by James Raney
“One tree up on a hilltop high, soon a forest over the countryside. The answer to the second riddle is a family,” Jim said. “They might start with only one or two…but before long they can be hundreds and hundreds.”
“You are correct again! And the last, lad? Are you able to answer the last?” Percival asked. It seemed to Jim that the monster was cheering him on, whether against the magical rules of guardianship or not.
Jim smiled. He should have guessed this one from the beginning. The answer had been in the words shared between he and George on the riverbank in the field of the faeries that very night.
“A strong knot makes two ropes one. It’s a friend,” Jim said. His eyes stung and his throat tightened. “Brother by choice and not by blood…a friend.”
“Indeed it is,” whispered the sea serpent. “Long has it been since I have had one of those.” A smile, rowed with razor-sharp teeth, broke over the water dragon’s face. Percival the sea serpent rose up high above the path of stone and roared with his loudest voice, like a blasting of trumpets. The mighty call made Jim want to jump into the air and shout for joy.
“You have passed the test, Jim Morgan! What greater victory is there than that? Now you shall have your prize!” Percival lowered his head so that his spiked crown fell level with the pathway’s end.
“Come, young adventurer. Have you ever ridden a great beast of the deep? There may be none alive and few who ever lived who have. But I believe you have earned the right. Come now and I shall carry you to your prize, and quickly we must go, for dawn approaches. I can smell it through the walls of rock that cage me in.”
Jim took two deep breaths to steady his legs, which were all but shivering beneath him. With a running start, he leapt from the edge of the cliff onto Percival’s head. When he landed, he grabbed hold of one the spines on the dragon’s head as a handle, to keep from slipping on the wet scales and tumbling into the darkness beyond.
“Is that alright?” Jim asked suddenly, wondering if it hurt to grab the great beast so. But Percival just laughed. He laughed so hard that the cavern shook and Jim trembled from head to toe.
“But you do have impeccable manners don’t you, master Morgan? Do not insult an ancient beast of the deep, my boy, to think that your tiny hands and feet could hurt me. I could carry a hundred men upon my back for a day and a night and not grow tired. In the glory of my youth I could battle a hundred sharks and have no fear of pain or defeat! And besides all that, our trip together will be very short indeed.”
Percival swung about and Jim heard the water rush and roil far below as the dragon ripped through the underground lake. The light from Jim’s torch was hardly enough to illuminate the way, but the blast of air whipping at Jim’s hair and tugging at his clothes told him the sea serpent moved with incredible speed. As they rounded a corner in the dark, a new light came into view. Early morning’s gray poured through a hole in the eastern side of the mountain. It lit upon a lone spire of stone that climbed from the dark waters. Atop the spire, the Hunter’s Shell glimmered upon a pedestal of coral.
Percival glided to a halt at the stone tower, sending a large wave crashing into its base. Jim gripped the water dragon’s spines as tight as he dared to keep from being thrown from his perch. All the while, Percival laughed and snorted, splashing his huge tail in the water, somewhere far, far behind where Jim stood on the monster’s head.
“Apologies, Master Morgan, but it has been so, so long since I stretched myself out in the waters. The beast’s heart within me is stirred by your adventure and I forget myself and the confines of this place.”
“Confines?” Jim asked, hesitating only a moment before jumping down onto the flat surface of the stone tower. “I’ve never even heard of a cave this big before, Percival.”
“Big?” Percival growled. “This cave is but a divot in the earth with a small puddle formed at the bottom. Surely you travelled upon the sea to arrive at the Veiled Isle, did you not? Does the ocean not take your breath away? It’s breadth and depth awe even me, boy. It is too large to be owned by any one creature, too deep to belong to even any nation. The sea is large enough for one to lose himself and all that haunts him, and yet vast enough to find himself again on the other side - to rediscover joys thought lost forever. Would that you came faster to this cave, young Morgan, for I would speak more of such things to you. You listen with no rush to speak. That is a rare thing. Take your prize. You have won it.”
Jim paused for a moment atop the beast’s head. Beneath all of Percival’s growls and threats, the monster’s riddles had revealed a heart with a hole in it - a hole Jim knew well. But time was short, so Jim stepped to the stone spire. Light danced upon the shell’s polished surface. It so dazzled Jim’s eyes that he could not be sure whether the glow came from the morning light’s reflection or from the magic within the shell itself. When Jim touched the conch, warmth tingled his fingers and heat tickled the palms of his hands. The power within the talisman thrummed through his arms all the way into his chest. Surely, Jim thought, there was more than enough magic in the shell to find anything in the world – including the Treasure of the Ocean. But even with his friends in danger of death, Jim feared the thought of this enchanted tool falling into the hands of the Cromiers. He lifted it from the coral and a silent flash pulsed into the cave. It blew Jim’s hair back from his face and sent a sphere of purple light running along the underground lake.
Jim took off the tattered remains of his jacket and wrapped the shell within them, the heat and tingles leaving his arms the moment it was covered. With the shell’s glow concealed beneath his dirty coat, however, he noticed the light shining through the hole in the mountain wall was no longer a dull gray, but the bright yellow of a morning sun. Dawn had come. Jim hung his head. The shell felt heavy in his arms. The white rose scar ached on his palm.
“I’m too late,” Jim said. “Even if the Cromiers let my friends go, they won’t make it back to the faeries in time. After all this, we’re still going to turn to stone on this island.”
“I am truly sorry, Jim Morgan,” said Percival. “Of all the adventurers to test my riddles in this cave, I wished success most for you. At least have this small comfort. You have won the game of riddles, so you may now command me to protect something of your choosing until the next traveler comes. It was so with your father, now it shall be so with you. Shall I protect the shell, or something else?” Jim was about to ask what this mysterious object was that his father had won all those years ago, when suddenly, clear as a bell, a thought only a young man with boundless imagination might dare to hope.
“Percival,” Jim said, rushing to the very edge of the stone tower. “The rules that bind you, they state simply that you must guard whatever the winner of the game of riddles commands you to?”
“That is true, young Morgan.”
“Anything?”
The water dragon, who had once, hundreds of years ago, been a young and wily sea creature himself, prone to leaping and splashing in the waves, caught a whiff of salty air and ocean wind now emanating from Jim. Percival leaned his huge head down to look at Jim, eye to monstrous, yellow eye.
“Yes, young Master Morgan,” the dragon said, smiling with rows upon rows of glistening teeth. “Anything!”
SIXTEEN
ust beyond the stone-fanged mouth to the cavern of riddles, the Ratts and Lacey, with poor Cornelius tucked in the folds of her arms, huddled together. Jim had been gone for far too long. The little clan was beginning to fear for not only his life, but for their own as well. Dawn neared. Even the Cromiers knew their time on the island had grown short, which made them more desperate and violent than even before.
“I say we send one of these other whelps in after him,” Bartholomew snarled to his father, jabbing a furious finger in George’s face. “The boy may already be dead, and we waste time just standing here! Morning is nearly upon us!”
“There is yet time, Bartholomew,” replied the Count. He cast a questioning glance to Spl
itbeard. The pirate was still leaned against one of the stone fangs at the mouth of the black cavern, amusing himself by walking a silver coin back and forth over his knuckles.
“Have no fear, oh son of the most venerable Count,” said the pirate. He palmed the coin in his fist and held it up beside his toothy smile. “When the time comes, Splitbeard shall remove us from these most unfortunate shores. It shall be as though we were never here at all.” He unfurled his hand one finger at a time to reveal the coin disappeared from his calloused palm, laughing at his own trick. The Ratts, of course, were hardly impressed.
“Amateur,” Paul whispered to Peter, rolling his eyes.
“Switched it to his other hand almost five minutes ago,” Peter agreed with a snort.
“The only real way to do that trick is to make a gold coin appear in your hand instead of silver’n,” George said, sneering with his brothers.
“Quiet!” Lacey whisper-snapped at the brothers. Her blue eyes flashed and her auburn curls whipped about as she spun on them, doing her best to keep the boastful brothers from making matters worse. “This is serious!” But she was already too late. Splitbeard had stepped away from where he leaned and was sauntering slowly toward the clan.
“Right you are, oh sweet little girl. Tis a most serious matter indeed. But when Splitbeard the Pirate has his back against the wall, he has greater tricks to call upon than vanishing coins, no?” Splitbeard leaned toward Lacey and reached behind his back. From some hidden pocket, he withdrew a long black and silver feather - the feather of a giant owl. Lacey flinched from the smirking pirate.
“Leave off of her, you jackanapes!” George challenged. He pulled Lacey behind him and defiantly set his jaw at Splitbeard and the Cromiers. “If you lot are in such a blasted ‘urry to get whatever it is waitin’ in that cave, why don’t you just go in after it yourself?” Then George, who often had no idea when to quit, and even less so when seized by his passions, crossed the line with Bartholomew Cromier. “I heard you whinin’ and cryin’ at how much better you are than Jim, about how you should kill ‘im cause you don’t need ‘im. So ‘ow ‘bout you prove it, Bartholomew!” George added the Bartholomew as nastily as he could, throwing the captain his most hateful glare.
Yet the moment the words left his mouth, George realized too late that he’d made a dreadful mistake.
A terrible change crawled over Bartholomew’s deathly-white face. A thin line of blood-red color ran through his cheeks. His ice-cold eyes narrowed in frosty hatred. His chin twitched and quivered, smoke rising from a volcano on the verge of eruption.
“Oh dear,” Lacey said.
Bartholomew stalked toward George and his brothers, hand on the sword at his side. “Perhaps you’re right, little street trash. Perhaps now is the time I put to rest all doubt and vanquish any remaining hope in the son of Lindsay Morgan once and for all. But, consider this: if I enter the cave on my own, what need have I for any of you?” Bartholomew’s sword flashed from his scabbard, a glimmer of steel in the torchlight. He sliced one of the buttons from George’s coat and swung the blade back around to rest at George’s check. The sharp point drew a teardrop of blood from the eldest Ratt’s face.
The Count came to stand by Bartholomew, eyeing his son, then the Ratts and Lacey. More than once Cromier had stayed Bartholomew’s murderous anger. But now, as Lacey and George watched the villain trace his scar with a firm, gloved finger, they realized the time for such mercies had ended.
“So be it, my son. If you wish to test yourself and earn my trust once more, it shall be so. But for now, dawn has come. Splitbeard shall return us through the Devil’s Horns. Naught but a moment will have passed on the other side. We shall rejoin the battle against Dread Steele, drive him off, or finally see him from this world. Then, in one night and one day, we shall try our hand again.”
“Dread Steele will flee or fall beneath my blade,” vowed Bartholomew. His face gleamed with sweat and more than a hint of madness.
“Splitbeard,” Cromier said. “I believe the time for our departure has arrived.”
“As you say, oh honorable Count. But oh great, red one,” he added, mocking Lacey and the Ratts with a false, sad frown upon his swarthy face. “Two men, and perhaps three, I might be able to whisk to the gates called the Devil’s Horns before the sun rises. But no more than that. Oh what, what, what shall become of our youthful comrades?”
Count Cromier’s gaze passed over the small huddle of friends. A cruel smile slipped onto his lips.
“Take the girl as a prisoner,” the Count pronounced. “As for the boys and the bird, kill them all.”
Bartholomew drew his sword over his shoulder, his attention fixed with glee on George, who was trying to be as brave as possible in his last moments.
“Finally,” was all Bartholomew said. But as he moved to strike, Splitbeard interrupted with a rasping shout.
“Wait!” he said. “Listen!”
Bartholomew rolled his eyes with furious impatience. He was seemingly ready to ignore the pirate and finish poor George off anyway, when suddenly, his own face twitched. Only then did George, Lacey, Peter, and Paul catch a hint of the sound that startled the villains before them.
It came from within the hidden chamber.
It reminded George of the first time he heard waves crashing against the shore at old MacGuffy’s lighthouse. Splitbeard the Pirate slowly retreated from the mouth of the cave. For the first time since any of the children had laid eyes on the wizardly pirate, a tumbling wave of fear swept over his face.
The rushing sound grew louder and louder until it broke against the cavern wall. The chamber mouth exploded in a rain of rock shards and dust clouds. A real serpent’s head, eyes aglow and teeth snapping, burst from the rubble into the painted cave. The Ratts and Lacey fell on their seats in the middle of the cavern, mouths hanging open and eyes all but springing from their heads.
The sea serpent opened its mouth wide and roared with primeval might. The Ratt Clan threw their hands over their ears and the cave trembled beneath the monster’s cry. The water dragon focused the brunt of its cry on Bartholomew Cromier. The force of the roar sent the black-haired captain tumbling head over heels until he struck the far wall of the great cave, where he crashed with a loud smack. Count Cromier had managed to dive aside, and Splitbeard - swagger long forgotten - scrambled on all fours like a mouse scurrying to escape a cat.
With the pirates scattered, the beast turned its yellow eyes on George, Lacey, Peter, Paul, and Cornelius. Surprised that the end would come this way, they threw their arms about each other and began to say their goodbyes. But the creature opened his toothy maw once more and, of all things, spoke.
“Good morning, friends of Jim Morgan,” the sea serpent said, and in a rather deep and charming voice, Lacey thought. “I am Percival, last of the water dragons of the deep. As of this moment, you are under my protection.”
Out from behind one of the spines atop Percival’s scaly head, waving his hat and a rogue’s grin stretched across his face, popped none other than Jim Morgan. For the first time in many days, he was obviously having the time of his life.
SEVENTEEN
hen Jim saw his friends alive and well, surprise draped across their faces, a spring of joy burst inside his heart and a smile flashed across his lips.
“Hullo!” he cried, poking his head out from behind Percival’s spine, his hat in his hand. “Don’t just sit there, you lot! Don’t you recognize a getaway when you see one?”
The shocked looks on the Ratt Clan’s faces lasted only the blink of an eye. When grown-ups might have wasted time asking questions or trying understand a completely fantastic situation, the Ratts and Lacey leapt to their feet and scampered atop Percival’s enormous head without so much as a second thought.
“All aboard then, friends of Jim Morgan,” Percival said, laughing between his growls. “Hang on tight, all of you. For long has it been since Percival the Great has gone for a swim. And he is ready to move fast!”
The roar of churning water drowned out the startled cries of the clan. Jim held tight to his spine with one arm and squeezed the shell close to him with the other as Percival twisted and turned over the surface of the dark lake. The stone column and the eastward hole in the mountainside flew past in an instant. Percival dove into a hidden tunnel. He careered right and left through labyrinthine turns and around sharp corners Jim never saw coming.
Jim looked back to ensure his friends were all accounted for, and that none had been sent flying into the lake. They were all still there, with eyes wide as saucers and faces white as waves’ foam. A light appeared at the end of the tunnel, and a roaring even louder than Percival’s swimming awaited them ahead.
“I hope none of you minds getting wet!” Percival shouted, laughing his dragon’s laugh.
“What do you mean?” Jim asked. The answer came faster than Percival’s reply. The enormous waterfall that cascaded down the side of the dark mountain was the entrance to the tunnel. Percival aimed to blow right through it.
“Hang on!” Jim cried. He pressed himself against the spine and gripped the shell even tighter. The water smacked Jim like a blast of cold air as Percival burst through the waterfall. He coughed and sputtered in the torrential flood raining down on his head. But when Percival cleared the fall, and Jim felt the warmth of morning upon his face, he opened his eyes with a smile.
The sea serpent flew through the air, his long body stretched out over the river called the Mountain’s Tears. The waterfall roared behind and the whole of the island, from the dark forest to the crags, and from the field of the faeries to the beach, stretched out before. With the shell in his hands and his friends at his back, all that had frightened Jim and caused him dread disappeared. Water droplets danced in the air and caught the rising sun’s light, exploding it into a hundred rainbows. Jim loosed the wild cry of a boy with the taste of victory on his lips and the exultation of life upon his tongue.