Deepest, Darkest

by William Ritter

  “The spriggan said, It’s a promise.” He was a few paces ahead of them, holding the stone up to catch the setting sunlight along the lines of the etching as he walked. “A promise of what?”

  Evie shrugged. “I don’t know. One of the spriggans said there was an Ancient One and that it was rising. I’m not sure what that means, but they seemed pretty spooked about it.” She gave Tinn’s hand one more squeeze and then let it go as they took the left fork in the path. Her uncle’s farm was just around the bend.

  “Whatever it is, it doesn’t explain anything about our dad,” Cole sighed. He finally tucked the stone back into his pocket. “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with him after all. I just . . .” He kicked a dirt clod on the side of the path. “I’m so stupid. For all that trouble, we’re not any closer than we’ve ever been. I just risked all of our lives over a rock—and for all I know, Dad just hitched a ride years ago and skipped town. Maybe he’s in Glanville or New Fiddleham right now, selling sausages out of a cart.”

  Tinn stopped walking. Cole and Evie turned to look at him. Tinn took a deep breath. “I don’t think he went to New Fiddleham to sell sausages . . .”

  Cole and Evie listened in silence as Tinn explained about the goblins’ Island of Bones, the mysterious artifacts that manifested in its soil, and the old red lunch box with their father’s initials carved into the top.

  When he was done, Cole was quiet for a long time, his expression clouded.

  “Secret island?” said Evie. “Well. I know where we’re headed next.”

  “You did hear the part where I told you that it’s cursed, right?” said Tinn.

  “How convenient,” Evie said, “that I happen to know somebody who knows more about curses and mysteries than anyone else in the whole wide world.” She turned her eyes to her uncle’s farmhouse. “Wanna come in and say hi?”

  The clock on Old Jim’s mantel ticked loudly as he looked the boys up and down. The man’s thick, bushy eyebrows cast heavy shadows over his eyes. A fire crackled away in the hearth, keeping the house almost uncomfortably warm, and the whole place smelled strongly of sage and burnt coffee grounds. Little bundles of dried herbs tied up with twine were strung by the door, and a silver cross hung by a single nail. The walls were decked with charms and talismans, and a set of shiny crystals sat on the windowsill, catching the evening light. One might have mistaken this collection for ornaments, if not for the sturdy metal blades, traps, and cages that shared the shelves with them.

  “See. That right there”—he gestured vaguely at the myriad cuts, scrapes, and greenish bruises covering the twins’ faces and arms—“is why I’m not keen on you running around all day in that infernal forest, Evelyn.”

  “We fell down,” said Cole.

  “There was a hole,” said Tinn.

  “Mm-hmm.” Old Jim regarded them both through narrowed eyes. “I’m sure there was. The two of you seem to find no end of holes you need help digging yourselves out of.”

  “Evie’s fine,” said Tinn.

  “I can see that she is. If she wasn’t, you boys would be wishing you had stayed in your hole.” Old Jim cast them one more meaningful look, and then he cracked his neck and stood up. “Well. I suppose I’ll go fetch the iodine and see if I don’t have a roll of bandages around here somewhere to patch you fools up.”

  “Uncle Jim,” Evie said as he rummaged in a cabinet at the back of his kitchen, “we were wondering—do you know anything about . . . islands?”

  “I know you want nothing to do with the waters off the coast around these parts. The forest is dangerous enough, but at least the monsters in there stand on solid ground and breathe air like you and me. The sea is a whole different mess.” He banged a brown medicine bottle on the counter and opened another cupboard.

  “What’s off the coast?” asked Tinn.

  Old Jim grunted. “There’s serpents so big they can crush a ship in half. And wild water horses who drag men to the bottom of the ocean just for fun. Finfolk are even more devious. They act all nice and feed you a special plant that helps you breathe underwater—but the longer you stay down there, the more you forget. Eventually you can’t even think for yourself anymore, and then they own you. Nasty monsters, all of them. Here we are.” He produced a roll of cotton bandages from the back of a shelf. “What on earth you fool kids want to know about islands for, anyway?”

  “For . . . my book?” said Evie with a weak smile.

  “My foot,” said Old Jim. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”

  “For my dad,” said Cole.

  Old Jim’s eyes narrowed again. “If you’re gonna tell tales, kid, that’s one thing—but don’t you dare go using your old man as part of your mischief. He was a good man.”

  “He’s alive,” said Cole. “And there’s an island somewhere off the coast where he might be. The goblins stumbled onto proof. You can believe me or not, but it’s true. It’s covered with bones, and it’s probably cursed, and I don’t even know if we’ll be able to find it—but it’s all we have.”

  “Then all you have is nothing.”

  Cole clenched his fists. “You knew him.” He raised his chin and looked Old Jim in the eyes. “You said yourself he was a good man. We never got the chance to learn that for ourselves. He’s our dad and he was taken from us.”

  Old Jim let his gaze fall to the floor. “Lotta folks in town think otherwise,” he said.

  “You don’t,” said Cole.

  Old Jim pursed his lips.

  “He didn’t run away,” said Cole.

  “I know he didn’t, kid.” Old Jim took a deep breath. The room fell quiet, save for the ticking and the crackle of the fire. Old Jim rubbed the back of his neck as he regarded the children each in turn. “I might know a guy with a rowboat,” he said at last.

  Evie straightened. “Really?”

  “But there’s no way in tarnation I’m sending you kids off on your own to get drowned or eaten or Lord knows what.”

  Cole glanced at Tinn. Tinn swallowed. “Are you going to tell our mom about this?”

  “Do I look mad?” Old Jim shook his head. “I like my chances with the finfolk and the kelpies better’n with your mother if she knew I was offering to take her boys out to some cursed island. You want to go off half-cocked, hunting for trouble—you’re stuck hunting it with me this time. That means for once in your fool lives you boys are gonna listen to me and mind what I say. Understood?”

  Two identical heads nodded in unison. Evie could barely contain her grin.

  “One week. Meet me right back here at dawn next Saturday, if I haven’t come to my senses.”

  Ten

  The sun had not yet climbed over the eastern hillside when the twins rounded the bend and reached the Warner orchard the following week. Old Jim was already outside hitching a pair of bay workhorses to a wide cart on which a faded tarpaulin stretched over the shape of a trim little boat.

  “I’ll sit next to Tinn,” said Evie. Tinn felt his face go all warm. He could transform to look like anyone in town, but he still couldn’t stop his cheeks from going all red whenever Evie was around.

  “Yer gonna ride up front with me,” Old Jim said. “And the boys are gonna slip under the tarp in back and keep hidden until we’re clear of town. Unless you want to wave to your mother as we pass the general store?”

  “Wait—we’re taking the main road out?” said Tinn. “But that’s the opposite direction from the coast.”

  “What, did you think we were going to just plow straight through the whole dang forest and then jump off a fifty-foot cliff?”

  Straight through the forest was precisely how Tinn had gotten to the coast nearly every week for the past year. The goblins had ships secretly moored at the bottom of the steep cliffs, with hidden stairways that led down to them—but it had not occurred to Tinn that there might be a less clandestine route to reach the ocean.

  Soon the boys were listening to Endsborough rattle by from und
er the boat. They could hear a murmur of voices and smell bacon frying as they rolled past the Lucky Pig. For just a moment, Tinn considered changing his mind, calling the whole thing off, running to tell his mother everything—but the moment passed and Endsborough faded into the distance. A few minutes later, Old Jim let them know they could come out if they wanted to.

  They both climbed up into the front, and the rest of the trip went by in a blur. Evie sketched in her journal along the way, and Old Jim examined the map that Tinn had copied down, making note of where they would be setting off and how far it was to the mysterious island.

  Old Jim unfolded a map of his own, an official one with color ink and a fancy seal. Tinn couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious about his hand-drawn sketch, but Old Jim seemed satisfied that the two lined up fairly well, point for point.

  “If your drawing is right,” he said, “then this mystery island of yours shouldn’t be too far off the cape. Can’t imagine why a hundred sailors coming in and out of the bay every month wouldn’t have spotted it. We should be able to make it there and back without too much trouble.”

  “And if we don’t find anything?” said Tinn.

  “Then we don’t find anything,” said Old Jim.

  The packed dirt became bumpy bricks as they rolled into the port at Abbot’s Bay, which looked a bit like some giant had taken a big C-shaped bite out of the coastline. Along the top of that C was the cape—a long stretch of land that reached far out into the waves like a knobby finger pointing the way to their destination. Old Jim paid to have his horses fed and tended to while they were out, and soon the four of them were sitting in the squat rowboat, pushing off from the dock and into the gray salt water.

  Cole watched the water rippling beneath them as Old Jim rowed. The waves lapping against the sides of the vessel felt like low, rolling hills. At first it seemed as though they were making no progress at all, but before he knew it, the dock had shrunk to a speck in the distance and the cape was growing larger and larger.

  “We’re getting closer,” said Evie. “Anybody see anything yet?”

  They turned their eyes toward the choppy waters beyond the end of the cape. Where the strip of land ended, a series of jagged rocks began. The water splashed and sprayed against them like gnashing teeth.

  “Nothing you could call an island,” said Tinn. “Just rocks.”

  “Don’t get too close,” Old Jim cautioned. “Give ’em a wide berth. One big swell would be enough to smash us against those suckers and tear the bottom clean off this skiff.”

  They peered across the water, trying to make out any land beyond the rocks. The sunlight bounced off the waves in blinding flickers and flashes, illuminating nothing but the occasional sharp rock piercing the surface.

  “There’s nothing out here,” said Old Jim. The water clapped against the side of the boat in a slow, steady tattoo. “Sorry, kids. Like I said, a hundred sailors coast past this spot every month. If there was an island, it would be common knowledge. Oof! Mind the rocks, Cole. Getting a little close, there, kid.”

  “Sorry,” Cole pushed and pulled against the oars to redirect the boat. “I’ll take us farther out.”

  “Wait,” said Tinn. “Do you hear that?”

  Silence hung over the boat for several seconds as they all strained their ears. They heard the lapping of the waves against wood, the distant call of gulls . . . and an unfamiliar, muffled clink of metal on metal.

  “What is that?” said Evie.

  “It’s coming from that way,” said Tinn, squinting against the glare coming off the ocean.

  “Nothing that way but nasty rocks waiting to split open a hull,” said Old Jim. “Maybe an old chain got washed up on one of them? Stay clear. Not even an experienced sailor would go through there on purpose.”

  Tinn’s eyes widened. “Which is why none of them ever do.”

  Old Jim raised a bushy eyebrow. “That’s what I just said.”

  “Could you get us in, just past the first few rocks at least?” said Tinn. Jim raised an eyebrow. “The goblins discovered the Island of Bones, and nobody else had a claim to it. They would’ve put their charms on it.”

  “Charms on what? There’s nothing there, kid.”

  “If goblins want you to stay away, they take something you already want to stay away from and just sort of nudge the feeling farther. I can feel it, nudging us away. That means there’s something there to nudge us away from. Please.”

  Old Jim’s scowl deepened. “This right here is why I hate all this dang magical hoopity-doopity. I don’t like having my head messed with.” He gripped the oars tightly. “Hold on—this might get bumpy.”

  Carefully, he rowed the skiff between the jagged rocks.

  “My head feels funny,” said Cole as they slipped farther into the hazardous waters.

  “Mine, too,” said Evie. “Kinda tingly.”

  Directly ahead, the air was growing thick, as if clouds were forming in midair. The sea before them began to blur. “We’re almost through it,” Tinn said.

  And then the veil fell away. The island did not appear, exactly. It had always been there, but their eyes finally stopped refusing to see it. Tinn had grown accustomed to this magic—he had even been allowed to watch Chief Nudd casting a similar spell when the horde repaired the northern watchtower on the cliffside.

  “Whoa,” said Evie.

  “Well I’ll be—” said Old Jim.

  The island was about an acre wide, as broad across as the sloping cow pasture that the boys sometimes cut through on their way into town. Unlike the pasture, there were no tufts of hay or wildflowers blossoming at the edges. While it was not made of bones, as its name implied, the Island of Bones was undeniably a dead place.

  Instead of trees or grass, there were great heaping mounds of debris, rising and falling in hills and valleys, and the air was thick with dust. Crushed gravel and fine brown dirt covered the surface, and sticking out of it were cracked helmets and scraps of cloth—here a dented canteen, there a rusted old wheel attached to the frame of a broken cart.

  Old Jim brought the boat aground and, reverently, the four of them stepped onto the desolate shore.

  “Was there a shipwreck, do you think?” whispered Evie.

  Tinn shook his head. “Doesn’t look like a shipwreck.”

  Cole hiked ahead toward the highest mound, right in the center of the island. He stepped past a torn glove sticking out of the dust, a belt buckle with a brass boar’s head, and a silk vest so big he could’ve used it as a blanket. Out of curiosity, he nudged the fabric with one foot. Ivory-white ribs beneath told him that whoever had worn that vest had not taken it off. He tore his eyes away.

  At the top of the mound he found the head of a pickax and a tool that might once have been a narrow spade, only the metal had been bent backward. A corner of what appeared to be a steel box stuck out of the gravel. Cole nudged it, but it was buried deep in the rocky soil. It didn’t budge.

  The wind picked up and swept across the surface of the eerie island, and the metallic clinking resumed. By Old Jim’s knees, the top of a bent iron ladder protruded diagonally from the ground, and from it hung the chain of a long-dead pocket watch. He reached down and picked it up. Its face was smashed glass, and one of the hands was missing entirely.

  Old Jim grunted. “Tigani pocket watch. They used to sell ’em cheap at Cobb’s Outpost.”

  “I don’t think they ever sold these at Cobb’s Outpost,” said Evie. She held up a pair of goggles by an intricately woven leather strap. Even if they had been working, they would have been much too small for a human head. A series of hinges controlled half a dozen lenses that swung into place in the front, but these were now bent beyond repair. Most of the lenses were cracked or missing, but, even covered in dust, the metal shone like it was glowing.

  “Those are gnomish,” said Tinn. “I’ve seen a pair like them at Hollowcliff. They have a set for analyzing gems and stuff.”<
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  “None of this stuff belongs,” said Evie. “Where do you think it came from?”

  Before anyone could hazard a guess, the island began to tremble beneath them. A cascade of rocks tumbled down from the mounds, and with them a few smaller relics rolled and bounced to the surface.

  “Watch out!” yelled Old Jim. He grabbed hold of the half-buried ladder to steady himself. Tinn stumbled, landing hard on one knee. Evie fell next, and soon Cole was sliding down the middle mound on his back.

  In another moment, the tremor died down and the island fell silent once more. The dust was gradually settling.

  “That was a big one,” said Evie.

  Cole pushed himself up, then stood for a moment, gazing at something small in the palm of his hand. With a start, he glanced back up at the top of the mound. The corner of the thick metal box he had kicked was now almost fully unearthed. It was no box—it was a sturdy black mine cart with a broken axle. “I know where it’s all coming from,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” said Tinn.

  “Below,” he said. “It’s coming from below.”

  “From where?” said Tinn. “The bottom of the sea?”

  Cole held out his hand and allowed Tinn to pluck from it a tiny, glowing, blue stone. “Where have you seen gems like that before?”

  “The spriggan tunnel. It was lined with them.”

  “And a lot of these tools look like they belonged to miners. Human and otherwise. What if the spriggan tunnels and the human tunnels are actually connected?”

  “No way,” Evie breathed.

  “The goblins have whole networks of tunnels, too,” said Tinn. “They don’t even use some of them. Kull says they’re just bricked off because they dug too deep.”

  The ground shook a second time, sending a fresh cascade of detritus rolling down the mounds. It tapered off with a shudder, and the four of them coughed in the resulting cloud of dust.

  “Time to get out of here,” said Old Jim. “You kids got your peek. I don’t know if it’s a curse or just a quake, but I’m not waiting around for this island to fall apart on top of us. Go on, back in the boat.”