Storm over the Caribbean

17. The Breadwinner of the Family

"Bloody men! Always staying at home, uselessly idling around, while us hard-working women must go out and work ourselves to exhaustion to put bread on the table! And they have the temerity to have their own opinions? They should just keep their mouths shut and focus on their cooking, their needlework, and their husbandly duties in the bedroom!"

Taking a deep breath, I sagged against a tree. Wow, that was...cathartic. No wonder men were such chauvinistic arseholes!

I had been trekking through the forest for over three hours by now—which I knew because, of all things, miraculously, my pocket watch had somehow survived the shipwrecking. Three hours. And I hadn't found a single morsel of food. Oh, I had found plenty of stuff that could potentially be food—but would I risk eating them? Nah-ah. Not in a million years. The bright, cheerful patterns on those fruits reminded me a little bit too much of some delightfully poisonous snakes I had encountered during my travels with Mr Ambrose.

Not that I had any idea whether that meant that they were actually dangerous. But, well...taking previous experiences into account, I wasn't willing to take the risk.

So, if not fruit, what did that leave?

Animals. Animals of all shapes and sizes. Animals from a thousand different species. And, lastly but most definitely not least important: animals that would have to be hunted.

Oh joy.

Ever so gently, I pushed aside the branch in front of me. There, in the clearing right ahead, stood a small, wild piglet. A small, juicy, damnably delicious-looking piglet. If I hadn't known the feeling came from gathering saliva, I would have thought I suddenly had a waterfall inside my mouth. Slowly, cautiously, I stepped out into the open.

"Good piggy, nice piggy," I whispered, slowly stalking closer. "Be a good little pork roast and stay where you are, will you?"

The piglet continued munching grass peacefully. It showed no reaction. All I heard was a soft grunt from behind me. Excellent. Now I could—

I froze.

Wait...from behind me?

Slowly, I turned my head.

"Oh, um...hello."

The massive mama pig behind me gave me a death stare that somehow, incredibly, could compete with the likes of Mr Rikkard Ambrose. Maybe it was the maw full of giant, deadly teeth?

She opened her maw and roared. Genuinely frigging roared.

Yep, it's the tusks. Definitely the tusks.

"Um...I was just looking. No offense, right?" I cleared my throat. "I mean, I'm sure we can resolve this peacefully, mother to mother?"

The wild boar gave another roar.

"Um...all right, so maybe this doesn't look very good for me, but I promise I didn't mean to—"

The wild boar charged.

"Oh bloody hell!"

I burst out into the clearing, startling the little piglet and sending it scrambling away into the underbrush. Right now, though, I couldn't care less, because...

"Oooiiink!"

Yes, that was why.

The enraged mama pig raced after me, screeching and grunting and growling what I was pretty sure were death-threats in Piganese. Or was it Piggish?

"Ooooink!"

This really isn't the bloody time to think about that, Lilly!

I glanced back, for just a moment—and regretted it an instant later. The mama pig was catching up, fast! And worse...