Jem and Scarlet exchanged sly glances. “Let’s just say . . . ,” Jem began.
“We’ve got something to show you,” Scarlet finished.
“What? What is it?” Ronagh squealed.
“Shh,” said Scarlet. “Not now. We’ve got to keep moving. I just have this feeling . . .”
“But I can’t stand the suspense,” Ronagh whined.
“You’ll see soon enough,” Jem said, steering the younger girl back the way they’d come and beckoning the others to follow.
“Just give us a hint,” Emmett pleaded.
“Is it big? Is it shiny?” Edwin persisted.
“Look, you’ll know soon enough. Just follow quickly and quietly. I’ve got a bad feeling about—”
“STOP. RIGHT. THERE.”
The Dread Pirate Captain Wallace Hammerstein-Jones’s voice sliced through the steam like a cutlass through a thief’s finger. The Lost Souls and Uncle Finn turned as a veil of steam lifted to reveal the rodentlike captain and his disheveled crew. Lucas, his face slippery with sweat and crisscrossed with scratches from unruly tree branches, looked triumphant. Iron “Pete” Morgan looked perplexed. Thomas the giant looked like he might cry.
“Look!” Captain Wallace cried. “Why, they’re . . . they’re only children.”
“Course they are,” said Lucas. “That’s what I kept telling you.”
“Yes, but”—Captain Wallace inched forward as if he were approaching wildlife that might be easily startled—“I didn’t believe it. Imagine. The Ship of Lost Souls, a ship of . . . children.” He stopped and began to laugh—a high-pitched, nasal cackle. Lucas joined in with forced chuckles, and Pete added a few halfhearted hars. Thomas’s lower lip quivered.
“Well, this’ll be easy.” Captain Wallace wiped his forehead and took another step forward. “Getting to the treasure will be no challenge at all. Why, it’ll be like taking candy from . . . children.” He cackled again.
Scarlet rolled her eyes. She’d had quite enough. She stepped forward, motioning for the others to get behind her. “Captain Wallace,” she said in her most commanding voice, “the children you see before you aren’t just any children. These are children who sail the seas. Children who brave bloodthirsty swabs and deadly jungle creatures without a second thought nearly every—”
“Silence!” cried Captain Wallace. He licked the sweat off his upper lip. “Do I look like I care? I’ve got a blasted treasure map here, and I’m not going to let a bunch of half-pint-pirates stand in my way. Now get off the path and let us real pirates cross before we toss you into that big lake. Good Lord, does anyone else find it infernally hot around here?”
“It’s a boiling lake, Captain,” Pete sighed.
“Which you’d know if you’d consulted the map,” Uncle Finn muttered.
“Why Finnaeus Bliss!” Captain Wallace’s eyes lit up, noticing the man for the first time. “You old scoundrel. Thought you were so smart to escape my ship, didn’t you? And here you are, hoping a bunch of children will protect you while I skip on past to collect my treasure. With your map! It’s too funny! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!”
Now Scarlet had definitely had enough. She reached into her boot and drew out her dagger, took another swift step forward, and pointed it right between Captain Wallace’s eyes. “Shut up,” she said. “You’ll never see the treasure. Not if I have anything to do with it.”
For a moment, everyone froze. Then Jem moved to her side. “Or me.”
“Me neither.” Smitty stepped up behind them.
One by one, the Lost Souls and Uncle Finn took their places behind Scarlet and drew their weapons.
“W-what?” Captain Wallace sputtered. “What is this? You think you children are going to scare me off? You’re crazy. You’ve got water on the brain. Thomas can crush you all at once. With his pinkie fingers. Go on, Thomas, take them out.”
But the big man didn’t move. He only looked at the Lost Souls with sad eyes.
“Thomas!” Captain Wallace screamed.
“Thomas,” Pete whispered, nudging him. “Go on.”
Finally Thomas took a step forward. He drew his cutlass and began to walk toward Scarlet. She gulped. She might be able to take on mousy old Captain Wallace, but a man Thomas’s size? She didn’t stand a chance.
But then, a few paces short, Thomas veered off. He walked straight toward the edge of the lake, stopped, and turned to face them. Swallowing hard, he held his cutlass out over the edge . . . and let it drop into the boiling water.
“I won’t harm ’em, Captain,” Thomas said softly as twenty-seven mouths dropped open. “These ain’t just any children.”
“You . . . you lout!” Captain Wallace sputtered. “Pete! Finish them off!”
Pete grasped his weapon and lunged for Scarlet. But he wasn’t fast enough—for Thomas reached out and held the top of his shipmate’s head in his big hand. “Sorry, Pete,” he said, and continued to hold on tight while Pete tried to twist free.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Captain Wallace stopped for a moment, distracted by his unintended pun. Then he screamed, “Lucas! Get them!”
“Which one?” Lucas yelled back with a tremble in his voice.
“The one who’s pointing the dagger between my eyes, you stupid boy!”
“Oh.” Lucas dove for Scarlet, who looked away from Captain Wallace just long enough to dodge her former crewman. Captain Wallace took advantage of the moment to draw his own cutlass and make a charge for Scarlet, but as he was about to pounce, Jem lunged, throwing all his weight into the captain’s shoulder. They tumbled to the ground, and Uncle Finn, with a warrior’s holler, threw himself on top.
Scarlet turned to face Lucas. The boy’s lips were pressed into a hard line and his eyes showed no emotion. How will this play out? she wondered, gripping her dagger with sweaty fingers. Lucas looked like he wouldn’t hesitate to slay her, but could she do the same to him?
He lunged, and she ducked to the right. The Lost Souls gasped and hopped out of the way. Scarlet turned to face her nemesis once again, trying to predict which way he’d lunge next. But as she watched his face for some indication, something in it began to change. His nose twitched and his eyes widened, locking on something behind her left shoulder. Scarlet heard a rustle and a rumble but didn’t dare look back.
“What the flotsam?” she heard Tim breathe.
“What’s going on?” shrieked Captain Wallace.
“And what is that smell?” Smitty added.
Lucas stood, frozen, and Scarlet finally dared a peek over her shoulder. There, behind her, behind the Lost Souls, stood the entire band of smelly wild pigs, shoulder to filthy shoulder, snouts in the dirt, grumbling what sounded like smelly pig swear words.
“Sink me,” Scarlet whispered, turning to get a better look. She gasped as the ground beneath the pigs began to writhe with deadly striped vipers and the trees began to shake with dozens, scores even, of angry, hair-pulling monkeys. The vipers hissed and slithered closer. The monkeys muttered and waved whiplike vines.
“Captain, what do we do?” Edwin yelled.
“Nothing!” Scarlet answered without taking her eyes off the approaching army of wildlife. “I . . . I think they’re on our side.” Oh God, I hope they’re on our side, she added to herself.
Sure enough, the leader of the smelly wild pigs picked Lucas out of the crowd and charged right for him. The boy hollered and took off running, followed by the pig chief and several monkeys turning wild somersaults. Uncle Finn and Jem let Captain Wallace scramble to his feet just as a group of aras swooped down from the treetops to dive-bomb him. The captain screamed and took off after Lucas, followed closely by Pete, a troupe of smelly wild pigs, and several dozen poisonous snakes. The animals brushed by Thomas but didn’t harm him.
Scarlet stood and watched them go, her heart poun
ding. Then she turned to Jem, whose wide eyes, she guessed, were about the size of her own.
“They . . . saved us,” he said. “But . . . how’d they know?”
Scarlet turned back to watch the rest of the snakes, pigs, and monkeys slinking back into the trees, their mission accomplished. She could sense the animals’ relief. How did they know? The answer was slowly taking shape inside her head.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“So you’re not satisfied with our treasure, are you, Jem?” Uncle Finn asked as he stretched out on the grass, running his fingers and toes through it.
“Well, it’s not that.” Jem, sitting cross-legged beside him, flushed. “I can see that this place is indeed quite the treasure. It’s just . . . not what I expected.”
Scarlet watched them, eyes half closed, from where she lay on her stomach beside the shining pool. All around her, the Lost Souls wandered as if in a dream, some exclaiming over star fruit and guava trees, some simply speechless at the beauty of the place. The traitor Thomas wandered with them. They couldn’t desert him, after what he’d done. So what choice did they have but to bring him along? Now it looked like they might have an honorary crew member—or at least a new friend.
“Anyway,” Jem said to his uncle. “It means you were wrong. The treasure isn’t a magic bromeliad like you said. Or a magic spice, for that matter,” he added, looking over at Scarlet.
“Hmm,” she said, too preoccupied to argue. Hundreds of questions were crowding her brain, demanding answers right away. She had suspicions, inklings, and hopes, and she knew she’d have to look deep inside again for confirmation.
She retreated to her core, where she’d found answers before, and began to sift through layers of memories, dusting off shelves of things forgotten. Images began to form in her brain, blurry at first, then gradually sharpening. She saw the clearing, but not as it looked now. A crowd of people. Islanders, she was certain, were milling around it, chatting as they dipped palm-leaf cups into the pool and drank its sparkling water. Others were sitting in the shade of the trees around its edge, munching on guava fruit, looking content. A group of barefoot children ran through, shrieking and laughing and tossing something red and shiny between them.
One small girl broke from the group and sprinted toward a willowy woman standing with friends on the edge of the pool. The woman dropped her basket of spices and gathered the girl in her long arms, then pointed to a flock of red birds sailing through the clearing. One briefly touched down on the ground and scraped the earth with its beak before taking flight again. The birds flapped off toward the trees and disappeared among them.
Scarlet sat up with a start. The damp grass had seeped into her shirt, which now clung to her cold skin.
“Well, I wouldn’t say I was wrong exactly,” Uncle Finn was grunting to Jem as he propped himself up on his elbow. “You see, there are indeed bromeliads around here, and they are indeed of the Bediotropicanus genus, and therefore by nature of their lineage and the structure of their cell walls, not to mention their propensity to flower when . . .”
Jem crossed his eyes at Scarlet and pretended to snore.
“I know where it is,” Scarlet said.
“What? Know where what is?” Jem asked.
“Come on.” And with that, she hopped to her feet and set off toward the trees. Jem and Uncle Finn only hesitated for a moment before stumbling after her.
“Where are we going?” Jem huffed as they waded through the bushes.
Scarlet came to a stop where her gut told her to. “Up.”
“Up,” Jem sighed. “Of course.”
Scarlet grabbed the lowest branch and pulled herself up onto it. Then she reached for another, just above her head, and did the same thing again. Finally, she found the spot she was looking for: a thick, sturdy branch that could hold all three of them at precisely the right height. From there, she could look down on the entire clearing—the creek, the pool, and the ring of grass around it where the rest of the Lost Souls now sat cross-legged, enjoying the view. Jem swung himself up and settled beside her. Uncle Finn took a few more minutes, sweating and grunting not unlike the wild pigs on the trail.
“I hope you realize I’m not as young—” he panted.
“Look.” Scarlet pointed to the next tree and to the one beyond it. Jem and Uncle Finn followed her finger. The branches held dozens of birds’ nests, in which sat dozens of bright-red birds.
“Why, it’s a rookery!” Uncle Finn exclaimed.
“It looks like a bunch of nests to me,” Jem said.
Uncle Finn raised an eyebrow at his nephew. “If you’d been listening to the lectures, you’d know that a rookery is a nesting place.”
“Oh. Right.”
“At least tell me you recognize the bird.”
Scarlet wanted to shout out the answer for everyone to hear, but she could tell Jem was thinking hard, recalling hours of lessons he’d dozed his way through. “An ara,” he said finally. “Nearly wiped out by the King’s Men when they first arrived here in the Islands.”
“Exactly,” Uncle Finn said. “A rare sight to see just one, but an entire colony!”
“Wait a minute,” Jem said, leaning closer and squinting at the rookery. The aras eyed him, but didn’t move. “Look at their nests. Are those . . .”
Scarlet grinned. Jem had found it. When the sun hit the nests at a certain angle, they began to twinkle with tiny bursts of red light, almost as if the sun were reflecting off hundreds of . . .
“Rubies?”
“Sink me,” Uncle Finn whispered.
“Their nests are full of rubies?” Jem turned to her, wide-eyed. “But . . . how did you know?”
Scarlet took a deep breath and tried to explain. “I . . . looked inside me. And I discovered . . . or rather, I remembered. . . that is, you see . . . I’m home. Well, almost.”
Jem and Uncle Finn exchanged confused looks while Scarlet gathered the nerve to admit what she hadn’t said aloud in years.
“I’m an Islander. Well, half. My father was a King’s Man who left his crew after falling in love with an Islander—my mother. Her people let him join them, and together they had me.” She smiled uncertainly, amazed at how it was all returning to her now. “This clearing was a special place we all visited now and then, maybe a few times a year. It was a place where we felt safe and relaxed, where we could gather food and visit with friends and . . .” Scarlet closed her eyes, remembering the spices in her mother’s basket and their wonderful smell, sharp and sweet at the same time. Then she opened her eyes and grinned. “And celebrate all the good things the island gave us.”
“But . . . but,” Jem sputtered, “why ever didn’t you tell anyone?”
“Because I was told to forget,” Scarlet answered. “And I forgot some things, or I tried to, since it hurt to think about it. When I was five, the Island Fever came through our village, and my mother asked my father to take me away while I was still healthy. She died of the fever after Father took me to Jamestown.”
More memories flashed through Scarlet’s brain. She saw the cool, palm-roofed hut where she had been forced to stay so she, too, wouldn’t fall sick. She heard her neighbors’ moans as, one by one, they began to cough, sweat, and succumb to the mysterious illness. She felt the good-bye kiss left on her forehead the night her mother sent Scarlet and Admiral McCray away. And the hot tears on her father’s face as she clung to his neck while he tramped through the forest.
Home, she told herself, can’t be far away. She wondered if the huts were still there, and what it would feel like to stand among them again.
Jem and Uncle Finn wore identical expressions of bewilderment and grief. Scarlet looked away from them and back at the treasure. She smiled. “Look. No pirate or King’s Man has ever found the source of the rubies, but the aras have known all along. They know exactly w
here to scrape the ground, nab a jewel here and there, and tuck them into their nests.” She sighed. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
“Then . . .” Jem squinted at her as if trying to make sense of everything he’d just learned. “This is the real treasure!” He bounced on his branch, then grasped it as he nearly lost his balance.
“Well, yes,” said Scarlet. “And . . . maybe not. I think the Islanders saw the treasure differently. We played with the rubies as children—they weren’t worth much to us. As long as we had land and food and family, we had everything we needed. In fact”—Scarlet wrinkled her nose, piecing it all together—“I bet old Admiral Angus thought the Islanders were keeping the rubies from him, when they were really here for the place itself.”
Jem cocked his head, considering this. “So the place is the treasure. The rubies wouldn’t be here if the animals and spirits hadn’t protected it all these years.”
“Or if the aras didn’t collect them. That makes them a treasure, too,” Scarlet added, then started as another memory was illuminated in her brain.
Uncle Finn, who’d been speechless until now, finally spoke. His voice sounded scratchy. “And these are the very birds they’ve all but killed off.”
Scarlet nodded, feeling her own throat tighten. She stared at the red heads, and the birds gazed back, looking rather proud of themselves. Yes, that was it, precisely. She felt their pride. And at that, she began to cry.
“Scarlet, what’s wrong?” Jem’s face changed from delighted to concerned. He reached out through the foliage and patted her hand awkwardly.
“I’m sorry,” Scarlet sniffled. “It’s . . . it’s the aras. I always knew . . . I mean, I’d forgotten . . .”
“What is it, dear?” Uncle Finn tore his eyes away from the birds and leaned forward on his branch to look at Scarlet as if examining a particularly unique specimen.
She bit her lip. “My real name is Ara. In my old language, it’s a word for both the color—scarlet—and the bird. I’d forgotten until now.” She wiped her eyes roughly with her sleeve. “After we left, my father stopped speaking my mother’s language and started calling me Scarlet instead. I guess it hurt him to remember, too.”
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