Page 34 of Escaping Pirates
“I call him Ernie and he hates it.” Harlan rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. “I’ll never tease him again once I’m out of here.”
“Go to sleep,” I told him. “You need to recover so we can make our escape soon, remember? They have to make port any day now. We’ve been out at sea for ages and supplies are getting low. Once we are closer to shore, we can let out those bottles.”
“I’ve never been so glad to hear that the food stock is running out,” Harlan said with another jaw-cracking yawn. “I’ll get you out of here, I promise.” Just before he fell asleep, he passed the cork through the bars back to me and squeezed my hand. “I promise,” he repeated.
I smiled and rolled the cork around in my hand. As long as I had Harlan on my side, I could face anything.
CHAPTER 13
“Read it again,” Blossom demanded a few days after Harlan had fully recovered. She and Sugar had called for Harlan to read to them and had me scrub the floor while he was there. I was grateful; at least when Harlan was around, Sugar and Blossom were on their best behavior, and it had been so long since I’d been tied up that my wrists had nearly healed.
Harlan repeated the passage he’d read, an excerpt fromThe Ballads of Yore, one of the most famous collections of songs and poetry in Haven Harbor. It was one that my parents had read to me many times before. I scrubbed the floor as quietly as possible, lost in Harlan’s deep voice that read aloud,
One fateful eve, when the sky turned red,
Pirates’ ships approached, and fear they spread.
With sails of black and hearts of stone,
They sought to pillage and claim as their own.
But the villagers brave, they would not yield.
They stood as one, with sword and shield,
With torches blazing and drums that roared,
They vowed to protect what they adored.
“That is dreadful poetry,” sniffed Blossom. “The lines about yield and shield make a terrible doublet.”
Harlan chewed on the inside of his lip. “Do you know what a doublet is?”
“Two rhyming lines,” she said, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Anyone with any semblance of intelligence knows that. But I know I could write something much more eloquent than that rubbish.”
“Yes, you could,” agreed Sugar, licking her fingers and smacking her lips with relish before snapping her damp fingers at me. “Scurvyella! Fetch me more butterscotch candies.”
I abandoned my scrub brush and scrambled to my feet, hurrying to collect more of the pale-brown sweets. As I set them on the table in front of Sugar, I noticed that a few crumbs had fallen onto the ruffled shirt peeking through Harlan’s jacket. Sugar and Blossom had insisted that Harlan be allowed to bathe and have clean clothes each time he called on them, which was the only thing I truly envied about his contract. Once I got back home, I would take a dozen baths a day.
“Pardon my reach,” I murmured as I brushed them off with a napkin. “You seem to have something on yourcouplet.”
I felt Harlan’s chest quiver in a silent laugh beneath my fingers, and I took the opportunity to tuck the cork into his coat pocket. Each time we passed it back and forth, it felt even more deliciously secretive and forbidden.
“Get your hands off him!” Sugar squeaked, flapping her hands at me like she was shooing away some pesky horsefly. “Go back to scrubbing the floor.”
“As I was saying,” Blossom continued in a dignified tone as I returned to my work, “if I ever meet the dunce who wrote this pitiful excuse for literature, I would give him a piece of my mind.”
“Assuming the author hadn’t died four hundred years ago, I’m sure you would,” Harlan said idly, flipping to the next page. “Are you a prolific poet like Bard Elliot was?”
“Oh no,” Blossom said with a smug smile. “But I don’t need to publish any works to know that my literary contributions to the world would vastly transcribe anything else.” She let out a breathy laugh.
“Undoubtedly so.”
“Authors should know when their work falls short.”
“Thank goodness they have you to point out all their flaws, then.” Harlan inclined his head.
“Yes. The public should be aware of such errors.”
