Nobody's Crew, Everybody's Crew

Copper had no ship. No crew. No flag. No one who saved her a seat at the table or knew how she liked her porridge or noticed when she was gone.

Until the Salted Hen sailed into port.

The Salted Hen was: Crooked in places. Loud in all of them. Crewed by seven pirates who had absolutely no business being a family and were one anyway.

There was Cook who made terrible soup and excellent everything else. There was Big Mira who had arms like oak trees and cried at sunsets which she denied. There was Ned who was afraid of fish which was inconvenient on a boat. There was Old Tam who had sailed every sea and claimed to have opinions about all of them. There was the twins Bix and Box who finished each other's sentences and occasionally each other's meals. And there was Captain Ro.

Captain Ro had a scar through one eyebrow and a laugh like a cannon going off and she had looked at Copper standing alone on the dock with nothing and said: "Well. Are you coming or not."

It wasn't a question.

Copper came.

On the first night Cook saved her a seat. Copper waited for him to take it back. He didn't.

On the second night Big Mira showed her how to tie a proper knot. Copper waited for her to lose patience. She didn't.

On the third night the twins taught her their card game which had rules that changed every time someone was losing and Copper laughed for the first time in a long time.

But.

At night when the Salted Hen rocked gently and the crew laughed below deck Copper sat at the bow and looked at the other ships in the harbour. Normal ships. Ordinary ships. Ships with ordinary families on them she imagined — mothers and fathers and children who had never stood on a dock with nothing wondering if anyone was coming back.

She watched those ships for a long time.

"You're doing the thing," said a voice. Captain Ro. Sitting down next to her without asking the way captains do. "What thing," said Copper. "The looking-at-other-ships thing." Copper said nothing. Captain Ro looked at the harbour. "I used to do it too," she said.

Copper looked at her. "You did?" "Every port. Every ship. Every ordinary family I'd invented for every ordinary ship." She was quiet for a moment. "Took me a long time to notice I'd stopped."

"When did you stop?" said Copper. Captain Ro thought about it. "When I started looking back at my own ship," she said.

She went below.

Copper sat at the bow. She looked at the other ships. Then she turned around.

The Salted Hen was: Lit from inside. Loud from inside. Full of the sound of terrible soup and card games with changing rules and Big Mira definitely not crying at the moon.

Copper looked at it for a long time. Her ship. Her crew. Her seat at the table.

Not the family she had imagined from a dock with nothing. Something else. Something louder and more crooked and considerably more inconvenient.

Something that had sailed into port and not sailed away without her.

Copper went below. Cook handed her a bowl. The soup was terrible. She ate every drop.