Wicked's Way

by Anna Fienberg

  ‘We’re better off without them,’ Wicked told the men. ‘I mean, take that little try-hard, Horrendo. He pretended to care about you all but no, soon as he could, he snatched his opportunity and vanished. Your little angel just abandoned us without a thought.’

  ‘Well, that’s a bit harsh,’ said Dogfish. ‘The Captain was going to make him walk the plank!’

  Wicked shook his head. ‘Never trust a soul. Haven’t you all learned that by now?’

  ‘Still an’ all,’ sighed Squid, ‘the lad did leave us with his recipe for lobster mornay.’

  ‘Aye, it was right thoughtful of ’im, an’ we still got those good fishing lines he set,’ Buzzard said, as he blinked away a tear. ‘I’m gunna miss the little fella.’

  ‘You great greedy guzzlers,’ thundered the Captain, stomping up the deck. ‘Stop thinking about your bellies and think about getting rich.’

  The men suddenly went quiet. The Captain told them that while they’d been losing the battle with the Blue Devils, he’d leapt to the enemy’s ship and stolen into the captain’s cabin – and snatched a treasure map right off the desk! Shipwreck Island was where they were bound.

  The men quickly cheered up.

  ‘But we gotta bite the bullet an’ take the most direct route,’ the First Mate told them when the Captain had gone. ‘Through the Scorpio Strait.’

  ‘We’ll die in those killin’ currents!’ cried Squid. ‘Waves as big as houses! Anyone with a brain would avoid ’em and go the long way round.’

  ‘Aye, ye gotta still be breathin’ to appreciate a bag of gold,’ said Buzzard.

  The First Mate shook his head. ‘The old devil’s made up his mind. You know what he’s like. Scorpio Strait it is.’

  The men tried to argue. ‘We’re too young to die,’ Goose protested. ‘Why, we ain’t even really lived yet.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Buzzard. ‘We only just got acquainted with the Continental breakfast.’

  ‘An’ next week we’re gunna have a stab at Seafood in a Basket,’ Goose put in, ‘with a bit of decent dinner conversation to go with it.’

  The Captain wouldn’t stand for their wails and protests. That evening he pointed his sword at the men huddled at the bow. ‘The next pirate who opens his beak will be spliced so far down the middle he’ll be talking to his twin.’

  A glowering silence fell. But the next morning, the muttering started up again.

  Wicked decided to keep to himself below deck and nurse his belly. He could have told the men to save their breath, but it seemed too much food and stupid talk had mushed their minds.

  And so the Captain set his jaw – and their course – for Scorpio Strait. That meant Davy Jones’ Locker for them all. The pirates knew their fate, like they knew the nose on their own hairy faces.

  ‘Well, I for one ain’t ready to be fish food,’ said Squid. ‘Who’s gunna stand with me?’

  There was a short intake of breath, a minute’s hesitation. Then each man stepped forward to pledge his sword. And so when the sea rose before them in a wall of water, the men ganged up on their Captain.

  Mutiny, that’s what it was, plain and simple. The coldhearted bunch snuck up from behind and threw him in the jolly-boat with nothing but a lousy bottle of rum. It all happened so fast. Quicker and meaner than a shark bite. Wicked remembered stumbling up on deck in time to see the back of the Captain’s head as he bobbed away over the waves. He’d never seen the man’s head without a hat on it. His hair was dull and thin, like old string.

  It was a strange, anxious moment. It made Wicked think of Headlice as he’d drifted away and how every second had put more distance between them, and the pit in his stomach where all the lost things were buried opened out, making him run, sick as a dog, to his berth.

  The Captain had always seemed indestructible – wrong or right, that devil at the helm was something you could depend on. And now he was gone.

  But the men were doing the high jig, lifting their knees and slapping each other on the back. They couldn’t stop laughing and congratulating each other.

  So Wicked squeezed his anxiety down to a fly-speck and swallowed it. He concentrated on thinking about the treasure they’d said was buried on Shipwreck Island. Blimey, if it weren’t for the Captain, that wool-witted crew would never have known about the treasure, or how to find it. Wicked wondered if they had thought about that when they bundled their Captain into his dinghy.

  ‘Now the old demon’s gone we won’t have to watch treasure slip through our fingers no more,’ the First Mate had cried. ‘By Jove, I’ll grab it with both hands!’

  ‘We’ll grab it,’ Squid said, narrowing his eyes with threat. ‘With all our hands. Plural.’

  ‘Aye, aye!’ shouted the men, wriggling their fingers in the air to show just how many they had.

  ‘That’s what I meant,’ said the First Mate hastily. ‘No need to get yer whiskers in a whirl.’

  And so the pirates set their own course, taking their own sweet time. Along the way they experimented with Horrendo’s recipes, frying, baking and sautéing, conducting long and tedious conversations about their culinary catastrophes. But when they did finally step ashore on Shipwreck Island, who did they spy hiding behind the bushes but the grubbiest, greediest set of young scallywags they’d ever had the misfortune to sail with!

  ‘It’s so nice to see you again,’ said Horrendo, putting out his hand to shake.

  The pirates went silly with surprise. But Wicked didn’t even raise an eyebrow when he heard that it was Horrendo who had masterminded the boys’ whole escape.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you the lad’s tricky as a two-tailed coin?’ Wicked muttered to Squid. ‘He must have known about the map all along, and made sure the small fry got to Shipwreck Island first.’

  Squid just shrugged, but Wicked was seething. How those boys got there in that rickety longboat, he couldn’t figure. They said something about the dolphins ‘guiding them to safety’, but it was all a lot of hot air.

  Within minutes Horrendo had the men slapping him on the back, as happy as clams. And when the lad suggested that ‘we boys’ help find the treasure, the First Mate brought out the map at once. ‘How interesting, a volcanic mountain, do you see the symbol?’ piped the little know-it-all, studying the map. As speedy as hounds after a rabbit, men and boys followed Horrendo up the mountain – and right into the hut where the treasure lay buried.

  Wicked stared into the deep dark hole they’d dug, mesmerised by the bags of gold inside. Coins glinted through rips in the cloth. All the past was forgotten … irritating boys, unfaithful friends, who cared when this gold glittered here for the taking? He couldn’t wait to run his hands through those beauties.

  But now, what? Here was Horrendo, the greedy pipsqueak, telling the pirates to share it all out with the lads as well. How much would be left for each man? Only a mountain of treasure would make up for all those lost years at sea. Sharing – what a mangy, flea-bitten idea!

  Wicked was having none of it. He leapt right into the hole and grabbed as many bags as he could carry. He would have got away with it too if that great lump of a lad Bombastic hadn’t jumped on his back and squeezed the breath out of him like a python. They all ganged up on him then, same as always, and who knows what they might have done if, sudden as a clap of thunder, there hadn’t been a terrible cry and a thud, then another and another, outside the hut.

  Wicked rushed out to see four, no, five men trussed in rope, lying on their backs in the grass. Another pirate went down, and it was then that Wicked saw, striding towards them, the dark silhouette of the Captain against the flaming sky.

  Right rum it was to see him standing there on Shipwreck Island, strong as twenty men, lassoing the pirates as they ran, felling them like trees, and all with the rope that had saved Wicked’s own life.

  ‘Why ain’t he dead?’ Bombastic moaned. ‘Why ain’t he eaten up by all the little fishies in the sea?’

  ‘I already told you why,’ Dogfish replied dully. ‘
Ye just can’t kill the man.’

  ‘Hand over the treasure, you dogs,’ roared the Captain.

  The men fumbled in their pockets and down their shirts, their hands full of coins and fear. But Bombastic was clutching at his waistcoat, trying to cover a squirming lump.

  ‘What’s that?’ As the Captain reached for the boy, Wicked smelled the rum on him, strong and sweet.

  Bombastic’s pet frog must have got a whiff of it too, as, delirious with the aroma, it hopped from the safe little waistcoat pocket right onto the Captain’s beard. The Captain’s mouth dropped open in horror, and, seeing its chance to lap at the sweet stuff, the poisonous pet took a death plunge right inside.

  ‘Aaarggh!’ choked the Captain. Even as he coughed and spluttered, the frog must have been working its way down the man’s throat, slithering in a rum-soaked frenzy.

  Wicked watched as the frog’s poison took its effect. It was a terrible thing to see. The Captain swallowed, turning wine-red to purple, charging off through the forest like lightning. Shuddering and shaking, crashing into trees, he galloped over boulders like a stampeding beast. He’d turned into a wild thing and Wicked, racing after him, felt deranged just witnessing the transformation.

  When the Captain streaked uphill to the top of the volcano, Wicked saw sparks shoot into the sky. The ground rumbled beneath his feet and he shouted in warning, ‘Come back! Danger ahead!’

  But the Captain wouldn’t stop. At the edge of the abyss he teetered and swayed, his head swinging crazily on his neck. And then his body went loose and he pitched forward, hurtling down, down into the boiling mud below.

  No one could come back from that. Not even the Captain.

  ‘He might be supernatural,’ Dogfish said later. ‘But nothing could survive a volcano.’

  Wicked couldn’t say a word.

  He stayed silent, too, when later that night on the sand, the pirates divvied up the bags of treasure, allotting a ‘fair share’ to the boys. Then, as men and boys climbed aboard the ship, stumbling under their bags of gold, he crept into the berth like a shadow. He was cold with shock and he didn’t know if he’d ever get warm.

  But look at the men now, they were happy. Ecstatic! They were making plans. Plans! And right at the centre of it all, as usual, was Horrendo.

  ‘Let’s take the treasure back home,’ Horrendo was urging them as they set sail under the moonlight. ‘If you help us rebuild our lives, the villagers of Devil Island will forgive you. All that fighting and kidnapping – it was the Captain’s doing, and now he’s gone! Aren’t you sick of swords and starving? Don’t you want to sleep in soft beds?’

  ‘Imagine,’ Buzzard had said dreamily. ‘No more fear of losin’ our ears.’

  ‘Or our pinkies,’ Goose added. ‘I only got one left.’

  ‘Well how many ears do yer reckon I got?’ said Buzzard.

  ‘Imagine,’ Squid had put in, ‘no more puttin’ up with yer absurd conversations. I’m for it, as long as I get to build a mansion in the hills with me share of the treasure.’

  Even the pirate Scabrous had agreed with him. ‘I want sunken baths in me powder rooms. With gold taps an’ all.’

  And so they sailed back to Devil Island, bristling with hope and dreams. When they drew near, Horrendo suggested that the boys take the longboat into shore first, so that the villagers knew their sons had returned to them safe and sound. ‘And we’ll need to take a good share of the treasure with us,’ added Hoodlum, eyeing Wicked distrustfully. ‘Just to make sure, like, you pirates are gunna do the right thing.’

  ‘Orright, but only if I’m aboard with you,’ said the First Mate. ‘Just to make sure you boys, like, are gunna do the right thing.’

  Villagers were gathered on the shore to watch the boat come in. They ran forward, their fists at the ready, but when they saw the shining faces of their own dear sons, the battle cries turned to howls of amazement.

  ‘Am I dreaming?’ cried Rip’s mother, dashing towards her boy. ‘Oh, don’t wake me up!’

  Mothers and fathers, aunties and grandmas couldn’t believe their eyes. And when the boat came back again with the men, their eyes grew even wider. Here were real live pirates greeting them civilly with ‘Good day to you!’, and ‘Excuse me’, and ‘Fine day for it!’

  Horrendo sat between his parents, their arms joined around him. Lone boys and men were among their families again. Pirates were crying. Even old Squid found his mother.

  But Wicked didn’t find his. No, his mother never came to find her boy. Not bloomin’ likely. He had to watch instead all the stupid hugging and kissing, mothers with their lost and found boys, the cries and sighs of grown men. It was enough to turn your stomach – even if it wasn’t turned already.

  Still, there was a moment on that first night, when he’d sunk into a bed and every muscle in his body relaxed so deeply it seemed he’d found heaven in a duck-feathered mattress, that he thought village life could be all right. And even the next morning, when the sun beamed through a clean window and there was the smell of freshly brewed tea, he wondered if he might stay.

  That morning he went to the meeting in the square. The villagers exchanged thin-lipped smiles with the pirates, the peace between them new and fragile. Wicked wandered through the crowd, stopping at the stall selling cakes and coffee. Up ahead, at the front, was a table laden with pirate treasure. A huge pile of jewels glittered in the sun, so bright it was blinding if you looked too long.

  Wicked blinked. He thought he saw Headlice, standing with a tall, curly-haired woman.

  A smile burst from his mouth. A flood of memories flashed behind his eyes and somehow the warm sweet feeling was stronger than anything else. He hurried towards them but as he drew near, he saw they were talking with Horrendo.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Horrendo said. ‘And this is your mother?’ The three all shook hands. ‘Headlice, weren’t you once a friend of Wicked’s?’

  Headlice nodded. ‘Is he here? I want to see him again, make things right.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Horrendo. ‘But, well, I think I should warn you first. Wicked mightn’t be quite as … er … willing to become a good citizen as the others. What I mean is, it might take him a bit longer to … rehabilitate. I don’t want to sound unkind, but he’s had a bit of trouble with the idea of sharing the treasure.’

  ‘Oh, Headlice told me all about him,’ Headlice’s mother said. She turned to her son. ‘Best to keep away from him, dear. He’s the one snatched so early. Poor mite, why was his mother not minding him? I’d never leave my child alone like that. Terrible, some people, they just shouldn’t have children.’ She shuddered. ‘It’s sad, but there it is. No wonder he’s so badly behaved.’ And she took her son’s arm, thanking Horrendo and moving away.

  Wicked flushed with rage. Something black and wild rose up inside him as he pushed his way to the front.

  ‘Steady on,’ muttered a villager as Wicked shoved past.

  But Wicked couldn’t stop. The darkness inside him was loud as a hurricane. It blew away any sweet drop of memory, it blew him forward until all he could feel was the heat of his anger and all he could see was that treasure gleaming and dancing in the sun. Badly behaved, was he? Well, he’d give ’em badly behaved.

  Horrendo was standing on a stool now, asking for understanding from both sides. ‘And before we share out the gold, everybody, I’d like to tell you my idea. If we each took only half of our share of the treasure, and put the rest …’

  Wicked gave a howl of fury. He lunged out of the crowd, snatching a bag of gold from the table. ‘This is pirate gold,’ he cried, ‘and no landlubber’s goin’ to tell me otherwise!’

  A storm of protest broke out from the villagers, and the crowd split apart just as surely as if Wicked had thrown a cannonball into the middle of them. He didn’t care, why should he? None of them cared about him. It would always be like this, people making up their minds about him before they even gave him a chance.

  The villagers were complaining their
sons had been kidnapped – well, his whole life had been kidnapped. He’d lost everything, and the only thing to show for it was this haul of treasure. Wasn’t that the prize? These families hadn’t ever been to sea or fought a man twice their size or known what it was like to have your guts ripped in half while you’re up in the rigging. No, they’d just spent their lives looking after their kitchen equipment and pretty gardens, and now, pickle their gums, a wheelbarrow of gold was arriving in their laps!

  Curses were hurled back and forth and it might have become bloody, too, what with the pirates putting up their fists, if Dogfish hadn’t caught Wicked’s wrists and held him down. Then Horrendo suddenly began to shout.

  ‘You selfish, lying, cheating pig!’ he bellowed at Wicked. ‘Can’t you see, if we all put some of our treasure into a common pool we’d have enough to build a wonderful life for everyone here? But no, you slimy apology for a human being, you dung beetle, you lousy smear of cockroach pus, you smelly …’

  The torrent of words stunned Wicked. The little angel was swearing – at him.

  The villagers fell silent, staring at Horrendo, their faces blank with amazement.

  ‘What’ll happen next?’ said one villager. ‘Will fish fall from the sky?’

  And when the crowd turned to look at Wicked, the pirate who’d turned their little saint into a cussing fiend, he felt himself to be smaller and shabbier than ever before.

  ‘So this is how Horrendo will be now the Wise Woman has lifted her spell?’ Rascal whispered to his sister, Blusta.

  ‘It can’t be true!’ she whispered back. ‘He’s never said a bad word to anybody. No matter what was done to him.’

  ‘Aye, and you should have seen what happened to him at sea!’

  Wicked felt woozy, as if he might faint.

  Truth to tell, he didn’t know what to feel. He just knew he had to get away from this hellhole and never, ever return.

  Chapter 18

  As Wicked rowed away from Devil Island, the sun was low and the voices of the villagers grew as faint as the moon’s shadow in the east. He didn’t know where he was headed.