by Cameron Jace
“We promise you we will tell you who killed your father.”
“I already know that. It’s Captain Hook.”
The mermaid looked upset. “Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter who,” I said. “What matters is that I know.”
“I’m afraid someone is messing with you head, Jim. We had a deal.”
“The deal changed.”
“I hope you didn’t talk to Ahab. He is a devious man.”
“I didn’t,” I lied. “It has nothing to do with him. Besides, I got his pipe.”
The mermaids exchanged looks. I could see how ugly they could turn if I upset them further. I could smell their hatred in the air. “So what do you want in return, Jim?”
“The way to Treasure Island.” That was my deal with Ahab. He told how the mermaids were Fate’s ears in the sea. They practically worked for him. Why kill Captain Hook when his mermaids whom he cherished could point me to where the treasure was? Ahab had convinced me that my father would have liked me doing; finding the treasure and making my mother rich, That it was the best revenge.
“It’s not called Treasure Island,” the mermaid puffed. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Whatever it’s called, I need to get there.”
“Why?”
“To get rich. I know you know how to get there.”
“We do,” she said. “But haven’t you asked yourself why we didn’t get the treasure ourselves?”
“Because you’re mermaids. You love the sea.”
They laughed, calling me naive.
“Look, Jim,” she said. “The price you’re asking for is too high for the pipe.”
“Really?” I stood up threw the unfinished apple away. “Is killing Ahab not enough of a price?”
“Now we know you must have talked to him.”
“How did I talk to him if I have his pipe?” I raised my hand, showing it to them. “He wouldn’t just give it to me.”
Thy way they shrieked upon seeing it was indescribable. I wondered what it really meant to them. Was it that important?
“All right, Jim,” the mermaid in the front said. “Calm down. Whatever you do, don’t whistle the pipe, understand?”
“Why would I? I have no interest in it.”
“You just think so. It can control you in ways you have never seen.”
“This pipe?” I stared at it and laughed, unbeknownst to me that by giving me the pipe, Ahab had led me on the first road of evil. I didn’t know it had already begun to control me.
“We’ll show you the way to the island,” she agreed, “just hand it over.”
“Not before you tell me. Point at it on the map.”
“Forget the map,” the mermaid said. “The way to the island isn't the map.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m sure Ahab told you they’ve been sailing to the right coordinates and never finding the island.”
“Yes.” I remembered the conversation between Ahab and Smolett.
“You know why they couldn’t find it?”
“It’s the wrong map?”
“No, Jim. Think. You need to use your mind more.”
“What do you mean? The coordinates must have been wrong.”
“No, they’re right. But none of the pirates ever found it.”
“That’s puzzling. How so?”
“Because the island doesn’t want them to find it.” she said.
“What kind of nonsense is that?” I began to lose my temper.
“The island has a soul.”
“You’re playing with my head. I will not tolerate this any longer.”
“I’m not lying,” she said. “Use your mind and think of the only soul in the sea that is as big as an island and still can disappear in a flash of an eye.”
“I hate puzzles,” I said. “And I’ve never seen a soul as big as an island.”
“But you have heard about it.”
The mermaids behind her began splashing their tails onto the water. It took me a while, but I finally got it. “Are you saying the island is a…”
“A whale, Jim. Yes. That’s why it disappears whenever one of those pirates on your ship try to find it.”
“They’re not pirates. They’re sailors.”
“So they let you believe,” she said, nearing the edge. “See? I told you things you have never thought were possible. Now hand me the pipe.”
“No,” I insisted. “I want to know more. I still want to find the whale. If it’s the island and has my treasure on its back, I want to find it.”
“There is only one way to find it, Jim.”
“Tell me. What is it?”
“If you kill Ahab.”
“What?” I grimaced. “Why?”
“Because the whale is Moby Dick, Jim,” she said. “Captain Ahab, also known as Long John Silver, isn’t after the treasure. Sure he wouldn’t mind finding it, but he is after…”
“Moby Dick,” I said. Things began to make sense now.
“No ship with Ahab on board will find the island,” she said. “That’s why he has you on board. Because the whale will show itself to you but no Ahab.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re special, Jim.”
“Everyone keeps telling me that and I don’t understand why.”
“Once you know your real name and the real name of the island you will understand.”
“Why don’t you tell me then?” I was getting frustrated.
“We can’t. The island won’t let us. The island — and you — have a greater purpose in life.”
“So what now? How do I get there?”
“If you kill Ahab, the island will show itself to you. But you can’t kill him because you don’t know the song you need to play on the pipe,” she said. “This is why you have to give it to us, so we can kill him.”
Everything became too confusing all of a sudden. What was I really doing here, I kept asking myself. At first I wanted to avenge my father, then Ahab messed with my head and persuaded me to look for the treasure. Which wasn’t so bad, because I thought my father must have been looking for the treasure as well. The faerie with the pearl hiding inside a fish must have been part of that treasure on the island.
But how come the trail of events led me to me having to kill someone?
“What are you waiting for?” the mermaid said. “You give us the pipe, we kill Ahab, then you lead this ship toward the island, and you get the treasure your father had been looking for.”
I wondered if the mermaids read people’s minds. This was what I was just thinking. “Who said my father was looking for the treasure?”
“Don’t you know your father died chasing a faerie inside a fish?”
“So?”
“Why do you think he wanted to catch the faerie?”
“Because she’d swallowed one of the most precious pearls in the world.”
Now the mermaids laughed again. A laugh that scared me.
“You’re so naive, Jim,” the mermaid said. “The faerie knew the way to the island. That’s why your father hunted it.”
More things began to fall into place. With every new revelation, I realized how naive I was. “Then why did Captain Hook kill my father?”
“We can’t answer that, Jim,” the mermaid said. “Not now. There’s a lot you will know later.”
“I want to know now!” I waved the pipe in the air, threatening to throw it away.
“As you wish,” the mermaid surrendered. “The faerie wasn’t inside a fish, Jim. It hid inside Moby Dick himself, only sailors and fools thought it was inside a small fish in the sea.”
“So Captain Hook killed my father because he thought he found the faerie. Thus he found the island?”
“Now you get it. Everyone is looking for the island.”
“Even Captain Hook? Isn’t he Fate?”
“He is, but he only knows so much.”
I thought about all the rumors I hea
rd in the past. “Is this island the Kingdom of Sorrow?”
“We can’t say, Jim,” the mermaid waved a hand in the air. “Even if you threaten to throw away the pipe. Now, just give it to us so we can kill Ahab and you find your island. Your destiny.”
“No,” I said.
“No?” the mermaid growled.
“If the island is my destiny, then I will find it anyways.” I stepped back near the barrels full of apples. “You just said that.”
The mermaids began to moan and curse my name. The transition from beautiful mermaids to beastly sirens was horrible. I was almost going to wet my pants. I stumbled back and fell.
Throngs of sailors woke up and came to wintess the wailing mermaids. They lit all kinds of fires to light up the night. Some of them were as scared as me. The mermaids began to hum their songs. And the men began to weaken, tempted to touch them.
“Don’t!” I screamed. “They will eat you alive.”
But I was too late.
I couldn’t comprehend how strong men like these fell to their knees and crawled on the ship’s floor toward the mermaids. They just couldn’t resist them.
One by one, blood spattered all over the edges of the ship. I watched Ahab’s men die one after the other.
“Ahab!” I shouted. “Come help the men. Do something.”
Ahab only came when everyone was already dead. The mermaids had sunk deep underwater, and the smell of blood in the ship was sickening.
Ahab laughed aloud. “All this blood.” the one-legged man didn’t seem to care.
“Are you laughing at your dead men?” I burst out.
“Not men, but traitors,” he said, kicking what was left of them out to the sea. “Smolett and his men were planning to throw me off the ship. They got what they deserved.”
“Throw you off?” I couldn’t take the surprises anymore. The world outside my home island was really a strange place.
“Come on, Jim. Don’t tell me the mermaids didn't tell you about the island being Moby Dick and hiding from me.”
“Ah,” I moped my head, realizing what was going on. “Your men were going to kill you for the same reason the mermaids wanted you dead.”
“Everyone is after the treasure on the island,” he snatched his pipe back from my hands and lit it. “All but me. I’m after the island itself.”
“And you used me to get to it.” I grunted.
“You’re still young, Jim,” he smoked his pipe. “You should start to get used to being used. Everyone in this world is using everyone else. It’s how the tides roll in this world.”
I sat down, leaned back against a barrel, and pulled my knees to my chest. Suddenly I wanted to go back to my mother. Why had I ever left home?
“Don’t give up on me, Jim,” Ahab said. “We need each other. You need to find your destiny. I have to find my whale.”
“I don’t want the treasure anymore,” I began to sob. “I want to go back home. I want to go back to my mother.”
And then, there, in this very dark hour of my life, Ahab told me something that changed me forever. Something so horrible that even now my hands tremble as I write the words. Captain Ahab, Long John Silver, the one-legged man whom Billy Bones warned me of, said, “Your mother is dead, Jim. I killed her with my bare hands before we left, just to make sure you have nothing to go back to. Now get ready to sail with me. Where else will you go?”
***
It’s hard to explain the following three years, trapped with a one-legged man, who might be the optimum of all evil, in the same ship. Those years will need another special diary, so you could understand who I have become.
All you need to know is that for three whole years we never came across another ship — not with people still alive on it. Most ships had been robbed by pirates, or Fate himself. Its passengers murdered; you could smell the blood across the ocean waves.
Ahab and I had to resist the mermaids so many times, although both of us seemed immune to their songs. We fought a few whales — none of them was Moby Dick. We survived harsh weather when the ship should have sunk. Ahab smoked his pipe and stared at the moon for long nights. I ate all the apples in the barrel until there was nothing left.
For so many nights, I thought of killing him in his sleep. But I was afraid. Not of him, but of loneliness. A lonely paradise was worse than a hell with enemies. Ahab was a crazy man, obsessed with the whale that took his leg. So obsessed, he easily tolerated the boredom of the sea for three years.
As for me, I worked and learned how to navigate by day, cried myself to sleep, and tolerated the nightmares of my dead mother by night.
It was an awfully long journey that I may detail in that another diary. What should interest you dear reader is the night I met the faerie.
She was tiny, the size of my palm. And she had wings and a funny way of speaking. One night she knocked on my window. I was so scared, until she started swearing at me in her squeaky voice, which made me laugh and realize how tiny she was.
“You weren’t going to open the window for me?” she squeaked. “It’s cold outside.”
“Normally I’d throw you out,” I said. “You’re nothing but a big insect to me.”
“Then why haven’t you?” she rested her tiny hands on her waist and pouted.
“I’m bored.”
“Me too,” she said. “I’ve been inside the whale for too long. You don’t want to know what happens inside when he burps.”
I laughed. “Are you for real? A fly that talks?”
“I’m not a fly. I’m the faerie your father was looking for, stupid boy.”
I sat and stared at her. “Are you serious?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “And I’m here to show you the way to the island.”
I shut the door to my room and shushed her. Ahab could be listening. “Why haven’t we found you long before?”
“I had to wait for you to turn sixteen.” she said.
“I turned sixteen?” I hadn’t counted the days. I hadn't known I spent so much time with the vicious one-legged man. “Why sixteen?”
“Rules of the island.”
“I’m fed up with all this talk about the island,” I said.
“I know. But it’s time for you to realize who you are and what the island is.”
“Are you going to tease me like everyone else?”
“No, I’m going to tell you, but we have to save a girl first.”
“A girl?” I furrowed my eyebrows. “Haven’t seen a girl in years. Except for the mermaids, if they count as girls.”
“You didn’t ask me who the girl is or why. You talk too much.”
“I know.” I rolled my eyes. “Who is the girl?”
“The price you have to pay to get your treasure.”
“The price? I thought I paid my debt to the sea already.”
“You haven’t,” the faerie said. “The universe will grant you a most precious island. And the universe demands balance.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“The universe will give you access to an incredible treasure, and will ask you to do good things for the boys and girl you will find on the island.”
I didn’t swallow that universe concept, but I kept listening.
“If the universe gives you good, it has to give you bad as well. That’s the balance.”
“Are you saying the girl is the…”
“The bad,” the faerie nodded. “She is a troubled girl. Very troubled. And the universe will demand that you take care of her. In return, you get to find the island without Ahab and anyone else chasing you.”
I stood up and sighed. I was tired of mermaids, pipes, melodies, islands, and secrets. I just needed to get off the boat and start a new life somewhere. I didn’t care much for the treasure anymore. “Anything to get to the island,” I said. “Just tell me where the girl is.”
“On a ship called Demeter,” the faerie said.
“I haven’t seen a single ship with people alive
on it for years.”
“This one is no different. But those on it aren’t dead. They’re sleeping. A long sleep.”
“The girl is sleeping too?”
“Yes. Now follow me.”
The faerie helped me leave the boat. I swam in the cold water after her, risking death. But I trusted her, and I still don’t know why I did, until today.
She took me to another ship which I couldn’t have seen without her glow in the mist.
The Demeter was silent. Finding the girl in a coffin hadn’t been hard. The faerie asked me to open the coffin to make sure it was the girl we were looking for.
I did.
The girl took my breath away. Even asleep. Looking pale and dead. It wasn’t beauty that drew me toward her. Something else I couldn’t explain. As if she were my destiny, too.
“Why is she sleeping?” I whispered.
“Don’t ask,” the faerie said. “Don’t even ask her about her past when she wakes up. She needs a new life, just like you. Now pull her out, gently.”
I did, noticing a lot of teeth scattered in the bottom of the coffin. I didn't comment though.
“Where to now?” I said.
“Look.” the faerie pointed ahead.
And there I saw it. Finally, after all these years. I saw a whale rising up from the sea, water rocking the ocean around us. It felt like the end of the world. But then the whale settled down to floating calmly in the water.
I could see palm trees, forest, and even wooden houses from where I stood. “Am I going to be all alone with her on this island?” I asked.
“No,” the faerie said. “Others will arrive. You will be their leader.”
We took a small boat from the ship toward the island. Soon we arrived at one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my life. The island itself. I didn’t even need to find a treasure on it. The island itself was a treasure. So beautiful it brought a tear to my eyes.
“The island is yours,” the faerie said, about to flutter away.
“Wait!” I said, holding the girl in my arms. “I want to know more.”
“Like what?” the faerie said.
“Who is this girl?”
“Her name is Wendy. Wendy Darling,” the faerie said. “Some call her Sleeping Beauty, but trust me she is hard to live with. You will take care of her as promised, or the universe will curse you.”
