Chapter Thirty-Seven
Pike hopped over the side of the row boat and into the surf, the water lapping through his legs and splashing his face. He grabbed a side of the dingy and heaved it toward the shore with the rest of the raiding party, and he felt exhilaration he hadn’t felt in more than a hundred years. Finally, the search was at an end. Finally, a chance to mete out violence and justice to the man who had enabled the curse. Finally, the chance to undo it.
They dragged the small craft onto the sand and Pike turned to the four crewman that had accompanied him, Sharktooth, Thurmond and Portnoy.
“You four stay here with the boat. We won’t be too long,” Pike said. “If we’re not back by daybreak, though, take your own measure of the curse, choose a new captain and choose your course of action ‘cause none of us four will be likely able to lend a hand seein’ as we’ll likely be dead.”
Pike snickered at that last bit. “Well, something closer to it than we be now, anyhow.”
Pike turned to the other three, rested his left hand atop the handle of his sheathed sword, and nodded toward the jungle. “Alright, let’s go find the bastard.”
Sharktooth stepped toward the treeline, lifted the crystal base and watched as the concentric circles collapsed and repeated in indigo until he had lined up the proper direction. He turned the base off course in either direction, just to be sure he was reading it right, and then fixed it back on the target, the circles quickly contracting to a dot.
“Aye, this is the way, cap’n,” Sharktooth said.
The four of them picked their way through the foliage of the jungle without problem, stepping through the natural world while much of it ignored them. The few nocturnal creatures that witnessed the crewmembers of the Killjoy passing by did not register them as a threat, and ignored them. The few resting dayside animals upon which the foursome passed stirred in their sleep, watched the men approach but did not quiver in fear or nestle closer to the earth. Even when the four passed through shafts of moonlight, the world largely ignored them.
The four skeletal men were not meant to be of the world, but beside it, witnesses to the life they had once had, but banned from it. And, as such, the world paid the cursed men back with indifference to them, mostly.
Just then there was a distant crack thunder followed by a beam of light that poked up into the night sky. The foursome stopped and watched the column of light for a moment, and cocked their heads to the side to point their ear holed toward the source of the sound. There was a faint rumble before the tower of light twisted about and split into several differently colored beams of willowy light. The skeletons turned to each other.
“This is wrong,” Sharktooth said, showing the crystal base to the others. The concentric circles were now pulsing outward from the center, a dot of indigo erupting in a reverse rainbow of circles that disappeared off the edges of the base, going everywhere. “This should not be doing that.”
“What’s it mean, then?” Portnoy said quickly, looking around the jungle for other unexpected situations.
“Can’t say, exactly,” Sharktooth said, taking a step away from the others and raising the base above his head and turning it through the air.
There was a crashing crescendo in the distance that drew the attention of the foursome, and they all noticed the increasing amount of light beams in the air, now swaying to and fro. Pike stepped alongside Sharktooth.
“Methinks this is not such a good turn of events, and I can’t even see what’s goin’ on, ‘xactly,” Pike said, “Care to shower a guess on me as to what you think we be in awe of?”
“Something’s gone wrong with the eye, Cap’n, is the only thing I know for sure,” Sharktooth said, tapping the base. “This is the opposite of what the locator should be doin’, and I don’t think it even can be doin’ it, which means something powerful is at work.”
“The wizard?” said Thurmond as he stepped alongside the two and stared at the base.
“Oh, to be sure,” Sharktooth said.
“He can’t have known we were coming,” Portnoy said. “Not even we knew we were coming until yesterday, and even then none of us knew where. It’s impossible.”
“And once upon a time we had flesh on our bones, ol’ Port, and I’d have laughed in your face if you’d a suggested a man could live a long life without it,” Pike said, absently drumming his fingers on his sword hilt. “Impossible? We spent a long time livin’ the word and I’m a fair shake certain there’s more yet my eyes ain’t yet lain upon.”
And then the wind whipped up in intensity, the lights in the sky twisting violently through the air and separating in to ever more colors. Sharktooth turned and showed the base to the others: the circles were blinking from an indigo dot in the center to off the edge like a strobe light, erupting from the base in a blaze of colors and washing the four former men in the colors of the rainbow.
“Can’t be good, even for us,” Sharktooth said.
Pike scanned the faces of the other three and shrugged his bony shoulders beneath his topcoat. “Let’s get back to the ship right quick and read’ her up to sail,” he said, turning and looking back at the source of the light, his expression as wistful as a bony face could be, before another rumbling crackle made its way from the light source. “As quick as we can, now!”