Endless

A Secret

My name was Aviva. I didn't know my last name. I don't know if I had one. All I knew was that I was on this ship and I was a secret.
"It's bad luck to have a woman on board." That's what everyone says. If a woman was on board the boat wouldn't sail. So that's why I was a secret.
So I guess my name wasn't Aviva. It was Hunter. My father told me so. He was the only one who knew. He said it was because when they realised my mother was a woman they threw her off the plank and drowned her. My father said he couldn't lose me too.
But then he left the ship. Joined someone else. Some other pirate. Maybe he was kidnapped, I don't know. He's just been gone for a long time. But he left me there.
So now no one knew I was a girl.
I was a secret.
Everybody else there was okay I guess. We were all like one big family so I had never really missed my parents. There was this one guy, Levi, and he looked kind of like my dad I suppose. He was tall and strong, straggly hair in a ponytail and small beard (although his hair was white) and he was loud.
There was also my best friend, Dorian. He had long dark brown hair and dark eyes. He was really smart for a pirate and he taught me how to speak french. Can you imagine that? French! In return I taught him sword fighting. He snuck on board two years before that, when he was about 7. He said his family hated him and he wanted to move away. So he came on the first boat he saw. Blackbeard accepted him. Why wouldn't he? Dorian was just another slave to him.
We were all slaves on that boat. Blackbeard made us work all day and night with small naps in between. If we slacked then we were whipped or punished in some other form. It was hell. But there wasn't anything we could do. If we tried to leave we became target practice for him. We meant nothing.
Blackbeard was a greedy captain- and lazy too. We powered the ship and now and again he would show up to steer if he felt like it (or if we were coming in to dock where all the young ladies were). He had a massive cabin all to himself with a dining and treasure area. His clothes were of the finest cloth pirates had to offer, and his pride and joy was his captain's hat. It was a large black pirate hat with dark red and brown feathers tucked in to the brim. That hat was as big and dramatic as his ego.
I suppose on the other hand we had a high fear-factor amongst other pirates and navies. We got quite a lot of gold and precious things because people were too afraid to try to challenge us- the mighty crew of Blackbeard.
And so we lived. As slaves. As pirates. As friends. As family.