King of the Pirates: The Rise of the Red - Chapter 004

He stopped at the edge of the dense forest, his small chest rising and falling in short breaths that barely filled his lungs.

The trees stood like ancient sentinels, their thick trunks intertwined with vines that climbed in slow spirals, their canopies so dense they formed a living roof capable of blocking most of the sunlight. Only rare golden beams managed to penetrate, falling obliquely onto the dark ground like pale, cold blades. The forest seemed to breathe: a darker hue, almost black in its depths, laden with mystery and a silent threat that didn’t need to announce itself to be felt. The air there was more humid, heavier, carrying the smell of wet earth, decaying leaves, and something wild that hovered just beyond the reach of sight—like a presence that preferred not to be named.

He stood there for a long moment.

Not out of formless hesitation, but out of calculated respect. The difference was important, and he had learned in the last three days that confusing the two could be costly. Hesitation paralyzed. Respect informed. He kept his eyes open, scanning the line where the trees began, looking for movement, listening to the sounds the place produced—and more importantly, the sounds it failed to produce.

The harbor pulsed behind him with its usual rhythm of creaking wood, distant shouts, and the salty smell of fish and tide. Somewhere behind him, life continued its daily brutality. Ahead, the forest waited with a patience that knew no hurry.

Three days. Just three days since he had opened his eyes in that frail body, and he already understood that to survive he would need to test himself. He had seen the worst the island had to offer: chains clanking on posts, children beaten by fallen crates, bodies thrown into the ditch like rubble. If he wanted to grow, prosper, and above all not be swallowed up, he couldn’t always retreat. The time had come to move forward—intelligently, but forward nonetheless.

He took a deep breath, the air filling his narrow chest with effort, and let the fear trickle down his thin shoulders like dirty water. His body trembled—not just from the morning chill, but from the acute awareness of his own fragility. Protruding ribs, arms as thin as twigs, legs that barely supported the weight of a malnourished child. The physical inventory was grim. The mind that inhabited that body, however, was another story.

He took the first step.

Shadows engulfed him almost immediately.

The dense vegetation brushed against his bare legs, broad, damp leaves leaving cold trails on his skin. Trees rose on all sides, twisted trunks covered in dark moss, roots snaking like exposed veins across the uneven ground. There was a different quality to the silence of the forest—not the empty silence inside the cabin, but an inhabited silence, full of small sounds that only became audible when the large ones ceased. The low buzzing of insects. The distant rustling of leaves disturbed by something he couldn’t see. The slow dripping of dew falling from leaf to leaf, tumbling slowly to the ground.

She advanced cautiously, pushing low branches with her small hands, her heart pounding against her prominent ribs. Each step demanded attention: the ground covered in decaying leaves concealed loose stones and treacherous roots that appeared without warning. A twisted ankle here would be a catastrophe—not because of how much it would hurt, but because of what it would mean in terms of mobility, the ability to flee, everything that survival in that place demanded of a functioning body.

He mentally counted the time as he moved forward.

Approximately seven minutes passed—which seemed much longer in that exhausted body—then the dense vegetation gave way slightly to a natural clearing. Small, not much larger than the inside of his cabin, but enough to let in a cylinder of light that fell directly onto the ground and illuminated the dust suspended in the air like tiny, aimless stars. And there, in the center of that space of light, was the tree he sought.

The coconut palm stood tall and firm among the others, its gray, fibrous trunk planted with the solidity of things that grow slowly and grow to last. At the top, several green coconuts hung in dense clusters—large, heavy spheres, each about the size of his child’s head, green like the rest of the forest and full of promise.

He stared upwards for a moment.

The image stirred a distant memory, from another life. Documentaries watched on empty nights, when work spreadsheets had already been closed and exhaustion wasn’t yet enough to turn off the laptop screen. Images of riverside dwellers on the banks of the Amazon harvesting açaí and coconuts. Lean, agile men, using ancestral techniques to climb smooth tree trunks with an efficiency that seemed to defy gravity—their bodies bending through technique what they lacked in equipment. At the time, I had watched with the comfortable distance of someone who consumes someone else’s reality as entertainment, without any of it needing to land in their own life.

Now I needed it.

A tired smile escaped his lips, barely perceptible on his chapped lips. Those lost hours that had seemed wasted in a previous life could now mean the difference between hunger and sustenance.

He pulled the cloth he had prepared before leaving from inside his worn clothes.

It was an old rag, completely frayed at the edges, but still sturdy enough to support his light weight—he’d tested it in the cabin, hanging it from the door frame, checking the stress points before truly trusting it. He looked around carefully, his eyes scanning the vegetation for any movement. No wild boar. No predators lurking. Only the low buzzing of insects and the distant rustling of leaves—sounds he had begun to mentally catalog, learning to distinguish what was background from what was signal.

He approached the coconut tree.

The trunk, though thick, was not insurmountable. The bark was rough enough to offer some support, but too smooth for conventional climbing without equipment. In his first mental attempts the previous night—lying in the dark, planning instead of sleeping—he had ruled out direct climbing as an option. Without the right friction, without sufficient muscle strength, a fall would be guaranteed. The cloth would be the solution. The peconha.

He rolled up the rag with his fingers trembling slightly, transforming it into an improvised rope. He tied the ends, forming a firm circle. He tested the size against his bare feet: not too big to slip, not too small to cut off circulation. He sat briefly on the damp earth, his chest still heaving from the minimal effort of having walked there—his body was a constant accusation of how much it had been neglected by the life that preceded it—and positioned the circle of cloth under the soles of his feet, adjusting it like a clamp.

He stood up.

My knees were already protesting.

She hugged the trunk with her two slender arms, feeling the rough bark scratch the sensitive skin of her forearms. The contact was uncomfortable in an immediate and honest way—without cushioning, without the mediation of proper clothing or gloves. Just skin against tree bark, and all that that implied. She took another deep breath—the air smelling of sap and wet earth—and jumped.

His feet slammed against the tree trunk. The makeshift rope snapped instantly, creating enough friction to hold him. The impact reverberated through the small bones of his wrists, sending a wave of pain up his arms to his shoulders. He let out a low grunt—the childlike sound escaping despite his efforts to contain it—and stood still for a second, simply holding on, letting the initial shock pass.

It was a technique used by those who lived on the banks of distant rivers, passed down from generation to generation by people who had neither ladder nor equipment but had the need and the intelligence. Now he repeated it with a body that could barely support its own weight.

It started to go up.

The process was a constant negotiation between willpower and physical limitations.

He gripped the base of the trunk with his small hands, raised his knees, propelled his legs upward in a coordinated movement, and then lowered his body slightly, stabilizing before the next thrust. Each cycle was an ordeal. His arms trembled with the effort of supporting the weight, the thin muscles burning like fire beneath his pale skin. His legs, weakened by chronic malnutrition, throbbed with each thrust, his bare feet occasionally slipping on the damp bark—brief, controlled moments of panic that he learned to absorb without letting them turn into a fall.

Sweat streamed down his face, burning his eyes, mingling with the accumulated dust and dirt. His heart pounded, his breath short and painful. Five minutes passed. Then six. Then seven. The summit seemed distant, unreachable, like something seen from the wrong bank of a river.

At some point—he didn’t know exactly when, time had dissolved into pure physical concentration—his arms gave way for a second. He slipped a few inches, the rope burning the soles of his feet, the bark scratching his skin in small cuts that opened without warning. A groan escaped, but he cut it off with clenched teeth, the tears of exhaustion that welled in the corners of his eyes being more of a physiological reaction than anything emotional.

He stopped. He breathed. He stabilized.

Then he continued.

Over the past three days, I had learned—in a way no spreadsheet had ever taught—that stopping wasn’t the problem. The problem was not starting again. Stopping to regain strength was strategy. Giving up was collapse. The difference between the two was intention, and intention was the only thing no one could take away from that small body.

He finally reached the top.

Gasping for breath, his small chest rising and falling like a cracked bellows, his whole body trembling with accumulated fatigue. His hands bled slightly where the bark had torn his skin. His legs felt like liquid lead, taking the shape of its container without having any substance of its own. But there he was—high in the coconut palm, with the forest spreading out in every direction and the harbor visible in the distance like a wound on the shore, diminished by the distance until it seemed almost harmless.

There was no time to appreciate the view.

He reached out to the first coconut. The green spheres were heavy, fibrous, attached to the bunch by sturdy stems that showed no sign of giving way. He pulled with his small hands—nothing. The added effort made his shoulders protest with an intensity that traveled the entire length of his arms. He shifted slightly, precariously balancing between the need to use force and not falling, and began to twist and break the stubborn fiber with repeated, methodical movements. With a damp snap, the first coconut came loose and fell to the ground with a dull thud that echoed through the clearing below.

He smiled.

An exhausted yet triumphant smile that barely curved her cracked lips, but which was utterly genuine.

He repeated the process. The second coconut was more difficult—his already exhausted arms trembled violently. The third and fourth required short pauses with his body pressed against the trunk while he caught his breath, the rough shell scratching his face but serving as an anchor against the dizziness. The fifth fell after a final desperate pull that cost him what remained of his immediate reserves of strength.

Five coconuts in total. Enough for days, if you ration them well.

The descent was like reverse torture.

Each controlled movement demanded absolute concentration, muscles screaming in agony as they had to support the weight slowly and deliberately instead of simply letting go. The cuts on his feet burned with the renewed friction of the rope, his legs threatening to give way every half meter. When he finally touched the ground, his knees buckled. He fell to his knees, breathless, the world spinning for an instant as his blood redistributed with the change in altitude.

It remained like that for an unmeasured amount of time.

Sweat soaked his rags, his chest burned, his hands throbbed from the cuts. But the satisfaction was profound in a way that had little to do with pride and much to do with something more primitive and honest—the satisfaction of a real problem solved with real resources, without intermediaries, without a system, without the comfortable mediation of money and structure that had separated, in his previous life, the need from its solution.

There, the need and the solution were one and the same. And he had bridged the gap between them with his own body.

He untied the makeshift rope, returning the cloth to its original shape. He spread it out on the damp ground like a makeshift bundle, placed the five coconuts in the center, and tied the ends with firm knots that he tested twice before trusting. The combined weight was considerable for such a small body—each coconut almost the size of his head—but distributed in the bundle carried on his back, it was within the realm of what was bearable.

He lifted the load with effort, his shoulders protesting, his back arching under the weight.

The return has begun.

He advanced with the same caution with which he had entered—each noise was assessed before it could turn into panic, each shadow checked before it could become a threat. Wild boars lived in that forest. He had seen the evidence in the cart the previous day, he had heard the warnings circulating in the port. They weren’t animals that announced themselves before acting. They were animals that arrived when distraction created an opportunity.

None showed up.

The forest released him with the silent reluctance of someone letting something go because they chose to, not because they were forced. At least that’s how it seemed, at the edge where the trees ended and the world of the port began again with its smell and its noise and its familiar brutality.

He paused on the shore for a moment, assessing the situation.

The port pulsed with its usual routine. Workers at the docks. Children running between the ships. Merchants at the stalls, their voices raised in the auction or lowered in the murmur of negotiation. No one looked at the thin boy carrying a simple package. He was invisible in the most useful way possible—present enough not to draw attention by his absence, small enough not to be perceived as a threat or a target.

He walked carefully, dodging to the sides, keeping his back to the walls as he passed larger groups. The hut appeared ahead with its precarious and familiar appearance—crooked planks, thatched roof, the entrance blocked by a frame that hardly deserved the name of door.

He entered unseen. He closed the entrance with his shoulder.

She set the package down on the ground with a long, trembling sigh that came from somewhere deep in her chest—not just from her lungs, but from some tension she had carried since before entering the forest and which only now, with the door closed and the coconuts intact before her, was allowed to dissolve.

She untied the cloth and revealed the five green coconuts, intact.

A smile lit up his dirty, exhausted face.

He retrieved the stone he had prepared in the previous days—a heavy fragment of dark rock with sharp, jagged edges that he had dragged with considerable effort from one of the harbor’s alleyways. The absence of a knife or any iron tool would be no obstacle. There, in that harsh world, improvisation was the only reliable blade. He positioned the stone between his outstretched legs, creating enough space to work without his knees getting in the way.

He picked up the first coconut with both hands, feeling the fibrous, green, still-damp husk of the forest. He raised it above his head, his thin arms trembling slightly from the accumulated effort of the climb.

It struck hard against the sharpest edge of the stone.

The impact reverberated through the small bones of his wrists, sending a wave of pain that rose to his shoulders. He repeated the gesture, always concentrating on the same point, striking with methodical precision. Twenty times. Thirty. Each blow echoed inside the hut like a muffled drum, green fragments flying, sweat once again dotting his forehead. The muscles in his arms—already weak and underdeveloped, paying the price for weeks or months of malnutrition before his arrival—burned as if they were about to be twisted from the inside out. His protruding ribs rose and fell with increasingly shallow breaths.

But it persisted, teeth clenched, until a sharper crack heralded the end of the shell’s resistance.

In the final blow, however, he lost control of his strength. The coconut split open all at once, the sweet water gushing out in a cascade over his chest, neck, and soiled rags. The cold liquid soaked his skin, trickled down his stomach, and formed a small puddle on the hard-packed earth floor.

”Shit!”

The word came out hoarse, laden with the adult irritation trapped in the child’s voice. He stood motionless for a second, staring at the mess, his chest heaving. Then his eyes drifted down to the inside of the cracked coconut. The white, soft, glistening pulp exuded a sweet, milky aroma that instantly made his mouth water. The sight was almost sacred in that moment of deprivation—something simple transformed into something precious by the hunger that had followed him like a shadow since the first day.

He rose with difficulty, his legs still aching from the climb, and went to the side of the makeshift bed—nothing more than an old rag thrown over straw, serving as both pillow and mattress. Behind it, carefully hidden, was the gourd made from dried coconut that I had found days before. It was irregular, rough, but perfect for the purpose. He returned to the rock and knelt again.

Using the gourd, he began to scrape the white pulp, taking generous chunks to his mouth.

The flavor exploded on my tongue.

Sweet, creamy, slightly oily, blended with the natural freshness of the fruit. Combined with the hunger that had consumed him for three long days, it was like tasting the best food in the world—not by exaggeration, but by real contrast, by the abysmal difference between the nothingness that had been his daily life and what it was now. In the previous days, his only meal had been a large piece of moldy, hardened, sour bread—probably stolen by that cunning child whose body he now inhabited, from some careless baker at the port. Now, it was nature’s nectar: ​​food rich in the reserves his body so desperately needed.

He ate with controlled voracity, scraping the inner walls of the shell until only the fibrous pulp remained. He drank what was left of the coconut water directly, tilting the open half over his mouth and feeling the sweet liquid trickle down his parched throat with an almost medicinal quality.

It wasn’t enough. Far from sufficient for a stomach that demanded more.

His eyes, gleaming with partial satisfaction, looked at the four remaining coconuts.

He repeated the process with each one—more cautious now, learning from his mistakes. Measured, precise blows, stopping just before the final impact. When the crack formed, he dropped the stone and used his two small hands to force the halves open slowly, his slender fingers trembling with the effort. It required patience and residual strength, but he succeeded. The clear, sweet water was drunk first, sipped from the gourd in slow, reverent sips, quenching the thirst that had followed him like a shadow since waking. Then came the pulp, carefully scraped, each piece chewed slowly to prolong the pleasure and aid the digestion of a stomach unaccustomed to receiving real food.

He repeated the ritual with each coconut, one after the other.

His arms grew heavier with each blow. His shoulders burned as if he had carried stones all day. His wrists throbbed, the palms of his hands—still sensitive from the cuts of the climb—ache from the constant friction. His entire body, frail and weakened by the malnutrition that preceded his arrival, paid the accumulated price of that day’s work. Sweat dripped down his dirty face, mixed with dust; his breathing grew increasingly shallow; small tremors ran down his thin legs from time to time.

Even so, he didn’t stop.

Each coconut he opened was a small but concrete victory against the hunger that had defined him since day one. And concrete victories—he had learned this in the last three days in a way that no corporate training had taught—were the only currency that mattered in a place where abstractions fed no one.

When the last one was finished, it was destroyed.

He sat leaning against the wall, his arms hanging loosely at his sides like dead weights, his chest rising and falling with deep, slow breaths. His muscles protested with every slightest movement, as if they had exercised for hours under the relentless sun. But his stomach was full—for the first time in three days, a warm, comforting sensation spreading through his abdomen like something he had forgotten existed. His thirst was completely quenched, his mouth free of the bitter taste of stagnant water. A pleasant torpor began to take hold, his body finally receiving the sustenance it had been relentlessly craving since the beginning.

Before succumbing to exhaustion, he stood up with effort.

He went to the entrance. He checked the makeshift alarm—the gourd still hung from the taut rope, the line stretched and ready to sound at the slightest touch. Satisfied, he went back inside. He picked up the old, torn cloak that served as a blanket, threw it over himself, and lay down on the crumpled clothes that covered the straw. The ground was hard, the uneven straw scratched his skin—but none of that mattered now as it had in the previous days. Tired to the bone, with a full stomach and a slightly calmer mind, he closed his eyes.

The last thought before slipping into sleep arrived floating like a silent promise on the threshold of consciousness, clear and unwavering:

‘I’m going to survive here, even if it’s the last thing I do.’

The cabin fell silent, broken only by the boy’s rhythmic breathing.

Outside, the port continued its cruel rhythm with the indifference of things that exist independently of who observes them. But within those crooked walls, a child with the mind of a man had conquered yet another day. A day of sweet pulp, fresh water, and determination that hadn’t asked permission from any of the obstacles it had encountered.

The world would demand its price tomorrow—he knew it.

But that night, he had paid with sweat and perseverance. And received, in return, the only thing that truly mattered at that moment:

The strength to continue.