by James Riley
Lian sighed, then knocked the hilt of her sword into Mako’s head—only for him to lock both arms around her waist and pull them both over backward, right out the hole in the wall.
“NO!” Lian shouted as she disappeared out the hole.
“MEGHAN, GO!” Mako shouted, and they were both gone.
“GO, GO, GO!” Jack shouted, pushing himself up. “We need to get out of here!”
May and Phillip both quickly pushed themselves up, then helped Meghan to a standing-floating-whatever position.
“The songbooks!” the mermaid said, grabbing for them. “I need them to figure out the correct music to take us to the Fairy Homelands!”
“Take them and let’s go!” May shouted, looking out the hole in the wall. “Right now there are about a thousand mermen swimming this way, and I’m pretty sure they’re not gonna be thrilled to see humans!”
“My father can’t know about this!” Meghan said, almost pleading with them.
“Perhaps it is too late for that,” Phillip pointed out. “Now we must flee if we hope to keep our lives. Will you come with us?”
Meghan glanced from Phillip to May to Jack, and sighed. “I… I will do this. For Mariella. I’ll go.”
“Good,” May said, grabbing her hand. “We’ve got one shot at this, and that’s only if we can make it to the pirate ship.”
“To Bluebeard’s ship,” Meghan said, then shook her head. “No, this must be done. Hold on to me, children. I’m a faster swimmer than all of you.”
The three of them grabbed hold of her arms, and Meghan exploded out of the hole, shooting like a backward-falling star up toward the sky. Looking up into the rush of water was too hard, so Jack glanced down, and saw that May hadn’t been too far off with her guess a few seconds earlier. Below him, merfolk civilians swam as quickly as they could out of the way of hundreds of mermen, all armed with tridents.
And just above all those soldiers was a mermaid girl, swimming away from an unconscious Captain Mako and straight for Jack as fast as she could, an extremely annoyed look on her face.
There was no chance. Lian would reach them first, just before the soldiers did. There was no way they could reach the relative safety of the pirate ship. Meghan just wasn’t fast enough, not carrying the rest of them. Lian wasn’t as quick a swimmer as the mermen, but she was an Eye, and that made her beyond fast enough.
There was just no chance that they were going to escape.
And all Jack could feel was disappointment. This was his fault, after all. Somehow Lian had followed him. The Wicked Queen knew where they were, and what they were doing, because of him. Not to mention that it was his fault the Queen was free in the first place.
Why couldn’t he be good enough? Why couldn’t he do even this little thing for May? Why couldn’t he be a hero?!
He couldn’t mess this up, not now. He couldn’t just fail again!
“You’re not serious,” said Lian’s voice in his head. “Tell me you’re not serious!”
Jack just nodded to himself, silently hoping that, whatever happened to him, he’d take Lian down with him.
“You can’t be this stupid, Jack!” Lian said in his head, while below she glared furiously at him, getting closer every second. “They’re going to get caught anyway!”
“No, they won’t,” Jack whispered to himself. “I’ll make sure of it for once.”
“NO!” Lian shouted.
“Yes,” Jack said, then turned to look up at Phillip, Meghan, and his princess one more time. He watched May for a moment, watched as her hair covered her face from the water flow, watched how tightly she held on to Meghan… and in his head he said good-bye.
Then Jack let go of the mermaid.
And just like that, May glanced down and saw him. Her eyes went wide and she yelled something, but by that point she was much too far away.
Jack just shook his head, then smiled at her, putting all the apologies he could into that one smile.
Then he sighed, flipped over, and swam down toward the approaching horde of mermen, as well as an extremely angry Eye, his sword glowing bright as the sun.
CHAPTER 28
May’s eyes were shut tight, water pulling at her from all sides. It was like getting yanked along behind a boat after falling over on water skis, only the boat wouldn’t stop, and the skis were a half-woman, half-fish apprentice fairy queen.
And then, for some reason, the mermaid seemed to jump forward slightly, as if she’d gotten a burst of speed out of nowhere. Maybe they were close to where they were going? May opened her eyes but couldn’t see anything above them as the water plowed into her face, so she glanced down instead.
Just in time to see Jack falling back to the ocean floor.
“NO!” she screamed. “NO, JACK, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”
Jack just smiled, then turned and swam down into the army of mermen, his sword lighting his way.
“NO!” May screamed again, and let go of Meghan as well…
Only to have some idiot grab her hand.
“Princess!” Phillip said, dragging her along by her arm. “Do not let go!”
May frantically tried to pull her wrist out of the prince’s grip, but he was too strong. “Let me go!” she screamed. “Jack! He needs my help!”
“Jack made his choice!” Phillip said. “If the fairy queens are to survive, we must escape!”
“NO!” May yelled, still fighting against Phillip. “JACK! COME BACK!”
“Trust that he knows what he is doing!” Phillip shouted at her.
“I don’t trust him!” May screamed, her eyes wild as she fought against the prince. “He makes stupid choices when I’m not around! He’s going to get himself killed. Let me GO! JACK!”
Just as she screamed, Jack plowed into Lian, his sword striking hers, both glowing hot like the sun.
“NO!” she screamed again.
And then a brilliant light exploded up at them, blinding May completely. Something rumbled ominously, and when May’s vision cleared, she saw that the mermen were still on their way, and Lian was gone… but Jack’s unconscious body was sinking right into the army of mermen.
“JACK!” May screamed as the mermen below began attacking, throwing their tridents up, cutting through the water from all directions. One trident grazed Meghan’s tail, and she shouted in surprise and pain, stopping just long enough for the mermen to close the gap even more.
The mermen seemed to be on all sides of them, throwing tridents or just swimming toward them with the three-pronged spears.
“There!” Meghan shouted, and pointed up. May followed her finger to see something huge blocking out the moonlight, like an enormous cloud cutting through the ocean.
The sea grew darker and darker, the only light coming from below them as May and Phillip readied themselves to fight, as much good as that’d do them.
Behind her, Phillip shouted, kicking at a merman who’d grabbed his foot. Next to him Meghan ordered the soldiers away, but they ignored her, concentrating on taking May and Phillip back dead or alive.
This was it. They weren’t going to make it.
And then, like magic, a trident flew toward the mermen, slicing through the water from somewhere above them. It struck one in his arm, and the creature let out a horrible shriek. More tridents flew down from above, a few connected by large nets that surrounded and enclosed groups of mermen, weighting them down and dragging them to the bottom of the ocean.
Even as May gaped in surprise, a net came flying down at her from above. It caught her, Phillip, and Meghan inside it, then immediately shoved them together and began pulling them all toward the surface with astonishing speed.
Mermen around them tried grabbing for the net, but more tridents from above kept them at bay, even while other nets filled with mermen dropped past them. May noticed for the first time that the tridents from the surface weren’t the golden color of the mermen’s. They were a dull metallic gray.
And then May, Phillip, and Meghan explode
d out of the water, and the sounds of waves, rigging, and yelling filled May’s ears. She pushed Phillip out of her way, just to get a look… and there was Bluebeard, hanging from the rigging of the ship as his pirates aimed tridents at the mermen below.
Bluebeard let out a roaring laugh. “Ah, I love when me plans come together so easily!”
CHAPTER 29
Wooden planks came rushing up toward May as the net holding her, Phillip, and Meghan crashed to the deck of the pirate ship. All around them pirates began cheering, led by their captain.
“LET ME OUT!” May shouted, struggling to free herself. Skinny and a few other pirates obediently cut her lose, and she immediately made a leap for the railing on the side of the ship. She climbed up over it, then leaned forward to dive back in—
Only to come to an abrupt halt in midair, hanging out over the ocean.
“Now, where do ye think yer goin’, little princess?” a voice said quietly, and Bluebeard pulled her back on board the ship.
“I’m going back in!” May screamed at him. “Jack’s still down there. I have to go get him! Someone needs to rescue him!”
“The Little Eye is still below?” Bluebeard said, actually seeming a bit surprised, but that was momentary. “We’ll mourn the lad after we celebrate!” With that, he dropped May to the deck and turned around to grin stupidly at Meghan.
Meghan, however, did not grin stupidly back.
“Maarten,” she said, then stood up on two human legs. “Looks like the spell still works.”
“You… you haven’t aged a day, my love,” Bluebeard said without a trace of his pirate accent, his voice full of emotion. “You’re still as beautiful as the setting sun and twice as radiant.”
She sighed. “Maarten, no. No, you can’t say that to me. Not anymore. Not this many years later.”
Bluebeard stepped forward, confusion pouring over his face. “Years? It’s felt like lifetimes, Meghan. I’ve searched for you. I haven’t ever stopped.”
“Yet you never did the one thing that’d let you find me, did you?” Meghan said, looking away. “You never… You sent these children to find the Sea Witch, but instead they brought me, and you… you couldn’t even… It doesn’t matter. Too much time has passed.” She turned and walked toward the ship’s cabin, then paused and deliberately switched direction to go belowdecks. “Let me know when we get to shore, please. I must study the Sea Witch’s songbooks to figure out how to get to the Fairy Homelands.”
Bluebeard… Maarten… watched her go, and the light seemed to fade from his eyes as she stepped away. “But… ,” he said to no one in particular. “But I…”
“What is happening, Captain Bluebeard?” Phillip asked. “I thought you had just been hired to—”
“A disguise,” Bluebeard said quietly. “An effort to avoid an all-out war on the Sea King’s part. I made up this identity, started horrible stories about myself, all to keep my kingdom safe, as no one would know where I was. But Meghan knew. She knew I searched for her, but I needed the Sea Witch. She could have fixed all this.”
“Women. Fickle as the very sea herself, eh, Captain?” Skinny said, but a look from Bluebeard shut him up immediately.
May just glared at both of them. “Do you not GET that my friend is still down there?!” She ran back to the side of the boat and pointed. “We aren’t going anywhere until we go get him!”
“May,” Phillip said, stepping in front of her. “Jack made his choice. He sacrificed himself so that we could save the Fairy Homelands and find out who you are. If we try to rescue him, his sacrifice will have been in vain, and we may fail in both quests. That is not what he would want.”
“You think I care what he wants?” May said softly. “You and he… you’re all I have left. And there’s no way I’m losing either one of you, not because of me. NEVER because of me.” She sighed. “Now, are you coming or not? ’Cause I’m going either way.”
“Don’t be stupid, girl,” Maarten said, shaking his head. “You’ll be killed and accomplish nothing. No, to face down the mermen, you’d need—”
“I’d need people used to dealing with them,” May finished, glancing around at the pirates holding tridents. “You mentioned something about you and your crew going underwater before, Bluebeard, that things had to be pretty bad for that to happen. Well, things are pretty much as bad as they can get right now.”
Maarten gave her a careful look. “Yes, perhaps they are. There are ways we could help, but they’re dangerous to both me and my ship, not to mention putting us all under the Sea King’s power. We could lose everything. How important is this boy to you?”
She glared up at him. “I’ll still be looking for him forty years later.”
Maarten nodded, then looked down at the deck. A moment passed, and he looked back up, the emotion gone but the twinkle back in his eye. “Get on yer feet, ye lazy scum!” Bluebeard roared. “We got a man overboard and we’re goin’ down to get ’im! Move it, lads. We’re a’sinkin’ the ship!”
May blinked. “Wait a second. You’re what now?”
“You wanted us to save your little friend, didn’t you, Princess?” Bluebeard said, yelling at pirates seemingly at random to do this or tie down that. “Well, we need to get down to him to be doin’ that, don’t we?”
“I… I guess,” May said as she and Phillip moved out of the way of the pirates running everywhere.
“One thing,” Bluebeard said to her, leaning over, and again it seemed to be Maarten talking. “If I do this for you, Princess, then I will need something in return.”
“Help me rescue him, and I will do whatever you want,” she said.
Maarten stared down at her. “You must agree that at some point in the future, I will ask for something of yours and you will give it to me. It doesn’t matter what that is, or when I—”
“Done,” May interrupted, shaking his hand.
The pirate looked at her curiously. “You are willing to give up anything for him?”
“Wouldn’t you give up anything for her?” May asked, nodding belowdecks to where Meghan had gone. This was for Jack. Nothing else mattered.
Maarten sighed, then nodded. “Perhaps I’ll find a way to show her that as well.” A second later, his eyes twinkling again, Bluebeard roared to life. “Send her below the waves, boys!”
Sinking the ship looked a lot like the opposite of what May figured they’d be doing to start sailing. The ship itself was about as long as a football field, or some other really long thing, given that May honestly could never remember how long football fields were. A hundred yards? That was like three hundred feet, wasn’t it? The boat did seem long, but she was over five feet tall herself, and so that’d be like sixty of her end to end. Only sixty? Or was that a lot of herselves? Stupid analogies. The boat was big, that should cover it.
Besides its bigness, it had four masts with all kinds of sails and ropes tying them together in some elaborate spiderweb of confusion. The pirates scurrying over the web, however, looked exactly not like spiders, given their beards, peg or other assorted legs, and general screaming of obscenities as they yanked at seemingly random ropes, pulling one here, yanking one there. They couldn’t really push on the ropes. That’s not how ropes worked. But whatever pulling they were doing was working, as the sails were coming down, leaving behind a set of masts that looked like empty tree branches in the winter.
“Bottle it, you bilge rats!” Bluebeard shouted. Skinny pushed May and Phillip to the center of the boat as a monkey with an eye patch saluted Bluebeard, growled out an “Aye, sir!” and climbed the center mast with a bottle on its back.
“Did that monkey just talk?” May whispered to Skinny.
“Can’t confirm nor deny such things, peaches,” Skinny told her. “Wouldn’t want the little bugger to get hunted down, after all, as a talkin’ ani-malmal.”
“I’m gonna take your other hand if you call me that again,” May whispered back.
“Aye, pumpkin,” Skinny said. “Now, if I c
ould gets the lot of you toward the center of the ship, we’re about to get bottled in, and ye don’t want to get in the way of any dangerousness, if ye catch me meaning.”
“I got exactly none of what you just said,” May said. “What’s going on?”
The monkey reached the top of the mast, aimed the bottle up above it, and then banged it down hard on the mast. The monkey began chanting something in… Well, it sounded like monkey, to be honest. There was a lot of high-pitched shrieking, grunts, and general monkey noises.
And just like that, the bottle began growing. In fact, it exploded in size, rapidly becoming large enough for the entire ship to fit into its opening.
The bottle’s opening narrowly slooped right over the boat, then smacked into the water with a loud splash. The bottle bobbed for a second as the boat magically centered itself exactly in it. Then water began slowly filling the bottle, and the whole thing began to sink into the ocean, pulling the boat down with it, leaving just enough air in the bottle for them to breathe.
It was a ship in a bottle, just… wronger.
“Well, this isn’t possible,” May said, crossing her arms. “Seriously, no. The air in the bottle would make us float.”
“Part o’ the magic,” Skinny said reverently as the monkey climbed back down and stuck out his tongue at May.
She pointed at him and gave him a dirty look. “You just made my list, little man,” she said as the entire ship sank beneath the waves.
CHAPTER 30
What did you do?!” an enraged voice shouted.
Jack’s entire body screamed in pain to the point that even opening his eyes hurt. Still, he cracked them just enough to see. Only apparently his eyes weren’t behaving like they normally did.
Everything was swimming like he was underwater still. One second he could see Lian, her face flushed with rage below her hood as she screamed at him. But then the scene waved out, and a different scene floated up.
“What did you do?” a girl’s voice said—a familiar, if much younger, voice.
“I lost the pail,” said a boy’s voice sadly, just as young, and just as familiar.
