1. Prologue

Captain Thorngold threw the binoculars over his shoulder, for he had seen enough. Widagai flew to the other side of the ship, an impressive four meters, to catch the golden object. The colorful parrot would have ran if his left leg wasn’t made of wood.

“It be a simple calculation, Widagai. We can catch fish until we’re ancient … or we can plunder that ship there.”

Thorngold was a gray rhino that barely fit on the ship. His horn pointed at a small boat on the horizon.

“What if the king finds out? He doesn’t like buccaneers.”

“Nah, he wouldn’t dare arrest us all the way out here, on the Dolphin Pass. Something ‘bout a curse.”

Widagai was unconvinced. He folded his wings around the binoculars and studied their prey.

“If we do this, there’s no way back.”

Thorngold walked around his ship mate and shouldered a black object into position. They had precisely one weapon: a large cannon at the center. The little profit from their fishing had allowed Thorngold to purchase it at Heroeshaven. The remaining gold had given them twenty cannonballs.

“And if we kill ’em all, they can’t betray us!”

Widagai’s beak drooped. “The Brita will miss a ship. Such a ship is worth millions of Soliduri! With all the spices, silk, food—”

Thorngold licked the corners of his mouth. “And that’s why we plunder it. A ten minute job. Instead of sailing and fishing for ten months. It be a simple calculation, mate.”

Widagai put the binoculars away. The other boat seemed smaller than them and carried no weapons. They could easily attack it.

“Maybe we’re lucky this time,” said the parrot. “But what if we don’t meet any smaller boats ever again? We can never come ashore again. We’d have to still our hunger with a diferent boat every month.”

Thorngold grinned. “There is always a smaller boat.”

So there is always a bigger boat, Widigai thought.

Of course, the Brita wanted to protect their valuable ships, which means they usually sent along secret war ships. To watch from a distance, hidden.

If they saw anyone attempting to plunder their spices, they’d suddenly appear and punch twenty holes through your ship. In Heroeshaven they spoke with both fear and pride about Captain Pi who “protected their lands against those barbarians”.

The ship neared. Widagai could read the sail: a white cloth with an unfamiliar symbol of a jellyfish. That was a good sign. As fishermen, they’d fallen prey to buccaneers themselves many times, which means Widagai knew all the dangerous flags by heart.

The name was unfamiliar too: The Sting.

Fine. We’ll plunder it, he thought.

“Karlos!”

A black cat jumped on the ladder to the ship deck, skipping three rungs at a time. His fur was combed and licked clean; both his ears carried heavy golden earrings. He balanced precariously on the ship’s edge to study the water and pick some food out of his teeth.

“I’m not jumping in the water again for some ittybitty fishy. Ruined my fur for weeks!”

“I be giving you somethin’ better,” Thorngold said.

His cannon had a metal protrusion at the back. By taking it into his strong jaws, and walking around, he could aim the cannon precisely at the other fishing boat. Most of the weapons these days were only made for monkeys with hands. Thorngold had been overjoyed when he was able to find a cannon for a quadruped.

Widagai took off. It was a sunny, beautiful day without a single cloud in the sky. He didn’t like that. It made it harder to hide and spy on other ships.

He circled around the fishing boat, just above the ignorant heads of a few apes and swine. He counted five large barrels around the mast. Through the netting he spotted at least ten more barrels in the storage below. He scoured the horizons, but found no secret guard ships.

He raised his wing at Thorngold.

Thorngold ignited the cannon’s fuse.

Karlos raised his long nails before him like swords.

“Hello, dear traders,” one of the apes yelled. “Might we ask you for the fastest route to—”

They only spotted the cannon pointed at them from a mere twenty meters away.

“I warn you!” the ape said in a panic. “There’s a Heavenly Object here! Destroy us and the wrath of the Seafarers shall—”

From a mere ten meters away, their deck exploded.

A cannonball split the planks and created a rain of wood flakes. From that brown mist erupted a black cat, swinging from a rope, who landed on the deck with a dull thud. Widagai dove down and picked at the face of a swine.

“Surrender!”

The swine threw their weight into the battle. Karlos’ hind leg was squashed, but a fast slice of the nail created a hole in the deck instead. He fell down; the swine remained on deck.

One of the apes had found his sword. They could actually hold weapons, and this one was dangerous enough to make Karlos crawl backward with trembling paws.

Thorngold reloaded the canon. The tip of their ship was only five meters away from The Sting. Widagai saw it happen—he had a clear view from up high—but failed to stop it in time.

Their ship rammed the other trading ship.

The Sting broke into two pieces. Everyone on deck slid downwards, through the hole, as if the sea were a magnet. The barrels filled with valuable goods rolled along with them.

Karlos stuck his nails in the mast to stop his fall. His weight, however, made the mast bend until it broke like a bone.

The entire crew of The Sting, and Karlos, clung unto the wood with all they had. The floating mast was all that separated them from drowning.

Thorngold glared. “Save the barrels! Karlos! Grab those barrels!”

“I—be trying—to survive.”

Widagai wasn’t strong enough to lift Karlos, especially not with his single non-wooden claw.

The apes were agile enough to swing themselves on top of the mast. They collected wreckage to quickly create raft.

Until they suddenly stopped caring.

One by one, the apes let go. As if something below the water pulled them down.

Karlos went under too, but he fought his way back to the surface. His eyes were twice as large and forgot to blink. He stared at nothing, his gaze empty.

“The … curse … exists. I … have … seen.”

All the animals who had been under water, even if only for a brief second, squealed and swam in different directions. They moved faster than Widagai had ever seen—faster than he could follow. Thorngold whistled for him to come back.

“I call it a successful mission,” said Thorngold.

“Succes!?”

Without touching the water, he impaled two barrels with his horn and brought them onto their own ship. “It be a simple calculation, parrot. Our ship is still intact and now we have free food and gold.”

“But … Karlos …”

“I be admitting, it’s not great to completely destroy the other ship. We might want to try something else next time. Oh well, life and ya learn.”

Thorngold turned around—and day suddenly turned into night. The sun darkened and Widagai struggled to distinguish their own ship from the wreckage of The Sting.

A battle ship towered over them, at an astounding length of at least fourty meters. Like a whale eating a tiny goldfish, simply by accident, because he hadn’t even spotted the tiny fish.

Thorngold bravely turned around his cannon, but realized it was useless.

“We surrender! Spare us! Don’t destroy our pretty ship!”

Widagai flew upwards to give this message to the ship’s captain. Even that journey seemed to take ages. He flew past the name of this sea giant, painted on the wood with elegant letters: Adventure Galley.

Only one thought remained in his anxious parrot brain.

There is always a bigger boat …