The Isle of Gold

by Seven Jane

  With my thoughts filled with the faces of the first family I had ever known—one I was not eager to lose so soon—, and my throat raging with the vaporing, I scaled a swatch of net at the base of a mast and lifted my body upward in challenge to the thrashing waves. Awash in the voices of my brothers and the power bestowed by a full heart, I faced the blistering, icy wind and the swirling, consuming sea, but I no longer did so as a dubious coward who feared her own end. I faced the storm renewed—the proud, determined woman who’d had the courage to disguise herself as a pirate and join a notorious and ruthless crew helmed by the mightiest man I’d ever known. Whether I were Merrin Smith, the brothel-dwelling orphan of Isla Perla, or Merrin Jones, daughter of the fabled Captain Davy Jones who sailed the seas immortally cursed, I would not be undone by the storm that formed the boundary between one world and the next.

  I took a deep breath, pumped my blade as high as I could reach, and screamed into the sky. If the sound of vaporing were to be a scar, then it was one I would proudly wear as a mark of honor for the remainder of my days.

  I would wear until it my bones laid with those of my brothers at the bottom of the sea.

  XIII

  When he had first set eyes upon it, Winters had named the storm that spun and bucked in the sky and seas, tossing the ship like a twig in the water as we were swept into the spinning currents at it crest. He had not just called it any name, but had given it the name of a goddess—one that I remembered well from my research.

  Charybdis.

  A daughter of Poseidon, Charybdis had been stolen away by his brother, Zeus, after she’d helped her father in combat against her uncle. As punishment, Zeus had chained her to the seabed and cursed her with an uncontrollable thirst that could never be quenched. To abate her thirst Charybdis drank the ocean whole thrice times daily and then vomited it back again, alternatively gulping and belching the water and giving rise to both whirlpools and tides that flooded and drowned the ships who sailed above where she lay. When Odysseus had faced her, he had said that Charybdis seethed like a cauldron on a blazing fire, swallowing the saltwater down so completely that the dark sands of the sea’s bottom were visible in the depths of her throat.

  Dunn had said the heart of the ocean was the home of the gods of the sea. By my estimation that meant that if such a place existed, it would reside in the belly of Charybdis, housed within the space of seabed exposed by her funnel. Incited with the energy from the vaporing, fury gave way to curiosity and anticipation to face this great, raging legend made real before my eyes. I returned my cutlass to its position on my belt and swung free from the net, moving nearer to the mainmast and into the throng of the men who had gathered at the rails in the waist of the ship. The captain was standing with his hands locked on the rail while Dunn waited nearby, scowling unpleasantly as though the sight disgusted him, and so I took my place beside Tom. We did not bother to waste words that would have gone unheard in the booming winds. Instead, the two of us stared overboard, down the bottomless gullet of the cursed daughter of Poseidon as she raged just off the starboard side of the ship.

  Perhaps it was a consequence of her curse, but goddess or not, the maelstrom was unlike any I had ever heard of before. I had expected it to take the usual appearance of shaken saltwater, blue and frothy, but as I stared into the whirlpool’s mouth I saw that it was black and speckled with jagged chunks of swirling, icy rock, same as the sea around it had been. Words failed me as I studied its funnel, which was describable only as a sharp fang of ice that narrowed in a thin, serrated ribbon as it spun in wild, twisting motions toward the ocean floor. It was a violent cone of water that sucked, and pulled, and swallowed everything into its downdraft to crush it within a churning spiral of death. Upon closer inspection I saw that some of the shards I had thought to be ice were in fact not ice, but splintered remains of wooden planks, the broken corpses, presumably, of other vessels that had fallen victim to Charybdis’ unending thirst.

  Staring, hypnotized by the spiraling depths of Charybdis’ throat, I was so entranced that I barely noticed the first flash of blinding green light that lit the sky above me. It was vivid and bright, and it cast a hue over the sea, recoloring the black water an eerie shade of ethereal green that was brilliant enough to glow behind my eyelids when I blinked, like I had stared into the flame of a candle too long. Behind this strange light came a deafening shudder as a second bolt of the green light seared the sky, and then a sharp crack like the sound of a tree snapping in half shook the ship. It tore my attention away from the water and I jerked my eyes in the direction of the sound, not even bothering to shield my eyes from the pouring rain. About halfway up the height of the topmast I saw where the sound had landed: the tall pole bore a zigzagged wound where lightning had raked its claws into it. I watched as it toppled and began to fall.

  It came down heavily, purposefully, and rushing along with it came a host of smaller pieces of heavy debris—bits of rope and iron. The sail tore away from the mast in shreds that were instantly whipped away into the wind and lost before they could begin to drift downward. I followed the fall with widened eyes, watching as wood and rope plummeted with surprising velocity toward the waist of the ship. I observed their fall, projecting their path with morbid curiosity until my eyes landed on the man standing directly in their path. I had not felt Tom move beside me, but there he stood—ignorant of the danger rushing down above him as he worked with his head bowed, securing something to the base of the mast.

  “Tom!” The name tore from my throat in a screech so high and tight that it felt like I had swallowed splinters of glass. The boatswain could not hear my voice above Charybdis’ roar. “Tom!” I called again, waving my arms frantically while I rushed toward him.

  I watched in horror as a thick knot of rigging plunged downward, falling faster than the rest of the debris like a bullet aimed directly for his head. I ran faster, barreling through the other men who were just as oblivious to the danger while they worked to brace for the inevitable impact of the storm ahead, but I was no match for the speeding weight of the rope. Time slowed as I watched it bear down at Tom’s head, and then I screamed another mouthful of glass as I watched it collide against him, the impact instantly erasing the consciousness from his eyes as his body crumpled lifelessly to the slick, wet planks of the deck at my feet.

  As if it sensed my despair, a blast of thunder boomed overhead in a mocking howl of laughter. I put my hands against Tom’s chest and then his neck, feeling for his pulse while the rain pounded down upon me, obscuring my vision even more as tears joined the raindrops pouring down my face. I pushed desperately at the places where it should be—wrist, neck, wrist again—but felt nothing. I would not believe he was dead.

  “Help,” I called out, grabbing at the pant legs of the men who passed by within my reach. “Mister Birch is hurt. I need help moving him out of the way of the storm.”

  “Ain’t no way out of the storm,” Domingo, owner of the scrap of breeches in my fist, sneered at me as he jerked out of my grasp. “Pull ’im to the side of the—”

  Another crash shook the ship and I threw my body over the limp expanse of Tom’s, using as much of my smaller form as was possible to shelter his unconscious body from the items that continued to rain from the sky as the ship edged closer to the mouth of the swirling, swallowing maelstrom. A hunk of rusty iron landed at my side, missing me by no more than three inches. It clattered away when the ship lurched severely on its keel, one side rising as the other rolled beneath it. Everything that wasn’t tied down skidded across the deck, Tom’s body and mine included. I dug my fingers into the fabric of Tom’s coat and burrowed my head into his chest, clinging to him so tightly that it felt like the bones of my fingers might break from the strength of their own grip. The ship pulled again, and we were slammed into the opposite rail of the ship with such force that it knocked the breath from my lungs. In the clamor around me I heard the screams of men as more were lost, flying over the edges when the Riptide fell on her
side. The sky was lost and all that was left to see was water.

  Vaguely, I hoped the scream had been that heartless bastard Domingo’s.

  If it hadn’t, it might soon be. One final sip of the mighty Charybdis and the ship would be sucked completely into her greedy gullet. The cold breath of fear crept like frost along the edges of my heart.

  Dunn’s voice reached me over the noise. “It be time, Mister Rivers, for ye to take off your disguise an’ reveal who you really be.”

  Lifting my face from Tom’s chest, I looked for the older man. I found him, standing in the waist of the ship with his hands crossed over his chest. Despite everything he seemed calm, almost serene.

  “I am no one,” I screamed at him over the roar over the storm, while, as if heeding Dunn’s words my hat blew away from my head and was lost in the wind. My hair whipped wildly around my face, covering my eyes before being matted down in place with sea spray. I could taste the salt from my tears as they slid toward my lips. “An orphan left behind like waste on an island. Who cares that I am not a man when the ship is about to be swallowed by the ocean?”

  “Aye,” Dunn shouted in agreement, eyes on the water as the deck began to fill with puddles. “But names have power … ’specially yours.” He said this as if it meant something. Brandon Dunn would be cryptic ’til the end, damn him.

  “I am no one,” I repeated, fresh, bitter tears stinging my face as they fell from my eyes. I looked at Dunn, whose eyes were soft, encouraging, and infuriating. “I am a woman without a name, and no story about legends and—”

  “Speak your name, damn you!” Winters interrupted to issue an impatient command from somewhere behind me. A flash of green light lit up the sky, this time so bold and blazing it could not be mistaken, and the urgency in his raspy voice increased as he ordered me again, “It is time! Speak your name and by the gods, deliver us all.”

  “No name has the power to save us from this beast,” I started, but even as I said the words I wasn’t sure I believed them. Once a string was pulled from the fabric of what one considered reality, the entire thing quickly came unraveled, the boundaries of things real and imagined blurred together in a tangled, indistinct truth. I had seen frozen, ghostly seas and the soulless eyes of possessed men, and was at that very moment waiting to be consumed by a goddess turned monster.

  With those as my final thoughts, I sat myself on the deck of the ship and, pulling Tom’s unconscious, unbeating body into my lap, I prepared to address the sea. “I am Merrin Smith,” I whispered, taking one last look at the swirling waves that tightened closer and closer around the ship like the glittering blue-black scales of a constricting python. I stared at the consuming emptiness which would swallow the ship whole, that would suck, chew, and tear it into scraps of wood and canvas as it consumed us all in one final gulp. Then, I blinked the image away and once more I set my eyes on Tom Birch’s face, taking in his face one final time, slack-mouthed and sightless as he lay in the nest of my crossed legs, unaware that they would never again see the light of day. Unaware that the image of his face would be the last beautiful sight I saw.

  I closed my eyes, preserving this final view safely behind my eyelids. “I am Merrin Smith,” I began, my voice as weak and shaky as the name. I swallowed and took a deep, steadying breath, and then started over once more, this time with my eyes opened and facing the storm. Dunn’s words and Winters’ demand echoed in my head. “I am Merrin Jones,” I said with a voice as loud and powerful as I could manage, loudly enough for the men nearest me to notice, to see their eyes widen in shocked recognition upon hearing the infamous name that Dunn had insisted was mine, and to see my hair blowing freely and tellingly in the wind. I saw them see me for the first time, not Westley Rivers, and I thought perhaps I saw a hint of relief in their eyes. “I am Merrin Jones,” I yelled again, strengthened by my own words. “I am the daughter of Captain Davy Jones, and we will not be taken by the sea!”

  These words were my last as the nose of the ship tipped into the fury, hovered, and then dove headfirst into the throat of the storm.

  Part III

  XIV

  I do not know what happened after we fell into the swirling throat of Charybdis’ maelstrom, nor for how long I slept, if that is indeed what I did. I awoke in a place that was warm, quiet, and not my own—and for that matter not any room I knew to exist aboard the Riptide.

  The first clue to my strange new surroundings was the bed in which I lay. Rather than the thin, worn canvas of my familiar hammock in the captain’s quarters, my body rested comfortably on a soft, down mattress stacked high with dozens of silken pillows. There was a heavy blanket draped across me, soft and supple and made perhaps of seal fur, and as I pushed it away I saw that the torn, sea-soaked rags of my usual clothing had been removed. Now, I was dressed in a thin cotton damask shift that wasn’t mine, and which was laced in eyelets sewn up and down the front and studded with tiny freshwater pearls. Another pair of beaded eyelets marched down the lengths of my outer arms until they rounded the curves of my elbows and reached my forearms. It was by far the most feminine item I had ever worn and it seemed like it had been sewn just for me, with a fit tailored to hug my figure as if a soft corset had been sewn invisibly within it, and of a quality more rich than I had ever seen or imagined. My hair was loose and dry, and it tumbled down my back in long, lively curls that were fuller and of a deeper shade of brown than I had ever seen it, as if my hair had been dyed the color of chocolate and styled by a fine salon in the Old World. It was longer than I remembered it to be, but I had worn it tied back and bound for so long that it was impossible to truly tell.

  I felt refreshed and at ease, as if I’d slept soundly for days and was now struggling to wake, held captive in the embrace of a temporal, dreamlike fog. The feeling was curious and slightly surreal—thin almost—and I ran my hands over myself, raking my fingers through my hair and running the tips over the delicate eyelets to see if I could discern the source of the odd feeling in my bones. All was as it should be, but then it wasn’t, either—the body simultaneously mine and not mine at all. I paused when I reached my left arm and did not feel the dull throb of bruises I knew to be there. As I looked at my skin I saw that no trace of the purple smudges left by Dunn’s fingers remained; my arm was as blank and perfectly white as if the mark had never happened.

  Alarmed and dazed, I sat up sharply in the bed and looked around the unfamiliar chamber in which I had found myself, unsure if I should search for a path to escape or enjoy the stunning view of this dazzling and unusual place that overwhelmed all of my senses in turn. The room was a bedroom chamber, but not like any I’d ever seen; it was still, and dry, and appeared to have been carved in the cavity of a cenote. The walls and floors were made of sea-green tinted limestone, and stalagmites of carved calcium ran in columns from its top to bottom, providing conduits for the distant sound of rainwater that echoed softly in the otherwise quiet room. The trembling flames of what must have been a thousand candles of varying size reflected brightly, their flames lighting the room in the reflections of blazing mirror mosaics and dancing across the gilded surfaces of more treasure than would have filled the Riptide’s holds if she had the space of a ship five times her size. The air was scented, but not salty like the ocean—a scent like lotus, powdery and sweet. The room flourished with the wealth of beautiful trinkets, each more lovely than the last, but none were as beautiful as the woman who I discovered sitting at a vanity at the far end of the room, nestled like a crowned jewel amongst her treasures.

  Her back was to me as she studied her own image in an ornate golden handheld mirror, held slightly tilted to the side so that her reflection was hidden from my view. A second, larger mirror hung on a wall of stone beside her, entwined in gold, but its glass was clouded and foggy from age so that her face was obscured. Still, I could see that her profile had a familiar quality to it, as if I had seen it somewhere before though I was certain that I had not.

  Seeing her now, I was not sure
how I’d missed her in my initial sweep of the chamber. I surely shouldn’t have—there was nothing about her that was common or unnoticeable; in fact, it was difficult to do anything other than stare in amazement at a woman who looked as she did. Besides Evangeline, this lovely creature was the most stunningly beautiful thing I had ever seen, though as I regarded her from behind there was something distinctly unsettling about her that made her appear less than entirely human and utterly devoid of Mistress Dahl’s warmth. I wasn’t sure if she were a creature to be adored or to be feared, nor why I had awoken in her presence.

  The latter unnerved me most of all. I should have been fighting a storming sea, or lying somewhere at its bottom. And then I remembered the gods at the heart of the ocean, and thought that perhaps I had arrived after all.

  It was near impossible to put the woman’s description into words. She was overwhelmingly feminine, as if she were a flower transformed into flesh—regal and fragile, ethereal but still so strongly tethered to the earth that she might have governed it. An orchid perhaps, or a yawning calla lily. Her busy movements about her vanity were graceful and precise, and she conducted them silently as if they were for my benefit. Of all of her qualities, most striking about her appearance, I decided finally, was her hair. It was not of any shade I’d seen before, save for atop the crown of a figure carved of shell and stone. It could only be described as the color of pearls if they had been spun into tresses as fine as glass; silvery-white with hues of blues and purples as it shimmered illusively in the flickering light the same as abalone under the sun. A line of scalloped seashells that were still pink from the sea offset the gleam of her hair. These adorned the length of her profile on one side, sweeping in a waving line from her forehead to the nape of her neck. The rest of her magnificent mane had been combed into a long twist of glossy curls that swept over her opposite shoulder and were clasped by a mother of pearl clip. An expanse of the milky white flesh of her back was exposed and it had the same shimmering, spectral quality as her hair, like it were all made from the same substance. A dainty gold chain interrupted the solid perfection of her skin as it wound itself around from her waist, up and around, and ending as it circled the base of her tall, swanlike neck. She wore a wrapped dress of crinkled red silk that clung to her slender form, tight and tucked and ending in golden tendrils that reached back over her bare shoulder like the pale tips of a many-fingered crab claw.