Voyage of the Owl

by Belinda Murrell

  ‘It will help to keep your bodies warmer and protect you from the bluebubbles,’ Serena explained. ‘Place it thickly around your neck and throat, and all over your body. If the bluebubbles sting you around your neck, you could stop breathing and die.’

  Lily quickly translated.

  The children all glanced at each other in trepidation, then stared out at the sea. There were more of the bluebubbles now, being pushed across the water towards them by the breeze. Now they could see that each one had a long blue tail, some two or three metres long, that rippled below them.

  ‘The long tails are the stingers,’ Serena continued. ‘The stingers wrap themselves around your body and burn like fire. The ointment forms a barrier so it won’t hurt quite as much. If one wraps around you, you will need to pull it off – but protect your fingertips with your shirt.’

  Obediently, Ethan and Lily smeared the ointment thickly over their whole bodies, but especially on their faces and necks.

  Roana sat pale and worried in the bow, tightly holding onto one end of the tubing.

  Saxon fiddled with the oars, clearing away some of the bluebubbles around the boat, pretending to be busy to take his mind off the danger Lily and Ethan faced. They had all been at sea long enough to know about sharks, Octomon, Barramon and deadly Sedah warships. But now there was another danger bobbing all around their flimsy rowboat.

  Ethan grinned weakly at Lily, giving her a thumbs-up signal.

  ‘We are ready,’ Lily muttered to Serena in Merrow.

  At a filthy inn called Davy Jones’ Locker, down near the port, Sniffer finally found the person he had been searching for – Stumpy, the former cook of the Owl, left ashore some weeks before after a drunken brawl.

  Stumpy, who was missing a couple of fingers on his left hand, was sitting by himself at a deeply pitted table, sipping on a mug of rotgut and drawing pictures on the table with spilled liquor.

  ‘Good morning, Cook of the Owl,’ Sniffer snuffled, taking a seat. Burgis sat down on the other side of the cook, grinning broadly. Stumpy stood up quickly, nearly knocking over his chair in his haste.

  ‘Gotta be going,’ Stumpy murmured indistinctly. Burgis pushed his shoulder, gently forcing him back down into his seat.

  ‘I need to talk to you about your captain, Fox, and the smuggling vessel known as the Owl,’ Sniffer whispered. ‘And a certain group of passengers taken aboard about three weeks ago?’

  ‘Never heard of them,’ the cook muttered, nervously taking another swig of rotgut. ‘Anyone can tell you, I’ve been here, minding my own business for weeks. Haven’t been near a ship.’

  ‘You have a choice,’ Sniffer offered. ‘Either you tell me everything you know about Fox, the Owl and her latest passengers and I will reward you amply. Or Burgis and I will escort you back to the dungeons of Tira, where Burgis will enthusiastically encourage you to share this information with us regardless. Either way you will tell me everything – where she sails, when and where the Owl will return, her secret signals, Fox’s escape routes.’

  Stumpy swallowed painfully, as Burgis heartily clapped him on the back. Sniffer dropped a small pouch of silver coins on the table, which jingled cheerily. The cook gazed into the small, dark eyes of Sniffer, then the smiling eyes of the enthusiastic young Sedah soldier, Burgis.

  He nodded reluctantly, images of the dungeons racing through his head.

  ‘The Owl set sail at the full moon, twenty nights ago,’ the cook ventured, his voice cracking and dry.

  ‘Go on,’ Sniffer invited, pushing the pouch closer. Burgis leaned in to catch every word.

  Stumpy sighed. Forgive me, Fox, he thought. I would not willingly betray you or the Owl.

  Lily and Ethan breathed deeply, then lifted up their rocks, carefully judging the hole Saxon had made between the floating bluebubbles.

  On the count of three they dived off the side of the boat and sank down, down, down to the dappled shadows below.

  The first moments were freezing cold, but their bodies quickly adjusted to the shock. A long blue tentacle brushed against Ethan’s leg. The stinger burned sharply but did not wrap around his leg. He ignored the pain, focusing on the shadowy ship below them.

  At low tide, the wreck of the Sea Dragon was only about four metres below the surface. The prow was a few metres deeper, with the deck sloping steeply up towards the stern. The sun above sent fingers of light probing down into the depths below.

  Lily and Ethan opened their eyes under the water, surprised how clearly they could see. Shoals of coloured fish flickered in and out of the rigging – silvers, yellows, blues, black and white. The light was green and ghostly. A majestic silver snapper swam slowly past them, its large eyes gazing at them incuriously.

  To the left darted a flat manta ray, its wings spanning over a metre, its long tail lashing.

  It took a few minutes to adjust to breathing through the pipe. In through the mouth, out through the nose. The air tasted sharp and salty and slightly seaweedy. They both had to concentrate not to hyperventilate. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

  An octopus fled as they approached. For a moment Ethan and Lily were horribly reminded of the Octomon that had nearly killed them at Goldcoin Cove.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Lily kept swimming after the glittering silvery green tail of Serena. They had come too far to stop now.

  As they swam along the deck of the Sea Dragon, heading up to the topmost point at the stern, Serena pointed out one of the new inhabitants of the ship. A large turtle was resting under the ship’s wheel, against the binnacle. His polished shell gleamed brown and cream in the gloom. He rested his small head lazily on one leathery flipper, as his beady eyes watched them swim by.

  Serena led the way, over the railing and down further into the gloom. Something moved slowly and sinuously below them. It was a small bottom-feeding shark, dappled brown and grey, its gills dark slits on its neck, its triangular fins weaving menacingly.

  Lily could vividly imagine its teeth, sharp as razors. She faltered, panic-stricken, nearly losing her tube in shock. Serena sensed her fear and swam back, smiling reassuringly. She bubbled out some words that Lily could not understand, then grasped Lily by the arm and pulled her forward towards the shark.

  The little shark flicked away, startled. Lily swallowed nervously, forcing her leaden legs to kick and her arms to swim on. She thought longingly of the surface and the sunny world up above. Then she thought of the Sun Sword and forced herself to keep going.

  Ethan smiled at her, hiding his own feeling of sick dread. He pointed out the large window that led to the captain’s cabin. The glass had smashed when the ship sank, leaving a gaping hole.

  One by one they dropped their heavy rocks and swam carefully through the opening, avoiding the sharp edges of glass. The cabin listed steeply towards the door, the floor now on a steep slope. The captain’s belongings stirred from their resting places and floated on the gentle current that their movement created.

  The inside of the cabin was dark, with no fingers of sunlight to illuminate the shadows. Ethan’s heart sank. It would be so much more difficult to search the cabin in the darkness, underwater, surrounded by menacing sea creatures. Who knew what creature might now be hiding in the darkness of this cabin cave, waiting to attack them?

  They had not found the Moon Pearl in this cabin when they had all five of them searching with the help of lanterns and no water to hinder their movement and breathing. How on earth had he thought they would manage to find the Moon Pearl on this futile excursion?

  The same thoughts were racing through Lily’s mind. She drew near to Ethan, clutching his arm, her eyes vainly searching the dark. Serena seemed unperturbed by the darkness, as she started to pick through the items floating on the current. In a moment she sensed their hesitation and realised they were blind down here in the darkness.

  Serena extracted something from her seemingly bottomless bag, a round sphere of intense green phosphorescent light. Its light made th
e cabin glow weirdly, yet it was bright enough for them to see by.

  Lily and Ethan swam directly to the centre of the cabin, where the sea trunk had shifted over the trapdoor. Lily helped Ethan to heave it out of the way.

  Ethan struggled to pull up the little trapdoor in the floor. Underneath was the empty space where the black chest of gold ingots had been hidden. Ethan put his arm right into the hole and felt around in every direction.

  There was nothing. He felt again to make doubly sure. He shook his head despondently at Lily. She pulled a face, bubbles blowing up from her nose in a long thin column.

  Ethan gestured to Lily. He started searching one side of the cabin, while she searched the other.

  They had already searched the cabin thoroughly on the night they had broken in. But they searched carefully again, sifting through sodden clothes, bedding and paper pulp.

  Serena seemed entranced by the scattered human artefacts. She fingered a few possessively, then picked up a silver goblet and tucked it into her bag. Then she found a small cherrywood pipe on the floor. Serena picked it up and pretended to smoke it, giggling with delight at her charade. Hagen laughed in glee, clapping his hands, while bright bubbles of air trickled up to the roof. Serena popped the pipe into her bag as well.

  Ethan noticed a small tobacco pouch, which must have fallen off the desk with the pipe. The red leather pouch was tooled with an engraving of a large butterfly, or perhaps a moth.

  Ethan turned away to keep searching the large sea chest. The image on the pouch triggered a niggling memory in his brain. He worried at it with a corner of his mind while he searched the chest. Butterfly. Moth.

  Then it came to him in a blinding flash of recognition. He remembered the coded note that Saxon had found on Lord Lazlac’s desk. They had finally decoded it to read:

  Master,

  Orders fulfilled. Cigars with note.

  Lunar Moth Stars on Sea Dragon two days.

  Lazlac.

  A moth.

  With trembling hands, he untied the leather thong that fastened the moth pouch. The pouch was full of soggy black tobacco. Ethan dug down through the tobacco. Nothing. He carefully sifted through the tobacco, letting the black strands float away on the current. The pouch was empty.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Ethan carefully felt the hard base inside the pouch. His fingers felt a rigid seam along the bottom. He wriggled his fingers along the seam and found a small cavity. His fingertips touched something cool and hard.

  He gestured wildly to Lily, who swam over to see what he had found. Ethan showed her the pouch and the engraving of the moth. Lily looked puzzled, then her eyes crackled with excitement.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Ethan gently wriggled out the object, his hands shaking. He was terrified he might drop whatever it was. Slowly he pulled out his thumb and finger, the object gripped tightly between them. Glowing luminously in the dim green light was a perfectly round, huge white pearl. It was exactly the same size as the ruby they had found hidden in the puzzle cigar box in the palace treasure chambers.

  The Moon Pearl!

  He handed it to Lily, who held it tightly, wild bubbles of air spiralling up in her excitement. Ethan felt inside the seam again and this time pulled out several sparkling diamonds – the Stars! He did not trust himself to take them out of the pouch, in case they slipped away between his fingers to be lost for ever.

  Ethan packed the gems carefully away in the cavity in the base of the pouch, then tucked the Moon Pearl back again. The leather pouch was firmly tied around his neck.

  Both Lily and Ethan felt their hearts pounding in exhilaration. Their mouths grinned so widely, the tubes threatened to slip out and escape. They hugged each other effusively. Lily danced a little hornpipe of delight, her hair billowing out like a cloud of seaweed.

  Serena was ransacking a cupboard of weapons, crooning over six cruel daggers and three curved cutlasses. In the end she could not decide so took them all. Hagen cooed appreciatively.

  Lily gestured to Serena and showed her the pouch around Ethan’s neck. She pointed back to the surface. Serena brandished a cutlass in agreement and led the way, out the Sea Dragon’s window and back towards the surface.

  Ethan tugged on the tubing three times, to let Roana and Saxon know they were on their way back.

  Without their heavy rocks, they shot quickly upwards, scooting through startled schools of fish and frightening off a curious stingray. Their heads bobbed free. They spat out the sodden tubes and breathed deeply and gratefully, carefully dodging the bluebubbles floating on the surface.

  Roana and Saxon hauled them into the boat, bundling them up with warm cloaks and anxious questions. Ethan was too breathless to talk, his teeth chattering from cold, but he smiled triumphantly, stroking the pouch.

  ‘We found it,’ he finally stuttered. ‘We found the Moon Pearl.’

  Roana jumped up and down in excitement, rocking the boat wildly. Aisha barked and leapt, whacking everyone’s legs with her tail. Lily shivered and grinned, whether from cold or excitement, it was hard to tell.

  ‘Show us,’ Saxon begged.

  Carefully, slowly, with wobbly fingers, Ethan pulled out the gems – firstly the luminous large Moon Pearl, and then the smaller sparkling diamonds.

  Everyone breathed out as one. They had done it! They had found the Moon Pearl!

  The exultation and celebration lasted only a moment.

  Serena murmured something quietly to Lily. Shocked, she turned to look. The others followed her gaze. There on the island to the east, a longboat laden with heavily armed Sedah soldiers was launching through the surf.

  ‘Oh, no,’ wailed Roana. ‘Not again.’

  Ethan stuffed the gems back into the tobacco pouch unceremoniously.

  ‘Quick, row,’ yelled Saxon.

  Ethan grabbed one oar and Saxon the other, and they started to row with all their strength.

  ‘Goodbye Serena, goodbye Hagen,’ called Lily in her Merrow tongue. ‘Thank you for everything …’

  Serena waved with a smile. She pulled her pipe out of her bag and started to play once more.

  Beautiful merrow music wafted out over the water, deep and resonant.

  The children expected the Sedah soldiers to be distracted by the music as before. This time the music seemed to have no effect on them. The soldiers pulled powerfully through the surf, ignoring the big waves crashing over the boat.

  Saxon and Ethan rowed strongly, but they were no match for a longboat propelled by thirteen powerful soldiers. The longboat gained steadily on them. Aisha barked and growled in warning.

  Roana and Lily squirmed with nerves. There were only two oars, so they could do nothing to help.

  ‘Maybe the soldiers have learnt from last time and have stopped up their ears,’ Lily cried. ‘They are getting closer and not taking any notice at all of Serena’s pipe music!’

  ‘Girls, you had better get your bows ready,’ Ethan panted. ‘It looks like you will need to cover our backs!’

  The two girls knelt in the stern of the rowboat, quivers on, bows ready, arrows nocked. They peered down the shaft of their arrows as the longboat came closer and closer.

  It was filled with men. Twelve pulled on the rowing oars and one stood in the rear as sweep, calling the rhythm and steering with a long oar. In between were crammed soldiers. Roana and Lily could count the bristling spears, shields and cutlasses.

  Ethan and Saxon were tiring. Saxon was not fully recovered from his brush with the Barramon, and Ethan had just had a strenuous dive to the wreck. The rowboat started to slow, and the longboat gradually gained faster.

  As the longboat came within range, the soldiers nocked their own arrows and let loose a volley of shots. A black cloud of flying arrows pursued the rowboat like deadly insects.

  Roana and Lily screamed. The sight of the deadly arrows spurred Ethan and Saxon on to greater effort. A surge of adrenalin raced through their bodies, sending their hearts poundi
ng, the oxygen pumping and their muscles surging.

  The rowboat responded by leaping forward out of range. The black arrows rained down harmlessly into the water behind them. The rowboat was now well past the first island, with the second island – the island where the Owl was moored – growing closer. But the gap between the two boats was now less than two hundred metres.

  The longboat gained steadily. The gap closed to one hundred and fifty metres, one hundred metres, fifty metres.

  ‘Ready. Aim. Fire,’ ordered Lily. They both shot off a volley of their own arrows – three in a row.

  The soldiers on the longboat immediately placed up a protective roof of shields. The girls stopped firing. It was a waste of precious arrows.

  The soldiers put down their shields. There, bristling up from the many shields, were six green fletched arrows.

  One of the soldiers guffawed some joke about the sight of the young lad and lassie firing arrows on the cream of Sedah manhood.

  All the soldiers broke out laughing, clutching their sides and clapping each other on the back.

  One of the forward soldiers stood up. He held his spear and shield up in the air, in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘Come on, lassie,’ he yelled across the water. ‘Kill me if you dare, or perhaps you’d rather kiss me!’

  He blew air kisses across the water to Lily. The soldiers all laughed uproariously again.

  Lily’s cheeks flamed with embarrassment. She clenched her hand on the bow, wanting to break it over the head of the soldier mocking her.

  Ethan and Saxon rowed valiantly. The Sedah longboat still gained steadily. Roana glanced at Lily in despair. What were they going to do?

  ‘Which one is your boyfriend, lassie?’ jeered the soldier. ‘Or are Tiregian laddies so paltry that you have three? Come and kiss me and you won’t want their kisses any more!’

  The comedian in the longboat was enjoying himself.

  The soldiers laughed again. Several others blew kisses to Lily. The soldiers were content to play with them while the longboat drew closer, like a cat plays with a mouse before it kills it.