Lackbeard

by Cody B. Stewart

  “You really think this will work?” Major North asked Carter.

  Carter shrugged. “When in doubt, blow something up.”

  The major smiled for the first time that Carter could remember. “I like the way you think.” He snapped his hand to his forehead in salute.

  Shocked, Carter clumsily returned the gesture.

  “You saved my cadets’ lives,” the major said as he presented Carter with the grenade launcher. “I think you should do the honors.”

  Every moment in his life, from the second he was born, had been building to this—the moment he fired his first grenade launcher.

  Brad didn’t seem to think it was as awesome an idea as Carter did. “I have serious concerns about my little brother firing a grenade launcher.”

  “And I had serious concerns about my big brother jumping off a cliff,” Carter said.

  “Fair enough,” Brad said.

  Carter continued before Brad could. “Besides, it’s not technically a grenade launcher if it isn’t launching grenades. It’s just a marble launcher. The coolest, most amazing marble launcher in the universe.”

  He took aim—high for maximum carnage. “Fire in the hole!”

  The marble-filled bean bag burst like an oversized shotgun shell, scattering little glass beads of mayhem throughout the tiled area of the cave. They dug into the rock wall, ricocheted, spread marble-y destruction, and triggered a swath of diabolical pirate traps.

  Boarding axes swung out of the walls. Cutlasses windmilled through the air. Muskets, flintlocks, and swivel guns blasted from hidden cracks and crevices.

  Carter had unleashed hell. And he loved it.

  A thick fog of black smoke and rock dust filled the cave. It clogged the crew’s lungs, and they hacked and coughed it back up. Once it cleared, they stood in stunned silence, gazing upon the war zone in front of them.

  “Awesome,” Carter said, but he couldn’t hear himself—his ears were still ringing.

  “My poor marbles,” Louis sobbed.

  “Way to take one for the crew,” Marcus said, clapping Louis on the shoulder.

  “Follow me,” Carter ordered his crew. “Step exactly where I step. I can’t be sure that all the traps have been triggered. Wouldn’t want anyone getting diced in half or blown into little tiny bits.”

  “Way to inspire confidence, Captain,” Darla said.

  “I do what I can,” Carter said with a smile.

  “Onward!” Walter shouted. “I smell treasure.”

  “I think that’s just mold and mildew,” Louis corrected. “But I like the vibe.”

  Carter blazed the trail, hopscotching and funky-stepping across the tiles, stopping occasionally to consult his blood map. He reached the other side intact, and, even though his legs were screaming for a rest, and the rest of the crew had yet to cross, he couldn’t wait. He knew what was around that corner just ahead. He could hear it calling to him.

  He ran ahead, turned the corner, and skidded to a halt.

  M. G.

  Carter wanted to cry, but he knew that was unbecoming of a pirate captain, even one that was just eleven years old.

  He basked in the glow of it. Like lying on the beach. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a second to be alone with it.

  A sea of treasure.

  25

  Madre de dios.” Yvette crossed her herself as she uttered the blessing.

  The rest of the crew shared the sentiment.

  “Valley Forge Military Academy! Hoo-rah!”

  In their own way.

  The cadets ran into the room and dove into a pile of gold and jewels. They threw gems at each other like they were having a snowball fight.

  Louis scooped up a handful of pearls and gazed at them, astonishment adding a glow to his cheeks. “I suppose these will serve as sufficient replacements for my marbles.”

  Marcus and Yvette walked from pile to pile, admiring the jewelry, the gold, getting lost in the shimmer and shine of it all. Their eyes sparkled as if diamonds had replaced their retinas.

  JJ and Nestor threw handfuls of doubloons into the air and let them shower down on them.

  Major North caressed the ivory handle of a flintlock pistol, a truly pristine piece of weaponry.

  Walter cast his line and brought back a silver crown, which he promptly set on his head. “King of the sea,” he said to himself.

  A sparkle caught Brad’s eye. He stooped down to pick it up—a diamond ring. Talk about a sign from above. “This might fit your finger,” he said to Darla, still down on one knee. “Someday.” He flashed her a mischievous smile, but Carter saw the honesty in it. Now Brad could have his wish. A house. A family.

  A normal life.

  Carter turned away from them, his crew, his friends, his…whatever the old folks were. They all had their dreams, their plans, but he still didn’t know what his were. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted.

  He wanted adventure, and he got it. It was done. He had his treasure. But what was he going to do with it? Have a normal life? He didn’t even know what that meant. All he knew was the orphanage, his friends, his brother.

  And all that was ending.

  He walked along the edge of the cavern, so many sparkly things that his eyes just skipped along, not focusing on one or the other. Until they spotted a gap in the sparkle—a waist-high hole in the cavern wall.

  He squatted down, and crawled through.

  The light from the cavern only reached a few feet into this tunnel. Carter turned on his headlamp only to have the light flicker and dim. The battery was dying. He crawled faster, hoping to reach the end before it died completely.

  The raucous celebration faded behind him as a new sound grew ahead of him—something like a roar, a rumble. The ceiling of the tunnel vanished, and Carter knew he’d reached the end. He stood and, with the last flicker of light from his lamp, he saw another lantern mounted on the wall. He opened his box of matches and felt around inside.

  One match left. Fitting. The end of the journey. The final match. He struck it, and lit the lantern. Like the others, this lantern set off a chain reaction, a cannon fuse sparking and lighting several more mounted along the wall. Except here, the fuse ran horizontal and vertical. The one Carter lit was only one in the first row. There were at least a dozen rows climbing several stories high.

  Carter followed the trail of sparks as it climbed all the way to the top. It looked like the night sky, full of stars.

  As his eyes fell, they didn’t land on the sea of treasure that made the chest in the other room look like a small piggy bank, or any one of the dozen chests that looked to be vomiting riches. No, his eyes landed on something else.

  The throne.

  A high-backed, gilded chair, arms upholstered in velvet, intricate designs that reminded Carter of waves carved into its legs. Truly fit for a king. Perhaps that is who the man sitting on it was—a king. Back when he had muscles and skin and a face and brains, before he had rotted to a wealthy skeleton.

  Carter stepped softly, walked quietly toward the skeleton. He imagined its eyes following him, and felt the sudden urge to say something. “Hi, I’m Carter. I mean, Captain Lackbeard.”

  No response. Obviously.

  Carter reminded himself that the skeleton was dead. There was absolutely no way that Carter was about to awaken an undead pirate king, who would then lead his undead pirate crew on a campaign to conquer the seas and spread un-death to the four corners of the world.

  No way.

  “I found your map,” Carter said. “Stole it, actually,” he added with some pride. “Because I’m a pirate. That’s what we do. You understand.” Carter laughed uncomfortably to himself.

  He was just out of arm’s reach of the skeleton now, but oddly, being that close helped to ease Carter’s fears. He saw then that it was no demon, just bones in nice clothing.

  Sadness washed over Carter. Unexpected, he didn’t know why or what to do with it, which just made him angry. Then, tired and confused, he
sat on the floor at the dead pirate king’s feet.

  He looked up at the skeleton and realized why he was so sad.

  This pirate king, a lord of the sea, sitting on his golden throne in a sea of treasure. This is what Carter wanted to be. The dream he had.

  But now, looking at the fancy skeleton, Carter saw that the pirate king was just alone. He had his adventure, his riches, but where was his crew? What was a pirate without his crew?

  “He’s nothing,” Carter said, staring into the pirate king’s empty eye sockets. “Nothing.”

  “Carter?” Brad’s voice echoed in the small tunnel connecting the two caverns.

  Carter stood at the mouth of the tunnel and shouted back. Moments later, Brad and the rest of the crew emerged, and Carter delighted at the looks of shock and amazement on their faces.

  “We did it,” Carter said wrapping his arms around one and then another. “The greatest adventure. We are pirates.” He looked at Brad. “Now let’s go home.” Carter watched the shock on his brother’s face turn to confusion, and then a content smile.

  Brad slapped his hand down on Carter’s shoulder. “Aye aye, Captain.”

  “Question,” Louis said, raising his hand. “How are we supposed to get all this treasure to the boat?”

  Carter gestured to the pirate king, and smiled. “Pirates never do anything without a plan.” He motioned for the crew to follow as he walked around behind the throne. A large portrait of a fancy-looking gentleman, like an English nobleman or something, rested against the cavern wall. He slid it to the side to reveal an opening.

  He and Brad stuck their heads in. A platform, about five feet by five feet, hung from the rock ceiling by a rope that was attached to a pulley system. The platform could lower all the way to the water, forty feet below, where their boat would be waiting.

  “That must be how he got all this so far inland by himself,” Carter said.

  “How do you know he was by himself?” Brad asked.

  Carter spread his arms wide, gesturing to the sea of treasure, and then to the pirate king. “All this, and just him. He obviously didn’t share any with his crew. He just sat there and looked at it. Didn’t use it for more adventures or a comfortable life in some big house. He just sat on his throne, all by himself, in a dark cave.”

  Brad clapped his brother on the back. “He didn’t have a pirate’s soul. He had a greedy soul.”

  Carter nodded. “Let’s get this stuff loaded up. I want off this island and back on the sea.”

  The crew shouted in unison. “Aye aye!”

  They split into teams, each with different tasks. Walter, Darla, and Yvette hiked back to get the ship. Nestor, JJ, Marcus, Brad, and Major North lugged the treasure from the smaller cavern into the larger, and then moved all the treasure to the lift. Carter, Louis, Ms. Roberts, and the cadets loaded the lift, and lowered it down once the boat arrived.

  The cavern was empty of gold and silver and jewels surprisingly fast. Two by two, the crew took the lift down to the treasure-laden deck of the ship, until only Brad and Carter remained.

  Carter took one last minute to study the pirate king, alone on his throne.

  “Ready?” Brad asked.

  “What’s going to happen once we get back?”

  “Don’t know. Divide up the treasure. Probably bribe the boat owners so they don’t press charges.”

  “No,” Carter said. “I mean, with us. Are you and Darla going to get married? Buy a big house with a yard and a swing set and have kids and barbecues and the newspaper delivered to your front step?”

  “No one reads the newspaper anymore,” Brad said.

  Carter punched him in the arm, but there was no oomph behind it. “You know what I mean.”

  Brad threw up his arms. “I don’t know, Carter. What do you want me to say? That none of those things will ever happen? I can’t, because, you never know. They might. But not anytime soon. I mean, I’ll go to college first—”

  “Yeah, and what’s the difference? You’re still going somewhere I can’t follow. And where does that leave me?” He pointed at the pirate captain. “It leaves me just like this guy.”

  Brad walked away from Carter, his shoulders heaving, like he was trying to keep calm. But when he came back, his eyes looked a little red and misty. “You probably don’t remember this—I think you were too young—but Mom took us to a pirate museum when we were little. She went into the hospital the next week. And she never came out. That was the last time the three of us did something together.”

  The memory flashed in Carter’s head.

  “Mom bought you that pirate teddy bear that you had forever,” Brad said. “But she bought me something, too.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a keychain—a pair of crossed swords.

  It looked like a cheap thing, plastic, your typical gift shop fare that could be broken with a mild tug. But Carter saw the importance of the thing in Brad’s eyes.

  “Mom knew she was sick,” Brad said. “She told me that when sailors turned pirate, they swore an oath, sometimes on a sword. So she bought me this, and made me swear an oath. That I would always look out for you. Always.”

  The world got wavy as the tears built in Carter’s eyes. Then his cheeks got hot, and he felt like a total jerk. All the times he wished Brad would leave him alone or lighten up or stop being such a drag. All the times he got angry at Brad for not taking this adventure seriously.

  Brad was the real pirate. The real captain.

  Brad tucked the keychain back into his pocket. “What happens to a pirate who breaks his oath?” Brad cleared his throat, and then spoke with harsh pirate’s voice. “He shall be met with a death most swift and painful.”

  Carter laughed and the tears spilled down his cheek.

  Brad clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Let’s go, Captain. Our adventure isn’t done yet.”

  26

  Phyllis Katzenbacher, heiress to the largest marshmallow fortune in the world, sipped tea and considered how lives change—both hers and that of the strange child sitting across from her.

  The tea room, once a benign taupe shade, something in the coffee range, was now a brilliant vermillion, speckled with eggplant polka-dots. It looked like the eggshell of an exotic bird, or perhaps a dinosaur.

  Phyllis then imagined that she was inside the dinosaur egg. She would be a raptor, most definitely. Something fierce and feared, but still graceful.

  She ordered it painted on the way home and, by the time she stepped foot inside her absurdly large and luxurious mansion, it was as she desired. When you are as disgustingly wealthy as the glamorous Phyllis Katzenbacher, all things are as you desire.

  Well, most things.

  This child, for example. It was not the one she’d chosen from the catalogue. She’d ordered a boy. Someone with a sturdy back. Jeeves wasn’t getting any younger, and she would one day need a replacement for him. But this child had tricked her. She did not enjoy being tricked.

  Phyllis looked over the rim of her china teacup, which was laced with gold, at Linn, as it called itself, staring off as if at nothing. She was an odd child. Not like any other she had encountered. Though, to be fair, she had encountered very few.

  Phyllis Katzenbacher never had children of her own. She never particularly wanted children, but she never particularly didn’t want children, either. She figured she would get around to it eventually, but she simply forgot. She spent her younger days globetrotting and rubbing elbows with the richest elbows in the world, some royal elbows, even. She had seen more adventure in her life than Indiana Jones and Lara Croft rolled into one. And, yes, she knew who Lara Croft was. Her tastes were wide-ranging.

  Who thinks of children while exploring shipwrecks in the Bermuda Triangle, or learning to paint with the masters in Paris? But her adventures had slowed as of late. Reluctantly, because her body had slowed, but not her mind. And so, her active mind wandered to children. Or, perhaps, he heart did. As often as she told herself that she only needed
a younger model of Jeeves, she knew that her extravagant house felt most empty these days. Jeeves was like a butler ghost, appearing when she required his services and then fading into the ether like a gust of wind when his services were rendered. Aside from him, it was just her.

  But not anymore.

  “What are you thinking of, child?” she asked Linn.

  Linn sipped her tea as she scanned the walls. “I was just imagining that I was a dinosaur.”

  Phyllis smiled.

  Just then, Jeeves materialized beside her. He whispered in her ear and handed her a manila envelope. Then he vanished back to wherever stealthy butlers go. Were there hidden passages in the walls? Phyllis would need to consult the original blueprints.

  Phyllis removed the contents of the envelope, a series of satellite images, and studied them carefully. She leaned back in her chair and tapped her chin with a long, crooked finger. She thought for a while about whether she should share this information with Linn. It would surely drive her to act. But would it drive her back to her old life? Away from sipping tea in a dinosaur egg?

  A surge of adrenaline suddenly rushed through Phyllis’s veins with the onset of an idea. An adventure. It had been so long. Maybe the time of adventuring had not passed. Maybe she just needed someone to share them with.

  “It seems your friends are in somewhat of a pickle,” Phyllis said, testing the waters. “I imagine it is in some way related to how you came to be sitting in my tea room rather than the young man I meant to retrieve.”

  Linn leaned forward, worry crinkling her nose. “What happened?”

  Phyllis handed her the photos. Aerial photographs of a marina. Several kids steering a sailboat.

  Linn looked up from the photos. “How did you get these?”

  Phyllis smiled. “Inquisitive. I adore that. Some people have satellite TV. We have satellites.”

  “We?” Linn asked.

  Phyllis gestured toward the room with a grand sweeping motion. “You are a Katzenbacher now, dear. What’s mine is yours.”

  Linn set down her tea, stood from her chair, and paced the inside of the dinosaur egg. Phyllis could feel the concern radiating from the girl. She took a final sip of her tea before setting it down. She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands on her lap.