The Guardians of Island X (18 page)

The Lost Souls and Islanders dove every which way into the jungle, rustled around for a few moments, then settled into perfect stillness. From her perch in a tree, Scarlet could make out Liam and Ronagh armed with slingshots below, and Smitty and Sina behind them, bows and arrows at the ready. The Islander girl looked up and gave her a nervous smile, and Scarlet mouthed a heartfelt thank-you. Then she closed her eyes and tuned in to Island X’s wildlife. The creatures were obviously upset. She guessed that meant the pirates were making their way across the clearing. Her heart began to thump. What if the bromeliad needed more time?

But there was no time to wonder, for now she could hear and see them herself. The Dread Pirate Captain Wallace Hammerstein-Jones walked out front, sniffling as
though he had a runny nose. Then came Lucas, tromping in his big boots. Then Pete, shuffling reluctantly. And finally forty or so more pirates.

As they neared the edge of the clearing, just to the left of the Lost Souls’ hiding spot, Lucas paused and turned. “Would you quit stepping on my heels?” he hissed.

“Oh, was I?” an innocent-sounding Pete answered. “I had no idea. How rude of me.”

“Shut up, you twits.” The captain wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Where are those little brats? You don’t suppose they left?”

“No way,” said Lucas. “They’ve got to be hiding.”

“They could be anywheres!” a pirate piped up from the rear of the group. His mates cast fearful glances up at the trees.

“They’re only children, you lily-livers,” Captain Wallace snapped. “Lucas, which way to the treasure?”

“Dead ahead, Cap’n.” Lucas peered at the map. “Should be just in these trees.”

Scarlet held her breath as they waded into the bushes, passing the Lost Souls on the right.
Stay together now,
she warned the pirates silently.
If one of you swabs strays this way, we’re all fish food.

Fortunately, the pirates looked too frightened to leave their pack. A few days on Island X had apparently done nothing to ease their fear of the jungle.

Scarlet turned her head slowly, trying to spot the aras behind her. She couldn’t see anything, and she prayed that this meant the bromeliad had taken effect. She also prayed that Sina and Kapu hadn’t overlooked a single
ruby. Just one glint of red in the morning light would spell the end of them, and the end of Island X as they knew it.

“Um, Cap’n,” Lucas spoke up after a few minutes. “I…think we’re here.”

“Here?” Captain Wallace stopped and looked around. “Where?”

“Well, the map says the treasure’s”—he spread his big arms—“right here.”

Scarlet’s heart began to pound. Lucas, Pete, and Captain Wallace were standing right in front of the ara rookery. She stared at it until she saw a green head pop up, then duck back into its nest. The bromeliad had taken effect!

Please don’t move,
she tried to tell the aras.
Don’t even rustle a feather. And for goodness’ sake don’t touch those rubies!

“I don’t see anything,” one pirate commented. “’Cept a few green parroty-things up there.”

“Me neither,” said another. “Sure this is the right place?”

“Let me see that map.” Pete reached for the paper, but Lucas held it away from him. “Oh, give it to someone who can actually read it, you numskull!”

Scarlet signaled to the ground crew to start surrounding the pirates while they were distracted. She inched forward on her branch for a better view and spotted a familiar figure—enormous, like Thomas, but with that radiant head of hair. Beside him, Uncle Finn stared at the ground. Both men were still gagged with
handkerchiefs, their hands bound behind their backs.

She must have moved too quickly, for suddenly Thomas looked up and saw her. Startled, he quickly looked away, but not before his captor noticed. The extraordinarily hairy pirate behind him had followed Thomas’s gaze to Scarlet’s tree and was now staring right at her. After a moment’s pause, he jumped as if he’d just realized that she wasn’t, in fact, a very large monkey.

“Here we go,” Scarlet muttered. Before the pirate could shout to his mates, she raised two fingers to her lips and blasted a signal.

The Lost Souls burst out of their hiding places, their hollers startling the pirates so badly that a few actually dropped their cutlasses and ran. The few dozen remaining fumbled for their weapons, only to find themselves ambushed by arrows and stones from all sides. Sina and Smitty each pinned two pirates to the same big tree. Liam and Ronagh whipped rocks at Uncle Finn’s and Thomas’s captors until they covered their heads and ran off, whimpering.

Scarlet jumped down from her perch and slashed the ropes that bound the captives’ hands. The men wasted no time ripping off their gags.

“Oh no ye don’t!” A pirate with a face full of scars was running straight for them, cutlass drawn.

“Uncle Finn!” Jem yelled. He pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it to his uncle, who stared at it for a second before his face lit up.

“Cover your ears!” Uncle Finn ordered, then raised the pipe to his lips and blew with all his might.

Scarlet managed to cover her ears just in time, but Scarface and about five of his comrades weren’t so lucky. Instantly deafened, they keeled over, giving Thomas a chance to sweep them all up under his arm and toss them into the clearing. Tim, Edwin, and Emmett chased a half dozen more after him, cracking vine-whips above their heads. Shouts thundered and cutlasses clanged throughout the jungle.

“I think we’re driving them back!” Monty shouted above the clamor.

“Keep it up, crew!” Scarlet yelled. Then out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure bounding across the clearing toward them. “Some are coming back! There’s one…wait a minute.” She turned for a good look at the figure, then gasped. This was no pirate. This was a man in blue and brass.

“Father!”

A pirate lunged toward her, but she booted him in the knee and hurdled him as he fell. Then she ran to meet the admiral.

“Scarlet!” he cried, his eyes wild and bright. “Are you all right?”

“Of course! We’re driving them back!” She paused to wipe a stream of sweat from her forehead.

“When they didn’t attack us, I knew something was wrong. I—”

“Arrrgh!” The pirate Scarlet had kicked half ran, half limped toward them, cutlass raised.

“Oh, honestly.” Scarlet drew her own slingshot and pelted him in the knuckle with a stone, forcing him to
drop his weapon. Then she shot another right at his ear, and he keeled over again, trying to clutch his knee, ear, and left hand all at once.

Admiral McCray looked down at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time. “So
this
is what your crew does?”

Scarlet grinned. “This is what we do best.”

“Captain, what’s going on?” Jem cried, pointing at Admiral McCray.

“It’s all right,” Scarlet yelled back. “He’s on our side. He’s here to help. Right, Father?”

“Father?” Jem cried. “Like, yours?”

“Bit of a long story, Fitz. Maybe later?” She turned back to the admiral. “You
are
here to help, aren’t you?”

He looked around at the battle scene, then nodded. “You bet I am!” he cried, drawing his broadsword. And he leaped at the nearest pirate, who responded by punching him in the chest.

“Hey!” Scarlet yelled. But to her surprise, it was the pirate and not the admiral who cried out in pain. Scarlet’s father watched him keel over, then patted his breast pocket and winked at Scarlet. He proceeded to charge a nearby group of three, hollering battle cries and curses that made Smitty look away from his next target and whistle.

“Now that’s an admirable admiral,” the boy quipped.

“That,” Scarlet replied, “is my father.”

“Your
what
?”

“Later! Let’s drive these pirates home!”

The pirates were now fleeing across the clearing,
chased by arrows, stones, and grinning island warriors. The Lost Souls followed them over the grass, around the pool, and straight to the mouth of the trail.

Then Captain Wallace stopped and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “What…what
is
this?” he whined. “They’re children! They can’t chase us off! We were right there, at the treasure!”

“Captain, there’s no treasure!” Pete yelled back. “That stupid boy led us astray.”

“But the stories—” the captain said.

“Birds hiding rubies? Captain, that’s absurd! It’s—”

But Pete didn’t get to finish, for the rope trap in which he and Captain Wallace had been standing clamped tight around their legs, and before they could even yelp, they’d been strung up in a tree.

Scarlet cheered. Tim had sneaked in and sprung the trap while the pirates were arguing. It was brilliant! It was—

“McCray!”

It was Lucas Lawrence, cutlass drawn, looking none too pleased at being foiled in his attempt to steal the treasure.

The floor of Jem’s tree house hung a few feet above Scarlet’s head. Just before Lucas could reach her, she clambered up onto it.

“Think you’re safe up there?” Lucas growled. “You have no idea what’s coming to you.” He clamped his cutlass between his teeth, grasped a low branch, and followed her up.

“Oh, I know what’s coming to me,” Scarlet retorted.
“Even if I didn’t have eyes I could smell you.”

There was no time to congratulate herself on the excellent comeback. In a moment, they’d both be standing on a very small platform with nothing to do but fight. Scarlet gulped. She’d been in this situation before. But this time, there were no pigs to save her.

Below, Jem came running toward the tree. “Stop! Stop!”

Lucas shoved him away and pulled himself up onto the platform.

“I don’t think it’s…” Scarlet heard Jem say. “Oh, scurvy.”

Lucas stood and plucked his cutlass from his teeth. He gave Scarlet a wicked smirk. “This is it, McCray. The moment we’ve all been waiting for.”

Then she heard the first snap. Realizing what was about to happen, she spotted a vine hanging nearby that just might hold her.

When the platform broke, splintering into a hundred pieces, she leaped for that vine.

Lucas tumbled to the jungle floor, knocking himself clean out of consciousness.

“HURRAY!” the Lost Souls below yelled as their captain swung down to meet them.

“Brilliant, Cap’n!” Smitty yelled. “A real island warrior, you are.”

Scarlet bent double for a moment to slow her heartbeats and her breath. Finally she looked up and shook her head.

“A real Lost Soul.”

“Lost Soul? As in the Ship of Lost Souls?
That’s
what your crew does?”

“Um. Well…”

Admiral McCray looked around at the Lost Souls, who were staring back at him equally bewildered. “Little ghouls, all dressed in black,” he murmured. “I can’t believe it.”

“Captain,” Tim whispered, “how do you know he…I mean, he
is
a King’s Man and all.”

“I know.” Scarlet turned to her crew. “But he won’t tell. Right, Father?”

He looked at the Lost Souls, then at the clearing beyond. “I won’t tell a soul,” he said.

Looking up at his messy hair and bright eyes, Scarlet doubted he’d ever said anything so true. The stern admiral was fading right before her eyes.

“The pirates won’t get far,” he continued. “My men are waiting a few hundred yards away in the trees. And no,” he added as Tim opened his mouth, “I didn’t tell them anything. I ordered them to lead me to the place where they killed the pig and stay put until I said so. Capturing any pirates who came their way, of course.”

Scarlet marveled at how the jagged lines on her father’s face had disappeared. She wanted desperately to talk to him alone, but there would be time for that later.
Right now, they had a few more pirates to deal with.

She turned to Lucas Lawrence, still unconscious on the jungle floor. Jem stood beside him. “I’m not sure how to feel about this shoddy construction job.” He kicked a broken stick.

Scarlet punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Are you kidding, Fitz? Your tree house saved us all, just like you wanted it to. Well, all right, maybe not
just
like you wanted it to.”

Jem laughed. “So what should we do with him?”

“And those two?” Ronagh pointed to Captain Wallace and Iron “Pete” Morgan, who were hanging upside-down from a nearby tree. The captain was complaining that the rope was chafing his ankles, while Pete sighed, holding his head in his hands.

“Hmm.” Scarlet looked around at her crew, her father, Thomas, and Uncle Finn. Her eyes lingered on the last two. Then she cried, “I’ve got it! We’ll feed them that bromeliad!”

“I dunno,” said Thomas. “Neither of them’s got andro…alo…they’ve both got lots of hair.”

Scarlet shook her head. “The other one.”

“Really? I don’t think green really suits either of ’em,” Smitty mused.

Scarlet rolled her eyes. “The
other
one. The one that’ll erase their memories.”

“Jolly!” said Jem. “Uncle Finn and I will go get some. Nice hair, by the way,” he added to his uncle.

“You like it?” Uncle Finn touched his curly mane. “It’s not too much?”

Jem grinned. “Not at all. It suits you. And, Uncle Finn, I’ve got to tell you about my new theory. It might sound crazy, but I think it’s sound. It has to do with animals learning languages, see…” His voice trailed off as they walked away.

Most of the other Lost Souls busied themselves tying up Lucas and lowering Captain Wallace and Pete from the tree so they could tie them up tighter.

Scarlet watched for a moment, then turned to her father.

“Thank you,” she said at the same time he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t—” she began, but he shook his head.

“I’ve been a terrible father, too consumed by my own grief and anger to focus on the one thing that mattered—you. I left you with that old woman, thinking she couldn’t possibly be a worse caregiver than me. At that point, I thought life couldn’t get any worse. And then you disappeared. I searched for you for
three years
, Scarlet. Three years of anguish. Three years of wondering if you’d be around every corner I turned.”

Scarlet nodded, remembering her time with Scary Mary, when every footstep on the stairs held the possibility of being her father’s.