Open Wardrobes

Having to go to work of course puts a slight crimp in the word count, but I did manage a little over 2000 words again today despite the distraction of Heroes and The Big Bang Theory.




He passed them all, clad in black more even than usual, and none spoke as Red crossed fore and ascended the dozen steps to the top of the forecastle. The Arrow was aimed eastwards already towards the open sea and tugged at the anchors to be off. She was not one to long observe the dead. Red Foxx lay a hand on the weathered railed as he turned to address his crew.
"Captain Grey Foxx is dead," he started simply. The crew knew, of course, these tidings already, for they had seen the pallbearers set off and return. But to hear the Captain himself say these mournful words brought grief home. Several wept openly and Red Foxx would not begrudge the least their tears. All had loved the old Captain. Red Foxx withdrew the Captain's Stone so it lay plain before all eyes.
"My father has passed the reign of the Island Kingdom to me," the Captain continued, "and it has been witnessed."
"Aye," Jat confirmed, "it has."
"The fleet in times of old would have been here, all captains gathered, but the secrecy of our Isle has been broken and in prudence my father and I agreed today it should be otherwise." There was more behind it, the crew all knew as well as did the Captain, but they accepted for now that such dealings could not yet be held openly.
"We shall meet the fleet at Harbarrow," Red Foxx commanded, "and there may make celebrations as are fitting this day." Some cheered, having felt cheated out of the glory that should be theirs as the new flagship and the Captan's crew. "Then," Red continued, "we shall continue the mission my father appointed to us. Oaths I have sworn, and through me have you also, that we shall reclaim the Heart of Destiny, though all the Kingdoms and every last of the Admiral's men stand in our way. I am Captain Foxx, Lord of the Islands, and as I have said it, so shall it be!"
Here all cheered, glad to be back on the chase again. But a few leagues behind the Admiral's ship itself had they been when the summons came that they must return to the Sacred Isle. First Mate Jat and the helmsman, Bluefoot Bill, joined the Captain atop the forecastle. The rest of the crew hauled anchor and made ready for the seas.
"Would you be wantin' to take her out, Captain?" the helmsman asked.
The Captain nodded and took the helm. "What course have you set?"
"Round the north side, Captain, and then through the Sandy Straits past the Dead Island," Bill answered, "with the Captain's permission, of course."
"You'll put an extra day on our course that route," the Captain noted.
"Aye, Captain, but the Admiral's fleet won't be lurkin' round those parts and I be thinkin' it best we not have any delays from their like before we see the fleet."
The Captain agreed, though Jat itched at even the small delay. "We'll be on the Admiral's trail before long," the Captain assured them both. "But we seek the map first," and he directed this most at Jat.
"Aye, Captain," Jat said stiffly, and then added, "Will you be needin' me here?"
Red Foxx took the helm as the Arrow pushed already out to sea, all sails unfurled. "No," he said, "see to the crew." Moving to deeper waters the Captain swung the vessel to port to make round the Island. "See me in my quarters once we've passed the Straits."
"Aye," Jay acknowledged and stepped back down to the main deck. More than one member of the crew received from Jat Stevens a tongue lashing a mite stronger than deserved and all wondered who had crossed the irascible First Mate. Bluefoot Bill stood behind Red Foxx at the helm as the Captain steered his ship towards the pirate port of Harbarrow. Behind them the crew rose their new standard. The familiar fox remained, but now by the Captain's orders it flashed red against the black flag.

*****

As Captain Red Foxx set sail from the Sacred Isle, Lemuel Drake stood at his own helm watching the swirl of foam on the sea below that marked his own father's watery grave. The old Admiral's coat fit him ill and he adjusted it without end in a vain effort to feel suited for it. He wore his own captain's hat still, for only the authority of the Shipwrights' Kingdom, now the Ruined Kingdom to all else, could pronounce him Admiral in his own right and it had no heir. His father had placed him in command of the Ruined Fleet in lieu of this higher authority and no man in the fleet would gainsay him, at least until the kingdom itself should be restored. Lemuel had heard tell that Captain Grey Foxx too lay somewhere sick and dying and though it the height of irony that the two should in such close time of one another both pass. The two old enemies, he supposed, could not long live without the other, so bitter that feud had become. Lemuel remembered well the Ruined Kingdom's fall. As a boy of nine he had been proud to join his father the Admiral onboard ship as he bore back from the Sacred Isle the pirates' greatest treasure, styled in their flowery speech the Heart of Destiny. But he remembered also watching helpless with his father as the Great Wave came to destroy their kingdom. How it could be anything but the work of the pirate-folk few of the refugees of the Ruined Kingdom doubted, though Lemuel often wondered, despite the sorcery rumored to be at their disposal, how they could have accomplished such a feat.
From a source he never would name, King Ottotorius learned the location of the pirates so-called Sacred Isle and laid claim to it. So sure had the pirates been of their island's secrecy they gave it nearly no other protection. In days the armies of the not-yet-Ruined Kingdom occupied the island and began the work of setting up new mines. The tales of the Heart of Destiny had entranced the king and he sought it and any other gems like it, gems he believed must still lie buried deep within the Isle. Lemuel did not give much heed to such tales. Stones were stones and had no further virtue beyond their beauty. But the king sent many men to the Isle to dig. They started slowly, spending many weeks searching for new veins. In this time Lemuel's father returned to the Ruined Kingdom with the pirate's Heart, although the old Admiral refused to tell Lemuel what he and the king then did with it then. It seemed to Lemuel, as he and his father remained in the palace awhile thereafter, that the king grew impatient with his new treasure and ordered the mining of the Sacred Isle to move more quickly.
It was then the disaster had occurred. After the vessel left for the Isle, carrying the king's new orders, Lemuel and his father remained as the king's fleet gathered in the waters just beyond the Ruined Kingdom to further rout the pirates. The Admiral had taken him onto the flagship again that day, while the king sailed beside them on the royal schooner. Lemuel had idled on deck, hanging over the railing, and watched the king's ship. The king was observing the progress of the fleet as his young daughter Amarantha played on deck. She was a few years younger than he and seemed just at home on ship, swinging on the ropes and taking the helm under supervision when her father allowed. They had often played together when his father was in port, or when Lemuel had been left behind on land and that youthful pleasure had made the separations from his father more bearable. Now she stood next to her father the king dressed in a simple white dress while the sun played upon her long hair. Lemuel watched them both and she turned. She smiled when she saw him and he smiled in return. Suddenly Lemuel lost his footing and stumbled against the railing as the ship's hull scraped against the seafloor. He watched as the water drained out of the bay then glanced back at the princess. Amarantha looked back at him as the shadow crept up upon the ships and darkened her face. She turned to look behind him, far out to sea, and it grew very dark. Lemuel turned. All eyes were on to sea as the wall of water rose up and moved quickly towards the shore. Shouts surrounded Lemuel, but he heeded none of them and gripped the railing tightly as the king's ship turned back towards land in a vain attempt to outrun its fate. The Admiral turned his ship into the wave, hoping to ride it out. The wave grew ever higher, unlike anything any of these hardened seaman had ever before witnessed. Ships scattered before it, though it swallowed each of them in turn and crushed them, the pride of the kingdom so easily snuffed out. The Admiral swept Lemuel up into his arms and bore him swiftly below deck and Lemuel lost sight of Amarantha. Just before the wave engulfed them too far off, beyond the cape, Lemuel caught a single glimpse of a faraway ship bearing the standard of a silver fox on black...
Lemuel tried to shake himself free of the memory. The choking taste of sea salt, the splintered wood, the screams that struck him each time he resurfaced. It was a marvel that he and his father survived when even the Admiral's mighty ship collapsed underneath the weight of so great a wave. Lemuel remembered seeing the white box that had tied Amarantha's red hair drifting amidst the wreckage. In that one fell moment the fleet of the Ruined Kingdom was indeed ruined, with just a scattering of ships surviving, those who providentially had been late to the gathering. Finished chewing on rope and timber, the wave swept ever inward and all the low-lying lands of the Ruined kingdom were flooded. Fields became swamps as every home in the great wave's path fell, even the towers of the king's great palace. The Admiral had been the one to find the body of King Ottotorius as it floated facedown as if to better see all the good men there already drowned. Lemuel never asked who had found the princess.
With the death of King Ottotorius and his daughter, his only child, Admiral Drake took command of what remained of the Shipwrights' Kingdom. A few vessels had miraculously escaped the catastrophe in shape enough to still be seaworthy and the Admiral sent one to find what others may have survived elsewhere. He then gathered the men that remained to provide help to whoever survived throughout the kingdom and, in the time that followed, to bury the dead. The pride of their kingdom made low, their lands all but unlivable, many fled the kingdom on the few ships found and spread out to what islands in the Coral Seas their dead king commanded, for the Sacred Isle was not the only such conquest he had made. Admiral Drake thanked the stars that the pirates had endured their own losses and did not seek to pursue the refugees. The Sacred Isle, however, the Admiral forsook. What devilry the pirate-folk had used to wreak this havoc the Admiral could not fathom, but as he did not share the king's lust for jewels he deemed it wise to retreat from that accursed place in order to brew a just revenge at his own leisure. The pirates for their part made no fight of the paltry handful of islands the Ruined folk now possessed, them being little more than rocks in the sea whereon the new inhabitants struggled to scratch out a living in exile. Some of the more daring ventured further into the Island Kingdom and made what homes they could far inland from ports less frequented by the pirate fleet. Captain Grey Foxx appeared content enough in the Ruined Kingdom's fall to worry much about a few strays that crept into his lands and kept to their own business.
In the years that followed Lemuel Drake sailed restlessly by his father's side through the Coral Seas on his course towards manhood. They pursued the pirates whence they could in retribution and seeing to the needs of their scattered people as best they could. From the Admiral Lemuel learned all the secrets of the seas his father could teach, preparing him for this day when he would have to take up the mantle himself and lead the fleet. But of one thing Lemuel always wondered and yet his father never spoke. What of the Heart of Destiny? Among the wreckage of the Ruined Kingdom Lemuel was sure it was not.