"Meine Mutter heißt Fei," said the small girl. (page 28)
"Meine Mutter heißt Mama," said the smaller boy.
Aboard the Jolly Roger, Mr. Smee is parleying with Klaus Störtebeker.
“What if we kidnap her and make her our mother?”
“I don’t think you can. And I don’t think she wants to.”
“But we are such jolly pirates, she’s bound to want to darn our socks and read us to sleep! Once she gets used to it, she’ll like it. And even if she doesn’t, she still has to do it. The bedtime stories don’t read themselves, and when our noses run and we’re feeling bad, we need a mother to wipe them and fuss over us. You know this, Klaus!”
“Aye, I know it!”
The two men were silent as they pondered the hard, harsh, mother-less life of a pirate. The high seas and treasure are all good and fine, and there were wenches at every port, but when you’re sick, and you want your mother’s chicken soup with fine klöpse, and for checking the temperature at the back of your neck with her cool reassuring hand, the exciting, adventurous, alone life of a pirate suddenly seems to be missing something big.
The two men helped themselves to the plate of soft caramels before them in consolation. They didn’t have a mother to remind them against the dangers of sugars, caries, and other such long-term dental considerations after all. So they gorged themselves on the chewy caramels and got the candies all good and stuck between their molars, and they thought nothing more of it except for reflecting on what good, deserving boys they assuredly were and in their heart of blackest hearts still are, upon their honor!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In between kissing her eyebrows and cheekbones, he looked at her in her unreadable black irises, almost blending with the pupils within, and asked, “Why do you want the Edelstone so badly?”
Wilhelmina looked back at him simply, and answered, “Because of my mother.”
And the words felt like a thousand daggers, at his heart that was just laid bare.
She could barely get the words out, “My mother, you see, she has the emperor of all maladies.”