by Les Goodrich
“Don’t leave,” Bonefish said and he crept back out into the Sun.
“Were would we go?” Tanner said and he stood to see if Joe was in the back and he even looked outside but saw no one.
In time Joe returned and they finally got new beers and paid for their lunch. Those beers were long empty and the bottles cleared away when Bonefish Jones returned looking behind his gangster strut as he entered the bar and handed Jordan a wrinkled and stained leaf of paper. She unfolded it.
“Not in here,” Bonefish Jones cautioned. “The money.”
Jordan handed him a twenty dollar bill and he slid back toward the door. He spoke as he walked. “Do your business and be gone from this place. And don’t search for good luck here. It left on the mail boat a hundred years ago and swore to never come back.” With that Bonefish Jones was gone and they never saw him again.
Jordan and Tanner gathered their wands, a coiled dock line, flashlights, trashbags, backpacks to haul back whatever they found, and bottles of water. Tanner also took a marlin billy club from the deck hatch and a flare pistol with six shells. Dan stayed with the boat.
They followed the makeshift map and found landmarks like the tripple coconut palm, and the standing stones on the eastern shore. They traipsed through brush and over limestone gravel trails. The next note on the map made no sense to Jordan when she read it and they stood at a fork in the trail. Where the trail split on the map, was the confusing note.
“Take the road to gunpoint. What the hell does that mean? We walk until someone pulls a gun on us?”
“Gunpoint isn’t a robbery,” Tanner said. “It’s a place. A point. Gun Point. A part of her assaults, remember? Gun Point is here. So at this fork on the trail we head that way. Let’s go.”
On the trail to Gun Point they finally came upon the two ruined canons, relics from an age-old fort, halfway buried in fallen leaves that the Bonefish Jones map said pointed toward the cave. They carefully made their way down a gravel wash where shells broke under their feet and land hermit crabs scattered before them.
At the base of a draw they saw the yawing black mouth that was a low cave entrance curtained with green vines and just beyond it, the green glass waters of the Bight of Acklins. With wands drawn they approached the cave entrance with pounding hearts and sweaty brows. They saw no one. They skirted the area and saw no trails and no disturbed ground and they looked to the cave roof and behind it before finally deciding to go in.
Jordan led the way. They pushed back the vine curtains and inside the air was damp and the floor was of sand. Light streamed in from holes in the limestone ceiling and roots from trees or shrubs high above hung orphaned into the void.
Tanner clicked on a flashlight and they searched the immediate area. Nothing. They delved deeper and found the back of the cave some short thirty feet inside and nothing was there save sand and roots and a musty smell of old seeped rain and mildewed rocks.
“Jack shit,” Tanner said and they exited the dark hall through the hanging vines.
“Hold it right there trespassers!” came a call that startled them both but would have been terrifying had it not been the obvious voice of a child. The voice belonged to a Bahamian boy of about thirteen, shirtless, and wielding a homemade PVC pipe bow and arrow he held aimed at them from the top of the ridge.
“Put that away please. We aren’t trespassers,” said a tired Jordan as she trudged up the slope toward the boy.
“You’re on my land. That makes you trespassers.”
“This is your land?” Jordan asked as she came up to him and the boy did lower the bow.
“This whole island is my land. I’m the fourth born. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Jordan and this is Tanner.”
“Hello,” Tanner said, worn out as well and he sat on the ground near the boy and Jordan sat too. The boy sat with them.
“I’m Freddy. You came on the boat today.”
“Yeah. From Florida.”
“The states. Cool. I’m going someday. What are you guys doing tromping around out here. It’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous kids with bow and arrows?” Jordan asked and her natural rapport with kids had already disarmed Freddy and they felt like old friends. Kids trusted Jordan because she was a kid herself and Freddy knew it and he looked to Tanner and could tell he was her friend so he relaxed some.
“No dangerous because of ghost pirates.”
“You know of the ghost pirates?” Jordan asked.
“I know everything on this rock.”
“Bonefish Jones sold us a map to find them. It led us to this cave but it’s empty.”
Freddy cracked up laughing and lifted his chin to the sky. “Old Bonefish Jones. That sneaky crook. I hope you didn’t pay him much for whatever he sold you.”
“Not too much.”
“Good. Are you sure you wanna find the ghost pirate cave? I can take you there. But it’s a sketchy place. It was lost for ages. Those bastards found it and think that it’s an old witch’s house. They may be right. But they guard it night and day. They have traps set up for intruders, but they don’t fool me. I have a few traps of my own. They skulk around and get drunk. But they always have a guard at the cave.”
“How many are there?”
“Three are here now. And four more that I know of, but they’re off somewhere. Have been a while.”
“Take us there,” Jordan said and the three were off. “What else do you know besides ghost pirates?”
“I know mermaids are real. I see them in the bight and bring them bananas. Some of the old timers know about them too. Not everyone. And I know witches are real.”
“You do? What do you know about witches?”
“I know they wear all black and they ride brooms at night. They can turn into cats when they want. And do magick.”
“Have you ever seen any witches here?” Jordan asked.
“No, but I’ve read all about them.”
“Are there good witches too?”
“Yeah I think so. I think there’s good and bad witches just like anyone. My mom tells me that all witches are bad and wants me to stop reading about them. But whatever. Maybe she’s right. She says the ghost pirates are just old hobos too.”
“Hmmm,” Jordan sounded and the three walked on. “Do you think the ghost pirates are just old hobos?”
“Not after what I’ve seen those bastards do. I’ve seen their ship appear in the bay like fog. I watched them vanish on the sand and reappear on their ship and sail away. I saw one stab another one with a sword and when he pulled the sword out rum spilled from the hole onto the rocks and they both just laughed. The one pirate said, “That’s alcohol abuse!”
The day was much advanced when they neared the cave and Freddy had them stop a good distance out in the brush. They continued cautiously along a narrow gravel path in the shade.
“Step this way,” Freddy said and he walked off the gravel way and around a scattering of coconut fronds on the path. “That’s one of their traps. It’s really an old water cistern about twelve feet deep. The lid was wood I think and it’s long gone. They made this detour from the main trail just to cross it.”
“Why’d they make the trap?” Tanner asked.
“They’re pirates, mon. They chase me off too but I give them hell. Now the pirate cave is just under that ridge beyond those buttonwood trees. Further along the trail there’s a tripwire that causes a large bolder to drop into a pile of old conch shells. If they hear that they come running. I can trip the alarm but when I do you two have to be ready to go into the cave. Sneak up from the beach. I’ll watch for you from a hiding spot where I spy on them. When you get close, hold up. I’ll trip the alarm and when you see them run off, the cave will be yours.”
“What are you gonna do when they come after you?”
“Leave that to me. If you get out of that cave alive meet me at the false cave Bonefish sent you to. Can you find it again?”
“Yeah,” Jordan said.
>
“Good. From there I know a hidden way back to the docks. If we’re lucky we can get you there before the pirates figure it out. They don’t go into the cave much. Disturb nothing at their camp. They’ll be looking for me on the inside shore where I keep my little sculling boat. Go now.”
Tanner and Jordan made their way to the beach then up toward the cave from that side. They paused in the shrubs and watched the cave entrance where three gnarly pirates sat on wooden benches and smoked long pipes and looked like Saint Augustine period actors in their garb of belts, sashes, pistols, and their excessive mismatch of gaudy stolen finery. Their leather cuffed boots crossed in the sand before them. Smoke rose from a fire reduced to coals on the ground where a kettle of some black and fouled stew steamed. Tanner and Jordan could just hear them.
“When’s old Hob back?” the dirtiest one of them growled.
“Dunno. Tomorrow maybe. If the wind holds,” the slim one speculated.
“Aye,” the stout bearded one said. “Ya think he’ll make good on his word?”
“If he does it’ll be the first time.”
“He’s dealing with those fish hags and I ne’er trusted ‘em. If they’ve scratched up some payment for this cursed pile of shit we’re guarding day and night, I say we take it.”
“And if they have, what’s to say old Hob don’t get that loot and skedaddle? And him with our boat and all.”
“Because he knows I’d hunt him and send him on down where he belongs. A date with the devil he has.”
“And how could you do that without giving yourself away?”
“There are ways. Trust me. It’s nothing you want to know. Thats hateful medicine you can’t spit back out.”
The three pirates jumped from their seats and sent benches toppling when they heard the conch shell clatter of their makeshift alarm going off.
“Intruders!” the grungiest said and he grabbed his sword from where it had spilled to the ground from the bench.
“Probably that damned kid,” the skinny one said.
“After ‘em whoever it is you worthless dogs. And let’s make quick work of it. Supper’s ready.”
The pirates barreled over each other and up the hill and scrambled into the woods toward the alarm trailhead.
“Let’s go,” whispered Jordan and she and Tanner dashed through the brush and into the cave. They made their way with flashlights into the dank interior.
“Watch out,” Tanner said and he pointed the light to a deep circular well lined with low rock in the cave floor. “I nearly walked into that damn thing,” he said and they continued on. They found a central passage and followed it as it seemed more trodden than the other two branches and it was the larger of the three as well. Along the way at one spot there was a natural skylight of limestone holes and the improbable spots of white light stood on the cave-dark sandy floor like beacons from another world.
Beyond them the cave wall. Below it a wooden floor of parceled boards and planks. Upon the boards stood three small stacks of books. An empty thin board crate with its lid askew. A porcelain bowl. A makeshift table with crooked and rotted legs. And there, against the wall, leaning like an abandoned decoration left behind in some hasty and long forgotten departure, stood the framed portrait of Aradia, Queen of the Witches, where she stood beside her altar, her hands raised high, her image paled grey under the dust of a thousand years. Jordan lifted her light to the painting and no words could contain the emotion that flooded through her and drained out of her onto the very ground and sunk into the Earth and rooted her there and she had no ambition to ever move again.
“Jordan!” shouted Tanner. “We gotta get out of here.”
Tanner gathered up every book into his backpack and looked around for anything else. He found no other books but he picked up a small conch shell. A dented tin cup. He scooped floor sand into a ziplock bag and closed it while Jordan carefully tilted the three foot high frame and looked behind it. Spider webs stretched from the cave wall and Jordan lifted the painting by both sides and dust fell from it. She tilted it some and she wished she had something to put it in.
“Garbage bags,” she said and she retrieved two from her pack and slipped them over the painting, one up from the bottom, one down over the top. She wrapped the bagged frame with a winding of crossed duct tape then held the painting under her arm like a surfboard. Just inside the mouth of the cave Tanner picked up a stick and scratched a Thurisaz rune in the sand. He pulled out a bottle of water and poured it into the cave as an offering to the strega and he said, “Thank you,” to the witch’s spirit.
“Let’s go,” Jordan said and the two were soon in the Sun outside scrambling up the hill but off the trail and they watched for their enemies but moved quickly.
When they came to the empty Bonefish cave they were sweating and winded and Freddy was already there.
“What about the pirates?” Tanner huffed.
“Last I saw them they were squabbling deep down in the pit where I led them into their own trap. It won’t take them long to get out and I’m sure they’re out already. Probably looking for me near the bight shore like I said they would. Looks like you got what you came for.”
“We did. Thank you,” Jordan said.
“You’re not out of this yet. Let’s get you to your boat. Come on, follow me.”
Freddy led them on safe hidden paths and they came to the shore a quarter mile from the small docks and cottages ahead.
“Yonder he goes!” came the gruff call from behind them and the three scraggly ghost pirates came kicking up sand at full speed, swords drawn, and splashing in places where the small waves dashed up around their swift running boots.
“Shit,” Freddy said and he broke out to run.
“Wait!” called Jordan and she placed the painting behind her on the sand and drew her wand. Tanner drew his as well and they faced off against the advancing rogues and Freddy stopped and cowered behind them.
“Are you crazy?” Freddy said. “They’ll cut you down. I’m out.” He turned to run again but stopped when Jordan spoke in a calm tone.
“If they can touch me, I can touch them. If they can feel sand and water and blow smoke in the air, then they can be moved by the elements.”
“I hope you’re right about this,” Tanner said and the pirates scrambled ahead and drew closer.
“I think I can get them all in one shot,” Jordan said mostly to herself and she composed an electric concentration that could be felt in the air. Leaves on the sand lifted and hovered around her. Pebbles gently levitated. Shells spun slowly in the air near her feet. “Just a little closer.”
The pirates drew within fifteen yards and Jordan flourished her wand at the three. “Body-Bind,” she said with pure confidence as if she were back home casually describing to someone how she had done it. The three pirates froze like statues with their eyes twitching around to survey their situation. The pebbles and shells around Jordan fell back to their places on the sand. Jordan turned to Freddy and raised one eyebrow.
“I’ll be damned,” the boy said. “A real live witch.”
“And you’ll never see a more powerful one,” Tanner said and he shouldered his backpack of books and walked on.
Jordan picked up the painting and walked along with Freddy asking many questions by her side.
***
Carol opened Avalon Spellshop by herself again and the morning was busy, and although she managed, she was glad to see Brit come in at two p.m. Even Brit was less cheerful than usual but she smiled and tried to get into the spirit of work.
“I think we both need a day off,” Carol said. “I’m going to close the shop on Sunday so your day off will also be a day you don’t have class.”
“That would be awesome,” Brit said. “I think I’ll sleep the whole day.”
“Good,” Carol said and wrote notes on the shop calendar. “It’s settled then. We’ll tough it out the next few days. I expect Tanner and Jordan will be back at some point Sunday night or ear
ly Monday morning. Actually, I think we’ll close Saturday too, and just put up the Closed for Repairs sign for the weekend. Then not open again until we’re all back and ready. When I talk to Tanner and Jordan I’ll get them to come in Monday to close. Like from one to six. You and I will open Monday but not until noon and just to talk to those two when they get here. So we will have the weekend off and come back in on noon Monday. Deal? ”
“Deal. That sounds good to me,” Brit said and she pulled her grey sweater off and pushed it into her bag. “I texted Jordan the other night. I can’t wait to hear about their adventure and to see what they got. Do you think they got the painting?”
“I don’t know. I guess they’ll let us know as soon as they can.”
Brit and Carol worked the rest of the day. Brit sold six books all together and Carol helped a witch from Savannah pick out a selection of calcite, rose quartz, and celestine crystals to be given to her three children as Yule presents.
Brit was on the register when the door opened and she looked with some shock to see Marshal come in. Messenger bag on his shoulder. White long sleeve shirt under red and navy argyle sweater vest. Khaki pants. White and navy saddle oxford shoes.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Brit answered and customers were milling in the general area.
“I was wrong to not believe you Brit. I’ve seen so much since then and you are all I can think about. I had to come by here and apologize and tell you that.”
“This is really a bad time and a terrible place for this,” Brit whispered.
“I know, but you’ve been on my mind every second since Halloween. I was wrong to judge your beliefs. Just wrong. I hope you can forgive me and maybe we can start over. Even just as friends if you say so. Whatever you want.”
Two ladies brought cards and incense to the register. “Not the place,” Brit sung in an overly sweet way with a giant smile to Marshal. He stepped back and Brit said, “Hi there,” bringing her smile around to the ladies and she rang up their purchases. The customers left and Marshal stepped up again. Brit pretended to be doing something terribly important at the front table. “I’m a little busy here.”