The Fork-Tongue Charmers

by Paul Durham

  Rye tied an end of the rope around her own wrist and threw the rest of the coil over her shoulder. She had gotten the idea from the Pull. Each of them had their own length of rope so that they could move in different directions, but they’d always remain joined at the center so they couldn’t be separated.

  “Great,” Quinn said. “And what if someone falls into a bottomless pit?”

  Both Quinn and Folly were looking at Rye. She scowled at them.

  “Then you pull her up,” she said.

  They entered the mouth of the cavern once their ropes were safely knotted. Inside, the cave’s height expanded ever higher upward, the basalt pillars stacked atop each other and forming an intricate maze of patterns. Rye had never been inside a beehive, but she imagined this is what one’s honeycomb passageways might look like. The waves rolled in from the sea, creating a frothy cauldron before flowing down a narrowing channel and disappearing deeper into the belly of the cave.

  They stood in awed silence. Rye stared up at the twisted ceiling high above them until her neck ached. The cave was both beautiful and haunting. She could feel the echoes of its sad melody deep in her bones.

  “Come on,” Rye whispered finally, and they made their way along the cave wall over a path of stubby but dry pillars.

  As they wound their way deeper, the ceiling sloped lower and the waters calmed. The current now branched into several azure-colored channels, each flowing into a narrower tunnel.

  “Which should we try first?” Folly asked.

  “How about you take the one with the sharks, Rye can take the one with the sea hag, and I’ll stay right here,” Quinn said.

  “Quinn’s right,” Rye said. “It would be best if we all take a different tunnel. Just for a short distance, to see what we find and then report back. That way, if anyone runs into trouble, the others will be able to help.”

  “That’s not exactly what I had in mind,” Quinn muttered.

  “All right,” Folly said, “this will be our signal if there’s trouble, if anyone falls down, or gets their foot stuck in a crack, or . . . whatever. Three quick but firm tugs.” She demonstrated. “Does everyone understand the signal?”

  Folly and Quinn were staring at Rye again. She rolled her eyes.

  “Yes, three pulls. I understand.”

  “Good,” Folly said. “So which do we start with?”

  “I’ll go down that one,” Rye said, pointing to a tunnel where the water reflected off the cave walls.

  She didn’t know why, but that one seemed to draw her in with an unspoken pull.

  Rye was careful to keep her rope taut as she worked her way through the snaking tunnel, a task easier said than done. The coil twisted around her and chafed her side. She tried to readjust it but almost set it ablaze with her lantern. As she followed the flowing channel, she was mindful that the echo of the waves grew fainter the deeper she traveled. She could now hear each splash of her boots in the briny puddles. Ahead, she spotted the tunnel’s end. It shimmered from another light source. There was something down there.

  Rye took a deep breath, hurried forward, and snagged the rope under her heels. It sent her sprawling on the rocks.

  “Pigshanks,” she cursed under her breath.

  She limped to her feet and pulled the coil of rope off her shoulder, dropping it into a pile in frustration. Rye set her lantern down and rubbed her scraped shins through the new holes in her leggings.

  Something on the ground caught her eye—a damp rock at her foot. She reached down and picked it up, feeling its glasslike texture between her fingers. In the light of her lantern it was as dark as midnight under a Black Moon.

  She stooped and pressed her lantern closer to the ground. She dug into her pocket and retrieved the stone from the sill. There were other similar ones, a scattering at first, but increasing in number as she followed them closer to the light source at the far end of the tunnel. Rye was so intent on examining the stones she didn’t notice the first tug on her wrist.

  Creeping along, she picked up more of the strange stones as she went. They were all smooth and dense, just like the ones that had been left for her in her shoe, her coat, and on the windowsill.

  Finally, she found herself at the mouth of a hollowed-out grotto. Sunlight beamed down from the crevice in the ceiling high above. The light reflected off a mirrorlike pool of turquoise water and cast the whole space in an otherworldly glow. No person was there to meet her, but the grotto’s walls were covered in rambling, black markings of those who’d been there before.

  Two more tugs caught Rye’s attention, but she ignored them. She looked more closely. The marks were simple drawings and hand-scratched words—some more legible than others.

  A LIFE OF MISCHIEF, AND A SHORT ONE, THAT WILL BE MY MOTTO.

  And, in a different hand:

  Fond tidings until we meet again, on that most distant shore.

  They were messages. Perhaps the last messages of the sons of Pest who’d come here?

  Another three tugs pulled at her wrist. Urgent, desperate.

  You taught me manners, proper and prim, but now I wish I’d learned to swim.

  She squinted at one more, and could feel the writer’s fear in his desperate scrawl.

  HELP, MUM! PLEASE! THERE’S BEEN A TERRIBLE MISTAKE!

  Rye’s arm jolted with such force that it nearly dragged her to the ground. She looked down. The rope was now taut, pulling her like a fish being reeled in on a line.

  Realizing that Folly or Quinn must be in trouble, she ran back through the tunnel as fast as she could. She found her friends at the main chamber of Wailing Cave, both of them flush with excitement.

  “Why didn’t you come?” Quinn said. “We thought something had happened to you.”

  “I found more stones,” Rye started to explain.

  Quinn glanced around at the rock walls and looked at her like she was wearing pants on her head. “I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by your discovery . . .”

  “They led to a grotto—”

  “I heard something,” Folly interrupted.

  “She really did,” Quinn confirmed. “I checked. There’s something at the end of that tunnel.” He pointed to one Folly had explored.

  “What is it?” Rye asked.

  “Don’t know, but it’s making quite a racket,” Folly said.

  “Could be a person,” Quinn added.

  “Or maybe it’s a Shellycoat,” Folly suggested.

  Together, they cautiously worked their way down the tunnel Folly had taken earlier. As they approached a curve in the wall, Rye heard the noise Folly and Quinn had mentioned. A groaning—but not the echo of the waves. It wasn’t a happy sound. Rye sniffed the air. Smoke.

  Then came another noise from the other side of bend.

  A sneeze.

  Rye raised an eyebrow at Folly and Quinn. Carefully, they peeked their heads around the corner.

  They found no sea monster, Shellycoat, or hag.

  Instead, huddled over a sorry excuse for a fire on the cave floor, was a bedraggled, one-eyed smuggler, rubbing his aching knee.

  “Dent!” Rye yelled, and rushed out to meet him.

  The startled Captain caught his breath in fright before brightening in relief.

  “Children! What luck you’ve found me. It seems fate still smiles brightly on the old Captain.”

  “What are you doing here, you cockle-knocker?” Rye said, her ears burning.

  “Such language from a young girl,” Dent said. “You’ll make an old sailor blush.”

  “The way you set us adrift, you’ll be lucky if the only thing we do is make you blush. Wait until my mother gets hold of you.”

  “Now, now, let’s not be rash. I’ve already got myself in quite a twist—literally, you see.” He grimaced and touched a knee that appeared to be swollen to twice its normal size.

  “Where’s the Slumgullion?” Rye demanded.

  “At the bottom of the sea, sorry to say.”

  Folly’s
eyes were wide. “What about your crew?”

  He looked up from his twisted joint. “Scattered like the wind. Some have surely washed ashore in the Lower Isles. Others are likely paddling for the Shale. The lesser swimmers, well, they may be dancing with the crabs.”

  “Was it a storm?” Quinn asked.

  “Of course not,” Dent said, taking great offense. “It takes more than a spring blow to set me off course.” His one eye looked up at them without its usual mischievous glint. “We were attacked,” he said sharply. “By a full-blown warship. Three decks. Two hundred men.”

  “A warship?” Rye said. “Whose?”

  Dent clucked his tongue. “Longchance’s, of course. A small sloop had been following us since the day after we left Drowning. Surely you saw it in our wake at one point or another?”

  Rye, Folly, and Quinn looked at one another blankly.

  “Well, imagine that. There are still a few things a ship’s captain knows that three rapscallions don’t,” he said, although his tone was not unkind. “I assumed the sloop was tasked with tracking our whereabouts . . . and reporting back to our friends who gave us such a warm send-off in Drowning.”

  “That’s why you set us adrift in the fog?” Rye thought out loud.

  “Aye, lass,” the Captain said, narrowing his eye. “It was my only chance of getting you to Pest safely. I hoped we would sail off and lead the sloop away none the wiser. I couldn’t take the chance of mooring in the cave—they’d discover our port.”

  “This cave is a port?” Quinn asked, looking around with new eyes.

  “Aside from Wick Harbor, it’s the only navigable port for heavy ships on High Isle. Few know its secrets. I wasn’t keen on sharing them with Longchance or his Constable.”

  Dent crossed his arms and furrowed his brow.

  “But what I didn’t expect were the warships trailing in the sloop’s wake. It took but one to sink us. The three out at sea now could sack the entire island.”

  Rye’s skin went cold. The ships on the horizon were no merchant caravan.

  “We need to warn the Belongers,” she said to Folly and Quinn. She turned and rushed for the mouth of the cave, her friends hurrying after her before she dragged them off by the ropes on their wrists.

  “A grand idea!” Dent called after them. “But could you help an old salt to his feet first? Hello?”

  21

  Ties That Bind

  Abby met the children at the door with a broom in her hands. Her welcoming look turned sour when she recognized the man propped up between them. She flipped the broom upside down, gripping it like a club as she marched toward them.

  “Mama, no!” Rye said, stepping in front of Dent to protect him from what was sure to be a wicked braining. “Wait until you hear what he has to say.”

  The Captain nodded enthusiastically and flashed a crooked smile.

  “Then, if he still deserves it,” Rye added, “give him a good knock upside the head.”

  The Captain frowned.

  Abby set her distrust aside long enough to hear him out, but not so much that she was willing to let him inside. She dragged two chairs outside the farmhouse door and propped his knee up with a compress of warm herbs. That was a good sign, Rye thought, although given the look on Abby’s face, a braining still wasn’t entirely out of the question.

  Waldron leaned on his staff and listened from the doorway of the cottage. Rye noticed Hendry, Rooster, and Padge hovering anxiously a healthy distance away. They craned their necks trying to get a better look at him. Waldron furrowed his bushy eyebrows, and Rye suspected that he hoped his ugly glance would convince them to leave. He had no such luck.

  Abby approached Waldron after she finished speaking with Dent.

  “We need to go to Wick,” she said.

  Waldron pinched his beard and shook his head. “They won’t listen.”

  “Of course they will.”

  “I know them,” he grumbled.

  Abby stared at him hard, waiting. Rye was surprised to see that, for once, Abby’s glare wasn’t enough. Waldron just shook his head again.

  “I’ll go myself, then,” she said flatly.

  “Save your breath, Abigail,” Waldron huffed. “You’ll only be disappointed.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “No more disappointed than I am right now.” She turned to Rye. “Riley, introduce me to your new friends.”

  Rye introduced each of them.

  “Tarvish—your aunts and I were childhood friends,” Abby said cheerfully to Hendry. “We used to chase otters together in the river. And Rooster—I knew your father. He used to steal my pies from the windowsill,” she said good-naturedly. “I’d recognize that Dunner haircut anywhere.” Rooster blushed.

  She smiled at the long-haired little girl. “Padge, are you—”

  “Your grandmother was my grandmother’s aunt,” Padge chimed in.

  “Of course,” Abby said, taking Padge’s hands warmly. “We’re cousins. Distant—but cousins nonetheless.”

  Rye shook her head. She wouldn’t want to climb her family tree; she might never find her way back down.

  “Come, children,” Abby said to Hendry, Rooster, and Padge, “let’s hurry to Wick to speak with your parents and the others. I’m afraid there’s no time to waste. Folly, Quinn, Rye—you too. We’ll need as many voices as we can spare to spread the word.”

  Rye paused as Abby and the others headed down the path. She glanced back at Waldron in the doorway.

  “Will you come?” she asked.

  Waldron shook his head slowly and cast his gaze to the sea. “The Belongers hear nothing but their own bickering. They won’t listen to Abigail. They won’t listen to me.”

  “We have to try,” she implored, but Waldron’s bristled jaw remained set. He didn’t move.

  Rye bit her lip, turned, and ran after her mother.

  Abby hurried through Wick, speaking urgently with every Belonger who remembered her. Before long, the word had spread quickly among the villagers themselves, and Rye saw animated conversations spring up in clusters up and down the winding streets. Soon the village was consumed by the angry shouts of the Belongers, and Rye eagerly waited for them to call in the teams from the seawalls and take up their arms. And yet, unbelievably, the men and women didn’t lay down their ropes. Rye was dumbfounded when she realized what was happening.

  The Belongers yelled not in response to Longchance’s ships, but to each other.

  “We’ll take the children to Westwatch,” a gray-bearded Fisher barked. “It’s long since abandoned, but there are still walls and gates.”

  “We’re outmanned. We should all go with them!” called a Fiddler with a white plume of hair cut identically to Rooster’s.

  “Who are you to say?” a different fisherman yelled back.

  “That’s right, Fiddler,” a thick-armed Crofter chimed in. “You haven’t won a Pull in ten years.”

  “The Fishers are still in charge until the Pull is complete,” the fisherman said, crossing his arms with finality.

  “Hold on now, that’s not so,” the Crofter said, waving both hands in protest. “Once the Pull begins, no one is in charge until we have a winner.”

  “Ha! Then we have as much say as any of you,” the Fiddler yelled.

  After much loud debate, nobody could recall whether there was any such rule, so they all turned back to the ongoing battle on the seawalls with even greater intensity than before. Cupping their hands to their mouths, the Crofters and Fishers urgently cheered for their teams to hurry up and finish off the other side.

  Fingers were pointed and bodies were shoved. A few levelheaded Belongers tried to maintain the peace, but as tempers flared the crowd seemed less inclined than ever to pay attention to pleas for common sense. Abby’s voice was now drowned out entirely.

  The Pull itself continued, the Crofters and Fishers heaving at the rope with what little energy they had left.

  Rye’s ears burned in anger. How stubborn could they be
?

  Then it occurred to Rye. Maybe the best solution was the simplest one. And maybe it could be found right under her nose.

  Or in this case, in her boot.

  Rye ran to the water’s edge and plunged in. The swim into the harbor was a short one, but the cold water and her nervous energy left her spent by the time she pulled herself onto the manmade rock island at the center of the seawalls. With her awkward swimming style, any onlooker could have mistaken her for a dog paddling out to chase a gull.

  The thick rope slunk back and forth in the squeaking pulleys just above her head. The Driftwood Crown tottered over the intricate system of wheels and gears. Rye swallowed hard and resolved herself to her task.

  She reached down and drew Fair Warning from her sopping boot.

  The rope proved to be tougher than Rye had expected. She had to saw at it, strand by strand, pushing Fair Warning through each fiber with all of her strength. If anyone spotted her or called out she was too preoccupied to notice, until, finally, the remains of the rope snapped with a loud twang. She barely threw herself down in time to avoid the flail of one end as it whipsawed past her face.

  The pulley system jammed and groaned before collapsing into a bent iron knot. Something clunked her hard on the skull and settled askew atop her head. On the seawalls, the teams of pullers lurched and tumbled backward, falling onto their backsides or into the harbor itself.

  Rye cringed. She hadn’t thought about that part.

  But what struck her most was the absolute quiet. All she could hear was the lap of waves against the walls. The boisterous Belongers had plunged into silence as they stared, dumbfounded, trying to determine what exactly had happened. Had the Fishers won again? No, both teams were dazed and climbing to their feet. Had the rope broken?

  Then someone called out. Fingers pointed, this time at Rye—alone on her tiny island at the center of the harbor.

  Suddenly it was quiet no longer. Hordes of villagers rushed down each of the seawalls, the colored tartan of the competing factions blending together as they charged toward their common enemy. They pressed close to one another on the rocks, their ruddy, bearded faces glaring down at her in rage.