Chapter 1 - How Ewan Crane Survived—Again

Ewan Crane had nearly drowned six times in his life.

I am terrified to share a new story, but I also really want to do this. My heart is in my throat; it’s all I can do not to comb through and over-edit everything.

Lady Pirate is not my favorite title, but it works for now; perhaps, after the story, you guys can help me vote on another.

Here is my Table of Contents, where you can still find The Graveyard House for free until May 1. After that, all but the first three chapters will go behind a paywall.

Thank you so much, loyal readers, for being here to embark on a new journey. I’m terrified, but proud of this one. I hope you enjoy!

—Mariella

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Ewan Crane had nearly drowned six times in his life. Now, he was floating in the water after a seventh wreck.

He was, chided fellow sailors, either a very lucky man—or the most unlucky to sail the vast blue waters. Six times, water had been emptied forcefully from his lungs; six times had he fancied that he’d seen the questionable events of his life flashing before his very eyes.

And here he was again.

It was not much of a life to speak of. His fondest memories were of helping his mother with housework. A fragile, troubled woman, she hadn’t been herself since Father vanished during one of his sea excursions.

Dead, said some people. Off with a lover, said others. Ewan did not think that the reason for Father’s disappearance mattered at all to Mrs. Anna Crane; she died when her son was six years old, died from malnutrition and heartbreak, and all of his memories after that seemed to involve survival.

When he found himself plunged into the icy depths of the ocean a seventh time, he clung to a memory of hanging laundry on the clothesline, two months before Mother’s death. He remembered the bedsheets, once white as wedding gowns, had become dull yellow over time due to the poor water with which they had been washed. He hung them with battered wooden clothespins, listening to his mother as she hummed one of many sea shanties that she had picked up from her father.

In place of lullabies, Ewan Crane had been raised on sea shanties and drinking songs. He sometimes thought that he would have turned out differently if the music he heard as a tender youngling had been gentle and full of hope.

But all of that was far from his mind as he struggled to keep his head above the water, choking on salt and surf, managing at the same instance to call for his friend.

“Finn!” Ewan called, finding a floating bit of wood and clinging to it as coughs rattled his body. “I say, Finn! I’m over here! Call out and I’ll find you!”

Their ship, the Mary Louise, had become engulfed in flames. No one knew how or why; all were concerned with saving their own skin. It did not matter if a lantern had fallen over, or oil had spilled, or a whale had attacked from beneath it. The Mary Louise was doomed, but there were yet men in the water gasping for air, which meant that Ewan Crane had work to carry out. He must save his friends.

The dark night was an echo of anguished cries from sailors who had not found wreckage to cling to. Ewan had an innate desire to save them all, but knew logically that such a task would be impossible, even if it wasn’t pitch-dark. So he called for the people he knew, his voice becoming shrill as he refused to give up: “Finn! James! Horace! Will—”

More water entered his mouth, and he was silenced for an eternity as he coughed, sputtered, spat it out. He had no way of knowing how long it took for him to fill his lungs with air again; he did not know, either, how long his tired arms could cling to this bit of wood. He could feel splinters as they delved into his skin, as if the fact that he was drifting and drowning had not been enough to punish him.

“Finn,” he said again, with far less enthusiasm, when again he could find his voice. “Horace. James…”

It was then that he spotted something in the distance, a light, a lantern, the haunting silhouette of a ship that managed to make itself known against the pitch-darkness of the night sky. Ewan smiled in spite of himself; it seemed that he would wear his seventh life like a badge, for if that was a ship, it meant rescue. The other option was that Ewan was hallucinating, but he did not dwell on the possibility. If he did not fill himself with hope of some kind, he would soon surrender and allow himself to be pulled down to a watery grave.

His arms were becoming tired. Instead of calling ahead for Finn or Horace or James, Ewan raised his voice and called out to the ship: “Here! I’m here! I—I am a survivor—my friends…”

It was then that he trailed off, realizing that he could no longer hear the voices of his friends. The chorus of lamentations had ceased, as if they were an orchestra that had all of a sudden stopped playing. Frowning, Ewan tried to squint in the darkness; it could not be possible that all of them had died in the same instance. If so, why had he not also gone? The cold water against his body was real, the agony in his muscles unimaginable, his voice like gravel after having screamed and shouted in vain for his best mates…

The wreckage of the Mary Louise behind him provided enough light for Ewan to read the name on the ship that floated, just out of reach. The Flying Dutchman. If Ewan had any words left to scream, he no longer had the courage to do so; the Dutchman would be no source of refuge, and he would rather surrender his seventh life than be pulled onto its deck with Finn and Horace.

Because surely that was where they had gone. That was why their agonized screams had ceased. Someone heard them and pulled them out of the water where they would otherwise have perished. Every person who’d grown up near the sea knew that the Dutchman sought new deckhands all of the time, though the word deckhand was used only as filler. No one could say for certain what happened to the shipwrecked men after Davy Jones rescued them.

Ewan had a fleeting, ridiculous thought: he could scale up the side of the Dutchman and help his friends to escape. Where to, though? The Mary Louise would soon be at the bottom of the sea, and he did not wish to condemn them, either, to a painful death by drowning. His arms would not be much good for climbing, at the end of it all…gads, they hurt…

Teeth chattering, Ewan Crane watched the Flying Dutchman sail away without him. If he had been able to think straight, he might have wondered why the notorious frigate ignored him, especially since—of all of the doomed crew of the Mary Louise—he had screamed the loudest. No, it did not matter; his eyes fluttered closed, and he rested his head on the pitiful bit of driftwood, listening to the dying crackles of the wreckage.

Ewan Crane had not been the captain of the Mary Louise, but he supposed there was some honor in having gone down with her. He’d never been meant for life on dry land. He found comfort knowing that his remains would be near the ship where, with a crew of brave and reckless men, he had found the Fountain of Youth.

Perhaps his body would wash up on shore somewhere. Perhaps someone would search his pockets and find the vial of blessed water. It would be of no use to him now.

Drifting off, he surrendered to the ocean for the seventh time.