Rebellious - Dravinea Merolette (howl and other poems .TXT) 📗

the vines of the house while carrying Neroli. The friends laid him on his bed and dressed the wound. Then, the pirate children wrote a note for him saying,
Neroli, we’re sorry, but we have to leave you. You could have been killed if we hadn’t told you to come with us.
After his friends had left him he missed them and only had the servants to play with and often his mother would see him looking out the window to the ocean. Neroli knew that most of the times he was lucky that she hadn’t been looking for him at night, because then he would be the most often gone. And the day outings were when his mother had sent him on errands. Neorli’s life was rather boring for a couple years.
When Neroli was twelve years old his mother died. She was walking through Sir Hyron’s gardens when the king’s guards attacked her. She was brought before her husband who told her that his men had burned Sir Hyron’s house to the ground and they were too late to save her son. Benia died of a broken heart. Neroli was enraged at his father’s lie. He planned to take the kingdom by force. At age nineteen the prince took a wife from a peasant family named Ambra. In a year she produced a son. They named the strong boy Jermemal. Which means ruler in Firion.
When Neroli was age twenty-one his half-brother took the throne. Neroli saw the time was right to seize power from his half-brother. On his voyage, disguised as a peasant, he and Ambra sailed towards Firion. But, he left his two-year-old son with Sir Hyron for the journey. Neroli was going to send for him when he successfully became king. (Sir Hyron used to live on the other side of the country, close to Pirate’s Cove). On the way Ambra was giving birth when raiders invaded the ship. Neroli dashed out the cabin door in order to defend his daughter and his wife.


Chapter One
A Bad Start

Mara’s father was fighting valiantly as he parried the many steel blades that were being slashed at him. By the end of the raid, Deviate himself noticed that the last man standing was an average sized man with a good hand at the blade. And the captain also saw that the man was guarding a single cabin on the boat and it was like if he did not succeed in the defense than he would go to hell if he died. Deviate ran to join the fight since he was always eager for
a throat to slit. Neroli was loosing his strength and endurance since he had been slashing and parrying for almost an hour he had the right to be winded. When Mara’s father saw Deviate order this fight to be between ‘him and the other master with a blade’ he planted his feet and tried to steady his beating heart. The captain slashed with his famous sword called the Leona or the Bringer of Death, and made a huge gash in Neroli’s fighting arm. Neroli only winced at the wound
Neroli decided to flee into the cabin and as he did so, the small room was under siege. Men shot at the door with guns, some slashed at the door with their swords, one almost unhinged the door when he swung from a rope and whammed into the blocked entrance.
Neroli spun around to see his wife dead in the bed with the crying child in her arms. Neroli turned white at the heavy stench of death. His wife had died giving him the baby girl she had in her arms. Neroli cried on his wife’s body until he snapped back into his present situation: There were pirates slamming on his room trying to kill him and if they saw the child they would slaughter her as well. And with every passing second the door hinges were getting looser. His wife was dead. And he had a child wailing in his arms. And there was not much time to do anything.
Neroli sat at the small desk and wrote a small letter to the buccaneers. Then he put his cloak on and tucked his child and the note deep in the folds of the fabric. Only when he finished it did the door fly off its hinges and hit the opposite wall. The pirates poured into the room and made a circle around the man with a black cloak with drawn swords pointed unmoving at his throat. Neroli was shining in sweat and he breathing was hard. He took many glances to the swords and his wife who lay motionless on the bed. The last to enter the room was Deviate came in was with a stern look upon his slim face and a smile of triumph on his thin and venomous lips. “Why were you such a coward to take refuge in this tiny room? For a man who lasted an hour against my men, you’re despicable.” Neroli leaned against the desk of which he stood in front of. Most of the men took one step forward to keep their advantage of the blade at his throat. Neroli was annoyed and weary and wished they would stab him soon and get this over with. His grip of his daughter tightened. He held her in his right arm and not his left because he figured they would stab him in the heart to kill him faster and the stab would not harm the child if the blade did not go near her.
“Really! For a while you were doing well and then you seemed to loose your pride and skill and that was when I wounded you. You do not deserve to live if you can be such a coward. Goodbye.” And Deviate himself used his own blade and stabbed the horrified man directly in the heart. Neroli fell onto the floor without a scream and lay still on the floor.
That was when Deviate saw some moving cloth in the folds of the dead mans robe. Deviate removed the cloak to reveal a whimpering newborn baby clutching a folded piece of paper. Deviate picked up the child tenderly and looked at the dead woman on the bed who he took little notice of until now. Now he understood. The man at his feet was trying to protect the woman who was probably having the child. And when he went into the cabin the woman died in childbirth. He tried to save his daughter in desperate efforts. The man lifted the piece of paper and read the note:

Neroli Drake. Dear Captain Deviate,
You have most likely killed me by now and I just wanted to ask you to do me one favor: do not slaughter my daughter. I sacrificed myself to save her and so did my wife on the bed in giving her life. Take her to Firion and give her to her uncle and aunt who live in a port named Port Helina. Find Sir Hyron Heron. My daughter’s name is Mara.
Many thanks,
Your dead,
Neroli Drake
Deviate looked up at his staring men. Their captain’s face just went from Spanish tan to ghost white. The men did not know that their captain had just killed his best friend and the future king. The crew had never seen their leader afraid in their lives. Deviate looked at the almost asleep child in his arms and asked his men, “have you any idea who we just murdered?” the whole group shook their heads in a solemn way.” W...we just killed a prince! We just slaughtered the man who should be king of Firion. We will die…” he said as if grieving over his own death, “unless we take the child until she is three. And then we drop her off at the prince’s close relatives.” He corrected himself on a brighter tone. “Yes, and by then the people will have forgotten him. Come, let us take the body of the young king and his young wife to bury it on the shore of Firion out of respect of the coward” by the end the man had his evil grin back on his face. “Let us leave this graveyard and go back to the Empress!” Deviate cried in a triumphant shout. The men ran back to the pirate ship that they called home carrying the murdered prince and his dead wife. While Deviate was slow to come because he was looking at the sleeping infant in his arms and rocked it tenderly while he hummed a soft lullaby to himself and Mara was the first to witness this rough sea man to smile like a father would to a child.


Chapter two
Prince’s Daughter

Deviate made it a point not to tell Mara anything about his friendship with her father or about her heritage for as long as possible. For the next few years for Mara up until she was three were joyous and wonderful. Mara turned into a tomboy and assisted in a few of the raids by age five. Mara was never told that she was the daughter of a prince, but was lead to believe that Deviate was her father and a woman they captured long ago was her mother. Deviate grew quite fond of the little pirate. So he decided to go back on his word of giving Mara to her relatives. That was until a tragedy struck.
Mara was twelve when it happened. Mara lived, dressed and thought like a pirate. She always was this way. She won in fencing duels against the crew. And she even led a successful raid on a merchant ship near the coast of Firion. Many people thought Mara was a witch who bewitches passing ships and takes the loot without mercy. Along the Coast there was a palace that was the home of the ruler of Firion. Deviate and his crew looted the flagship of the royal navy and let me just say that that was the start of the whole mishap.
One day the ship ported at the docks of Firion, the Capital of the country that the ship robbed constantly from. The king just happened to be Mara’s uncle).
Deviate sent the crew to go buy more supplies for the ships. Most of the crew did not like the idea of actually buying anything, but they followed his orders. Deviate went back to the ship and controlled what was happening there, but he let Mara explore the city as long as she stayed clear of the palace.
Mara had no thought of ever going to the castle. She wanted to go explore the city, the shops, the villages, and the people. Mara had never been allowed to go off on her own before.
As she walked through the streets full of carts, horses and merchants. she noticed that someone was following her. She turned around and the figure stopped. It was a tall person in a long black robe. It looked almost like a masculine dress to her. The sleeves were long and the middle of the outfit was down to his ankles. She was confused. The person wore a hood that shadowed his face.