The Pirate, part one
Maya receives a letter that changes everything
This week we begin a new story with The Pirate. Previously, Maya has just revealed the true reason why she’s sharing her story and research with Einar. Now they discover new information that could change everything.
The Great Fire is designed to be read in any order but you can catch up on the previous stories here:
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The Pirate
Part One
When she could, Maya slept in the beds of the dead. Death notices were hung for everyone to see in the centre of Teron on the tower wall. So all she had to do was make note of where they lived and then she could have a few nights rest in a real bed rather than on the dirt floor of the tunnels below.
Sometimes she could only stay one night before the house was cleared and made ready for new occupants, sometimes she could manage nearly a week. She had been sleeping in her new house for two nights now and when she decided she could stay a third, she allowed herself a cup of tea.
She sat at the table near the front door waiting for Einar to arrive. She counted through the stars while she waited, trying to avoid thinking about anything else. It was bad enough having to relive her past and tell her story to a stranger, but it worse having to wait for them to arrive to tell it. Einar may not know it yet, but the story was coming to the part that brought her the most shame and she wondered if she should tell it at all.
Einar now knew who he was, or rather, who she suspected him to be - wasn’t that enough? Perhaps she didn’t have to tell him the rest of her story. Perhaps she could just tell him about the fire.
Her thoughts were swimming with regrets as she pieced together what she had lived and what she was told. It had only taken a few months to find Rodyn and hear his part but it had been decades before she met the Dancer and what she had to say was frankly disappointing. She had been hoping that the Dancer would remember more but all her story had proved was that her mind was fixed on vengeance.
Maya had come to realise that what your thoughts were at the time of the curse changed what you forgot and consequently what you remembered. The Dancer must have been focused on how she came to be imprisoned because her memory was so clear about that night but it fell away at any mention of anything else.
Rodyn had been the same. Maya had searched for records about his family, trying to find a name for his wife and daughter but she found nothing. At least nothing that she could easily ascertain.
She was getting recognised more often, passing glances were becoming stares and she couldn’t be sure how long it would be before someone alerted a patrol and she would have to return to hiding underground. Or leave the city all together.
Maya reached Pleione, the star her father had told her had once been a Queen. Many had called her stubborn but she fought for her people with her life more than once. She remembered her father pointing out her supporters in the cluster of smaller stars surrounding it, when a letter was passed under the door.
At first she thought it was from Einar but she could see that it was sealed with red wax, a luxury that he couldn’t afford. She slowly rose to her feet and approached it as if it were alive and would scatter into the cracks in the walls if startled. As she picked it up she made notes of the size of the paper, the texture and its thickness.
It was folded so that the corners of the paper were sealed in the centre with wax, which made it look like a flower. The seal was imprinted with ocean waves and some writing that Maya couldn’t read, she traced the seal with her thumb wondering whether she should open it.
She thought it might be a letter to the person who used to live in the house because this wasn’t a note written in passing. The writer had taken their time.
She passed the letter between her hands toying with the idea of whether to open it or not. It could be a trap, to see whether someone was living inside the house, so then breaking the seal would show that it had been read and there would be no way to hide her tracks.
It could also be nothing.
Maya had seen the image in the seal before but she couldn’t think of where and any sea was far away from Teron.
As Maya moved it, a finger of light came through the door and touched the corners of the letter revealing two words written in small cursive beneath the seal.
She hadn’t seen it before because it looked like it had been written in water, it was only underneath the light that she could make out the words. As soon as she realised what she was reading, she dropped the letter to the ground.
The letter was addressed to her.
But not just to her, to a name that she hadn’t heard since her coronation nearly forty years earlier. No one alive knew her by that name, or so she thought. She stared at it lying on the ground, and now even in the dark she could still see that name.
‘Something wrong?’ Said a voice behind her. The words triggered her memories of shadows and her confrontation in the throne room. In a whirl of movement, Maya drew her sword and pointed it at the voice before she realised that it was Einar. The boy gasped as the sword pressed against his throat.
It took a moment for both of them to catch her breath. She should apologise but thought better of it.
‘You’re late,’ she said and withdrew the sword sheathing it at her waist. She abandoned the letter and sat down but she could still see it lying in dust by the door. She could almost hear it calling to her, to a name that she had almost forgotten herself.
‘I nearly didn’t come,’ said Einar. Maya understood why and she wanted to tell him that it was going to be okay but she had promised herself not to lie to him. There was every chance that it would all end terribly for them both.
Still, she could tell that he was afraid and she felt that she should say something but the rights words fell from her mind and all that she said was:
‘Did you tell anyone you were coming here tonight?’
‘Of course not.’ Maya rose again to her feet and retrieved the letter from the ground.
‘This letter is addressed to me. It was passed under the door only a few moments ago,’ she said, handing him the letter. ‘Just before you arrived.’
‘Who’s it from?’
‘I have no idea. I thought you were the only person who knew I was alive. But then there’s that.’ She pointed to the letter and he began to study it just as Maya had, feeling the paper and carefully pulling at the corners, trying to peak inside without breaking the seal. He came to the seal itself,
‘It’s water,’ he said.
‘An ocean, I imagine.’
‘You've seen the Ocean?’
‘It’s the only way to get to Arundel and the Broken Islands.’
‘What’s it like?’ He asked. When they crossed the Great Ocean, Maya had never been more afraid. They had barely been on the water for a day before a storm broke and they were battered with waves that became larger than the wall of Teron. She had been stunned by nature’s strength before but they had always sought shelter inside the Mountain.
Out on the water there was nowhere to hide.
She remembered the Captain yelling orders to the crew that were drowned out with each crashing wave that appeared from the bottomless churning water.
‘Deep,’ she said, finally. ‘And dark.’ He slumped back into his seat, disappointed with her response. ‘Believe me, Einar. It’s something to behold. When you see it you can tell me what it’s like.’
‘Well when I do, I’ll have more to say than it’s deep and dark.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ she said, leaning forward and taking the letter. She angled it against the candlelight to show him her name. ‘Do you see that?’
‘Mayanthrel Kahpeem.’ Maya couldn’t help but laugh; it was the first time that she had heard her name in over forty years and Einar had butchered it.
‘Ka-pae-em,’ she corrected.
‘What is it?’
‘That’s me. My full name,’ she said. ‘My mother used to call me Threl but no one has called me that name in a long time. I’m not sure my children even knew but whomever wrote this letter does.’
‘Then open it and find out.’ It wasn’t Einar’s words that forced her hand but the way that he looked at her. It was the same way Thal used to look before he left. When he would ask in his kindest voice to spend time with her and she would say no.
Maya snatched the letter from the table and broke the seal, squeezing her thoughts out of her mind. No matter what the letter said, it would be better to read it than think about anything else.
Maya saw her name printed at the top in the same cursive as the front before she brought it closer to the light and began to read:
‘You don’t know me but I remember you. You and your parents came to visit my Queen when you were a child. I sat across the table from you at the dinner we had in your honour. You wore flowers in your hair.
I write this not to scare you but to show you that, even though I imagine we are strangers to each other now, we are friends.
I’m writing to you because I can help.
I remember what happened at the fire.
I remember because I never forgot.’
The Great Fire is released every week via the verse fiction newsletter. The Pirate continues with part two next week. Get it straight to your inbox so you don’t miss a sentence.