Pirate Curse

by Kai Meyer

  “Can the two of them speak too?”

  “He claims so, yes.”

  The mysterious man was just coming into hearing distance, but to Jolly it seemed as though he’d been listening to her the entire time, for a knowing smile was playing about his narrow, colorless lips.

  “Good day, Munk,” he said, and bowed almost imperceptibly—which, remarkably, his parrots imitated. “Greetings to you and all who live on this island.” His healthy eye, a brilliant light blue, was directed to Jolly. “You have a visitor, I see.”

  “This is Jolly. She’s a castaway.”

  “Jolly. Well, well.” The Ghost Trader nodded to her as well. “An unusual name for a girl. I thought the pirates only called their flags that.”

  She could have denied that she had anything to do with the pirates, but she was too proud. It seemed strange to her, though, how suddenly he connected her with freebooters.

  “Do you also have a name, sir?” she asked straight out.

  The Ghost Trader smiled in amusement. “One or another.” But he didn’t give her one, instead turning to Munk again. “I hope your family is well. Your father isn’t here?”

  “He climbed up to the top of the mountain while it was still dark. But he must have seen that you’ve landed. He’s sure to come right away.”

  From beneath his closed cape the Trader pulled out a thing that puzzled Jolly even further: a silver metal ring, narrower than her little finger, but with the diameter of a large plate. He let it dangle from his right hand next to his body as he walked together with them over the beach and through the jungle to the house.

  “How’s the magic going?” he asked Munk when they were halfway there. “Any progress?”

  Munk sighed. “Not worth mentioning.”

  “It will come. Patience is the touchstone of magic.”

  Jolly made no attempt to hide her distrust. “You know all about mussel magic?”

  “I don’t like to do it myself, if that’s what you mean. But yes, I know a thing or two about it.”

  “He showed me how to do it,” Munk said proudly.

  “That isn’t quite right,” contradicted the Trader. “I’ve only told you what there is to it—I can show you nothing. I don’t have your talent.” He sounded very serious when he said that, with no trace of irony.

  Munk’s mother was waiting for them on the veranda. She’d placed several earthenware cups, a bottle of rum, and a pitcher of water on the table, as well as a wooden board with bread and goat cheese. She greeted the Ghost Trader with reserve, but not in an unfriendly way. The two exchanged a few polite trivialities: how the journey had been, how business was going, whether there was any news from the outside world.

  “The indications for a Spanish attack on New Providence are increasing,” said the Ghost Trader. “The viceroy has sent an armada, even if no one has seen it yet. At least no one with whom I’ve spoken.”

  Munk’s father came down from the mountain, and soon they were all sitting around the table and breakfasting together. Despite his ascetic appearance, the Ghost Trader ate twice as much as the others. Now and again he broke off a piece of bread or cheese and handed it to his parrots. Jolly’s instinct told her that Hugh and Moe were no ordinary birds, just as the Ghost Trader was certainly no ordinary man. Why ever had Munk put such trust in him that he’d even confided his greatest secret to him?

  As if the Ghost Trader detected what was going through her mind, he suddenly reached under his cloak and pulled out three polished mussels, each more unusual than the last. “I almost forgot these,” he said with a wink of his one eye as he handed them to Munk. The latter beamed, thanked him, and carefully placed them in the purse at his waist. His father looked on with visible disapproval, but he said nothing.

  For the rest of the meal they listened to the Trader’s reports, and Jolly had to hand him one thing: He could tell stories like no one else.

  He was able to embroider even the most trivial news to sound like a hero’s tale, without his listeners getting the feeling that he was really bending the truth or inventing whatever it was.

  “You’re still a wonderful tale spinner,” Munk’s mother said after a while. She’d thawed amazingly during the conversation, in contrast to her husband, who continued to maintain a cool distance.

  The Trader shrugged. “Long experience. And perhaps talent. Who knows?”

  The men turned to business soon after that, which was on the whole limited to Munk’s father’s declaration that he was not interested in any more ghosts at this time. He didn’t inform the Trader that they intended to leave the island.

  “But I have some really outstanding new spirits with me,” the Ghost Trader said, marketing his invisible wares. “Princesses from the Far East, heroes from the icy North, and wise men from all directions under the sun. Not to overlook diligent workers from the—”

  “Certainly,” the farmer interrupted him. “I can easily believe that, but I still have enough here. Only one has gone missing since your last visit. Besides—and I say this every time, my friend—I don’t believe a word of your praise. I may be only a simple tobacco farmer”—and with that it seemed to Jolly that his eyes bored with especial persuasive power into the Trader’s eye—“but I am not gullible. Spirits of princesses and heroes don’t appear to be different from all the others, so your ghosts could just as well be the souls of poor wretches and castaways.”

  “Princesses also go down with ships,” said the Ghost Trader, giving Jolly an inscrutable side glance. “That has been known to happen.”

  Munk’s father made a gesture of refusal. “You’ve always been honorable in your business with me, but your talk … I heard, for instance, of a spirit rebellion on Grand Caicos, in which an entire plantation was destroyed. What do you have to say about that?”

  The Ghost Trader smiled in the shadow of his hood. One of the two parrots, the red-eyed Moe, let out a shrill scream. “Misfortunes happen, I’m afraid. And I assure you, in this case it was the farmer’s fault entirely, that jackass. He let some priest talk him into having his ghosts blessed. Good grief, the idiot sprayed them with holy water, which is really no way to handle a spirit. No wonder they all went wild.”

  “And still, we need no new spirits. Perhaps next time.” As if he wanted to encourage the Trader to a faster return, he added, “Yes, I really think next time I’ll be able to take two or three of them.”

  The Trader nodded. “Regrettable, but that’s the way business goes sometimes.” He turned to Munk. “Tell me, are the ghosts obeying you now? Or are there any who’ve given you trouble?”

  “No trouble. Everything was just the way you said.” He looked proudly over at Jolly. “When he was here last time, he told the ghosts that in future they should obey not only my father but also me.”

  “I asked him to,” said his father. “Out here you have to be prepared for everything. I could be sick or have an accident. Munk is old enough to run the farm alone if necessary.”

  The Ghost Trader drank a sip of water, then got up. “I won’t keep you from your work any longer.”

  “Aren’t you going to stay the night here, the way you usually do?” Munk’s mother asked in surprise.

  The Trader shook his head. “I must go on as quickly as possible. If the Spaniards really do attack New Providence, it would be especially advantageous to conclude as much business as possible beforehand. Who knows if the plantations will be able to find enough customers for their wares afterward?”

  “Not everyone trades with the pirates,” said Munk’s father disapprovingly.

  “I know, I know. You’re an upright man.” The Ghost Trader made the mysterious silver ring vanish under his robe and bowed toward both grown-ups. Then he said to Munk, “Will you and your friend come with me to the boat?”

  “Certainly.”

  Jolly and Munk joined the Trader as he left the veranda. They turned into the lane through the jungle that led down to the beach.

  “Good sailing,” the f
armer called after them. “And watch out for the weather. It looked earlier as if there could be a storm blowing up. There were clouds on the horizon, and we haven’t had a hurricane out here for a long time.”

  “I’ll take care, thank you,” replied the Trader.

  The farmhouse with its palm frond roof and palisade fence disappeared behind the bushes and trees. Jolly, Munk, and the Trader spoke again only when they reached the beach. The sailboat rolled in the low water. The only shelter on deck was offered by a canvas awning; there wasn’t even a cabin. The thin mast would offer no resistance to a storm.

  Jolly found all this more than remarkable. The most puzzling was easily the Ghost Trader himself. Before he picked up his robe and strode through the gentle waves to the boat, he shook hands with them both.

  “Be careful, especially in the next few days.” He noticed Jolly’s raised eyebrows and added with a smile, “The Spaniards are going to make good on their threats, probably very soon. You’re very far away from New Providence here, but who knows? Perhaps you’ll feel the waves of all these troubles, even out here.”

  Jolly and Munk watched as the man climbed aboard, set the sail, and maneuvered the boat with astonishing speed between the reefs and out onto the open sea.

  Yet there wasn’t even a breath of wind on the beach.

  “I thought you intended to ask if he’d take you with him,” Munk said. He added hopefully, “Or have you reconsidered?”

  Jolly shook her head. “I have a better idea.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “We’ll follow him.”

  Munk stared at her. “We’ll do what?”

  “Something about him isn’t right. Don’t tell me you haven’t already noticed that. Do you think, in all seriousness, that he travels the entire Caribbean in that nutshell?”

  “He doesn’t lie to me. Certainly not.”

  “But perhaps he doesn’t tell you the whole truth, either.”

  “If there’s a bigger ship lying out there somewhere, my father would have seen it from the lookout point.”

  Jolly pressed her lips together and thought about that. “Yes,” she said then, “probably so. Nevertheless, let’s go after him a little way.”

  “He’ll see us.”

  “Not if the distance is great enough.”

  “If he does, he’ll be angry.”

  “I thought he was your friend.”

  “He won’t be anymore if I spy on him.”

  Jolly sighed. “Then I’ll go by myself. You’d probably just hold me up out there anyway.”

  Anger blazed up in Munk’s eyes. “I’m just as much a polliwog as you!”

  “But you have no experience walking on the open sea. The waves will throw you down.”

  “They will not!”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she kept the Ghost Trader’s boat in sight; now it was only a white spot on the endless blue. “Then you have a chance to prove it now.”

  And with that she jumped away over the breaking surf, landed between two waves, and ran off.

  She’d been right to have misgivings: Munk did in fact hold her up. But she didn’t let it bother her. Anyway, she couldn’t run too fast or she would come too close to the boat and risk being discovered.

  Munk had trouble keeping his balance on the swaying surface under his feet. A number of times he stumbled or made the mistake of walking on the crest of a wave against the current, which almost snatched him back. However, he was trying as hard as he could, that was clear, and Jolly only had to support him once when he threatened to topple; the other times he caught himself on his own. With time he grew a little more secure, and soon Jolly was paying more attention to the boat far ahead of them and not just to him.

  “My father has certainly seen us,” said Munk, casting a look back at the lonely mountain that towered above the roof of the jungle on the small island. Somewhere up there, the farmer was keeping a lookout for strange ships—and instead, he was having to look on while his son and the pirate girl disobeyed one of his oft-repeated injunctions.

  You’ve really had a bad influence on this boy, Jolly said to herself in amusement.

  Nevertheless, she couldn’t reign in her curiosity. She had a bad feeling about this Ghost Trader. He was concealing something from them. Was she afraid of him? He made her uneasy, certainly, but she was a polliwog, after all, and if necessary she could always run away from him across the waves.

  And what if he set his ghosts on her?

  “Hey,” Munk said suddenly, after they’d been under way for almost an hour, “look at that.”

  “Yes, I see it.”

  On the horizon a broad, wavering bank of fog had appeared, and was quickly coming closer. White, vapory arms wafted at its edges, as if they were feeling for the gulls in the sky. The Caribbean sunshine made it radiate with blinding brightness. The Ghost Trader’s boat was heading straight for it.

  “Are those the clouds your father spoke of?” Jolly had experienced more than one hurricane, but none of them had announced themselves with fog.

  “Well, hardly.”

  “I knew it!” Jolly hastened her steps triumphantly. “Something’s not right about that fellow.”

  “And that from a pirate, of all people!”

  “Did he ever tell you anything about this fog?”

  “Perhaps he didn’t know anything about it beforehand.” Munk’s defense sounded halfhearted.

  “And therefore he sails right toward it? Every halfway sensible seaman in a boat like that would make a gigantic detour around this fog bank.”

  Munk said nothing more. It wasn’t in him to distrust his friend, but what he saw in front of him appeared to please him still less. Jolly wasn’t sure if he shared her distrust; but very clearly, he was wondering.

  The Ghost Trader’s boat kept heading straight toward the fog. Very soon white vapory fingers reached for sail and hull. The Ghost Trader could be made out as a tiny figure standing straight as a candle in the stern.

  Munk was having trouble keeping up with Jolly. “Don’t you want to go back now?”

  “How else are we going to find out the truth?”

  “Maybe there is no truth. Maybe that’s just normal fog up there.”

  The boat had almost disappeared now; only a dark spot vaguely indicated its position.

  Jolly swore. “We’re going to lose him in there if we don’t hurry.”

  Munk couldn’t go any faster, she knew that—he’d had too little experience with this water walking; the waves were going to throw him back and forth like a plaything. “You go on,” he said. “I’ll be along for sure.”

  “We stay together,” she countered. “Anything else is too dangerous.”

  Munk tried once more to increase his speed, but the result was that he stumbled. At the last moment he caught himself with both hands, leaped up again, cursing, and ran on.

  Finally the fog had completely swallowed the boat. Jolly hoped the Ghost Trader had maintained his course. That way she could stay on his trail if she just ran straight ahead.

  The wall of mist lay like a wavering mass on the sea, forty or fifty yards wide and as high as the mast of a warship. Its foremost billows wafted toward Jolly and Munk. After the searing sun of the past hours, the cloud felt pleasantly cool on the skin.

  Instinctively, Jolly held her breath when she pushed into the interior of the fog. An unnatural stillness extended on all sides of them. She felt strangely oppressed by the white walls enclosing and towering over them. Munk was running along beside her as a gray silhouette, but she didn’t dare speak to him for fear the Ghost Trader could be nearby and hear them.

  They hadn’t gone fifteen yards through the fog when the view abruptly cleared. Soon they could see the reason: The wall of fog was not a compact mass but a ring, which was hiding something in its center.

  Jolly’s heart missed a beat.

  Before them rose a galleon.

  The ship lay, its rigging creaking, in the middle of a clearing in
the fog. The galleon’s hull was made of dark wood. A ridge of algae and mussels had collected above the waterline. The sails on the three tall masts were gray and tattered. Not even the most neglectful captain would have overlooked something like that. But anyway, Jolly doubted that there was a captain on board this ship, any more than there was a crew.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Munk’s voice wavered.

  “Yes,” she said. “Your Ghost Trader has just the tub that fits him.”

  “And I thought there were no ghost ships.”

  She looked at him mistrustfully» “I thought there were no ghosts.”

  Reluctantly they moved forward, finally leaving the fog and walking into the light of the blue sky. But not even that was able to lift their dark mood. The ghost ship drew all their attention.

  “There are kobalins in the water!” the Ghost Trader’s voice called suddenly, even before Jolly had seen him. Munk looked up at the stern of the galleon. The Trader had both hands on the railing and was looking down at them with his robe billowing out. Beneath the open cape Jolly could see the silver ring at his belt. His dark-clad body was sturdier than she’d expected from seeing his gaunt face. A black shirt stretched across his broad chest.

  It was a moment before she really took in his words. “Kobalins?” she repeated in alarm.

  Munk stood there as if rooted.

  “I’d keep moving,” said the Ghost Trader. “If you stand still, it may encourage them to attack. Come aboard. You’re safe here.”

  “He’s right,” said Jolly grimly, grabbing Munk by the hand and pulling him forward.

  “Did you see any?” he whispered tonelessly. “Kobalins, I mean.”

  Her eyes skimmed over the water, but she couldn’t see anything suspicious. “No.”

  “Me neither. Do you think he just wants to scare us?”

  “Would he have needed tales of kobalins to do that?”

  Silently they crossed the last distance. A ghost who looked just like the flickering workers on the plantation threw them the end of a rope ladder. Jolly climbed up first; Munk agilely followed her.

  “Welcome aboard.” The Trader came toward them, while the ghost pulled up the ladder. “It was clear to me that you wouldn’t come with me if I asked you to.”