Herera - Stories of The Purple Pearl

3. Reminiscing

I was ten when I saw The Purple Pearl for the first time. I had just snuck out of my room after another fight with my parents about proper behavior. There, at the horizon, where the sun transformed from a bright yellow ball into an orange-purple stretched band above the water, I saw it. A minuscule black flying dot. It was a flying ship, I was sure of it. I knew no one would believe me, so I told no one, except Frido, who was my friend, or so I thought.

My parents would have ridiculed me as well, and then they probably would have forbidden me to ever mention it again. That wasn't the kind of talk that was expected from a mayor's daughter.

My father was the mayor of Port Ember, or so he called himself. He was actually no more than the supervisor of the prisoners that were sent here from England to start a new settlement. My mother was the daughter of a duke, so there was absolutely no room for magic or pirate talk. Pretty ironic, since they arrived here on a pirate ship as well. That's what I told them, and three days later I still felt the invisible bruises of the beating that was my father's response.

My brothers and sister did know what kind of talk fit our class. They were allowed to come to banquets and official gatherings. I'd never shed a tear for having to stay at home. I used the many nights my parents and siblings spent away from the house, to escape from my own prison cell that they called my room and strode for hours on end by the shore, searching for shells, pearls and other treasures and then throwing them back into the ocean, where they belonged.

When I was fifteen, my parents started realizing that sometimes they had to show people that they had another daughter. They forced me into the most hideous light green dress I'd ever seen and I had to wear high heels I couldn't walk five steps in. The hairdresser spent hours pinning up my hair, leaving some fabricated curls and waves down my shoulders. I'd looked like a princess, he'd told me. I'd agreed. It was ugly as hell.

The only interesting talk I had at that party was with an ex-detainee that told me everything about the flying ship I had seen soaring at the horizon five years earlier. My parents were furious that I couldn't even behave one night and talk with the people I was expected to talk to. I had to stay at home and do chores for months.

But a week later was my sixteenth birthday, and I wasn't about to spend that night in my little room. Right before sunset, I crawled out of my bedroom window and walked for hours around the island, past the old settlement grounds, behind the abandoned gold mine, through the cave where Frido and I used to play before his parents forbade him from spending time with me. I ended up at my favorite spot, the groin that split the tidal waves right before they crashed against the cliffs of my hometown.

I sat down on the rocks and stared at the ocean. And there it was again. The flying ship.

It landed on the water and I watched how it docked at our port. The sea gods already knew what I was going to do before I knew it myself. At that moment, I didn't have control over my own movements. My thoughts were swept away by the force of the waves and replaced by the tenuous ocean air and a salty future. Without another glance back, I snuck onto the ship with the amethyst sails and hid under the deck. I didn't move or make a sound until the next morning, when we were far, far away from the land.

Further – or closer – than I'd ever been from home.

***

"She must be a spy. She definitely doesn't fit in here."

Those were the only two sentences I understood from the many people arguing when they had found me behind the gunpowder crates. The rest was a mixture of gnomish or dwarfish languages – I'd never really figured out the difference – and some other human languages, but barely anyone spoke in the common tongue, which was the only language I understood.