“Now there is absolutely nothing to look forward to. Nothing!”
“Now now, that’s not true, dear Lucinda,” Anderson Brigby Bright said, hoping to cheer her up. “I’ve prepared the most marvelous surprise for you.
Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa groaned. “It’s not another painting, is it?”
“What if it was? You’d be lucky to get another painting. I’m going to be quite famous one day.”
“You’re going to be famous as a painter.” She said the word “painter” like it was a particularly vile form of toe fungus. “That’s not like really being famous. Not like being a musician.”
“How dare you!” Anderson Brigby Bright shouted. He didn’t mean to sound so angry, but he couldn’t help himself.
“If a painter went missing, no one would even bother to form regional clubs to look for him. He could just stay missing forever and no one would even notice.”
Anderson Brigby Bright opened his mouth and then closed it again. He didn’t want to ruin his perfect evening by fighting with Lucinda, no matter how wrong and crazy she was being.
“As I mentioned before, I’ve prepared a surprise for you,” Anderson Brigby Bright said. He made himself smile even though what he really wanted to do was clench his teeth. “It’s not a painting and I think you’ll quite like it.”
He left the table and went up to the microphone. He signaled for the band to start playing the opening bars of “You Enchant Me, Yes You Do.”
But just before he filled his lungs to belt out the first note, he had a moment of doubt. What if Jane was right? What if he really wasn’t a gifted singer, despite all of his practicing?
No. He couldn’t stop now. Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa was watching him, and she deserved nothing less than greatness. He opened his mouth and prepared to sing.
But just as the first horrible note of the song came out of his throat, it was drowned out by a deafening clap of thunder. The band stopped playing as the lights in the trees flickered on and off. And then a storm like no other broke over the Science Fair Dance.
The Storm of the Century
Oh how it rained! The clouds boomed the loudest thunder in the history of thunder, and the sky was lit up by the flashiest lightning in the history of lightning flashes.
Students at the Science Fair Dance scattered in all directions. The crepe paper decorations dissolved into mushy puddles. The lights in the trees blew down in a tangle of sparking electric wires. The punch bowl overflowed with rainwater, and the dance floor grew squishy and slick.
Anderson Brigby Bright Doe III found himself separated from Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa in the commotion. He’d taken shelter in the gazebo, and she had taken refuge in the bandstand.
Anderson Brigby Bright was scared of thunderstorms, although this was not something he would admit, even to himself. So when his hands began to shake and his knees began to tremble, he told himself that he was only concerned for Lucinda. He thought about bravely making his way across the courtyard to the bandstand to be with her. It seemed so romantic to hold each other’s hands for comfort during the storm.
KABOOM!
As the whole courtyard shook from an exceptionally close lightning strike, Anderson Brigby Bright reminded himself of how she’d said that no one would care if a painter went missing. He could just barely make out the bandstand through the torrents of rain that were pouring down—torrents that would undoubtedly flatten his wonderfully wavy hair into a dripping mess—and decided to stay where he was. Maybe after she endured the storm with nothing but the comfort of a bunch of musicians and musical instruments she’d realize how crazy she’d been acting and learn to appreciate him and his photorealistic paintings more.
Across town, Ms. Schnabel was once again standing on her front porch in her fuzzy pink slippers. She was watching the rain pour down in front of her as the sky lit up with brilliant flashes of light.
She was not supposed to be at home. She was supposed to be up at the gifted school helping to chaperone the Science Fair Dance. Her sister had insisted that she volunteer as a way to demonstrate her commitment to her new life as a teacher instead of her old one as a pirate.
She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the wildness of the night. Back when she was a pirate captain, she had adored nights like this. She’d climb up the mast to the crow’s nest, letting the wind and rain lash at her while her crew huddled belowdecks. She always felt safe on The Wild Three O’Clock, no matter how the ship pitched in the waves. It was a worthy vessel, although in the end, she hadn’t been a worthy captain. Her own pride had sunk her ship when no storm could. The wind howled around the front porch, almost as if it were as brokenhearted as she was that The Wild Three O’Clock now lay at the bottom of the Sea of Cortez.
BLAM! BOOM! BANG!
Three flashes of lightning were followed quickly by three crashes of thunder. The intensity of the storm had caught Ms. Schnabel by surprise. Normally she was very good at sensing what the weather would be like—and her senses had told her that the evening was going to be perfectly pleasant. It wasn’t like her to be wrong about a weather prediction.
Of course, maybe she hadn’t been wrong. Maybe something else had happened to disturb the pattern of the weather. Maybe the Grimlet twins had accomplished what they’d set out to accomplish.
“No,” she told herself. “That’s impossible!”
But was it? What if the Grimlet twins had succeeded? What if they really had built a weather machine that worked well enough to generate such a powerful storm?
The rain was blowing up onto the porch now, and her fuzzy pink slippers were starting to get drenched. She went back into the house and looked at the very proper and modest organza silk dress that her sister had set out for her to wear. But she couldn’t put it on now. Her mother had taught her that organza silk was a poor choice for bad weather because it was easily stained by water spots.
Of course, with the storm, the Science Fair Dance was probably canceled anyway. There was no point heading there now.
Her eyes drifted over to the kitchen trash can. Her pirating clothes were inside of it. They were waterproof and couldn’t get any more stained than they already were. They’d be perfect for a night like this. Surely she wouldn’t be hurting anyone if she put them on one last time and went to see what the Grimlet twins were up to.
Unlike real pirating clothes, pirate costumery is not terribly waterproof. This was something that Captain Rojo Herring was learning the hard way as he was dragged down to the lake by his three captors. His clothes were sodden, his peg legs were waterlogged, and his magnificent pirate hat was wetter than a wet blanket.
He wanted very much to wipe the small river of water that was running down his face and dripping down the front of his shirt, but he couldn’t, because Ebb had tied his hands together—and he would have liked to complain about having his hands tied together, but Jeb had put a gag in his mouth to keep him from yelling for help. Not that it mattered. No one could have heard his cries over the noise of the storm.
He’d always told himself that there was no fate on earth worse than being the fake captain of a real pirate crew. Now he realized he was wrong. Being the real prisoner of a real pirate crew was much, much worse. As Captain Rojo Herring was forced on board The Mozart Kugeln, he worked frantically to untie the knots that bound his wrists. His long fingers were strong and nimble, but he was running out of time.
“Unfurl the sails,” Flotsam told Jeb, raising his voice so that he could be heard over the growling thunder. “We’ll soon be underway.”
“As long as the wind don’t rip us to pieces,” Ebb grumbled. “I don’t like this storm. It ain’t natural.”
“It’s because we’re cursed, ain’t it,” Jeb said. “That pizza psychic woman be right. Nights like this be when the Mad Captain goes hunting fer treasure.”
“Stop saying that name!” Flotsam snapped. “You want to bring The Wild Three O’Clock down on us all?”
The Mozart Ku
geln twisted and tossed in the storm. The three pirates grimly fought to keep the ship under control.
“Maybe she’ll leave us alone,” Ebb pointed out. “All we got on board is our prisoner, and ’e ain’t worth much.”
“Not unless Mad Captain Penzing thinks music be treasure,” Jeb said. “You’ll play for us again, once we get back to the ship, won’t ye? We missed the sound of yer fiddle lulling us off to winky winks at night.”
Captain Rojo Herring made muffled noises through his gag. But whether he was agreeing or disagreeing with the request was impossible to say.
A sudden burst of lightning lit up the lake so that it was almost as bright as day—and Ebb, who was serving as the lookout, saw something lean and large gliding through the water.
“Did you see that?” he gasped.
“What?”
“That thing. Moving in the water. It’s big.”
“Yer imagination’s getting the better of ye, you chowderhead.”
Captain Rojo Herring began mumbling frantically through his gag. He’d seen the shape, too—and he’d seen that it had changed its course and was now moving toward The Mozart Kugeln.
“It ain’t me imagination,” Ebb said. “It’s…it’s…”
“Is it Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific?” Jeb asked innocently.
“A plague on yer scurvy head!” Flotsam shrieked at him. “Don’t say that name!”
But it was too late. The large shape suddenly loomed up in front of them. The three pirates screamed—and Captain Rojo Herring would have screamed, too, if he’d been able to with a gag in his mouth. Then the shape smashed into the bow, and the boat capsized.
As Captain Rojo Herring sank to the bottom of Lake Remarkable, he realized he’d made a tactical error. It was all well and good he’d learned to ride a bicycle, but in retrospect, he wished he’d learned to swim first. Riding a bicycle is not such a useful skill when one finds oneself suddenly thrown from a boat in the middle of a large body of water.
He’d managed to finish untying his wrists, but having his arms free did not help him much. He flailed frantically, but everything he did seemed to make him sink even faster. And as he sank, he realized just how much he had to lose. He wanted to stay in Remarkable and enjoy life in his new house. He wanted to find the woman he loved and convince her that she loved him, too. Most of all, he wanted to not spend the rest of his life running from people who wanted him to be something he wasn’t.
But now it was too late. His lungs were bursting in his chest, desperate for air. His head was growing bleary and his arms were growing weak. Then, just when he thought things couldn’t get much worse, they suddenly did.
The large object, the one that had capsized the boat, was rapidly swimming toward him. It had dark turquoise skin, large horns, and a mouth full of the sharpest teeth he could ever remember seeing.
It was Lucky, of course, even if it was hard to recognize her as the same creature who had happily danced to his music that night at the lake. She did not look the least bit happy now. The earsplitting cracks of thunder had driven her out of her mind with terror and anxiety. Her serpentine tail thrashed as she rapidly propelled herself toward Captain Rojo Herring. He saw anger in her wild eyes, as if she were blaming him for the storm.
Lucky snapped at his head and missed. Captain Rojo Herring paddled away from her as best he could. The lake monster let out a wild, underwater roar and raised her head to snap at him again. Captain Rojo Herring closed his eyes, knowing he could not escape being crushed between her strong, sharp teeth.
Jane Makes a Discovery
It was true what they said about the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill. It was drafty. Jane shivered in her birdcage as wind whipped around the mansion and seeped in through the cracks and under the doors. Rain lashed the roof, and the mansion creaked with awful groans and wild rattles. At least Jane hoped the groans and rattles were coming from the mansion and not from the ghosts that were supposed to haunt it. If only she’d read about the mansion’s ghosts when Ms. VanderTweed had offered her the book about them!
A sudden gust of wind battered the roof, and the mansion shook as if it were an effort to stay up under the assault of the weather. Salzburg frantically flapped around the living room and knocked over a Boston fern that had been sitting atop a sturdy bookcase.
“Salzburg, don’t be scared,” Jane said soothingly. “Come down here instead and show me how you get out of your cage.”
Salzburg screeched and called Jane a scurvy dog. The storm had unnerved the bird quite badly, and all she wanted to do was hide her head beneath her wing.
Jane wished she had a wing so she could stick her head under it, too. Being stuck in a birdcage was a tiresome end to a long and unsettling day. First Grandpa had gotten arrested, then Dr. Presnelda had tried to convince her that Captain Schnabel was actually a pirate, and Captain Rojo Herring had told her he definitely wasn’t one. And stranger still was the ridiculous thing Captain Rojo Herring had said about Grandpa John knowing Lucky. People like her grandfather didn’t make friends with lake monsters. And they didn’t commit crimes to protect them, did they?
But what if Captain Rojo Herring was right? What if Grandpa John really had sabotaged the bell tower to protect Lucky? What if he really did go to the lake to feed her figgy doodles? It would be amazing. Totally amazing, but…
Jane tried to ignore the pang of jealousy burning in her stomach. If Grandpa were as impressive as everyone else in Remarkable, it would mean that she was truly the only one in town who wasn’t special at all.
So now, in addition to feeling cold, frustrated, and scared, Jane also began to feel more alone than she ever had in her life. It was hard not to cry. In fact, it was impossible not to cry—and tears started streaming down her face. She looked around for something she could use to wipe them away, but all she could find were the newspapers that lined the bottom of the birdcage. Newspapers are not particularly absorbent, and Jane knew they were likely to turn into a soggy, inky mess if she got them wet, but she sensibly realized that having something to read might go a long way toward taking her mind off her troubles.
Jane had hoped she’d find the comics, or a weather report, or maybe even the section of classified ads where people listed puppies for sale. But as she dried her eyes on the corner of her shirtsleeve, she discovered something rather odd. Captain Rojo Herring hadn’t lined the birdcage with full newspaper sections. Instead, he’d used a mishmash of newspaper clipping and stories he’d cut out of magazines. It was almost as if he’d been collecting them to save, but then had changed his mind.
Odder still was the fact that every single article Captain Rojo Herring had collected was about Ysquibel. Why would a pirate—even a fake pirate—be so interested in a musician?
“It’s because they’re friends, isn’t it?” Jane said to herself, remembering how Ysquibel had named a character Captain Rojo Herring in his musical Prise de Corsaire.
Jane began to read. As the night wore on, she learned all about how Ysquibel had developed a gift for music at an early age—and that his gift meant he spent his childhood composing and performing with no time to go to school, play with friends, or do anything else. As he’d grown older, his schedule had only become more intense.
His fans were as demanding as they were adoring. When he asked for a night off, they protested vigorously. When he wanted to go on vacation, there were riots in the streets. He tried to explain that he was utterly and completely sick of creating music, but no one cared. He talked endlessly about all the things he’d like to do with his life instead of being a famous composer, but no one paid any attention to this—until the night he disappeared.
“So he was stuck in a job he hated, too,” Jane mused. The musician and the pirate captain seemed to have more in common than just a friendship.
There had been several sightings of Ysquibel since he’d gone missing. The most recent one was on Kaffeklubben Island north of Greenland. Kaffeklubben Island was so far-flung t
hat it was only accessible by boat. Jane wondered if maybe Captain Rojo Herring had taken Ysquibel there before he wrecked his pirate ship. It was what a good friend would do.
And then, without warning, the bottom of the birdcage broke. Jane fell out and landed hard on the floor below. She was quite surprised by this, but she shouldn’t have been. Birds, even large ones like the great bustard of Central Europe, are not heavy. Consequently, birdcages aren’t designed to support the weight of an average ten-year-old, not even one as average as Jane.
Jane scrambled to her feet. She was bruised from the fall, but happy to be out of the cage. Maybe, just maybe, there was still time to save the captain. And once she’d saved Captain Rojo Herring, then he could help her save Grandpa John! Getting help from a fake pirate would be better than nothing.
She ran to the telephone to call for help, but the line was dead because of the storm. Then she ran to the front door and tried to open it, but the pirates had locked it and taken the key. She kicked and pounded on it while Salzburg flapped nervously around the hallway. But it was no use. She’d have to think of something else.
According to the Grimlet twins, the typical kitchen was well stocked with the type of common household items—like baking powder, seltzer water, furniture polish, frozen peas, and so forth—that could be combined to produce the most marvelous explosive messes. Jane hoped that some of the Grimlets’ criminal mastermindfulness had rubbed off on her, and that she’d be able to figure out how to create something powerful enough to blast through the locked front door.
This was not the most reasonable or realistic thought Jane had ever had. Even if she’d found piles and piles of common household items, she wouldn’t have had the slightest idea what to do with them. But as it turned out, this wasn’t important. When she got to Captain Rojo Herring’s kitchen, all she found were stacks of empty jelly jars, half a loaf of toast, and a truly horrible smell.
“Gah!” Jane gagged. For a moment, she thought maybe the pirates had come back and were stinking up the place again. But the stench was actually coming from an expired carton of milk that Captain Rojo Herring had left out on the counter. Jane gagged again and went to pour the stinking milk down the drain.
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