A Distant Memory

Chapter 3:

Distant Memory

 

 

 Jonah lay on his thin mattress. The mattress lay on a wicker weave, stretched across a steel frame which sat upon four small, foot high poles. The small bed made for one, would shift slightly according to the temper of the sea. And of course, an angry sea would mean Jonah skidding across the wooden panelled floor and to the other side of the room.

 Jonah had his eyes closed, his mind elsewhere. Dreaming of another time he could no longer remember. His father held him above a river. Reeds and tall grass stood around them both. His father looked into his bright green eyes with wonder. Jonah could remember being exhausted, his legs dangled, whilst his father held his ribs. The man’s giant, rough hands felt uncomfortable against Jonah’s naked skin.

 Viktor Harte looked younger at this time. His face untainted by the hardship and gruelling experience that was life as a pirate, captain, husband, and father. His smile was wide, not as toothless. His goatee simple, clean and kept with his black hair tied back. His green eyes smiled, with age not yet cracking his youthful skin. Viktor was twenty-two in Jonah’s memory. Jonah was led away, and the rest was too vague to remember.

 Jonah opened his eyes, the creaking ceiling boards was the picture he fell asleep to, when he was sober. He rolled onto his side and looked across his quarters. A desk braced itself against the wall. Jonah sat up and swivelled, his feet pressing lightly on the wooden boards. He thought. He walked over to the desk, a simple three drawer desk with an oak top. He pulled up the stool that lay on its side and sat. He opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out a small wooden box. He sat the box in front of him and looked at it. It was very small, about a hand span each way, square. Small carvings were intricately etched into the soft mahogany wood. The carvings were symbols of a language Jonah couldn’t speak, and after carefully copying them onto a parchment and showing them around, he found no one who can read them, not even the educated folk in Gratstone. They did however, identify the carvings as tribal.

 Jonah could only imagine where his father had stolen the intriguing box from. But he did remember the day it was given to him. His father had called him into his quarters. Jonah knocked on the door and waited as he was told to do so. He heard the ceremonial ‘enter’, from him father’s gruff voice inside. Jonah entered, his father’s room was purposely built next to the hull with the statue of the woman smiling into the waves. A large bed laden with silk sheets, stolen from the finest nobleman Viktor Harte had the pleasure of sacking. On the walls hung oil paintings, mostly of the sea, Jonah’s father was in love with it, again they were rewards from his pillages.

 “Jonah, I have somethin’ for ya, a partin’ gift to enjoy in whilst I’m gone.” His father stood and walked over to a chest filled to the brim with gold and silver. Coins and medallions of every culture spilled over the edges.

 Jonah’s eyes widened with glee as he rubbed his hands together. Money to spend on women and booze.

 “What is it Pa?” he said with a smile.

 His father came back over to him, “hold out your hands, boy.”

 Jonah obeyed, his father placed the small box into one palm, and a folded parchment sealed with wax into another. Jonah wrinkled his nose and looked at the box with curiosity.

 “What’s inside?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

 “That’s for ya to find out,” Viktor smiled, a single gold tooth stood in a row of dirty ones, “the day ya find what those markin’s mean, is the day the box will open, and ya learn your past.”

 Jonah looked at him with even more curiosity; the symbols engraved on the box meant nothing to him.

 “Jonah?” Jonah looked up from the box, “you’re cap’in whilst I’m gone. Jonah, it’s yours, you’re in charge now, look after your sis and take what ya can. You can open the note after I leave.”

 “When ya comin’ back, Pa?”

 Viktor placed a hand on Jonah’s shoulder. He squeezed to show a small sign of affection, and left Jonah in his quarters, holding a box and parchment.

 Jonah was back in his room; he shook the memory from his mind and pulled open the top drawer of his desk. In it he found a bottle of rum and a glass. He poured himself a shot and downed it in one squeezing his eyes shut as he let the burning clear his throat. He opened his eyes, the green irises thinned to let the pupils enlarge; they focused on the parchment pinned with a dagger to the wooden wall in front of him. The parchment had his father’s scribbling handwriting, it was the note that Jonah looked at every time he drank, or if he couldn’t look at it, he would imagine it. The words imprinted on the back of his eyelids.

‘We found you’.