skinny as she was, nodded but seemed too polite to stare. Answer! Boy or girl?
One had no idea how to answer such a ridiculous question.
I think you’re girly girl girl, the leader went on as if she hadn’t expected an answer, anyway, because those girly girl clothes. Too nicey nice for boy. Here she danced a little on the tips of her mud-caked toes. Huge flies swirled up around her. Everything stank a pleasant bathroom stink. But they think you be boy. Your hair too pretty fine fine for boy, but your face so ugly for girl.
Once more there was no answer, and again it was as if none of them expected an answer, anyway. With some unseen gesture from their leader, the children—there were five-six-seven of them—all sat down in a ring, swords at their sides, and began to debate in their odd, sing-song language. One was aware of their charcoal-like smell and their snotty noses and even of the way they breathed, but for some reason one was not scared; this all seemed too much of a silly game. Two fat little pirates had found several yards of sailor’s rope alongside the boat and set about braiding and unbraiding the frayed ends like dolls’ hair, waiting for the next stage in the game. The tallest boy, who had so many feathers and beads woven into his long wooly hair he might have been a girl himself, looked to his pirate captain, who rose again and pushed their hostage down, into the center of their circle. The metal hull of the boat was hot through the seat of one’s new madras shorts—one was suddenly embarrassed to be so clean and tidy and pale next to these brazen outlaws. Why was one the only person here bothered by the flies and the heat? Next the children were looking at one’s new oxblood leather shoes, filthy now as they were, and so without being asked, they were removed and the tall girl squeezed her elephantine feet into them. She made a grimace as if in horrible pain. The tall boy of beads and feathers clapped his hands in joy at her antics. She made an exaggerated bow, whistled loudly through uneven teeth, and swung back her seaweed sash. Looky look at me, she told the rest, teetering again on her tiptoes. Pretty fine lady! Pretty fancy me! At this they all laughed, even the new pirate in the middle, though nobody would guess such a rusty, throaty sound was a laugh.
Listen to froggy! a boy with a just a few matted tufts of hair like marigolds growing from his scalp said—well, it might have been a boy, though it was wearing a tattered dress. This remark too struck them all as very clever—until suddenly the pirate leader swished her swordstick in the air and then deftly tossed both shoes down below them into the blackish yellowish muck. What your name, froggy face? she then commanded, and all was quiet but for the buzzing of flies and lapping of water beyond.
No answer, and there never would be. Not until this moment did one realize what it was not to be a fellow pirate, but a pirate prisoner.
Froggy fella keeping secrets, one of the smallest of the children testified, and all the rest nodded vigorously. It was only then that one noticed how late the sky said it must be and only then that one began to hurt for Mar, so far away in her seashell hotel, so very fast asleep. One might have begun crying, but it was too hot and there were too many gnats to tell.
The pirate leader was examining her captive so closely one could see the pinkish clouds in her pretty, wide-set eyes and smell what she’d had for lunch—squishy bugs, apparently. Her hands were large and muddy, like her feet, and they seized the collar of the blue shirt Mar had bought just for the trip. She smiled a smile almost as beautiful and genuine as Mar’s at story time. Confess, froggy, you be spy on us! she hissed, tightening her grasp on the shirt.
Obviously, this was a game they’d all played before, but not knowing the rules, it might be time to be afraid. It might be better to show them fear, as if to say, I will play along.
They were all waiting for some word, some way for them to know how far they could go. Any answer would be the wrong answer. Through brackish tears, through stinging gnats and encroaching fog, one saw the circle tighten and an anger even they must have been surprised by growing within these dirty half-wild children. Confess! confess! confess! they repeated, now laughing and screaming and punching at each other, trying to get even closer to their prisoner.
And then their leader pinned the captive back against the hot hull of the boat, huge hot hand around choking throat, but all the same gentle, the way a kitten might be held up for examination. You a fairy child, she said at last, all teeth and tongue and lips slobbering into the face below her. You make milk sour, you give baby belly-ache. At this the dried mud on her cheeks cracked, and laughing she gave her victim a little push into the arms of the other children. Swords—no, one must remember they are only sticks—scratched one’s chest and belly, and the smallest of the boys dared to pee right onto the brand-new dress socks. The pirate queen pulled the upstart’s hair and drew the hostage away from the rest and up close to her again; why couldn’t one resist any of this? Give us all your nicey nice, froggy frog, she commanded. Then a sudden slap across one’s face—barely more than a pat, however, as if only to see the cheek flush a bit. Nevertheless, this seemed to signal that now all was possible. The rest were already stripping socks, shorts, shirt—though it seemed they were only doing this at first to make it easier to tickle. More amphibian sounds—mixed laughter and pain—bubbled forth, and they all humorously imitated this until it seemed even the forest behind them echoed with a thousand croaking beasts.
The pirate children fought over the meager articles of clothing, trying them on and splitting their seams or twisting them so hard they ripped. All at once they tumbled off the boat and into mud, which meant even more fun. Soon they had torn strips of oxford cloth and madras to bind one’s wrists and make an appropriate gangplank blindfold—and they began their march across mudflat to the water’s edge, the pirate leader poking one’s back with her sword, the rest leading each other like a row of paper dolls unfurling. No one noticed the blindfold had slipped far enough down for one to see easily—to see happy children at their game, to see waves now shoving with more force at their bodies. For now that the fog was lifting, it was apparent that this marshland was a bay of the same ocean that lapped at the hotel where Mar lay forever sleeping—or had she been awakened with a kiss from Far by now, and were they searching up and down the coast for their lost child? Yes, it must be so, and yet… Then one had a thought as clear and cold as ice water, a thought that lasted but a moment, only to be left behind as all thoughts must—that one had never belonged to blue-eyed Mar and gray-eyed Far, that whatever one remembered was just a dream one was only just now awakening from, and that instead one had always been these pirates’ playmate, and ultimately the pirates’ naked, shivering prey.
Somewhere far away there existed a picture like this in one of those big books of monsters and myths which aunts and uncles had lately been bestowing—a colored woodcut of a tiny figure shackled to a rocky islet in the midst of a churning sea; on the other side of the rocks a winged dragon was just entering the picture—only part of its immense scaly body would fit within the frame. Mar had not yet come to that chapter. Who the figure represented or whether the monster was good or evil was not yet known, though it was clear the tide was rising and no matter what happened the person on the rocks was doomed… With lengths of hemp-rope and strips of cloth the tall wooly boy had tied their hostage to the last dead tree stump in the bay he could reach without having to swim more than a few feet. Lastly, for no reason, he tied a gag around one’s mouth, because bad bad little froggy don’t talk nice, the shaven-headed girl said from shallower water, shaking her finger like a mother; at that, they all collapsed into giggles. Now that the water had washed off so much mud it was clear most of them were really not much darker than oneself would be in July—and splashing about in the foul water they seemed more than ever like innocent children at play. The tallest girl, their captain, was so happy in her work she sang a song whose words were nonsense or maybe just regular words in that secret language of theirs. For the first time in years one longed to be able to sing along with other chil
dren, to run and laugh with them on the beach, in the gathering dusk.
Running and laughing, indeed, they left their prisoner behind, tied securely but not too painfully to the tree stump, with the tide rising and the sun setting and a swiftly approaching twilight already almost caught up to them. The pirate leader turned and hollered from her regained perch on the shipwrecked hull, but what came out of her big wide mouth sounded more like the victory roar of a young lioness than words or a song. Even from this far off it seemed one could still see the pink clouds in her eyes. Several swords shot across the water, falling far short of their intended victim. A rain of mud, seashells, and pebbles followed, but the child pirates soon gave up, bored already with this elaborate game. Were they still crying for a confession? What could one possibly confess to be set free? By the time the tide was up to one’s chest, the blindfold had slipped all the way off, as had the oxford-cloth gag—one wondered if the children could hear their prisoner’s strangled laughter above their own—but they were either hiding behind the boat or had