Blaggard's Moon Read Free Page B

there. She’d be out of the Warm Climes, where nothing was as it seemed.
    How she got mixed in with pirates, and how Delaney got mixed in with her, and how she got away, and how he got here on a post in a pond way upriver among the Hants, so far away from his home in the Kingdom of Nearing Vast…that was a story. That was the kind of story Ham Drumbone would be telling for years to come, speaking soft and low to silent sailors deep in the forecastle, as they swung in their hammocks at the end of a long day’s watch.
    â€œGood old Ham,” Delaney announced, happy again for another pleasant turn of mind. Hammond Drumbone. Oh, Ham would tell this tale. He’d already told much of it, up to the point where the little girl came in. These last parts now, he’d have no way of knowing. That wouldn’t keep him from making something up, of course. But the rest of it, what had led up, that was a bigger story. That went back years. It was a big tale, too, with pirates and pirate-hunters, and fights at sea and onthe land, and then of course that whole tale of love and woe. Some was a famous story, known by all, but some wasn’t. Some Ham picked up from bits and snippets that Delaney and others told him. Ham filled in a lot of it himself, no doubt. But no one ever minded. No one ever asked which parts were true and which parts weren’t. Didn’t matter. It was all true, the way Ham told it.
    Delaney could almost hear Ham talking now, a shade of melancholy in his deep voice, calling up both lonesome longing and high hopes at the same time, painting those word pictures like only he could paint them. He was as good as the Hants were at conjuring images. He’d wait until there was quiet, there under the decks, quiet but for the creaking of the ship’s timbers. And then he’d begin.
    Where did it all start? he’d ask. Where do such tales ever start? It was what he’d always ask at the outset of a story. Then Ham would answer himself. Deep in the darkest part of the heart, where men don’t know what goes on even inside their own selves. That’s where every story starts.
    That Ham. He could tell a tale.
    â€œDark and clouded it was,” Ham began one evening below decks, “with the sky iron gray and restless, the misty sea churning beneath it, throwing off white foam as far as the eye could see.” Smoke rose from his pipe as the men lay silent, hammocks in tight rows swaying together with the movement of the ship. “A storm was brewing, aye, and a big one, too. And then a thundering came, and it echoed, and then a voice came, carried on the thunder. But the voice was not like the thunder. The voice was high and beautiful. The voice was a girl singing sweet, and lingering on every note, a pure voice from far away, from out of the rain, out of the storm, out of a dream.”
    â€œHow old was the girl?” a young sailor asked in hoarse whisper.
    â€œDon’t matter her age,” Ham answered easily.
    â€œWhat’d she look like?” asked another, bolder.
    â€œIt was just a voice, gents. A disembodied voice, as they say.”
    â€œYe mean she ain’t got a body?” a third asked, somewhat shocked. “It’s a ghost, or what?”
    Ham sighed. “It’s all happening in a dream. The ship, the singing, the girl…I’m telling you about a dream that Mr. Delaney had. When he wakes up you’ll know where he is, for some of you were there. But I’m trying to build some mystery into it, so shush and let me tell it.”
    The pirates went silent again, and Ham continued. “And then thelightning flashed, and there was a ship. An enormous, sleek thing, sailing toward our Delaney at uncanny speed, sails full and billowing white in the sudden gale. And the voice sang words, radiant words that almost seemed to make sense, if only one could listen aright. But they didn’t make sense, not to Delaney, and he was listening