I don't go tellin' this to just anybody, but Jack Sparrow ain't the name me mam called me. She was a savage, me mam, a queen / witch / priestess / chief's bastard daughter. [Choose one as applicable or insert your own.] The name she gave me was Tsaga'auweh. No, no, not like that. Try again: you want to stop between the "ga" and the "ow" like you're goin' to cough; only you don't. That's the way! Now (an' even One Arm Ned down at the Anchor could count on his fingers how many people know this) what Tsaga'auweh means is Flock of Small Birds, 'cos that's what caught her eye the day she named me, see? That's how her people choose names. 'Course, no-one could say Tsaga'auweh, so it got shortened to Jack, for Mam was a long way from home by then: I was born an' raised in a whorehouse / palazzo / pirate ship / tavern / man'o'war...

The variations are endless, and often so are Jack's stories, but what he'll never mention is how he came to hate his first name after that terrible, helpless journey from the whorehouse where he'd spent his short life.

For what felt like weeks, they travelled inland (hence clearly, as far as Jack was concerned, in the Wrong Direction) across marsh, forest, hills, and plains, his mother feverish and coughing, giving out their few coins for a cramped seat in a leaky boat or a bumpy wagon. Jack had no say in where they went (not that this stopped him protesting). All he could do was scan the stars to keep track of the direction, memorise landmarks, and try to gauge the distance covered; because one day, somehow, he was going back.

His mother's village, when they eventually stumbled into it, was small, well organised, and hospitable—up to a point. In return for looking after Tsehu'alee and her soon-to-be-orphaned children, the latter were to live like civilised folk, and express their gratitude for by never mentioning their old lives or forgetting their lowly status. This was not Jack's idea of fun.

Suddenly, what used to be a secret name shared only with his mother and sisters was the only name no-longer-Jack owned, and its shortcomings got on his nerves. Why "Small Birds" for heaven's sake? Why "Flock"? What was wrong with "Bloody Terrifying Massive Great Eagle"? Better still, "Sea Eagle"? Mam was always saying he'd be a sailor, after all, even though he had yet to see the actual ocean.

He missed the noisy, brandy-scented whorehouse parlour, the kitchen warm with baking and full of scraps waiting to be snaffled by hungry children; he missed sailing logs around the swamp guided by the stars. Most of all he missed his biggest sister, Nancy. No more Notlvsi for her: she was old enough to stay behind and earn her living at the whorehouse. Jack's other sister, once Sally, but now forever Saloli was never lively company, still less after she took to life in the village like one born to it.

Lucky old Saloli, thinks Jack bitterly; but it's Nancy he envies. For him, the routine of growing corn (hard and dull), respecting elders (dull and frequently impossible), religious observance (mind-numbingly dull), and warrior training (terrifying until he figures out it's all a sham, then just silly—and dull) has grown ever harder to bear, even as other difficulties (the language, his foreign looks) have lessened. Grandmother is the only one who seems to see things his way; she's friendlier and funnier than he'd expected from a sorceress, and he likes it when she lets him help out with her charms and spells. But it's not enough.

His mother dies during the second winter. Within days, Jack is paddling his canoe towards the place where, on his first night in the village, he watched the second star in the Chicken-Headed Goat's tail climb over the horizon. At last, he's headed back to the whorehouse where he was born, but mostly just headed away from all that damned chanting and corn.

The constellation Jack calls the Chicken-Headed Goat (having catalogued the night sky after someone told him this was how sailors found their way at sea) isn't, in fact, visible because it rises and sets during daylight in winter. But he knows the sequence of stars that rise in the same segment of sky, so that's not a problem. What is a problem is finding navigable water so he doesn't have to walk all the way through the woods and hills, over the plains, and into the swamp. That and finding anything to eat.

Jack's paddle is a flat stick, helped along by his legs kicking the water on either side. As for the canoe itself, Jack is aware that some people might overlook its finer qualities due to the unfortunate lack of time, tools, and skills needed to hollow out his... craft. (He steadfastly refuses to think the word log.) A born sailor such as himself can appreciate the vessel's remarkable canoe potential.

In fact, with the backward-pointing branch on the hull to serve as a keel, it's really an embryonic boat! As such, it deserves a proper name, so, using a good dollop of river water, one of Granny's spells and as much as he can remember of Aggy's rosary (in case the spell proves insufficiently nautical), he christens it the Wicked Wench after the establishment to which he plans to travel. He has to break off the keel in the shallowest swamps and even crosses a couple of dry places that force him to beach his canoe and find a new one on the other side, but the name travels with him all the way home.

~

The whorehouse looks good. Someone's repainted the sign, rejuvenating the carved wench who, in Jack's opinion, looks not so much wicked as well fed and scantily dressed, albeit he's been told the writing above her head says different. René and Dorcas are sitting in the shade smoking and peeling potatoes (René doing most of the smoking while Dorcas peels). They don't notice Jack and his canoe gliding along the creek, but they look up, startled, when he climbs the bank and starts walking towards them.

He's not sure how he imagined this moment, but it never occurred to him that they'd fail to recognise him. When they do—quite spectacularly—he decides to take it as a compliment. It's not just the longer hair and strange clothes: he's grown up in a year and a half. Truth be told—and it occasionally will be—Jack's pretty impressed with himself: locating one small whorehouse across many miles of unknown country is no mean feat for a boy who still has to use a half-size bow.

In later years, he'll try to incorporate his first voyage into the history of the great pirate he'll have become. It's a challenge, because the full glory of the achievement tends to be dulled by censorship of certain elements (being dragged against his will to a landlocked village that doesn't appreciate his finer qualities; starving half to death on a floating log because he's not very good at spearing fish or aiming effectively at passing squirrels). Mostly, all that survives is the name of the first vessel Captain Jack Sparrow ever commanded.

"Jackie?" quavers Dorcas, as if he hadn't introduced himself three times already. "Julie's boy?"

"Returned to you from an epic an' arduous voyage!" he replies, doffing an invisible hat and sweeping a bow, for he still remembers how fancy folk behave in the big world beyond the village and he intends to be part of that world again.

"Don't just stand there, René. Fetch Nancy!"

Then he's enveloped in Dorcas' fleshy hug and not released—or indeed permitted to breathe more than the bare minimum necessary to sustain consciousness—until Nancy comes down. She's grown too. She wears her hair up like a proper lady and there's paint on her face (both a bit out of place it's true, but Jack loyally supposes this is the height of elegance for a person sleeping off a hard night's work). And her threadbare shift lifts and falls and, well... swells, around, over, and amongst a generous helping of fantastically female curves. Jack can hardly believe this woman is his scamp of a big sister. She's taller than him, so he has to hug upwards, but he pats her comfortingly as she sobs into the top of his head.

Everyone's come out to gawp now. He gives them his best smile and wave, stepping back from Nancy and suddenly feeling rather dizzy. Next thing he remembers, he's sitting at the big wooden table. Dorcas has just set a huge, steaming bowl of stew in front of him.

"Eat up, Jackie!" she exhorts (unnecessary, but appreciated). "You look starved half to death! I dunno what Julie's people eat, but you can't've got very much of it, eh?"

He wants to tell her he's had enough bloody corn to last the rest of his life and has become rather expert at catching fish, thank you very much—not to mention the one squirrel—but his mouth's full of bread and stew so he just grunts, shakes his head, and shovels in another spoonful. A bowl of stew, a certain amount of beer, and a lot of questions later, Jack's well into his tale. His mother's death arouses murmurs of regret, but no surprise: they knew Julie was going home to die. What they want is the manner of it, which could pose a problem...

"I'm glad she made it home," Aggy reflects sagaciously, "for all it was among heathens. She never wanted to die a whore."

"Hush!" says someone.

"Aye! Better to live as one, eh?" calls Daisy, which gives rise to a general round of laughter and drinking to that. In the ensuing confusion, Jack manages to refill both his cup and his fancy.

"What you may not be aware of," he begins, raising his voice over the din, but then waiting for it to subside before he continues. "What you may not be aware of is that my mother, Julie, or more properly Tsehu'alee," (his imitation of a catarrhal elder nicely exaggerating the name's ungodly sounds) "counted as minor royalty among her people."

This is greeted with some cynicism.

"You may scoff," Jack concedes graciously, "for these are, after all, but simple savages who have royalty the way more civilised folk have..." He casts around for a station that is elevated yet plentiful. "...tavern keepers or ships' captains."

This seems to go down well. Big Alf, proprietor of the Wench, grins broadly.

"Tsehu'alee came from a wealthy and powerful family—by local standards, naturally. Indeed, 'twas for that very reason she was forced to leave."

Nancy is giving him funny looks, but he can talk to her later, in private. It is, he feels, a stroke of genius to turn the awkward fact of Mam's exile into proof of her exalted rank.

He pauses for effect and a gulp of beer. It tastes heavenly after a year and a half with no alcohol whatever (except for that time he and Mam tried to ferment corn mash, with mixed results). Soon, he has them rapt with the tale of the Princess Who Could Not Marry. (In Jack's version, this is not because nobody wants the odd-looking daughter of the village witch and an outlandish stranger on the run from something he never explained, but because all the tribe's high-ranking single men have been slain defending their homeland.)

Boldly, Princess Tsehu'alee set forth to seek a man worthy to renew the blood of the tribe. (Buzzard in a Tree would have a few words to say about her decision to seek this paragon of manhood in a trading post whorehouse, but Jack's current audience seem to have no problems with it.) Many years later, she returned home in triumph—without a husband, true, but with two fine children. Tragically, however, Queen Tsehu'alee's quest had robbed her of her health: she passed away with dignity and grace, surrounded by her grief-stricken subjects.

To the dismay of all, the Queen was succeeded by her wicked uncle Squashed Beetle (which sounds fearsome as long as you don't translate it), who sent poor Jack to toil in the cornfields for his daily bowl of gruel. But Squashed Beetle's daughter fell in love with Jack despite his now lowly status, and vowed to marry none other. Her father threw her into prison, but the beautiful Tits Like Coconuts escaped. (He doesn't translate that either, but Nancy chokes on her grog and has to be slapped on the back before the story can continue.)

Together, the young lovers stole a war canoe and fled towards the coast, but Squashed Beetle and his men caught up with them; Tits Like Coconuts was slain; Jack fell unconscious into the river, and was left for dead. On waking several miles downstream, only his extraordinary stamina, ingenuity, and knowledge of the heavens enabled him to return, battered but unbowed, to the land of his birth.

"Won't they come after you?" asks Aggy, wide-eyed.

"Doubt it," assures Jack, with unfeigned confidence. "They think I'm dead, don't they? Anyway, how'd they find this place?"

They never let him forget how he failed to track a deer through sand in broad daylight (damned wind kept blowing the sand around, didn't it?) So how'd they guess he'd kept track of the stars on his journey to the village and used them to guide his way home so he hardly set foot on dry land? (And he'd like to see those smug deer trackers bring down a squirrel with one stone and steer a canoe at the same time—even if it was only the once.)

"That's all very well, Jackie lad," says Alf with a leer. "But how're you gonna to earn yer keep in a whorehouse? We's clean out of princesses with wicked uncles, in case ye'd not noticed, an' the sailors as comes through mostly wants what they sees on the sign: an actual wench."

"With tits like coconuts." Nancy adjusts her own pair and eyes Jack's flat chest with a rueful grin.

"Not all of 'em, I bet."

Jack does his best to look knowing and authoritative (which in a way, he is, warrior training having had its more stimulating moments).

"An' anyway I can do jobs, an' pick pockets an' stuff." He casts around for something more novel and manly. "I could go into town and trade for things: tell people 'bout the Wench—bring in more trade."

~

To everyone's surprise—not least Jack's—this is pretty much how things, in fact, turn out. When he's not voyaging around the swamp on his canoe or lying around with the whores, telling stories and braiding beads into each others' hair, he sees to it that vegetables get peeled, grates emptied, wood chopped, and floors more-or-less, as and when absolutely necessary, mopped.

Everyone learns that Jack works better when not ordered about, and that the louder and cruder a man shouts on his way in, the likelier it is, after few drinks, that he'll be slipping quietly upstairs with Jack.

As often as he can manage, Jack takes the boat up the creek to fetch flour and brandy. His youth and inexperience are a magnet for traders with sharp eyes and glass beads.

"See how they shine? Every one fit for a king an' worth a doubloon if it's worth a penny, but to a fine lad such as yerself, I'll let '~em go for three bits, savvy?"

Jack thanks them politely and explains that he savvies all too well. Then he makes his way to the warehouses and taverns. He generally returns to the Wench laden with a welcome—if unpredictable—assortment of cut-price supplies, woozy with complimentary alcohol, and followed by admiring new friends with broad grins and jingling pockets.

He's home, and he's happy. For a while, he almost forgets that he's still not a sailor.

~

Tall Ship Tales

Prologue 1 (Tale Minus One): Shine
Prologue 2 (Tale Zero): Names


Tall Ship Tales 1: A Keel
Tall Ship Tales 2: A Hull
Tall Ship Tales 3: A Deck
Tall Ship Tales 4: Sails
Tall Ship Tales 5: A Ship