MARA:
“Why is nobody sitting there?”
CHIBI:
“Because he’s dead.”
MARA looks at him.
CHIBI:
“What?”
MARA:
“You’re not supposed to say it like that.”
CHIBI:
“But he is.”
On the table stands a cup.
Full of rum.
Nobody drinks from it.
Around it, the tavern is alive.
Boots stamp.
Dice bounce.
Someone is singing a song with at least four different versions of the same verse.
Someone else has forgotten which version they started with.
MARA:
“Why give rum to a dead man?”
CHIBI:
“Maybe dead people get thirsty.”
MARA:
“They don’t.”
CHIBI:
“Have you asked one?”
Mara considers this.
MARA:
“No.”
CHIBI:
“Then we don’t know.”
A pirate reaches towards the cup.
Another slaps his hand away.
PIRATE:
“Not that one.”
The first pirate immediately takes another.
MARA:
“There’s a rule.”
CHIBI:
“There are always rules.”
MARA:
“But they’re breaking all the other ones.”
The captain’s hat is on someone who is definitely not the captain.
A sailor is dancing on a table.
Two people who nearly fought with knives yesterday are singing with their arms around each other.
The cook has surrendered his ladle to a woman who is using it as a drumstick.
CHIBI:
“Maybe celebration means choosing which rules still count.”
MARA:
“Who chooses?”
CHIBI:
“Everyone.”
MARA:
“That sounds like a terrible system.”
CHIBI:
“Yes.”
Someone cheers.
Everyone cheers with him.
Neither child knows why.
CHIBI cheers too.
MARA:
“You don’t even know what happened.”
CHIBI:
“Neither do half of them.”
A chair falls over.
Nobody cares.
A bottle falls over.
Three people care immediately.
Mara watches them rescue the rum.
MARA:
“So the bottle matters more than the chair.”
CHIBI:
“Obviously.”
MARA:
“And the empty cup matters more than the bottle.”
Chibi looks at it.
Nobody has touched it.
CHIBI:
“Yes.”
MARA:
“Why?”
For once, Chibi does not answer immediately.
At another table, a sailor is telling a story about the man who should be sitting before the cup.
The story is funny.
Everyone laughs.
Then the sailor stops halfway through.
His face changes.
Someone beside him finishes the story.
The laughter returns.
Quieter this time.
MARA:
“They’re happy and sad at the same time.”
CHIBI:
“Adults do that.”
MARA:
“Can we?”
CHIBI:
“I can.”
MARA:
“You cried because your biscuit broke.”
CHIBI:
“It was a very good biscuit.”
Mara looks back at the empty chair.
MARA:
“Was he good?”
CHIBI:
“The biscuit?”
MARA:
“The dead man.”
CHIBI:
“Oh.”
He thinks.
CHIBI:
“Probably not.”
MARA:
“Then why do they miss him?”
CHIBI:
“Maybe missing someone isn’t a reward for being good.”
Mara considers that too.
A fiddle begins a faster tune.
Someone pulls the captain into the dance.
For three seconds, he resists.
Then he gives up.
MARA:
“Is he still the captain?”
CHIBI:
“Yes.”
MARA:
“But nobody is acting like it.”
CHIBI:
“Maybe tonight they’re pretending he isn’t.”
MARA:
“Why?”
CHIBI:
“Because tomorrow he is again.”
The children watch.
Ranks blur.
Voices grow louder.
Stories become less careful.
People lean against people they would never touch in daylight.
A man who has not smiled all evening suddenly laughs so hard he cannot breathe.
For a little while, everyone seems less guarded.
MARA:
“So celebration changes people.”
CHIBI:
“No.”
MARA:
“No?”
CHIBI:
“Maybe it just makes it harder to hide them.”
Mara looks at him.
MARA:
“That was clever.”
CHIBI:
“I know.”
MARA:
“Don’t ruin it.”
CHIBI:
“Too late.”
Something knocks beneath the floorboards.
Once.
Mara looks down.
MARA:
“What was that?”
CHIBI:
“Probably the water.”
It knocks again.
MARA:
“You said probably.”
CHIBI:
“Yes.”
Neither of them looks under the table.
The music grows louder.
The empty cup remains untouched.
MARA:
“Do you think he knows they remembered him?”
Chibi watches the black window beyond the tavern.
Something pale seems to pass behind the glass.
Or perhaps it is only moonlight on the harbour.
CHIBI:
“I think leaving him a drink is safer than finding out.”
Mara nods.
That makes perfect sense.
Tonight, almost nothing else does.
Which rules would your crew keep when all the others fall away?
Enter a Pirate Borg world that remembers what you did: