The Swashbuckling Yarn of Milady Vixen Read Free Page B

lad of your age, and she took up the idea quite nicely.”
    Violet was shocked and hurt by the man’s words. Trying her best and practicing twice a day since they first left port, she’d thought she was growing more proficient with the spear. To hear that all her hard work wasn’t meeting with her teacher’s—and mama’s— approval was like a stinging slap across the face.
    “So you’re going to teach me to fence,” she said, bottling up the tears and hurt.
    “If’n you don’t skewer me with that pig-sticker.”
    Jamming the spear into the deck, she reached out and took the slender blade from Ginger Tom’s hands. Swishing the sword through the air, she smiled at the familiar sound. She had to admit it was more familiar than her current dance partner.
    “Well,” he said nervously, pulling out his own blade. “Shall we begin?”
    With gentle words and instructions, the first man she’d spent time with since her father’s death described in great, yet simple detail the fine art of swordsmanship. Within an hour’s time, Ginger Tom and Violet were fast friends.
    “Where are you going, Violet?” her mother asked a week later on a sunny morning.
    The voice sounded like it should’ve been coming out of a dying woman’s throat, gurgling past her thick lips and rattling around the cabin. A slight greenish cast was about her noble face.
    “Out onto the deck to practice with my sword,” Violet answered.
    No answer came her way from the sickly woman swinging in the hammock. A quick nod was all she got before Mama snagged the porthole and retched noisily out of it. Violet saw she wasn’t terribly accurate with her aim. Running out and holding her nose from the bile-smelling stench, she took great gulps of the ocean breeze.
    The ten-year-old was stunned to see sailors running around shouting and yelling like the legendary Kraken had risen from the sea depths to drag them all to Davy Jones’ locker. Everywhere she looked was frantic industry; the crew had donned fear-laced faces and grim smiles like festival finery. There were rumblings beneath her feet and the hard wooden thunking sounds of cannon ports opening.
    “Tom!” she screamed upon spying her teacher, “what is going on?”
    “Get back in the cabin!” the man snarled.
    “Not until you tell me what’s wrong!”
    “Pirates, God curse the lot of them! We’ve been shadowed all night by a buccaneer’s vessel, and we haven’t been able to outrun it. Now they’re closing, and that means we’ve got to fight.”
    “I want to help!”
    “Don’t be stupid, you’re only a little girl—now get your mother and hurry below decks where you’ll be safe!”
    She started to say something, but a series of roars boomed out, and the Dancing Dolphin lurched to the starboard side as her guns went off. Huge white clouds of smoke poured over the top deck, making Violet choke and cough. With tear-filled eyes she fled back the way she came. The pirates’ answering shots hammering into the Dolphin ’s side and the shuddering impacts knocked her off her feet. Scrambling on her hands and knees, she scooted across the threshold.
    “Mama!” she screeched. “We’re beset by pirates! Tom said we’re to go below decks!”
    “Let them come,” her mother snarled like an angry lion.
    The sickly woman was teetering on widely spread legs, her face set in a grimace of unshakable determination and her hands filled with her tall spear. Her long brown legs quivered, and her bosom rolled beneath her colorful dress when the Dolphin ’s weak return fire rang out. Stumbling past a stunned Violet, her mother staggered like someone eagerly heading to a battlefield where they knew they’d never return. Violet knew her mother would sell own her life at a dear cost to be paid in full by buccaneer lives.
    No, Suga wasn’t committing suicide. You see, her mother bear’s instinct to preserve her one and only cub was in full swing, and hell would be gaping for any foolish mortals