The Water Wars - Cameron Stracher [27]
The man rapped once on a steel door at the front of the cinder-block building. In a moment the door opened, and he pushed us inside. The dimly lit room was darker than the night, and my eyes were momentarily blind. I could make out a few candles and then soft fabrics hanging from the walls. Music played quietly—acoustic instruments from an earlier era. Even as my eyes adjusted, however, my brain could not. Curtains, candles, and music were the last things I expected from pirates, and they were a stark contrast from the concrete exterior.
“What kind of children walk the open road?” asked a deep voice from the shadows.
“We weren’t walking,” said Will. “We had our pedicycles.”
“Didn’t get you very far, did they?”
The voice belonged to a man about our father’s age and height. He wore black boots, a gray sweatshirt, and black canvas pants that fit tightly at his waist. He had longish hair, a thick beard, and a tattoo of a small bird on the side of his neck. His nails were clean, and he wore a single yellow band on his left ring finger. His hands were stroking the fur on the heads of two golden-brown dogs.
I stepped back instinctively, but the dogs remained still. “Are you going to kill us?” I asked.
“Kill you? Why would I kill you?”
“You’ve kidnapped us.”
“I haven’t kidnapped you. We found you on the road. You would’ve starved to death if we hadn’t picked you up.”
“Is that why your men chased us and hunted us down?”
The pirate frowned and stopped petting the dogs. “You ran from them.”
“Because they were pirates.”
“What do you know about pirates?”
I considered his question. Everything I knew about pirates, I had learned in school. They were dangerous, lawless men, who would do anything to steal water, including killing and maiming. But it was true that I had never met a real pirate, and didn’t know anyone who had.
“Pirates steal water,” said Will, “water that’s meant for other people.”
The pirate laughed, deep and rich. His hair bounced on his shoulders like something alive. “Governments steal water,” he said, “water that doesn’t belong to them.”
Will stared at the pirate but didn’t say anything else. Water belonged to whoever drilled or refined it, and pirates certainly did neither. They took the water collected through the hard work of others.
“So now what are you going to do with us?” I asked.
“What should I do?” asked the pirate.
“Let us go.”
“Can’t do that, little sister. How will you get home? It’s dangerous out there for children.”
Of course the pirate was right. There was nothing but rocks and sand between here and home. Even if we could get back across the border now, we could never walk hundreds of kilometers without water. And even if we could, bandits or coyotes would surely get to us. We were trapped with bad men in a foreign republic. I bit my lip to stop myself from crying again.
“We’re not children,” said Will, annoyed.
I expected the pirate to laugh, as shakers usually did when kids insisted they were grown up. But instead he did something strange. He raised his head and looked off into the distance as if he could see something there. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”
“Will you let us go, then?”
The pirate returned his gaze to Will, and then he did laugh. “Do I look like a fool? Let you run straight to the army?”
“We won’t. We promise!” said Will.
“A boy’s promise. That’s pretty.”
“It’s worth more than a pirate’s.”
“You have a lot to learn about pirates.”
I knew what Will was thinking: The farther we went, the harder it would be to get home. The harder it was to get home, the less likely we were to ever see our parents again—traveling