The Trouble with Mojitos. Romy Sommer

       Prologue

      There is a legend told by the elders of Los Pajaros of how the neighbouring island of Tortuga came to be uninhabited.

      It was midsummer, at the height of the seventeenth century, when the ship first sailed into the calm waters of the natural harbour at Fredrikshafen. In those days, the town was a prosperous settlement and traders came from all corners of the Caribbean to sell sugar, spices and slaves, so a ship was not an uncommon sight. But there was something different about this ship, so that heads turned and all work along the docks ceased as the ship sailed into view.

      The legends say it was a ship made of gold, encrusted with jewels, its sails made of the finest silks from the Indies. For it was a royal ship, and it carried a princess.

      There was one man on the docks, though, for whom the ship’s arrival was to mean more than just a sight to behold. He was a pirate captain, a hard man who’d been cast out of his homeland, a man with no heart. But when he saw the princess, fair and pale and regal where she stood in the ship’s prow looking towards the island which was to be her new home, he saw the vulnerability in her face, and he loved her.

      As the ship berthed beside the quay, the princess waited on its deck for her betrothed, the governor of these islands. She looked out over the busy docks and she saw a man who made her heart beat faster and her breath quicken.

      By the time her betrothed came to claim her, it was too late.

      As the governor led his princess away, to the golden carriage that awaited them, she turned to look back over her shoulder and her gaze met that of the dark-eyed man who’d won her heart with nothing more than a crooked smile.

      The pirate winked at her.

      The governor and his royal bride were to be married within the week, in a festival with more pomp and finery than the islanders had ever seen, a festival worthy of royalty. The people crowded the streets to see the show, and they got a show indeed.

      For the pirate led his marauders right into the heart of the town’s cathedral, and snatched the bride from before the very altar to take her back to his home on Tortuga.

      The governor sent his ships in hot pursuit of the pirate ship, and the sound of their cannon balls rocked the whole island. The battle raged, fierce and terrifying, for a day and a night before silence fell at last.

      Only one ship returned.

      It sailed into the harbour with the grim-faced governor at the helm. Neither he nor any of his sailors ever spoke of that day again, but soon everyone on Los Pajaros knew that the governor had cast a curse on Isla Tortuga. He was from the far away land of Westerwald, a land rich in magic as well as gold, and his curse carried all the magic of his people.

      From that moment on, the governor waged a war on all pirates, dedicating his life to hunting them down and killing them. And when a terrible storm ravaged Tortuga and the citizens came begging for refuge, the governor showed them no mercy and ordered them killed too.

      And so the island of Tortuga was abandoned to its fate. Those fishermen who strayed too close returned with tales of the carcasses of ships lying deep in the water, and claimed they heard the death cries of the many of who died that fateful day. Gradually the sea covered over the wrecks, and a coral reef grew around them, and none but the sea turtles ever disturbed their slumber.

      “But what became of the princess and her pirate captain?” the children of Los Pajaros always ask.

      Their elders shrug. “No one ever knew their fate. Some say they drowned with their ship in the great battle. Some say they died in the storm, abandoned by their own people who blamed them for their ruin.”

      But there is one old woman, a wizened,