Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath

by Lauren Child

  Ruby felt a yank as the little speaker was pulled from her ear, and she looked up to see Mrs. Drisco’s face level with hers, the teacher’s eyebrows arched in an angry position.

  “Can you explain yourself?” said Mrs. Drisco in a chilling whisper.

  Ruby looked down at her satchel, and her alphabetic notes and excuses folder. She had a good one from Dr. Franton at the lice and flea clinic, asking her to please avoid all cheerleading activities or indeed anyone involved with cheerleading — but it wouldn’t really work for this occasion since cheerleading was not the issue. And the note from the president was far too useful to be sacrificed merely to prevent a detention.

  Ruby paused. “If you could give me a little time, Mrs. Drisco,” she said. “I’m a little fuzzy today, so I might need a few minutes to come up with something good.”

  “That’s it!” boomed Mrs. Drisco. “Principal Levine’s office, NOW!”

  Ruby sighed. She would take the punishment; she could do with a little quiet time. What did it matter if it involved sitting in a dreary classroom on her own? But what she had forgotten was that the tape player, and more importantly the tape, would be confiscated by Mrs. Bexenheath. A schoolboy error on Ruby’s part.

  Darn it, Ruby, you’re off your game.

  She would need to enlist the help of a couple of her friends. When Clancy came by the detention room (as she knew he would), she passed him a coded note under the door. He read the note, which told him all he needed to know, and immediately snapped into action.

  Clancy knocked on Mrs. Bexenheath’s door and began some complicated story about a water bubbler that wasn’t bubbling in the lower hallway. He was halfway through this unnecessarily detailed explanation when Red Monroe knocked on the door, supposedly to tell Mrs. Bexenheath about a pigeon that was flapping around in the girls’ locker room, but in fact she was actually there to “accidentally” knock the large piles of carefully sorted mail onto the floor.

  While Mrs. Bexenheath was picking it up and Red was apologizing and Mrs. Bexenheath was struggling not to curse, Clancy Crew was opening the “confiscation cupboard” and retrieving the tape player.

  He ran to the window and threw it down to Del, who sprinted around the back of the building and passed it to Mouse, who was standing balanced on Elliot’s shoulders.

  From there, Mouse managed to just about pass it up to the window of the room where Ruby was enjoying detention. A small hand reached out and took the tape player from Mouse and . . . mission accomplished.

  Of course no one but Clancy knew what was on the tape. Mouse, Del, Elliot, and Red just assumed it was some music and that Ruby needed it to relieve the tedium of several hours of isolated study.

  Ruby listened to the tape over and over. She worked hard and felt she was getting pretty close to cracking the code. She looked at her watch: forty-seven minutes before detention was over. Then she wrote her 3,000-word essay on why it was a good idea to pay attention in class — not an essay Mrs. Drisco was likely to enjoy.

  When she was released, she went to meet Clancy at the Double Donut. He was moaning on about physics. “Mr. Endell just went on and on and on about YKU 726,” he said, slumping down in his seat and resting his forehead on the table.

  “You mean YKK 672,” corrected Ruby.

  “I mean he just went on and on about how super interested we should be because this only happens once in a blue moon.”

  Ruby shrugged. “Well, I guess he’s right. It is kinda rare for a small part of the ocean to stop moving.”

  “Yeah,” said Clancy. “It’s interesting to mention this once, twice, even thrice, but not like sixty-seven times.”

  “Well, Mr. Endell is kinda obsessive,” said Ruby. “Did he mention how often YKK 672 happens to pass by the earth?”

  “Did he mention it? Are you kidding? He didn’t stop mentioning it! Once every two hundred years. That fact is now etched into my memory.”

  Ruby smiled. Her theory was correct.

  “So what were you doing while Mr. Endell was boring me to death?” said Clancy.

  “Well, I was writing an essay about paying attention to Mrs. Drisco,” said Ruby.

  “Yeah, but what were you ACTUALLY doing?”

  “You remember how I was telling you about the Chime Melody interference?”

  Clancy nodded.

  “Well, what if it wasn’t interference? What if someone was using music to deliver a message?”

  “What kind of message?” said Clancy. He was staring at her, his eyes saucer-like.

  “Like locations, information, instructions,” said Ruby. “This someone is giving them all in code to someone else.”

  “You think these someones are the pirates?” Clancy looked puzzled.

  “No,” said Ruby. “I mean yes and no. The pirates don’t strike me as capable of thinking up this kind of code or of deciphering it — not from what my mom said anyway. Those guys sounded kinda Neanderthal.”

  “So you’re saying there’s more than the pirates out there?”

  “I’m saying there is more than likely someone who is kinda in with the pirates, but not part of their band. Someone super smart. Then there also must be someone else on the outside who’s issuing the orders. One supersmart person sends out the code on the Chime Melody airways and one super smartperson working with the pirates deciphers it.”

  “So where have you got to? With the code I mean?” asked Clancy.

  Ruby bit her lip. “That’s the thing, I haven’t got it yet. I’m just guessing at this point, and it’s making me crazy.”

  Clancy patted her on the back. “You’ll get there, Rube. No doubt about that.”

  “Yeah, but when?” She sighed. “Maybe only once it’s all too late.” She stood up and slung her satchel over her shoulder. “I better get going; got a lot to do.”

  “You can’t go,” said Clancy. “It’s Friday night, we were gonna hang out, remember?”

  “Clance, I got a job to do. It’s kinda important, you know?”

  “Yeah, for your information, I do actually! The job is more important than anything else, including your friends, including me. I got that, OK? Loud and clear!”

  Ruby felt guilt wash over her, but rather than say the right thing, she said exactly the wrong thing. She regretted it as soon as she uttered the words and saw him flinch.

  Clancy didn’t reply. His face said it all, and Ruby just turned and left the diner, not once looking back.

  By the time she made it home she had a horrible little voice jabbering in her ear, telling her what a crummy friend she was. She ignored it, and instead allowed the white noise of her busy brain to block it out. Up in her room, she turned on the mini cassette player and pulled on her headphones. The awful music played on and did nothing to ease her mind.

  Then at about half past four that morning she got it.

  WHEN SHE FELT SURE SHE WAS RIGHT, when she was positive the code worked, that what she was putting together made sense, Ruby went down to find Hitch.

  It was 5:05 a.m. on Saturday morning, and he was sitting in the kitchen drinking a cup of very dark coffee. He watched her as she placed the cassette player on the table. She pressed the play button, and out scritched the unharmonious sound.

  When the piece was through, Ruby took out various pieces of paper, placing them in front of Hitch in order:

  First the musical score.

  Then the score marked with letters underneath the notes. Once he had taken in how it all worked, Hitch nodded, and Ruby laid more papers on the table, each one delivering another short instruction.

  TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CHIME MELODY CODE AND HOW IT WORKS, CLICK HERE

  He looked at them for a long while, reading the messages over and over.

  Finally, Hitch spoke.

  “This ‘she’ that they’re talking about, got any ideas who it might be?”

  “Uh-huh,” Ruby replied.

  Hitch looked up, his left eyebrow raised. “Go on,” he said.

&nbs
p; “I reckon she’s a wreck, an old wreck,” said Ruby.

  “You better not be talking about me,” called Mrs. Digby as she bustled through the room, bucket in hand — in one door and out the other.

  “Never would!” Ruby shouted after her. They continued to talk, but with their voices hushed slightly: the housekeeper had sharp ears.

  “The eighteenth-century wreck of the Seahorse to be precise,” said Ruby. “I’ve been reading up about it, and I found an obscure account by some old guy named Featherstone that describes the night of the shipwreck as Martha Fairbank told it. She insisted the ship went down somewhere near the Sibling Islands.”

  “Even though every other account says it couldn’t have?” said Hitch.

  “Yes.” Ruby nodded.

  “OK,” he said. “So tell me your theory.”

  “We start by assuming that the Seahorse did go down where Martha said it did,” said Ruby. “Where the toes of the sisters meet — the toes of the sisters are the twenty small rocks sticking straight out of the sea a quarter mile from the islands; the wild currents make it difficult and dangerous to navigate around them.”

  “The toes of the sisters?” said Hitch.

  “Lots of people used to call the Sibling Islands ‘the sisters’ in those days and the smaller rocks were called the toes. It’s all because of that old legend about them.”

  “What old legend?” asked Hitch.

  Ruby waved her hand impatiently. “I’ll tell you some other time. It’s not relevant to this. What I’m trying to say is that if the wreck sank somewhere in that channel between the rocks and the Sibling Islands, then this explains why the pirates are trying to keep boats out of the Sibling waters or anywhere too close to the islands. They block coast-guard signals and redirect cargo shipping way off course. If a pleasure boat comes by, they steal what they want and cut them adrift. It makes for good cover — makes it all seem random and about looting cash rather than premeditated and to do with two-hundred-year-old treasure.”

  “But why now?” said Hitch. “Why look for treasure that may not even be there, in a wreck that has been submerged for two hundred years?”

  “Because now they can,” said Ruby. “The currents are calm for the first time in living memory, so it’s actually possible to dive the wreck.”

  “But this theory presupposes that the pirates knew this was going to happen, or made it happen somehow.”

  “Yes,” said Ruby.

  “They made it happen?” said Hitch. “This band of pirates knows how to quell the tides?”

  “No, but they knew it would happen.”

  “How?”

  “Because of something that happens once in a blue moon,” said Ruby. “Something that happens every two hundred years.”

  “I’m listening,” said Hitch.

  “In her account, Martha Fairbank described a falling star and how the pirates floated to the island on a raft. They couldn’t have done that unless the seas were still. The falling star was an asteroid. The same asteroid, the same falling star, that we’re seeing now.”

  “YKK whatever-it-is?”

  “YKK 672, yes. Well, that’s what’s stopping the currents. It has to do with gravity. Anyone who knew when it was coming back into orbit would know that they could swim the waters and dive the wreck then.”

  “OK,” said Hitch. “But is it likely that these guys would know all this? Aren’t they more brawn than brain? I can’t see the thugs your mother described looking this stuff up in the local library.”

  “I agree,” said Ruby, “which is why I think that guy my mom described — the nicely dressed fellow who was in with the pirates but not like the pirates — has to be the brains behind all this, or at least some of the brains behind all this.”

  Hitch nodded. “You have to wonder what a clean-cut guy was doing with a bunch of bandits.”

  “Another thing’s still bugging me about all this,” said Ruby. “That treasure might be worth finding, but if Martha was telling the truth, and I think she was, the priceless part of it, I mean the really priceless part, is not underwater at all; it’s hidden in a cave inside one of the Sibling Islands. A cave lost under a rockslide. If this guy is so smart, then why doesn’t he know that? I mean it’s a lot of effort for some old gold and a few gems, right?”

  “Maybe if we take a look at that wreck, we might find the answer,” said Hitch. “You fancy taking a dip, kid?”

  “When were you thinking?” said Ruby.

  “Like the message said, we need to act swiftly. So how about just as soon as I can get hold of Kekoa?”

  HITCH, RUBY, AND KEKOA TOOK A BOAT out to the Sibling waters. The two sister rocks rose dramatically out of the sea before them. It was easy to understand why sailors of days gone by had been superstitious about them. The rocks were beautiful but lonely, isolated there in restless seas — though today the water was tranquil.

  They maneuvered the boat until they were between the two rocky outcrops once known as the “toes of the sisters.”

  “So what’s the story with the rocks?” asked Hitch, peering at them through the haze of the morning light. “How did they come to be called the Sibling Islands, apart from the obvious I mean?”

  Ruby listened closely as Kekoa explained: as one would expect, she knew a lot about the coasts and waters, but Ruby was impressed at how much she also knew about local history and mythology.

  Ruby was familiar with this story from all her library research, but she liked the way Kekoa told it.

  It was a melancholy tale of two sisters. Both had been flung overboard during a violent storm. Separated by the waves, they were then miraculously rescued by the tide, which carried them each to their own island. It was said that the girls climbed to the pinnacle of each rock and called to passing mariners. “Help us,” they cried, but their calls were muffled by the wind and sounded like whispers, and most did not hear them.

  Those who did hear their calls mistook them for the voices of sirens, mermaids luring them onto the rocks. Sailors who followed sirens rarely lived to tell the tale, their bones smashed to pieces and their lifeless bodies dragged down to the depths of the indigo ocean. So the sisters were destined to call to each other across the turbulent channel forevermore.

  Today, though, the islands looked far from tragic, glowing gold in the hazy morning light. Hitch scanned the horizon, but there were no other boats to be seen; they were alone as far as they could tell.

  They waited for an hour or so, Hitch regularly scanning the radar for vessels that might prove sinister. To pass time more merrily he tuned in to the radio and an old-fashioned song spilled out. “WELCOME TO CHIME MELODY,” came the announcer’s voice. “HERE FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE.”

  “It would seem your theory is correct, kid,” said Hitch. “Chime is the only station you can receive in these waters, so I guess it’s the old tunes or no tunes.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Ruby. “I kinda like the oldies.”

  Kekoa didn’t say anything, but Ruby could tell she would rather have silence no matter what the radio was playing.

  “So you find out anything more about the sea whisperings?” asked Ruby.

  Kekoa shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not yet.”

  “One of the kids on my swim team thought she heard it in Twinford Bay.”

  Kekoa looked up. “Really?” she said. “No one has heard it there before.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t hold your breath,” said Ruby. “Red’s a very imaginative kid, if you know what I mean. She was prepared to believe it was mermaids.”

  Kekoa continued to stare at Ruby, but didn’t say a word.

  Hitch wouldn’t allow anyone to dive until he had checked out everything he could check out. The coast seemed to be clear — nothing was beeping on the radar — and finally he said, “Well, there don’t seem to be any murderous pirates around, so I guess you’re good to go.”

  The water was dead calm, the whirling currents and undertow gone for a while at l
east, but there was no way of knowing for exactly how long.

  “Be careful, Ruby,” said Kekoa. “This situation is not safe; these waters should not be so still, and might not be for much longer. These are dangerous seas.”

  If Ruby had interpreted the coded message correctly, then they were moored just above the wreck of the Seahorse where the toes of the sisters meet. The location seemed to fit with Martha Fairbank’s description too. “We sailed to the rock guarded by the golden bird.”

  Hitch lined up the boat in such a way that indeed, from that angle, the pinnacle of the rock did look like a golden bird. As he did so, Ruby saw what looked like a blink of light flash from the smaller island. She squinted, staring ahead of her, but it didn’t come again.

  “What is it?” asked Hitch.

  “I thought I saw something — a trick of the light I guess,” said Ruby.

  “You sure you’re up for this, kid?” Hitch asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” said Ruby.

  “Diving for real is different from diving in training; you don’t know what you’re going to find down there.”

  “Isn’t that the whole point?” said Ruby. “Oh, you think I might see a skeleton or two?” She gave him a mock-horrified look.

  “I’m not so concerned about the already-dead; it’s the live ones who can cause the grief. We don’t know who’s been down there recently or what they’ve been up to, so be careful and stay close to Kekoa. You hear me?”

  “I hear you,” said Ruby.

  He tapped her hand where she clutched the boat’s side. “I’ll be right here, kid. And I can follow your movements on the radar.”

  She nodded, and the two Spectrum agents attached their breathing apparatuses and fell back into the water.

  They saw it before long: a carcass of sorts, a ship’s skeleton, covered in barnacles and seaweed, its wooden frame rotting into and blending with the very seabed. Amazing marine plants and coral had grown through it, around it, and within it, and this long-lost thing was now alive and crawling with sea creatures.