by Nadia Aguiar
The brass rings jangling on his boots grew louder as he approached, and through the hullabaloo on the deck, the children could pick out each distinct clank. The pirates dashing to and fro across the deck obscured his face until he stopped in front of them. The children drew in their breath and shrank back against the bulwark. Penny burst into tears.
Maya could see that the long-ago sharks had gouged his face with their razor-sharp teeth and when the wounds had healed they had left him disfigured. A scar, pale and lumpy as egg whites, ran diagonally across his entire face, from the left corner of his forehead, down between his eyes and across his cheek to the lower right-hand corner of his jaw. It had pushed his nose to one side, so that it was almost under his left eye, and his right eye sat a good inch higher than his left one. But the scar didn’t stop at his jaw. From there it ran in a straight line across his neck, as if someone had once tried to cut his throat and part his head from the rest of his body. His skull was so scarred that hair did not grow on half of his head. The rest sat in a long, gray braid on his back. The children stared at him in horrified fascination.
His mouth had not been touched by the scar, and so while everything else on his face was not exactly where it should be, his mouth was in place and his words, when he spoke, were clear and low.
“Don’t think that because we’re heading to a battle that many won’t return from, I’ve forgotten about the Pamela Jane,” he said. “I will find her. She was my ship, a ship of Tamarind, and I have reason to believe she is very precious to this place. All these years—ever since I watched that thief Hábil Izquierdo sail across the Blue Line with her—I believed her to be at the bottom of the ocean. But now I know that she has returned. She’s made her way back home and I’m going to have her back.”
Captain Ademovar took another step forward and leaned down so that his hideous face was just inches from the children’s.
“She does not belong to you,” he said in a cold, deep growl. He straightened up and when he spoke again, his voice was booming. “We’re sailing into battle now. If you’re alive when it’s over you’ll tell me where she is, or I swear to you that I will load that baby in the cannon and shoot her into the side of one of our enemy vessels. I will begin with the baby, and I will move on to the children. Those of you who are too big to fit into the cannons whole will be chopped into parts. You will be able to watch as your own limbs are fired two hundred feet over the water and devoured by sharks. And I assure you, swimming with sharks is not, how shall I say it?” He paused and waved a hand over his face. “Not pleasant.”
Captain Ademovar stood back. “You’ll inform one of my crew when you wish to tell us where the Pamela Jane is moored,” he said as he turned to walk away.
The children looked at Penny, who was in the sling in front of her mother. With all their hands tied behind their backs, a pirate could come along at any moment and pluck her from them.
Frowning with concentration, Simon began to try to figure out just how the pirate had tied them.
“I’ve got one,” he said triumphantly. “But it’s just the outside knot—he made a bunch of them.” He kept his eye on the pirates milling around on the deck.
Maya yanked at her own bindings but only succeeded in chafing her wrists. With every minute that passed they were closer and closer to the enemy fleet. The closer they got, the bigger the fleet appeared. Cannons bristled from their decks and their black sails blotted out the sun. Knives and guns flashed from the holsters of the pirates.
Maya suddenly felt calm, as if she were outside her body. After everything they had been through, it seemed hard to believe that it had come to this. Were these their last moments? She looked dreamily toward land. They were about a mile offshore. She could see Tamarind between the gentle green swells. Up ahead were the walls and ramparts of a northern city, the shells embedded in the stone glinting in the sunlight, shining cannons pointed out to sea. They fired every now and then and clouds of white smoke hung in the air. Maya saw other towns around the coast, their tin roofs flashing like mirrors sending a signal. The tops of the blue mountains were wreathed in mists and the lush cassava fields rippled gently in the breeze. Maya breathed deeply the smell of sea kelp raked up on the shores, the cassava cooking on outdoor stoves, the scents of jungle flowers and the hot, moist breath of the jungle. Squawking gulls careened in the air over the ship. The fleet passed rocks where funny, seal-like sea creatures that Maya had never seen before were sunbathing. The creatures barked joyfully, batting their flippers together as if they were applauding.
As the ship rounded the head, suddenly Maya saw a column of people marching on the coastal road. There were hundreds of them. No, thousands! The ship rushed on but Maya could see that the column stretched for miles along the road until it disappeared around a bend. It must be the Peace March! It was happening! Maya could hardly believe her eyes. Even though she was tied to the railing of a ship, a prisoner, possibly about to be shoved in a cannon and catapulted to her doom, her heart soared. The road unfolded in a coral ribbon over the hills and cliffs and shores, and all the time there seemed to be more people pouring out of coral doorways and tin shacks and hillside villas and joining the mass of people walking a circle around the island. People collecting kelp from the beaches threw down their rakes and joined. Whole tribes were arriving single file out of the jungle. Maya strained her eyes but the people were too far away to make out Isabella or Gloria.
“It’s working!” Maya cried. “Look at how many people there are, it’s working! They’ve done it!
“Helix,” Maya said breathlessly. “It’s the Peace March. The message—it worked!”
The pirates had also noticed what was happening on the shore and they had stopped what they were doing. An anxious murmuring seethed across the deck. They had no idea what was going on. When Captain Ademovar bellowed a command they set to work again but they were distracted. The sails of the Gretchen Ella were stretched taut as the mighty ship heaved through the waves toward the fleet from the North, who were now close enough that Maya could make out individual figures running around on the decks. She saw the enemy’s midnight blue flags beating in the wind on the top of the masts and her knees quailed.
A distant buzzing drone sounded in the air, and Maya looked up. There was a tiny blot in the sky, growing more distinct as it grew closer. It was a two-seater propeller plane with a red snub nose. As it flew over the March, a long pink scarf fluttered from the cockpit like a festive streamer. It was Kate! Just then there was a terrific boom as the first cannon was fired from the enemy fleet. It landed inches from the Gretchen Ella with a giant white splash. But no one was watching because a mystical, unearthly glow had come over the fleet.
“Look!” Simon cried.
Everyone had been distracted by the plane and hadn’t seen the mass of lighted insects approaching behind the fleet, but now they all squinted up at the sky. There were hundreds of thousands of fireflies, blotting out the sun. Though the lights from the creatures were faint and they twinkled on and off, together they created a shimmer in the sky. Their wings, beating faster than a hummingbird’s, caused tiny currents of air to swirl beneath them. They began to descend on the fleet.
“We’ve been bewitched!” cried one pirate. His knees buckled beneath him and he fell to the deck, looking up in horror at the swarm of lights.
“Lower the sails!” shouted Captain Ademovar. “Lower the sails!”
But the pirates were not fast enough and the fireflies were all over the ship, smothering them.
“They’re superstitious,” said Helix. “They think the fireflies will steal their souls.”
In his panic to get them off of him, one pirate stumbled and fell backward into the sea, where Maya was horrified to see several sharks make quick work of him. One of his arms floated off for a moment but then was snatched from below, leaving behind a bloody soup.
Captain Ademovar was suddenly in front of the children again. He pressed his hideously disfigured face against M
aya’s and she smelled his rotting breath. She knew he blamed them for the ghostly lights that were descending like a plague over his fleet. But then he stepped back and was halfway across the deck again, roaring orders, and the pirates began tearing the shirts off their own backs and fanning the air where the insects were as if they were beating back flames.
“Look,” cried Simon. “They’re like moths—they’re eating the sailcloth!”
The pirates had realized this, too, but they were too late. The insects moved down the sails as swiftly as fire, devouring them.
It was happening on all the ships. Ragged sails fluttered in tatters and the fleet had come to a standstill in the water, rocking uneasily in the current. It was the same with the enemy fleet. In all the chaos, a second cannon had yet to be fired. Then the jungle fireflies rose all together in a glowing ball of light and flew back toward land, vanishing as swiftly as they had appeared.
Simon had managed to free himself and he now set to work on his mother’s knots. A low bellow sounded from the shore. Maya knew that sound—it was the conch shell that she had given Isabella.
The ship rolled down a giant green swell and into a great shadow. The shore with the marching crowd was still bright but the sea had suddenly turned dark and ominous. Maya struggled to turn her head and see behind them. There was a giant towering over the sea, blotting out the sun, the ocean lapping at his knees and a cold, dark gulf of shadow pouring into the sea before him. She recognized Desmond’s brightly colored patchwork tunic and her heart leaped—he was coming to rescue them!
“Desmond!” she shouted joyfully. “Desmond, we’re right here!”
Maya’s mother’s face had drained of color and she watched speechlessly as Desmond began to walk toward them, stirring huge waves. The ships began to lurch violently, like bobbing corks.
People on the shore began pointing and cheering.
“Desmond,” Maya cried again. “Desmond, we’re here! Help us!”
Maya’s whole body turned cold as she realized that Desmond wasn’t coming to rescue them. He didn’t see them on the ship at all, in fact. Isabella had sounded the conch shell and now he was coming to destroy the fleet, to do his part for peace. Maya remembered the day she had given Isabella the conch, the momentary guilt that had passed over Isabella’s face as the idea must have occurred to her. She had planned right then what she would ask the giants to do. That was why she, and then Gloria, after she received Isabella’s note, had told Maya and Helix that they had no time to spare in rescuing Simon and Penny. Maya looked out over the sea in shock and disbelief. Maybe Isabella had just decided to believe that they would have escaped by now? Or maybe she thought the cause was worth their lives? How could she have sacrificed them like this? Maya could have wept at how easily they had been betrayed.
“No!” she cried. “It’s all gone wrong! He doesn’t know we’re in here! Help,” she shouted. “Help!”
But the wind and the slap of the waves and the shouts of the pirates muffled her cries. The frenzied pirates raced around the decks, turning the cannons to face the giant.
“Hurry, Simon!” Maya said. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” said Simon. “Your knot is different than all the others. I’m going to do Helix’s first so he can help me.”
Maya’s knees were shaking. Simon untied Helix’s knots quickly and then both boys turned around and tried to free Maya.
Cannon fire began exploding from all the ships and it sounded as if they were in the height of a terrible thunderstorm. But the cannonballs, if they struck the giant, bounced off, barely making him flinch.
Simon and Helix were fighting with the knots that bound Maya’s wrists but if anything, they seemed tighter.
“Desmond,” she cried desperately. “Desmond! Stop!”
But the giant approached relentlessly. The pirates began fleeing in terror down into the cabin.
The swells rose and the ships lifted on dark green crests and plunged into the cold troughs. Electric eels flashed through the sea, shooting jolts of electricity through the water. Many of the pirates had dropped to their knees to pray. Two more giants had appeared on either side of the enemy fleet. It looked as if another was approaching in the distance. As she watched, the enemy fleet began to spin in a circle on the surface of the water, as if the ships were part of a great merry-go-round. Maya stared, transfixed, as she felt Simon tugging at the knots around her wrists.
“I can’t get it!” he cried.
Maya’s mother, who had hardly said a word the whole time, suddenly held Penny to one side, lunged forward, and tripped a pirate who had been fleeing toward the cabin. He sprawled facedown on the deck and in one swift motion, she unsheathed his cutlass from his belt, wheeled around, and sliced the ropes that bound Maya. The ropes slid from her wrists and dropped to the deck with a soft thud.
In the distance, the spinning ships of the enemy fleet were suddenly sucked, one by one, beneath the surface. Maya could hardly believe her eyes. But then she felt their own ship beginning to turn as Desmond dipped his arm in the water and spun it in circles, creating a whirl pool. Slowly the southern ships, helpless without their sails, were pulled along as the water turned.
“Hurry,” cried their mother. “He’s making a maelstrom!” She grabbed the children and pushed them toward a large wooden barrel that held freshwater on the deck. She cut the ropes binding the barrel to the railing. Helix helped her to push it over and the water gushed over the deck and into the sea. The deck was already tilting steeply.
“Get inside,” their mother said. “All of you.” “There isn’t room for me,” said Helix but the children’s mother took hold of his arm and forced him to climb into the barrel. “Squash together and we’ll all fit,” she said. The ship was now spinning faster and faster on the water. Captain Ademovar leaped toward them, enraged—but they crammed into the barrel just in time. It tipped on its side and rolled across the deck and Captain Ademovar was gone from sight. They were thrown from the Gretchen Ella into a funnel that was spinning around and around like an underwater tornado. The center of the funnel was air, surrounded by a dark wall of water. The barrel was stuck half in and half out of this wall. The force of the water and the buoyancy of the air inside the barrel meant that it lay on its side and no water came in through the open top. They were whirled around and around. Maya, Simon, Helix, and the children’s mother, clutching Penny, held on to each other, too astonished to scream.
The vortex was so strong that after a few minutes there wasn’t even any water touching the seafloor at the base anymore, just a pinkish crop of reefs with flattened sea fans and fish lying on their sides gasping for oxygen. The whirl pool was moving very fast but it seemed to Maya almost as if it was in slow motion. In the wall of water opposite them she watched as the flotsam and jetsam of wrecked ships and pirates flew around in a circle. One by one, the ships crashed out of the sides of the vortex and landed on the seafloor. Maya watched in astonishment as pirates climbed out of the ships and walked around, looking up in horror at the dizzyingly steep funnel of water turning all around them. Maya screamed as she felt the current slacken and she realized that the whirl pool was about to collapse. She saw the walls of water crashing down toward the pirates, who ran around in helpless terror. The sound of the ships splintering to bits filled their ears. The water struck.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The Black Cross * Going to Find Papi *
The Ravaged Straits
The barrel was jerked from side to side in the powerful surge of water, and Maya could no longer see out of it or determine which way was up. Seawater flooded in. Maya closed her eyes and prepared for the end.
But the barrel had not been far from the surface when the walls of water collapsed and was full of enough air that it remained buoyant. It fought its way up until it burst through the surface. For a few minutes it teetered precariously in the waves and the children, their mother, and Helix held on to each other and braced themsel
ves against the barrel’s sides.
The turbulence slowly subsided. Maya stood up and peered cautiously out. The sea around them was calm, and there was no sign of either pirate fleet or of any of the giants. The maelstrom and the currents had obviously carried the barrel far away. All that surrounded them were cheery little green wavelets sparkling in the sunlight. It looked like they were about a half mile from shore. Greater Tamarind rose green and shining out of the sea, and in the distance Maya saw the tail end of the March turning a bend on the coast, after which it slipped from view. They were alone again. Simon was trying to look over the edge of the barrel, too, but Maya was taking up most of the room and all he could see was sky.
“Are we all all right?” asked the children’s mother, her voice muffled inside the barrel.
“No,” grumbled Simon. “I’m squashed. Mostly because of Maya.”
“No,” disagreed Maya. “We’re squashed mostly because of your big feet and bony knees.”
Simon tried to stand on tiptoe so he could see out.
“Just be patient,” said Maya. “The current is taking us right in to shore. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Maya, shove over,” said Simon. “I want to see out, too.”
“Oh, all right,” said Maya, jamming herself back down in the barrel.
Simon wormed his way to the top.
Several inches of seawater sloshed back and forth as the barrel bounced on the waves.
“We’re getting closer to shore,” Simon called. “The tide is taking us in. We’re just coming around some rocks right now.”
Then Simon yelled suddenly.
“What is it?” asked Maya.
“The Black Cross!” Simon shouted. “It’s here! Look!”
The barrel heaved precariously as, scrambling and twisting around uncomfortably, Maya and Helix managed to stand up and pop their heads out of the barrel. The three children fell into silence as they stared at the great cross towering forbiddingly over a rocky point on the shore. It could only be the Black Cross that the old sailor at Senor Tecumbo’s had told Maya about and that Rodrigo had drawn on the map. It was easily thirty feet tall and though the sun beat down on it, it had not faded. There were no towns or people or fields in sight, no signs of civilization at all.