ADRIEN, MARINETTE ET LA REINE DES NEIGES

V. Les enfants de la capitaine pirate

The royal couple had filled the carriage with macarons and croquignoles. And the cabin where she travelled on board their yacht, to which Marinette had also received a ticket, and which she had boarded in the northern port, was full of grandeur. On the outside, the sailboat, which was decked with gilt sculptures and a mermaid figurehead, glittered and glimmered in the blue waves, as intensely as a flame, so that it attracted, and nearly blinded, the pirates who waited in ambush behind the rocks of the ocean.
"It cannot be possible," a sinister contralto voice was heard. "This is a royal yacht..."
In the meantime, Marinette was resuming once more to narrate the story of her quest to the captain of the yacht when the lookout suddenly shouted from the crow's nest above:
"Pirates! To starboard, heading towards us!!"
Then everything changed as brusquely and quickly as it could.
"It's gold leaf... Gold leaf!!" the pirates roared, as they swung from the ropes of their gallion onto the deck of the yacht to claim it. Without the slightest of qualms, they shot the captain of the yacht dead, slit the throats of the sailors, threatening them with their weapons... and tore the helpless passenger from her precious cabin.
"What a cutesy and well-fed little lassie," said the pirate captain, a silver-haired bear-like virago of a woman, while she pinched Marinette on the chin. "I wonder how high the ransom that would be paid for her... Now you come with us, my bonnie, and, if we get cross, your days are done, for we want no trouble with someone who might betray us..."
And, without the least delay, with death in her icy blue eyes, she drew a cutlass whose blade dazzled in the light of the sun, tickling Marinette's throat, as the arteries within throbbed, and letting a scarlet rill trickle on her lilywhite skin. By now, the poor captive was convinced that this was her journey's end, when suddenly the old pirate captain let out a scream, and she let Marinette go. Behind her assailant's back, the captain's son, a tall and strapping young scoundrel whose hair shifted in black and bright blue, seemed to be tearing off his mother's plaited ponytail:
"Let her go!" he exclaimed. "I will not let anyone hurt her... This girl will be my friend from now on!"
"Luka is right, Mum," a dark-haired, pale pirate girl in black replied in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. "And besides, I would like to wear red for a change," she asked Marinette to give her the boots and gloves of scarlet silk.
Both siblings insisted so much and so seriously, that in the end their mother surrendered, and they finally got it their way. Though a redoubtable pirate queen, Captain Anarka was also a mother, and the wishes her children made for any of the spoils had always been her soft spot.
The prisoner could not believe her luck: her life was saved because the captain's children had taken a liking to her! Soon, the siblings escorted her on a gangplank across to the pirate gallion.
"Don't worry," Luka told Marinette. "We will not let anyone kill or torture you... Unless, of course, if you make Juleka feel cross..." he motioned to his younger sister, who narrowed her eyes and stared at Marinette with a fixed expression. Juleka looked darkly at the prisoner and pulled out a glinting cutlass from her belt, then drew it across her own throat in a cut-throat gesture as she coldly said: "Don't ya try to run away, or..."
When the whole crew finally boarded the gallion, having tied the yacht to its stern, the captain's children led Marinette into the cabin where they slept. A guitar was hanging on the wooden wall, and soon the young man took it down and put it upon his lap, in front of his sister and prisoner.
"Juleka and I share this one," the pirate prince said as he strummed the strings, without concealing the slightest hint of his pride. And, every night, I gently stroke the strings with my little dagger, to remember that, here on board, it is me who is in charge!" he pointed at the middle of his own chest.
"And now, tell us your story," Juleka said in her matter-of-fact tone, as Luka grinned and Marinette looked at her with a shudder running down her spine.
A teary-eyed Marinette thus braced herself to tell, for the umpteenth time, the same old story:
"Well, I'm not sure if this is a good story... but it's certainly a true one." Then she told the pirates her own story, her search for Adrien, and how the princess and her fiancé had tried to help her. She also recalled that both of them were only children and saw one another as siblings, as she told the story this time to Luka and Juleka. After a while spent in songs, the strings of a guitar, and the stories of their lives, the three of them became great friends. In conversation, they told each other of their joys and sorrows. Fortunately, the siblings were rather nice people for being pirates, Marinette thought. They had not taken her new cloak to wear themselves.
Later on, in the middle of the night, as Luka slumped down to sleep with his guitar in hand, his sister began to speak at last some words relevant to the quest, but still with that fixed expression and in that monotone:
"You have sought this Adrien of yours all over the realm, but you have not found him," the captain's daughter told Marinette. By now, both of them were wide awake. "But I have seen your Adrien..."
"Oh, please, tell me where he is!" Marinette exclaimed.
"I have seen him pass, when I had the lookout watch on the crow's nest, flying overhead in the troika of the Snow Queen. I was lucky to have a warm plaid to wrap myself in, for she breathed upon the tops of our masts, and it all frosted over! It is most likely that the Snow Queen has spirited him away; she has the custom to whisk away young people who once were nice and happy. She lives a few leagues from here, in the Arctic. Surely they were heading towards her ice palace."
Marinette could do nothing but utter a gasp and wring the edge of the plaid for reassurance.
"But you need not fret, shan't you? We have been pirates since childhood, if we ever have been children anytime in our lives spent slitting throats left and right," Juleka wrapped an arm around Marinette's waist. "We know how to manage the sails of a little yacht, in storm or calm or rain, and how to guide ourselves by the stars in the open ocean. If you please, Marinette, we will carry you there..."
In the meantime, Luka snoozed and snored so loudly that even the watch on deck and in the crows' nests could hear him from afar.
"I will go wherever I have to go to find my beloved Adrien. No matter how many shores and seas I have to cross. No matter how many perils we will have to brave."
Early in the morning, over a hefty breakfast of eggs and ham with hardtack, the two girls enlisted the help of Luka for their mission. Of course he was not only glad to help, but even excited to embark on an adventure of their own.
And, all day long, whenever they had spare time from the chores, the three young people began to conspire. In the evening of that day, the siblings accorded, they had to make their captain and mother dead drunk, as well as the watchmen; it was not an easy task, given how well those warlike, muscular people could hold their liquor, but a shot of laudanum from the surgeon's cabinet in their drinks would surely do wonders! And then, once the coast was clear, the three young ones would have to fetch what was needed, make their way down to the yacht and cut the rope that tethered it to the pirate gallion.
It was such a waterproof plan that, to quote Luka himself, it did not even need a brushful of tar.
Thus the hours dragged anxiously by, until, in the end, the sun disappeared beneath the waves in a bloody western horizon. Red sky at night, sailor's delight, they had told Marinette. It was then that, after drinking their evening liquor, all the adults on board, from Captain Anarka to the lookout and the watchmen, felt suddenly worn-out and fell unconscious where they were.
At around the same time, all three adolescents were sliding down the rope that tied the yacht to the stern of the galleon, Luka first leading the way. Marinette's knees buckled with vertigo, but, a vigorous pat from Juleka on the back and a downfall while screaming at the top of her lungs later, the blue-eyed maiden landed in Luka's arms, like a bride carried across the threshold, as he stood on the deck of the yacht, looking rather flustered before he set her down.
Then, Juleka slided down the last, producing from the pack on her back three pairs of sturdy Wellington boots, three sou'wester hats with matching raincoats, and a ham, hardtack, and chocolate, as well as a little keg full of lemonade. All three of them were delighted with their new-found liberty, and the young pirates had even had the kindness to share their provisions and their rain clothing with Marinette as they helped her escape from the pirate gallion. Then, deftly severing the rope with his cutlass, Luka told both girls:
"Allons-y donc! Juleka, unfurl the sails! We shan't make much of a racket, or Mum will wake up and find out our desertion! And of course we shall care quite well for our friend Marinette..."
And that was how, after sailing through storms and fair weather, at breakneck speed over foam-crested ridges of waves and plunging down in between them, they finally landed on the coast of the Far North. In the distance, they saw spectacular lights in all bright colours, accompanied by impressive cracklings and whistlings.
"The Northern Lights..." Marinette gasped in awe.
"Ain't they impressive?" Luka asked her.
"Mais oui, Captain," replied Marinette, astonished; while Juleka said nothing.