Chapter 30 - The Return of Captain Scar

*Flashback*

A cruise ship cuts through the wide open sea. Not another boat, or strip of land is visible as flat blue water shines in the mid-day sun. Darker lines form the horizons, empty in every direction. But wait... There is something in the water. An indistinct shape bobs on the ships wake. As the huge ship bears down upon it, it becomes clearer. And then the little boy watching it realises what the shape is, and shouts gleefully: “A pirate! A pirate in the water! They made him walk the plank! Arrr! Arrr!” He picks up his toy cutlass and begins to fight a little over-enthusiastically with another little boy, who gets upset at being stabbed in the stomach, and runs away crying. The crying boy’s mother stands up to give the excited boy’s mother a piece of her mind, but then stops, distracted. For it is a pirate. He’s even dressed like one. And he’s about to go under the ship.

The mother dials the captain on the emergency phone. He gives the order for the ship to be turned. The ship veers to the left and comes to a halt. The pirate bobs on his board, just out of the way of the ships progress. A lifeboat is lowered, and some crew members row over to the figure. He is unconscious, but has a pulse. He is very thin and bedraggled, his striped clothing torn and wet, his skin a fiery red from sunburn. He seems like he has been out here for several days. They lift him into the lifeboat and take him back to the ship, where he is laid on a bed and attended to by the ship doctor. When he recovers consciousness, he tells them he does not remember what happened, and takes a job as a children’s entertainer, pretending to be a pirate.

It really was a pity that Scar had been unconscious during his rescue. It was the most piratical thing he had ever participated in. His father would have been proud of him, floating like that on that tiny piece of wood for days, his clothing all torn. If he’d lasted another day or two, he was sure an albatross or something would have come and pecked out his eye, and he would have had a legitimate reason to wear an eyepatch. He couldn’t help feeling a little hard done by, coming out of such an adventure without an eyepatch. But such was life. Now fate had handed him the opportunity to be a pirate and completely avoid any risk of death, dismemberment, prison, bankruptcy, mutiny, or humiliation at the hands of his own prisoners. This job suits him to his very core.

Unfortunately, some others don’t agree. The children, for instance, don’t believe he is a pirate, even though the captain has given him his own parrot, and he has taught it to say “Arrr!” They laugh at him, and want him to make balloon animals. One little boy keeps challenging him to sword fights, whacking him around the head with a wooden cutlass and calling him a cowardly cur when he refuses.

When the Captain threatens to fire him for failing to make satisfactory balloon animals, Scar feels his last chance at piracy slipping away. He tries harder, practicing making balloon animals at night in his cabin. But all this does is use up the supply of balloons, and litter his cabin with tiny bits of coloured rubber, when they inevitably pop. He is devastated when the Captain calls him into his office to inform him that they will be letting him out at the next port, and gives him his final pay packet.

In keeping with his role as ship pirate, Scar is made to walk the plank as a final send off. They extend the plank from a special hole in the hull, on the very lowest level. Apparently they have done this before. A large crowd gathers to watch. The drop is only about a metre and a half, but somehow that makes it even more embarrassing. As though he is not tough enough to walk the plank at a higher level. They are quite near the docks, within swimming distance, and the townspeople have an excellent view. There are not even any sharks. As Scar walks the plank, he can feel his father rolling in his grave. He is a failure.

To make matters worse, when he reaches the end of the plank, Scar discovers that he is terrified of heights. He slips on the end of the board, and instead of the graceful dive he had planned he splashes into the water in an undignified mass of flailing limbs. As he sinks beneath the surface he spots something through the clear water. It is resting on the sandy sea-floor, in the shade of the docks. It is dark under the docks. The sun doesn’t reach in. Yet there is a sparkle. A glitter. Something is shining. Almost as though it is giving out its own light. Scar rises to the surface, spluttering and coughing. He spits out copious amounts of water, and does not look at his audience. There is a fallen star under the docks, and it is his. He will sell it. He can be rich again! Visions of new boats, open seas and enormous cannons fill his head. Maybe if he gets enough money for the star, he can have his leg amputated and get a pegleg. All the great pirates had peglegs. Finally, finally, he will be respected. He strikes out toward the star.

Sadly, as is often the case with Scar’s plans, he is about 200 years out of date. No-one would buy a star anymore. It had long been discovered that fallen stars had no use whatsoever. They don’t even really sparkle. That stops after a few days, when the star cools down. Then it is just a lump of rock, and who wants one of them? He had severely misconstrued a sign a few years ago, and had been looking for a star ever since. It had been written in huge red letters, screaming from the window of a newspaper publisher, and had been surrounded, for some reason by pictures of young men and women in compromising positions, with their hands over their faces: WE PAY FOR PICTURES OF THE STARS. It follows logically for Scar that they would pay even more for an actual star.

When he reaches the pole of the docks where the star sparkles, he takes a big breath. This is it. He has made it. He dives under the water, eyes wide open even though it is salty. He can’t chance missing it. The water is crystal clear and surprisingly warm, considering it is nearly winter. A school of tiny fish swarm past his nose. One hits his face, but Scar is not distracted. He is filled with the single-minded determination of one who has hit rock bottom and found out it hurts. The star sparkles more brightly as he draws near. It is taking on a shape, but Scar cannot see it. The water is deeper than he had expected. He is running out of air, and everything is going black and wiggly. His lungs are about to burst, and so are his eardrums, because he has forgotten to breathe out through his nose, and the pressure is higher near the sea floor. He reaches out. His hand closes around the star. It is surprisingly smooth, hard, and hollow, with a large hole in the top. But he does not have time to think about it now. He kicks hard for the surface.

His head breaks the surface, and he gasps for air. He has never had anything so sweet pass his lips. And he had eaten pure sugar as a child. He floats on his back for a moment, just breathing, clasping the star with all his might. He is not going to dive back down there. He looks over at the shore. The crowd has dissipated. Clearly, nobody wants to be held responsible for the preventable drowning of a children’s entertainer. Scar smirks. There will be no-one to fight him for the star. The fools. And then he looks at what he holds in his hand.

Scar had not realised that stars looked like this. It is much longer than it is wide. It is hollow, with a large hole in the top, at one end. Underneath the hole, a long narrow bit with a flat end pokes downwards. The end is level with the flat bottom of the other end of the star. The whole thing is not much bigger than a small woman’s foot. In fact, it looks a lot like a woman’s shoe. A very nice woman’s shoe, it is true, but a shoe all the same. For a moment Scar is extremely disappointed. He can feel his whole future flooding away from him. His happy visions of piles of jewels, of gold and silver coins heaped in a treasure room, of antique guns with diamond bullets, are fading rapidly. He almost throws it away, but something stops him. It has started to glow.

* * *

The Gods

Julius Rufus Pegasus, father of Sameus Rufus Pegasus, God Omnipotent over all lands west of the great ocean was sitting on his sofa. A pretty servant girl was feeding him grapes. He grinned. This was the life. Omnipotence. Immortality. A pretty servant girl feeding you grapes. Useless sons being stabbed in the back and composing terrible poetry was nothing in the great scheme of things. The plan to bring his son into the family business, so to speak, was well underway...
“Julie!” A young God, omnipotent only in a small region in the very far south (and thus not omnipotent at all), burst through the door. The servant girl jumped as she fed her master a grape, and accidently punched him in the mouth. He frowned and waved her away.

“This had better be good news,” he bellowed at the young God. In fact, he did not care very much if the news was bad. All could be fixed with a wave of the hand, by one such as himself. He just did not like being interrupted. Particularly by some young upstart who felt it was acceptable to call his superiors ‘Julie’. Julius Rufus Pegasus really hated being called Julie.

The young God quivered. There was good news, but there was also bad. Which should he tell first?

“Out with it!” bellowed Julius Rufus Pegasus.

“The pirate has found the shoe,” the young God announced, a jolly and insincere grin cracking his face.

“What’s the bad news?” Julius Rufus Pegasus sighed.

“Your son has completely disregarded your instruction and is on a pointless quest to rescue the girl he has been composing those terrible poems for.”

Julius Rufus Pegasus groaned. He had known this, of course, deep in the recesses of his mind. He was omniscient, after all. He had just been choosing to ignore the knowledge. Apparently it was time to take a greater interest in his son’s quest.

* * *

The shoe sparkles like nothing Scar has ever seen. It glitters, and shines with an inner light that has no source. Rainbows seem to be stretching out from it. And Scar sees that this is worth so much more than a stupid star. It is obviously magical. It probably has a genie in it. Or a direct connection to the Gods. For once, Scar is right about something, although the Gods will never let him know that. He swims to shore.

That night, Scar sits in the tiny room he has rented at the most disreputable inn in town, and rubs desperately at the shoe, waiting for the genie to pop out. He sleeps with his door and windows locked, fingers tight around the shoe.
That night he has a dream. A genie comes. It is wispy and bad tempered, but shows him the way to a city with golden walls and a diamond road. In the city, thousands of supremely rich men fight to buy the shoe.
When he wakes, he tucks the shoe out of sight in his bag, buys provisions with his pay from the ship, and sets out to sell his shoe.