by Mara Webb
“One more!” a man yelled. “This one will show ‘em!”
Miller was fixing our boat to the dock on Green Holt, and I was waiting for him to finish before I got out. There was a lot of shouting coming from somewhere off the shore, then another boom erupted, and smoke billowed upwards from behind the trees.
“Oh, now they know who they messed with!” the man’s voice yelled again.
“What on earth is happening?” I asked Miller.
“I think they are firing cannonballs at each other, or fireworks. I don’t know,” he shrugged. He reached out a hand to pull me up onto the dock and I saw the tiny blue lightning bolts tingle across my palm as I held onto him.
“Who goes there?” the man yelled again. This time he was much closer. There was a flashlight pointed right at us and I had to look down at my feet to avoid being blinded by it. “I won’t ask a second time! Load the cannon!”
“Whoa, slow down Pete!” Miller yelled back. “It’s me! Miller!”
The flashlight lowered and we were able to see the figure approaching us. He was a slim man with wild grey hair and a black leather eyepatch. He was wearing mismatched sandals, pale grey shorts and a t-shirt with a skull on it. He looked like a modern-day pirate, which also tied in nicely with the fact that he seemed to own a cannon.
“Miller, matey!” Pete chuckled. “Good to see ya, good to see ya indeed!” He limped quickly along the dock and wrapped his skinny arms around Miller, slapping him aggressively on the back in the weird way that some men do.
“It’s good to see you too,” Miller said. “This is Sadie Alden, she’s the new peacekeeper.” Pete released Miller and looked at me with confusion for a moment, before bowing over dramatically into a curtesy as if he had been presented with royalty.
“Ms. Alden, a pleasure it be, I’m sure,” he declared. “May I be asking, whatever did happen to Greta?”
“She was killed, Pete,” Miller explained. “I thought you would have heard by now.”
“Argh,” he scowled. “I suppose the rascal that did it is walking about happy as a clam, eh? Just you wait until I get my hands on that scumbag!” Pete began waving an angry fist in the general direction on the main island and I realized that I was staring at him with my mouth wide open. He was so weird that I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.
“We handled it,” Miller assured him.
“Not the way I would’ve!” Pete snarled. “Throw ‘em to the sharks, the lot of ‘em!” Who was he talking about? I had so many questions that I didn’t know which I should ask first. “Any who, I suppose my little cannon show is what has brought such a fine lady to my shores.”
“Yeah,” Miller answered. Miller had looked at me and realized that I was still trying to understand Pete, so answered on my behalf. “Are you firing at Skerry?”
“Of course! I’d blast that cursed place right out of the water if given half a chance!” Pete replied. He pulled a sword out of a sheath hanging around his waist and thrust it skyward. I could have sworn that there hadn’t been a sword there only seconds earlier. Was this guy a witch? A pirate witch? What was his deal?
“Right…” Miller hummed. “But do you remember what we talked about the last time I came over?”
“Yes, of course! You told me to only fire at them if they deserved it!” Pete grinned.
“I’m pretty sure that isn’t what I said,” Miller replied.
“Well, let’s not get bogged down in the details,” Pete smiled. “Come, let’s venture on down to party central and talk about less horrendous things than those nasty folk over on Skerry and what they have done to irk me so much this time.”
Miller looked back and me and I shrugged. I hadn’t got the faintest idea what Pete was talking about, but he was already salsa dancing his way back along the dock towards the sand. We began to follow him, crossing the beach and walking between row after row of palm trees until we found ourselves approaching a flaming torch.
There was a clearing in the trees and torches had been set up around the edges to light it up, there was music playing and a dozen or so folk were dancing with drinks in their hands. It was a beautiful night for a party, if you ignored the lingering scent of burnt explosives from the cannon fire.
“Everybody, give your warmest of welcomes to the new peacekeeper, Sadie Alden!” Pete announced. The group cheered and clapped, then immediately got back to twirling. “She be here to settle this Skerry nonsense once and for all.” A smattering of applause followed that statement as if they hadn’t heard him.
What was the issue between this island and their neighbor? If Pete was with us at the party, then at least he wasn’t firing cannonballs at anybody. How long would the ceasefire last?
“Miller, you didn’t call ahead for a room my dear,” a woman said as she spun herself towards the two of us. “How do you know I have any space tonight?”
“I…” Miller stuttered.
“I’m kidding! Of course I have a couple of rooms for you both. Oh, you are going to get the full Honey treatment tonight,” she smiled.
“The Honey treatment?” I echoed.
“My name’s Honey, sorry I probably should have opened with that! I run the guest house here on Green Holt.” She reached out a hand to shake mine and soon Pete was hobbling over to join in the conversation. Alarmingly, he was still waving his sword around.
“Ah, a fine place it is too! No better place to rest your head than at Honey’s guest house,” Pete grinned.
“I see you’ve met old toothless,” Honey laughed.
“Toothless?” I said. I was so baffled by everything that had happened since we came ashore that I was just repeating random words that people were saying to me.
“Yeah, toothless Pete. He makes a very specific kind of first impression,” Honey said.
“But you have teeth?” I said, looking at Pete.
“That’s what you think!” he cackled, spinning away into the middle of the dance floor.
“I assume you are both here to deal with our Skerry problem,” Honey asked. She had stepped a little closer to one of the flaming torches and I could see that her hair was beautifully golden and curled elegantly down over her shoulders. She had a warm, friendly smile that was enough to make you forget that Pete was waving a sword around at a dance party.
“I’m not sure what the Skerry problem is,” I confessed.
“Oh, it’s a long story. Why don’t I take you to the guest house and you can try to get a few hours of sleep before Pete starts firing at them again?” she offered.
“Lead the way,” Miller said.
“We’re leaving, Pete!” Honey yelled. I looked over to see that he was now whacking the sword against a palm tree and dodging the falling coconuts while laughing hysterically. The rest of the group were clapping as he did this, and I almost couldn’t look away. “Honestly, when that man gets into party mode, he can’t hear a darn thing…” Honey mumbled.
When we had approached Green Holt, it hadn’t looked all that big. Something about the density of the trees made it hard to get a good understanding about the geography of the place, but as they began to thin out, we realized that we were somehow nearing a cliff top.
“Honey, this place looks even more beautiful than it did the last time I was here,” Miller said.
“Nature does the hard work for me,” she laughed. The guest house was built overlooking the ocean, only a dozen or so feet from the sheer drop of the cliff. It was west facing, looking out over the golden hues of another island sunset. “Would either of you care for an herbal tea? I have all of them!”
“What would you recommend?” I asked.
“I’ll whip you up a fine one,” she shouted as she disappeared into the house.
“What do you think?” Miller asked, looking out at the setting sun as it let out it’s last few moments of light.
“This place is gorgeous,” I replied. “Pete’s pretty weird though.”
“Yeah, but you shouldn’t judge a place b
ased on it’s weirdest resident. Everyone else is almost normal,” he laughed. “Wanna sit for a minute?”
Miller sat cross legged on the grass and I sat down beside him. The stars were beginning to puncture the night sky and the chill in the air caught me off guard.
“Wow, the heat dropped quick!” I gasped, looking at the bumps on my arms like goose flesh.
Miller wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me into him. Was this our first date? If you ignored the part with the weird pirate guy, then it was a pretty romantic place to be. “It’s nice to be alone,” he said, kissing the top of my head.
“Two cups of tea,” Honey announced as she walked back out of the house carrying a silver tray. “I’ve left the keys on the tray for you both too. Miller I’ve got you in Room 1 and Sadie you’re upstairs in Room 3. Enjoy!”
She lowered the tray to the ground and then began to walk back into the house.
“Oh,” she said, clicking her fingers as if she’d just remembered something. “Breakfast is served at eight!” She carried on walking two more steps before clicking her fingers again. “Oh, and I sprung for a few new movies if you want to take a couple of VHS cassettes to your rooms. Your separate rooms.”
She hurried back into the house and I was left to contemplate why she had emphasized the word ‘separate’, and why Hallow Haven was the only place left on earth that used VHS tapes so frequently.
I guess I had already assumed we would be sleeping in separate beds, but hearing Honey specify it out loud was a little odd. Miller reached out to the tray and handed me my cup of tea. Holding the ceramic mug was enough to fill my body with heat again, and after a sip or two I felt much warmer.
“Well,” Miller said, grabbing the key for Room 1. “I guess we should turn in, unless you want to watch a VHS of a movie they made in the late ‘80s?” He was smirking and I smiled back at him. Miller hadn’t grown up on Hallow Haven, he’d moved here years ago and still was able to react to the strangeness of the place in the same way I did. He clearly agreed with me that VHS tapes belonged in the distant past.
“Is breakfast going to be weird? Are we going to be suspended upside down and made to eat a palm leaf or something?” I joked.
“Hey, stranger things have happened,” he smiled. We stood up and walked towards the house. There was a wooden picnic bench on the grass outside and a few sun loungers that faced out over the cliff. I didn’t know if Honey ran this place by herself, but whoever had decorated this place had done a beautiful job.
The windows on the ground floor were trimmed with fresh flowers in boxes beneath the glass, the front door was carrying a floral wreath and as we walked inside it seemed that the flowery theme continued.
The entrance hallway was adorned with potted plants and paintings of trees, so many that I couldn’t actually see the walls that they were hanging on.
“I’m this way,” Miller smiled. He kissed me on the cheek and walked off to the left, leaving me facing the staircase that would lead up to room three. I walked up the steps, baffled by the sheer number of paintings on the walls, and found room three on the top landing.
I unlocked the door and was immediately hit by a breeze rolling in through an open window. I locked the door behind me and walked over to close the window, but something caught my eye in the darkness outside. It looked like someone was running away from the house towards the trees.
I blinked a few times and tried to search for the mystery figure again, but I couldn’t see anything. Maybe it was a trick of the light, a tree shadow or something.
I closed the curtains and turned back to the bed. There was a piece of paper folded over on the pillow with my name on it. Had Honey left this here? If not, who else would know where I was?
3
I woke up and immediately grabbed the folded paper from the nightstand to stare at the words again. It was a short letter, but it had kept me awake for an hour before I had managed to drift off. ‘Sadie – you’re not safe here.’
If it had been Honey that had wanted to tell me this, then why would she have left a note on the bed? I wasn’t on the ground floor, so if someone had in fact climbed in through the open window to leave this on the pillow then they would have to have scaled the building. No mean feat.
The clock on the wall told me that I had twenty minutes before breakfast would be served downstairs. In my sleep it seemed I had summoned a few items of clothing from my house back on the main island and a fresh t-shirt and shorts were waiting for me on the chair by the foot of the bed. I quickly dressed, slipped the warning note into my pocket and ran into the attached bathroom to fix my hair.
Thankfully, Kate and Effie had fixed my hair for me enough times that I had picked up on how to use the spell for myself. I placed my hands on the top of my head and focused on the need to detangle and style the mess of curls and frizz. When I looked back into the mirror, I realized that I was absolutely not ready to have tried a spell like that on my own.
My long hair had been sheared just above the shoulder and was now curled voluminously like a 50’s pin-up model. I looked at the floor, but there wasn’t any hair there. Where had my hair gone? At least it wasn’t messy anymore, but it hadn’t been my intention to have such a dramatic hair cut before breakfast. There was no use in me trying to fix it, the next time I might accidentally bald myself.
I was more nervous about what Kate and Effie would say when they saw it than about Miller’s reaction. I grabbed the key, unlocked the bedroom door and hurried down the stairs, following the scent of toast and coffee.
“Sadie!” Miller said, calling me over to the small table by the window. The dining room area opened out onto a deck that faced the water, it somehow felt like every room in the house had an ocean view. It wasn’t until I was about to sit at the table with him that he realized what had happened. “Your hair! Wow, I love it!”
“I’m glad you do,” I smiled.
“Was this not what you were aiming for?” he asked.
“I just wanted to brush out the tangles from sleeping on it, maybe pop it up in a bun or something,” I confessed. “I don’t dislike it, but it wasn’t planned.”
“Well, I think you look like a movie star,” Honey grinned as she brought over a French press with hot coffee. “Would you like any fresh fruit juice? I’m partial to pancakes on a day like this and I’ve got any topping you can think of.”
“Gee, orange juice would be just swell,” I said. Swell? Eesh, now I was even talking like someone from the 50’s. Had the hair cut messed with my brain?
“Pancakes would be great, Honey,” Miller said. I nodded in agreement and Honey walked back to the kitchen. “Did you sleep well?” Miller asked.
“Not too bad,” I said. “How about you?”
“I kept thinking I heard noises outside, but I figured it was just the sound of the ocean. Your house is right on the beach, so you’re probably used to the sound of the tide,” he smiled.
I didn’t mention the note. I thought about it a few times as we waited for our breakfast, but I felt as though I should wait until we were back outside by ourselves just in case anyone was listening in.
“Here we are, two servings of pancakes and I’ve got enough butter and syrup here to sink a battleship,” Honey laughed. She placed the plates in front of us and the stack was so tall that I had to lift my knife and fork almost as high as my chin to start cutting into it. “What are your plans for the day? I suppose you will be chasing down Pete for some information about that cannon, huh?”
“Why does he have a cannon?” I asked.
“I can’t even remember how long he’s had that thing, but he loves any excuse to get it out and demonstrate his power with it. Of course, that’s just the biggest weapon he has, that man had plenty of smaller ones…” she trailed off. That sounded slightly ominous. “Anyway, enjoy your breakfast.”
She turned and walked back to the kitchen and then the sound of pans crashing together rang out.
“Are you okay?�
� Miller shouted.
“Yeah, just tripped over a darn cat. Don’t mind me!” Honey chuckled.
I thought that sharing breakfast together would be a great time to talk, but I was so into my pancakes that I didn’t say a single word until the plate was empty.
“Do you need more food?” Miller asked. “I bet Honey can get some more if you need.”
“No…” I gasped, feeling sluggish from the amount of food in my stomach. “That was perfect, I just need a minute.”
“I remember my first time staying here,” he laughed. “I ate more than I could handle then, too. Say what you like about Green Holt, but they make some amazing food here.”
“I need to get some air,” I managed, struggling to hoist myself onto my feet. Had we eaten dinner last night? I couldn’t even remember when I’d last had a meal. We’d been up in the trees on the main island, then walked down to listen to the music on the beach, and before I knew it, we were on a boat out to some random island.
I walked through the door out onto the deck that faced the water. The cliff seemed to curve around, and I realized why so many of the windows could face out onto the water, they had water on two sides of the house. The ocean air was helping with my feeling of fullness, I inhaled deeply in an effort to speed up the process of digestion.
“What on earth…?” Miller said. I looked behind me and saw him emerging from the dining room doorway and staring at the grass that ran alongside the deck. He was staring out at a hole in the dirt, and the mound of soil beside it.
“How did I miss that?” I mumbled to myself as I walked to stand beside him.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Honey complained as she came out to join us. “Some days I wish I could just pack a bag and move off this stupid rock.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Treasure hunters, that’s what’s going on!” she explained. “I suppose this means that y’all are throwing Shell’s Day sometime soon, huh?”
Shell’s Day was an event that a jewelry store on the main island had invented. It was like their own valentine’s day, only they now did it four times a year. As a marketing ploy to sell more jewelry it was a great idea, but Honey had a look on her face that suggested that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.