Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull

by James Raney

Ocy went next. In spite of her earlier suspicions, she was now very nearly as excited as Ally. But she was also more thoughtful. She looked back and forth between the hats and Paul with her enormous, yellow bird eyes, as though attempting to divine the location of the marble. But alas, when she plucked Peter’s cap from the ground she found nothing but dirt underneath. Unlike her sister, however, Ocy took losing a bit less graciously. She squawked what could have been some ancient, harpy curse word, and kicked at the dust with her sharp talons.

  Lastly came Celia. She laughed a dry chuckle and ran her long, purple tongue over her yellow, needle teeth. “You lost this li’l game before you started tiny man-child,” said the harpy, leering at the children with the most horrible smile stretched across her grotesque face. She raised her claw over George’s hat and let it linger there, as though she dangled the clan’s fate from her talons. “You shoulda’ used four hats, li’l man-child, for you gots only one left. Now I’m gonna get me a glittery and get me my fill o’ man-flesh for dinner to boot. It’s been a good day indeed. I’m gonna enjoy eatin’ you clever li’l Ratt boys for dinner!” With that Celia seized George’s hat, her yellow eyes never leaving Paul’s face. But when both of her sisters gasped, Celia looked down to find no trace of the marble at her feet. Her freshly clawed face came up trembling with rage. More than hunger burned in her eyes then…now there was murder.

  “This is a trick!” she screeched, rearing up on her claws with wings outstretched. The five friends backed up against the rock wall as far as they could go. “I knew you was playin’ a nasty trick on us, lyin’, man-child. Show us what’s in your hand little trickster!” Celia reached out with her wing and seized Paul by the wrist.

  Jim’s heart dropped. Once more, he feared, Paul’s con had been uncovered by his mark. This time, perhaps to their doom. But instead of fear, a smile slowly spread over Paul’s face. He opened his hand one finger at a time. The palm was empty. It seemed, Jim realized, that the smallest Ratt had taken his brother’s advice and been doing some practicing indeed.

  “Sorry ladies, but there’s been no cheatin’ here,” said Paul. “The marble really is under a hat.” Paul reached up and removed his own hat. Underneath, balanced in Paul’s tangle of brown hair, lay the marble, glittering in the dim light.

  “Oh, very clever, very clever!” said Ally, who seemed ridiculously eager to play the game again. But Celia stretched out her long neck until her hideous face hung only inches from Jim and Paul’s noses.

  “Me still thinks this is some trick, man-children. I’m of a good mind to put you both outta me own misery right here and now!”

  “Remember your promise!” said Jim, raising one shaking finger and doing his best to keep his voice from trembling. “Remember what you said about having bird honor and all that? Would be a shame to tarnish your reputation, wouldn’t you say?”

  Celia did not cackle nor screech. Only a smile crossed her face – a smile full of malice and hate.

  “Oh, I’ll be keepin’ my word, little man-children. We’ll give you your head start. But when we catches you again, there ain’t gonna be no games and no guessin’…there’ll only be gnashin’ and mashin’ of bones in me teeth! That be a promise.”

  “Well, that sounds fair I suppose,” Paul replied weakly. Jim felt sweat bead up on his own forehead as well. “So, if you three will please so kindly close your eyes and count to ten—”

  “Twenty,” Jim interjected.

  “Thirty,” said Lacey.

  “Right, thirty,” agreed Paul. “We’ll try and give you all a good hunt again.”

  Begrudgingly, eyes glistening with poisonous rage, Celia stepped aside, sweeping her sisters back with an outstretched wing.

  “Run, little man-children,” she growled. Her needle teeth clicked and clacked against one another and her talons scraped along the rocky path. “Run fast for I’ll be seein’ you soon, I will, I will!”

  “Right then, thank you,” said Paul, tipping his hat and scrambling out of the dead end.

  “Remember not to count too fast or it’s cheating!” added Peter as he followed his brother out.

  “Lovely to meet you, Ally,” said George, and the tittering harpy waved her wing to George before her sister slapped it down.

  Lacey followed, wiping the tears from her cheeks and taking Cornelius’s still form gently from Jim’s arms, cradling the bird before dashing out. Jim came last. He backed out slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on the three sisters.

  “Catch you or no, little man-child,” Celia said, her lips trembling with rage. “That black poison runnin’ through your veins is gonna ‘ave you, even if I don’t. Whether by my claws, the magic o’ this island, or the black poison in your body…you ain’t never gonna leave this place alive! Now…One,” she roared. She and her sisters turned their backs and faced the rock wall. “Two!”

  Jim did not wait for three. He turned and ran from the dead-end ravine. Celia’s enraged prophecy followed him, ringing in his ears and filling his heart with dread. Once more Jim’s hand began to throb and that cold chill climbed down his arms and legs.

  SIX

  he moment Jim rounded the corner out of the ravine, he ran smack into his four friends. They all stood in a circle, not running for their lives, as Jim was quite sure they needed to be doing.

  “Why on earth are we just standing here?” Jim shouted. Celia’s loud count was already at five and echoing through the crags.

  “Paul, you were brilliant!” Lacey said, wrapping one arm around the smallest Ratt brother and squeezing him tight. “But right now I need all of you to trust me or we’ll never make it out of these rocks alive. Will you follow me?”

  Jim heard Celia hit seven and then eight. There was no time to argue. “Go, Lacey, go!” was all he said. Without another word the five friends bolted off, racing through the stone maze, darting around sharp corners, and leaping over small boulders fallen into the ravines. Jim had no idea whether they were running back the way they had come or toward the fields of tall grass Cornelius said lay north. Over the sound of their running feet and his own slamming heart, Jim could hear Celia’s voice growing louder and louder, rumbling down the stone corridors.

  “…Eleven…Twelve…Thirteen!”

  “Lacey, where are you taking us?” Jim yelled in a hushed rasp. She was sprinting just ahead of him, with George and his brothers right behind. But as they skidded around one last corner, Jim found the answer. His heart froze in his chest. Bones littered the ground at their feet. Sticks and straw were piled in heaps upon the jagged edges of the crags above their heads.

  They had run straight into the middle of the harpies’ nest.

  “The nest?” Jim cried, smacking himself in the head. “Lacey, of all the places you could have run, you chose here? Right in the place where those three birds are going to eat us for dinner?” Jim was aghast and a spike of pain lanced through his hand. “Why don’t we just gather ourselves on a plate and sprinkle each other with salt and pepper for good measure?”

  “Just shut it, Jim, and wait here!” Lacey snapped, thrusting Cornelius back into Jim’s arms. With hardly a pause she plunged through the pile of bones, throwing them out of her way and leaping over the tusks and antlers, straight to the harpies’ vast pile of glitteries.

  “…Seventeen….Eighteen…Nineteen!”

  “Lacey,” said George, a little too matter of factly for Jim’s taste in this particular situation. “Normally you know me and the boys are always in for a good burglin’ – actually sort of miss it we do…but is now really the time? And do we really want to make that Celia bird any more furious than she already is?”

  Lacey ignored them all, though, and was now hurling objects over her shoulder into the pile of bones. At last she found whatever it was for which she searched and ripped it from the pile. She stuck it beneath her arm and tore back through the bones to where Jim and the Ratts waited.

  “Twenty-three…twenty-four…twenty-five!”

  “Well, I’m glad
we stopped for that!” Jim raged, throwing one hand in the air. “We have just enough time to baste ourselves in sauce for the main course!”

  “Jim, just shut up!” Lacey shouted. Without a word as to what she was doing, she reached over and tore one of the sleeves right off Jim’s jacket, cutting him off with an upheld finger before he could protest. “We’re going to be alright as long as we use what George has in his pocket.”

  “What do you mean?” George asked.

  “The fog seeds you stole from Egidio Quattrochi’s shop.”

  “You stole from old Egidio?” Jim yelled at his friend.

  “Twenty-eight!”

  “You’ve had those the whole time, George?” Paul raged.

  “I was savin’ ‘em!” George protested, pulling a handful of gray seeds from his pocket.

  “Saving them for what, George? An emergency?” Peter cried, looking furious enough to slug his brother.

  “Twenty-nine!”

  While the boys had been yelling at George, Lacey had taken Jim’s ripped sleeve and wrapped it snuggly about his left forearm, cinching it so tight that Jim winced from the pain.

  Then came the last.

  “Thirty!” Celia roared. With a clap like thunder the harpy sisters’ wings beat down. Three dark shapes burst into the air, screaming with bone-rattling fury and hunger.

  “Here they come!” Jim shouted. The three sisters circled tightly together, swinging back toward the nest, where the children stood entirely exposed.

  “George, now!” Lacey screamed.

  George poured a few of the seeds into one hand, reached high above his head and hurled them to the ground just as Celia shouted over her sister’s screams.

  “I see you, man-children!” She howled. But as the harpies streaked through the air toward the nest floor, a thick blanket of fog enveloped Jim and his friends. The mist hung so heavy Jim could feel it on his skin, like a cloak pulled over his shoulders, hiding him from all the eyes in the world. Stranger still, the mist became thinner in a small bubble just before them, allowing the five friends to make their way through the otherwise impenetrable mist.

  “This way!” Lacey hissed. Jim and the Ratts followed her, just as three crashes shattered the bones in the pile behind them and Celia’s infuriated roar rung in his ears.

  “Curse you, you trickin’ man-children! I’ll taste you before this is all over! Me and me sisters is gonna hunt you til we either slices you up in our teeth and eats you, or watches you turn to stone, you trickin’ man-children, you!”

  “Does this mean the game is over?” Jim heard Ally say loudly behind them, followed by another roar from Celia and Ocy.

  The five friends tore through the thick fog. As they went, Jim realized why Lacey had ripped the sleeve from his coat and wrapped it about his arm. The cloth concealed the rotten smell of his poisoned wound. Hidden from both sight and smell, the Clan of the Ratt would make their escape. More than even that, as it had been when Ocy had pinched Jim’s arm beneath her claw, the tight knot of cloth slowed the spread of the poison. Jim felt his head clear for a few precious moments as he ran for his life.

  “Looks like you saved the day, Lacey,” Jim said a little sheepishly. “Sorry I yelled.”

  “How did you know I took them fog seeds, Lacey?” George asked. “Not even Dread Steele saw me nick those. That’s how fast I was!”

  “I never saw you take them, George,” said Lacey. “But you knew you could not have them, and therefore I knew immediately that you took some.”

  “And what was it you took from the harpies’ nest?” Jim asked.

  “All of the glitteries in the nest were pirate gear that the harpies had taken from poor souls trapped on this island. So I knew one of these had to be among them.” Lacey showed Jim and the Ratts a small box with a brass face in the center, and a needle moving about beneath the ring: a compass.

  “With Cornelius hurt, I knew we would be lost in here forever if we couldn’t figure out the direction in which we were going,” Lacey continued. “So I took a chance and went back for one. Now, even if we make a wrong turn or two, as long as we keep heading in the same direction, we should be able to find our way out of this impossible maze.”

  “And which direction would that be?” Jim asked, licking his lips nervously.

  “North,” Lacey said with a long sigh. “We’re going north.”

  “You’re brilliant, Lacey,” Jim said. Black poison or no flowing through his veins, he meant it. “Absolutely brilliant, you know that?”

  “Thank you, Jim,” Lacey replied. But when she looked back his way, Jim saw the worry in her eyes. They were on the run from three, merciless harpies and trapped in a maze of rock and stone. They had only until the next sunrise to make it to the hidden cave and back again. Worse still, Jim thought, swallowing hard and feeling the ache of his left hand beneath the wrappings, he may have even less time than that.

  Travelling through the crags was tedious, frustrating work. Even with Lacey’s compass dutifully pointing north, the small party wandered down several dead-end paths. More than a few of them were long and winding. Many times the clan was forced to double back and search out new corridors through the mist all over again.

  Flapping wings clapped above their heads along the way. More than once the clatter of sharp-taloned claws sounded on the rocks above their heads. In those moments of nearest danger, Jim and his friends crouched as close to the ground as possible, where the magic fog was thickest. Jim would jam his poisoned arm deep in the crook of his other elbow to conceal the smell as much as possible, until more wing beats carried away whichever harpy lurked on the crags above.

  The clan also took turns carrying Cornelius. The valiant raven had yet to regain consciousness and lay still as a stone in their arms. Lacey gave Jim a turn at the compass and made a little wrap for Cornelius’s damaged wing from a strip torn off the hem of her lovely dress. She patted his little feathered head and whispered to him that it would be all right. Even George was kind enough to tell Lacey that he actually missed old Cornelius’s stories and couldn’t wait to hear one again as soon as the raven awoke.

  But the long march through the ravines was especially cruel and draining for Jim. In spite of the tight bandage wrapped about his wrist, the pain sometimes tore through his hand and reached into his arm - sometimes even into his chest. The flute song faintly began to play again. Jim would shiver then, teeth chattering, as though caught by surprise in a winter wind.

  SEVEN

  fter many miles the fog at last broke free from the crags. The billowing mist spilled into a vast field, thick with long brown grass that grew taller than a full-grown man.

  “We made it!” Paul shouted. But Lacey and George immediately slapped their hands over his mouth and put their fingers to their lips. The harpies could still be near, they warned. As hard as it had been to avoid them in the ravines, it would be even worse in an open field.

  Jim and his friends waded into the thick growth, keeping their heads low and creeping as quietly as possible. After a while, the enchanted fog thinned enough for Jim to take a look around.

  “Well, the good news is that the harpies haven’t guessed we would be this far away.” He pointed to three small specks circling the sky a good distance away over the crags. “But I’d wager they could cover that space in pretty short order if they wanted to. So we better keep moving.”

  “What’s the bad news, Jim?” George asked, peering at him through the grass. Jim looked toward the horizon. The sun hung low in the east, glowing orange as dying coals.

  “It’s already evening,” Jim said. A throb grabbed at his hand and a wince crossed his face. “There’ll only be a couple more hours of light. We were in the ravines for the entire afternoon.”

  “It’ll still be alright won’t it, Jim?” Peter asked hopefully, appearing in the grass beside his brother.

  “Right,” said Paul. “The cave can’t be that far away now, can it?”

  “I don’t know,”
was all Jim said, gripping his aching wrist tight. “I don’t know at all.”

  Jim and his friends pushed through the Sea of Tall Grass beneath the cool, purple sky. The fiery orange of the setting sun was just visible over the long blades. Dragonflies buzzed over the clan’s heads and fireflies floated above the field. In some stretches the grass grew so thick that Jim all but swam through the brown stalks. He, Lacey, and the Ratts had to call out to each other, for they could see no further than their hands could reach. Other times, small paths weaved through the growth. Yet even in those clearings there was no seeing above the grass.

  George, of course, took advantage of the situation and braided several strands of the tall grass into a sword, with which he attacked his brothers over and over. Peter eventually swore that if they all turned to stone he would jump on George’s back at the last moment and pummel him, so that anyone who found them could see Peter punching his brother in the face for all eternity. But all the while, Jim feared that once the sun set and darkness fell, they would lose their way again - this time in a maze of grass instead of a maze of stone.

  As the day’s warmth died, the evening breeze bit deeper into Jim’s skin. He was growing colder by the hour. Even beneath the makeshift bandage about his wrist, Jim could feel the source of that cold creeping farther and farther up his arm – toward the heart beating within his chest.

  Jim sighed heavily and was adjusting his wrappings when the fading sunlight glimmered off something bright at his side. It was a spider’s web. Within the shimmering strands, a firefly had become ensnared and was thrashing against its bonds – all to no avail. In spite of the dark cloud that had settled over Jim’s heart, a brief tug of pity for the little bug pulled inside him. Jim was trapped in a web of sorts himself. One strand of the web was the Cromiers’ wicked schemes and plots. But another part of the web holding Jim was crawling inside his veins. No matter how hard he kicked, it seemed there was no escape.

  Jim reached out and, with a flick of his finger, set the firefly free. The little insect zipped into the air at once. It flew in an exuberant circle about Jim’s head and came at it stop an inch in front of his nose. There it bobbed up and down, as though to say thank you, before flying off to the east, toward the Field of Lights. Jim managed a small smile before another pang gnawed at his hand and cut short even that small moment of levity.