"She is a ray of sunshine . a rain of warm summer . a bright fire of a cold winter's day ."

Imran Shaikh

Chapter 3

The Rock

Few days before a large ship with grey sails mounted on its masts was anchored outside of the eastern Elk island rocky coast.

To harness the power of wind and propel the vessel fast the sails was huge.

The dark sail's was almost covering half of the sky when they were full extended, if you could see the ship coming in front of your boat in the harbour.

The main body of the ship the hulk was from dark hard wood almost black in colour.

The 'Rock'' was its name and it was a new ship ,no more than a year in the sea.

During the day the ship was full of activity as the maintenance of such a huge merchant vessel required hard every day work even in the anchorage.

The sailors , dark skinned men from the Hazzel islands was short,well bulid men with hard features

They were swearing and shouting at each other as they did their everyday chores like every other day in the sea.

They were under the supervision of their quartermaster's ,usually ,but not this morning.

They were all together ,six of them talking on the deck discussing something vividly.

Something was obviously made them anxious and upset ...more than the usual.

There was a revolt few days ago and the captain was dead.

They were in charge now and they have already chose a new one to take the lead.

His name was Bastian and he was the captain first mate before he killed him.

- " She will be sold in the slave market of the Slave Bay ... "he said with hard voice like craking ice.

He was a tall gaunt man with rusty brown cloths uncoulored from the long years that he spent in the sea.

The long grey beard that reached down until his chest was dirty and wild.

- "No-one will be ever hear again about her or her father ..." he continued looking with his cold blue eyes the rest of his companions.

One by one they agreed silently.

They hadn't any choice now.

They couldn't risk any witnesses.

Not with a crime as horrible as this.

-We have no use for her here ...'' he continued.

-Virgin girls like her will get a good price there...She chose to refuse any collaboration with us ... We can deal with her with other ways ... ''he said and a evil smile sharp like knife appeared in his stern face.

Down in the dark holds of the ship was a small room that they used to store the valuable parchments of the ship.

Records, maps and other more precious and private documents was locked there and the keys was in the possession of the captain ...or his daughter Iacomina.

Here she was locked after her father cold murder.

But she didn't knew it yet.

She only knew that there was a riot and three men from the crew woke her up as she was sleeping with her nighties and drugged her violently in the hold despite her screams for help to her father.

Feeling helpless and terrified with what might happened to her soon she was curled up against the wall in the darkest corner of the small room.

The hard wood was was icy cold and she could felt it with her soft bare feet.

Tears was still running down from her blue eyes to her cheeks.

What this men planned to do to her now ?

She never expected an end like that.

Suddenly she remembered something.
Her delicate hands touched her soft white left ankle where a unique henna tattoo was painted in her complexion.

It was a shape of a dark blue horse.
It was a symbol that her grandmother gave to her when she was little.
It was the tradition.
-Be free as this mare '' she told her then.

Lost in her thoughts she didn't hear them coming for her ...

Chapter 4

The fatal journey

This was her first trip with her father captain Agustin and perhaps the first travel that she made in her entire life.

She was only in her twenties but she was determined to explore the unending seas of her word.

This was the first time that she saw her father since she was an infant in her mother hands.

But still after several months in the sea her father , this cold silent man , didn't show her any affection or even a slight sight of interest about her.

He was a tall muscular man with pitch black beard and hair despite his age and deep hazel eyes unlike hers.

He was distant and isolated in his cabin all of his spare time.

When he wasn't on the deck with his quortermasters or planned the course of the ship in the conference room he gave orders to don't be disturbed for any reason.

Even from his beautiful daughter who so often tried to reach him ...

She wanted to know her father ...but she couldn't find the way.

She was deeply hurt from his behaviour and she had cried many times alone in her cabin ...But her tears didn't change a thing in her life now.

One time she tried to speak to him when he was on deck.

He was looking the blue horizon lost in his thoughts.

His eyes seemed blue as the sky then ...

She came silently next too him and touched him gently in his soulder.

He turned then and his eyes wasn't calm as before few moments ...

"What happen ? "he told her with his usual stern voice avoiding looking her in the eyes.

"Just i thought that you may have some time now" ... she whispered softly but with an obvious hesitation in her tone ...

I don't ...maybe tomorrow" ...he replied coldly and turn to leave again.

Her eyes filled with tears ...

She ran in her room.

She was always ashamed to cry in front of the others.

"You are my father ! " she whispered before her father turned his back at her.

She couldn't say to herself that she wasn't expected this treatment from her father however.

Chapter 5

The mother

Rumours said that she wasn't a child of her father at all.

One day she found a portrait of her mother forgotten in a old dusty chest.
She was beautiful.
Who was the artist she didn't knew.

But this small colourful painting stayed for ever in her memory.

Her mother was a foreign woman that her father a Sealord of the great city of Alegria bought from a slave market in the Bay of Slave's six years before her birth in one of his journey's.

He shaw her first time as she was sleeping in a straw mattress inside an open waggon.
Her beauty enslaved him instantly as he said later to his men.

I offered almost four hundred silver coins for her and i didn't even though of it" he had said for that later.

When the slave merchant refused to give her to him because she was already sold to someone else he became furious.

And under his fury became mad this day.
And not for first time.

He killed the merchant with his knife and with the help of some men of his crew kidnapped Albina, her mother from the harbour market and took her in his ship.

He carried her in his arms as she was still shackled with rusty chain's in her hands.

She was in sock from the brutal murder in front of her eyes and she didn't resisted in the beginning.

When her kidnapper and later her husband approached his ship she tried to fight back.

Miranda hit him repeatedly in order to escape from his hands but he didn't seem to care.
When they reached the ship she understood that she couldn't do nothing more.

She was taken.

She was so afraid of him from the beginning of their relationship.
But soon the woman found his aggressive demeanour and power over the other people irresistibly attractive.

His language and appearance was totally strange for her but that made her curious.

She was always slave girl from her childhood and had changed many master's and houses but she never met someone like him.

His brutality and fierce masculinity was near the limit of madness but nonetheless impressive.

The captain from his side thought that only if he treated her like normal woman and not as a slave girl he would be able to gain her love.

And her as a woman  knew that she could have a tremendous influence on him if she managed to manipulate his mind somehow.

She slept with him multiple times but their relationship didn't develop as she was hoped ...

It was a relationship based in fear,personal interest and later constant jealousy from both of them until she eventually gave birth of their first child.

He promised her that after her first child she will be free woman according to the law's of the city.

The magisters of the Free Cities in the Crystal Islands had strict rules about that.
And that because almost half of the cities population were slaves usually young women called "sea wife's".

This unions like hers was usually without the women's free will.

She just didn't had any choice then.
Miranda became pregnant soon after her arrival in the city with his child.

Although she tried to learnt the language and customs of this strange for her country but she didn't forgot her homeland.

More than one times she tried to escape from the Crystal Islands and tried to bribe many different captains or even sailors to take her away from this "rock's" as she usually call them.

But no ship or captain was willing to confront her husband wrath after that.

Unfortunately she lost her first child.
Her husband never forgave her that ...

Few years after rumours about her and her private life started to spread in the city.

Many said that she had a secret relationship with a man who came from the sea
For how long nobody knew ...

True or not nobody had any proof for that as the mysterious man had never seen again.

Her father learnt about this when he came back from one of his journeys.

She had just given birth to a healthy child then.

It was his daughter ?

He didn't believed that.

He took her child and gave it to his relatives in a nearby island.

After he divorced her officially and declared to the city athorities that she was sent away with one of his ship's.

But in fact he imprisoned her and in an isolated mansion, not allowing her to see even her daughter or anyone else.
There chained in a dark full of moisture room like prisoner she lost every hope and will to live.

He had betrayed his love.
And he was determined to make her pay for that.

He started drinking too much and his physical strength made him very dangerous for anyone that argued with him for even the slightest thing.

One night two months after her imprisonment her mother was found dead under mysterious circumstances.

Some said that she took her own life with a knife cutting her vein's.

Others usually the captain enemies said that her drunken husband killed her the night that he returned from his ship after one of the many revelries that took place this profitable for the merchants year.

But the daughter never learnt anything about this stories.
Nothing except the name of her mother from her relatives.

They took her in their isolated tower and she was grew up away of the buzzing city until everything about the past was forgotten in the buzy city.

Chapter 6

The Daughter of the Sea Wife

As the years passed she became a graceful girl, tall and lean in body as her mother, her relatives said often.

When she asked about her mother she never heared anything except that she died from a terrible disease few days after her birth.

For sure now she wasn't a woman that she could passed unnoticed from the crew.

But because of her highborn status she considered them idiots and born servants and avoided them all the times.

The crew from the other hand was friendly in the beginning but in the end  almost everybody avoided her because of her character and of course her father hard reputation and manners.

They wanted to keep their high paid jobs at sea.

So she was alone most of the day feeling more and more her loneliness as the days passed by traveling in the deep dark seas.

She spent much of her time down in her cabin doing all the work related to the filling of the ship.

It was the only thing that her father had asked from her since the beginning of the journey.

She hoped that maybe her hard work will be appreciated from him.

One day.

But this day never came.