Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) Read online

  Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space)

  Edited by

  Catherine Lundoff

  Contents

  Introduction

  Treasured Island

  The Seafarer

  Saints and Bodhisattvas

  The Doomed Amulet of Erum Vahl

  Serpent’s Tail

  Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

  Andromache’s War

  Rib of Man

  A Smuggler’s Pact

  The Dead Pirate’s Cave

  Rosa, the Dimension Pirate

  A Crooked Road Home

  After the Deluge

  Tenari

  Search for the Heart of the Ocean

  About the Contributors

  About the Editor

  About QUEEN OF SWORDS PRESS

  Copyright © 2018 by Catherine Lundoff

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real people or current events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space)

  Queen of Swords Press LLC, Minneapolis, MN

  www.queenofswordpress.com

  Cover Design By: S.L. Johnson Images

  “Treasured Island” copyright 2018 Ginn Hale; “The Seafarer” copyright 2018 Ashley Deng; “Saints and Bodhisattvas” copyright 2018 Joyce Chng; “The Doomed Amulet of Erum Vahl” copyright 2018 Ed Grabianowski; “Serpent’s Tail” copyright 2018 Mharie West; “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” copyright 2018 Megan Arkenberg (original publication in Shelter of Daylight #4); “Andromache’s War” copyright 2018 Elliott Dunstan; “Rib of Man” copyright 2018 Geonn Cannon; “A Smuggler’s Pact” copyright 2018 Su Haddrell; “The Dead Pirate’s Cave” copyright 2018 Soumya Sundar Mukherjee; “Rosa, the Dimension Pirate” copyright 2018 Matisse Mozer; “A Crooked Road Home” copyright 2018 Caroline Sciriha; “After the Deluge” copyright 2018 Peter Golubock; “Tenari” copyright 2018 Michael Merriam (original publication in Ray Gun Revival #44); “Search for the Heart of the Ocean” copyright 2018 A.J. Fitzwater.

  ISBN: 978-1-73258-331-3

  Dedicated to all our favorite pirates.

  Introduction

  Why pirates? Why not pirates, I say! I am a lifelong fan of fictional and (some) historical pirates. Pirates have always represented freedom and adventure and swordplay and many of the things that I find irresistible. I was 9 when I first read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, 11 when I read Raphael Sabatini's Captain Blood and 13 when I saw Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara in The Black Swan.

  By then, I was hooked. I watched or read almost anything featuring pirates that came my way. I enjoyed Geena Davis and Frank Langella in Cutthroat Island, tolerated Hook, chortled my way through The Ice Pirates. I have even written the occasional pirate story myself, including two featuring Jacquotte Delahaye (sometimes known as “Back from the Dead Red”) and one about Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Fictional pirates are, let’s face it, fun.

  Of course, pirates were (and are) also bloodthirsty, cruel and terrible and those aspects of their stories cannot be ignored. Contemporary pirates, real or fictional, are much more complicated figures than the pirates of my youth: the romantic, wronged noblemen driven to sea by injustice, kidnapped youths of stout heart and true and all the other imaginary heroes that sailed under the Jolly Roger.

  I wanted to know more about those complicated pirates. Where were the queer women, the gay and bi men who I knew had to be there, the pirates who weren’t white dudes who looked like Errol Flynn? I dove into nonfiction. I researched the Barbary Pirates and Grace O'Malley, and rejoiced in my initial discovery of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. I read about Ching Shih and her fleet of 300 junks. I read tomes about pirate cultures and history.

  But I never completely abandoned the pirates of fiction. Modern pirates, at least the fictional ones, are no longer all male or all white or all heterosexual. Television shows like Crossbones and Black Sails and movies like the seeming endless Pirates of the Caribbean franchise depict people drawn to piracy from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds, and even sexual orientations. There are comics like Raven: The Pirate Princess, I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Space Pirates from Outer Space and Polly and the Pirates that are filled with the adventures of a diverse range of female pirates. Authors from Tim Powers to Tanith Lee, Jane Yolen and Alex Acks have portrayed even more kinds of pirates, from the historical to the fantastical and beyond. At last, fictional piracy is beginning to reflect the rainbow skull and crossbones that a number of historians have suggested that it was.

  I wanted an anthology with some of that diversity and range, so when I put out a call for pirate stories, I encouraged international contributors and made it an “open to all orientations and sexualities” call. I was very pleased to get nearly 100 submissions, from a total of fourteen countries. I read about lesbian pirates, gay pirates, bi pirates, transgender pirates and heterosexual pirates, as well as a number of tales in which sexual orientation wasn’t specified. I got stories set in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and outer space, amongst other locations. Stories were set in ancient Greece, in Viking-era Scandinavia and in the Golden Age of Piracy, along with many other time periods. It made for some terrific reading.

  This volume represents some of my favorites amongst those stories, which I hope will also become some of yours. Author Elliott Dunstan writes about the aftermath of Trojan War and how one of Homer’s neglected characters turns pirate in “Andromache’s War.” A.J. Fitzwater gives us a new installment of their dapper lesbian capybara pirate saga in “The Search for the Heart of the Ocean.” Ginn Hale maroons her gay pirate hero on a fantastical island to find himself again in “Treasured Island” while Matisse Mozer sends his heroine across dimensions into new dangers in “Rosa, the Dimension Pirate.” Ed Grabianowski takes us to a world of fantastical horror and introduces us to Jagga, a pirate captain turned demon hunter, in “The Doomed Amulet of Erum Vahl” while Ashley Deng sails us into the Barbary Coast from an another world in “The Seafarer.”

  And that’s not all. Author Joyce Chng weaves a tale of newfound love and revenge in the South China Sea in “Saints and Bodhisattvas” while Michael Merriam takes us to the stars and a reluctant pirate crew forced to fight a terrible foe in “Tenari.” Mharie West’s family of bisexual poly Viking pirates must combat intolerance and persecution in “Serpent’s Tail.” Geonn Cannon’s pirate captain carves out a new life for herself and her crew during the Golden Age of Piracy in “Rib of Man.”

  A wounded pirate risks capture and destruction by her greatest enemy to save her shipmates in Megan Arkenberg’s “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” Soumya Sundar Mukherjee’s teenage heroine must battle pirates, mechabeasts and even a robot to save her father and herself in “The Dead Pirate’s Cave,” while Peter Golubock’s pirate captain sails the former streets of post-climate apocalypse New York City in “After the Deluge.” Su Haddrell gives us a woman pirate who needs allies and finds an unlikely one in the swamps of Louisiana in “A Smuggler’s Pact” while Caroline Sciriha’s pirate hero seeks redemption in “A Crooked Road Home.”

  Welcome aboard the Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space)! Keep your blade sharp and step lively. We sail with the tide.

  Treasured Island

  By Ginn Hale


  * * *

  How I came to be marooned on the back of a wandering island is a matter of some debate. Bosun Lisboa would no doubt maintain that I received a rightful punishment for attempting to incite a mutiny against our brawny, blond Captain Alvim. But I would argue that I simply surveyed the ragged, bare-foot crew as to how many members might enjoy a respite from murdering sailors and plundering great stores of half-rotten bananas. I’d wondered if anyone else desired to return to familiar home-shores. Perhaps take up fishing as a source of income.

  After the months we’d spent chasing fruitless rumors of Captain Barradas’ hidden treasure and slaughtering entire crews of little merchant ships for their pitiful stores, fishing didn’t sound so bad to many.

  Before you laugh, allow me to point out that a good number of us came from fishing families before we were pressed by naval recruiters or captured by privateers. All I know of navigation and sailing, I learned while hunting the vast silver shoals of sun skates and dragon eels that swam in the shadows of Reinazona’s wandering islands. It wasn’t the easiest of work nor the safest of trades but then, neither is piracy.

  And truth be told, I’d felt far cleaner back when I’d reeked of fish guts and eel shit.

  So, after another evening swabbing blood off the deck and listening to the screams coming from the sad little captive in our captain’s cabin, I felt a change of occupation might be worth pondering. In hindsight, I acknowledge that I shouldn’t have pondered so very loudly. But I’d been under the influence of rum and remorse. And a little more rum, after that. I may have referred to Lisboa as toadspunk; I may have called the captain a turd in a velvet coat—that’s beside the point.

  The trouble was that Captain Alvim had only just done-in our previous captain—Easal, was his name, I think—who’d only been leading us a week since he himself had done away with the captain before him. There had been a few before that as well. Sometimes, even I forgot that it had been Captain Barradas—him of the maps and riddles and the lost treasure—who’d had me dragged from my little fishing boat to serve as their Almagua navigator. “In the service of our Queen,” he’d assured me.

  But the wandering islands he expected me to find a way through were strangers to me, nothing like those I’d grown up among. And of course it hadn’t taken long before Barradas’ patriotic privateering gave way to preying upon any ships he encountered amidst the ever-changing shores of the Laquerla Ocean.

  All in all, it made for an uneasy history. And there was me, in the middle of it, sick and drunk. I still argue that I didn’t deserve to stand beneath the mizzen-mast, accused of inciting mutiny. Though I readily admit to having upped my stew on the captain’s shoes.

  Of course, the crew couldn’t just murder me and toss my body in the ocean. Deadly bad luck killing an Almagua at sea, even one as defiled with bloodshed as me. Too much of a chance that my fishy spirit would take to the waves howling murder and raise up those black whales on my granny’s side of the family. I swore to them that I’d do it too.

  “They will rise up and crack this ship in half!” I punched my right hand in the air, displaying the blue tattoo of my clan. “And they will drag each and every man of you down to a deep, cold hell, where my ghost will play mermaid melodies on your bones!”

  Bosun Lisboa looked alarmed, though he tried to hide his fear by bowing his face down into his thick black beard. Captain Alvim still held his pistol to my head but I felt his hand tremble.

  “It’s a doomed captain who curses himself and his whole crew,” I pitched my voice not to reach him, but the fearful men surrounding us. If I didn’t spark a mutiny in my life I certainly meant to with my death. It was the very least I could do for the man threatening to blow my brains out.

  Alvim lowered his pistol.

  An hour later the captain and bosun decided to let me set course for the nearest wandering island. Then they’d throw me overboard so that I might swim to the shore. If I got tangled in the island’s stinging tentacles, well that would be between me and the island, none of their doing. That was Bosun Lisboa’s reasoning and many agreed with him.

  The evening I was to be tossed over, the red-haired eunuchs, Akwa and Rui, brought me a canteen of fresh water and a strip of dried squid. They’d been the only survivors of an Imperial Indaji pleasure ship that we sank three years ago and neither wanted to make an enemy of a ghost. They requested that I tell my grandmother of their kindness, and I agreed.

  After that, Dalir, who was long limbed, dark haired and only a few years older than me, crouched beside me. A decade past, he’d fled gambling debts in the opal kingdom of Muqadas only to lose his liberty at a card table in some pirate nest on the Laquerla coast. Now he traded me his prized knife in exchange for a kiss and my lucky dice. I realized that there were tears in his eyes and I supposed those nights sharing hammocks and hand jobs must have meant more to him than he ever said. I gave him my last three gold coins telling him that they would only weigh me down in the waves.

  Then I went into the dark water and swam beneath a full yellow moon.

  Back home, I’d thought our flotillas of islands, drifting across straights and forming ephemeral archipelagos, were immense. But the wandering islands of the Laquerla Ocean made them seem small as man-o-war jellyfish. Tendrils, thick as tree trunks, and scarlet fan-like gills hung around me and stretched all the way into the lightless depths. What creatures they hunted down there, I couldn’t say. I simply thanked the Great Brine that none of the silver stinging tendrils cared for so small a catch as me.

  Though one eel did snap at the buckle of my shoe before retreating back to its lair.

  Even in the dark I could see brilliant corals ringing the wandering island like a reef. I nicked my hands and shins, making my way to the sandy beach. I would have laid down there and slept, I was so tired, but the big spider crabs clambering ashore all around me inspired me with enough worry to keep me from flopping there like easy carrion beneath their fist-sized claws. I staggered to a stand of fig trees and managed to climb up to a branch, which I lashed myself to with my belt, and dozed.

  I woke as the sun rose, and for the first time I took in whole forests of tree ferns, figs and palms spreading for miles before me. Above them, morning mist condensed and cascaded down jewel blue sail-fins like waterfalls tumbling down sapphire cliffs. Generation after generation of seabird and bat colonies had added guano to the fertile soil that blanketed the wandering island’s thick shell. When I descended from the tree I realized that the island’s back had long ago become as earthy as land. The pulse of its heart was only a soft hum beneath my feet.

  Still, I took a few hours that first day to dig deep and climb down to where I could lay my bruised hands on the turquoise blue scales of the island’s warm shell and give it my thanks and seven drops of my blood. “I mean you no harm, Traveler. For all I eat or drink, I’ll give back my share of piss and droppings. For your shelter, I will praise you to the sun and the moon and I will stand for you against the flames. And if I die here, my bones and body are yours too, but my soul, that’s mine alone.” I started to rise but then knelt again and added. “If my granny is down where you can reach her, tell her I say hello and that I haven’t forgotten home, no matter how far I’ve roamed.”

  With that done, I set about exploring to find shelter, fresh water and what I could eat. Along the way I also began discovering what all wanted to eat me.

  The biggest of the spider crabs hunted inland a good distance, but only at night, and as vicious as those claws of theirs looked, they were nothing compared with the massive beaks of the giant gold-plumed birds that stalked the forest in pairs. They stood far too tall and heavy for flight but weren’t anything like the paunchy green auks that I’d known back home. I nearly shit myself when two of the sleek, gold giants tore through the tree ferns, charging me. I dived to the left, drawing my knife, but the birds couldn’t have cared less. They bounded past, stretched up to their full height and ripped a python from a tree branch. Bet
ween then they tore the writhing creature in half then they gulped it down as easy as a pair of robins dispatching worms. They took crabs and turtles as well. That evening, I saw the pair feed the crabs to nestlings the size of ponies.

  After that, I listened closely for the flutter of feathers and the excited clicks the giant gold birds issued as they hunted. When I stole eggs, they came from the nests of much smaller terns and gulls. I slept uneasily and took pains to avoid the hills of palm fronds that formed the gold birds’ nests. They seemed to feed happily enough without my scrawny meat.

  Biting flies, on the other hand, delighted in my pitiful taste. Over the course of passing months, I think they must have drained enough blood to fill another of me entirely. I made a joke to myself that a great swarm of them might steal my moldering jacket and fly across the ocean to impersonate me on the step of my poor mother’s door.

  “Pascoal!” I imagined her calling out to the swarm of flies as she hefted her swatter. “I hardly recognized you!”

  I laughed to myself and then felt a wave of sorrow as I recalled my mother’s fragrant hearth and my nimble sisters stitching nets and teasing me for throwing flowers at the shipwright’s handsome son. I remembered the crunch of our shell path beneath my feet as I used to pelt from the house to greet my uncle on his way home from the market. The memories were like a treasury of beautiful glass that cut too deeply.

  After that, I tried not to think of my family again.

  I found respite from the insects and the gold birds by climbing high up to the oldest expanse of the island where cold winds drove against the immense blue sail-fins. Hills of moss mounded up over the remains of ancient fallen trees. Bats sang for the love of date palms all night long. I sang back to them and to the moon as it winked in and out of the clouds. I allowed a love-struck beetle to steal the remaining buckle of my shoe and I named the tiny orange frogs I discovered living in the freshwater hollows where I drank. Vaz became my favorite because he fearlessly clambered up to my shoulder and trilled hilarious songs of courtship, while I gathered eggs and dates.