by Will Mabbitt
The count smiled, his eyes twinkling again. “They’re taking anybody these days . . .”
He chuckled to himself.
“And you’re looking for my part of the X, yes?”
Mabel nodded.
“We have three bits already, but I need all five to get home.”
The count raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.
“Get home?”
“Back to the hooman world. Once we have all the pieces we can open a porthole and—”
Mabel stopped suddenly. She had said too much.
The count’s expression had changed slightly. It was the twinkle in his eye—it had gone.
“And you have found all the pieces but one? How interesting. What a resourceful little girl you must be.” The count gazed into the distance as if recalling a memory from long ago. “How I’d love to go back. How people must miss me! You know, I was quite something back then . . .”
The count smiled sadly and removed a chain from around his neck. On the end was a piece of the letter X.
He held it out to Mabel Jones. She went to take it, but he pulled it out of her reach.
“You know, you could live here with me if you wanted.”
He looked at her with his lovely blue eyes.
Mabel imagined eating cornflakes with the count and his lovely blue eyes at breakfast. It might not be too bad. They’d probably eat soft-boiled eggs, which were much better than ship’s biscuits. Fewer weevils too.
The count smiled again and his eyes twinkled warmly. “Would you like to live in a castle, Mabel?”
She wouldn’t have to scrub the deck like she did aboard the Feroshus Maggot.
“Would you like to be a princess?”
Princess Mabel!
It had a certain ring to it!
The count’s eyes crinkled warmly around the edges. “It must get lonely here. Without your family, I mean.”
Mabel nodded sadly. “I miss them.”
“Of course you do.” The count put his muscular-but-not-too-muscular arm around her shoulders and hugged her a bit. He smelled all clean and soapy. “Maybe I could be your new family?”
But I’ve already got a family, thought Mabel Jones. And I’ve already been away for ages, and they’ll be so worried.
She looked at the count and his lovely blue eyes . . .
And it was as though they cracked before her gaze and she could see deep within his soul.
She saw the man who had ordered the removal of Omynus Hussh’s last remaining hand.
She saw the man who wanted her to stay with him forever in his castle. As a princess?
A prisoner, more like!
Spinning away from his arm, she snarled:
“My name is Mabel Jones. I am a pirate, NOT a princess. And you are definitely not my family! GIVE ME THE PIECE OF X!”
Her finger tightened on the trigger of her pistol.
The count smiled politely and bowed a little. He wrapped the shard of X in his handkerchief and held it out toward her.
“As you wish, Mabel Jones.”
Mabel snatched the parcel and fled.
CHAPTER 15
A Helping Hand
As Mabel fled, she had a strange feeling.
It started as the same type of nagging worry you get if you leave for school having forgotten your PE clothes on a PE day.
As she sprinted through the courtyard, it grew to the size of the nagging worry a parachutist might get after jumping from an airplane, unaware he’d forgotten his parachute.
A monkey guard opened the gates for her.
“What an ugly monkey!” he commented to his fellow guard as they both saluted.
By the time she had reached the eager pirates waiting in a rowing boat, the worry had grown so large she could hardly contain it.
Finally it bubbled all the way out of her mouth.
“The piece of X!”
It had been too easy! The count had just let her have it. She turned to look back at the castle.
The count was watching her escape from the balcony of the tower. Was he waving?
Captain Split looked at her. His evil eye glinted.
“Well? Did you get it?”
Mabel unwrapped the parcel the count had given her.
“Mabel always delivers the goods,” declared Pelf proudly.
But Mabel saw differently.
She looked up at the expectant pirates, angry tears of disappointment welling up inside her.
“It’s a pebble! A stupid pebble! He must have swapped it.”
Split growled a terrible growl.
“Swapped it? You’ve stolen it for yourself, you miserable little thief!”
“I haven’t!” protested Mabel Jones. “The count tricked me!”
“I don’t care about the count,” snarled Split, stalking toward her, a murderous leer stretched across his face. “I only care about that piece of the X!”
The crew cowered in the rowing boat as Split drew his cutlass.
Suddenly a whispery voice spoke from the other end of the boat.
“Looksy what I’ve gotted!”
OMYNUS HUSSH!
The cunning creature had snuck back to the boat unseen and unheard. And he was holding the count’s piece of X in his hand!
HIS HAND?!
ONE OF HIS HANDS IS BACK ON THE END OF HIS ARM?!
Mabel sighed with relief as Split lowered his cutlass.
“I’ll let you off this time, snuglet . . .”
He snatched the piece of X and held it up to the light admiringly.
Omynus Hussh nestled his head on Mabel’s shoulder.
“We stealed it together,” he said proudly. “Me and Mabel.”
Then, so quietly that no one, not even Mabel, could hear, he corrected himself:
“Me and my friend, Mabel.”
CHAPTER 16
Really, the Bestest Thief Ever
Minutes earlier the count had watched Mabel run from the castle. He smiled to himself.
I’m such a clever man! A silly little girl is no match for me. Even if she is armed and dangerous!
He put his hand in his trouser pocket and pulled out the piece of X. All it had taken to fool Mabel Jones had been a simple conjuring trick he’d learned as a boy.
He placed the piece back in his pocket. He’d have to find a safer place for it now.
All was quiet.
Suspiciously quiet.
The count gazed out over the Calm Blue Sea. Tomorrow he would sail after the pirates on his golden galleon and blow their scruffy boat to bits with his ornately monogrammed cannonballs. Then he would take the three pieces of X that Mabel Jones had so helpfully collected, and return home to his own world.
He had no idea that, at that very second, the hand of Omynus Hussh—still very much attached to the arm of Omynus Hussh—was sneaking up inside his left trouser leg and unpicking the stitching of his pocket.
And then, a few moments later, the silentest of lorises was climbing from the balcony to hurry back to the Feroshus Maggot.
“But the hand!” I hear you whine. “It was chopped off! By what witchcraft can a loris grow a new hand?”
And, by chance, Mabel is explaining the trick to her crewmates right now. Let’s join them.
“The bundle I gave Omynus was simply a long-sleeved sweater,” explained Mabel Jones.
She smiled at Mr. Clunes. “Thanks for lending it to me, by the way. I’m afraid it’s a little damaged.”
Omynus Hussh continued:
“Then Mabel says to the guard, all softy yes-sir-no-sir, ‘It’s only fair to let him have his favorite sweater on. After all, you only gets your last remaining hand cuts off once in a lifetime.’”
Mabel blushed.
“All Omy
nus needed to do was take his dried hand and hold it in his good hand. Then put on the jumper. The long sleeve covered his good hand, with the dried hand sticking out from the cuff.”
Mabel drew a quick diagram for the pirates. “To the casual observer it simply appeared that one arm was slightly longer than the other.”
Milton clapped his trotters together in delight. “So when the executioner’s ax fell to slice off his hand, it cut through the one he’d already lost! I say, what a lark.”
Mabel smiled proudly. “Then, using the pirate surprise-attack as a diversion, Omynus climbed up the tower to the count’s balcony, where he was perfectly placed to steal the piece of X, if need be.”
Mabel reached into her pajamas and pulled out the twice-severed hand she had collected after it had been cut off.
“Here, Omynus. I thought you might want it back.”
The silent loris shuffled his feet and looked shyly up at Mabel.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Later that day, back on the Feroshus Maggot, Omynus Hussh kissed the severed hand good-bye and dropped it gently overboard.
No one saw him do it and no one heard him whisper:
“Bye-byes, hand. I don’t needs you anymore. I’ve got something better now . . . A friend.”
CHAPTER 17
The Captain’s Leg
Once more, the Feroshus Maggot set sail. With four of the five pieces of X in his paws, you’d think Captain Split would’ve been in good humor.
But no!
With every minute that passed, he grew angrier. And Mabel grew nervous too. The comet was now even farther along its path across the sky, and the X was still incomplete.
Eventually the captain retired to his cabin. The crew could hear him, still shouting, as they toiled at their stations.
Mabel Jones was busy swabbing the deck. A pirate ship must be kept clean and tidy at all times, lest an unfortunate shipmate should tread on a discarded halibut head and slip overboard.
As she was scrubbing around the base of an old barrel, though, something strange caught her eye. Tucked carefully behind the barrel was a small cloth bundle. Peering inside, Mabel discovered a stale old weevil biscuit, two brown apple cores and a hunk of stale bread.
Very strange!
Who could the bundle belong to? Whoever it was must be very hungry to be stashing food like that! And somehow she couldn’t imagine that any of the pirates liked apples.
Then she noticed something else. Next to the bundle, half hidden by the barrel, was a footprint.
Another hooman footprint . . .
Glancing carefully around the deck, Mabel Jones took her own ration of slightly less stale weevil biscuits from her pocket and wrapped them in the bundle. Then she carefully put the bundle back where she had found it.
And so the Feroshus Maggot cut through the waves as if the ship itself were desperate to reach the location of the last remaining piece of X. The piece belonging to the final name on the list:
Old Hoss, from Scrape.
Split re-emerged from his cabin. He could not be satisfied, no matter how many fingers, hooves, or paws were blistered by the burning ropes of a pirate ship at full sail.
“Faster, you lazy whelp!”
His whip lashed out at the bottom of Milton Melton-Mowbray, who was doing his best to climb the rigging (not at all easy with trotters).
“Harder, you soundless plank!”
The whip lashed the back of Mr. Clunes as he manhandled the anchor into storage.
Even Mabel, who had done so much to help gather the pieces of X, was singled out for harsh treatment.
Actually, she got the worst treatment of all. Every time she crossed Split’s path, his single eye would narrow to a suspicious squint. Sometimes he would curse and spit at the deck where she walked.
One time, he’d gone further:
“Treacherous hooman. I got my eye on you!” His whip cracked at her bare feet and he laughed cruelly as she fell to the deck, nursing her bleeding toes.
Mabel looked up to find his wolf face thrust close to hers, his foul breath invading her nostrils.
“You and me are going to end badly, snuglet,” he whispered. “Very badly indeed!”
That night the crewmates gathered on deck to swap lusty boasts and ghostly tales of the long-dead beasts of the sea. They spoke of the places far and wide where they had traveled, and horrors so vile that to hear them would make your tail fall off (if you had one).
The captain joined their circle.
Pelf leaned back against a barrel. He sucked hard on his pipe.
“Tell us again of the treasure, Captain. Tell us the story of the X.”
“Very well . . .”
The crew huddled closer to the oil lamp, and the captain, fixing them each with a boggle-eyed stare, began his tale.
“One dark and stormy night, more than five years ago, as I was pacing my cabin, a small puffin fell in through the window and collapsed upon my table. My first thought was that it would make a fine accompaniment to my evening meal, for your puffin is a fatsome bird and fries nicely in its own juices. Luckily for the puffin, though, before I could wring its scrawny neck, it managed to squawk my name.
“‘Idryss?’ it choked. ‘Idryss Ebenezer Split?’
“And then I recognized it! My father’s loyal shoulder-bird, Barrymore.
“‘Barrymore!’ I says. ‘What brings ye here? What news of my father, the great pirate Gareth Split?’
“‘Treachery!’ he says, rubbing his throat. ‘A mutiny aboard the Flying Slug!’
“The words struck cold into my heart as sure as if I’d been gored by the frozen horn of a tundran yak. For the Flying Slug was my father’s ship, and mutiny is the foulest of deeds.
“‘How did such a wickedness come about?’ I asks.
“‘It started with the fog,’ Barrymore replies. ‘We’d been drifting for days, unable to see more than two feet in front of us, when suddenly there was a terrible scraping. We’d struck a rock, though all the charts showed we were leagues from the nearest shore. The hull held true—for the Flying Slug is a fine, strong ship—but we could not push ourselves clear. And it wasn’t long before we discovered that we were not alone . . . A strange creature dwelled alone on that very rock. A hooman!’
“‘A hooman!’ I cried with a shudder, for the very thought of such creatures disgusts me.
“‘Aye, a hooman,’ says Barrymore. ‘He was stricken with the screaming fevers, bone naked, beardy, and clinging to a metal X. He swore it was the key to a great treasure that he would share with your father, if only he would take him away from that cursed rock.
“‘The crew believed that the hooman was a bad omen and we should leave him there to rot, for we already had two hoomans aboard: a cabin boy who’d performed THE DEED some weeks before, and a prissy count who’d paid for passage to the Calm Blue Sea. But your father wanted the castaway alive, and he allowed him to join the crew.
“‘Five days we waited for wind and tide to lift us free of the rock. But no wind came and the crew grew restless. First they blamed the hooman, then they blamed your father. Finally four of the crew rose up and, in a stroke of the foulest betrayal, mutinied!
“‘They divided everything on board the ship into five parts, taking one part each and leaving one part for your father—for not even the most villainous of mutineers would leave their captain penniless. Mutinous they may have been, but they were right about the hooman being cursed. The very moment we left the ship, the wind picked up and a wave lifted the Flying Slug back into the sea and she sailed away, leaving your father, me and the fevered hooman on that uninhabited rock. Not a bite to eat except the bitter fruit of a single lemon tree . . .’”
Split paused his story and motioned for more rum to be poured into his tumbler.
“That p
uffin told me a great many more things that my father had learned from the hooman castaway. Secrets of the X that you would never believe. But the one thing he couldn’t tell me was the names of the mutineers, for the pirate code forbids snitching. There’s no pirate lower than he who tells tales on another like a whiny schoolgirl. But luckily the hooman had written their names down on a piece of paper my father had about his person.”
“And that was the list Mabel read for us!” cried Milton excitedly.
The crew looked at Mabel proudly. She blushed and pretended to pick a weevil from the biscuit she was eating.
Old Sawbones jabbed a morsel from his teeth with a rusty chisel. “So the hooman must have written down the names in lemon juice, as that was all he had on the island!”
Split nodded.
“And so my father sent the puffin off to bring me that list and the piece of the X that the organizers of the mutiny had left with him. For the fools had divided the X into five parts too, not knowing its true powers. And so the parts were scattered across the seas, until now.”
Milton blinked worriedly.
“What happened to your father? Did you not go back and rescue him?”
“Alas, the puffin couldn’t remember where the rock was. He’d flown further than a puffin ever should. For all I know, my father and the hooman are trapped there still . . .” Split grinned and narrowed his eyes. “But more likely the herring gulls are picking at their bones.”
“And the puffin?” asked Mabel.
“Barrymore?” Split smiled a wicked smile. “We served him that night in a nice red wine sauce!”
He emptied the tumbler of rum down his hairy throat.
“That’s enough stories for tonight, methinks.”
While the pirates drifted off to sleep one by one, Mabel watched as the twinkling moonlight shone onto the intricate carvings etched into the captain’s bone leg—scenes of battles, mermaids, and sea monsters.
The captain’s voice broke the silence.