Haley The Dreamer Haley slept to dream. Only to dream. Others slept for the necessity the need or the urge. Haley only slept because dreams were better than living. Dreams are what she lived all day for, at the night she would have them. She would transform into the dream, and she would be thrilled with the sheer beauty. Then she would wake and find her mind seething for it could not dream in full while she was in the waking hour.Yes her mother said she kept her head in the clouds, her sisters said she day dreamed all day. She knew them to be wrong she would only dream the way she loved to when she was in bed. She knew she was meant to dream. Only to dream. She dreamed of a land where #life was not what it was, she dreamed of a boy who never liked adventure. Of a beast, of a lamp of a tree. Of the bald boy lost in grayness to tiny to see. This girl dreamed only to hold what was true this girl only dreamed, this girl was you.

Peter Part I Death of the pirate lady The sea is the same, the sea is wide and broad and huge. Every inch of it water, every square as the next. The wind blew us on the way to my doom. Why do my brothers enjoy this? It’s cold and there is so very much water. I pulled the jacket my eldest brother Jared had given me before this wooden hand of my fathers had picked me up and whisked me off, it was far too large I could do nothing with my hands. I pulled it taught around me, maybe if I held on hard enough my eldest brother would come and protect me. “Don’t worry pete it’s a easy sail. You’re not expected to do anything. We’ll meet you on the island, six days okay?” I pulled the coat tighter. I still shook with the chill of the wind. “little boy? Move ou’ o the way!” The captain hired by my father to pay special attention to my safety thunked on me with the wooden part of his arm. “How’d ya get on anyway? Were pullin’ precious cargo, this here vessel. This here vessel be a royal one. We be ‘ployed to the king, we be. tras’potn his son we are.” I turned. and blinked at the captain and touched my head gently. It hurt. Not that I’d tell him or my father it was a mistake, he didn’t deserve to lose his job -as he surly would- over that. He blinked at me and grunted out something about ropes and sea air and forgiveness and told me off for being above the deck and showed me under. Not that I needed help finding were I had been shown to by multiple sailors after multiple accidental thunking’s over the corse of the past three days. It made me wonder how many stowaways they could have regularly for me to be mistaken as one every day. I curled in the bed I had been given and stared out the port hole at the same damp scene I had seen for three days. Where I was sleeping wasn’t bad, it was where the captain normally slept. Going by the way he held himself he had back problems and required a good mattress like this one. He had become progressively more bent each day. I had already offered to let him become straightened in his own bed, he had refused. Pride. Why? I never understood pride. I curled tighter. Maybe that’s why I was such a lousy prince. KA BAM KA BOOM KA-KA BOOM-BAM Ice struck and I was frozen. That was the sound of a tree, unmistakably just expanded by the ship.. When I was younger a tree had been blown over during a bad storm. It had made a similar sound as it fell. The water was calm and there were no trees, no trees with the exception of the mast of the ship. The mast is a tree like it always is. With it’s long rope branches reaching down to grab the ship and hold it off the water. I held the jacket tight. One of the sailors, possibly the only one who had never thwacked me, slid like water into the room. “Come with me.” he grabbed my hand and pulled me off the bed. “we need to go before they realize you’re the cargo.” he slipped me up on one arm near to him. “I’m sorry for doing this, I beg you to realize under the circumstances it’s better for them to think me to be smuggling a few extra helpings then to think I am smuggling the youngest son of the king.” He buttoned his jacket around me. His was large for him for although his thick coating of years lifting and hoisting he was thin. I wondered where he had gotten the jacket. I wondered if his older brother had given it to him. He left one sleeve unfilled to hold me against him. I felt him slide out of the cabin onto the main deck. The noises of a battle gave his sneaking an exciting backdrop. I felt him slide to the side and begin to get his leg over to the small #lifesaving dingy. I felt him stop before touching the ladder. “That is a mighty fine coat.” A wrinkled voice said. It wheezed out a laugh. “it’s not though but I’ll have it anyhow since ya’ don’t got any cargo.” The sailor squeezed me tightly. “My coat? the captain has a much better one if ye fancy a new one.” “The captain gets the captain’s coat. Though he have far more captain’s coats than he ever wears. But tradition be tradition and I be needin’ a new coat.” “If you hurry you may be able to...” The voice cut him off with a swing of the sword down his belly almost hitting me and quite effectively shredding the coat. We tumbled to the ground. I felt exposed lying on the deck. Even more so once I saw the Pirates. The deck was covered in three times as many people as had a right to be there. the ones that did were bound with whatever the pirates had around rope, bandanas. the unfortunate captain had what looked like old dirty under cloths tied across his mouth and a scowl on his eyes. He didn’t have his coat. The man in the captains coat was clean shaved and tall with hard adventurous eyes and a bandana tied across his hair. It surprised me how much he looked like my eldest brother. “Ah Derhium what have you found.” He swished his way over and bent above me. He grabbed me by my coat and pulled me vertical above the deck. The neckless bearing my family stamp pulled up in his hand. He dropped me to the ground. “Ah Derhium.” He pated the man who had sliced me from the sailor. “You have found the ships cargo.” He turned. “Take him to Carl on the ship. let the crew go we need them to send a message. No need to take the valuables.” “Not the valuables sir?” “None but the boy.” “The boy?” “The only valuable we take is the boy. Don’t scuff him we need to sell him at full price.” The captain cackled and I heard the sea and the hardships the darkness and the light inside him and I heard the chorus bells of all his wickedness. And I was very very scared. “ Tell Carl that she is in the presence of royalty. Introduce her the Prince Peter the seventh son of King Isaac the third.” Carl turned out to be a pirate woman who cooked for the crew. When she heard what the man who brought me had to say she yelled at him. “Who does that captain think he is?!? That poor boy you have there is no more than five. And here he is holding him ransom? That man is a menace on all our conciseness! Billy never acted this way. Ever. Holding a young boy ransom well I never the poor dear. Come come and out of my kitchen you ransoming pirate!” I wasn’t sure who she wanted out me or the pirate. She grabbed me and pulled me deep into the hollows to the oven to get warm. “What is you’re name?” “Peter.” “Peter, thats a sweet name. So young and innocent hold on to that name yeah?” I nodded “My name is Carlina Torinino. Call me Carl.”I blinked at her. “Not a pirate though just a pure bread pirate lady.” I pulled my coat as she explained it, and everything I was to be held ransom to my father, for a lot. I wondered if he’d pay. I would never be king, I had six brothers all ten to more years older than I was. I pulled my jacket and thought of Jared, he was my eldest brother and the next in line. He would be a good king a better crown then my father. I wish he was here, he kept me near even though we were far apart in years. Carl talked me into dreams, and I lay by the stove dreaming of the castle and of land. I woke to the cooked smell of warmth. I moved from the now unbearable warm spot by the stove. She was talking in a second “Here eat something and I will tell you a story.” She sat with me by the stove eating, I was starved but watched her closely. She was looking far away. “Yesterday you heard me say a name. Billy, that’s what I called him Billy, the world knew him as Black Beard. This was his ship.” She looked up past the ceiling to the hollows and bellows and board the wood and the curves sank down and were reflected in her eye. “I loved him. More then anything, too much, far far too much. But he loved me, not purely for a pirate may never be pure in all his dealings never is he allowed to be pure. He was as close as a pirate, as a man ever came. He was the best damn pirate I ever knew. And I grew up knowing a lot of pirates. He stole many a thing, especially hearts, and he took mine full and true and set it up on a little golden dais in his cabin. I was an angry sort and took his in replacement. He hadn’t had anybody ever do that so within a week of the first theft we were wed. Soon after about ten years into our endless voyage a brand new troupe of pirates right off the shore thought of the best way they could think of to prove their worth. They were going to take on the biggest scoundrel of them all, my husband. The crew should have been able to throw them down to the locker in seconds but there were too many and they had the pretty little thing of surprise. So we were taken by our own breed and so my husband the greatest pirate who ever walked the seas was thrown to his object of joy. The crew were out of work then so the leader offered them a job, doing what they know. They took it, for all the praise I have for pirates, they have no loyalty especially to a dead man who doesn’t pay. Me being the only women on board and the men being hungry decided I should cook, and every day of every year since I started I spit in that awful captain's food hoping someday it’ll poison him. I’m telling you all this boy because your father will blow this vessel down to sea as soon as you’re gone. And I be damned if Billy dies with me.” I stared down at the floor boards knowing she was probably right. I may not be my father’s favorite son, but I wasn’t his least favorite either. We heard shouting from the deck. I heard a cracking noise after canon fire. Then the scuffling sounds of a battle. “What did I tell you boy? You’re father is the most powerful man on this side of the water. He has no reason to pay this ransom. The captain is stupid he should have killed you first. Now are you straight on all the details boy?” I nodded that I was. “Good. I had expected more time to push it into you. Apparently when the king’s son is in danger the fastest ships are sent at the fastest speed.” The stairs leading to the kitchen were hurried down, my second oldest brother slipped under the curtain with wild wide eyes. He had a sword on his hip. He saw me immediately. “Peter!” He saw Carl standing by me and ran over scoping me up as he ran, he went to push her. “No John stop no!” He turned to look down at me. “She wasn’t trying to hurt me. Let her be.” “Peter, she’s a pirate.” I grabbed tight to him. “John, take me home...I don’t like boats please!” He held me close rocking gently. He gave Carl one last uneasy look before deciding I was safe with him. He ran into the battle, I saw all of my brothers flying and swinging at the pirates who had taken me. John shouted and they slipped gently out of the battle and into a smaller boat and from there a bigger one. I sat on the deck shivering slightly. “Oh Peter I gave you that coat to keep you warm.” Jared found me. He scoped me up and went to the side of the boat. Just in time to say goodbye to Carl as the pirate boat disappeared in a burst of red taking her down to her love. I watched it go down and couldn’t help thinking, I knew he wouldn’t pay. Part II sleepy returns “NOW!” I heard my father’s voice bomb through the bells of the ship, it was as if he was the ship and the ship was him enveloping each other, until they twisted together as one, echoing and speaking together. “WHERE IS THE MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS” I saw the captain who had thwacked me not two days ago was dragged on to the deck. He could have walked it seemed to me for he was not injured but he seemed to feel as though he hadn’t the need to hurry this for himself, like a child who had accepted they must bathe but didn’t see any reason it had to be immediate. It reminded me of taking medicine. They drooped the bag of captain at my fathers bootstraps. The poor old captain made a face like a sad little dirty worm lying at my fathers boots. My father treated him as such. “You are the man who allowed my son, my youngest little boy, no more than four, to be taken by pirates. Ransomed, and kidnapped?” “We trie’d sire we ‘tempted to keep da `ittle ‘ord s’fe” His salty sea speak worsened with fear. “When I hired you I was under the assumption you could were intelligent enough to keep a boy of four on your ship for six days time” I clung tighter to Jared and earthquaked back in forth in his arms, I could no longer count the times I had heard my father use the cold poison in his voice but it always frightened me. Jared held me tighter and shimmied his hand along my back. My father drew his foot back and I shoved my head into Jared’s neck just in time to feel him call out “Father!” Jared’s voice was sharp and rang out short and clear like a drum tapped once tightly on the head. “Jared, this must be done we can not allow such carelessness, especially when it comes to Peter.” Father stopped using his ice and used his lesson voice instead. “I know.” Jared’s voice softened to cotton and he rocked me slowly, “but, father Peter has had enough for today, he doesn't need to see this as well.” I peeped my eyes above Jared’s shoulder at father. He sighed the long sigh of knowing his son was right and he was not. “Jared.” He said his voice was soft and starchy, slow and tired. He held out his arms. “give him here.” In the death of silence that followed Jared rocked me slowly into father’s arms. I pulled his coat tighter, shivering. Father smiled at me kindly “Peter.” I stared at him and shivered. “how are you feeling little one?” “I just want to go home.” I said sloppily. “I don’t like boats” I sounded tired, I was tired I wanted to sleep at home on dry land. “yes, yes, we are still expected at the island though Peter.” “oh” I looked at the small silver buttons I was clinging to on his coat. One was tarnished and it’s small thread tentacles were loosening from his coat. “It’s little over a days sail we will be on dry land before you know it Pete.” Simon my third oldest brother piped in, smiling in an attempt to cheer me up. “Plus you’re with us now it won’t be so bad, easy sailing, as they say.” “I just want to go home.” My voice cracked like ice, the river leaked through and I began to cry, clinging to my father. Father sighed and held me tight. “I know little one, it is a visit to a very old friend for his daughter’s birthday, and you know our not being there would cause questions, and questions would cause concern, before you knew it little one, people would say that your father is losing his touch” he taped my nose gently another fruitless effort to cheer me up, he laughed warmly and looked down at the worm captain. “Take him to the brig, I wish to reunite my family.” He gave me into John’s care. “Take him down to rest and get warm I will join you as soon as I sort out what I need to to make sail for the island” On a royal ship with my father on it there was no captain. John who was the oldest after jared and the rest of my brothers whisking after him headed to the royal suite. Where I was immediately buried under blankets, careful clinical looks, and questions. “Are you hurt?” “Do you need something to eat?” “Where does it hurt pete?” “Drink?” “Have another blanket.” “what did they do to you?” “Pillow?” “apple?” “Did they feed you?” “how long where you on board?” “Hot water bottle?” “Bread?” With each question I shrank a bit more disappearing into the soft blankets of my father’s bed, they asked so many questions I was surprised they could see me at all, at this point I should be completely gone and all they would see was the little fold in the blankets where I had been. I began to shake again when Jared’s entrance stopped many of them mid-query. “Brothers!” He said surprised. “Give our poor little one space you’re scaring him! has the boy not had enough fright?” He swoshed down to the bed and I dragged over into his lap. He held me to him and arranged the blankets so I was cozy but close to him. “Sleep, Peter.” He said, his voice sounded like lullaby music like the very sweet, very few, memories close to my chest of my mother. “We will stay right here. No pirates will hurt you, you’ll feel better when you wake.” I followed his musical voice and sloshed into dreams in his arms. When I woke I felt no better, the slosh swish and crash of the sea was lapping at my insides and I felt even more like a little puddle of seawater moped up from the deck then I had before. Jared was gone in his place was several thick pillows and blankets. My clothes had been removed and replaced with lose cotton pants and a old long shirt I looked like a loopy cotton rabbit with ears from all angles, for the clothes were much too large. I fell myself the great distance from where I was laying to the floor dragging a thin warm blanket over me.I headed to the crack of light flitting it’s dragon tong under the door, I heard the low dragon belly rumble and I followed it into the room. “-A boy! we should be taking him straight home!” “We must make at least an appearance! for state reasons! The Gemagolds have never even seen Peter we must at least present him!” “He isn’t going anywhere! it can wait!” “do you really want to miss her birthday?” “I don’t but-Peter?” I rubbed my eye with my rabbit eared sleeve. “what are you doing up little one?” I made a noise in response to father’s question. Jared plopped me onto his lap. “How are you little one?” I cuddled closer, he was much comfier than the bed. He laughed kind and throaty. “Sleepy still I see.” He let out a little laugh, and then a short sigh. “you want to go home don’t you little one?” I bobbed my head against his chest and nuzzled closer. I often cozied to Jared when I was scared or needed help being coaxed into sleep. “ I want to take you home more than anything my little one, but Lady Jessica, the Gemagolds only daughter is promised to Jared as a wife, her birthday as the future queen is a state event, the royal family must go.” I look to the wood table for how to answer. “There is no way around it Pete.” Simon encourages, “If there was thats what we would do.” Jared let out a long sigh and looked down at me “You can do this, Peter you don’t even have to do anything, you just have to be there, I’ll even carry you in to meet Lady Jessica, it will be as short as we can manage, just a week, seven days, deal?” I give the wood a minute to help me think and nod shortly. My brothers cheered and scuffed up my hair, Jared smiled at me gently and nodded. All of us trickled out slowly and into bed.

I Am The Bookcase “Mamma? Why is that boy over there bald?” the boy was saying. “Garry it’s rude to stare.” No no stare all you want, I thought peeking from my window. This is the most human intercourse I get until nanny pulls me further into the gloomy maze of doors that holds me within her bird like clutches. I stared at the boy. I stared as if I were the sledge hammer and he the water mellon. Smashing his insides with my eyes but they kept moving along outside where I could not go. I slid down to the grey floor with it’s grayness staring up blankly to me like a dead corpse’s eye. I stared at the wall with its wooden bookcase all the way up. Big cold and wooden. The whole house looked like a home that had been long since forgotten. Like a small cat that no longer received any love. A thing without love? That’s what I am. I am the thing where there’s no love or hope. The thing without place or reason. I am that old book you opened once with purpose and interest that was set aside and forgotten, never opened but once. I am this house, I am the bookcase. Forgotten not loved. I stared at the bookcase, and I thought. The bookcase feels the same way I do, I know this because I see. The bookcase is full, full of knowledge of truth. This bookcase holds thousands of letters of pages. Not one of these volumes of lonesome purpose has ever been opened when I have been here and there has been very little time that I was not here. I am part of the house for I never leave. I am a bookcase. I lean back and close my eyes. I must sleep because then I wake up in another grey room in the house. I know it is not the same room for the bookcase is no longer there. In it’s place is a painting and there is no longer a window. The rest of the room is lavishly decorated like most of the house but it couldn’t be more of pure and total discomfort if it tried. The painting was of children playing, laughing it is very dull and hideous. I hate it. Artful perfected strokes form their way across the page, there are bright colors so vivid and bright. It all looks like mud. Mud because it melds with the place it was put in this wood and brick cage of mine. Nanny enters, with a beam of contrasting light behind her. “This.” Says my warden gesturing to the contrasting light “is Esmeralda.” “Hello.” She has a stark linen dress that flounces just below the knee and perfect blue bows in her hair that falls in a wild mane of rings round her face. The mane is a color trapped between mud and sunlight and her eyes are a dull blue that wavers lightly in the rooms depressing light. Nanny bows and leaves. I stare at the girl with disinterestedly fogged eyes. She blinks like some sort of night bird back. Then she sharpens her gaze to a point. She shimmies her eyes from my face to feet and back. Turning up her nose she breathes shortly out crossing her arms. “If your not going to say anything I’m going to leave.” She swivels round her heel to the door. “And that painting is dreadful.” The door bangs shut behind her. I sink my seat. It’s been more than a day maybe less before Esmeralda re enters. Her dress has been painted green but is otherwise unchanged and her ribbons have remained constant. She marches into the room and I react as if she hadn’t. She stomp stomp stomps her way right up into my nose and bends over till all I can see is muddy hair and dull blue eye. “Do you talk?” No. I am a bookcase. “Good. Papa says you’re dying.” I say nothing by way of conformation. “Papa also says I have to be nice to you. He says we need to be friends.” She stops and looks from my face to feet again. “Do you want to be friends with me?” I turn my head to one side then the other. She disappears and does not return. I stay in my prison lying in desperate wait of the one event that can free me from these hallowed halls of grey. I do not see Esmeralda again. I think about her sometimes but not often. I do not care. One day I am older and still I have not been allowed out from the grayness. Esmeralda comes back to see me. She sits on the edge of the chair facing mine and tells me of #life beyond the grayness, she tells me she understands me now and it’s okay. She forms words so I don’t have to. I feel blessed. This is the only time in which I was able to let the grayness be grayness. I was not part of the grayness I was me I was free. I played as a child should and forever each day it was only us. Never anyone else. She would laugh and I would be tight lipped and happy. I was so drawn and so awed by the sheer whiteness of it all I forgot the pain because it didn’t matter anymore. Oh how wrong I was how very very wrong. Esmeralda could not stay forever every day she did not have nothing to do. she would have to not come back at time. But she came back always again and we would have our forever again. Soon though the playing became hard, and she had to leave and not come back for a bit. It was not suposed to be long. She said it would not be long. She lied. It was during this time that the event every man waits for began for me. She was not there when it began nor there when it ended or anywhere in between. It was on my last day that I spoke my first word. It was not easy, but I wanted to. I needed to. “Eh-zi.” ************************* A girl sat on a stool her long curly auburn hair fell down past her shoulders her brilliant blue eyes filled with tears as she red the letter informing her of her friends death. She held it to her heart and wept. “Papa how awful!” She cried. “You knew he was dying dear, no one could have done anything.” “All these people!” She cried. “All these people see the world blandly but I saw he made me see it right! I could name I thousand people that should fill his place in the grave!” “Esmeralda! Esmeralda my dear! Don’t say such things!” “No. No, it’s true and please” She swallowed and looked her father in the eye “call me Ezie.” She looked down at the letter and smiled through her tears. Don’t worry dear friend she thought we had forever and someday in the distance we’ll have it again.