My baby girl is married to some bum who dosen’t deserve her. I have to agree with her mother that she should have talked to us before making such a important decision! I should have said no and then found a decent and hardworking man for her! But I can never say no to her, I was always to soft with her.

The worst part is that the wife almost killed me when I said that we needed to stop the wedding, apparent she likes the boy and believe that he is a good match, she is just angry that she wasn’t evolved in the process. Women, who can understand then?

The boy just doesn’t care about anything that dosen’t go into his bowl. Maybe I’m being unfair to him, he come up with the idea of building a new house for them. Saying that Rita’s future house was horrible and since we have a surplus, why not build something new for her as a wedding gift?

Build a house as a gift, only a person who lives off someone else hard work can think that. But after talking to the wife in the last few days she made me realize that he has making a good point.

The kid plot of land is very poor, like every plot in the island, so he dosen’t have the recourses to build and maintain a decent house. I would be surprise if he has enough food for two people. My baby may go hungry thanks to that, can’t let that happen.

Today I will be visiting her new home and I will talk to him about building a new house and how he should start working to me.

Yesterday I had a few words with Guilherme about getting him something to do. Must make sure Rita won’t starve and the wife said she was a big help preserving food too. Good thing that I was intelligent enough to build boats instead of a house, now that I have more mouths to feed.

-“ I was wondering, how long can preserved fish last?”

As usual the boy is making complicated questions, but he stopped making them for me and now only asks his mother. I wonder if he thinks that I don’t know the answers? The worst part is that I not sure about this one.

-“That depends. When you use salt you can still eat without problem for at least 6 moons. By drying you can still use for 4 moons.”

-“It’s such a shame that we can’t make more salt, then the food would last a lot longer.”

-“Not really, I prefer dry fish to salt and we need to use salt for other things too. We would also need a lot of people and equipment for that much salt.”

We are going to Rita house and I need to admit that using salt to preserve the food makes a lot of sense. But the production of salt is a big problem, most households just make their own salt by collecting and boiling salt water in small clay posts

We would need to build large lead-lined pans. But where I would get the materials? I heard that some people use salt pits but I don’t understand how that works. I could try bigger clay posts and use the village woman for that. Rita and her husband could organize that and maybe they could inherit the salt production.

Been a farmer here is a very easy way to starve, I will give to the boy the boats and the workshop, so there should be no problem in giving Rita the salt production. I wonder if the boy will be angry when I tell him that, since Rita shouldn’t have the right to inherit anything from me.

I look at him and he smiles. The little fool, always acting like he knows something that I don’t. I really want to beat the living shit of him whenever he does that. But he is finally looking me in the eye after months, can’t punish him for just smiling like my father used to do and then telling me to do something about my stupid face. As if I could do anything about how I look!

Plus, knowing him he will be thankful for having to deal with less work. Just the workshop and the boats will give him enough work to feed his family and more. He will spit in my grave if I try to give him more.

-“We have a lot to do today, we are just going to stay for a while before going back to work.”

-“I know darling, you have been more than clear about that. You did your best to not visit your only daughter’s house for days already.”

I can feel the anger in her voice, not my fault that we have a lot to do and no time to waste visiting someone that is always in my house! Besides, the wedding was too expensive, we need to work hard to have enough food to ourselves and to trade with the pirates!

What a party! Never before in the island’s history there was such a wedding party! More like a festival really, normally in wedding’s only the members of the two family goes and maybe a friend or two. But to my daughter weeding I invited every single villager!

It was very expensive and I almost broke myself to pay for everything, but Carlos’s face when he saw how rich I’m made everything worth it. I could see the envy in his eye! When he married his daughter, he invited a few people and passed months making sure to tell anyone who has willing to listen of how only he could afford that.

Now everybody knows who is the richest man here! It’s good to finally have the respect that I’ve always deserved. The best part is, it’s only a matter of time before the old fool admits that there is no way for him to bring his share of the wood without my help.

The pirates will stop in the island in a few moons, if they see all that wood there they will collect without doubt and he will loose everything. Didn’t he want to over charge to bring my share? Let’s see if he likes when I do that to him!

When the pirates stop in their away to raid, they will trade for food, normally they would take everything that the village has and we would have hungry bellies for a few days. But now thanks to me, the food production can feed them and us with no problem!

That’s why we should be working hard to make sure everything is ready for trading season instead of doing some useless house visit. But the wife made clear that she would be going and would be hell to pay if I wasn’t there.

The boy didn’t want to come either, but as usual, he makes sure to be on his mother’s good side, and when he received the look that the whole trip wasn’t optional, he stopped complaining. He even had the nerve to tell me that was never a good idea to be on the bad side of the person that cooks the food.

Which made me think, my bastard of father was getting very violent by the end of his life and after teaching me everything that he knew, he died on his sleep after a few days.

I always thought how luck I was that he only died after teaching me everything. Maybe I wasn’t so luck, maybe my mother, may she be on the embrace of the Gods, decided that enough was enough and did what needed to be done to protect me and her.

I look at my family, lately they look happy. Especially the boy, a few moons ago I wouldn’t be surprise if he tried to murder me. To quiet and lost in his mind, never bothering to talk or learn anything, both my wife and I were worried about what would happen to him when we were no longer here to protect him.

But she said that he started to make a lot of questions to her about how everything worked and tried very hard to understand. I won’t say that he started to enjoy working but he no longer looks like doing some work is the worst thing in the world. He just acts like it’s something that needs to be done, even if he hates doing.

She says it’s a huge improvement and is very happy to answer his questions. Whatever make them happy is good for me. Not having to worry about been murder by my wife and son is a very good thing.

We arrived at Rita, the place has seen better days. but since there was only a boy and his sick mother to take care of the house and farm I shouldn’t be surprise. I was hoping that I could reform the house since that is cheaper than building a new one. But I will need to build one from the scratch.

The expenses keep building up, the bastard better work very hard for me to make up for what I’m doing for him. Rita see us and immediately hugs her mother and then me.

-“It’s good to see you guys, come in I have prepared something for us to eat.”

-“Good, I’m starving.”

She laughs.

-“You are always starving you little monster”.

-“It’s not his fault that he is in his growing phase and need lots and lots of food to grow big and strong.”

As usual Natali has to protect the boy from any kind of criticism. And she refuses to stop, saying that he needs a better self esteem and I already criticize him enough.

-“Only his head is growing big, he looks pretty small to me”.

-“You are only jealousy because I will soon be a lot bigger then you.”

-“That day is very far away little monster.”

While we talk her husband tries his best to pretend that he is not here, which is good, he already know his place I won’t have to worry about him hurting my baby. The house is very small and decrepit. What did Rita saw in him? There is a lot of better man to choose!

After siting around the fire we are giving some porridge[1] with more water then anything, I try my best to act like the boy and eat like there is no tomorrow, but it’s hard. I know that Rita can cook better since she was always helping her mother. She probably dosen’t have any ingredients to work.

I need to give the kid a decent job so he can feed my daughter and any future grandchildren, I won’t have my own kin starving. Besides, I think he looks like a nice kid, with the necessary instructions he may become worthy something in a few years.

The woman talks while the men eat in silence, there is nothing for us to talk to each other. I will mention about building a new house when it’s time to leave, if I was to say that now we would waste the day with the woman talking about what the house will look like. They can’t do that later when I’m not around.

In the next few days Guilherme will talk to him about his new job and payment, no need to talk serious business now. It will take a while to get the salt production going on, but I need to start to start thinking what kind of position I will give to the kid.

Can’t put him in charge yet, to young and without the necessary experience, maybe in a few years. Guilherme already has to much work to handle, who should I given the position? Should ask Natali later, it was her idea to put Guilherme in charge of the boats in the first place and worked just fine.

While I’m lost in my thoughts, I hear screams and immediately leave the house to see what is happing. Since Rita’s new house is a bit far from the beach where the sounds are coming I have to run for a while to go to a rock, which gives a better view.

When I see the beach I can feel my blood go cold. There is a war ship in the beach and I can see warriors killing and capturing people. I look behind me and see the others coming in my direction.

-“We are being attacked! Nestor, take everyone to the other side of the island! Don’t hide close to the village, they will be looking for that!

The boy stares to the beach and says:

-“It’s the Dancing Fool.”

I look and see that he is right.

-“Dosen’t matter who is! You guys need to escape while I collect my tools.”

-“Honey, you must escape with us!”

-“ENOUGH! You guys run while I go back to the house.”

No point wasting time talking, it will take time for them to collect all the villagers that live close to the beach and we must make sure to escape. We can rebuild everything back, but to that I will need my tools, without them even if we survive, we will starve to death later.

I start running and looking back I see the boy leading the rest of the family to the path. Good ,I always knew that I could count on him when needed. The screams continue and I can see some smoke.

I must go fast, can’t waste the time they are pillaging close to the beach, they will soon go inland. But why in the seven hells are those bastards raiding us now? What changed for then to destroys their only safe stop in their trips?

We are so poor, what could they could possible want that is better then a safe port?

[1] I can count in one hand how many times I ate porridge as adult, mostly because I was sick. I only used to eat regularly when I was a baby. We Brazilian just don’t eat that when we grow up. When I was a teenager reading fantasy novels I always saw porridge as something like “fantasy food” in addition to being sick or baby food. Only a while a go when I start to travel more I realized that porridge is an “adult food” that people can eat every day, it was kind of a shock for me.