“It is you who have stolen from me,” he growled. His burning eyes swiveled to Leif, who was trying to hide behind the trio of dogs. “It was you who came to my home. Who uprooted the plant. Who brought it here, endangering all of its kind, endangering all of my kind, endangering the world at large.”
By the time he was finished, his voice was a roar. His form had shifted into something between wolf and human, hulking, huge, and terrifying.
Leif let out a squeak and dove behind Mr. Carroll.
“All right, everyone,” said Eliza’s mother much less sharply. She held up both hands. “Let’s proceed calmly and logically. First things first. Who are you?”
“My name is William,” the wolf-man said through clenched fangs. “Or it used to be.”
“Can we assume that you have the missing plant?”
Slowly, William opened his coat, revealing a shaggy chest and a bundle of gold leaves thrusting up from an inner pocket. “I do. And I will bring it safely home, or destroy every trace of it.”
Eliza swallowed. The Carrolls shifted nervously.
“And where is ‘home’?” Eliza’s mother went on.
“The island where the plant was taken from, of course.”
“Hang on.” Leif’s head poked up behind the bulldog. “You’re telling us you lived on that little deserted island? All by yourself?”
“No.” William’s face was shifting again, the canine muzzle shortening, although his teeth remained long and sharp. “With my family. Others like myself.”
“How long have you inhabited the island?” Eliza’s mother asked.
“For a very long time.” William’s voice softened slightly. “We live on fish and game, and on the fruit of this plant.”
“So you all eat the fruit,” said her mother. “And you all…change?”
William smiled a fanged half-smile. “The longer one eats of the fruit, the more powerful one becomes. With that power comes size. Strength. Control. I myself can change at will, as you see. Unless I am temporarily overcome,” he added, pouring a dribble of water out of one sleeve.
Eliza looked at that old-fashioned coat, and then at William’s shifting, inhuman, ageless face. “How old are you?”
“In human or dog years?” boomed Mr. Carroll.
“Oh, Win!” giggled Mrs. Carroll.
Eliza’s mother rolled her eyes.
But William gazed steadily down at her. “I am older than even I know.”
“Will that happen to us?” the shaggy brown mutt asked, in Tommy’s anxious voice. “Will we get more powerful over time, too?”
“How much of the fruit have you eaten?”
“Um…one berry?”
William’s teeth flashed again. “Happily for all of us, the effects of an amount that small should wear off quickly. Perhaps within a week.”
The Carrolls let out yips of joy. The Boston terrier snuggled up to the bulldog and gave a relieved sigh.
“A single berry is nothing compared to eating the fruit for a lifetime.” William closed his coat gently over the golden leaves. “This plant is not just part of our diet and key to our survival. It is at the root of our way of life. You might even call it sacred to us. We have our own name for it: Canis mirabilis.”
“Ah!” Eliza’s mother brightened. “A play on the Latin phrase annus mirabilis, miraculous year. Miraculous dog. Very clever!”
“When you stole this plant from us”—William leveled another burning yellow glare at Leif—“I was compelled to follow you and retrieve it. If I did not, the effects would be disastrous.”
Eliza’s mother cocked her head. “How so?”
His eyes flashed to her. “You know how so. My family would be hunted and captured. Our island raided. Its ecology destroyed. The plant brought to the wider world, where it would be cultivated, studied, sold to the wealthiest among you, used by those who had enough money and power to control others or to enrich themselves further. It would mean destruction and chaos.”
Eliza pictured armies of wolves racing into battle, and then tubby, pampered, ageless dogs in gleaming city penthouses. She pictured a little forested island turned to a stripped chunk of rock. Maybe it was because she was still soaking wet, but suddenly her entire body felt cold.
“Like Tibbles the cat,” whispered Tommy.
“Cat?” Mrs. Carroll hopped up and looked eagerly around, then seemed to catch herself. “Oh. I’m so sorry. Hunting instinct.”
“Go on, Tommy,” Eliza’s mother commanded.
“Um…” The brown mutt blinked around at them all. “Stephens Island is this little island near New Zealand. It was the only place in the world that was home to the Stephens Island wren. In the 1890s, people started building a lighthouse there, and a few ships’ cats got loose on the island—people used to think it was just Tibbles, the lighthouse keeper’s cat, but there were probably others—and in less than a year, the wrens were extinct. The cats killed them. And then, because the cats reproduced like crazy without any larger predators, people had to start shooting the feral cats until all of them were dead.”
“Ew,” said Eliza sadly.
“Yeah, but it proves the point.” The mutt tried to shrug. “When you bring a new thing into an ecosystem—even if it’s just one plant, or one cat—the effects can be huge.”
Everyone was still.
“We are a small group, living on a small island,” said William at last. “We are part of our own contained and balanced world. But with just one seed of Canis mirabilis…any one of you could be Tibbles the cat.”
Quiet settled over the greenhouse once more.
“Well, I’m not interested in being Tibbles the cat,” boomed Mr. Carroll at last. “I’ve always been more of a dog person myself!”
“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Carroll. “William, if we had known all this, we would never have brought that plant here.”
Eliza looked up at her mother. “Mom?” she whispered. “Do you think he’s right?”
Her mother closed her eyes. “You know, I fully expect to wake up tomorrow morning and discover that all of this was an absurd dream, because there is simply no way in the real world that I am discussing returning an undiscovered plant with transformational powers to the island that it came from with a bunch of dogs in pajamas.” She opened her eyes again. “But I am. And as disappointed as I might be, scientifically, to have to say this…Leif should sail you and your plant home.”
Leif, who had started to look calmer, stiffened up again. “What? I don’t want to go all the way back to that creepy little island.”
“And I don’t want to go to the authorities about your plant poaching,” said the bulldog. “But sometimes we have to do what we don’t want to do.”
Leif rasped something under his breath, but he didn’t argue.
“We should get you on your way!” said Mrs. Carroll brightly. “Hurry, everyone!”
Everybody burst into action.
Mr. Carroll shut himself in the basement and jogged back out minutes later on two feet. Leif called his crew and grumpily told them to get ready for another long trip. Mrs. Carroll and Tommy sniffed around the greenhouse, surveying the fire damage, which turned out to be quite minimal. And Moggie trotted around everyone’s feet, tripping people and licking their ankles.
Eliza found her mother at the back door, gazing out into the night. She touched her arm. “Are you okay?”
Her mother let out a long, tight breath. “No. I would not say that okay is what I am.” She looked down at Eliza. “You’re a researcher, so perhaps you’ll understand. Do you know how it feels to discover something that clashes so completely with everything else you believe that it shakes those beliefs to their foundations? That it makes you wonder how many of your beliefs are based on incorrect premises? Or on nothing at all?”
“Actually, I usually feel the opposite,” said Eliza. “The things I discover just give me
more possibilities to believe in.” She leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder. “But I guess that just means I need to keep looking.”
Her mother gave her a quick squeeze. “Good plan.”
“All right! All aboard that’s going aboard!” shouted Mr. Carroll, hurrying toward the van. Leif slumped reluctantly after him. Eliza’s mother, Tommy, and Mrs. Carroll followed them into the garage.
William glided past Eliza, his long black coat sweeping the floor. Then he stopped sharply and turned to face her. Even in the darkness, his eyes seemed to catch and burn with light.
Eliza felt the same icy gust that she’d felt before: the sense that told her there were supernatural powers here. Or maybe just supernatural powers.
“Oh,” she said. “I almost forgot. But I guess you didn’t.” Shivering, she held out the red berry on her palm.
William took it with fingers that were long and sharp-nailed, but very careful. Eliza watched the berry disappear between his teeth. “Thank you, Eliza,” he said in that deep, old-fashioned voice. “I have something to return to you as well.” Reaching inside his coat, he pulled out Eliza’s research notebook.
“Really?” Eliza hesitated. “I thought you had to take all evidence of the plant.”
William smiled. His teeth looked less vicious now. “I believe I can trust you with this secret. And I would hate for you to lose so much spectral research.”
Eliza’s cheeks burned. She grabbed the damp notebook, looking away. Was he mocking her? All her research had come to nothing, and he knew it.
“The world is full of wonders,” William said very softly. “This should give you more reason, not less, to believe that.” He touched her shoulder so lightly that she barely felt it. “Farewell, Eliza.”
He climbed into the back of the van. Then Mr. Carroll, a wolf-man, and one grumpy sailor whooshed out of the garage and away into the night.
Turn to this page.
THE NEXT DAY AT Carrolls’ Gardens was very quiet.
Eliza and her mother, Tommy, and the Carrolls went silently about their usual work. They had promised not to talk about William or the plant, and suddenly it seemed like there was nothing else to talk about. So they didn’t.
Eliza and her mother ate a muted dinner in their room. Afterward, instead of reading ghost stories, Eliza played mindless games on her tablet until little exploding candies piled up behind her eyelids every time she blinked. She went to bed feeling heavy and empty at the same time.
But in the middle of the night, something woke her.
Eliza opened her eyes.
The room was still. Her mother snored softly in the other bed. From somewhere nearby, there came a creak.
Eliza swung her feet to the floor. Instead of curiosity or excitement, all she felt was annoyance. Something had woken her. She was going to find it and make it shut up.
She grabbed her mother’s flashlight—who cared if ghosts didn’t like flashlights? Right now, she didn’t like ghosts much herself—and stalked out into the hall.
The beam bounced along the empty corridor. Just ahead of her, the attic door shifted on its broken hinges.
Creeeak. Of course. That was all it was. A broken door shifting in the breeze.
Eliza turned, ready to stomp back to bed. She couldn’t wait to be back in her own house, where there were no stupid broken doors trying to trick you, or—
Wait. Eliza halted. A breeze?
She guided the flashlight along the hallway again.
The first door stood slightly open.
Eliza slunk nearer.
Light from the street filtered through the room’s dirty window. And that window was slightly open, too. A whisper of night air rushed over its sill, fluttering the hem of her T-shirt.
More carefully now, Eliza scanned the hallway. The attic door swung again, almost like an invisible hand was opening it for her. Eliza tiptoed through it, past the litter of empty chemical bottles, up the scorched stairs.
The attic was empty.
Eliza made doubly sure, slicing every corner and shadow with the flashlight. No movement. No dark-cloaked figures. She was about to thump back down the steps when her flashlight glanced over something sitting on a trunk—the half-dusted trunk she had noticed before.
It was a small glass jar.
Inside the jar, glinting like marbles or cinnamon candies, was something red.
Eliza dropped to her knees and grabbed the jar.
Berries. Familiar red berries. Several of them.
But…how? How had they gotten here? Who would be stupid and stubborn enough to do this? And why?
The questions piled up like fuel on a fire. And, suddenly, she was furious.
It was straight-up, full-on fury, like she’d felt when she’d spotted a couple of obnoxious boys from her grade smashing the jack-o’-lanterns of her five-year-old twin neighbors. She’d taken off down the street after the boys, screaming about what wastes of cellular activity they were, and hurling pieces of broken pumpkin after them. She’d actually beaned one boy right on the head. She’d felt feverish, and righteous, and almost out-of-control.
Gripping the jar, Eliza shot to her feet. She would destroy the fruits. And then she’d figure out who did this, and she’d bean them on the head.
It could be Tommy. This was the spot he’d used for his secret plant studies, after all. It would be pretty stupid of him to return to such an obvious place, and it seemed odd that Tommy—who understood the dangers—would steal the berries to begin with. So maybe it wasn’t Tommy. Maybe his aunt and uncle had done it. The Carrolls had been willing to bend rules and keep secrets before. Or—maybe—maybe a certain obsessive gray-eyed botanist couldn’t stand to let every trace of this plant disappear.
Eliza swallowed. All the more reason to destroy the evidence immediately.
She turned toward the attic steps.
But creaking up the stairs, with his own flashlight and a big duffel bag, was someone else.
Eliza and Leif both jumped.
“Geez!” said Leif, wide-eyed. “What are you doing up here, Eliza?”
“I heard something.” Eliza tucked the jar behind her back. “What are you doing up here? I thought your boat would be way out in the ocean by now.”
“The boat is.” Leif held up his left hand, which was wadded in a knot of bandages. “I managed to slam my hand in a metal case just before we left the docks. Had to come back here, visit the ER, send the crew on without me.”
“But William and the plant?” Eliza asked. “They’re safe on board?”
“Of course.” Leif swung his duffel bag to the floor and set the flashlight beside it. “Should be past Massachusetts by now.” He sighed, scratching under his cap with one tattooed hand. “It was so late when I left the hospital, I didn’t want to wake everyone, but I knew Win and Camila wouldn’t mind if I climbed up the old fire escape and sacked out here.” He grinned ruefully. “Sorry if I woke you. I’ll let you get back to bed. I’m beat myself.”
“It’s okay.” Eliza sidled past, keeping the jar behind her back. “Good night.”
“Hey,” said Leif. “What’ve you got there?”
Eliza would have darted down the stairs, but Leif stood in her path. “It’s…” She hesitated. “Just something I found.”
Leif’s pale eyes focused on her face. “Hey! Is that from that plant? Did you steal those?”
“No!” Eliza exclaimed. “I found it up here. I was going to get rid of it.”
Leif studied her. Eliza wasn’t sure if she saw distrust or mere wariness in his eyes, but they seemed to grow even sharper. “Somebody must’ve been tempted,” he said. “Just one of those berries could be worth a lot.”
“Not worth risking the ecological balance of the whole world,” said Eliza.
She sounded exactly like her mother, she realized. And exactly like Tommy, with his Tibbles the cat story
.
The truth crashed over her. There was no way her mother or Tommy would have stolen these fruits. So that meant…
“Here.” Leif held out his good hand. “Why don’t you head down to bed, and I’ll take care of those.”
Eliza looked into his pale blue eyes.
Something cold lanced through her.
Dropping the flashlight, she lunged for the stairs. But Leif grabbed her in one ropy arm. His bandaged hand clamped over her mouth.
“Sorry, Eliza,” he said. “I can’t let you get rid of those berries when it took me so much work and two broken fingers to save them.”
Eliza wrenched her head sideways far enough to see Leif’s face.
“Yep.” He gave another half-grin. “I’m actually pretty pleased with how it all went. I had to wait until William was fast asleep, of course. Lucky for me, but unlucky for him, I used to make a living as a pickpocket. I got a handful of berries without him even twitching.” Leif gave a raspy chuckle. “Then I needed a reason to get back ashore that wouldn’t make the other guys suspicious, so I had to injure my own hand. But I’ve worked a lot of jobs between pickpocketing and treasure hunting. I’ve been a stunt man. A pastry chef. A rodeo clown. And if that job taught me anything, it’s how to create a distraction, and how to handle a little pain.” He cough-laughed again. “I’m thinking it’s time for another career change. Pickpocketing was small potatoes. Now I’ll pull off jewel heists. Bank robberies, maybe. Nobody’s going to suspect a dog, right? I know they call them cat burglars, but I think it’s time that a dog burglar has his day!” Leif stopped and shook his head. “Geez. I sound just like Win.”
He closed his good hand around the jar in Eliza’s fist. “Guess I’m like him in more ways than one. Just got some pots and soil from downstairs.” He nodded at his duffel bag. “Once I plant the berries, I’ll have a whole little rare plant store of my own.”
With a sudden desperate writhe, Eliza broke out of Leif’s grip. She ran, not toward the stairs, but toward one of the attic windows, still clutching the jar. Caught off guard, Leif scrambled after.
Eliza unlatched the sticky old window. She shoved the pane upward. Outside, a tiny ledge ran around the edge of the turret’s pointed tip. Four stories down, pavement gleamed beneath the streetlamps, damp and dark.
The Story Pirates Present Page 11