It's time, me hearties😆!!!! Fans of pirates, character-driven stories, action, and found family, gather 'round!
Amazon.com: Mind of a Pirate eBook : Briar, Sarnai : Kindle Store
Blurb below the cut!
Pirates and psychology make for an unconventional mix, but in the year 1700, it was not also uncommon. There was a pirate crew led by Captain Snake. She was fearsome—ruthless (and saved countless victims from abductions, slavery, and the cruel treatment often given to those with psychological disorders).
Known as Lesia by her crewmates, she leads her team on missions to protect those who think the world has turned its back on them. She knows how they feel. Her entire crew does. They all have at least one mental illness—one reason they were treated like outcasts until Lesia gave them a home on board her ship, the Clinic. Here, they can participate in treatments, have stability in their lives, and learn to love themselves. Yet, shadows of the past can never truly be outrun.
When darkness looms over the Clinic, Lesia and her crew must deal with a greater threat than ever before. After overseeing so many therapies herself, it becomes time for Lesia to take her own advice: Confront and overcome her traumas.
The people followed after the woodsman, babbling and wailing, tearing at their clothes. He did not understand their language, hence the babbling, and the wailing could be heard two counties over. Royal woodsman Locor did not falter, however, and repeated in the voice of his father: “it’s for the king.” He gave a salute. He was always saluting.
These were northerly people, hinterlanders, and thus barely literate and often forgotten. They formed a parade of unremitting sorrow and the woodsman repeated: “it is for the king!” like that changed anything.
Two sure-footed mares dragged the tree between them and the tree was, by all accounts, the most beautiful thing anyone in the capital had ever seen. Bark like freshly fallen snow. Leaves like silver-dollars, shimmering underwater. Even the tree sap was a royal golden color.
When the tree was first felled, in only three swings Locor might add, a fish monger threw herself on top of it and this was when they still had a translator with them. The translator repeated in a monotone, “we are alone,” she relayed. “What have you done? We are all alone.”
Locor had been given the first task for a royal woodsman in ages—it was all about iron and filthy smelting now, so he would bring this damn tree if it would mean something to the funeral. The king’s son waited for them, perched on the edge of his seat like the rest of it might burn him.
His sour little face curdled at the sight. “Will that even be enough to house his torso?” he seethed, though he never even had to witness the weeping fish monger.
Locor schooled his expression into something contritely worthy. “It will be enough.” It had to be. And he thanked his lucky mother’s that he wouldn’t be the one making the casket. The king’s son muttered to himself, revealing the type of muttering man he might become, and dismissed the whole party. Locor would have to send a nudge for accolades later. The venture had taken a fortnight and lost them two good men and one decent wizard. But, again, at least he didn’t have to do the rest.
The branches were broken and the sap drained and the stump turned to mulch to be spread across the bottom like sand. They hallowed out the trunk and stripped the bark and final resting place of the king appeared like a small boat, in the end, than a bed.
The casket of the ancient silver hearth tree was completed, fit for a king, and the cabinet maker's apprentice heard it first. The kingdom was wealthy as you might guess, and had woodworkers aplenty, but this cabinet maker had hands like music. He was so renowned he was marched into the king’s very own workshop and told to build.
They soldered and sanded and broke branches off like limbs and fashioned a cover for the casket that was more like a door. A vertical, striped door that he left for his apprentice to finish.
The cabinet maker’s apprentice used her lucky thumb to pry the cover up and place it on top. The cover fit satisfyingly into place, smooth as butter, and she heard a pop like a joint dislocating. The apprentice, who had never had very good hearing—she was boxed too many times in the ear by older siblings who lacked a lucky thumb—frowned, and the noise shivered through the small bones of her face.
She looked left and right, alone in the royal workshop, and pressed her good ear to the white wood of the silver hearth tree and closed her eyes. Through her bones, she heard the whispering. The voices were slippery, wet in the vowels, and on the very edge of understanding.
“Ah.” Apprentice Theodora took a step back—she was lucky for a reason—and took another back. “No. Thank you. Good day.”
The day before the king’s funeral the workshop was shut and the body laid aside to be beautified below, and cabinet maker exhaled. Theodora did not. She would be spared, thanks more to her feet than her thumb, but the rest would be executed.
In the morning, white lilies were spilt across the floors and the windows buffed and minstrels played ballads fit for long winter nights. They marched the ladies in with their hats tall as hives and the men with their beards long as dresses. It was customary in this country to watch the body be laid into its final resting place and many brought viewing glasses.
Yet, in the wee hours, the cover to the casket would not open. They pried and they jerked and they smashed—it was supposed to be a beautiful day! Yet, the casket would not open to house the king’s body.
Even in the frenzy, a few of the soldiers who were told to smash, and the woodworkers were told to pry, heard it. They did not mention this—the whispering or the scratching from the other side. The cover remained shut.
They lined up the woodsman with two new accolades on his chest, the cabinet maker with hands like music folded in front of him, and all the rest. Even the horses, who did nothing wrong. Their blood was spilt like flowers across the floor and that distracted the populace enough from the jammed casket. Though, of course, the king’s body didn’t need one anymore.
During the cheering and drinking, the palace physicians reported the body was missing from their care. Quietly, they sent scouts through the halls and children into the nooks and crannies. “It will smell, smell like evil!” the king’s son roared. “It will be leaking and putrid and not hard to find.”
But the king’s body was already gone as the casket door slid shut. And, if you listen very carefully, the whisperers will tell you: “if you want in so badly, we’ll let you in.”
