Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath

by Lauren Child

  Ruby did find that curious. It was like one of those riddles, similar to that one about the diver found drowned in the middle of a fire-ravaged forest. There was always a logical explanation if you thought about it long enough. To have drowned in your own boat, alone, meant there must have been water on board. A person could drown in just a few inches, but anyone but a baby would have to be unconscious to do so. She walked into LB’s office, picked up the file from off the desk, and began reading immediately.

  The report said nothing about signs of a bump to the head or the man having been drunk; this was no accident, far from it. However, there were clear signs that someone had tried to strangle him, but not with their hands, the injuries didn’t fit with that. Perhaps the assailant had given up with the strangling and decided to drown him instead.

  The conundrum was that the boat was found way out at sea and there were no signs to suggest another occupant. So therefore, the fisherman must have been attacked either by a diver, who then swam away, or by someone who sailed by, boarded the boat, drowned him, and left the scene. But then this didn’t make sense. Why would you drown a man and then pop him back in his boat? Why not make it look like an accident?

  It was the sort of thing that happened in a Sherlock Holmes mystery, not just off the coast of Twinford.

  “Rats!” said a voice, a man’s voice, sounding flustered.

  She looked up to see Blacker hurrying across the Spectrum hall. He was balancing drinks and donuts, and some hot coffee had just spilled down his sleeve.

  “Sorry, Ruby, I’ve been with Sea Division and I couldn’t get the darned scuba-sub to start and everything sorta slid from there. Boats and submarines just aren’t my thing.”

  Once they were comfortable in the globe room, they started trying to figure out what they knew and what they didn’t know.

  “No one responded to the Mayday call sent out by your mother, or the ones sent from the Runklehorns’ yacht, because it transpires that we were right: all Maydays were blocked — deliberately blocked.”

  Ruby nodded. “That figures.”

  “Given that your parents are not the only ones to have tussled with pirates — there have been several incidents — I think we can begin to imagine that pirates might be to blame for the blocked Maydays.”

  Ruby nodded again. “I thought so too. I guess they don’t want anyone to come to the victims’ rescue while they’re busy with their plundering. But why aren’t they going after the shipping?”

  “Yeah, I agree,” said Blacker. “That doesn’t make sense. These men live to rob. It’s what they do — like sharks swim and eat, these men sail and steal, but why don’t they bother with the more valuable spoils?”

  Ruby sighed. “It would mean there has to be something else they’re after, something that’s worth more to them than random cargo.”

  Ruby and Blacker worked together for the next couple of hours, and as they worked, they began to see a clear pattern evolving. The only boats that were attacked by pirates were small boats that came directly into the waters within a mile or so of the Sibling Islands. The larger tankers and shipping vessels couldn’t come as close because of the rocks, but anything that sailed within sight of the Sibling Islands was steered off course, taking them as far away from the area as was possible.

  It looked random, but it really wasn’t.

  “They’re trying to keep people away from the waters around the Sibling Islands,” said Ruby. “They aren’t particularly interested in robbing them, they just want them gone.”

  “And that isn’t too hard generally,” said Blacker. “Most ships avoid the place anyway, apart from fishing boats, and even the fishing hasn’t been good lately. Most of the big shoals have gone.”

  “Yeah, Mrs. Digby’s all upset about it,” said Ruby.

  “Keen on fish, is she?”

  “Swears by it,” said Ruby.

  “Well, Mrs. Digby would be reassured to know Kekoa is investigating that,” said Blacker. “But so far she still isn’t sure if the problem’s man-made or caused by some natural phenomenon.” He tapped his pencil on the desk as he thought. “But what we do know is these guys must really want to keep folks away from the islands; they don’t want a soul observing what they’re up to.”

  “But what exactly could that be?” pondered Ruby. “The islands are just rock.”

  “Yeah, and the waters around the islands can be very dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing; the swells and currents are pretty strong,” added Blacker.

  “Well, except for right now,” said Ruby.

  “That’s right, your folks got lucky. Kekoa told me about that asteroid.”

  “Yeah,” said Ruby. “Galactic activity certainly seems to be fitting in with someone’s plans.”

  “But plans for what?” said Blacker.

  That question Ruby didn’t have an answer for, but she knew a good place to start looking.

  RULE 53: IF SOMETHING IS WORTH KNOWING, CHANCES ARE IT’S WRITTEN DOWN SOMEWHERE.

  TWINFORD WAS AN OLD TOWN, now considered a city: one that continued to grow and sprawl desert-ward. Tall, sleek buildings appeared to the north side, but the center of town was carefully preserved and protected by the Twinford Historical Society. The buildings — old, beautiful, and full of history — attracted tourists from far-flung places as well as neighboring towns.

  In the very middle of Twinford, just near the city museum and city bank, stood the city library. A magnificent and imposing piece of architecture that announced its importance in Latin, via the motto carved across the front: Ipsa scientia potestas est.

  Ruby loved this place, and always had: so many books, so much knowledge to stuff your brain with — and the comforting sounds of the creaking floorboards and discreet whispers provided a certain intimacy. It was also open late into the evening, sometimes all night, and that suited Ruby very well indeed.

  Ruby dumped her coat and satchel on one of the many chairs flanking the long wooden table that stretched almost the length of the library floor. Green-shaded reading lights illuminated the surface, giving the place a cozy glow: it was a nice place to study.

  Ruby walked between the rows of hardback spines, all sitting in perfect order on the ancient-looking shelves of beautiful dark wood, handsomely crafted a hundred years ago. Some volumes had been waiting many, many months to be chosen; some would stand untouched from this year to the next. She chose with great care, methodically scanning the books, studying each one before adding it to her pile. Forty-five minutes later she had a stack of twenty-two, one on top of the other, sitting in front of her on the table.

  Then she began reading. Book after book. She read about the time when sailors risked life and limb to sail the high seas, when the only way for people to move from country to country was by ship. The journeys that could take months, the passengers who died on the way.

  As she read her way through the more ancient books, Ruby stumbled across various writings describing the wrecking of the Seahorse and the looting of the Twinford treasure. They tended to differ in detail, but most seemed to agree on two things.

  One: That the Seahorse must in truth have been wrecked many miles to the north of the Sibling Islands; it was just not possible for the ship to have sailed into those waters at the spot the child, Martha Fairbank, described — it was far too dangerous, and the captain was experienced enough to know that.

  Two: That pirates brought about the ship’s destruction by attacking the crew and setting the ship alight, and that most of the treasure must have sunk without a trace.

  Yet no one believed the little girl’s tale about rubies and a sea monster — just a child’s wild imaginings. As for her mother being taken alive? This was the wishful thinking of a four-year-old girl who had lost everything.

  Ruby didn’t feel she had discovered anything she didn’t already know until she opened a book written by a certain John Elridge Featherstone, a physician who claimed to have treated Martha for ravings and fever after she w
ashed up on Twinford’s shore. He had spoken at length with Martha’s governess as well as the child herself and had gleaned some interesting facts — information Ruby had not read anywhere else.

  In this account it was Martha Lily Fairbank who took center stage, and while Featherstone clearly didn’t believe all she had to say, he had at least listened: Martha insisted that once the pirates believed that they had murdered all on board, they began carrying supplies from the ship, and along with these supplies they carried her mother, kicking and screaming, “My daughter, my daughter, she cannot be dead.” But little Martha did not call out to her; she stayed perfectly silent, stock-still in her barrel.

  Those pirates who remained aboard went belowdecks to search for gems and gold and treasures, and that’s when they were taken by surprise. A violent battle broke out, for it seemed they had not slaughtered all of the Seahorse crew. The men — pirates and sailors — fought to the death as the burning ship sank beneath the waves. Though it was true that most of the treasure was lost with the ship and most of those on board went down with it — some of the pirates did survive. They escaped clutching the priceless Fairbank ruby necklace and a casket of rare gems. Martha saw it all from where she hid, safe in her apple barrel.

  This much of Martha’s story Ruby knew already. But then it got more interesting.

  According to Martha, this small band of pirates clambered aboard a makeshift raft, clutching the treasure that was the Fairbank rubies and Eliza’s casket of gems. The barrel Martha had hidden in was also brought, along with the other supplies, and the pirates floated on their raft to a secret cave in the rocky Sibling Islands. Which of the two sister islands they rowed to Martha did not know since she could see very little from where she crouched, peering through cracks inside the barrel. All she said was, “We sailed to the rock guarded by the golden bird.” She also described the cave the pirates paddled toward. “It had a big rock ledge that overhung the entrance like a porch or a lintel — a giant’s door.”

  Martha could hear from the echoes that she was now inside a deep, enclosed, cavernous space. The pirates’ voices were clear, and she listened as they talked of the treasure they had salvaged and how they would make good their escape. “No landlubber will find this place, so secret is it. A cave like this cannot be found by town-dwellers. We will stow the treasure here,” they said, “high above the tidal pool. The captain will come for us soon enough.”

  Several times Martha feared that she would be discovered, knowing that before long the barrel would be opened. That night she bravely crept out of her hiding place while the pirates slept, hoping she would be able to escape the cave.

  She walked down many of the tunnels, scratching her initial as she went. Being an unusually intelligent child, she knew she might need to find her way back.

  For three nights she explored the caves while the pirates slept, always careful to return to the apple barrel before they awoke. On the final night, as she curled herself inside the cask, she began to fear that she might never again see the sky.

  Some hours later she was abruptly woken by a whispering — a mournful sound as she later described it. Louder and louder it called, but the pirates slept on. Yet when they finally awoke, they let out terrible screams, the screams of grown men, fearless men, who now had terror in their cries.

  “It will kill us all! It strangles us in our sleep. This monster, this devil of the deep.”

  Martha saw a tongue of lightning strike at the cave and then heard a huge thundering as a rock crashed down and the cave quickly filled with turbulent water. The barrel was sucked into a “whirling thing,” as she described it. Down, down it went, and then up again, and the child was flung far from the island cave and there she bobbed in her apple barrel.

  The breakers carried her tumbling to shore, and like a cracked nut, the barrel broke in two and the little girl could once again see sky, and watched as a star fell from the heavens.

  Hours later she was found like a tiny mermaid asleep on the sand, her turquoise dress gathered up like a tail, her face, legs, and arms all dyed indigo by some mysterious pigment. The child told the story to those who would listen, of the pirates and the plunder, her mother and the rubies, the treasure caves, the whispering and the devil from the deep.

  A search party went to find the Seahorse, some motivated by revenge, some by greed. But few boats could sail in those waters, and the ship, even if it had gone down where she claimed, had sunk far beyond human sight into the turbulent currents, and the jewels could not be retrieved. As for the hidden rubies and casket of gems, the caves the child spoke of simply did not exist, could not exist. Some brave souls searched, but no cave was ever found, and her talk of floating to the Sibling Islands on a raft was not possible with the currents in that region as furious as they were.

  Martha was forgiven her ungodly lies because no one could doubt that she had been through a trauma so terrible, she could no longer speak the truth. Her mother dead, her inheritance lost. She never spoke one word more about those dark days of seafaring terror. And as for the story, it gradually became myth. The treasure, the Seahorse, the pirates? Perhaps the boat had just been hit by a terrible storm.

  Ruby closed the book and sat back in her chair. She remained there for some time, quite still. She thought about Martha — her long, long-distant relative, her long-dead relative whose voice she almost thought she heard. Believe me, it seemed to say, Listen, I tell the truth. I cannot lie. Ruby opened her notebook and wrote:

  QUESTION

  Why would Martha lie?

  ANSWER

  So the search would continue for her lost mother? Because she could not bear to face the truth, that her mother was truly dead?

  Possible of course.

  But what if Martha was telling the truth?

  What if her mother WAS carried off to join the pirate band?

  What if the pirate caves did exist?

  What if the Seahorse really did sink somewhere near the Sibling Islands, and for some reason the currents were still then too, like they were for my parents? Like they are right now?

  And if it WAS the asteroid that calmed the waters for them, could the same one have passed by the earth all those years ago?

  Ruby was well aware that asteroids can come back again and again, in very long orbits. Two hundred years didn’t seem impossible. And Martha did talk about seeing a falling star as she lay on the shore. . . .

  Then, of course, there was the matter of the whirling thing.

  A giant whirlpool?

  It was certainly possible.

  The cave?

  Perhaps the huge rock Martha heard crashing down covered the cave entrance so it could no longer be seen.

  A sea devil?

  Maybe the lightning had conjured the illusion of a sea monster by casting strange shadows on the cave walls.

  The whispering and mournful sounds?

  Just voices of woe and fear combining with the sound of sharp splitting rock as the cave collapsed and the water rushed in: no monster, no supernatural being, just weather and sea colliding.

  The picture was getting less blurry. Ruby and Blacker’s theory about ships being rerouted to keep them away from the Sibling Islands, the calmed currents . . . someone out there wanted something from the Siblings waters, and if Ruby Redfort could believe in the treasure of the Seahorse, then maybe she wasn’t the only one.

  Maybe, a mere two hundred years later, someone was trying to dive the wreck and secure its sunken bounty.

  The only thing was how to prove it.

  WHEN RUBY GOT HOME, SHE WENT IN SEARCH OF HITCH: he was nowhere in the main house, so she guessed he must be downstairs in his apartment. She could hear him playing music — the clarinet, something he often did if he got more than a few moments to himself. He claimed it helped him think, but Ruby wondered if it didn’t help him block out the noise of the day, the tricky thoughts that must buzz endlessly around that head of his. The music was probably his own form of white noise.


  He didn’t seem to hear her knock, but the door was ajar and Bug, who had followed her down, pushed his way in. Hitch continued to play until he noticed Ruby standing there in the doorway.

  “Hey, kid, you not out riding the streets of Twinford fighting crime?”

  “No, I’ve been at the library.”

  “How very civilized. Any new books I should be reading?”

  “Maybe an old one,” said Ruby.

  “I’ve always enjoyed the classics. What’s it about?”

  “Pirates, treasure, sea monsters — that kinda stuff,” she replied.

  “Sounds gripping,” said Hitch.

  “Yeah, it was,” said Ruby. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  “I look forward to it, kid. Oh, by the way, I got you the radio tapes, left them in your room.”

  “Thanks,” said Ruby. “I’ll go check them out.”

  She spent the rest of the night listening to the tapes, to the eerie music, the music that wasn’t quite music. Eventually, the cassette clicked off and she fell asleep, her head resting on Bug, and for a couple of hours they both slept well.

  The next morning Ruby felt terrible; she was suffering from lack of sleep and was kinda grouchy. The tiredness was building up in her and she was finding school a chore. All she really wanted to do was prove herself right: this Chime thing had to be more than it seemed, it had to be a code. It was the only way to make sense of it.

  She was sitting in Mrs. Drisco’s class listening to the noises in her earpiece. She had this neat little device, very discreet — a tiny tape player tucked into her satchel. In her exercise book she wrote the notes she was hearing. The tricky thing was that she kept having to stop and start the machine. This made a rather obvious clunking sound, a sound that did not escape the sharp ears of Mrs. Drisco.