Bonnyread Island
A Short Story
2026 Summer Island Getaway Challenge
By Maryanne Peters

I don’t know about you, but I always think of a summer getaway as a chance for renewal. I like to think that after all the stresses of work, you can just strip down and run into the sea, and let the water wash away all your thoughts and pains, so that when you step out of the water it is almost like being somebody else – somebody better equipped for whatever comes next.

But what came next was the same as before. The same thoughts would come into my head, the same pains of stress would arise, as if the ocean only offered a few days of respite. I suppose that feeling this way just hammers you down. For the summer of 2025 it hardly seemed worth spending the money to go on vacation.

In fact, everything that had happened at work right up through spring, had seemed even harder to cope with. I had worked myself to exhaustion, yet somehow others had taken the credit and I looked like the slacker. There was even the suggestion that my continued employment was in question. People had suggested that I resign and start again somewhere else.

But then I decided that was what made the need for a getaway even more important. Could I wash it all away and keep it away this time? I needed to try harder, even though it seemed that every time I did that, I missed out on the rewards.

I received one of those emails – the unsolicited ones that offer you the tropical island experience. It was not even as if I was looking, so that it could be explained by search history bots or cookies. It seemed to come out of the blue, and to promise me a venture into the blue.

The resort was on Bonnyread Island, somewhere in the Bahamas. The island was small with no airport, so it could only be reached by boat or by seaplane. Apparently, it had some history, having taken its name from the real-life female pirates of the Great Age of Piracy in the Caribbean, Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

But I was not interested in history. What interested me was that the island offered small coves with white sand around the island, places where I could strip down completely, and truly cleanse myself of everything wrong with my life. On a whim, perhaps, I booked a ten day stay at the only resort on the island, although there were some private homes on the other side.

I believe in travelling light for trips in the summer. However, I did pack light hiking boots to explore the island. I packed shorts and two pairs of swim trunks and light shirts only. I was excited when I boarded the airplane. I had a feeling that this trip was going to be life-changing – I just did not know how that might happen.

From Nassau I took a seaplane directly to the resort, hitting the sheltered waters of a lagoon and motoring right up to a floating pontoon off a small jetty. I was greeted warmly and after a tour of the facilities I was shown to my modest but comfortable single room, possibly the only single they had. The other guests appeared to be couples.

I had a drink at the bar and had a light meal there too, before retiring with a map of the island that had been given to me at my request. It was a photocopy of something that had been hand drawn, possibly even a century or more before, but I was assured that nothing had changed. The script appeared old and ornate and there were some curious drawings including a mermaid at the bottom with her head almost haloed by a small sandy cove that was not named. I could see that it was very sheltered, but there seemed to be a path to it. I decided that was where I was headed, the very next day.

So in the morning I went to the buffet breakfast with my small knapsack and ate some food and packed some away for later. I took swim trunks and a pool towel, and my little sack was full. I wore shorts and a tee-shirt and a hat with a brim. I set off energetically.

A trail followed the ridge and there was no obvious drop off to the cove, but I was sure that I was in the right place so I ventured off the solid worn track from time to time to look for a way down. By sheer chance I found the way, concealed between limestone boulders, a clear path beyond them even with steps cut into limestone in places. At the bottom the trail opened on to a perfect wineglass-shaped beach of white coral sand, with cliffs and thick vegetation above that. It was totally private.

I took off my clothes and did not bother putting on my trunks. I left my clothes on a rock and walked into the sea naked. The water was warm and calm, with an offshore reef sheltering the deep water and preventing ready access even by shallow water boats. It was perfect.

I dived deeply, surfacing to push the hair away from my face. It seemed to be longer than I thought. I had not had a haircut in some time but when facing myself in the mirror I had never noticed how long it had grown. But the water felt great, as if I was swimming in carbonated water, making my skin tingle. It was exactly what I wanted – the feeling of nakedness and being totally at one with the sea, one of the most powerful forces in nature and the source of the first forms of life on our planet. In geological terms, the womb of the world.

Then suddenly, I realized that I was not alone. I looked up the beach and there was a man sitting there, on the trunk of a tree that had tipped over and then regrown straight up, to make a U-shape that he could sit in. He seemed not to be looking at me, but at the sky.

“Hello,” I called out. “I am just warning you, that when I get out, I have no swimwear on. It is on that rock over there, with my towel.”

“There is nought on that rock, stranger, but it matters not to me should ye be clothed or as God maketh thee.” The words seemed strange, as if from another time. His clothing too, shorts that extended below the knee, had been a fashion some years ago. But these shorts and his shirt, a pullover type laced at the chest and also made of canvas-like fabric, seemed ancient in style.

I looked at the rock and there was no sign of my things. I smiled as if to say to him that I was ready to accept the joke. I rose out of the water and waded up to him.

“Ye have been in the water too long,” he said. “This be Mary’s Bay, where Mary Read came into being. I would never swim in these waters, least I lose my manhood as seems your fate.” He was nodding in my direction and looking down my body. I was drawn to follow his gaze.

When I looked down it seemed to me that I must have spent too long in the direct sunshine without my hat. My body seemed different. It was hard to see any hair on my body, and most chilling of all, my penis seemed to have reduced in size. It was still there, but it was a fraction of the size that it should be. I looked up at him, I suppose with an expression that pleaded for an explanation.

“Have ye no idea why this isle carries that name of Mary Read and her good friend and some say her sometime lover, Mrs. Bonny? Do ye know nothing of the history of these parts? Come forward, stranger. Be assured that I have seen all manner of folk, men and women and those in between. Come hither, and by chance I have a costume of these times that ye may wish to wear, out of modesty.”

He held up a one piece swimsuit. It was a woman’s bathing suit, in a fashionable shade of blue with a shimmer to it, with a diagonal textured pattern and an open back. Even from where I stood in the water I could see that it was something very special – something beautiful. I walked out of the water towards him in a manner that seemed somehow odd, with one foot in front of the other.

As I drew near he stepped off his tree seat down to the sand, and held the garment out to me. I could see that he was an older man, say fifty years of age, but strong and fit, with shaggy sandy hair and a brown beard with flecks of grey. His eyes looked kindly, but yet with a hint of violence behind them. I was struck by the idea that he was handsome, which is not something I had ever thought of men before.

I stepped into the swimsuit and pulled it on. It fitted perfectly. There was very little room in the crotch, but that didn’t seem to matter. In fact, looking down it seemed the way this outfit should look.

“I can show you the way back to your inn, if you would favor my company,” he said. “I may even offer to carry you over the rough parts.” He nodded towards my naked feet that suddenly felt as if they could barely cope with the rough pieces of coral in the sand. I noticed that his feet were bare but clearly roughened by some time without shoes.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Ben Rackham, is my name,” he said. “Born on this island, but I will not recount the year to ye. I know this place, you see, and I know the history.”

He picked me up as if I was a bouquet of flowers and deposited me on the path above the beach, then he led the way up, offering me a hand where needed and a lift over obstacles of any size. He smelled of coconut oil – rich and exotic, but somehow manly.

“Tell me then, of the story of those lady pirates you spoke of,” I said, to break the silence of our walk.

“Ah, lady pirates they may have been,” he began. “I can say that Anne Bonny was definitely a woman. She may have dressed as a boy to get free working passage across the Atlantic, but she married the man Bonny and later ran away with the pirate Jack Rackham. She is my ancestor, you see. Her child was born in prison in Jamaica all those years ago – my forebear. But as for Mary Read, I be told that Mark Read had a claim to an inheritance, which he did not get, so he left his home and served for a time in the army of Britain. Inheriting property and serving in the army are not things that women could do in those days, so it seems that when Mark crossed the Atlantic to this place, he was a man. So, ye may ask, how did he become Mary Read, who had many men as lovers as well as one woman in her friend Anne Bonny? We only know that it happened here, possibly in the year 1715 when he (or is it she) would only have been 20 years of age. After that we only hear of Mary, the swashbuckling lady pirate who fought the law until she was thrown into jail in November 1720. We know that she was a woman then, even if she may not have been with child as she claimed, and Anne was.”

“What happened to her? What happened to Mary?” I needed to know

“Well, the record shows that both Bonny and Read were sentenced to hang but escaped that fate by “pleading the belly”. The record shows that Anne Bonny was later released but the records show that Mary Read died in prison in April 1721 … but did she? If she died in jail then why is her grave on the other side of this very island? I could show it to you if you wish it”.

“I am suddenly very tired,” I admitted. “Perhaps tomorrow?”

“Sure enough,” he said. “We are now where we part company, and the path to the inn is clear. But on the morrow, at noon, I will wait in this spot for ye to come, and I will show you many things that I hope will bring you joy.”

And then he was gone, and I was left to make my way back to the resort in bare feet – bare feet that seemed to have soles as tender as my cheek.

But when I arrived, walking into reception in nothing more than a woman’s swimsuit, the man behind the counter barely batted an eyelid.

“Welcome back,” he said. I wondered if people like him are trained to ignore guests who might not be dressed conventionally. “I have good news for you, you have been upgraded, and we have already moved you to your new room. It has a sea view, and it comes with a free spa session. You might like to take advantage of that this afternoon? It looks as if you have had an adventure in the interior.”

I was shown to my new room, or I should rather call it a suite. It was huge. It had a king size bed and furniture both inside and outside on the Terrace, with a vista across the turquoise colored coral waters to the blue ocean beyond.

But I could not see my bag. I opened the closet and there were clothes hanging there, but not mine. They were women’s clothes. In the drawers too – feminine underwear folded and fragrant. And in the bathroom, cosmetics and lotions, and a pink razor that for some reason seemed to call out to me.

On a whim I pulled something out of the closet. It was one of those beach to bar flowing robe things with beads in patterns stitched on over an exotic printed pattern. For some reason I was not ready to shed the swimsuit, but this could go on top and immediately I was dressed. All I needed were shoes and there was a pair that seemed to match – flat sandals with stones attached in similar colors.

When I looked at myself in the mirror it seemed to me that the reflection was not me, but that was not a bad thing. There was a woman looking back, but she was excited – a little puzzled perhaps, but excited in a way that I had not been for many years. There was a time when I lived for excitement like this, not knowing what the next day, or even the next hour, might bring. A person who lives in that state is truly living. I thought that was a feeling that I had lost forever, that I would never feel again, but now it was back and ten times stronger.

There was a hibiscus flower on the side table, and I put it behind my ear.

The hotel phone rang and I was told that the spa was ready for me. A spa? I had never been to one. Why would I even bother with that? Now it seemed like yet another adventure. I rushed out the door with the flat heels clicking on the tile floors and the robe billowing behind me.

“Just lie back and relax, sweetheart,” the lady said, so I did.

I could explain none of what happened but I decided that I did not need an explanation, at least not yet. If it was a dream, or magic, or just a sequence of modest delusions imagined to be something real, it did not matter. I was alive. I had cleansed myself in the sea and had almost become reborn, into somebody very different from me – somebody so much happier, as if facing the world with new eyes.

How long would it last? Did that even matter? Just lie back through the facial and the massage and the aromatherapy, and then the hair and whatever they were doing to my face and hands.

The sun was setting as I made my way to the bar. I was wearing that robe but this time over a bikini, which strangely seemed to fit me even better than the swimsuit. My chest had come forth into the cups and my junk had retreated from the front of the bottoms.

“Order anything you like, it is on the house, compliments of the owner,” said the barman.

I ordered off the picture on the list – something colorful but alcoholic.

“I should thank the owner,” I said. “What is his name?”

“His name is Benjamin Rackham,” the barman said. “As for thanking him, he lives right here on the island, but he rarely comes down here. He says he lives in the out rather than the in.”

“I will thank him tomorrow then,” I said.

He was there when I got to the ridge, wearing exactly what he had been wearing the day before, and smelling of coconut oil. He had under his arm a roll of what looked like canvas.

He seemed very pleased to see me and he admired my new hairstyle and the color of my lips.

“Ye are a sight to behold,” he said.

“Before we go any further I have to ask about the way you speak,” I said. “It sounds a little out of time, perhaps even piratical?”

He smiled. He said – “I am a Baha-man. A white Baha-man, but born and raised here. Some say that we all sound … piratical. But the accent on this island definitely is. It’s in our blood, you see. We are sailors and people who surrender ourselves to fortune, wherever fate may take us. That is who we are.”

“To never know what tomorrow will bring?”

“Exactly,” he said. “And on that point, I wonder if we might go down to Mary’s Bay again before we walk across to Mary’s Grave, which is near to where I live,” he said. “You could have a swim there.”

“Will you swim with me?” I asked.

“Not there,” he said. “I have told you about those waters. I will watch you swim. I think you only did half the job yesterday. If you want it, let me help you finish the job, and go all the way, just as Mary Read did.”

“I think I would like that,” I said.

I swam naked and he watched. I felt that water again. I wanted it to do what he had indicated it would, even though I knew that was irrational and perhaps just wishful thinking. But he had unrolled the canvas on the beach near the tree I had first seen him sitting on. That was where he would lay me down and finish what the water of the bay could not. That was where Ben Rackham would enter me and make me a woman. That was how Bonnyread Island would work its magic on me.

Is it any wonder that I never want to leave?

The End
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© Maryanne Peters 2026