The Pirate Pig Page 2

“You were supposed to stand guard, you hairless slime fish!” Barracuda Bill barked as he held out the cutoff rope. “And what is this? You think the pig was hiding a knife behind its flopsy ears?”

  Pip’s heart nearly stopped.

  “Search the ship, you oxeyes!” Barracuda Bill barked. “Bring me back my pig! And the one who cut the rope!”

  The pirates cursed and stumbled away in all directions.

  “Julie!” Pip whispered. “You have to jump, or else those men are going to fry us!”

  But Julie just hid her head between her legs.

  “I’ll let that pig starve for three days!” Barracuda growled. “No, a whole week! I’ll lock it up with nothing but dry bread and water…!”

  That’s when Julie charged.

  With a loud grunt, she ran over Barracuda Bill and shot through the bald pirate’s legs. Then she flew over the railing.

  Pip followed her without a second thought, past the confused pirates. He got to the railing with a couple of leaps and flung himself over, toward the black water.

  Pip splashed into the sea, barely a pig’s breadth away from Julie.

  “I’m coming!” Stout Sam called. The dinghy shot out from behind the pirate ship, where Sam had been hiding since he’d heard the Barracuda approach.

  Sam pulled the thoroughly soaked Pip and the dripping Julie into the boat, and then he leaned into the oars like he’d never done before in his long seafaring life.

  “After them! What are you waiting for?” Barracuda Bill shouted from the railing. “Get me my pirate pig!”

  “But—but we can’t swim, Your Nastiness!” Swordfish screeched with fear. “And you can’t, either!”

  “Then shoot at them!” Barracuda Bill growled. He was so angry he nearly fell over the railing.

  Stout Sam rowed like the devil while the pirates readied their cannons. Soon the cannonballs came flying, splashing into the water right behind their boat.

  Stout Sam panted, “If their aim gets just a little better, they’ll turn us into matchsticks!”

  All of a sudden, Julie started squealing, so loud that she even managed to drown out the cannons.

  “Dog sharks and needlefish!” Stout Sam shouted. “Julie! We don’t have time to fish for treasure right now!”

  But Pip dropped his oar and listened. “Captain!” he whispered. “They’ve stopped shooting!”

  Stout Sam lifted his head and listened, too.

  Pip was right. It was suddenly very still. But then they heard Swordfish’s shrill voice across the water. “Your Nastiness!” he shouted excitedly. “The pig squealed. Did you hear? It really squealed!”

  Pip held his breath.

  Barracuda Bill’s men were standing behind their cannons with their mouths wide open. Everybody was listening.

  Just then Julie threw her head back and squealed once more, so loud that Pip had to hold his ears.

  “Hooooraaaay!” the pirates cheered. Pip and Sam saw them scramble to cast out their nets.

  “Let’s hope you’re right, Julie!” Stout Sam whispered as he picked up his oar. “Would be nice if there was enough gold to keep those scoundrels busy fishing for a week.”

  With a grunt, Julie rolled herself up in the bow of the boat and fell asleep. Pip crouched down next to her and stroked her bristles.

  Tired and happy, Stout Sam rowed them back to the harbor. It was already growing light as they tied their boat to the quay.

  “Hungry now, Captain?” Pip gave Stout Sam a huge grin.

  “I’m so hungry I could eat a whole pig!” Stout Sam answered. He quickly pressed his hand over his mouth. “Oh! I’m sorry, Julie. It was a figure of speech. I of course meant a whole cake! Or two, maybe!”

  Julie wasn’t even paying attention. She sat on the quay and grunted happily as the sun rose over the sea.

  “I’ll be right back!” called Pip, and he ran to the Thirsty Shellfish, where Lanky Lola was sweeping the night’s debris out into the street.

  “What happened to your pig?” she asked as Pip tried to squeeze past her.

  “We got her back,” Pip answered. He grabbed the bag of jellyfish cream cakes, which was still standing on the counter, and ran back to Stout Sam and Julie. The two of them were sitting on the quay, and Stout Sam was tickling Julie’s ears.

  “Thundering flounders! Jellyfish cream cakes!” Stout Sam said admiringly as Pip put the bag down next to him. “Where did you get those?”

  “I think we earned them!” Pip answered, while Julie sniffed the bag hungrily. “Though I’m sure our troubles are only beginning. Barracuda Bill will be after Julie even more than before, now that she filled his nets with gold. I think we’ll have to hide her, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” sighed Stout Sam. “We’ll probably have to find ourselves another island.”

  A few hours later, they were painting Julie’s bristles black and telling everybody how their pirate pig ran away. Then they set sail and went out to sea with their blackened Julie.

  “What kind of island are we looking for?” Pip asked.

  “One where nobody has ever heard of Barracuda Bill and his golden eye patch” was Stout Sam’s answer.

  They sailed for five days and six nights. Julie squealed three times during their journey, though Stout Sam never cast out his nets. They still had enough gold coins on board.

  On the sixth day, they found a peaceful island where there was nothing any pirate would ever be interested in. And nobody there had even heard the name Barracuda Bill.

  They picked the most beautiful stretch of beach they could find, and there Stout Sam built a sty for Julie. He planted coconut and banana trees next to it and built a hut for his and Pip’s hammocks. And Pip of course painted a new sign. Then they built a jetty they could tie their boat to and for Julie to sit on and look at the sea.

  And they are probably still living there.

  And they are probably still very, very happy….

  Excerpt copyright © 2002 by Cornelia Funke. Translation copyright © 2014 by Oliver Latsch. Interior illustrations copyright © 2002 by Kerstin Meyer. Cover art copyright © 2014 by Vivienne To. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published as Emma und der Blaue Dschinn by Cecilie Dressler Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg, Germany, in 2002.

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  1

  THE BOTTLE IN THE MOONLIGHT

  Emma loved the ocean. The house where she and her family lived stood right behind the dunes, and at night you could hear the waves rush over the sand. To Emma that was the most beautiful lullaby in the world. Her four brothers, however, thought that it sounded like a growling sea monster, and it made them dream of giant octopuses that pulled them out of their beds with wet arms.

  Brothers are strange. During the day they fight and scuffle, and at night their fear of the dark won’t let them sleep. Nearly every night one of Emma’s brothers crawled into her bed to hide from sea monsters and octopuses, only to immediately start snoring so noisily that she couldn’t hear the rush of the sea anymore.

  It was on nights like those that Emma put on her bathrobe and snuck out of the house to trudge through the dark and down to the water.

  The salty wind whispering across the waves, the beach stretching from one end of the night to the other, it all belonged to her alone. It was wonderful. Four brothers can be quite hard work for one girl, so every now and then she really needed a little solitude.

  The darkness never scared Emma. After all, she had Tristan with her. His legs might have been as short as bratwursts, and his tail might have looked like a twirly noodle, but he also had lots of pointy teeth in his mouth.

  Sitting on wet sand is not very comfortable, so Emma always took a cushion with her to the beach. On that cushion Emma and Tristan sat side by side, and the sea
breathed at their feet like a living thing.

  On clear nights, when the moon poured a silver highway onto the water, Emma imagined that at the other end of that highway lay the most beautiful and wondrous land on earth. People rode on camels, and palm trees swayed in the warm breeze. There were no brothers in that land, or maybe a few teeny-weeny ones who were very gentle and only wanted to scuffle on Saturdays. Nobody went to school or had to work. The sun shone every day, and there was just enough rain to water the oases, which lay like shimmering diamonds at the edge of the desert.

  Who knows?

  Maybe the moon likes to eavesdrop on the thoughts of girls who sit alone by the sea with noodle-tailed dogs. Maybe he listens to their dreams and tries to make them come true. Maybe…

  One night, when Emma again came trudging down the beach with Tristan and their cushion, there was a bottle floating in the moon-silvered water. It bobbed just a few steps away from the water’s edge. It shimmered and flickered as though someone had stuffed it with a thousand glowworms. Emma tried to pull the bottle from the water, but her arms were at least a couple of feet too short. So Tristan waded into the cold waves.

  “I wonder what’s in there,” Emma said, as Tristan dropped the bottle in front of her feet. “Do you think I should open it?”

  The glimmering and glowing made her feel a little uneasy, but Tristan just looked at her and smacked his lips, which meant something like, “Of course you should open it!” If he’d meant, “You better not!” he would have turned his backside to her.

  “Fine. If you say so,” Emma said. “But it’s your fault if something bad happens.” Then she pulled the stopper from the bottle.