The Shadow of Nisi Pote

by H C Storrer

  “Yes, they are all different. That is why we have rules!” the second voice bellowed.

  “You know as well as I that any one of them has the potential. You gave up the guardianship to take a higher seat on the council, Fering. I suggest you take it up with them,” Tristan argued.

  “What… the council… psh...” the smaller voice mocked. To Jack it seemed to emanate from a bronze colored butterfly floating in front of Tristan, “Well, then have it your way.”

  It was then that Tristan’s eyes flashed to Jack’s. With a finger to his lips he admonished the one he called Fering, “He is awake, we will discuss this later.”

  Jack would have pretended to look away as the burnished moth darted off, but the pain kept him pinned to where he was. Blinking swiftly, he tried to make his thoughts believe what he was seeing as Tristan half walked, half floated into the room.

  “Who—” Jack swallowed, “who was it you were talking to?”

  “Oh, that is just Fering. Never mind him.” The man picked up a log for a seat and took a place beside the invalid. Leaning over, he began fussing with the bandage upon Jack’s chest. “How are you feeling? You have been asleep for many settings of the sun. I had worried you were dead, although Tigerlily assured me that was not the case.”

  Jack took a quick inventory of the pain—he hurt all over. “I’m alive,” he replied frankly.

  “Ha, yes you are.” Tristan smiled down.

  “Where am I?” Jack pressed. His memory of the last time he had been awake was more like a dream.

  “You are in Hukupapa’s jungle hut. You are safe here,” Tristan replied.

  “Huku… no, I mean, where is this place, this… land?” Jack asked.

  “He wants to know about the island,” a third voice, high like the tinkling of a small bell, interrupted.

  “It’s Tristan?” Jack tried his best to lift his head to catch a glimpse of the other person.

  “How rude of me.” The man stood and swept off a small purple cap. “Yes, I am Tristan, the guardian of Nisí Poté. This is—” He stopped and located his hand to his right and then changed direction, pointing back to his left. “This is Isabelle.”

  “You can just call me Belle for short,” the little voice laughed.

  “Or Tinkerbelle,” Tristan added.

  “You know I hate that name!” A sparkle of silver light circled Tristan’s head and flicked him behind his ear as he did his best to guard against the attack. In a huff, the silver stream landed upon the woven mat that made Jack’s bed. “You ignore him. He thinks he’s important because he’s the guardian.”

  The shock of what he was seeing caused panic to well in Jack’s neck. “Ahhhh,” startled he screamed and shot back from his mat, rolling into the palm fronds behind him. Through panicked eyes he looked back and forth between the strange man and tiny woman. The pain jabbing him when he breathed forced him to accept reality.

  “Careful, young master.” Tristan hurried forward to help Jack back to his bed.

  “Don’t—” Jack struck out a warning hand, his eyes recoiling in fear. “You… you are—”

  “Here to help you,” Tristan offered.

  “Running out of patience?” Belle asked.

  Jack shook his head. “How is this possible? You’re pixies!”

  “Pixies?” Belle shot forward, indignant.

  In reply Jack swung out, swiping her away.

  “Now, there is no need for that.” Tristan caught him by the arm. “Strictly speaking, pixies are nitwits. We’re fairies, and as I said before, we are here to help.”

  Jack was used to hard work, his arms and legs muscled from his time on the Faversham. He even enjoyed using his stature in wrestling bouts with some of the royal marines on board. However, as the strange little man held his limb, he found it completely immobile—it was a strength he had never felt before. “I’m… I’m sorry, Sir. This is all so new to me.” Jack was conciliatory as his knees buckled underneath him, darkness encroaching on his vision once again.

  “What is the brute’s name?” Belle huffed. “I refuse to go about calling him ‘man thing.’ ”

  “I agree, tell us your name,” Tristan ordered, hefting Jack back to his mat.

  “Peters, Sir.” The reply was frank and quick. Months of conditioning forced his tongue as if he were talking with a captain of a new vessel.

  Belle’s gasp was audible, and Tristan released his grip as if Jack were scalding hot. “Then it is you.”

  ***

  Jack hobbled about on his stretch of sand, a mass of freshly harvested jungle ferns in hand. Taking each one at a time, he shredded the length of their stocks in uniform, thin, fibrous strips. He had watched men on the docks make rope many times as a child. He was going to have to improvise without all the hands and tools, but he was sure with a bit of work he could make a strong cord. Using a deep groove in a short plank of driftwood, he rammed his first strip of vine into the cut and began to twist. His chest still hurt, and his shoulders ached enough that he had to stop frequently to rest, but he was determined to make cordage. He was going to need rope if he had any chance of escaping off this strange island.

  “Can I help you?” a woman’s soothing voice called from the brush.

  “I think your kind has helped plenty already.” Jack replied curtly. He had left the jungle hut two days earlier with plenty of protest from the native girl called Tigerlily. Jack was convinced that his visions of the supernatural had to be a trick, like a man who was drunk. There must have been something in the food the girl had given him that made him hallucinate. He missed the lessening of pain that her poultice provided, but there was a price to be paid; he was afraid it was making him go mad.

  “I told him to issue for challengers. I thought they would rough you up a bit . . . please, I never expected him to call for a taniwha!” She stepped into the warm sand, trying to explain. “You are still healing. Please, let me care for you.” Minutes passed in silence, and then she spoke again. “How can you understand me? No other man that has come to Nisí Poté could speak our language.”

  Jack continued weaving his rope. “I wished it.” he said bluntly. “One moment I couldn’t understand a thing, the next… ” He felt stupid for saying the words. A person couldn’t wish it. She had to be speaking English. They must have learned from some poor fool already dead in the arena. The thought rushing out through his lips, he asked, “The better question is, how did you learn the king’s English?”

  Tigerlily shook her head, confused. Giving up the inquiry, she took notice of his work. “And what about all that?”

  “What?” Jack looked up from his weaving to follow her finger aimed right behind him. With his eyes widening with horror he gawked for more than a moment at the neat stacks of fine hemp rope, bundled where it laid in the sand. They were just like the ones he had hopped over on the London docks, including the red thread binding the ends as a mark of their maker. “It’s you, you are doing… you are trying to drive me to madness!” Jack was on his feet immediately, gripping the coarse cordage in groups of three, hurling them into the jungle in a frenzy.

  “Stop.” Tigerlily approached him. “Just stop.”

  In a great spin, he hurled the native girl to the ground and stormed down the beach, mumbling about her tricks.

  “Peters.” Jack recognized Tristan’s strange voice but ignored him. “Peters!” Tristan persisted. Like the explosion of pollen from a thousand flowers in a windstorm, the tiny insect sized fairy burst instantly to the size of a man in a golden sparkle before him. In shock, Jack skidded to a stop, sand spraying in a fan as he fell to the ground.

  “Peters, I’m sorry to have scared you, but—”

  “This is not real!” Jack held his face in his hands, rubbing the temples above his eyes. “It was the blow, my memory… all of it is… this is not real.”

  Tristan stood over him, his jaw agape. Behind him, his transparent wings shimmered in the sun.

  “This is why he left my hu
t. He believes that he is dreaming,” Tigerlily explained as she approached.

  “This will not do.” Tristan leaned down to Jack’s level. “I need you to believe, the council is demanding a test. Peters? Peters!”

  “What!” Jack lifted his head in frustration, oscillating between Tigerlily and Tristan. “It was you who brought me the food?”

  Tigerlily aimed a finger into her chest, Jack nodding in agreement. “No.”

  “Then you?” Jack pointed at Tristan.

  “Peters, we don’t have time for this.” The fairy put a hand out to lift him from the sand.

  “Did you bring the food? The rope?” Jack resisted.

  “No, but I can explain, Peters.” Tristan lifted Jack from the ground with the same indomitable strength he had used to hold him upon the mat in Tigerlily’s hut.

  Shocked, he looked into the small man’s radiant face, “You are real? I’m not dreaming? But how?”

  “I can explain everything,” Tristan put a consoling hand on Jack’s shoulder. “But for now, Peters, I have to get you ready.”

  “For what?” Jack recoiled. “And besides, it’s not—”

  “The council has voted.” The masculine squeak of Fering cut through the jungle as a bronze streak of light sliced between Jack and Tristan. Looking back at Tigerlily, Jack remained silent as she held a warning finger to her lips. “It has been decided that the man must face the test or be banished.”

  “But he is the chosen one,” Tristan argued. “His name is Peters. He can use the island’s power. Not even Latavius had that ability.”

  “If it were up to me he would already be beyond the reef,” Fering huffed. “Yet there are others on the council who have considered his name, Petersss,” Fering held out the ‘s’ for emphasis, “as possibly making him the one of legend. I have my doubts. No one seems to mind that the prophecy speaks of the legend of one called Peterrr.”

  “Well, my name is—” Jack started.

  “And the power of Pan? Is that also in doubt?” Tristan asked

  “Only you and Isabelle can attest to that. I, for one, am unconvinced. Besides, neither his name or supposed power will save him from banishment if he cannot prove himself,” Fering argued in a haughty, noble tone. Turning his tiny form about, just before Jack’s eyes he bowed his head slightly as his wings worked to keep his bulbous girth in the air. It was the first time Jack had studied the insect closely and would have found the fat little fairy a bit comical, if it hadn’t been for the reverence all others seemed to give him. “You are hereby commanded to prepare for the trial, Master Peters. By order of the council of Pan, guardians of the tree.”

  “What trial?” Jack looked at Fering, then Tristan, confused.

  Tristan shook his head slowly as Fering’s lips cracked in a knowing grin before darting back to the jungle thicket.

  “What trial?” Jack studied Tigerlily’s face. “There is a council who has decided my fate? Without even laying eyes upon me?” His agitation was quickly turning to anger.

  “Never mind all that.” Tristan paused, his gaze on the underbrush as his head slowly turned to Jack. “The council will see soon enough. They will not banish you from the island; you are the one of prophecy. Fering has his allies, but the entire council must return with your fate. Now what about your name?”

  Taking a deep, calming breath, Jack winced. His wounds were mending, but the dull, aching pain still persisted, making his mind slow as if swimming through honey. Despite his foggy thoughts, he was able to understand one point of law on this strange Island: Peters was the closest thing to the name that would keep him alive. Jack was a name that would cut him adrift. “My name is just Peter.”

  Instantly, Tristan’s eyes beamed. “I knew it! I knew you were the one of legend!”

  Chapter 25

  F or the next several days Jack half expected to wake each morning on the deck of the Faversham, instead of in his jungle home. Fairies were not real, and he knew for sure magic did not exist at all. Yet as the evidence mounted, the notion that it was all a strange dream began to be replaced by a singular idea: he had found Sam’s island of bread.

  “You said that you were attacked by pirates,” Tristan restarted a conversation from a few days before.

  Ignoring a plate of French pastries, Jack preferred to work at the flesh of a very real coconut. “You’re still thinking about this?”

  Tristan’s shiny face contorted as he tried to form a question. “What are pirates?”

  Jack smiled and shook his head. The fairies were wise and noble, while at the same time ignorant, like children. “Pirates are… well, they are men.”

  “Are you a pirate?” Tristan pressed.

  “No,” Jack chortled. “They are bad men. Who kill other men and take their…” Jack stopped. He knew if he went any further, he was going to have to give a lesson on economics. “They kill men to make themselves powerful.”

  Tristan’s face grew worried. “So do pirates use swords? How do they fight on the water? How did you end up in the great deep? And—”

  “Men sail on great ships with cannons,” Jack interrupted before the questions grew. He could tell Tristan couldn’t understand. “Look. I’ll show you.” Jack took a stick and started to draw an image of the Faversham in the dirt. It was a crude drawing, but he was careful to show the scale of the ship compared to a man on deck.

  “This was the boat you were on?” Tristan looked amazed. “In the time of Pan, men came on much smaller boats.”

  “What men? The people of Tigerlily?” Jack asked.

  “Yes, and others,” Tristan replied.

  “Others? Are there other men on the island?”

  “No, only the wild ones. They were invited by the first protector.” Tristan’s eyes were serious. It was obvious he didn’t like the subject. “What are cannon?”

  “They are metal tubes that use fire to shoot great iron balls out of their mouths,” Jack gave a quick explanation.

  Tristan looked at him, his face full of worry and excitement. “Fire?”

  It was at that moment that Jack realized he hadn’t seen or even smelled a waft of smoke outside of Tigerlily’s hut. Only the village side of the island had fire. The fairies existed without even an oven to stay warm by. Like a bee, Jack’s mind returned to a question he had spent his quiet evenings, staring at the stars, contemplating: his impending banishment. “How many men have come to this island? Those that were not allowed to stay?”

  Tristan ignored him, focusing upon his dirt drawing. “So, these cannons, they send fire? To burn the ship?”

  Jack blinked at his questions being brushed off. After a pause, he replied, “Not exactly. They shoot heavy balls of metal.” Jack started to draw an image of the Jolly Roger. In no time, he diagramed his memory of the Faversham as it was blown apart. “These are the pirates. We were stuck on a reef. But if one can maneuver closer, you can board the other ship and take it over. That’s when swords and… well, swords. That’s when swords would be used.” Jack decided if he was the only one to answer questions it was no longer an exciting subject. Standing, he brushed the dust from his worn trousers. “I would very much like to see more of the island.”

  “That is not possible.” Tristan shook his head, his eyes intent on the drawing.

  “So, I am just to sit here and wait, then?” Jack moaned in frustration.

  “Umm...yes. We could play a game?” Tristan looked up, hopeful.

  “Well isn’t that a grand idea,” Jack drawled sarcastically. “Don’t you have guardian duties to attend to?”

  “You are my guardian duties. Besides, I like you. You say funny things and know more about the world than even the oldest fairies on Nisí Poté. Now, do not take offence, but—”

  “Wait, what was that? The oldest fairies on what?” The name sounded like something he would have heard during his studies as a child. “Was that Latin?”

  “What is Latin?” Tristan queried.

  “The language of the Roma
n Empire,” Jack said.

  “We had a Roman here once. A foul creature if you ask me, did nothing but talk of conquering the entire island in the name of Caesar. By the way, what is conquering?”

  Jack sat down and, despite his frustration, smiled. “It means he wanted to take over and rule the island.”

  “Ha Ha Ha!” Tristan rolled back with laughter. “Take over from Pan! You are funny, Master Peter.” His chiming laughter renewed with vigor as he smacked himself on the forehead. “That is why he attacked the wild men on the island—to conquer them. Wait till I tell Tink.”

  “What happened to him?” Jack renewed his quest.

  “He died,” Tristan sighed matter-of-factly, a smile still lifting the corners of his mouth.

  The bluntness of the phrase sobered Jack immediately, and he floundered for a question to break the silence. “Was it the wild men? Did they… you know… kill him?”

  “Oh, no.” Tristan smiled. “The council ordered it.”

  Jack sat erect. Instantly, a memory of the ol’ Baily, the gallows, and Talmage flooded his thoughts. “You said they were to banish me. How much time do I have?”

  “Oh, don’t worry. You are the chosen one. You make things with the magic of the Island. Not even Silette can do that.” Tristan swept away his concern.

  “But eventually I will run out of time. I cannot wait here forever,” Jack said.

  “You worry too much, Master Peter. On Nisí Poté, we don’t worry so much.” Tristan slapped Jack on the knee.

  “What name did you call this place?” Jack asked, admiring Tristan’s ability to sidetrack him.

  “Nisí Poté. It is the name the great Pan called the island when he first brought us all here. In your tongue I think it means island of nothing, or not . . . or never.” He screwed up his head in concentration, then abruptly it smoothed back to his smile. “I can never keep all your languages straight. Pan spoke something called Greek, well, that’s what the ancient texts say. The wild men speak something called . . . Māori? Although none of the fairies can really understand them. Mostly they hit themselves, yell a lot, and stick out their tongues.”