Other Islands: Book Three of the Hook & Jill Saga Read online

  She turned her face from him, but not her eyes. “I cannot say.”

  “I will come tomorrow. When the sun sails high overhead, as now.” He stood waiting, hopeful of he knew not what. She closed her eyes and raised her face, as if communing with the sunshine that penetrated her flesh. On impulse, Cecco reached both hands out to her.

  “Raven.”

  She opened her eyes and her gaze settled on his hands. He had already taken greater liberty than this touch that he offered. He had clasped her close, pressed his body upon hers. He had ministered to her needs, even guessed her heart. Now her own hands surprised them both, fitting into his, full of warmth. In that moment of contact, Raven and Cecco stood on the cliff above the ocean, two islands from two different seas. Between them passed a look of recognition, deep, and startling.

  She gave a gasp, and then Raven ran. And as she ran— back to White Bear’s authority— like Cecco, she measured the outside of her courage, traveling in her mind a path she’d never followed before.

  Cecco gazed after her, until she blended like a deer into the forest. Turning to the bay again, he looked upon the Roger. He flexed his fingers, tempted to peer into his palm, to read the fortune written there beneath the wedding band. But he squeezed his hand shut instead.

  “Another Island. And a forbidden one.” He heaved a great sigh. “My lovely wife. May you sail your way to it.” And then he recalled Lily’s voice, comforting.

  Magic dwells here…of a nature that can occur no other place.

  “Well, Jill. This Raven, I feel, is an omen. But if she has come merely to pick my lonesome bones, she is welcome to them.” Cecco smiled, sadly, replaced his pistols, collected his headdress, and followed the narrow path to the left. Toward Neverbay, and desolation.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Boy! Go back to your hole in the ground! The pirate’s shout rang in David’s head as he dashed along the muddy stream bank toward his hideaway. He knew of nowhere else to flee. But did he dare to enter there? If the man’s words were to be trusted, he was aware of the hole in which David had believed himself safe. It was so very secluded, so dank and disreputable a place, surely David’s first hunch was correct. No one had entered there in a long time, nor would anyone desire to enter it, even if it were known or found. By virtue of its nature, it must be protected. A fouler place David could hardly imagine.

  Yet that spot was where he sped when the captain routed him from his spying place. David turned tail, never stopping until he reached the stagnant end of the stream. Here he paused only long enough to decide, then he shinned up a tree to hide high among its rattling leaves. He waited, watching to see if the pirate would follow, if he would seek David in his den. The dry brown leaves scratched his cheeks, bristly bark cut into his skin, but David didn’t stir. Nor did the willow branches clinging to the rock wall at the end of the path below, concealing his grotto.

  The cavern was another of the incomprehensible elements of this Island. A certain mysteriousness hung like a fog wherever David wandered. Rules of nature, immutable in the parts of the world David had sailed, were blatantly broken here. Waters that fell from snowy mountaintops were warm. Dressed like savages, white men lived with Indian women— in an English house. Tiny beings whizzed through the air sometimes, much too large to be fireflies and much too mobile to be pegged for certain as fairies. Animals that in the wider world would eschew each other’s company here banded together to hunt and howl in packs. Most disturbing of all, David had seen with his own eyes a crew of boys, looking as dirty and unkempt as the ‘fairies’ were fey, jumping into the atmosphere and hanging there, for all the world as if they could fly.

  After the experiences he’d endured— the pirates, the privateers, the storm and the shipwreck, the days lost at sea in a sinking, shrinking boat— David didn’t trust his senses any longer. In the same way he denied the magic of this place, he delayed the conclusion that the one hospitable spot on the Island was too disgusting to shelter him. His need for sanctuary outweighed the evidence of his corrupted intellect. Surely the decay underfoot and the stench in his nose were only his faculties overreacting to all he had suffered?

  Three days ago he heard salutes fired from a fleet of ships as they sailed in, but he hadn’t yet traveled to the bay to view them. A sailor himself, David knew several days must pass before these vessels made sail again. He hoped to secure passage on one of them, but he’d been too hungry to hike that far, opting first to put the stolen bow and arrows to use. And in any event, he’d have to tidy himself up before approaching ship’s officers to beg favor. His hair and his mud-caked shreds of clothing reeked. The pool by his dwelling place was ideal for catfish; as a wash pond it proved less than satisfactory. David could imagine the revulsion a layer of green scum would fetch him, even from a slack ship.

  The arrival of the vessels cheered him, until that first night at the bonfire. At that point, an unspeakable dread descended upon David. He stared at the men making merry, and understood that these people were pirates. And worse, David thought he recognized them. Yet as he blinked the dimness of despair from his eyes and his heart’s banging calmed, only one man seemed familiar. The burly redheaded seaman. But this man didn’t dress like the Roger’s sailor had done. Instead of the striped shirt that pirate had worn, this man sported a fine white blouse with ruffles, and his beard was trimmed close and neat, like those of David’s uncle and the other officers of the Unity. He wore spectacles, but David couldn’t remember whether that pirate did; a protective officer had shoved David under a cannon during the boarding and, later, his vision had been taken up entirely with— well, David hadn’t paid attention to the men after that.

  The foreigners speaking French that night certainly reminded David of the privateer crew that boarded after the pirates, but he reasoned that blue jackets such as his assailants had worn were common among sailors, French and English alike. He assured himself that the pirates who attacked the Unity were worlds away. Surely the Roger would anchor in one of the rowdy, more populated ports such ruffians enjoyed. David set his mind at ease on that score. He had determined that, after all, no matter what the sailors chose, this place was far too much of a wilderness for the jaded tastes of— of Red-Handed Jill.

  David didn’t trust the quirkiness of this place. Naming the woman might cause her to appear at his elbow, magically, like one of those birdlike beings he thought of as fairies. He hesitated to conjure her, even in his thoughts. He despised her. His emotion was all the more vehement because he despised himself for falling stupidly, embarrassingly in love with her, at the first moment of impact. He was just a boy then, prone to the traps such vixens laid for their victims. But in the following weeks he’d learned. Beauty is as beauty does. The truth lay in the homilies his widowed mother quoted four years ago as she kissed him goodbye and sent him off to earn his keep on his very first voyage. All that glitters is not gold. But along with David’s immature, ungovernable body member, his hatred rose, threatening to choke him. He’d been a ninny. He hated himself. He hated the passion he’d leaked at the sensual rites of those revelers that night.

  He hated Jill.

  But he had believed himself to be rid of her. He’d thought with the arrival of those ships that his bad luck had blown, like mist off the mountains. Pirates or no, he could stow away, or even work his way back and jump ship in some civilized port. Then, this morning, just as David had begun to believe he could escape this Island, his confidence was shattered.

  Captain Cecco cinched it. David could not pretend that that ostentatious Italian was anyone other than who he was. Those big, braceleted arms had seized David on the Unity. He had questioned David, forced him to take him to his uncle’s quarters. David had waited on him, served wine. He had witnessed the wedding, seen the bride and groom’s signatures mark the logbook. How could he ever forget the man Red-Handed Jill had chosen for her mate? The man she’d kissed so provocatively, in the same breath with which she’d flirted with a cabin boy. David had felt onl
y envy burning then. Now the circle of Fate was closing in on him, a crushing darkness, blacker than the inside of his cavern. Ill luck returned with a vengeance. Those pirates were here! David hadn’t broken free of them. Nor had he a prayer of escaping this Island.

  Exhausted by his turmoil, worn out with watching, David slunk down the tree. Searching the path by the stream one last time, he allowed his shoulders to slump. Clearly, Captain Cecco was not in pursuit. No doubt he judged a cabin boy too negligible an adversary with whom to bother.

  David brushed aside the crippled willow branches that hid the mouth of his lair. Then he shrugged off his overlarge jacket and tossed it inside. Holding his nose, he got down on his dirty belly to slither under the wall of rock. Chilled air greeted him, raising gooseflesh. He slipped his jacket back on but didn’t wipe the mud off his feet; the layers kept out the cold. Creeping on the frigid muck of the floor, he felt his way toward a mat to collapse upon it. Its woven branches were smooth, and warmer than the ground. It kept the blankets from seeping with dank. Whoever made this bed must have had a similar use for it. David wondered if that person, too, had sought this grotto as a refuge. Had he reclined on this mat and, closing his eyes against the blackness, lain beset by visions of a golden-haired harpy?

  It seemed he was safe for the moment. David thought of the bundle secreted in a fissure at the back of the cavern. Captain Cecco might send his best men to search, but he’d never find David’s most precious possession. Wrapped in oilcloth, it would withstand the dampness of the cave as long as necessary. At first, David had set the packet on the shelf at the cave’s right end, next to the bowl of teeth and the lion’s paw, and by the shell full of scorched-smelling powder. But then on one of his ventures he’d found the hand mirror. It had an ivory handle, carved in scrollwork. An odd object to lie abandoned— unbroken— on an untamed shore.

  David discovered it at the far western end of the Island in a sunny lagoon. Sunny, but eerie. He’d glimpsed the lagoon from a cliff top and, finding no entrance on land, he’d had to swim in order to enter it. Once within its secret confines, he splashed along through its rock pools with a feeling of self-consciousness, as if he was watched. But he’d seen nothing but rocks and seaweed, the rippling clumps of which held an uncanny likeness to human hair.

  Curious to view his dwelling, on returning to it he had propped the mirror against a rock outside the opening to direct sunshine into the cave. From the doorway he’d seen moss and mud and confirmed his theory that the crunching underfoot came from bones. Of these he avoided closer scrutiny. He’d also found the secret fissure. Only an intense beam of sun could reveal the cleft and, since that time, David had hidden even the mirror for fear some unknown person might employ it and discover his bundle. Now, in spite of the carrion, he felt more secure.

  The mirror’s light had also revealed a painting of mud above the shelf. A crude drawing of a clock. David decided that someone long ago, attempting to live here, had tried to make the place more homely. But what purpose the collection of teeth served was beyond his imagination, and left him with a queasy feeling, an even queasier sensation than the rotten odor had given him, which, unbelievably, David learned to tolerate. When he got back to civilization— here tears scalded David’s eyes— when he was delivered from this hellhole, David would place his oilcloth packet in the proper hands. His duty to his uncle would be done, and, maybe, with this final act of obligation, the curse of the Unity would lift from his shoulders. Rolling his eyes toward the spot where he knew the mud clock loomed in the darkness, David pretended to hear it ticking away the minutes he was doomed to spend here.

  But with the feeling of safety came the leisure to wonder. His own luck had washed out, but Captain Cecco’s should be in full spate. Why was the pirate alone this morning? Or rather, not alone, but keeping company with the females at the clearing? He had been fondling that woman, just as his men had made love to her at night. Like the impostor clock, David had lost track of time. Yet he knew Jill and Cecco’s marriage to be only recent. How did it happen that even a buccaneer would neglect such a wife to play the rake with another? David’s experience in such matters was so limited he could attribute the act only to the immorality ingrained in pirate life. No doubt Captain Cecco sought women just as blatantly as Red-Handed Jill trifled with a cabin boy.

  And, in his heart, David was glad. He hoped Jill was hurting. Maybe Cecco had taken David’s shamrock from Jill; maybe her luck was sinking, too.

  In the timeless dusk, David counted the few possessions Jill and her company had left to him. Mostly they were goods he’d stolen since the shipwreck, and nothing even pirates would pilfer. A bow and arrows, two blankets, moccasins that fell off his feet, a relatively clean blue jacket, an empty rum bottle, deerskin leggings he’d blushed to find he couldn’t wear without a loincloth. Catfish bones. He wiggled his fingers and felt the weight of his one great find.

  Mined from his hole in the ground, it was a magnificent gold and ruby ring.

  David smirked. Let Red-Handed Jill feast her eyes upon that.

  But the smirk soon slid from his face. He swung his head to dart a look toward the smudge of daylight at the cave mouth, covered by willow boughs. Distinctly, David heard footsteps approach.

  A single pair of boots.

  CHAPTER 7

  Predatory Creatures

  The boots halted just outside the grotto. David held his breath, his eyes wild in the darkness. He didn’t move for fear of a noise that might prompt an investigation. The dim aura at the entrance became dimmer, and David’s heart pounded, waiting for a hand to sweep aside the willow boughs. While the filter of light shifted in flickers, he heard a shuffle of foliage. With raised hackles, David endured this torment for some minutes, then all became still. After a pause, the boots could be heard again— retreating.

  Nearly faint with relief, David let out his breath, hearing his echo hiss. He had been certain Captain Cecco had come with torches to roust him out. He’d heard of other boys being pressed into service, by naval captains and by pirates. David felt no love for this cavern, nor for this evil Island, but he far preferred to remain here in its bewildering wilderness than to serve that bully and his bewitching wife again. Dizzy from fright and foul air, David dragged himself to the opening.

  He poked his nose out for a deep and reviving inhalation. Pushing the willow aside, he was surprised to find the air full of a dusky, sweet aroma, the scent of flowers. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he observed, arrayed on either side of the entrance to his cavern, armloads of roses— red, pink, yellow, even blue and purple— all of them big as his fist, and perfect. David had spied a glade toward the end of the Island growing an abundance of such blooms. The fragrance there had been pleasing, like the promenade of a palace, only three times as strong. He recalled that the scent of roses in that garden had mingled with apple blossom, and, sure enough, the same blossom mixed with these roses, arranged with artistry next to the opening, as if laid in tribute at the mouth of a tomb.

  David shuddered. He didn’t like to think of his shelter as a tomb. He always tried to ignore the skeletons, passing them off in his mind as animal remains, hunted and discarded by the cavern’s earlier inhabitant. But now, with growing trepidation, David understood that his dwelling might not be so innocent, nor was it unknown on the Island.

  He calmed himself with soothing thoughts. No doubt this place was a mystery to the natives, too, a place spawning superstition, and held in reverence. Perhaps the bowl of teeth was meant as an offering, just as these flowers must be today. But David remained uneasy. He had invented a fine theory…but it didn’t explain the boots.

  The boy saw no one about. Thinking to splash some water on his face, he slid from the opening, taking care not to dirty his stolen coat. Under the shade of a willow on one side and the dead-looking tree in which he had hidden on the other, he knelt at the bank of the stagnant pool. He shoved up his sleeves and, dipping his hands, sent a patch of scum whirling away, then scoop
ed some tepid water for a rinse. He kept his lips pressed tight, knowing from experience the swampy taste of this pool. The ruby ring on his finger glowed in the softened sunlight, a pleasure to see.

  David became aware as he relaxed that the birds, no doubt as startled as he by the boots, had begun to call again. Mourning doves with their lugubrious coos. He knew a nest of them to be wedged in the lower branches of the tree above him. Waiting for the ripples to still, David focused on the tree’s reflection in the pond. Gnarly brown leaves, branches like broken bones. Then, with his skin still dripping, he gasped.

  Reflected in the water below was a face. It stretched and distorted as the water undulated, but it didn’t disappear. Looking hurriedly up, David spied an Indian hanging in a branch above, watching, a bow slung over his shoulder and a knife at his knee. In a flash of time David wondered two things— why did the doves sing with this intruder so near? and how came a native on this Island to be fair? Then he bolted.

  But as soon as he spun, another fair face confronted David. The fairest he’d ever seen, more lovely now in this woodland setting than it had appeared upon the Unity. With her hair damp and curling, her body sheathed in topaz, the deadly beauty of Red-Handed Jill stood smiling at David, regal, fierce, and commanding. The knife and pistol at her sash completed the effect. David staggered back, jumping as a rose thorn pierced his heel. He stumbled into another native who blocked the entrance to the cavern, this one with hair like ebony, and a tomahawk at his thigh. The Indian shoved him forward to stand facing Jill.

  With her clear voice, so well remembered, she caressed David. But, as if stroked by a tiger’s paw, he felt the graze of her hidden claws.

  “David. How pleasant to see you again. And how surprising. Almost…magical.”