He was shocked. “I saved you, James,” he said ever so softly.
I did not strike. I should have, but I did not.
* * *
I raced back to Blue Bonnet’s tent, to search my trouser pockets for any grains of Flying Sand that remained. I rubbed what I found over my chest, into my hair. Then I took off, flying out of the tent into the air across to the promontory and down to the rocks below.
Tiger Lily lay among them, broken, not yet dead. I held her and sobbed. She reached up and touched my cheek, catching a tear on the tip of her finger and then bringing it to her lips, as if to taste me one final time. Then she opened her hand and held out the wedding ring.
“To My Eternal Love,” she whispered.
* * *
Carrying her in my arms, I returned to the camp, and placed her broken body at her father’s feet. Now he had an honest reason to mourn.
It was Sunflower who spoke.
“You’ve come back,” she said with bitterness. “You who are One with the Great White Father. He came among us, bringing Death. He descended in the Well and now has risen again. Bringing Death. Always bringing Death.”
I could not meet her eyes. My eyes instead met Lone Wolf’s, and I knew he hated me forever now. They all did. I never told them what had happened or who had done this to their beloved—I was still in too great a shock. Instead I looked one last look at Tiger Lily, then turned and marched to the lip of the Deep Well.
On the third finger of my starboard hand I placed the wedding ring.
Then I descended once again, never to return.
* * *
I know that the Scotsman’s book claims that I tried to drown her in the lagoon, and that Peter saved her life. Can you imagine what I felt on reading such a lie? It was he who betrayed me, not I her. I will never trust a man or boy again, I thought, or love another woman.
Never. Never again.
* * *
By the underground lake I met Daisy. She came to me at once, as if she understood. I could tell she had been nesting on the little island, for she was covered with sand. She floated in the air before me now and nestled in the hollow of my clavicle.
It was then I realized—you, dear reader, may have guessed long ago, but only now did I guess—that the treasure of the island, the treasure marked on my father’s map and guarded by the dragon, was not buried in the sand; it was the Sand itself.
I swam to the islet and scooped some up, filling the pouch that held the watch (which I now fastened by its chain around my neck), then peppering myself with as many grains as I thought would last the night. Daisy followed as I flew from the islet to the ceiling of the cavern, then squeezed through the narrow crack. Its passage led to a rocky ledge below the promontory, several hundred feet above the sea. Inviting Daisy to join me, I turned toward the stars of Peter’s Liana and willed myself up. It was the second star I was aiming for, not the starboard one (on the right) but the one that was port side, to the left, the sinister guiding light. I would fly until dawn, if that were possible, and perhaps I would die on the way. But if I did not die I might succeed in leaving this wretched archipelago forever.
When the sun rose, God willing, I would be in England.
INTERLUDE
HOOK AT ETON
Chapter Seven
As the sun rose I spotted the Plymouth coastline. I flew high above the sea, hoping that any fisherman, looking up, might mistake me for a great bird. Heading west, I circled Saint Michael’s Mount, then flew north. I plummeted landward as swiftly as possible, and touched ground just as the morning’s sun was first gracing rooftops. Daisy, nestled in my hair (to which she had retreated halfway through the flight), awoke and stretched. I adjusted my indigo wrap, drew my Wedding Knife, and walked as boldly as possible into the front room of the Wretched Traveler.
A man of forty-plus years stood behind the bar, washing glasses from the night before. The inn was much shabbier than I remembered it. The man turned to greet me and stood dumbfounded. I could hardly blame him. Before him stood a near-naked fourteen-year-old boy wielding a knife and bearing a miniature crocodile atop his head. I leapt across the room to the top of the bar, aided by a combination of Flying Sand and Never-Isle litheness. Daisy hissed at him as I pointed the knife at his throat.
“I’m looking for Scroff. He took something from me and I want it back.”
The barman’s mouth dropped open in fear and astonishment. Like Scroff and his ma, he was missing his lower front teeth. Poor dental hygiene clearly ran in the family.
I explained myself: “You’re the father, I presume. Your son attacked me in the barn several months ago and stole from me a locket that belonged to my late mother. I’ve come to retrieve it.”
The man managed to choke out a word: “Locket.”
“Yes. A locket. He ripped it from my neck.”
“No. No.”
“Yes. He did. If he’s sold it, his life is worthless. Where is he?”
The man swallowed, then began to gasp for breath, as if he were having a fit.
“ONE LAST CHANCE!” I shouted. “WHERE IS YOUR SON?”
“Not possible,” he rasped.
I whipped the knife across his throat, not deep enough to cause serious injury, but enough to draw blood. He clutched his neck and staggered back, knocking over several glasses and a bottle of gin. The fumes of the alcohol made my eyes water.
He thought he was dying. He held a hand, wet with blood, in front of his face to ward off another blow. “Please, sir, please,” he begged, “have mercy.”
“Do you know of this locket?” I demanded.
He nodded.
“And?”
“Course it’s sold. It were gold !”
“To a pawnshop? A local merchant?”
He nodded.
“Retrieve it. I’ll give you an hour.”
“Not possible.”
This was absurd. He was stalling, wavering, lying to protect his son.
“Why? Why is it not possible? WHERE IS YOUR SON?” I roared as Daisy let out a peep that I’m sure she meant as a threat.
He caught his breath, stood a little straighter. He wiped tears from his eyes. He seemed on the verge of hysteria. He was preparing for death.
“It were me,” he mumbled.
“What? What was you?”
“It were me what took it. I’m Scroff.”
The world stood very still. I couldn’t believe my ears or eyes.
“You’re the father. Your son was fifteen, sixteen years old. Is. Is sixteen years old.”
“No more. I’m thirty now.”
Another silence. I felt a sickness fill my stomach. “What’s today’s date?” I asked.
“November fifteenth. Year of our Lord 1888.”
In shock I slowly lowered the knife.
My God.
Fourteen and a half years had passed.
* * *
I tried not to think of my predicament. True, in my visit to the Never-Archipelago I had lost track of the time, and could not tell you, dear reader, exactly how many days and weeks had come and gone. Still, I was absolutely certain that nothing like a year had elapsed, let alone fourteen of them. Yet as I looked around the inn and took in its shabbiness, as Scroff showed me a mug commemorating the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, as I perused a pile of newspapers that he had stacked for kindling, I could not deny that much had changed in the world in my absence.
Time had brought change to the Wretched Traveler too. Scroff may have been thirty, but he looked forty-five. His mother lay abed in a back room, lost in a world of dementia. He had indeed pawned my mother’s locket, but that was too long ago for any hope of reclamation, and the coin he sold it for had been long spent. He had lost his youthful bravura and was clearly terrified of this crocodile-capped madman in his front room.
The moment I let down my guard he would, I was certain, summon the police. So I continued to threaten him until I had obtained some loose clothing lying around the inn. The s
hirt, shoes, trousers, and jacket were a bit oversize for a fourteen-year-old, but I did what I could to make adjustments. Once I had bound Scroff to the brass footrail by the bar, I stuffed balls of newspaper into the toes of the borrowed shoes and rolled up the trouser cuffs and shirtsleeves, hoping to obtain snugger clothing in good time. I then took what little coin I found in the cash drawer, stuffed my new pockets full of day-old bread, and set off.
I was determined to pick up my journey where fourteen and a half years before it had left off, and I now headed toward Penzance in the hope of finding my father’s family. I had no idea, of course, who in that family might still be alive, but I had obtained in my shipboard conversation with Raleigh a bit of information about them, and so prepared myself for the worst.
During my halcyon days at Eton, I had succeeded in securing the address at which my father’s family resided, they being regular contributors to the college whose letters were kept in the Donors’ File of the Records Office. When I first set off on my pilgrimage fourteen years past, I held that address in mind and—it being only months that had slipped by in my experience—I remembered it still. And so it was that on a lovely day in November of the fifty-first year of Her Majesty’s reign an ill-dressed lad with a crocodile on his head arrived at Number 25 Chapel Street, Penzance, and knocked on the door.
To be honest, I had quite forgotten about Daisy’s presence, nested as she was in my thick tresses, and it was with unfortunate haste that I now plucked her from my crown to stick her in a pocket before the door could be opened. Startled, she bit me in the process of transfer, and so the woman who answered my knock beheld a dirty boy sucking a bloody thumb.
“What do you want?” she queried as she gazed down at me imperiously. She was wearing black, head to toe, a widow’s garb. “We’ve no food. Go away.” She shut the door in my face.
I noticed a brass nameplate to the port side of the door. JAMES COOK, MERCHANT, it read. (So my grandfather was named James also! Was he still living? Why was the woman dressed in mourning?) I knocked again. “Excuse me but—I’m your nephew!” I shouted, guessing that the woman could be the wife of my father’s youngest brother. “I’m James Cook the third!”
After a moment she opened the door again. “We have no nephew,” she declared and slammed the door once more.
“My father was James Cook, Captain James Cook of Her Majesty’s ship the Princess Alice! The ship disappeared southwest of Bermuda in the Year of our Lord 1860!”
There was silence. I had not heard any retreating footsteps, so I knew that she remained on the other side of the door. After a few moments more she opened it again.
“Then you could not be his son,” she announced with a smile of triumph, as if she had caught me miscounting cards and was playing her trump on my ace. “If he died in 1860, which is true, he could not father a boy of sixteen.”
“Fourteen,” I corrected her, “and I never said that he died, simply that he disappeared.” (Of course he had died, but affirming this fact would not help my case.) “Are you my aunt? I’m sorry—I don’t know your name. My father never spoke of you, he only talked of his younger brother, Arthur. Reverend Arthur—a minister, yes?” (That, at least, is what Raleigh had told me.) “Perhaps Uncle had not yet married by the time my father . . . vanished.” (This was all guesswork on my part. Nearly twenty-nine years had passed since his disappearance; therefore this woman—who was clearly fifty if she was a day—could certainly be my aunt by marriage, assuming that my uncle Arthur—who remained at home—had wed.)
She studied me from head to foot before exclaiming, “This is absurd. You are absurd. You’re dressed like a beggar. You’re filthy. Why should I believe you?”
“I have his watch,” I said spontaneously, then reached into a non-Daisy pocket and pulled out the instrument.
She took it, studied it, opened it, then read the inscription.
She was right. This was absurd. True, the watch bore his initials, but “J.C.” is not an uncommon monogram and could belong to many a man (including our Lord!). Why would she believe that this watch came from my father?
She clapped her hand to her mouth and began to sob.
She shut the door again, not as soundly as she had before, and I heard her footsteps retreating. I waited, uncertain what to do next. She had the watch, and it appeared to have meant something to her, but what now? I knocked again. When the door remained firmly closed, I retreated across the street and studied the house from that vantage point.
It was stone, narrow, neat, and probably in line with the modest dwelling of a successful merchant who had religious scruples against ostentation. Was this the house in which my father had been raised, and where he had spent his last night on English soil before boarding the Princess Alice?
I recrossed the street and tried to open the door on my own. It was locked.
I pulled out a piece of Scroff’s stale bread and ate. I placed some in my Daisy-pocket, which sustenance she devoured hungrily. My legs and arms began to ache, a pain that was bone-deep, and I feared I was coming down with some illness connected to flying. The street, meanwhile, was becoming busy with daily commerce. A few passersby studied me with concern for their safety, and I worried that a policeman might arrive shortly and place me under arrest for loitering. Sure enough, after I had been on the stoop or in its vicinity for an hour or more, a bobby turned a corner and began striding in my direction. At this point the door to Number 25 reopened, and the woman motioned me inside.
A dark narrow hall led to the back of the house. The hall became even darker once the door was shut.
“I’m your aunt Margaret. That is, if you are my nephew. If you are not, if you are nothing but a lying thief and beggar, which I suspect is true, then may you burn in the Eternal Flames of Hell, and soon.” With these words she turned and headed down the hall toward the back room. I followed.
We entered a tiny bedroom, lit by a fire and as hot, I suspected, as the Eternal Flames to which she had condemned me. In a corner stood a night table with a washbasin and ewer. A bedpan, uncovered and redolent, sat on top of a quilted throw rug, one of several such rugs surrounding a large bed situated in the middle of the room. Propped up against the bedstead was a very old man.
“Grandfather,” I said to him. “You’re alive!”
“What’s that to you, boy?” the old man replied.
Aunt Margaret tossed another log on the fire.
“Come close,” the old man commanded.
I did.
He wore a nightcap, but a wisp of white hair hung like a tassel from underneath, covering one pale gray eye. His skin was mottled, his face splotched with large brown marks that appeared in the firelight to resemble scabrous wounds. His breath smelled of onions, and of dead things.
“You say James is your father?” he asked.
“Yessir. He only disappeared in 1860.” A little lie, nothing more.
He said nothing at first, but his eyes never left mine.
“Do you doubt it?” I asked, fearing he did.
“No,” he finally answered. “You’re much like him, in face and figure, when he was your age. How old are you?”
“Fourteen, sir.”
“Ha! You look old for your years.” This surprised me—I had never been told this before.
I was feeling bold and replied, “So do you.”
He grinned at this. A few of his teeth were black.
“You have your father’s spirit, I’ll say that. What’s your name?”
“James. The Third.”
“Your father had a prior son named James,” he said, “so you may be the fourth.” He was referring, I assumed, to myself, but of course he wouldn’t know that. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to meet you, sir. I wanted to learn some more about my family. My father’s family.”
“Such as what?”
I thought for a moment. How should I begin? “Is it true we’re descended from Captain James Cook?” I blurted.
&nbs
p; “Who in heaven’s name told you that?”
“My father left me a book. A history of the captain’s voyages. It was your gift to him, I was given to believe, when he graduated from Eton.”
I saw a spark of memory flash in his eyes. “And why would that make you think your ancestor was that Captain Cook?”
“My mother said so.”
“Ah. And you believe your mother?”
“Why would she lie?”
There followed a beat of silence before he answered. “All mothers lie. Or their sons wouldn’t wish to grow up, knowing what truly lay ahead.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“And who was your mother?” he asked.
What should I say? I felt I couldn’t tell him the truth, not just yet, for that would only convince him and my aunt that I was a madman and a liar.
“Even if you are who you say you are,” my aunt interrupted before I could respond, “why should we trust you? You had a brother, half brother, who was a thief and a scoundrel. We paid for his education at Eton, but he was caught red-handed in a scandalous crime and ran away before he could be properly punished. I daresay he’s dead now, God be praised—we never heard of him again and I can only assume that he is burning in the Eternal Flames. How do we know that you, James the Fourth, do not take after him?”
I swallowed and answered with sincere humility. “You cannot know that, Aunt Margaret, until you come to know my character. I am not here for money, or personal gain. I simply want to know more—about my father.”
“He didn’t go down with his ship?” The old man drew my attention back to him.
“No.” This much, at least, was true.
“Does he live still?”
“No, sir.”
The old man was silent for a moment, absorbing his son’s second death. His expression was unreadable. “Why did he not return?” he finally asked. “Or at least send some message home? Was he shipwrecked, like Selkirk, on some undiscovered island?” This last question was colored by sarcasm, and he showed surprise when I answered in the affirmative.
“He was.” This was nearly true.
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