up to 45k words

3 files changed, 472 insertions, 21 deletions

diff --git a/cuts.txt b/cuts.txt
index 78edde5..65f180f 100644
--- a/cuts.txt
+++ b/cuts.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,26 @@
+--- 
+
+The afternoon sun was gone. The Wind began to roll ashore in gusts ar first, spitting cand off  the tops of the dunes, whiping it into the aire and then letting it settle again, some kind of dance between wind and done, one that ducked the dunes dipped the dunes, back, away from the sea, and then lifted them again in some kind of dance, light and bluri at the edges, stingin the skin of any create that might cut between them might be so bold as to cut between then. Very quickly though the dance became to fast to follow, the wind no longer let the sand dip, prefering the whirl it endlessly across the sandy shore dance floor. the sea because to instrde, waves moved higher as if draw by a tide, but it was not a tide it was wind, moved water over thousands of miles, piling it up here in th sahllows of the coastal water where it rose and surge forward., washing the frontal dunes first, then rising high enough to whipe out their camp, what was left, that the had not backed up was list, nothing more then the stones for the limns, though Birdie was sad to see them gone, pished out over the marsh. her father said perhaps they would find them, bu again, but Lyuly could not see how, the dunes were moving like soldier marching befor ethe wind, further bck buring reeds and sloughs and certainly and stones that folled down below them. 
+
+The sy was dark, there was not trace of sun and it was impossible to tell the time, though Lulu thought it must be lat evening, her stomach gnaed at her sides , the water had made it all the way across the marsh, They'd see fish through helplessly across the reeds, left floudering when the storm surge pulled back, btu then it came again, more and more surging until it did not teceed anymore, but was simply the new leven of the sea.
+
+The island they had chosen to make their stand was ten, perhaps twelve feet above the water line and now the water was threatening to rise hight enough to wash them off it. It was too late to move, the turned their boats over and her father started a small fire under one of them using the cials he had brought from came/ He kept it low, letting each twig burn to coals before allding more. 
+
+Just enough to light toches later, if we need them he said to Birdie, who helped him stack twigs near the stern of the over turned boat. The wind was starting to blow sand up on the windward side of the overturned boat. Her father and Taba used their shuvels to pile up more and seal off the bow and windward side, making a reasonable windtight, perhaps even water tight barrier. They would know more about that when the rain began i. 
+
+The all climed in, her father placed the stove pip in trought the sand to vent the fire. It was still smokey and hot under the boat, but it was bette rthan being out in the spitting sand and rain. Lulu sat down byt hte interance and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. Her omother and sister sat on the other side of the entrance tunnel, Birdie in tk's lap. Her aunt and charles were back toward the stern with tk Tamba's wife. H, Henri crawled in and paused on hands and knees loock around. He laced at lulyu but went to his mama, taking a seat on her other leg, opposite Birdie. You cant sit like this all night she said, but we can fuddle for a little while.
+
+Her father and Tamba were still outside, she could hear them shouting to each other, trying to be heard as the wind increased aroun the. She coud hear the his of wind blown sand hittin ght full above her head. TLight flickered at the tunnel crawlspace and seconds later the sky clapped in the thunderous roat that shock the cround so hard the little mountain Lulu had been idling shaping wiht ther hands of dry sand, flattened out noticably. It was only as it sank down again that Lyuluy realized she'd been sooping up sand and letting it run out of her hand like her mother's prize timer that always hung high in the rathers, out of reach even of Birdie and Lulu. No one used the glass timer but Papa and Mama. he used it to navigate some times, though her had not in a long time. I know these waters well enough.
+
+Then segue to the aligator at the door. First her father and Tamba come in, then the sad and curious aligator, then the brunt of the store the flashing sky, the calm of the key, the other side of the brunt, and the end of the night. Waking the next day, their hime cone, the whole cur of the shoreline different. And then the piece of tthe boat that they dind fishing the next day.
+
+They bury him on land. The little boy, puffy and white, down. Chunks of flesh missing. Crabs eating them. They brun them in pyre, the sparks reach up like mingling wiht the stars, the after life, the next time around, etc. 
+
+---
+
+Scene of lulu and Bridie sailing with their father. The boat is a small coastal cruiser, junk rigged perhaps, or liek a dhak from the aftrican, Tamba and her father build the boat, cata maran single outrigger, oah rigged, triangular inverted sail, fast, stable, next to no draw, can handle some open water, but good at navigating inlet and marshes and rivers. Big enough to hold a descent catch, but also fast and capable to runnig good in from a ship to shore under the cover of sarkness. Her father helps unload ships that sail that come in the beginning. The firls see their father take the boat out at night. Meet the sail. He helps bring treasue and men ashore. Load it into wagons and smuggle it into Owen twon. guns and run. Lulu and Birdie get to help , this is their fist time. perhaps, something similar to ricing camp disaster? does that fir or do they simply see it happen and her father tells the story abroudn the fire. 
+
+Need to get wise old Tamba in camp and telling stories. Not necessaryly all african stories. He;s sailed widely, all around the world and knows stories from nearly every culture. He becomes a way to get out of the rut of any one point of view. He tells tails I can borrow from the myths of many cultures. Thwich means I can't be accursed the approation, or at least not any one appropriation. If you steal from everyone everyon will be mad. Might as well I suupose. What's the harm. If you're going to go, go all the way.
 
 Cuthie was swinging on the vine at the edge of the clearing as Birdie approached. He called out to her as he leaped off the limb and swung out wide over the racks of drying meat and lines of linens hanging in the noonday sun. His white teeth gleamed in the light and made his smile seem like it was a thousand times brighter than her own. She laughed and ran across the compound, jumping at his legs as he passed over her. She scrambled up the tree to the limb he'd leapt from. The branches of the TK were worn smooth from Tamba's hands and hers and Lulu's and Henri's and Francis'; and Charles's and countless other children who'd made the same climb to leap from the rope swing that Tamba had built. The tk nuts around the branch were she stood were gone already. She climbed up one branch higher, where the bark was still rough, fewer hands and feet had tread and she picked a tk nut. Tamba was still swinging, slower now, ever closer to equilibrium. 
 
diff --git a/lbh-cuts.txt b/lbh-cuts.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b13789
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lbh-cuts.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+
diff --git a/lbh.txt b/lbh.txt
index b7fffe0..77a84a5 100644
--- a/lbh.txt
+++ b/lbh.txt
@@ -162,6 +162,30 @@ arriving by ship
     discovering the arkhanglsk
 
 
+##Kids playing in Arkhangelsk
+
+What do you want to play? Birdie was hoping Lulu would say I don't know and they could play a game Birdie had in mind, but she didn't.
+
+"We're crocodile pirates?"
+
+"Crocodiles that are also pirates?" Henri's face immediately brightened at this idea. "Can we eat people?"
+
+"We are people though."
+
+"Wait, I thought you said we were crocodiles?"
+
+"We're half crocodile, half human."
+
+"Do we have human heads or crocodile heads?"
+
+"It depends, we can have whichever we need. Mostly we have human heads, but when we go into battle we have crocodile heads and teeth."
+
+"Yes!" said Henri. "But we have human arms, because we still need swords and guns."
+
+"Of course."
+
+
+
 
 
 # Prologue
@@ -1041,6 +1065,7 @@ Sails
     - Ratham arrives, break the spell of sadness
     - no word of the ship though
     - hunting and careening, winter solstice bonfire with the pirates
+'''
 
 ## Storm
 
@@ -1234,51 +1259,60 @@ Lulu cocked her head. Are you trying to decide if you should eat me? She glanced
 
 Tamba nodded. "Maybe it will just go away."
 
-A particularly close flash of lightning made them all flinch and when they did the alligator flinched as well and it was then that Lulu noticed it was missing its other eye. Lulu cocked her head and stared at it's one eye again, but this time she saw it differently. Are you the same creature? Is that possible? You're bigger. But so am I. A year is a long time. Do you recognize me? Is that why you're staring at me? Are you trying to tell me something?
+A particularly close flash of lightning made them all flinch and when they did the alligator flinched as well and it was then that Lulu noticed it was missing its other eye. Lulu cocked her head and stared at it's one eye again, but this time she saw it differently. Are you the same creature? Is that possible? You're bigger. So am I. A year is a long time. Do you recognize me? Is that why you're staring at me? Are you trying to tell me something?
 
 The eye moved as she thought these questions. It focused back on her for a moment and then it lifted it's body up. Lulu saw her father raise the gun. "Wait!" she yelled. The alligator turned it's eye to her one last time and then it slipped out from under the tarp and disappeared into the night.
 
+---
 
+Lulu did not remember falling asleep, but she woke with a start, stiff and slumped against her father, who was still asleep. She did not move, but lay slumped, listening. The wind still blew, but it was only a gale, strong, stiff, steady, bending the palms and pines, but not tearing at the earth, not seeking to rearrange the world in a night. She gently eased off her father and crawled out from under the small boat that had been their world for a long terrible night. She half expected to see the alligator somewhere just outside, waiting for her, like a patient dog. Instead she found her sister, sitting on a washed up piece of gnarled old oak, starring down the river, out toward the sea, crying.
 
+Lulu came ad sat beside her. Neither of them said anything. Lulu thought of Francis and hoped he was okay. Francis was kind and good, you could see it in his eyes. Her uncle had something of that in his eyes too, but he didn't listen to it. She put her arm around Birdie. "I'm sure they went ashore. I'm sure they're fine."
 
---- 
+Birdie nodded. "Thanks Lu." She leaned her head on Lulu's shoulder. "They're not though."
 
-The afternoon sun was gone. The Wind began to roll ashore in gusts ar first, spitting cand off  the tops of the dunes, whiping it into the aire and then letting it ettle again, some kind of dance between wind and done, one that ducked the dunes dipped the dunes, back, away from the sea, and then lifted them again in some kind of dance, light and bluri at the edges, stingin the skin of any create that might cut between them might be so bold as to cut between then. Very quickly though the dance became to fast to follow, the wind no longer let the sand dip, prefering the whirl it endlessly across the sandy shore dance floor. the sea because to instrde, waves moved higher as if draw by a tide, but it was not a tide it was wind, moved water over thousands of miles, piling it up here in th sahllows of the coastal water where it rose and surge forward., washing the frontal dunes first, then rising high enough to whipe out their camp, what was left, that the had not backed up was list, nothing more then the stones for the limns, though Birdie was sad to see them gone, pished out over the marsh. her father said perhaps they would find them, bu again, but Lyuly could not see how, the dunes were moving like soldier marching befor ethe wind, further bck buring reeds and sloughs and certainly and stones that folled down below them. 
+Lulu pulled back from her. "What? Why not? How do you know? What happened?"
 
-The sy was dark, there was not trace of sun and it was impossible to tell the time, though Lulu thought it must be lat evening, her stomach gnaed at her sides , the water had made it all the way across the marsh, They'd see fish through helplessly across the reeds, left floudering when the storm surge pulled back, btu then it came again, more and more surging until it did not teceed anymore, but was simply the new leven of the sea.
+"Nothing happened. I just... I can't feel anything. It's like... there's just nothing when I think of them."
 
-The island they had chosen to make their stand was ten, perhaps twelve feet above the water line and now the water was threatening to rise hight enough to wash them off it. It was too late to move, the turned their boats over and her father started a small fire under one of them using the cials he had brought from came/ He kept it low, letting each twig burn to coals before allding more. 
+Lulu considered this, but didn't say anything. She tried to hold them in her mind and tried to feel them. She too felt nothing. But she wasn't sure she ever felt anything. She had never done this before anyway, how would she know? Then she wondered why she had never done this before. "I don't feel anything either, but I don't think I ever did."
 
-Just enough to light toches later, if we need them he said to Birdie, who helped him stack twigs near the stern of the over turned boat. The wind was starting to blow sand up on the windward side of the overturned boat. Her father and Taba used their shuvels to pile up more and seal off the bow and windward side, making a reasonable windtight, perhaps even water tight barrier. They would know more about that when the rain began i. 
+"You don't think about people?"
 
-The all climed in, her father placed the stove pip in trought the sand to vent the fire. It was still smokey and hot under the boat, but it was bette rthan being out in the spitting sand and rain. Lulu sat down byt hte interance and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. Her omother and sister sat on the other side of the entrance tunnel, Birdie in tk's lap. Her aunt and charles were back toward the stern with tk Tamba's wife. H, Henri crawled in and paused on hands and knees loock around. He laced at lulyu but went to his mama, taking a seat on her other leg, opposite Birdie. You cant sit like this all night she said, but we can fuddle for a little while.
+"We'll of course I think about people."
 
-Her father and Tamba were still outside, she could hear them shouting to each other, trying to be heard as the wind increased aroun the. She coud hear the his of wind blown sand hittin ght full above her head. TLight flickered at the tunnel crawlspace and seconds later the sky clapped in the thunderous roat that shock the cround so hard the little mountain Lulu had been idling shaping wiht ther hands of dry sand, flattened out noticably. It was only as it sank down again that Lyuluy realized she'd been sooping up sand and letting it run out of her hand like her mother's prize timer that always hung high in the rathers, out of reach even of Birdie and Lulu. No one used the glass timer but Papa and Mama. he used it to navigate some times, though her had not in a long time. I know these waters well enough.
+"When you think about people, you don't feel them?"
 
-Then segue to the aligator at the door. First her father and Tamba come in, then the sad and curious aligator, then the brunt of the store the flashing sky, the calm of the key, the other side of the brunt, and the end of the night. Waking the next day, their hime cone, the whole cur of the shoreline different. And then the piece of tthe boat that they dind fishing the next day.
+Lulu was quiet.
 
-They bury him on land. The little boy, puffy and white, down. Chunks of flesh missing. Crabs eating them. They brun them in pyre, the sparks reach up like mingling wiht the stars, the after life, the next time around, etc. 
+"When I think about people I feel them, somehow, I don't... I just... I can't really explain it, I just... I feel them."
 
----
+"I wish I could do that."
 
-Scene of lulu and Bridie sailing with their father. The boat is a small coastal cruiser, junk rigged perhaps, or liek a dhak from the aftrican, Tamba and her father build the boat, cata maran single outrigger, oah rigged, triangular inverted sail, fast, stable, next to no draw, can handle some open water, but good at navigating inlet and marshes and rivers. Big enough to hold a descent catch, but also fast and capable to runnig good in from a ship to shore under the cover of sarkness. Her father helps unload ships that sail that come in the beginning. The firls see their father take the boat out at night. Meet the sail. He helps bring treasue and men ashore. Load it into wagons and smuggle it into Owen twon. guns and run. Lulu and Birdie get to help , this is their fist time. perhaps, something similar to ricing camp disaster? does that fir or do they simply see it happen and her father tells the story abroudn the fire. 
+Birdie smiled, but started to cry again. "But now I don't know, I think about Francis and I can't feel anything, and I am scared that that means something happened to them, that, that they've died."
 
-Need to get wise old Tamba in camp and telling stories. Not necessaryly all african stories. He;s sailed widely, all around the world and knows stories from nearly every culture. He becomes a way to get out of the rut of any one point of view. He tells tails I can borrow from the myths of many cultures. Thwich means I can't be accursed the approation, or at least not any one appropriation. If you steal from everyone everyon will be mad. Might as well I suupose. What's the harm. If you're going to go, go all the way.
+Lulu felt herself start to cry. She hugged her sister and began to cry on her shoulder, and she felt Birdie crying on hers and they cried together, until they had nothing left to cry.
+
+## Sails
 
+'''
 so Tamba comes to the fire and starts to tell stories, her father tries to get him to stop but the fgirls, and the reader begin eto put things together, the swimming at night, the sailing at night, the sails on the horizen, Tabna's stories of beinging goods into the harbor. Then her father asks for a story aout tk, something to get the kids away from being curious about whta all he does besides making tar.
 
 What does he do, he helpos get the goods ashore and brings water out to the boats when the need it. dried fish, he's paid in whatever the boat has, somethimes rich fabrics their mother makes into fine dresses f, sometimes rum, which her father sells to the taverns in charlestown. Perhaps there's  ascene where they all go to charles town to trade the rum for money and the kids get to go to the traders, scene at the slave market. That could be a rough one. need to find out when slavery reeally took off, when the slave market opened. woiuld it have been their in 1705? If not then some seen of blacks being treated poorly and the family's rage. Maybe her father buys someone, a child perhaps, a man and a child. Her father hauls them back out to camp and sets them free. They help out and then they go to join a crew. 
 
 Tamba asks them their names, asks if they can sail. They buy someone that can and set them free.
 
-
-## Sails
+'''
 
 It was after breakfast, the first truly cold morning of the year, it would still be plenty warm by midday, but it was cold now in the mornings. Her father had come in from his morning swim and for the first time sat by the fire to warm himself. Birdie had been stirring leftover stew in the kettle, which she'd hung herself over the fire. She was the first up, after her father. She scooped out a bowl bowl stew and stepped out into the cold air. She sat on a stump and ate. The more she ate the hungrier she felt and before long went back inside for another bowl. "That's my girl," said her father, ladling another bowl for her. 
 
-"You'll help with the kilns today. Kobayashi and I are going to Charlestown"
+Birdie tried to smile but she didn't feel it. She hadn't felt it. It had been a week since the storm and there had been no sign or word of her uncle or cousins. Twice her father and Kobayashi had sailed up the coast toward Charlestown stopping along the way to survey the beaches and marshes for any sign of Delos, but had found nothing. Her father still said that they had simple been driven into the marshes and probably had to walk out, but Birdie could tell he believed that story less every day.
+
+Her aunt wandered the north end of the island, staring out at the sea. She seemed in a daze, she did not talk to anyone and Birdie had not seen her eat for days. Every now and then Kadiatu would convince her to eat something, but it was never much and afterward she would wander back to her camp and sit on the top of the dune, waiting.
 
-Birdie nodded. "Yes papa." Lulu took the ladle from her and sleepily spooned some in her bowl. She followed Birdie outside. When they had finished eating, and Birdie was finally full they walked together down to the shore to wash their bowls in the surf. 
+She probably saw the sail before anyone else, but if she did she didn't bother to come tell them. It was Birdie who saw it first at their camp.
+
+She and Lulu had walked together down to the shore to wash their bowls in the surf. 
 
 Birdie stopped at the shore. Lulu knelt and let the rushing water of the wave fill her bowl and pull the bit of fish at the bottom back out the sea. Birdie watched but she made no move to wash her own bowl. She stared out at the sea where she thought she saw something white on the horizon, something that might be a topsail coming into view. 
 
@@ -1286,15 +1320,15 @@ Birdie stopped at the shore. Lulu knelt and let the rushing water of the wave fi
 
 Lulu stood up, she was shorter than Birdie by half a head, but she saw it too. "Sail?"
 
-They looked at each other and smiled. A way out of tending the kilns. Birdie quickly washed her bowl and they turned and ran back up to camp. Laughing and shouting sail. Her father turned and squinted out at the sea. He hmmmed and went inside, returning with the spyglass. He trained it on the speck still wavering at the horizon. 
+They looked at each other and smiled. Birdie quickly washed her bowl and they turned and ran back up to camp. Laughing and shouting "sail." Her father turned and squinted out at the sea. He hmmmed and went inside, returning with the spyglass. He trained it on the speck still wavering at the horizon. 
 
-"Topsail, moving northeast." He handed Birdie the glass and she climbed up the nearest dune to get a better look. Northeast was no good, that meant it was headed away from them, but that made no sense, they should have spotted it earlier if it was coming out of Charlestown. They've have seen sails well and clear when she rounded cape and turned to the north, headed for London or . The only boats that ever headed northeast without coming out of Charlestown were... she glanced over at her father. He was watching her, she could see him smile, she watched him watch her figure it out. Raiders. It was a coasting ship that had drifted too close and, probably unbeknowst to its captain and crew, had been spotted. Word would spread north. Not from their camp, her father never passed on sea gossip as he called it, it was one of the reasons raiders came to their shore in peace, but this one obviously wasn't, which ruined Birdie's hopes of something to do other than feeding kilns. She walked back over to her father and passed the glass to Lulu.
+"Topsail, moving north." He handed Birdie the glass and she climbed up the nearest dune to get a better look. Northeast was no good, that meant it was headed away from them, but that made no sense, they should have spotted it earlier if it was coming out of Charlestown. They'd have seen sails well and clear when she rounded cape and turned to the north, headed for London or Northampton. The only boats that ever headed northeast without coming out of Charlestown were... she glanced over at her father. He was watching her, she could see him smile, she watched him watch her figure it out. Privateers. Pirates. It was a coasting ship that had drifted too close and, probably unbeknowst to its captain and crew, had been spotted. Word would spread north. Not from their camp, her father never passed on sea gossip as he called it, it was one of the reasons raiders came to their shore in peace, but this one obviously wasn't. She walked back over to her father and passed the glass to Lulu.
 
-"We'll wait a bit on the fires. We've nothing to trade. And it seems they don't need to careen. We don't want to send up any smoke, might be taken as a signal and we've nothing to say." 
+"Doesn't look like they're headed this way."
 
 Birdie nodded. She screwed up her courage inside and said quickly before she lost her nerve, "Papa, can Lulu and I play at the Arkhangelsk until you need us?"
 
-Her father looked at her darkly, but then he smiled. "What gave you the idea that there was ever a time when I did not need you? I always need you Birdie, at my side, we are joined at the hip. He clasped a huge hand on her shoulder and pulled her tight against his leg and attempted to take a step forward, swinging her along with him. She laughed and tried to pull away, but his grip was strong, she remained pinned against his leg and he took another, stiff-legged step, swinging her along again. He walked her like that, laughing as they went all the way over to where Lulu stood oblivious to the both of them, watching the sail through the glass. "She's tacking toward us."
+Her father looked at her darkly, but then he smiled. "What gave you the idea that there was ever a time when I did not need you?" He rubbed his beard and continued. "I always need you Birdie, at my side, we are joined at the hip. He clasped a huge hand on her shoulder and pulled her tight against his leg and attempted to take a step forward, swinging her along with him. She laughed and tried to pull away, but his grip was strong, she remained pinned against his leg and he took another, stiff-legged step, swinging her along again. He walked her like that, laughing as they went all the way over to where Lulu stood oblivious to the both of them, watching the sail through the glass. "She's tacking toward us."
 
 Her father stopped and took the glass from her.
 
@@ -1333,6 +1367,399 @@ Her father smiled at her. "A wonderful idea my darling freewoman, but... but, we
 Birdie pushed the canoe up onto the shore and used her pole to vault out of the stern of the boat, over the water, to land on the shore. She dragged the boat up and tied it off to a branch hanging down from the sprawling oak that marked the landing that led to Kadiatu's family's land. She and Lulu followed the well worn path through the trees. Their house was on stilts made of cypress, thatched like every house in the area, but better and more substantially made. Kadiatu and her family were not travelers. They did not move camps like Birdie's family. Their camp had a more permanent feel to it. There was a privy made of leftover oak boards her father and Tamba had split last year to repair the shelving in the hold of the tk. Beyond the clearing the house sat in was a larger clearing where Kadiatu's grandmother grew corn and beans, plants she had received as gifts from the few remaining Edistow that lived on the island.  
 
 
+---
+
+Jack Ratham was dressed in his trademark calico shirt, black pants, red sash and worn, but somehow still very stylishly cut jacket. Birdie didn't really know it was stylish, she just knew that it looked unaccountably good on Jack Ratham, which is the merger of fashion, what a thing is, how it is shaped and so on, with who a person is, which is to say what sort of figure they cut in the world. The one Jack Ratham cut was distinctly his own. She reminded Birdie of her father. They could not have been more different, and yet in some fundamental way, the way they looked at the world perhaps, they were alike.
+
+Ratham smiled at her. "Birdie, how you've grown my dear." He turned to her sister. "And Lulu, still climbing trees?"
+
+"Oh yes sir." Lulu wanted to tell her about her latest adventure, but she stopped herself. She looked up at Ratham. "Captain Ratham..."
+
+"Lulu, I know your question. I saw it in your sister's eyes as well. And the answer is yes. She is. She will be sailing in the tk. We plan to careen." He straightened up and turned to her father. "That is, captain, if you have any tar to spare us."
+
+Her father laughed. "I do believe that's why were out here." He hugged Ratham. "Good to see you Jack."
+
+"Likewise." 
+
+There was much hugging and patting of backs and the crew shook hands with them, some they remembered from the previous summer, when Ratham had come north to the cape. 
+
+Ratham glanced up at the dunes. "I see the Arkhangelsk has survived two years worth a storms."
+
+"She lost her mast last week." Birdie dropped her head. "And her mate."
+
+Ratham knelt down beside her. "It's a tough thing to take as a captain, Birdie. You, you are still captain yes?"
+
+Birdie nodded and fought to keep the tears out of her eyes. 
+
+"I lost a first mate to a storm. Whole ship full of men in fact, whom I'd been drinking with not three days before." Ratham stared down at the sand, seemed lost in thought for a moment. "I wish I could tell you something that would make it easier. But the truth is, it's never gotten any easier for me." He stood up and rested his hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry Birdie." He turned and clapped a hand on her father's shoulder. I know you don't drink captain, but I may have to tonight."
+
+Her father and Ratham headed down the path toward the camp. Ratham's men gathered up their things and followed them leaving Birdie, Lulu, and Henri standing on the beach, staring at the Arkhangelsk. 
+
+"I wish it had been washed away." Birdie said it before she'd really thought about it, and then she realized she meant it. It would never been the same. She would never be able to play on the ship without thinking of Francis. She realized them that she didn't want to play on it anymore. She wondered if she really wanted to play. She wanted to... she wanted something and she didn't know what it was. She wanted Francis back. She wanted Owen back. She would even take her uncle TK back. She just wanted things to be how they had been. She wanted her aunt to be like she was, she wanted to play on the boat, she wanted... but as she stood there in silence, wanting, she suddenly realized it would never be. Nothing would ever be the same. A thing came, a storm happened, it reshaped the land, it reshaped her, it had made her into something else and nothing would every be the same. Her father had always told them, nothing remains the same, everything is always different, everything is always changing. He said it so often it was a kind of mantra they made fun of behind his back, not because they didn't believe him, but because they didn't realize, they didn't know. It was one thing to hear and understand a thing, it was another to live it and no, only now Birdie realized did she understand what her father was saying. Only now did she for the first time, have some incling of what it must have felt like for him to lose her mother. For her there was nothing. There was an absence she could feel, but it was not loss it was absense. Now she understood what lose felt like. She understood that she did not understand the loss her father must have felt when her mother died.
+
+---
+
+Anne Bonnie riding in, foot on the gunwale as the men row. Jack and her father talking about her as Birdie details everyting she loves about her.
+
+Birdie glanced up and saw a second boat coming in, slowly rowing in against the tide. A figure in a wide brimmed hat was standing up in the front, one foot on the gunwale, holding a line tied to the bow, as if were reins on an unseen porpoise. It was too far to make out the figure's face, but Bridie knew who it was just by the way she stood. No one stood the way Anne stood. She had a perfectly balanced poise that suggested no matter where you might put her, she would be utterly at ease and soon in charge. 
+
+Ratham stood next to her father, watching the boat come him. He shook his head. "That woman knows how to make an entrance."
+
+Birdie heard her father chuckle. "Are you jealous John?"
+
+"Jealous? Of course I'm jealous. Everyone of sound mind is jealous of her."
+
+Birdie wasn't jealous. At least she didn't think she was jealous. She just loved Anne and whenever she was around her she felt better about everything, she felt better about herself, she wanted to be better. She wasn't sure if she wanted to better for Anne or just being around Anne made her want to be better. She wasn't even sure exactly how she wanted to better, she just knew that there was something about Anne that made everyone and everything seem like it was better and it was an elevation you had to live up to.
+
+She never moved from her pose with one foot up, not even when the boat caught a reasonably large wave and pitched forward, sliding down the face of the wave which then broke and soaked the men in the stern. Anne's red hair blew in the wind and Birdie could see her smiling now, scanning the beach. The boat nosed up on the sand the Anne vaulted off the bow, her boots sinking into the soft sand, where she stood for a moment surveying the crowd before her. She walked straight toward Lulu and Birdie.
+
+She knelt down before them, her huge black hat with its single ostrich feather was all they could see. She lifted her head and looked at each of their faces. "Birdie, Lulu. Have you been taking good care of your father and your brother?"
+
+Birdie nodded, but could not being herself to speak. Anne spun her head around to Henri. "Is this true Henri?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Good. Good." A wide smile came over Anne's face. She put her arms around Birdie and then Lulu, and then waved a hand to draw Henri in too. "tk father's name, you know I am here to steal your children."
+
+Birdie's father smiled. "And I thought I was using them to lure you here."
+
+"Careful there tk father's name," said Ratham.
+
+Anne straighted up and adjusted her hat. Birdie watched as she leaned in and quickly kissed her father on each cheek. "Strictly business tk father's name. We need to careen. *Revenge* has worms, our canvas is frayed, and lines are shredded. She's a sad sight when you get out there."
+
+Her father nodded. "We'll bring her in at high tide then. Send some of your men out hunting with Tambo, let's see if they can't get a couple boar, we'll cook them overnight, have a feast tomorrow."
+
+"You know tk father's name, that I and my crew will drink if we do that."
+
+"Good for you John. I don't care if you drink all the rum on the island, so long as you're not aboard my ship."
+
+"You still call that thing a ship do you?" Ratham smiled. Anne let out a low whistle. Birdie saw her father's face flash red and then return to normal. It happened so fast she was sure Ratham had not even seen it, but she knew Anne had. 
+
+"I call it home actually." 
+
+"Oh relax, tk father's name, I'm just playing. She's a fine vessel. She's got what, two guns is it? He slapped his hand on her father's shoulder and stopped laughing quite suddenly. "Everyone knows you're one of the finest captains in the East Indies and yet you have a this tiny boat, and you spend all your time on shore making tar... which, don't get me wrong, you make the best tar... anywhere, but I don't understand why, you could have a huge ship, a proper crew and I'd be willing to bet you could take a Galleon without hardly trying and retire in wealth and splendor. Do you like this jacket by the way, it's new." Ratham held out his arm and her father pinched the calico cloth between his fingers and rubbed it.
+
+"I don't know anything about clothes John, but it seems nice to me. As for the ship, I rather like the one I've got." he paused and glanced at Anne. "You see John, when you know you can have something whenever you want it, you don't always feel the need to have it all the time."
+
+Ratham laughed. "Well there you go then. Good man." He walked over to the first boat and began dividing its crew into hunting party and careening party. 
+
+Her rather stood next to Anne. "Where's Mary?"
+
+"In her quarters."
+
+"She staying there?"
+
+Anne shrugged. "I imagine she is."
+
+"How does..."
+
+Anne turned her head up to look at her father, Birdie could see nothing but an ostrich plum. "Doesn't matter to you does it?"
+
+Her father laughed. No, I suppose not. You're an odd duck Anne."
+
+"You're an odd duck too you know. I've missed you." 
+
+---
+
+Anne and her father did most of the work to get Revenge in and on her side. Captain Jack as Ratham told the kids to call him, made a chair out of some wood planks and a pile of sand and sat there, jug of rum at hand, watching the progress. It took the entire crew and half the trees they'd cut that summer to bring Revenge in and get her on her side, sufficiently out of the water to work on her full. At Ratham's insistence they started on the starboard side. "Always start on starboard," he said. Anne had just shrugged and passed the word on to the men doing the work. With the ship on her side, Mary did come ashore, despite what Bonny had said. She did not speak to anyone but her own ship's crew and seemed ill at ease. Birdie smiled at her, but she acted as if she could not even see Birdie. Birdie took an instant dislike to her. 
+
+Lulu thought she was pretty and defended her when Birdie called her rude. "Maybe she's just having a bad day Bee, I mean her ships on its side, looks to be pretty badly worm eaten. Probably doesn't have but a couple years left in her at most," said Lulu.
+
+The three of them were sitting on the bow of the Arkhangelsk, watching the men work on the hull of Revenge. Birdie wished she could help, but her father wouldn't let her even roll barrels of tar down the beach. Too dangerous he'd said. Birdie understood the danger of careening, but she failed to see what was dangerous about painting a hull with tar. "If a line gives way, if a timber rolls and that ship moves, it crushes anything in it's path like a bug" her father said. "I'd just jump out of the way," she said, but he'd only grunted and ignored her further pleading. And so she sat, watching from another ship.
+
+Just over Lulu's shoulder, back toward camp she could see a plume of smoke rising up from the great pits her father had buried two huge boar in last night. By evening they'd be ready to dig up, and it would be Birdie's favorite meal, the delicious sweetness of the pork, with the special rice Kobayashi made to go with it, her mouth watered even now at the thought. 
+
+It wasn't until she glanced out at the sea beyond Revenge that she realized she had not thought of Francis or Owen for several hours. Is this what happens she thought with a start. Is this how we move on? We slowly forget them? It seemed somehow the most horrible thing she could have done and yet she realized she didn't do it, it simple happened. At most she let it happen. Suddenly she understand why Aunt Māra wore black and kept to herself. If you didn't make an effort to hold the dead in your mind you risked them slipping away from you. 
+
+She found herself wondering what Francis would have thought of Anne. He would have loved Calico Jack, he was hard not to love. He was loud, often drunk, a bit of a fool, but completely lovable. Henri followed him around like he was the greatest thing on the island, which she knew irritated her father, though he never said anything or made any effort to stop him. Jack was harmlessly hilarious, though from stories Anne told he was fierce and quite capable when he needed to be. He did after all command a ship of about sixty men. And two women. He had captured a Spanish Galleon the previous year off the coast of Port Royal Jamaica, which Birdie knew had taken skill, perhaps some luck, but skill and daring certainly. It was hard to imagine the man now sitting in the sand in his fancy coat, swigging rum from a jug and throwing shells as seagulls leading a ship full of men into battle with a ship twice, maybe three times the size of Revenge, with three decks of 24 pound canons sticking out the side of it. Birdie had never seen a galleon. None of them had, not even her father, though he'd at least seen the British equivalent. If the rumors were to be believed British warships would be here soon enough. Birdie shivered. She wondered what Ratham would do when the British came for him. Probably get drunk she decided.
+
+She watched as Anne walked away from the Revenge, over to where Ratham sat and flopped down beside him, taking a swig from the jug of rum. 
+
+"You know what would be fun."
+
+Henri's voice broke the silence and interrupted Birdie's train of thought. 
+
+"We should try to sneak up on Captain Jack and steal his rum."
+
+Birdie smiled. "Okay," she said.
+
+
+
+
+They recognize it as ratham or vain because they come on the sprng or neap tide, which is when you wnat to careen. The girls are excited to see anne bonnie. There's a chapter where Anne Bonnie tells the kids a pirate tale, either of her fighting off the british while ratham gets drunk or of the ghost ship off the azores.
+
+## The Tale Anne Bonnie Told
+
+The firelight lit the circle of dunes a rich orange glow like a dying sun still trying to light a world. Anne's teeth shone white in the orange light.
+
+We'd been in the duldrums for days, maybe weeks, it was hard to know, one brutaly hot day after another, no wind, no current, dead stillness. I remember Jack took off his jacket and tried flapping up and down at the sail to create a bit of wind, but of course it didn't work.And he just ended up tired. We were all hungry and thirsty all the time. Food was running low. We'd put a water ration in place the minute the wind died. Two dips a day. It was like sailing a merchant ship. (knowing laughter). We finally found enough of a current to pull us out and what do we see on the horizen but a sail. but it's impossible to know how far ahead she is, we might catch her in a matter of hours, it might be a week. There's still no wind, we're really just drifting, but with a bit of direction. Those sails though, they must be difting too. Revenge doesn't have a very tall mast so we often sight ships before they sight us.
+
+It's one of Revenge's best points put in Jack.
+
+Yes it is, Bonny smiled. So we figure there's not much to be done. Either we drift faster and catch it or it get the wind ahead of us and disappears. I hate drifting. Every sailor hates drifting. We float along for days with those sails on the horizen, never can see the ship. just the sails, the white against a world of blue, forever out of reach.
+ 
+Finally after three days the sails disappear and we know. Wind. Life comes back to the crew, men get out of hammocks again. Everyone feels lighter, the water ration doesn't even seem so bad anymore. Two hours later we heard that first snap, that delicious curling sound of canvas catching wind. And we move forward, we leap forward. It feels like Revenge has been shot out of a gun. We're laughing and crying, everyone is hugging. 
+
+The crew was smiling now at the memory.
+
+And then we see the sails again.
+
+Birdie noticed the smiles fade from the crew's faces. One man crossed himself the way the Spanish due. Anne continued.
+
+This is our luck, we're out of the doldrums and there's a prize in front of us. It doesn't get much better than that. We slowly run her down. She's not well sailed. Jack takes a point of intercept that's about half a day out. We figure we'll have her before nightfall. Now of course we can see her. And it seems strange but there's no one on the deck. We figure they just seen our sails and are hiding. Wouldn't be the first time. Though usually there's still someone at the helm. We can't be sure, but Jack says come her Anne. So I go up to the poop where's he's got the glass and have a look. It's a strange thing, the deck is well laden, there's stuff lashed everywhere, she looks smartly rigged, not very well trimmed for someone trying to outrun a pirate, but not everyone can sail.
+
+Laughter from the crew
+
+Still, you ever get a feeling? A chill down your back? Like something just isn't right and you don't know what it is? I had that feeling. I took the glass and went up in the rigging of the main mast. We used to have a barrel up there, so I went and stood in it for a while studying a ship. I can't put my finger on it but something is off.
+
+I told Jack when I came back down that I had a bad feeling. She glanced at Jack. He was breaking bits of a twig and throwing them in the fire. 
+
+I told him it didn't feel right to me. He asked me if I wanted to fall off. But that would be crazy, a heavily laden ship you're having no trouble overtaking? Who falls of that. I said no, take her. But I put the men to the guns, just to be safe. It's just before sundown when we finally get within shooting distance. Jack gets the horn and shouts out, tells them to turn into the wind, we're going to board, all the usual stuff. No one answers. No one is on deck. We they're terrified, hiding below deck. So we pull along side, grappling hooks go over, we turn her into the wind and board. The men are up the masts, lowering sails to slow us all down. Jack and I and tk walk around. There's no one. It's so eery quite it's unnerving. 
+
+I should say that by this time I am with Anne on the, something's not right here, feeling. But I was still hopeful of rum somewhere on that cursed ship.
+
+We get to the tk door to below and all kind of look at each other. Everyone's least favorite moment of boarding, stepping down in to that darkness where you don't know if it's going to be swords or guns coming at you. Jack goes first, heel slides the ladder sword in one hand pistol in the other. It was quite impressive. She smiled at Ratham, he tipped his tri-cornered hat at her. 
+
+Alex and me don't hear a thing. I yell down, Jack, what's going on. Nothing comes the answer. Alex and I go down, slow, guns drawn. There's Jack wandering around in the darkness, poking around the crew's hammocks. There's no one. And still that strange silence. You know how the presence of people makes a noise, a very quite, subtle noise you don't really notice... until it's gone? That noise was gone.
+
+We struck a torch and searched the deck, There's no one. What's more there's no sign of anyone that looks fresh. There's no half eaten food. No mess dishes, nothing. It's like there hasn't been a person on that ship in weeks. I'm starting to get a little spooked. I looked over and Alexander's white as a fog. He says he's going to go up and check on the rigging.
+
+Jack and I stand there for a bit in the darkness, looking at each other trying to figure out what's going on. The firelight from the torch is making strange shadows on the hull. Jack just stares at me. Where is everyone Anne? 
+
+You don't think they'd hide in the bilge do you? Jack made that face the captain makes when he doesn't like your idea. Anne grinned. Jack waved his hand in mock theatrical bow. Birdie saw the crew laughing in the firelight.
+
+We hunted around, but there wasn't much to hunt through. Some silk, mostly some barrels of alcohol. Not the kind you drink. A couple were empty. There was some salt pork that was still good. Jack found the bilge hatch and we open it and thrust the torch down in it, but there was nothing but stinky water. We went back up topside. It was pretty obvious, there was no one on the ship. It was just sailing. 
+
+We sat down on the deck rails and talked it over.  
+
+Jack threw the last of the stick in the fire. "I think they abandoned ship."
+
+Several of the crew grunted. "Who would abandon ship?" asked Anne.
+
+"In a storm? It's crossed my mind." Jack laughed, but seemed serious as well, and very drunk. 
+"I mean, you really want to abandon ship right, but you don't of course because that would be stupid. Well suppose you gave into that? Suppose you really did it?"
+
+"There were seven hammocks in that hold, no way you're convincing at least seven sailors to abandon ship. No way." Birdie was nodding along with Anne. She knew she would never do it. Better to die at the helm her father always said. 
+
+"What were they carrying again?" Her father looked lost in thought. The way he looked when we a was a hundred leagues away in his mind. 
+
+"It was grain alcohol mostly. Couple of empty kegs. Don't know how anyone drinks that stuff."
+
+"Hmm. Did you seize it?"
+
+Anne looked aghast. "No. We got out there quick as we could. I'm not taking a ghost prize."
+
+"You left a perfectly good ship sailing itself across the Atlantic?" Her father looked incredulous. He seemed uninstested in the spoky part of the story, which had already made Birdie wish her Aunt Māra were there so she could crawl in her lap.
+
+Anne and Jack glanced at each other. Birdie saw the crew stare away. She noticed her father pick up on it too. 
+
+He shrugged. "Shame," said her father, "it'd help kill the worms in your hull."
+
+---
+
+Anne and Jack and the crew spent two weeks on the beach. The crew helped her father frame out a new Delos. It still needed a mast, but they'd floated it and rowed it up the river. It was a slightly modified design her father believed would sail faster. Jack stood on shore watching Anne and her father trying to surf it in from its maiden voyage. "You know birdie, three years ago I started sailing in something not much bigger than that thing. I sailed into a Nassau two winters ago in a canoe. A canoe Birdie. It was a fine canoe. But look at that Birdie. He pointed down the beach at Revenge which was nearly upright, waiting for the tide to lift her enought to slide back out into deeper water, her hull sealed, her rigging the next thing to be worked on. 
+
+"That my girl, is a warship. I captured that vessel without firing a single shot. We simply rowed up. There was no wind that day, so we were rowing our canoe. We rowed up and they were so afraid of us they just gave up. I never thought I would see a day like this, when people like me, Anne, your father. When people like us would have our own ships." He took a large swig of rum from the small barrel in the sand.
+
+"Sure, I dreamed of things like that, and maybe I even secretly thought maybe... maybe one day I'd have my own ship, nothing this big, but maybe one day the sea would grant me a ship, maybe I did think that was possible." He wiped his lips. "But good lord, look at that thing! It's a warship. People like us rule the sea right now. We have warships. This was not supposed to happen Bridie."
+
+Her stared out at the sea in silence for a moment. "Somewhere, someone is very, very unhappy right now." He smiled. She smiled back at him. "Someone somewhere is plotting their revenge. And they will probably get it, but for now.... for now the seas is ours, Birdie."
+
+---
+
+Birdie went with Tambo and Kobayashi to work the rigging on Revenge. The ship was huge, so much larger than tk ship name as to make her home feel like a little toy. Revenge was a warship Jack kept saying, and Birdie thought he was just bragging until she got out there next to it in the rowboat and realized what he meant. It was big, a truly massive, hulking heavy looking piece of wood and sail. It had a presence you could not ignore. 
+
+She climbed up the rigging with Tambo behind her. They got to work tarring the standing rigging, some of which the men were still retying and splicing. The smell of pine and tar and salt water mixed in the offshore breeze with it's scent of salt marsh and river mouths and maybe, if she really focused, the hint of campfire smoke. But she didn't focus, she focused on holding onto the rigging because she was higher than she had ever been before and, unlike her sister, she did not much like heights. She kept one arm looped tightly around the hemp line as she painted the tar onto the row of line above it. 
+
+She was halfway down the mizzen mast rigging when she happened to stare out at sea at just the right moment so that she saw something white move. At first she thought it was a sea gull, or a skimmer dipping its beak down to snag some unseen fish, but then she realized it was not a bird, it was too far away, to indistinct to be a bird. It was a sail. Without really thinking about it, because it was what she always did when she spotted a sail, it was what any sailor would do if they saw a sail, she yelled "sail".
+
+She felt every eye on the ship glance up at her, find her line of site and follow it out to sea. Tambo was in the rigging across from hers and he slowly turned around to look. She watched as it dipped below the horizon before he had turned. She gulped, what if no one believed her? She glanced down. Jack was standing below her, one leg on the rail, glass to his eye. She watched as he brought the glass down and glanced up at her, "Flag? Bearing?"
+
+She shook her head. He nodded. He called out someone's name and handed them the glass. Birdie watched as the sailor climbed the main mast rigging up to the barrel and began scanning the horizon. He was at least 20 feet higher than her, surely he would see it. She watched as he silently shook his head to Jack. Tambo turned back around and looked at her. "You sure?" he asked quietly.
+
+She nodded. "Very."
+
+"We should hurry up then. Even if it doesn't show again, Captain Jack may want to chase it."
+
+"What about the rigging?"
+
+"We'll leave them the barrel of tar, they can finish it when they finish it."
+
+Birdie felt her heart sink. Anne would be leaving too. She glanced around the ship, looking for her, but she was below. The barrelman still had not seen anything. Birdie began to wonder if maybe it hadn't been a bird. She and Tambo went back to their work. The men below went back to their tasks, but there was a tension, Birdie could feel it. She glanced back at Edisto. She wondered what her father would say. She decided he would probably say nothing. This was always a good assumption when trying to decide what her father would say. But would he believe her? Of course he would. He always believed her.
+
+"Sail!"
+
+Birdie glanced up at Tambo. He nodded toward the deck and they both began decending, brushes int thei mouths, the bitter taste of piney tar on their tongues. Captain Jack was racing up the main mast rigging and Birdie couldn't help wondering why he hadn't done that when *she* had yelled sail. Was it her? Or would he have ignore the first sighting no matter who had made it? Was the sailor in the barrel some eagle-eyed trusted salt? Was that why Jack seemed to belive him and not her. She had a dozen reason why he didn't act on her sighting by the time she reached the deck, but the truth was she was hurt. She didn't like it when people doubted her. Especially a whole ship full of people she liked and wanted to like her.
+
+Anne came up from below deck dressed in leathers and carrying two tomahawks. Two more were strapped to her waist and to more to her back. Birdie had never seen her dressed for battle, she was startled by how different she looked. Her eyes seemed more alive, they had an intesity Birdie had never seen in them before. "Birdie," she cried. "I want to bring you with us," Birdie's heart skipped a beat, but before she could react Anne went on, "but your father would kill me." Jonathan, she turned to a sailor who was preparing to help hoist a sail. "Make read their pirogue. Birdie, you help Tambo get the bung in that barrel and then get overboard to the boat, we're raising anchor. 
+
+The ship came to life when Anne came on deck. Men scurried up the rigging and began dropping the sails. Others were already winching the great wooden wheel that raised the anchor. Birdie had spent most of her life at sea, been on many a ready ship, but she had never seen a crew come together in the kind of concerted effort that the crew of the Revenge displayed now. It was like an organism waking up. An octopus moving first a few suckers, then whole tentacles, then sudden it's off, gone in a flash. She and Tambo hammer in the bung and fairly slid down the side of the rigging into the priogue. Jontahn hoisted up the rigging behind them and Revenge began to move away from them before they had even settled into their seats. The offshore wind sent her surging out to sea and she and Tambo watched her go as they set about raising their own sail and tacking back toward shore.
+
+And just like that, Revenge was gone, back to what she did best, chasing sails over the horizon.
+
+---
+
+Tambo's people have been sailing these waters longer than ours probably. Her father nodded at Tambo, but he shook his head.
+
+"I do not think so." 
+
+Birdie glanced back and forth between the two them. Her father raised his eyebrow. 
+
+"The Egyptians perhaps. There are stories I have heard from the northern tribes about trading for copper that came from over the seas. But my people were coastal cruisers. Why cross oceans when everything you need is right here?" Tambo stretched his arm toward the shore. "If you want to have food, you need to be by the shore. Maybe you sail out of sight sometimes, you follow the currents and migrations of the fish, but you do not need to go too far. Where I come from there is plenty of food to be had without even setting foot in a boat. You grow rice on the shores. We have yarrow and tk on the higher ground, and you cast a net in the shallows for fish. We have palms and a tree that is not here. It is very strong. Like the teak we traded in Siam. We have these trees for building shelter. Everything is just there, we use it. It is only crazy people who would leave this." He smiled and gestured at her father.
+
+Her father grunted. "I didn't leave anything. I was driven out."
+
+"So you say."
+
+"Our people have been hunted down and driven out for centuries. The lowlanders do not like us."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Yes, why?"
+
+Her father shrugged. "I don't know. I think on this all the time. I think perhaps it is because they cannot stand the idea that not everyone is as miserable as they are."
+
+Tambo laughed. "You may be on to something there. These people came to our shores too and seemed unable to leave us alone. And look what they do to the people on these shores. Some people Birdie, I don't know, they won't leave you alone. It is a great mystery."
+
+"How did they drive us out papa?"
+
+Her father sighed. "Drive might be the wrong word."
+
+Tambo burst out laughing. "Yes, I think it would be. I have no love of the British or any of the rest of the people you call lowlanders, but I know you well enough to know that no one could drive you out of anywhere. You'd die in a hole before you'd be driven anywhere."
+
+Birdie expected her father to join in Tambo's laughters, but he did not. He ignored him completely. "We left Birdie because I was tired of the place we were. I wanted to go somewhere no one knew my name, somewhere I didn't have to do anything so I could chose what I wanted to do. So I could be free of the obligations that places lay upon you."
+
+Kobayashi was nodding. "I too left to be free. It is a hard thing for some. For me it was easy because when I am here, I can breath, I am free, no one looks for anything from me. I an able to be who I am. Your father can be who he is," Kobayashi's eyes twinkled, "he can wear his loin clothes and do his dances by the seashore."
+
+Now her father laughed. I will never live down the loin clothes will I? Everyone shook their heads. "That's fine. That's what I wanted a place of possibility. A place individuals can do as they wish, no matter how eccentric that might be, so long as it doesn't harm anyone else or try to force anyone else to pay their bills. You wouldn't think that would be so hard to find really, but it is, by god it is. I've been nearly around the world and this coast here, this is close as I have come."
+
+"That seems silly. Why would anyone care what you did? That would just make them stupid."
+
+Tambo raised an eyebrow at her. "Strong talk in this one tk."
+
+Her father smiled. "Yes, they are strong. They will have to be. Stronger than us I fear. I fear they will be living through much more than you and I have had to deal with this time."
+
+Tambo puffed on his pipe and said nothing. 
+
+Kobayashi leaned back against a stack of driftwood and packed his pipe. "This country is wild, it will not be tamed."
+
+"I hope you are right Ko, but I worry that line of thinking will lead to trouble. People who believe they can do no harm are the most dangerous people of all."
+
+Kobayashi grunted. "True." 
+
+Aunt Māra leaned forward and stirred the fire until a log caught and flame flickered orange light on all their faces. Lulu and Henri were asleep, their heads in Aunt Māra's lap. Birdie yawned. Her father looked over at her. "You got us all serious Birdie, should I pull out the fiddle, lighten up the night?"
+
+She surprised herself by saying no, that she was tired. She gathered up her quilts and walked up the rise of the dune, away from the fire and lay down in the sand, spread layers of quilt over her until she could feel a cacoon of warm begin to form around her. She laid her head back and looked up. The dusty spray of the milky way spread across the sky. Orion the hunter stood tall and strong, his bow ever at the ready. He must be with us she thought, he must be Alban. Maybe he too is looking for a place to be who he is, a place he can hunt and run free. As her eyelids dropped the stars seemed to gather up, and pull together, to rain down around her and keep her safe and warm there beside their brother the sea. Where she was free.
+
+
+---
+
+Her father was standing on top of the dune looking out at the sunrise when he spun around fast and yelled back toward camp, "Someone bring me the glass."
+
+Lulu dashed into a hut and grabbed the glass out of her father's sea chest, which lay opposite the door. She turned around and almost barreled right through Kobayashi, who laughed. "What is this big panic?" 
+
+"Father wants the glass." She darted out the door with the glass clutched tight in her hand and looped up the dine to where her father, Birdie and Henri were standing. They were all shielding their eyes, watching the thin line of horizon where two ships were sailing, nearly directly toward them. Her father held out his hand without ever looking down. Lulu handed the glass to him. 
+
+"Revenge. And her prize I imagine." His voice trailed off to a whisper. "Why are they coming here though?" 
+
+Lulu knew he was talking to himself, but she enjoyed answering his inner monologues when he spoke them out loud. Who talks aloud and doesn't expect other's to answer. "Maybe her prize needs to careen."
+
+Her father took the glass from his eye and stared down at her. He cocked his head to the side as if considering her, but she knew he was really considering some silent thought in his head. "That could be Lu. That could be."
+
+He turned around and walked back toward camp. "Kobayashi! Tambo! We may need meat. I am going to sail the Pirogue out to them and see what's afoot. I'll have them fire a cannon if they're coming ashore." Lulu watched from dune as he headed down the trail toward the marsh to collect the Pirogue. She considered running after him, but she knew what he'd say *it's too dangerous*. It was always too dangerous. She grumbled to herself as she walked back toward camp to see Tambo and Kobayashi packing their rifles. "You should take Henri." They glanced at her, then at each other. Tambo shrugged. Kobayashi looked at her, go get him. 
+
+Lulu bolted back up the dune. Henri was already on the far side, walking the shore with Birdie. She yelled. They turned. But she knew they could not hear her. She gestured for them to come, and then she began running toward them. They met in the middle and Lulu had to bend over, panting hard before she could get it out even in gasps. "Henry... hunt... Tambo... Kobayashi..." birdie put is together before Henri, and shouted. "Tambo and Kobayashi said henry can go hunting?"
+
+Lulu nodded and sat down in the sand. Henri did not ask for details. he was off and running the miute Birdie had opened her mouth. The girls sat in the sand, catching their breath. Birdie stood up. "Look, papa." 
+
+There was the Pirogue, barreling out of the river mouth, sail smartly trimmed. They could see their father's back as the boat road the offshore breeze through the surf at the mouth of the river, where the currents were slippery and strange and Lulu hated the way the boat moved, it moved unnaturally. Unlike a boat ever moved anywhere else. It was the only thing she hated about sailing, crossing the mouth of a good size river. 
+
+Her father slide right through it seemingly without noticing it. Soon after he was force to tack and the sail swung over blocking him from view, though she was sure he could see them on the sbore. The Pirogue was a sneaky little boat. Or at least Delos had been. She assumed the new Delos was as well, she had yet to be in it.
+
+She felt a wave of panic pass through her chest at the thought of Delos. She and Birdie had not spoken of it since the days after the storm when they were still looking for it. She missed the boys. She missed Aunt Māra. Aunt Māra might still be on the island, but the part of her that Lulu loved to be around was gone. She was like a ghost wandering the island, never really there, never really anywhere. 
+
+They watched as the Pirogue and the man of war closed the gap between them. The merchant hung back. If she was in need of tar, no one seemed in a hurry to bring her in. Lulu shivered in the wind. She and Birdie took turns throwing shells at seagull feather sticking up in the sand, trying to see who could get the closest, but not hit it. Birdie was winning.
+
+They lost interest in the game as the two boat drew together. "I wish we had a glass," said Birdie. 
+
+"I wish we were in the boat with Papa," said Lulu. Though she too wished they at least had a glass. Technically Tambo had a glass and he probably would have let them use it if they'd asked, but she had not thought of it. Her only thought was to get Henri headed back to camp so he could go hunting. Without Charles around Henry had no one to hunt with. He never spoke of Charles, or of hunting, but she knew he missed them both. She saw it in the way he sat quiet sometimes, staring at nothing. It was little bit like what Aunt Māra did, but it didn't last as long. Still it lasted long enough that Lulu had noticed it, and as soon as she noticed it she'd made a point to look for ways she could help him. This was the first thing she'd been able to do. It made her feel good to think of him off hunting, though she did wish that she'd thought to ask Tambo for his glass because it was impossible to tell what was happening offshore. Her father's boat was in irons, probably being towed by a line to Revenge, since she had not slacked sail, though she did appear to be coming about. The Pirogue's sail flutter like a flag alongside. 
+
+And then they watched as the Pirogue heeled slightly, caught the wind and pulled away from Revenge. The big ship began to turn away, abreast the wind, Lulu saw the anchor fall from the bow and guessed Revenge was going to spend the night just off the mouth of the river.
+
+Her father came back up the river, the tide and wind in his favor such that he sailed all the way up into the marsh without even tacking. Lulu watched him from the dune, and once she realized he might be able to do it, she darted off through camp and down to the edge of the marsh to watch. She was standing out on the huge fallen oak that served at their dock when he glided up and tossed the stern line to her. 
+
+"You never tacked."
+
+He smiled. "I got lucky."
+
+"Birdie and I have been trying to do that for two years now."
+
+"I know kiddo. I almost tacked just so you could be the first ones to do it. But then," he laughed, "then I couldn't believe *I* might be able to do it, so I had to do it." He looked down sheepishly.
+
+"It's okay papa, I;m glad you did it."
+
+"Thanks Lu. I'm glad I have to you to back me up, because if I were listening to me, I would not believe me. Ratham sure isn't going to believe me."
+
+"Is he coming?"
+
+Her father frowned. "Yes, he's coming with Anne. Only for the night. A party of hunters is going to try tk south island for boar and deer. They're provisioning to go back down to Nassau. 
+
+"Is that his prize ship anchoring out there?"
+
+Her father frowned again. "Yes. We'll talk about that tonight. Where's your brother."
+
+"Hunting with Tambo and Kobe." Her father raised his eyebrows. "It was my idea," said Lulu.
+
+"That was kind of you Lulu. I should have taken him yesterday when I went upriver. I know he misses having Owen around." Her father glanced inland.
+
+"Do you think they're dead Papa?" 
+
+Her father stopped coiling the line for a moment and looked at her, then looked away. He sighed. "I don't know Lu. It's possible. But I don't know, it seems like something would have washed ashore... but I don't know. Maybe they made it inland and something happened. I tell you what though, I don't *feel* like they're dead. But I'm not sure I was close enough to any of them to feel that, so I can't be sure. I still look for them everywhere I go. We'll find out more when we go to Charlestown."
+
+"We're going to Charlestown?" Lulu nearly fell off the tree into the fluf mud she jumped up and down so much.
+
+"We are. Time to provision."
+
+"Wait, are we leaving? But I thought we were staying through Christmas?"
+
+"We may. But we need a few things either way. Might as well get them. Ratham is paying us a share to this prize. You sister sighted it, he believes she deserves it."
+
+"What? She gets a share? Like a real buccaneer?"
+
+"She does if she wants. But she needs to understand everything that means before she takes her share."
+
+"What do you mean, what does it mean?"
+
+"It means she's a buccaneer, her name goes in the ship's log. That means anyone who ever gets hold of that ships log knows she's a buccaneer."
+
+"Is that bad?"
+
+Her father sighed. "It really depends who gets hold of the ships log, but I think it's not good either way, and I'd rather she did not do it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+He sighed again and climbed out of the Pirogue onto the log next to her. "I don't know what's right Lulu. On one hand, there's that man out there in that other ship, he's losing everything on his ship. Captain Ratham will take it, and the ship, and sell it for himself. That man gets nothing. Jack is stealing everything from him. On the other hand, most of those things were made by slaves or stolen from the people who lived on this land before the Spanish came. People I think of as Alban, though they may speak a different language. So that man who just had everything stolen, stole what he had in the first place. Is it okay to steal from the person who stole? Or is it just more stealing? I don't know. I can argue it both ways and in the end I'd rather just sail and fish and hunt and not worry about anything else. But we need new sails, we need tk, we need tk. We could make those things, but it would take us a long time, and apparently, there is a man coming who wants us off his island.
+
+"Wait, what? His island? How is this island is?"
+
+"It was granted to him by the King of England."
+
+"How can the King of England give our island to someone?"
+
+"Because the King of England has more soldiers with weapons than we do."
+
+---
+
+It was somber around the fire that night, Anne sat beside Jack, leaning into him from time to time. Lulu watched her father across the fire. She always suspected her father and Anne might be in love, but now she wondered if she was mistaken and it was Jack and Anne that were in love. TK fix this: She wished she understood this thing love that grownups talked about. What was it, what did it mean?
+
+"This McPhail." It was Tambo who broke the silence. "Does he plan to settle here? On the island I mean? Like those plantations down south of here on that gooseneck island in Georgia?"
+
+"Oh, I doubt that." Ratham chuckled. "He sounds more like the type to call Charlestown home, send a man out here every now and then to make sure riffraff like us aren't overrunning the place." 
+
+"What do you plan to do tkfather? I here Virginia is very nice these days. CErtainly a good bit of water to disappear into. Excellent fishing. Could be just your kind of place to winter. Bit cold though I suppose."
+
+"Not enough jack pine, too far north for them, there'd be no point to wintering there, we couldn't make tar. Same reason we sail right past Okracok"
+