fall."
He chuckles a bit and then asks, "And why would we want this big one to fall?"
"'cause it would help us move faster." I muster up the confidence in my answer as I keep talking, knowing, but refusing to accept in my six year old brain, that it was probably wrong.
"If you want the ship to move faster sweet heart I suggest you go and pray for some more wind."
"Would that make me helpful like you wanted?" I looked up at the huge man with hope.
"Uhh." He coughs, "Yes..." And then under his breathe he says, "probably wasn't a great idea to say that to her... Hmmm."
"Okay!" I said this with great joy and ran to the top of the deck to begin my mission of praying to God for wind.
After a good couple minutes I decided that this is horribly boring and I needed a snack so I headed down to the mead hall, as my dad so delicatly calls it.
I started rummaging through the cabinets looking for any form of sugar, but was very quickly stoped with a wack of a spoon to my head.
"Aye, lassie, what are ya doin in my kitchen tis unruly to be runnin about as ya do."
The cook is a genuinely scary guy so I do the best thing I can think of in this situation: run.
And where do I run? Right out the door around the hall and into an obstacle that was not previously in this hallway which upon collision landed my promptly on my face.
I look up to the sound of high pitched laughter.
"Hey!" I say as I get up and see a boy ruffly my age. Or maybe a couple years older, "Why did you sneak aboard this ship? How dare you! Captain! Captain! Dad! Dad!" I start screaming and running down the hall back towards the mead hall and top deck with this boy hot on my heels.
"Stop that!" He grabs me by my hair, pins my fave down to the ground and I start screaming. I hear footsteps down the hall and feel great relief because it is probably my dad who is coming to save me from the riff raff.
I begin screaming even louder.
"What in the world is going on?" I hear this deep, strange voice and footsteps getting closer, "William what are you doing? You'll soil your coat!" The feet come within view of my face and this man with the most exspeive shoes I have even seen pulls the awful boy off of me.
"William we do not associate ourselves with those lower then us. Just look at all that color on her skin. She looks practically native." The older man says this with a shiver.
"Hey! I'm not native." I say, "and he attacked me first."
"We will see little girl let's bring you up to the fine captain I am sure he will be mortified to find the likes of dirty you running rampant on his ship. I'm sure you probably snuck in with the rats." The man the grabs my ear and drags me in the direction of the deck. With that evil William smirking as he tails his father. I promtly stick out my tongue so William, or the moster as I would most likely want to call him, knows just how awful he is.
"Captain Davis." The evil old man says to get my father's attention, "I found this piece of filth by the supposed luxury cabins and was wondering what you would do to the native child."
My father looks and me and begins to laugh, "How long has it been since you had a bath Isabella?" He then snifs me and asked if I had forgot the last time we docked a few days ago, "You must excuse her. Sir, I am very honored to have one of the richest men aboard my fine ship in the Caribbean for passage, and she is just my daughter, who as you did say likes to be filthy and run rampant around the ship. Do not worry however, I will make sure she avoids you and treats you with the proper decorum."
"Well that shall be fine. But my son should be needing an apology."
My father looked at me, "Isabella?"
"I will not apologize to that twat!" I say with much indignation.
This earns me a quick slap across the face, "You can and you will right now." Says my father.
I look at the ugly monster and then look down at the ground. I do believe he is quite ugly with his bright blue eyes and curly dark brown hair that catches in the light. It must be his nose. It's too straight, "I am very s-"
"PIRATES!" Says a long shout from up above.
"PIRATES! Headed right towards us from the star board side."
My father looks up and cusses like a salior.
The evil man looks at my father and says, "You promised their would be no pirates on this route! I trusted you. YOU SWINDLING THEIF."
My father looks at the man apologetically and says, "I have taken this route 100s of times and never encountered any. This here is a fine ship. We shall outrun them. Take the kids. Please. Under the deck. Perhaps to the mead hall for some sugar."
The evil man grunts angerly and walks towards the hatch.
"I will not go with him daddy." I pout.
"You can and you will." Seeing my reluctance, he adds, "It will make me very happy, and make you very useful." My dad plants a kiss on my head and shoves me in the direction. Before turning to his crew. I never pass up a chance to be useful so I do end up dragging my feet to the mead hall.
I feel the acceleration of the ship and think that they have let the big sail down. I long to look up at it, but I must be useful.
All the paying passengers are loitering below deck, and many are in the mead hall. I head there again thinking about sugar, and find William, the ugly monster, eating my favorite tarts.
Just as I am about to go and take them all from him because those are my tarts a huge explosion comes from above deck and then a crash and the boat is pulled in an abnormal direction. This causes William to fall on his backside and I laugh. I lost my balance a bit but I did not fall. I have been raised at sea.
There is a lot of screaming up deck and I want to go up and see what is going on. As I move towards the door however Willam grabs me and says that it's not for a ladies eyes. Screw a ladies eyes. I am not a lady. So I twist my arm forcing him to release me and bolt out of the mead hall right to the hatch.
As soon as I clear the hatch I am met with a battle scene one so horrifying that I close my eyes for a second. A huge man struts over to me and says, "What do we have here?" And examines me. I see my dad far off fighting in the distance and scream. The man the grabs me and says, "Why you will probably fetch a pretty penny. Though I might let you go if you tell me how many other kids and where they are."
I look at my father I have to save him, "One more his name is William he is in the mead hall. Let me go!" I struggle to get the words out through my fear.
"Great." The man leans over and tells on of the other pirates, "One kid in the basement grabs him." Then looks at the other and says, "Determine how much money is in the ship." And then pulls me towards the huge ship next to ours.
I look towards my dad and see him laying on the ground in a pool of blood, and scream and thrash and cry. But my captor refuses to let me go. I get so bad that this new evil pirate walks me in the head and all I see is black.
