by Kai Meyer
“Heave to!” bellowed Walker.
Buenaventure let the wheel rotate, ghosts scampered over the masts. The Carfax began to turn across the narrow passage. Thus they could receive the Palomino with a broad-side as soon as she sailed across the next crossing into their target zone, whether from the left or from the right.
The masts of the bounty hunter slid over the edges of some cliffs, then the entire sloop became visible. She didn’t turn into the cleft in which the Carfax awaited her but sailed sideways across it and blocked the exit.
“Fire!” screamed Walker.
And “Fire!” also bellowed the captain of the enemy ship.
Seconds later the air was full of iron. Powder smoke burned in Jolly’s throat and shortened visibility on board to a few yards. Cannonballs broke through the wall of smoke, shredded the billows apart, and struck rope and sail. Wood burst in a deafening detonation. Everyone aboard lost his balance, some fell to the deck, others grabbed onto the sides or the railing. Loudest of all screamed the Hexhermetic Shipworm in his onion-dome cage, although he was the only one who was still in the same place heel been before.
Jolly looked upward.
The yard on which Griffin had been sitting was empty.
“Oh, no!” Her heart did somersaults as she ran over to the railing.
Walker shouted orders continuously, ghosts hurried everywhere. Soledad and the Trader had vanished behind the smoke somewhere, but Jolly had seen them. And Munk … yes, Munk arranged his mussels.
“I’m going to look for Griffin!” she bellowed and climbed over the railing.
“Jolly! No!” Walker’s voice made her hesitate for a moment. “There are coral banks everywhere here. It’s swarming with—”
Sharks, she added in her mind and pushed off. She had no time left to explain to the captain that the sharks would do nothing to her. Griffin, on the other hand, was defenseless and at their mercy in the water.
Her feet struck against the churning sea, fighting for a hold. A boiling wave crest rose up right between her legs, and Jolly lost her balance. As long as she was standing upright, the sharks wouldn’t notice her; but when she was lying down, they could see her silhouette from below.
She was on her feet in a flash. Because of the huge clouds of powder smoke, her vision extended no more than ten feet. She saw the hole the ball had torn in the Carfax’s hull, but it was too high to seriously endanger the ship at the moment. She couldn’t tell from here how things stood with the Palomino; the bounty hunter’s ship remained invisible behind the walls of yellow and gray smoke.
“Griffin!”
She called his name into the acrid mist, but there was no answer. The yard had been high enough that Griffin could have broken his neck when he hit the water, but she didn’t want to think about that at all.
It was pitilessly dark, now that the smoke swallowed the moonlight. The oil lanterns aboard the ship sent out a weak light, but it hardly reached down to the water; sulfur yellow, the lanterns hung like fuzzy stars in the darkness over the railing.
Jolly knew one thing for sure: If Walker decided to end the battle, he would extinguish the lanterns so that the Palomino would lose their trail in the darkness. By then, at the latest, Jolly had to be back on board or she would wander around blindly in the dark for an eternity.
“Griffin, damn it!”
He was the best swimmer she knew. But if he’d lost consciousness on impact with the water … or worse yet, if a cannonball had hit him up there …
May I? he’d asked her. You already know—kiss you.
That idiot. If he’d simply done it, then she would probably have … oh, no, of course she’d have defended herself.
Or would she?
“Griffin, where are you?”
Her foot caught on something in the water. She stumbled, fell forward, and just caught herself on all fours. At the same time a wave rose beneath her, shot up, and struck her in the face with the force of a punching fist.
She didn’t see black—the smoke and the night had long provided for that. No, lights flamed in her forehead so brilliantly that she shut her eyes, lost her sense of up and down, and for a moment lay unconscious.
That’s what she figured, anyway, for when she opened her eyes again, she was floating on the waves like a piece of wood. Her head bumped against something soft with every roll of the water and there was a pain at the roots of her hair—something was pulling on it.
Her face felt swollen.
Her head ached.
Something shot past her, a dark triangle that cut through the waves like a saber.
With an oath she tried to stand up and avoid the sharks attack. But it didn’t attack her, was perhaps cautious because of the noise on the surface, avoiding the commotion produced by the intruders into its waters.
Jolly came swaying to her feet. With that she was out of the shark’s field of vision. Searchingly, she looked about her.
Everywhere smoke, everywhere darkness.
And no Carfax.
The ship was gone.
“Goddammit!” she cried into the mist—and then she saw what had tripped her before.
Beside her floated Griffin, clinging fast to a splintered piece of wood in whose sharp points her hair had been caught a moment before. His braids danced on the waves that broke against his head and his shoulders.
He was facedown in the water.
He wasn’t moving.
Jolly bent forward, pulled his head out of the water, tugged at him, called his name desperately.
“Don’t do this to me,” she stammered helplessly. “You aren’t to die, hear me? You simply can’t die now!”
A movement beside her swept her mind empty instantly. It was no longer only a single shark around her.
There were several, six or seven.
And the circle they formed around Griffin and Jolly was closing in every second.
The Decision
The Carfax had completed a turn and was now ready to sail back on her original course through the island labyrinth, away from the other end of the rock passage, away from the Palomino.
“We’ll have to leave Jolly and Griffin behind,” said the Ghost Trader tonelessly in the deathlike stillness as the companions stood next to each other at the railing, staring into the tumult of smoke and black waves. The water seemed to boil, as if all the hidden currents had suddenly decided to rise to the surface.
“No!” Munk’s cry made the others recoil. “We’ll look for them both and take them aboard.”
“If they don’t turn up again by themselves …” Walker left the rest unsaid. His face was wet with perspiration. He was responsible for them all, and the strain of command was showing.
“Jolly is somewhere out there!” Munk’s face still glowed feverishly, but the anger in his voice left no doubt that he was in control of his mind. “Jolly is a polliwog! She doesn’t just drown.”
“In this sea? Who knows.” But Walker wasn’t getting into an argument with Munk, turning instead to the Ghost Trader. “You say we should leave them behind?”
The Ghost Trader’s face was hardly discernible under the hood. It was as if Walker spoke into a black chasm. “It is not an easy decision. But we must bring at least one polliwog alive to Aelenium, cost what it will. Otherwise”—he lowered his voice—“otherwise everything else was in vain. The whole mission, our voyage so far …” He turned to Munk. “Even the deaths of your parents.”
“You’ve lied to me from the beginning!” Munk took a step back from the Trader, but he stood firm against the threatening gaze of the shadowed eye. “You’ve always known where all this would lead. The mussels you brought me … the visits to the island … all only to prepare me and sometime get me to Aelenium.”
“What’s false about that?”
“You’ve decided about my whole life, without me or Dad or Mum being aware of it. But now … now I decide what I do. And I will not go to Aelenium before Jolly is back on board.” He hesitated impercept
ibly. “And Griffin.”
Soledad shouted Jolly’s name into the mists once more, but again she received no answer. She’d already tried at least twenty times, without success.
The second salvo from the Carfax’s cannons had brought the Palomino a little off course and carried her behind the cliffs. The ghosts had been faster than their opponent in making the guns ready to fire, and so they were able to get off a second broadside at the bounty hunter first. Constantine was probably at that very moment maneuvering to bring the Palomino back into her old position. Only from there could he place his opponent under fire.
It was clear to every one of them that this was their only chance to gain a new lead. They didn’t know how badly the two salvos had damaged the enemy ship—the smoke still lingered between the cliffs and blocked the view—but it could only be a question of time before the fight continued.
If they really intended to risk a retreat, it must be now.
With or without Jolly and Griffin.
“We have no choice,” said the Ghost Trader. “Nothing is as important as our mission to get a polliwog to Aelenium. It’s the only way can we stop the Maelstrom.”
“Your mission,” said Munk scornfully. “Not ours.”
“You still don’t want to believe it. If the Maelstrom unfolds his full power and opens the gate to the Mare Tenebrosum, we are all lost. The Caribbean. The entire world. And you, Munk, are the key to our salvation. Only you can control the Maelstrom. But for that I must get you to Aelenium.”
“Me—or Jolly.”
The Ghost Trader nodded. “I would rather have brought you both there. Two polliwogs can do twice as much as one. But I’d rather lose our chance for half than give up the whole. If we do not leave now, we gain nothing at all Perhaps we would find Jolly and take her on board. But what then? The Palomino shoots us to pieces, you and Jolly die—and the Maelstrom triumphs.” The Trader walked up to Munk and took him by the shoulder. “This isn’t only a possibility, boy—it’s an incontestable fact. Either we give up Jolly and Griffin now—or the world will soon perish.”
Soledad had listened in silence and did not join in the talk now. But her expression revealed her thoughts. She wanted to save the two of them, wanted to do everything for them so that they wouldn’t be left to an uncertain fate out there. But she also recognized the fatal truth in the Ghost Trader’s words.
“Munk,” she said quietly, “it’s your decision.”
Munk hesitated for a moment; then, moving wearily, he began to climb over the railing. “I’ll go and look for them.”
“No!” The voice of the Ghost Trader sounded different from just a few seconds before, roaring like a storm wind and shot through with icy cold. “Soledad is wrong. It is not your decision.” His hands drew a symbol in the air, and at that moment three ghosts came down from the rigging and pulled Munk gently but firmly back onto the deck.
Munk cursed and resisted, but the grasp of the wraiths was unrelenting.
“I am sorry,” said the Ghost Trader softly, and all except Munk recognized the sincerity and sorrow in his voice. “But it can be no other way. Do not believe that it is easy for me.”
“Let me go!” bellowed Munk, as the ghosts pulled him away from the railing and held him in the middle of the deck. He had tears in his eyes now, and his tired features showed only anger and desperation. “You can’t do that! Soledad! Walker! You can’t simply leave Jolly behind.”
The princess lowered her eyes and said nothing.
Walker turned back to the bridge, but his steps seemed heavy, as if the air in front of him had turned into something firm. Everyone saw how very reluctant he was to give the next order.
“Full speed ahead!” he said, then—hesitantly—he repeated it once again more loudly.
Buenaventure didn’t move. “The girl,” he growled. “What’s going to happen to the girl?”
Munk was screaming and cursing down below on the main deck. The Hexhermetic Shipworm, on the other hand, was silent and had lowered the head with the triangular shell; he almost seemed to be grieving for Jolly and Griffin as much as the others were.
“Walker,” said Buenaventure. “We can—”
“You heard him.”
The pit bull man hesitated, and for a long moment it looked as if he’d refuse the order. But then he let out a high-pitched howl, full of pain and despair, placed his paws on the wheel, and did what had to be done.
“Thank you,” said the Ghost Trader, and he turned and went forward to the bow, entirely alone. No one followed him, no one wanted to be near him.
“Jolly!” Munk roared again, but the mists swallowed his voice.
The Carfax began moving and quickly left the scene of the battle behind her.
Jolly mustered all her strength and dragged Griffin’s torso out of the water. He was heavy, not only because he was a boy and a bit bigger than she was, but more because he was hanging limp over the debris like a corpse. To make matters worse, his clothing had soaked up a lot of water.
The Carfax had vanished. Impossible to say whether it was hidden behind the next cloud of mist or whether it … no, the others certainly wouldn’t leave her in the lurch.
But would the Ghost Trader gamble on the lives of two polliwogs if he had the chance of at least saving one? He’d never left any doubt about how important it was to get them to Aelenium. At least one of them.
She gasped for air and felt she was going to have to give up. But then, just as unexpectedly, she got herself under control again. Somehow she had to pull Griffin out of the water.
The sharks came closer. Their circle was now only a few feet away from the two castaways.
Jolly dropped to her knees, pulled Griffin’s left arm around her shoulders, and using all her strength, heaved herself onto her feet. She uttered a scream under the strain, so loud that in spite of the cannon smoke, it echoed from the rock clumps. She stumbled, fell back on her knees. Tried again. And succeeded.
This time she managed to pull Griffin up. With her left hand she firmly clasped his arm, which still lay around her shoulders; she threaded her right hand under his belt in the back and held him upright as well as she could.
She’d gotten a helpless person to safety once before, a seaman on the Skinny Maddy, but that had been on land, and the man had had firm ground under his feet, in spite of his weakness. But Griffin was no polliwog, and the water offered his feet no resistance. Jolly had to bear his full weight and still be careful that his legs didn’t sink deep enough to attract the attention of the sharks again.
Somehow she managed to drag him forward. The shark fins vanished, except for one in the water, and even the last predator kept its attention on its prey for only a few heart-shaking moments longer and then gave up.
Onward! Jolly thought grimly. Don’t think! Just keep moving forward!
Eventually she would have to stumble onto a bank. The passage hadn’t been very wide, and although Jolly had lost her orientation in the haze, the rocks couldn’t be far away.
Forward! Get moving!
“Jo-Jolly …”
“Griffin!” She almost let go of him in her relief. She turned her head in order to look into his face, but she couldn’t. Had he opened his eyes?
Griffin made retching noises, and then he shot a surge of water over her shoulder.
“We’re going to make it!” she got out in a groan.
Once more he tried to say her name. Then she felt him go limp again.
“Griffin! Come on—you have to help me! Hold on tight!”
He didn’t move again.
And yet—he was alive!
The relief gave her new strength. Desperately she fought against the high waves, against the smoke in her lungs, against the blindness in the midst of darkness. The wind had freshened and now began to disperse the mists. The moon showed itself again and mixed its icy light with the billows of smoke to a depressing twilight. Anyway, Jolly could now see something again.
The rocks, there ahe
ad!
Several mounds rose out of the water ahead of them. Right behind them was an incline of rubble, covered with strange silhouettes. Only on coming closer did Jolly see that they were tree stumps.
With iron will, she passed the outer rocks and dragged Griffin onto land with a cry of triumph. She wasn’t sure whether anyone could hear the cry except herself; perhaps it existed only in her head. She felt empty and exhausted.
Little pebbles crunched under her feet, then under both their bodies when they collapsed, partly side by side, partly on top of each other.
Again she blacked out, and again she didn’t know later how long she’d been unconscious. Perhaps for only a few minutes, perhaps for an hour. Possibly even longer.
When she opened her eyes again, the smoke was gone.
Just like Griffin.
Panicked, she felt about her, but she could grasp only bare stone, loose rubble, and—a hand. Fingers closed around hers, then a face appeared over her. Griffin’s blond braids dangled down and almost touched her cheeks.
His smile looked exhausted—but it was a smile.
“Looks as if polliwogs can see into the future,” he said. His face was very close above hers, but at the moment she didn’t find it uncomfortable. He was alive.
“Into the future?” she repeated, as if she’d heard him wrong.
“You know what you said to me?”
“I’ve said a lot in recent days, I think.” She tried to sit up, and he eased back a little to make room. But only a little, only as much as absolutely necessary.
“You said I could kiss you when the two of us were stranded on a lonely island.”
“Oh, there were … restrictions,” she said with an uncertain smile. She ought to have been thinking about a thousand things, about the Carfax, her companions, about the outcome of the sea battle with the Palomino, and about what was going to become of them, alone on the shore of this clump of rock.
His smile grew a trace wider, almost the old Griffin again. But then stood up and stretched out his hand to her.
“Can you stand up?”
His abrupt withdrawal made her even more uneasy than his closeness a moment before.“I wasn’t the one who almost drowned,” said, but she took his hand and let him pull her up.