Pisces of Fate

by Pisces of Fate (retail) (epub)

  “It’s a miracle,” Shoal said. “Thank you, Lady of the Sea,” she said to the still waters.

  “There’s a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation for this.” Ascott said. Shoal turned and looked at him with one eyebrow arched. “I admit, it’s not immediately obvious what that explanation is, but one must exist.”

  “We should leave here now, before you say something really stupid,” Shoal said.

  Tacus flapped his wings, feeling the air catch under his restored feathers. He leaped into the air, circled the pool twice and flew out the hole in the roof, silhouetted for a moment against the bright moonlight before vanishing into the circle of dark sky.

  Chapter 18

  After climbing up the roots to the surface they agreed to go back to the beach. The flat stone pathway might go somewhere, but they knew the treasure—what She called the Pisces of Fate—was no longer on the island. The return journey through the clinging jungle took less time now that they knew which way to go.

  Shoal felt filled with light. She had been face to face with the Lady of the Sea, one of the old gods. Her faith in the beliefs of her ancestors was confirmed and the joy of that connection with Nana Smith and her line stretching back to the first canoes that came from Somewhere Else, that mystical place whose name had been lost to the eroding ravages of time and a focus on oral tradition for recording history rather than something more durable, like stone tablets.

  Ascott, on the other hand, kept muttering about optical illusions, swamp gasses and refraction variants of light through mediums with differing densities. In spite of his focus on objective reasoning, one clear thought held centre stage for a solo that deserved a standing ovation: If the pool can heal and restore anyone, then the sooner I get Charlotte here, the better.

  When they reached the beach, someone had lit a fire on the sand, using Shoal’s boat as kindling.

  “Oh come on!” Ascott yelled. “What is with this guy and burning other people’s boats!?”

  A pair of large figures stepped out of the jungle, spear guns aimed at Ascott and Shoal.

  “Come on over,” Kalim Aari called from the other side of the fire. “We have mushymellows and beer!”

  Prodded forward by the spear guns, Shoal and Ascott walked down the beach. Kalim sat in a deck chair, a crumpled straw hat tilted back on his head. His boat was barely visible, moored off the beach, and an inflatable zip craft bobbed in the soft shush of the light breakers.

  “Good evening Ascott and…I don’t believe I have had the pleasure?” Kalim stood up, extending a hand and a charming smile in Shoal’s direction. She wrinkled her nose as though his fingers with dripping with week-old fish intestines.

  “This is Shoal,” Ascott said. “Kalim, I sincerely hope you have put your affairs in order. That was Shoal’s boat you burned this time.”

  “What, that old wreck?” Kalim laughed. “I figured it was driftwood.”

  Shoal’s eyes flashed in a way that made the fire seem temperate. “It was my Nana’s boat,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Well, I am truly sorry. Mushymellow?” Kalim handed her a thin stick with one of the toasted savoury treats melting on the end.

  Shoal smiled sweetly, took the stick and tossed into the fire, where it flared blue and spat stevia sparks.

  “Well, that wasn’t called for. That wasn’t called for at all.” The charm left Kalim’s face in a sudden stampede the likes of which had not been seen since the tourists on the cruise liner Eptatretus departed the All-You-Can-Eat buffet during a particularly rough passage after Mrs Limpkiss, who suffered from sea-sickness, discovered a soiled sticking plaster in her ambrosia.

  Ascott stepped between them. If he lifted his chin he could almost look Kalim directly in the eye.

  “What do you want this time?” Ascott asked coldly.

  “I want you to tell me what this book means.” Kalim turned away and lifted the old journal from a beach-bag next to his chair. “I mean, seriously, I have read this thing from cover to cover. Either pages are missing or someone is making a fool out of me.”

  “That wouldn’t be too hard,” Shoal snapped.

  “Your words wound me, they really do,” Kalim replied. “Now, I’m not a patient man, so I suggest you tell me what the secret of the journal is, or I will instruct the Citronella twins to shoot one of you somewhere extremely agonising, but not immediately fatal, with a spear gun.” Kalim gestured to the two men standing on the edge of the fire light. They raised their spear guns and took aim, one at Shoal, the other at Ascott.

  Ascott’s throat went as dry as the sand above the high-tide mark. “I’ll need to take a look at the book,” he said.

  “Oh, absolutely, please take your time. Study it, commit passages to memory. In fact, why don’t you take it home for the weekend and read it thoroughly!?” Kalim’s voice rose to an angry shout and he waved the journal in Ascott’s face.

  “If you want answers, I need to know what the questions are,” Ascott said.

  Shoal turned and glared at the two guards over her shoulder. “You boys had best shoot me in the heart. If I’m still alive when I hit the sand, you are really going to regret it.”

  “You must have worked something out. You came here, didn’t you?” Ascott said to Kalim.

  “Well, that was easy, see I paid some guy at the docks a few pearls and asked him where you might have gone. Turns out that he heard from a drinking buddy, who heard it from his cousin’s wife, who was visiting her sister, who happened to be bringing her laundry in from the balcony line next to the Smith’s Dive Emporium and overheard you talking about coming out here. I must admit, it is a beautiful spot. I am sorry about the way I have completely crushed the romantic mood. Really I am.”

  “I need to see the book,” Ascott said again.

  Kalim regarded him for a moment, then shrugged and slapped the slim volume into Ascott’s open hand.

  Ascott turned his back and walked over to the fire. He stood in the firelight turning the pages, and then he lifted his head. Holding the book out in one hand he held it close, but not too close, to the flames.

  “Let her go or I burn the book,” he said, loud enough to be clear.

  “What? What are you doing?” Kalim stood open-mouthed, a fresh beer bottle glistening with condensation gripped in his hand.

  “I said, let Shoal go or I burn the book!”

  The Citronella twins turned like two elephants in an elevator, narrowly avoiding tangling the razor-sharp tips of their spear guns as they took fresh aim at Ascott. He feinted dropping the book into the flames. “Let her go! If this book burns, you will never know the secret!”

  “Really?” Kalim looked around the empty beach in apparent disbelief. “This is your plan? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just cooperate? You tell me what I need to know, I give you a cold beer, take you home on my boat. I might even arrange for a replacement for the one that I burned!”

  “Two. Two boats you’ve burned, and a house,” Shoal said in a voice that could cut glass.

  “Right…right…I forgot about that one. That was more of a dugout canoe, how hard can they be to make? You just cut down a tree and chisel out the insides.” Kalim shrugged.

  “Two boats, one house, and you kidnapped Tacus,” Shoal added.

  “The parrot? The parrot was not kidnapped! That was simply me reclaiming my own property!” Kalim waved his hands in the air, beer spilling into the sand. “He was supposed to have a map tattooed on his body. But no. As useless as a boggle on a wentwhistle.”

  “Your property? Since when? He’s been happily living with Ascott for over a year now. In the house that you burned down! I can’t believe you pulled out all his feathers because you thought he was a map!” Shoal looked ready to punch Kalim in the nose. His sudden smile stopped her.

  “Forget it, where is the old duck anyway?” Kalim dr
ank the contents of the bottle in his hand.

  “He’s…he’s at home,” Shoal said.

  Kalim watched her face for a several heartbeats, “Okay,” he said. “Okay! Boys, take the girl to the zip-boat, she can take it back to Montaban. See?” he said, turning back to Ascott, who was still holding the fluttering pages over the fire. “I’m letting her go.”

  Ascott didn’t move. His attention seemed captured by the pages of the old log book suspended over the fire. The Citronella twins urged Shoal towards the rubber boat. She got in and started the outboard engine, which hummed with enthusiasm to be off.

  The closest twin put his large foot against the boat’s rubber side and pushed it out into the water. Shoal sat watching the beach, hand on the throttle but not ready to leave until she saw how things played out.

  “There you go,” Kalim said, “she’s safe and sound and on her way home. Now—the secret of the book, if you please?”

  Ascott tensed, digging his toes into the sand and watching Shoal. She nodded and he dropped the book into the flames, where it burned in a flash of heat and light.

  “No! No! No! No!” Kalim had a tantrum right there on the beach. He slapped his head, tearing off his straw hat and kicking sand as he howled with rage.

  The moment the book left his hand Ascott ran for the boat. Shoal was already gunning the throttle and he dived for the nearest pontoon as the bow lifted under the surge of power. Shoal reached over and pulled Ascott onto the rubber deck, Kalim’s screams of fury echoing across the channel behind them.

  “I hope Tacus is okay,” Ascott said from the floor of the boat.

  “Tacus can fly, and if we don’t get out of here, we’ll wish we could too.” Shoal leaned forward, the outboard motor whining as the throttle was squeezed tight. The small boat bounced over the light swells and hit the water with a wet clapping sound.

  Ascott sat up. Looking over Shoal’s shoulder, he could see the fading glow of the beach fire. There was no immediate sign of pursuit. “I suppose they are in no hurry. They know where you live,” he said.

  “They’ll have to give up now. They don’t have the book, and we don’t know where the treasure is, either.”

  “I’m sorry about your Nana’s boat,” Ascott said.

  Shoal grinned and patted the rubber pontoon. “It’s okay. I have a new one.”

  Chapter 19

  In the middle of the night Montaban was quiet, except for the snores of the inhabitants and the nightly meeting of the Montaban Council of Cats. Felines had been a part of the port town since the first canoes arrived. They had staggered ashore from the boats and found the warm stone, tropical sunshine and abundance of fish-scraps to their liking. The locals were accommodating, for as far as they knew the cats kept the rodent population down and didn’t bother anyone. The cats soon established their own hierarchy of rule. At the top were the Alpha Male and the Alpha Female. Below them was a tangled family tree of offspring and other cats that fought for dominance and their place in the ladder of society. The humans, of course, were not considered worthy of inclusion in this government system, ranking with all other living creatures as beneath the contempt of even the lowest cat.

  For hundreds of years the Council of Cats watched over the town. Some nights they gathered to debate issues of philosophy and scholarship. Other nights they would simply argue over a point of law or complain about the way kittens didn’t show respect for their elders the way they did when they were that age.

  During the day the cats stretched out along the white stone balconies and rooftops of the houses to meditate in the warm sun. In the evenings they dined on fresh fish and the occasional unlucky rat while they watched the town work according to their master plan,* all the while congratulating themselves on being lords of their domain.

  “What was that?” Ascott started at the sound of a banshee choking on a fish bone somewhere around the Montaban docks.

  “Just cats,” Shoal said. “Help me with this tarp.” They pulled the canvas cover over the inflatable boat and left it parked among other, lesser vessels of wood and metal.

  “Cats—now there’s an animal that knows more than they let on,” Ascott said as they climbed up on to the dock.

  “Cats know two things: how to steal fish and how to make more cats.”

  “There’s your parallel to humanity right there…” Ascott trailed off.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Shoal was still in a fighting mood after their run-in with Kalim and the Citronella twins.

  “Just something someone told me recently. About fish and people and—well, cats too, I guess.”

  “I’m going home,” Shoal said.

  “I’m sorry,” Ascott said again. “About your boat and every­thing.”

  “So am I. But you know, sometimes you have to let old things go and embrace new ones.”

  “Do you think Nana Smith would understand? About her boat I mean?”

  “Nah, she’d hunt that beggar down and use him for shark bait.” Shoal grinned. “We had an adventure! We found a living spirit of the old religion and Tacus got his feathers back. Over all it was a fruity date.”

  “I need to go home—to the City, I mean. I can bring Charlotte back here and we can use the water in that pool to cure her.”

  Shoal nodded. “I thought you didn’t believe in She?”

  “Science has nothing to do with what I believe, and everything to do with what I observe,” Ascott replied.

  “But you believe what you see? Come on, Mum and Dad will want to hear the story from both of us.”

  The streets of Montaban were deserted and dark at this hour of the night. Even the pubs which lined the dock as a barrier between sea-business and wife-business were closed. Only the occasional person lay snoring in a stupor, curled in a doorway if they were lucky, face-down in the dirt if they were not.

  The cats watched them pass with expressionless faces; only the gleam of their yellow eyes suggested Ascott and Shoal’s movements were being observed and included in some grand calculation.†

  Ascott was going to comment on how the cats around here were distinctly unnerving when an insistent Pssst! broke the silence. Shoal nudged Ascott and pointed towards the Exco.

  Sam was lurking in the shadows of the barely open door. He gestured for them to come closer before vanishing inside.

  The air of the darkened office carried a lingering scent of aniseed. Ascott and Shoal shuffled closer together in the gloom, which reached an even deeper pitch when the door closed behind them. Bright light filled the foyer as if someone had flicked a switch. Sam rubbed his hands together. “Crazy, ain’t it?” he said, waving at the flickering chandelier over their heads.

  “Sam, did you find something?” Ascott said.

  “Sure did. None of it makes a shell bit of sense of course. But that’s your problem, I guess.”

  They followed the old man through the half-door to the office area behind the Exco service counter. Ascott gave him a hand and they pulled the hidden door open. The room looked much like it had when they first saw it, stacked high with boxes of fish-skin parchment and odd artefacts of ancient belief systems.

  Sam tottered inside. “I was wonderin’ who in the hubris would feel the need to be worshippin’ all the gods. Seems there’s only one fella crazy enough to do that.” He rifled through a pile of skins and lifted one up to the light shining in through the open doorway. “Here, take a look at this.” Sam handed the crackling sheet over to Ascott.

  “I can’t make much of it out, the ink has run…Near the bottom it says ‘Forgive me’, and it is signed ‘Dentine Tubule’. Dentine Tubule put all this together?” Ascott slowly looked around the room. “But…I found his body in the wreck of the Bilgepuppy.”

  Shoal scooped up more parchment and scanned them. “Signed ‘Dentine Tubule’. For a dead guy he sure found plenty of time to
write his memoirs.”

  “No,” Ascott said, “this doesn’t make any sense. You can’t have the skeleton of a dead ship’s surgeon holding a box at the bottom of the sea and at the same time have him gathering artefacts and storing them in a hidden room at the back of the Exco!”

  “You think that’s freaky? Wait here.” Sam shuffled out of the room.

  Shoal and Ascott blinked at each other. “What…?” Ascott said to the empty space where the old man had stood a moment before. They listened to the crashing sound of things falling down in the outer office and then the hurried slap of Sam’s bare feet bustling across the floor.

  Raising a large framed portrait in the doorway, Sam announced from behind it: “Dentine Tubule.”

  “Dentine Rictus Tubule, founder and first manager of the Montaban Export Company,” Ascott read from the faded plaque along the bottom of the frame.

  “So Dentine started the Exco, then went off and got himself drowned when Captain Aarrgh’s ship sank?” Shoal looked puzzled.

  “Nope,” Sam said, setting the portrait down with a grunt. “Mister Tubule opened and ran the Exco for years after Cap’n Aarrgh disappeared. Papa always said he was an odd fella. Nervous type. Wouldn’t go near the sea. Deathly afeared, he was.”

  “Weird,” Shoal said.

  “If he knew about the treasure, why did he stay here? Why not just get rich and go back to the mainland?” Ascott walked around the small storeroom until he reached the cabinet that took up most of the back wall. With the boxes of papers and the village of statues and figures that blocked access now moved out of the way, the cabinet could be opened. He twisted and pulled on the latch. Somewhere deep in the wall, stone ground against stone and then clicked like a giant’s knuckle cracking. The entire cabinet swung outward half an inch on hidden hinges.

  “I knew it!” Sam cackled. “Executive washroom! They said it didn’t exist. But ol’ Sam believed!”

  A strong smell of seawater wafted through the crack on a draft of cool, damp air.