Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (17 page)

Cluttered tables and shelves lined the walls from end to end within the shop. They were covered and stacked with clay pots and jars, labeled in Italian, Arabic, and nearly every other language of which Jim had ever heard. Glass vials and bottles, rolled scrolls, bound leather books, and various bones and skulls from strange animals (only some of which seemed entirely natural to Jim) filled the spaces between. Wicker baskets of all shapes and sizes stood in corners or in random stacks about the floor. Jim and the Ratts soon discovered that some of them rattled and moved all on their own.

The clan tiptoed to the hallway at the back of the shop and toward the door to the lit room. Bizarre paintings of mythical animals – unicorns, griffins, dragons and others of which not even Jim knew names or stories lined the corridor. The pictures seemed so real that the images all but stood out from the canvases. Paul nearly fell into a trance meeting eyes with a many-headed hydra. He leaned so close to the picture that he almost walked right into the wall before Jim caught him at the last moment.

Don’t touch
, Jim mouthed. Paul nodded in agreement, but he threw another mystified look at the painting before moving on. Finally, the
children reached the door. Muffled sounds rumbled from the other side. The light creeping around the open crack flashed and changed colors from red to blue to green. Some magic was at work just beyond the doorway, Jim knew. His heart beat hard and his upper lip began to sweat. But curiosity provided Jim some measure of courage. He crept to the doorway, and carefully as possible, stuck his head around the corner to look inside.

Brilliant flashes of light blinded Jim as he glimpsed the room beyond the door. He closed his eyes tight and tried to blink the dazzles away. For a moment, however, all he could do was listen.

“These are difficult questions you have brought to my shop, Dread Steele,” Jim heard a man with a thick accent say. “But I fear the answers may be more daunting and deadly still.” The man speaking must be Egidio Quattrochi, Jim imagined. But as Jim’s vision cleared, he quickly became far more interested in what he saw than what he heard.

A squat, round man stood in the center of the room, surrounded by several bowls, cauldrons, and baskets. He wore a shopkeeper’s apron and his white hair trailed off his head like wispy bird wings. Beneath a set of long, feathery eyebrows, a pair of the largest and roundest spectacles Jim had ever seen rested on the man’s pug nose, giving his eyes a most owlish appearance. Light and smoke in all manner of colors drifted from each of the containers at the shopkeeper’s feet. Into these vessels he reached with both hands, casting the enchanted contents onto the floor and into the air above his head. He threw a handful of sparkles at the roof, where they hung like stars in the sky. He tossed a fistful of dirt at his feet, which rose up like rocks from the earth. Out of the largest cauldron the shopkeeper fanned blue smoke over the floor, where it rippled and rolled like ocean waves.

“It’s a map,” Lacey whispered over Jim’s shoulder. The glowing lights from the room danced over her face, and George’s as well, as they stared into the room with Jim. So much magic, Jim thought to himself, and how much more to come? But off to one corner of the room, Dread Steele stood still as black stone, wrapped in his cloak. Cornelius
rested upon his shoulder and MacGuffy stood at his side. The pirates gazed upon the sorcerous goings-on with urgent intent.

“You were right to say that no island lies beneath the stars from Lindsay Morgan’s map, my old friend,” Egidio continued. “At least no island that can be seen. Look here!” Egidio knelt down in the enchanted mist about his feet and pointed to a pair of rocks in the water. They curved up from the ocean and nearly touched each other at the top, forming almost a complete circle. “The Devil’s Horns,” Egidio whispered. “Gateway to the Veiled Isle. I might have known!”

“The Veiled Isle?” Cornelius crowed, ruffling his feathers. “There are few enough islands these eyes have not seen, old man. But even this isle’s name has never fallen upon my ears. Has magic masked it from the world?”

“Yes, master raven, yes. The gateway opens but one time a day, at sunset. It remains this way only from the moment the sun’s disc touches the horizon’s edge, and closes the instant it disappears below the sea. In that time alone might a ship, sailing into the face of the setting sun, reach the Veiled Isle. It is a magic place, Master Darkfeather, peopled by creatures both dark and light. It is said there is a mountain at the heart of the island. Beneath that mountain is a cave, a cavern full of paintings. In this cave is a chamber - home to an ancient terror. Lindsay would not have buried his artifact in the sand on the Veiled Isle. He would have hid it there, in the cave. Of this I am certain.”

“We have faced such challenges before,” uttered Dread Steele. “We shall overcome them again.”

“Yet you must beware, Steele!” said Egidio. “The Veiled Isle is protected by more than the Devil’s Horns and magical creatures. It is enchanted by a powerful curse. Any mortal that crosses the gate has but one day and one night upon the isle’s shores. At sunrise on the following morn, if he has not returned through the Devil’s Horns, he will be trapped there forever – prisoner of the Veiled Isle for all time.”

“Is there a talisman you could give us to shield us from this curse?” the Captain asked. But Egidio shook his head in reply.

“There are few enough items in the world powerful enough to protect a man from magic this deep. Not even old Egidio possesses them. I do have more fog seeds, though. Came in handy, did they not?” Egidio chuckled and produced a leather pouch from his apron. He shook the bag and the contents rattled within.

“Fog seeds?” George whispered a little too loudly into Jim’s ear. “So that’s how he pulled that trick off on the beach! Brilliant that was…wonder if there’s some of them seeds lyin’ around in here?” But Jim just shushed his friend with a wave of his hand.

“Magic islands and curses be trouble enough, Egidio,” MacGuffy grumbled. “But know ye what might lie at the end of our search? We think mayhaps it be not the Treasure of the Ocean itself. But if not that, then what?”

“Old Egidio may not know for certain, MacGuffy, but I do believe I have a very good guess. For it was I who told Lindsay Morgan of its existence.” Egidio reached out his hands and murmured some spell into the air. All of the magical fog and dirt and sparkles answered his call. They swirled before him in a glowing cloud until they came together in the floating shape of a large shell. The light from the shell shone in Egidio’s glasses, turning them to nothing but circles of molten color. “The Hunter’s Shell – the most powerful seeker in all the world. One need but speak the words engraved upon the shell, and no matter how deeply buried or how far away, the shell will guide the one who holds it to whatever he seeks. I believe the map leads to the Hunter’s Shell. I believe Lindsay made the map to ensure Jim could find the Treasure of the Ocean if ever he needed.”

Egidio waved his hands once more and the luminous cloud before him whirled again. This time it formed a shape Jim had seen many times before: a trident with the circle of a pearl behind it. It was the symbol on the lid of his father’s box - the symbol of the Treasure of the Ocean.

“Does the boy know, Steele?” Egidio asked. The shopkeeper’s voice was low and grave. His glowing eyes were fixed upon the shape before
him. “Does Jim know why he must be the one to find the Treasure? Does he even know what the Treasure is? What it does? Perhaps if he knew what it did to Bartholomew all those years ago, or if he learned of the storm that guards it, he would not be so eager to seek it out.” Jim went cold where he crouched on the floor. His fingers and toes tingled and his mouth went dry. He strained his ears to hear what Dread Steele might answer to these questions he so longed to learn.

“The red storm,” Steele whispered. The magic, shell-shaped cloud glimmered in his dark eyes. “It is our own fault that the storm even exists – Cromier’s, Lindsay’s, and mine. It was our tampering with the Treasure of the Ocean that unleashed it upon the world. It is a force of magic that even I fear. There is so much pain in the past, Egidio. Is it for me to tell a boy these things? These are things a father should tell a son. I am only a sailor - a pirate the boy hardly knows. I was his father’s greatest enemy as far as he knows. I do not know how to speak to children. I know only the ocean. I know only the lonely life of the sea.”

“The boy has no father, Steele. He has only himself, and his friends. He needs guidance and wisdom. The ocean you know so well is a wise teacher, is it not? He has the right to know, Dread. He has the right to know that—”

Egidio was about to say what Jim had the right to know, and Jim was nearly crawling through the wooden door to hear it. But a loud snap cracked in the hallway behind him, and a hissing noise rushed into his ears. Jim whirled around to find several things happening all at once.

Lacey and George were practically on top of him, just as eager to hear Egidio’s next words as Jim. This, unfortunately, left Peter and Paul to their own devices. The two younger Ratts had wandered back to the paintings on the wall, where the brothers stood, frozen with fear, each with a finger on the canvas. Jim thought at first that one of them had broken the picture’s frame. But just as he and the others were about to make a break for it, Jim realized that the snap had come not from the paintings, but from a small blue flame at the hallway’s entrance. A column of smoke rose from the flame into the darkness – a
column of smoke that took the shape of gray pirate, a smoky tendril of a cutlass in his hand.

With an ear-piercing howl, the floating pirate streaked down the hallway, pulling his smoky blade back to strike. Peter and Paul screamed at the tops of their lungs. Then Lacey and George shouted for Peter and Paul to stop screaming. Then all five of them, with nowhere left to go, stumbled backwards through the doorway and into the sitting room.

The gray pirate soared over the pile of children and faded away like a foggy ghost. But when Jim turned over, he found his nose not three inches from the very real boots of Dread Steele, who was glaring down on Jim and his friends with eyes so hot they could smelt iron.

“Welcome to my shop, Jim Morgan,” said Egidio, an amused smile on the old man’s face, and a spark of laughter in his enormous eyes. There was no such humor to be found on the hardened face of Dread Steele.

The walk to the
Spectre
through the streets of Shelltown was one of the longest and most miserable of Jim’s life. Dread Steele surged ahead of the others, his black cloak trailing behind him and a dark storm raging in his eyes. When they reached the pier Dread Steele flowed onto the ship like an angry wraith. The Captain never even gave Mufwalme a chance to apologize for allowing the children to escape. He barked for the big man to take Lacey and the Ratts to scrub the decks for their disobedience. But when Jim moved to follow his friends, Steele stayed him with a black glare.

“As for Jim,” the Captain said, the edge on his voice sharp as a blade. “Mister Darkfeather will escort him to my quarters, where he shall wait for my return. He and I have much to discuss. Mister Gilly, we shall set a new course if you please!”

As the Captain blew off to the quarterdeck and Mister Gilly’s wheel, Jim’s shoulders slumped and his stomach dropped nearly into his shoes. Lacey, George, Peter, and Paul gave Jim a horrified look before marching off to scrub the decks with Mister Mufwalme. Even
MacGuffy, hardened man that he was, wore a nervous frown. Jim slowly turned on his heel and made his way toward the captain’s quarters with doom in his heart. When he got to the door, Cornelius patted him once with a soft wing on the back of the head.

“Good luck, my son,” the raven said, then flew off to the mainmast. With a heavy sigh, Jim turned the handle and trudged into the captain’s quarters to wait for Dread Steele.

SEVENTEEN

im dared not sit in Dread Steele’s red leather chair, nor in fact, could he even bear to look at it. All he could imagine was the shadowy Captain sitting there in but a few moments, glaring at him with dark eyes. Neither did Jim wish to look out the window, which still hung open from his earlier escape. Everything in the cabin reminded Jim of some failure or warned him of some punishment to come.