Copyright J.B. Norman
Aspiring pirate Mary-Anne van der Schapp steps onto the dock, boarding another ship with ill intent for the very first time.
With a confidence perhaps unexpected of a Sheep Wildering, Mary-Anne steps forward.
“Avast ye — Hang on…”
She flips through her Normal Person-to-Pirate dictionary.
She clears her throat.
“Ahem. Avast ye scurvy dogs! I be here to plunder and pillage your ship and despoil ye of your worldly possessions!”
She blinks down incredulously at the little book in her hands.
“Wait. Am I really supposed to talk like that? Oh, dear.”
She clears her throat again and looks back up at the sailors on the deck of the ship.
“Look, I’m a pirate. I feel like we all know what’s happening here. I’m boarding your ship.”
Dunstana steps out from behind the Wilderling pirate.
“And I’m helping!” she declares, brandishing her wooden sword and cork gun.
Mary-Anne glances down at Dunstana.
“I don’t think they’re listening,” the Wilderling pirate notes.
She heaves a frustrated shy.
“It’s because I’m a sheep, isn’t it? This would be so much easier if I were an alligator, or a mountain lion. Nobody ever takes threats of bodily harm seriously when they’re coming from a sheep.”
“Well,” Dunstana offers, “you are floofy and fun to hug. But I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Just show them at you mean business. Like this.”
She aims her cork gone and takes a shot. A cork goes sailing across the deck.
“Ow!” one of the sailors cries. “Right in the eye! What the heck!”
Dunstana frowns.
“Hmm. I was aiming for the one on the left…”
Another one of the sailors strides forward.
“Excuse me, little girl,” he says, standing over Dunstana. “I’m going have to ask you to give me that cork gun of yours. It just isn’t safe for you to be waving that thing around, shooting people in the eye.”
Dunstana responds by shooting him in the eye.
She glances over her shoulder up to Mary-Anne before she dashes down the deck.
“Go, go, go!” she cries.
What follows is a short and decisive battle on the ship’s deck. Although unused to combat, Mary-Anne conducts herself admirably, even subduing the ship’s captain on her own. For her part, Dunstana shot seventeen of the sailors in the eye with her cork gun.
“Well?” Dunstana hopefully asks her crew as they start searching the captured ship. “What did we find?”
“Well, Captain,” one of the crew says. “We searched the ship’s hold.”
“Uh huh, uh huh,” Dunstana says, eagerly nodding along.
“And we found a hundred and forty crates…”
“Uh huh, uh huh,” Dunstana says, eagerly nodding along.
The pirate glances uneasily at Mary-Anne.
“… of salted mutton.”
“You monsters!” Mary-Anne cries at the subdued sailors.
Dunstana and the rest of her crew listen to Mary-Anne making known her grievances to the sailors.
“Powers help me,” she cries, “if I find out that you’ve cooked and salted someone I know…”
“Beasley,” Dunstana instructs. “I think she’s mad. Go help her beat up those guys. Maybe do that thing were you grab a dude and hit other dudes with him.”
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