by Sue Perkins
“All this hard labour is making me hungry,” he complained, as he sat down and grabbed a sandwich.
“Do you think we’ll find anything?” Fury swallowed her food before speaking.
“Doubt it.” Eion carried on eating for a few moments but when he’d finished his sandwich he turned to face her. “I think the pirates only used to bury their treasure for a short time, then they’d come back and get it. It had to be their livelihood and they needed the stuff to survive.”
“What if they didn’t come back?”
“I expect someone else found it. They must have buried it over a century ago. We can’t be the only ones who’ve discovered this.”
They continued eating until all the food had disappeared, then packed up the wrappings, drank their water and headed for the cave once more.
“I think another hour will be enough. If we haven’t found anything by then I think there won’t be any treasure there.” Eion looked at her. “Do you agree?”
“Yes, I’ll take the first ten minutes, you take the second.” Fury looked up at the glass set in the wall. “By the time we’ve done it, the light will shine down and the pirates should arrive.”
Eion nodded and they set to work. Ten minutes passed quickly and Eion reached for the spade to take his turn. Before he could grasp it, the ground began to shake wildly and clods of stone and earth fell from the ceiling of the cave.
“Earthquake!” Eion grabbed Fury’s hand and pulled her toward the ladder leading up to the cavern. “We need to get out of here.”
He’d no sooner spoken than the shaking stopped. The two quickly climbed into the main cavern and grabbed their bags, but Fury pointed up to the glass.
“Look Eion, some of the earth’s fallen away showing more glass.”
Both turned as a sound came from the cavern entrance. The revelation of more glass had allowed the pirates to arrive early.
“Is it my imagination or do they look more solid?” Eion said in a low voice.
The pirate captain’s head swung in their direction.
“Thieves!” he roared. “Get them, lads.”
Chapter Seventeen
The pirates moved toward them, hands held out with dirty nails curling at the end of their fingers. Their lips snarled up to show blackened teeth, and evil glowed in their eyes.
Eion moved in front of Fury, but the advance of the ghostly men made them back away. The pirates were pulsing in and out of transparency and solidity and the coldness of their approach forced the two friends to climb down the ladder into the cave beneath. The pirates followed and two of them remained at the bottom of the ladder while the others hurried across to where Fury and Eion had been digging.
“Eion, something’s different. They keep flickering in and out from solid to faint, and they’re not carrying any barrels. I think the earthquake has moved them forward in their time, but we’re still in our time.”
“Why? We could have gone back to their time.” Eion frowned and she guessed he struggled to follow her theory.
“I believe if we’d gone back in time, we would be the ones flickering in and out and they would be totally solid.” Fury knew she was right, but they had no more time to discuss her idea.
“I can still only see a mist although I can hear them.” Eion squinted in the pirates direction, then shook his head.
“Thieves! They’ve stolen our treasure!”
The leader of the pirates stomped across the cave, kicking up sand with his boots. Eion and Fury backed away until they were up against the wall and had nowhere else to go. The captain towered over Eion.
“You will tell me what you’ve done with our treasure or we will bury you in the hole you stole it from.”
“We haven’t touched your treasure,” Eion said indignantly and Fury felt proud and frightened of his stand against the pirate captain. “We were looking to see if we could find it, but there’s nothing but earth.”
“A likely tale. Tell me now where you’ve put it, and we’ll make your end quick.”
“Captain.” A nervous sounding voice came from behind. “If they’d stolen it, wouldn’t the treasure still be here?”
“Yes, Captain. They wouldn’t come back after they’d taken it, would they?” Another pirate spoke.
For a few moments the Captain remained silent while his right hand stroked his straggly beard. He glanced across at the hole in the sand, then back at Fury and Eion.
“Bosun, your words make sense, but if they didn’t steal our treasure – who did?” His eyes narrowed as he looked at the assembled pirates. “It would have to be one of you.”
All the pirates took a step back, waves of fear radiating from them. Fury looked at them one at a time.
Couldn’t be the two who spoke up, they would have kept quiet if they were guilty. I assume the Captain didn’t steal his own treasure, so it leaves two of them.
“What exactly did you have in the treasure?” Eion asked out loud. “Jewels, gold, coins?”
“Why do you want to know?” The Captain’s voice held a great deal of suspicion.
“Would it take one or more people to move it?” Eion spoke again. “It’s taken several of you to bring it down here. I assume one person could remove the treasure, but they’d have to make several trips, or several people could make one trip. Depends on what the treasure is.”
Fury’s pride in Eion grew with every word he spoke. He was being so brave.
“Don’t listen to him, Captain. He’s trying to be clever. He and his mate obviously stole the gold and they’ve hidden it somewhere.”
Mate! Do they think I’m a boy?
Her annoyance cleared as she looked down at her clothes and hid a smile. She’d slipped on a pair of jeans and a shirt over her wetsuit to keep warm while they were in the cave, plus she’d tied her hair back. Apart from the hair she had dressed identical to Eion. In fact, her hair looked similar in style to the sailors’ greasy locks.
“Our captive has a point,” the Captain spoke after several minutes’ silence. “It would take at least three men to move the treasure. Or one man making three trips.”
Fury wondered why they thought she and Eion had stolen the treasure. The pirates always brought the chests with them when they entered the cave, but she remembered they weren’t carrying anything this time.
The earthquake definitely put them at a later time than we normally see them.
The accusations answered one of Fury and Eion’s questions: nobody had found the treasure in their time as no chests were hidden in the cave.
“Maybe we can help.” Fury tried to make her voice as deep as possible, to keep up the presence of being a boy. Eion looked at her with raised eyebrows, but he didn’t say a word. “It sometimes helps to talk to someone outside of the problem. When did you notice the treasure had disappeared?”
“We buried it here then came back six months later, that’s today, to uplift it and sail across the ocean. As you can see, it’s gone.” The Captain looked keenly at her, and she wondered if he had guessed her to be a female, but from his next words he showed he desperately hoped she’d solve his problem. “You seem to have some knowledge of this area. Tell us your ideas of how our treasure vanished.”
“Do any other pirates sail in these waters?” Eion took over the questioning.
“As far as we know – no. Not many of our kind sail the southern seas. There’s more bounty in the middle part of the ocean.”
“I presume nobody saw you and your men hide your loot.” Eion’s voice had taken on a thoughtful tone.
“No, they wouldn’t have lived if we’d been aware of anyone else.”
From what the Captain said, it sounded to Fury like one of his own men had stolen their chests of gold.
Gold!
Her mind turned to the pirate who’d accused them. He’d said gold when speaking of the treasure.
“Do all your men know what the treasure is, or do you keep this knowledge to yourself?”
The Captain�
�s eyes narrowed as he looked first at her, then at each of his men in turn. All the pirates shuffled their feet, but none of them seemed more uncomfortable than the others.
“Do any of you want to admit to stealing our treasure?”
He waited while mutterings of: “No, Cap’n”, “Not me, Cap’n” came from his men as they all tried to deny knowledge of the missing loot.
“To answer your question, my men do not know what’s in the chests. Why did you ask?”
“The one who accused us mentioned gold. He knew the contents of the chest so, from what you say, he must have been the one who stole the gold.” Fury pointed at the pirate, who now tried to hide behind the others in the cave.
His fellow pirates didn’t wait for their Captain’s order, they grabbed the guilty party and pushed him to the ground in front of their leader.
“Please, Captain, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.” The man sobbed uncontrollably, but his leader ignored his pleas and the other pirates demanded answers.
“Ask him where he’s put our loot.”
“Make him talk.”
“You heard your mates.” The Captain nudged the kneeling man with his boot. “Talk.”
“I lost it.”
Even Fury couldn’t believe the man could have lost three chests of treasure. The Captain showed his disbelief as he kicked the man again, harder this time.
“Now tell us the truth.”
“Please, Captain. It is the truth. I thought I could take the treasure and no one would know. I brought one of the small boats across and lowered the chests into it, but when I got into deep water, the boat started leaking and sank. It went quickly and I had to kick off my boots and coat to stay afloat.” The man appeared too scared to be telling anything but the truth.
The Captain tapped his foot and stroked his beard and looked unsure whether or not to believe his crewman.
“Is the treasure where we can recover it?”
“No, Captain. I headed for the land further along the shore, but the tide dragged me away from the cliffs. By the time the boat sank, the water looked black and deep.”
The other men began to chant. “Walk the plank. Walk the plank.”
All this time, the pirates had been fading in an out, now it had reached the stage of flickering. Fury looked at Eion, and raised her eyebrows in question. Did he think the pirates were going to fade out. Eion shrugged in denial and she remembered he couldn’t see the actual pirates, only a mist.
The earth began to shake again, but the pirates didn’t seem to notice it, even when it increased in violence. Eion grabbed Fury’s hand and they edged toward the stairs.
“Stop right there, or I’ll cut your heads off.”
Chapter Eighteen
The two friends turned slowly round to face the pirates. The Captain stood with legs akimbo and a cutlass held up in his hand, ready to thrust forward if they moved. The man waved his sword in the air and Fury jumped nervously as a lump of rock fell from the ceiling.
“Did you see that?” Eion whispered. “They might not be able to touch us but the rocks falling down can hurt us.”
“We’ll have to find a new place to hide our loot if we don’t deal with you. Both of you get into the hole you dug.”
Fury could feel the panic welling up inside her. If they did as the Captain ordered and he dropped rocks on them, they’d never get out. Eion squeezed her hand and she glanced at him. Did he have a plan to get them out of here?
“Move! Now!”
Fury shuffled one foot forward, trying to move as slowly as possible. The ground began to shake again and she stumbled and bumped into Eion. The tremors did not seem to bother the men from the past and the Captain took a step toward them but stopped when a shimmer appeared in the air between them and the pirates. The shimmer solidified into a young girl. She looked oddly familiar. Fury glanced up at Eion but he showed no sign of seeing the new arrival. He had his gaze fixed on the pirates.
“It is time for you to go,” the girl told the pirates. “You do not belong in this time and you will not cause harm here. Begone!”
“Fury, is it you talking?” Eion spoke in an undertone.
“No. Can’t you see the girl?”
“I can see a shimmer but no figure and the words are muffled.”
The girl pointed her finger at the men from the past and a blue spark forged forward and hit the group of pirates. Their forms faded once more, but this time they did not solidify and they wafted away to nothing.
The girl turned to face the two friends. Fury smiled at her and she smiled back. The aura around the unknown girl proved her to be a ghost who hadn’t passed over. Fury had seen this on Ellen, the ghost who’d haunted her house back in Cave.
Fury frowned. The new arrival looked exactly like the girl who had stared so adoringly up at Eion. She even wore the same clothes. Fury had no time to investigate more now, the ground was shaking wildly.
“Eion, we have to get out of here.” Fury tugged at his arm and they raced up the stairs grabbing their backpacks as they went through the cave above.
The trip back to the level of the eyes was even shorter than usual, but they raced along the damp tunnel, afraid the earthquake would allow the sea to break through the walls. Fury glanced over her shoulder. The ghost had followed them.
“Stop here for a moment,” she told Eion when they reached the eyes. “I have to catch my breath and we have company.”
He frowned at her. “Company?”
Fury turned to face the girl. “Eion can’t see you, but thanks from both of us. We weren’t sure if the pirates could hurt us, but dropping rocks on us would have been nasty “
“I heard Eion call you Fury, is that really your name?”
Fury nodded.
.”Would you be kind enough to let Eion hold your hand.” The girl tilted her head to one side. “He would then be able to see me, using you as a focus.”
“Of course.”
“Fury, who are you talking to?”
Eion looked totally confused and, rather than try to explain, Fury took his hand and turned him toward the girl. His reaction startled Fury.
“Isla, is it you?”
“Yes, it’s me, Eion. I’ve come to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye, but you –I mean,...”
“You may not have seen me, but I’ve been here watching over you since the day I died. I didn’t know why I couldn’t move on, but now it seems I had to make sure the pirates didn’t trap you underground. If they’d succeeded in burying you under the rocks no one would ever have found you. The earthquake would have finished the job they started.”
Fury shuddered at this mention of how close they’d come to being buried alive.
“Now I must say goodbye.”
“Can I give you a hug?” Eion’s sombre expression made Fury wonder if tears weren’t far away.
“Oh Eion, I wish you could, but I’m not substantial in your world, but I can stroke your cheek in a way you can feel.”
Isla reached out and stroked the side of Eion’s face, without actually touching him. Fury could see her aura touching his skin and smiled with delight when he trembled. He might not be able to feel her actual touch, but he could sense the movement of air beside his cheek
“Goodbye, Eion. You and your friend must go, the next shake will be a big one and will destroy the tunnel under the sea. You should be out on the water, not in this rock.” Isla looked at Fury. “Thank you, Fury.”
Fury led the way down the tunnel to the kayaks but when she looked back Eion had fallen behind. She raced back and grabbed his hand.
“You heard what Isla said, we have to get off the island. She came back to save you, don’t throw that away.”
Eion brushed his hand across his eyes and Fury realised he’d been crying. She pushed him in front of her as they reached the kayaks and they jumped in and pushed off from the island.
“Eion, look at the eyes.”
Fury reached out to touch his hand
as he spun round and looked back. Isla stood in one of the eyes and, when she saw Eion turn to look she raised her hand in farewell, then slowly faded away.
Before they could turn away there was a loud rumble and as they watched the island shook with the tremor of the earthquake. The rumbling died down a huge plume of smoke rushed from both the eyes.
“I think that proves Isla was right. The tunnel under the water no longer exists.” Fury said, but Eion turned his back on the island and paddled toward the beach.
Fury and Eion returned to the shore. Being on the water, they didn’t feel any shaking but when they reached the beach they noticed people packing up to leave. They carried the kayaks up to Eion’s car, then he turned to Fury.
“I can see your mother and mine hurrying across the grass. Shall we meet up tomorrow morning for coffee? You can assure your mum we won’t be going out on the water. I need to talk and you’re the only one who’ll understand.”
Fury nodded and turned to face her mother.
Chapter Nineteen
Friday morning Fury arrived at the beach cafe early but Eion already sat at a table, waiting for her. He smiled and nodded to the lady behind the counter.
“I ordered cappuccino with chocolate on the top for you, okay?”
“Fine.” Fury settled herself in the chair beside him.
“How did your mother react to us being out on the water during an earthquake?” He wanted to know.
“Surprisingly, she didn’t act too bad. A bit of fussing, a bit of crossness. The main thing she went on and on about was ‘Thank goodness you had Eion with you. I hate to think what would have happened if you’d been on your own.’“ Fury mimicked her mother’s voice and Eion gave her a wan smile.
Their coffee arrived and they sat quietly for a few moments, sipping their hot drinks.
“Do you think she’s starting to accept me? If so, it will be good for our future.” Eion began and Fury nodded. “I expect you’re wondering about Isla. She’s my younger sister. She died about two years ago although even after she’d gone I got the feeling she still hung around.”
