The Guardians of Island X (20 page)

Scarlet grunted loudly, and Jem glanced down. She was untieing and retieing her bootlaces as if her life depended on the loops being perfectly even. He shook his head and turned back to the houses. Yes, real doors would be nice. And shutters for the windows. But those would have to wait until he returned from their trip to Port Aberhard. For whether Scarlet liked it or not, she’d been summoned to the nearby port by the only person in the world she actually had to answer to—her father.

“Blast! Blimey and bilge!” Scarlet swore as her bootlace snapped in two. “Stupid boots. Why do I have to wear them at all? They’re such a waste of—” She looked up at Jem. “What?”

“What, what? I didn’t say anything.” He took a step back, not liking the glint in her eyes. Mad Captain McCray, as the crew sometimes called her, had a glare that made even the fiercest pirate’s knees quake.

“You’re giving me that look,” she said, eyes narrowing.

“What look? I wasn’t giving you any look,” Jem protested.

“You were. It was a ‘buck up, McCray, going into port’s not so bad’ kind of look.”

“It was not,” said Jem, although he suspected that was exactly the look he’d been giving her. Going into port really wasn’t
that
bad.

She glared at him a moment longer, then looked down at her bootlaces and sighed. When she glanced back up, the angry look had been replaced by a downright mournful one. “I just…hate to leave the island,” she muttered.

Jem sighed. Part of him wanted to point out that they should have been halfway to port by now. But two months under Scarlet’s command had taught him that wasn’t the way to get things done. He swallowed his impatience and knelt down beside her.

“Look, I know these father-daughter meetings are a pain, but look on the bright side.”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow.

“Well.” Jem swallowed, thinking hard. “You get to catch up on all the port news.”

Scarlet looked unconvinced.

He tried again. “We can steal some of those blackberry preserves you like.”

Scarlet shrugged.

Jem decided to change tactics. “It’s only for one night. We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon and everything will be fine. Nothing will have changed.”

Two small, black monkeys scampered by, shrieking.

“For instance,” he continued. “The monkeys will still be up to no good.”

“Come back here!” A ginger-haired girl raced by in hot pursuit. Two purple butterflies clung to her braids, and a small chameleon poked its head out of her shirt pocket.

“And Ronagh will still be working on her menagerie,” he added. Scarlet nodded and managed a tiny smile.

“And, doubtless, Smitty will still be head over heels in love.” He batted his eyes at Scarlet. Finally, she laughed.

“Did I hear my name?” A tall, blond boy appeared behind them.

Jem grinned at Scarlet. “I didn’t mention Horace. Did you?”

Scarlet giggled. “You mean Walter? Nope.”

After several years as a Lost Soul, Smitty still refused to tell the crew his real name—“Smitty” came from “Smith,” his last name. So they continued to call him by the worst names they could think of, assuming that one day, they’d guess correctly.

“We ready to go yet?” asked Smitty.

“Yes,” Jem answered, just as Scarlet said, “Not quite.”

Jem’s shoulders sagged.

“That’s fine,” said Smitty. “I’ll just go say good-bye to Sina one last time.” He turned and trotted off across the clearing.

Jem looked Scarlet square in the eye. “Okay, Captain,” he said. “If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for Sina. We need to get Smitty off this island before he drives her completely mad.”

Scarlet considered this. “I heard he showed up at her tree house this morning before the sun was up and insisted on serving her breakfast. And singing all the way through.”

Jem nodded. “Exactly.”

Scarlet held up her hands in defeat. “All right, Fitz. You win. We’ll go.”

He scrambled to his feet and pulled her up before she could change her mind. But she’d only taken a few steps toward the tree houses when she stopped and raised a hand to her forehead.

“Oh no.” Jem groaned under his breath. He’d been so close.

“Shh.”
Scarlet closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she announced, “It’s the aras.”

“Of course it is.” Jem sighed.

“They need me,” said Scarlet.

“Right.”

“It could be important. I’ll be right back. You go and gather the crew, and I’ll meet you by the houses. I
will,”
she added when he raised an eyebrow. “Promise.”

He watched her jog off across the clearing and cursed Scarlet’s favorite birds. It was entirely possible—probable, even—that they hadn’t called for her at all, and she was just making one last effort to stall. But unlike Scarlet, Jem didn’t have the ability to channel the island’s wildlife and know when they were hungry, upset with one another, or in distress. So he couldn’t say for sure.

And, anyway, the aras
were
important. Hunted to near extinction by pirates and King’s Men for their beautiful red feathers, the birds were a treasure beyond everyone’s expectations. They actually collected rubies, digging them out of the ground with their beaks and tucking them by the dozens inside their nests. The Lost Souls had made it their job to protect both the birds and the jewels from all the treasure-hungry pirates and King’s Men in the tropics.

“Is she
still
stalling?” Tim asked, appearing at Jem’s side. He pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “This is crazy!”

“She says the aras need her now,” Jem said, and Tim snorted. “I know,” Jem agreed. “But I think she’s almost ready this time.”

“That’s what you said two hours ago,” Tim said. He took off his spectacles, wiped them on his shirt, and then perched them on his nose again. “Can’t you hurry her up?”

Jem gave him a withering look and began to walk toward the tree houses. The quartermaster always got twitchy when he’d been away from their ship, the
Margaret’s Hop
, for too long. “You go find Emmett and Edwin,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll grab Smitty and Liam, and we’ll head off as soon as she gets back.”

“Good luck with that,” Tim yelled back. “Last I heard, Smitty was reciting love poems to Sina. It might take even longer to drag him away than the captain.”

Jem groaned again. Getting the small crew of Lost Souls off Island X for a quick trip to port was hard enough with a reluctant captain. A lovesick crewmate, he could do without.

He found Smitty standing by himself near his tree house, watching a group play Monkey in the Middle nearby.

“Isn’t she beautiful, Fitz?” Smitty said without taking his eyes off the crew.

Jem didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. Smitty had been hopelessly in love with Sina since they’d first met her a few weeks before. Sina and her little brother, Kapu, were native Islanders—possibly the only two who had survived the Old World diseases the King’s Men brought with them when they invaded the tropics.

“If only we could understand each other.” Smitty sighed. “I’ve tried to talk to her like Scarlet does, with
my eyes.” He gave Jem an intense stare to demonstrate. “But it doesn’t seem to be working.”

Jem stifled a laugh. Smitty’s stare was more likely to stop a smelly wild pig in its tracks than demonstrate his affections. “Well, you’re not half-Islander like Scarlet is. Those two have a special connection.” He couldn’t quite understand it himself, but when Scarlet couldn’t recall the right Islander words and Sina couldn’t understand the English ones, the two friends could read each other’s thoughts.

“All right, Smit. Are you ready to go?” Jem asked. But Smitty ignored him, staring at Sina until she finally turned to look his way. He waved, but the tall, dark-haired girl rolled her eyes and turned back to the game.

“Smit!” Jem snapped his fingers in front of the boy’s face.

Smitty pulled his gaze away and looked at Jem. “Actually, I was thinking I might sit this trip out,” he said. “Maybe I’ll stay here and…you know.” He looked dreamily at Sina again.

“Not a chance,” Jem said flatly. “You’re coming to port.”

“But—”

“No
but
s.” A little bit of Scarlet seemed to have rubbed off on him. “You love a good port raid. You’re coming.”

Smitty shoved his hands in his pockets. “Well, that’s true. And I suppose you can’t very well go without me since I am the best pickpocket in all the tropics.”

“And so modest,” Jem commented. But he was
heartened to hear the smart-mouthed pirate sounding a little more like his old self. Apparently, love did strange things to a person.

“Jem!” someone called. He turned to see Gil Jenkins standing near the pool in the clearing, waving both arms. “Come quick!”

“Oh, what now?” Jem groaned, jogging off. But as soon as he saw what Gil was pointing at, he began to sprint.

Two men were stumbling across the clearing, their clothes torn and filthy. “Uncle Finn!” he yelled. “Thomas! What happened?”

He hadn’t seen his uncle Finn or his uncle’s research assistant since they’d set off to collect plant samples a few days before. They looked like they’d been wrestling crocodiles rather than searching for the rare plant that Uncle Finn believed could cure baldness.

“Jem,” Uncle Finn gasped, practically collapsing into his arms. Jem staggered under Uncle Finn’s substantial weight. “Water.”

“Here.” Liam tossed the explorers each a canteen, which they proceeded to gulp down without even stopping to breathe.

“What the flotsam is going on?” Scarlet appeared at Jem’s shoulder.

“Not sure.” Jem waited for Uncle Finn to catch his breath and quench his thirst so he could start explaining. Several other Lost Souls ran over to see what the commotion was all about.

Finally, Uncle Finn handed Liam the empty canteen.
He wiped his mouth with his dirty sleeve and turned to Jem. Then he drew a deep breath. “Brace yourself, nephew,” he said. “Of all the tales I’ve lived to tell, this one is by far the most terrifying.”

A few Lost Souls gasped.

“What happened?” Jem whispered. Uncle Finn was famous for his dramatic storytelling, but this sounded dire, even for him.

“We met…” Uncle Finn paused dramatically. “The panther.”

The Lost Souls gasped again.

“The panther?” Smitty repeated. “There’s a panther on Island X?” He moved closer to Sina, putting a protective arm around her shoulders, which she quickly shrugged off. She pulled an arrow out of her bag and examined the sharpness of its point. Sina had the best aim on the island. Smitty lowered his arm and moved a few feet away.

“There is indeed.” Uncle Finn sniffed. “If you’d studied my map, you’d have seen it.”

“That’s right!” Jem reached into his back pocket and whipped out the map. It wasn’t Uncle Finn’s original map, which the explorer had drawn decades ago while first exploring the islands, but a close reproduction that Jem had made himself. On the western arm of the X-shaped island, Uncle Finn had written “Panther’s Lair. Hungry.” Jem made a mental note to add that crucial detail to his map later. He shivered. “What happened?”

Uncle Finn dropped his voice to resume his dramatic tone. “We were out looking for more samples of the
bromeliad that cures
androgenic alopecia
,” he began.

“Cures what?” Ronagh piped up.

“Baldness, remember?” Scarlet told her, pointing to Uncle Finn’s head of thick, curly hair. Until recently, he’d been completely bald, proving that the bromeliad really did work miracles.

Uncle Finn smoothed down his hair. “We’d hiked farther west than we’d ever gone before when we got caught in a downpour sometime yesterday evening. And then—”

“We found this hole in the side of a mountain,” Thomas cut in. “Like a cave or a den. And it looked right warm and dry—”

“So we ventured in.” Uncle Finn cut him off, shooting Thomas an irritated look. The old explorer preferred to tell his own tales. “Only to find ourselves face-to-face with…” He paused once more. “The biggest, snarliest, hungriest black panther we’d ever seen.”

Several Lost Souls shrieked. A few more dove behind some larger ones for protection.

“Have you ever seen a smaller, less snarly, not-so-hungry one?” Ronagh asked.

“Quiet, Ronagh,” said her brother, Liam.

“Just wondering,” she muttered to the chameleon in her pocket. “Maybe there are friendlier ones.”

Scarlet shook her head at the younger girl. “Don’t even
think
about trying to make friends with it.”

“Not on your life.” Uncle Finn gave Ronagh a stern look. “We were lucky to escape with ours. And I was lucky that Thomas has the strength of ten men and could
injure the beast while I made my getaway.”

“You
what?”
Ronagh cried, turning to Thomas.

“I just poked ’im in the eye, real quick,” Thomas said, taking a step back from the red-faced girl. “He ain’t hurt, I swear!”

“But he’s angry,” said Uncle Finn, his eyes gleaming. “So if you value your young lives, watch out for this beast. He lives up the western arm, but who knows where he might turn up.”

Jem wiped a trickle of sweat off his temple, remembering the noises he’d heard last night when everyone was asleep. Port Aberhard, with its Old World streets and buildings with doors that shut and locked, was looking better by the second.

Scarlet, however, seemed to be thinking just the opposite. “Maybe…maybe we shouldn’t go to port today,” she whispered to Jem. “Maybe we’re needed here.”

Jem shook his head, trying to clear it of the panther and focus on their mission. “Captain, it’s already late afternoon. Your father’s expecting you tonight.”

“But what about the crew? We can’t leave them now.”

“If we leave now, we’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. If we stay, we’ll just have to go tomorrow. You know that,” he insisted. Admiral McCray had made it clear on their last visit—when they had arrived two days late because a war broke out between two troops of monkeys—that he expected his daughter to abide by their agreement. Once every two weeks, Scarlet had to meet him in port. If she kept up her end of the bargain, he’d let her live with
the Lost Souls on Island X and keep the King’s Men away.