“Ladon felt that!” Stubby cackled, his face lit with energy as he aimed and fired, catching a snake through the middle. Ladon roared again, and Stubby’s mouth twisted in grim amusement. “Take that, ye ugly lizard bugger.”
“There be too many o’ them,” Ebba shouted. She turned her pistol around and used the butt to whack another snake away. Another sailed overhead and landed at her feet. She screamed as it went to sink its fangs into her leg.
Cosmo brought the tip of his cutlass down and pinned the snake’s head to the wood.
“Sink me, that was close,” Ebba said. “Thank ye.”
Cosmo wrenched his sword from the bottom, and they stared as water sprayed up through the hole.
There was now a leak in their boat, which sat in a sea of snakes. “Shite,” she said.
“Shite,” he echoed, eyes rounded.
“Ebba!” roared Stubby. “Eyes on ye.”
Her back straightened, and she cocked her second pistol, trying to make sense of the incoming snakes amidst the spraying chaos and flying oars and waving pistols. The boat rocked violently, and Ebba yelled with the others. They’d all be dragged back to Ladon like the villager. He’d take his revenge against them for using his precious mountain apple.
Behind her, Stubby stopped moving, staring in the direction of the ship. “What in Buckle O’Pigswill’s ocean grave be that?”
“A tad busy right now, my fellow,” Barrels puffed. Most of his salt-and-pepper hair had escaped its leather tie.
“Just sayin’, there’s a glowin’ ball headin’ straight for us. Thought ye may want to know is all.”
“What?” Locks said, sending a snake flying away with his oar. He plucked another from the air by its tail, whacking the snake’s head against the side of the boat.
Ebba’s throat constricted. She had some idea what that ball might be—
A glowing light exploded overhead, and the snakes reared back, twisting and emitting a high-pitched hiss as they attempted to escape the light. The droplets of water churned by the snakes’ twisting attacks fell back to the salty water. As though sucked back by Charybdis itself, the snakes shied away to escape the light penetrating through the top layer of the ocean.
Ladon’s screams rocked down in a steady wave from Neos Mountain.
A wide circle formed around their rowboat as the snakes were pushed back.
“Row!” Barrels shouted again.
Plank and Locks wasted no time in resuming their row to Felicity. The rest of them—barring Ebba—stared up at the glowing white ball in awe.
Ebba prepared for the next battle that awaited her when they got back to the ship, wondering if she might’ve preferred Ladon’s snakes to what lay ahead.
They heaved the rowboat over the bulwark and Cosmo pulled up the rope ladder.
“It’s a wind sprite,” Plank whispered. “Just like after Syraness.”
Sally still floated ten feet out from Felicity’s side and high in the air, keeping the snakes at bay. Ladon’s minions didn’t appear to like her glowing light.
“What in Davy Jones’ is a wind sprite doin’ here? And protectin’ us, no less?” Locks added.
Cosmo slanted a look at Ebba, who tried to arrange her face in an innocent expression. Amusement flashed in his amber eyes telling her she hadn’t convinced him. “A pet of yours?” he asked in a voice just for her.
She remained mute.
“We need to be away from here, smart-like,” Stubby ordered. “The snakes are waitin’ just outside the sprite’s glow.”
Everyone burst into action. Ebba unrolled the mainsail with Plank. Locks and Stubby went to raise anchor, yelling when it was out of the water. The others wasted no time in hoisting the mainsail. Stubby jogged to the wheel, adjusting Felicity to fill the snapping sail. Plank slid out onto the bowsprit and freed the foresail, jogging back to the mast to raise it.
“Get up and hoist the topsail, little nymph,” he said to her.
She rushed to oblige, shimmying up the rigging to the crow’s nest.
Felicity began to inch away from Neos and quickly gained speed with most of their sails up and a lucky wind.
Cosmo had collected a crate from the hold and was filling it with fresh produce by the time she got back down to the deck. Fruit and vegetables were scattered everywhere. Ebba and Grubby helped him, grabbing more crates and filling them with the chaotic remains of their trade. When the last of the produce was tucked away in the belly of the ship, Ebba walked to stand beside Plank at the hull.
He looked out to where Sally still floated high above them, casting a protective ring around their sloop.
“Plank, do ye think Ladon only attacked the village because we were there?” she asked.
He didn’t shift his gaze from the sprite. “We have no way of knowin’, little nymph. I’d judge from the villagers’ behavior it’s been happenin’ for a while.”
“Do you think we started it, though? When we challenged him a couple of months ago and took his golden apple?” That man had died or would soon, wrapped in snakes and taken to be hurt or eaten by the monster. Guilt chewed on her innards as she wondered if that was their fault. If they’d ruined the village of Neos by angering Ladon.
Plank wrapped an arm around her. “What did I say to ye about creatures afore we dropped anchor here?”
Her brow wrinkled as she recalled their conversation. “Ye said it were in a creature’s nature to act the way they do.”
“Aye, little nymph. It be Ladon’s nature to wreak havoc as he tries to find the other half o’ his soul. We didn’t place Ladon on the mountain, and we couldn’t have prevented this happenin’.”
She bit her lip and replied, “Not even with the dynami?”
“Does the dynami protect against a snake bite?”
“It might if we could melt it down,” she answered and then sighed. “Those poor people.” Her talk with Cosmo took on a new meaning in the wake of what she’d seen. The villagers’ contentment to always stay on Neos really could be a weakness. Their refusal to move from Neos seemed more like a self-made trap than anything else. Why didn’t they leave when they were being picked off like that?
Locks joined them, and they stared back at Neos and at the mountaintop poking out above the towering rainforest. “Do ye think he be sendin’ his snakes because he’s too weak to come down himself?”
“If that be the case,” Plank said in a haunting tone, “the villagers should fear the day he’ll be able to come himself.”
Ebba squinted at the row of snakes pursuing them. “They’re stoppin’.”
Plank and Locks followed her finger. The snakes were halting in a row . . . as though held back by invisible tethers to the island of Neos.
“They can’t be goin’ any farther,” Locks guessed.
“Six hundred feet,” mused Plank. “Best we be keepin’ that in mind when we pass by Neos on our way back to Zol.”
“Aye,” Locks replied. “Our tradin’ days at Neos be over, methinks.”
The glowing ball that was Sally the wind sprite zipped back over Felicity’s deck a short while later. She lowered, casting a few looks at Ebba, who shook her head emphatically, hoping to convey the need for secrecy to the sprite.
The others joined them and her fathers circled around the sprite, who now hovered at eye level.
“What do ye think it could be?” Ebba asked in false amazement.
Six sets of eyes snapped to her face, along with Cosmo’s amused gaze—though she frowned, he was panting heavily and clutching at his shoulder. Still, he had enough mangoes in his basket to care for himself. He’d let them know if he needed help.
“What?” she asked casually, dragging her attention back to her fathers.
“Yer voice be high-pitched, that’s what,” Stubby said in a low voice. “And the only time it does that is when ye’re hidin’ sumpin’.”
Really? She did that? “I ain’t hidin’ anythin’,” Ebba said in a deep voice.
Cosmo laughed
, dropping his grip on his shoulder to perch against a barrel.
All six of her fathers crossed their arms, Grubby only after a sharp jab from Plank.
“Do ye have sumpin’ to be tellin’ us, Ebba-Viva Fairisles?” Locks asked.
She swallowed and glared at Sally even though the sprite did kind of save all their lives. Sally clearly took this as a sign the fish was out of the scupper and came to stand on Ebba’s shoulder.
Ebba said brightly, “Everyone, this be my pet, Sally. She’s a wind sprite.”
Sally booted her in the jaw and Ebba yelped, rubbing the spot. She made to swat the sprite, but Sal disappeared beneath her dreads.
“I don’t think Sally the wind sprite likes being referred to as a pet,” Barrels noted.
Pillage wound about Ebba’s legs, craning his neck to eye Sally and licking his lips as he did so.
“Aren’t ye glad she was here?” Ebba blurted, shoving away the cat. She glanced up and was confronted with the solid row of her fathers. “She saved all our gullets back there,” Ebba pressed. “What if I hadn’t kept her as a pet?”
Sally bit the back of her neck.
“Ow! Ye soddin’ wee thing.”
“How many times do ye think she’ll say ‘pet’ afore she learns?” Stubby asked Locks, whose face was set in uncompromising lines. Ebba searched for the weak spot in her fathers, immediately going to Grubby, who avoided her eyes, then to Peg-leg, whose eyes were fixed on the mast. Barrels’ brows were raised and he met her gaze without flinching.
Bugger, they were united on this. That hardly ever happened.
“Ye’d best be tellin’ us from the start,” Plank said.
Ebba straightened, scowling at Cosmo, who wasn’t bothering to conceal his grin. “I met Sal in the siren’s nest,” she admitted. “Sal and her friends helped me steer Felicity through the rocks and gave me enough light to see the way when the lanterns went out. Then, when we were in Kentro, I found her in one o’ the grog barrels, three tits to the baker’s wife. I made her a bed in the hold and’ve been feedin’ her ever since.”
Three of her fathers had softened during her short speech. She was off the hook.
“This one saved us from the siren, huh?” Peg-leg said, edging closer.
Sally peeked out at him from underneath Ebba’s ear. Ebba snorted at the tickling sensation of the sprite’s wings against her neck.
“Why did ye keep her a secret?” Plank asked in a stern voice.
Ebba scuffed at the deck. “I thought ye’d tell me to leave her behind because she’s a sprite.”
Grubby hummed in the back of his throat. “Fierce bad luck. Worse than a manta ray.”
Before Ebba could say anything, Sally shot out from her hiding place and had a hold of one of Grubby’s ears in her tiny hands. She lifted him bodily off the deck and into the air, depositing him on the far end of the top spar on the mast.
Plank whistled.
The sprite returned and retreated behind Ebba’s dreadlocks again.
Her fathers stared.
Barrels broke it. “She doesn’t have the dynami, does she?”
“Nay, but she’s strong,” Ebba said proudly. “Probably all the mangoes she eats.”
Peg-leg exploded. “That’s where my mangoes’ve been goin’?”
Oops.
“I’m mighty disa’pointed ye didn’t tell us,” Locks said in a hurt voice.
The others nodded in agreement. She heard Barrels whisper to Stubby, “Sherry did say teens did these sorts of things. Secrets and such.”
Ebba’s cheeks were scalding hot. She stared at her feet. When she’d found out how much they’d concealed about their pasts, that had hurt. Concealing a pet might not have been as bad, but it wasn’t kind either. “I’m right sorry,” she said.
Sally slid down her arm and leg onto Pillage’s back. The old black cat glanced over his shoulder at the sprite on his back. The sprite bared her teeth, wrapping her tiny hands through his fur and tugging in blatant threat. Pillage blinked and then faced forward, stalking across the deck in search of vermin with Sally in tow.
“I just wanted to pay Sally back for what the wind sprites did for me in Syraness. And I wanted my own pet,” she added. A carrot hit her in the side of the head. “Bad Sally! No mangoes for ye,” Ebba shouted. Ducking, she narrowly avoided a flying apple.
Ebba turned back to her fathers to see them exchanging coins, half of them smiling and the rest grimacing.
Barrels turned to the others. “Maybe it’s time Ebba learned the . . . difficulties of being responsible for another?”
Her fathers smiled evilly.
“You can keep your wind sprite,” Barrels announced.
That was it? Keeping Sally was her punishment?
“And ye’ll also swab the decks daily until we be back on Zol,” Stubby said.
Her mouth dropped open, but her protest dried up at the hard look on Stubby’s face. Plank split away from the others and approached the wind sprite.
He bowed slightly when he neared. “I thank ye, Sally, for savin’ us from Ladon’s snakes just now and for keepin’ us safe against the siren.”
The wind sprite gave him a regal nod in return before digging her heels into Pillage’s sides and carrying on with her tour of the main deck.
Six
Ebba sat balanced out on the very tip of the bowsprit, watching a pod of dolphins race beside Felicity. Their crew were halfway through the three-day journey between Neos and Febribus.
The pirate island. She’d be hard pushed to remember when anything had excited her so much except learning they were leaving Zol not that long ago. Febribus was the forbidden fruit that had always dangled out of reach. Her fathers had steadfastly refused to take her within a day’s sailing of it, opting to stick to the safer destinations in the Free Seas. Maltu was exciting, she supposed. But on Maltu there was a mixture of pirates, island-dwellers, tribespeople, and navy men. On Febribus, there were only pirates.
Her people.
She smiled happily. Maybe there would be other pirates her age there, too. Nice ones—not like the crew of Malice. Maybe there were some similar to Cosmo but not as soft.
Sally floated in front of her in a seated position.
“Showoff,” Ebba muttered. The wind snatched the word and threw it behind Ebba, but the sprite stuck out her tongue, catching the word.
“Sal?” started Ebba. “Sumpin’ happened on Neos. Sumpin’ other than Ladon and his fangers.”
The wind sprite drew closer, holding up both palms.
Ebba shifted, wondering how to put her fear into words; to convey what she’d felt when she’d compared her skin to that of the village boy. “. . . I don’t think any o’ my fathers are my actual fathers.”
Sally cast her an ‘are you kidding me’ expression.
“My skin be dark, surely too dark for any of them to be my father,” Ebba said in dejection, too at war with herself to be embarrassed that Sally found her statement extremely obvious. “I mean I saw the di’ference, o’ course; I just thought that my mother must be who I got my color from. And I never realized how much darker I really was. But,” she said, her face screwed up, “the other day, Cosmo was askin’ me about my parents, and I caught him lookin’ at my arm. I know what he was implyin’ now, Sal.” She sighed heavily. “I can’t be any o’ theirs, can I? Or is it po’sible for me to be dark and have a white parent? Wouldn’t I be a lighter brown?”
Sally whirred sympathetically.
Ebba sniffed hard. “Anyway, I ain’t sure what it means now that none o’ them be related by blood.”
It was one of the times Ebba wished Sally could talk. The wind sprite hugged Ebba’s face and gave her a tiny kiss that did help to ease Ebba’s turmoil somewhat.
“Maybe I’ll just forget about it all,” she ventured. “It don’t really matter, does it? They feel like my fathers, and we’ve gotten on just fine until now. I probably wouldn’t even like my real parents, whoever they be.”
&n
bsp; Sally pulled back, her brows furrowed.
Ebba diverted her gaze and stared ahead, feeling as though she was at a fork in the road where one path would let her continue as she was while the other would end in disaster.
Things were fine the way they were though. Asking questions would only rock the boat. Pretending had worked for nearly eighteen years after all.
Why wouldn’t it work now?
“The soothsayer,” withered Locks, “lived at the southern tip of Febribus. Who knows if she’s still there. Who cares? Not me.”
Locks had forbidden any utterance of the soothsayer’s name aboard Felicity. He said the ship would rot and sink for sure if they did because the woman was mighty bad luck.
Peg-leg handed Ebba a steaming hot meal, and her mouth watered at the aromas coming from the slow-cooked chicken and herbed vegetables. The cook was in a good mood again.
“Will she still be there?” Cosmo asked. He’d given back everyone’s clothing and possessions from the Neos trip but still wore his tunic unlaced at the top. The prince slave reached for his meal with his left arm and blanched, the blood draining from his face. He cradled the arm against his body and inhaled slowly before extending his other hand to take the plate.
Ebba watched him closely, popping a potato in her mouth and chewing. A few days ago, he’d been able to move the arm without much pain at all. How quickly was the poison spreading?
“Are ye all right, Cosmo?” she asked quietly.
“Aye, a rat doesn’t leave the gutters now, does it?” Locks spoke over her.
Barrels spoke. “I think you’ll find they do—”
“Do they?” Locks cut in. He repeated more aggressively, “Do they?”
“Nay,” they all chorused dutifully.
They watched Locks storm off to the bow, and Ebba grimaced. Locks forgot everything—everything. Even her birthday and always where he left his tools. “Ye said he hadn’t seen this lady for how long?” she asked.
“Near on eighteen years, I’d say,” Stubby answered. “Right around the time ye dropped into our lives. We didn’t want to come back to Febribus with ye, too dangerous-like. And Locks was ‘dead-set’ against seeing Verity again.”
Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Stolen Princess (Pirates of Felicity Book 2) Page 7