Copyright J.B. Norman

“What’s going on in there?” a pirate asks from the other side of the locked and barred door, desperately tugging at the door knob.

“Oh, uh.” Kat stammer, leaning her full weight against the door to keep it closed. “Yeah, we’d love to want to help you…”

She glances over to where Skadi and Dunstana and rummaging through the Piratesburg’s map room for the map to the island of Isla Insula.

“… but, uh,” Kat mutters, her tongue outpacing her brain. “Jimmy spilled his… gun… oil?”

She winces. She’s pretty sure there’s no such thing as gun oil.

“So it’s very dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Gun oil eveyrwhere.”

She pauses hopefully and prays that the pirates on the other side of the door will soon give up and go away. Instead, the pirate on the other side starts trying to tug the door open again.

“But, uh,” Kat continues. “We’re fine. We’re all fine. Here. Now. How are you?”

“Who are you?” the pirate asks. “I don’t recognise your voice! And we don’t even have any women in the crew right now!”

Kat groans. Though, the silver lining here, is that the pirates can tell she’s a woman. Odds are usually about even that any given stranger will think she’s a guy.

“You keep looking for the map, Stacy,” Dunstana tells the Hrimfaxi mercenary.

“Skadi,” the Hrimfaxi woman corrects.

“I’m not good at names!” Dunstana insists. “You just keep looking for the map.”

She turns to her sister.

“Open the door, Kat. I have a plan.”

Perhaps against her better judgement, Kat pulls the door open.

“What the?” the pirate on the other side exclaims, almost falling into the map room as the door he’s been trying to kick down suddenly opens.

He blinks in surprise at the sight of three invaders ransacking the map room.

“I knew you were up to no— Ow!”

Dunstana pulls the trigger of her cork gun, sending a cork right into the pirate’s eye/

“That is not a plan!” Kat cries.

“Oh,” the pirate groans. “You little mongrel! Right in my eye! When I can see again, I am going to give you such a talking— Ahhh!”

As the pirate stumbles blindly around the map room, Kat grabs him and dumps him to the ground.

“Well,” Kat says, turning to Skadi and Dunstana. “I think we’ve got about three minutes before the rest of the pirates come charging down the hallway. We need to find the map.”

“Is this it?” Dunstana asks, holding up a parchment.

“No. That’s a map of Pelayo.”

“Is this it?”

“That’s Goldharbour.”

“Is —”

“Dunstana! That’s a grocery list.”

Dunstana glances down at the list.

“Wow. They buy a lot of cinnamon.”

“I found it!” Skadi exclaims, pulling the map of Isla Insula out from a pile of rolled-up maps, and sending the other cascading to the floor.

“Ow,” the pirate the ground groans as most of the maps come tumbling down onto him.

Right on cue, the rest of the Pirates of the Pirateburg come storming into the room.

“You there! Stop!”

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Admittedly — and probably pretty obviously — this scene draws most of its inspiration from the scene in the original Star Wars where Han and Luke try to bluff their way into the Death Star’s detention block. I couldn’t think of someone for them to rescue, so I changed their task to stealing a map, which maybe makes more sense given the pirates.

Also, although this scene features Kat, Dunstana, and Skadi all working together to get into the Pirateburg, it’s not necessarily supposed to be a sequel to the scene from June 1 where Dunstana goes on a Viking raid to the Piratsburg.

And, with that, I’ve got a week of my month-long daily Short Scene exercise done. I’ll be posting a recap soon.

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