On
the Twelfth Day of Christmas Anne went to bed and had, Twelve Odd Dreams.
“Got yourself into another scrape?”
Hawkyns couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face at his daughter’s
predicament.
“Just untie me please.” Anne
muttered. Hawkyns cut the bonds around Anne’s wrists and ankles and she managed
to wriggle out of the rest. “I think I’ve had enough for one night.” From the
look of it, many people had already had enough fun for one night. Frobisher was
nowhere to be seen, probably upstairs in one of the rented rooms. She’d have to
make her way back to the ship on her own. It weren’t too far a walk.
The swaying of the ship usually
sent Anne into a dreamless sleep that she would wake from just in time to take
her watch on deck, but that dreamless quality that Anne held dear eluded her.
Anne’s dreams began back in the
small room her mother rented. Anne had grown up in this Inn, the only child of
several floozies who rented rooms. The whole house was empty of people. The
streets were silent. In her dream, Anne ran down the stair and stepped out into
Fleet Street.
The moment that her feet would have
touched the road, the streets of London transformed into a forest. Out of
nowhere, Robin Hood and his Merry Men came racing through yelling about the
sheriff being on their heels. Anne didn’t waste any time in following Robin
through the maze of trees.
Just as Will Scarlet was giving
Anne a hand up into the branches of one of the trees, the branches became ropes
and Anne was back on the Gabriel, tossing in a gale. This dream wasn’t so
unfamiliar, there had been one or two storms at sea during Anne’s voyages. She
gripped a knife between her teeth so that she could cut the lines. One faulty
step, and Anne was sent tumbling down into the sea.
Remarkably, Anne found that she
could breathe underwater, as one often can in dreams. Sirens swam around her
and reached out their arms. They pulled Anne through the waters towards the
surface and Anne crawled out onto a sunny shore of someplace that looked a bit
like Italy (if Anne ever knew what Italy might look like).
A group of people surrounded the
gasping young woman. Their facial features was so exaggerated that they almost
seemed to be wearing masks. Anne couldn’t understand their strangely accented
speech, but after a few moments Anne was hoisted into a hay filled cart and the
group started out on a journey of some sorts.
As she was being pulled, Anne swore
that she saw fey folk trailing them along the road. A blue fish like fey sat
next to her in the cart and few bubbles in her face. Anne’s limbs felt so heavy
that she couldn’t brush him away. Pan, eating a pretzel, appeared not too long
after, making faces as he consumed the salty snack.
The worst was yet to come as more
fey folk joined Anne in the cart, then proceeded to pick up the cabin “boy” and
fly off. The flight itself was terrible, but Anne could have sworn that she had
seen the Normyl sisters somewhere in the sky during her flight.
The fey folk set Anne back down in
Bristol in the middle of a great crowd of foreign looking people. Merchants sold
and hawked their wares under a blistering summer sun. Performers mingled and
showed their tricks and pieces. The rat catcher delighted children with a trick
where he made a mouse pop out of a book. Anne wandered around until she tripped
and found herself face down in the dust of the street at the feet of some high
born lady.
Looking up, Anne gazed into the
face of none other than Queen Elizabeth herself. Scrambling to pick herself up
off of the ground, Anne bowed low and hoped to high heaven that she hadn’t
committed any serious faux pas. Daring to look up, Anne now stared into the
face of a rather spectral dark figure that moved without sound. They were all
about the town of Bristol, and shivers ran up Anne’s spine. One of them touched
her and Anne’s world went dark.
Opening her eyes, Anne found her
next dream world to be in Captain Frobisher’s cabin. Captain Frobisher was
throwing out all of the ship’s rum, insisting that it was from the devil
himself and should not be aboard any self respecting English ship. Anne knew
that this had to be a dream, there was no way that Captain Frobisher would ever
throw out any booze of any sort. Anne hurried from the cabin into an even
stranger scenario.
Outside on the deck of the Gabriel the
crew were fighting with what appeared to be most of the Draco disciples. The
strange part of that scenario was that they were fighting with clothing fabric
and seeing who could come up with the best gown for Queen Elizabeth within half
of an hour. Debating whether or not to go back and help Captain Frobisher
dispose of the rum (and stash some away for her own personal use), Anne looked
over the side of the ship and promptly was shoved overboard for the second time
in her dreams.
This time Anne fell into a mass of
fluffy pillows, or so it seemed. Sitting up, Anne found herself in one of the
lovely but quite impractical noble’s dresses. Afternoon sunlight flooded the
garden of some wealthy estate and another young lady dressed in a green gown
similar to Anne’s was hurrying towards her.
“Anne!” She said in a very familiar
voice, “Anne wake up!”
Anne opened her eyes, on Christmas
Morn, to see a very disgruntled Crew assembled behind John the boatswain. “Anne
wake up!”
“What?” Anne replied blearily,
nearly falling out of her hammock. “Will said he’d take my watch for me!”
“It’s not about the watch lass,”
John sighed. “Captain’s in jail again and we need you to get him out.” He
handed Anne a dress and she sighed.
“I’m gonna kill him one of these
days.” She threw the skirts on over her clothing and laced up the bodice. “Who’s
got the money this time?”
And it was back to business as normal.
Fin.
Well I hope you all enjoyed the most random thing I've ever written in my life. I hope it gives you giggles. I had fun writing this and it was a good lesson for me in keeping to something and seeing a self set deadline through, even if I finished two days late. Thanks for bearing with me.
I'm probably going to let Anne cool off now that I've abused her character for this story. Possibly some Anya stories coming up, or just some random prose that has nothing to do with the characters that I've been playing. For some reason I'm much more protective of those characters than the ones that I act out.
Once again, thanks for letting me post my rubbish.
I nearly cheered aloud during the Robin Hood scene! And what an ending for Anne to actually wake up to. (;
ReplyDeleteThe ending is actually my favorite part of this whole story :P I thought it linked back to the beginning rather nicely, it started with Frobisher, and more or less ended with Frobisher.
ReplyDeleteBecause (of course) it's always been all about Frobisher... :D
ReplyDelete