by K.N. Lee
Gergot growled as they came to rest, Lester losing his balance to go from standing flat to being on the edge of a slope. He tumbled toward the shore below them.
"This is not where we are supposed to be," the gargoyle growled. Raising his head, he could see the lighthouse in the distance, a single beam of light shining over the waves now presented at the edge of the sea.
Melina slid down the slope and helped Lester to his feet.
"Where are we supposed to be?"
"At that lighthouse. It's on an island, and it’s the closest anything to the Melesan's true home. We should have gone to the lighthouse."
"So where are we?"
"Somewhere on the Forgotten Shore at the edge of the Sea of Ignorance," the gargoyle stated, joining them at the edge of the water. Lester dropped his bag in the sand.
"So how are we going to get there?"
"I don't know," the monster admitted, fanning his wings. "We'll have to come up with something." His gaze was fixed on the iron gray sky above and the shaft of white light crossing it as a bridge over water.
The sudden detour away from the lighthouse and onto an entirely different island where the lighthouse was only a possibility to reach hadn't been an accident, but rather the concentrated efforts of two rather devious women looking to insure they would be more than capable of getting rid of the spawn of their elder sister.
As Phoebe chanted open a door to somewhere humans really were not supposed to go, the sisters, hidden back in the trees chanted something altogether different. They didn't want the spell to fail, not completely. Sending the child away was precisely what they wanted. Instead, they only wanted to be certain she never made it to her destination, or back home again. The easiest way to do that was to send her somewhere else in the wilds, somewhere something strong would reside. The words they whispered to the cosmos sought out malice, a great twisting heart of it coiled beneath the world and the gate turned toward those inhuman eyes. It was very near to where the children had landed.
The light of the spell faded, leaving the two in sudden darkness, but there was no light necessary for their smiles. The girl was gone. The gargoyle as well, an extra stroke of luck.
"Shall we make our move?"
"Not yet."
"She won't suspect it."
"There's too much magic still in the air. We shouldn't rush. It makes mistakes." Pauline smoothly soothed her sister's objections. "Besides, with them gone, we have time to wait. Time to let her pain grow. Let her suffer."
12
Crossing the Sea
There was a moon somewhere in the sky, Melina hoped. She hadn't seen it since they landed on the beach away from where they were expected to be. Her eyes once again went to the lighthouse in the distance. The bright beam of light streaking out across the sky was the best indicator of its location, since the lighthouse itself was so far away. Lester was sitting on the sand, his bag before his feet, arms drawn around his knees. Gergot sat on his haunches a few feet from Lester, his body so still it seemed he had turned to stone.
Did gargoyles turn to stone for real? Melina wondered and then pushed the thought away. That wasn't really important right then. What was important - was that they were on an island a long distance from where they were supposed to be with no way to get to that damned lighthouse.
With a huff she stamped her foot.
"Frustrated?" Lester asked the question without looking away from the frothing sea ahead of him.
"Yeah, sure, you could say that."
"We'll figure this out," he said dispiritedly.
"Don't sound so sure," she responded and started down the beach away from them both.
"Don't go too far, we don't know what's here," Gergot said.
"I won't. I just need to think."
The sand crunched beneath her feet with every step, punctuating her twirling thoughts with the surety that they were not prepared for this. The waves murmured and settled back, adding nothing to her thoughts but white noise and a strong smell of salt. The only time salt had a smell to her was when it was in water.
A funny thought to have.
Something else sounded below the murmur of the waves. Not louder than a whisper, but when the waves died down she could hear it, slithering. The sound of something smooth against something not. Melina stopped, turned round to see the world around her. Lester and Gergot were within reach of her voice, but far enough way she didn't hear them, or at least didn't think she did. Besides, neither of them slithered. She looked across the waves, the froth of the caps was white, so white it made points of light beneath the beam. Then one of those points dropped onto the beach.
Slide.
The sound it made was of something pulled across the gravel of the beach as it rolled back down into the trough of the wave only to be caught again by the water. Cautious, Melina started toward the edge of the water. At the high tide line, she stopped. The water lapped at her ankles and something brushed up against her legs. A half dozen of the drowning pearls were thrown up onto the land. Melina scrambled back, looking down to see the line of blood already soaking into the rip in her sock above the top of her shoes.
Several of the pearls slid back into the water, but one or two stayed on the sand and unfurled. The creatures were white. Just white. Even their open mouths and the oversized teeth inside. Melina didn't think, but rather began to run. And scream.
"GET AWAY FROM THE WATER!"
Lester jerked his head up and looked at her. His thoughts had been deep enough to keep him from noticing the things crawling up out of the waves. The one now only two feet from him was the size of a basketball with fangs the length of steak knives. It opened its mouth in its yawning hiss and launched itself for his face. Kicking backward, he accidentally shoved his bag at it, which saved him from losing a portion of his face.
The gargoyle was more proactive, but then he could be considering he was the only member of the trio with fangs to rival these creatures. The one that attempted him found itself caught in his jaws and its back broken with little more than a flick of the gray monster's head. He tossed it away and spit in a very human gesture before bounding toward the boy.
"Go!"
Melina was only feet behind as they vacated the beach, heading into the unknown stand of trees higher up on the island. Back on the beach, the broken pearl was being devoured by its fellows amid squeaks and squeals which sounded more playful than painful.
"What are those things?"
"If I remember correctly, baby Leviathan," Gergot said without slowing. "Trust me, those are the easy ones. You don't want to play with one that's full grown."
The trees above them blocked most of the light turning the forest into grand funhouse of shadows. Away from the beach, the sea sound died away leaving them in the silence only broken by their breathing and footsteps and brushing against the undergrowth.
Lester, in the lead, stopped running first, slowing to a trot, then finally stopping, his breathing a wheezy bellows. Melina joined him, then looked back at Gergot.
"Okay, so we're even further from where we needed to be now."
"True, but death was something I told you we needed to avoid." He sat down on his haunches again and snorted. His ears twitched. "And we have something else we need to be worried about, do you hear?"
"No," the two said.
The scream was something which could have come from a mortal throat, but it had not. An answering cackle from the ring of Death said it was something else entirely. Then they were surrounded.
The reek of moldering cloth overpowered the forest scent as the three were surrounded by twelve men; or rather those who had once been men. Each wore the best remains of leather boots and breeches, once white shirts now streaked with mud and decomposition hanging heavy over skeletal frames. Some still had hunks of what had been hair, another a bandana, and finally one a wide three corner hat. Every one of them carried a weapon and those weapons seemed newer than any of them.
"Surrender, or be run th
rough," said the creature in the hat. "Prisoners, be ye now. You'll do as you're told or find yourself feast for the beasts."
"In their current condition, we might be able to take them," Melina whispered.
"Perhaps, but I think it might be better to play it a little safer, at least for now," counseled the gargoyle quietly before settling his weight all the way down on the ground and folding his wings behind his back.
"Good."
The rope used to tie their hands smelled as bad but seemed to be in better shape than any of the pirates themselves. Each prisoner had a guard, the gargoyle had two. The Captain, at least so Melina had decided he was, lead them through the dark of the woods.
They emerged from the dark at the top of a cliff with the sound of water raging nearby. The beam was once more fully visible shooting across the sky to its unknown destination. Below them, at the base of the cliff, was a cove, and in the cove an antique three mast sat heavy against the sand canted to one side as if it had been dropped from some great height. They traveled, single file, down a natural staircase carved in the cliff by time to the base and boarded the ship.
"Now we'll see what the Captain will have us do with you," the one wearing the hat said.
There was only one problem with that idea: Gergot wouldn't fit.
The doors of the ship were simply too small for the shoulders of a full grown gargoyle, no matter how they grunted and pushed, he could not go.
"Leave the beast," he roared. "He'll just have to make a decision about him in absence, so he will."
"Such a lovely thing to be called a beast by the likes of you."
"An uppity beast at that," he snarled.
Below deck was not as dark as the forest but only by the safety of a few lamps twinkling like stars in the dark. Though one would have assumed the captain would be in the Captain's quarters above deck, they were lead down into the bowels of the ship where it only became darker once again. Then a form shivered up out of the dark, the pallor of a bleached skull wavering before them.
"And who are these ya bring me?" The spirit inquired.
He had once been a man of some girth, the clothes of the spirit hung heavy on him, bagging and sagging as a hundred years in water will do. He glowered at them with empty eye sockets from beneath the wide brim of a hat cocked back on his head to allow him to see.
"Trespassers on our island, Captain. We've brought them to face your judgment."
The Captain quieted his first mate with a look, letting the man shrink back before he addressed the two brought before him.
"And what's your business here?"
Lester's voice stopped in his throat. In fact, his thoughts had mostly stopped in his head at the sight of the dead men, walking dead men. The awareness that he might never see his parents again kept occurring to him in the most unpleasant ways. He had already seen himself die on this particular day three times. Now, looking into the face of this ghostly pirate, he saw it again, only this time he had been run through on a glowing blue sword.
Melina, however, had faced Death, been brought up with him, understood the danger and said,
"We have no business here. Our business is at the lighthouse across the sea. And if you would be so kind as to let us leave, we'll be getting our way there."
The ghost stood taller than she, looming over her a specter of ice blue light and heavy shadows. Dank wind, peppered with flecks of wood rot, moved through the air brushing her face.
"And if I have no such kindness left in me," the creature inquired, his smile something unhealthy.
"Then you'll find nothing left in you at all when I kill you," she responded, her own eyes full of malicious mirth.
"Gergot said to play it safe," Lester gasped, the sight of death rolling before his eyes like a screen. He would never see the true one coming.
"Gergot's not here and the time for being safe has passed," she snapped already feeling the strength rise in her as it often did at the merest hint she might need it. "So what's it to be, Captain? Shall we tango or do you want to be reasonable and generous?"
"You challenge me?"
"Yes, to your destruction or my own."
"Release her."
The ship's hold canted to one side like the entire ship did, leaving her standing at a drunken lean as the first mate fumbled with her ropes under the weight of her eyes. Once she was free, Melina rubbed her wrists and put her right hand out, palm open. The familiar weight of her mentor's weapon of choice settled against her palm and she closed her fingers over the handle, turning it before her like a windmill.
"Come then, Captain, let me grant you mercy," she breathed.
Near at hand, the Captain, shrank back into himself, his cutlass in his hand wavering.
"You bear the mark of Death." He made no attempt to mask his wonder, or his fear.
"And it shall claim you."
"Oh, but if it could." The spectral weapon faded to the floor of the ship, disappearing completely from sight. "Hear me, child, and hear well, I would ask a boon of thee."
The air quivered with fear despite the fact that the fearful were those who had no more use for breath. Melina did not lose the scythe from her hand, but did lower the butt of it to the floor where it made a sound which echoed through the close space like the thud of a heartbeat. Lester sidled closer to her as the ghost become more solid and horrid with each passing moment. The man who stood before them moments later was very, very real and still dripped the gore of his death from the wound at his heart.
"You bear the mark of the Immortal Death, child, so you do. And it would be to him I would offer this plea, but as he's not with you, it will be on you I set my tale, if you have ear to hear."
His eye sockets, though empty, pleaded for some response.
Melina nodded and tapped the scythe again. This time the sound came back as if the heart beat twice.
"You've come to the seas between realms, one of the ways to move about not quite tame, so you have." He doffed his hat, holding it over the gape at his heart. "Me and my crew, we've long plied these waters, as some do when they have the courage and willingness to chance for a pretty. There are monsters in these waters that can swallow a man whole and even those that can't well, let's just say to die their way isn't any cleaner. Yet if a man's strong and tricky, he can live well. So my crew and I did live well. We made our trade. And made our pretties. This island here became our place of staying when the sea was in a foul temper and as likely to smash our ship as float it. During one such squall two creatures joined us here and for a pretty one bartered passage for them both. They would go across the sea together. For their money, we offered to take them to the far shore, beneath the light of the beam what comes from that high lighthouse. How they came to be on our island, we never chanced to ask."
The Captain paused, looking into the faces of those members of his crew that remained in the hold. They shuffled their feet and looked at places in the wood. One scratched his head so hard his hair came out in drifting tufts.
"We hatched a plot, so we did."
With a shake of his head, he attempted to stamp his foot on the deck but his foot made no contact.
"Tricky we were. Too tricky. Too long we had naught but ourselves to answer to. We had forgotten that between the realms is still the world of the Immortals, places where they may hold sway. The two who bartered passage, they joined us aboard ship and we set sail. On the horizon, another storm, one of the summer screams, was already rolling in bringing with it a blackness like night. We were out of sight of land on any side, the way still long before us all when that storm rolled in furious. It was during the storm we made our move."
Melina refused to step back when the Captain leaned in nose to nose with her.
"We threw the two overboard."
"But they paid for their passage!" Lester yelled.
"What cared we for that? Our gold had been paid. We had no need to go all the way to the island, we were well rid of them," the Captain snapped, rounding on the
boy who did shrink away from him.
"You've told me nothing I care about," Melina said quietly bringing the spirit's attention back to her. "Tell me something I care about or I will grant thee mercy without delay."
"Begging the Lady's pardon, I was reaching the point of concern, so I was." Again he clutched convulsively at his hat.
"We threw the two overboard into the sea and thought little more of it. Nothing in fact. Our pockets were flush. We set to our favored haunt for carousing and settled there to make merry until such a time as it became necessary to be tricky again. We were three days into that port when a man, tall, slender, and certain, walked into the brothel where we were hold up. The ladies knew him, even if several of my men did not, they knew nothing of the Immortal Death and they paid for their disrespect quickly. Yet it was me he sought. Had me dragged down in nothing more than my knickers. When I came to him, he sat at a gaming table with a deck of cards in his long hands. His eyes were empty sockets full of aching dark, they were.
You threw my son and my gate keeper overboard.
He said to me simply tossing a card on the table near his boots. It made a sound like a maiden's sigh before coming to rest on the wood.
You stole from them and set them to die.
Another card sighing to its rest.
My gatekeeper is still missing.
Another card.
I couldn't find the words to say anything until he finally looked up at me.