Paradise Island

by Charmaine Ross

  “The prize of obtaining his goal is what he wants to face,” Estelle said.

  “You know that is not true. I see the ties that bind you together even as we speak. You are angry and hurt because you love him and that is the true meaning of Amor Fati. The fates of love, both good and bad. It is the strongest type of love, the kind that will have you willing to lose your life for the other. The only love that can defeat a god is what leads him this morning. He would willingly sacrifice himself in the face of great danger so that you may be safe.”

  “It was not love. Just lust. Clear physical infatuation,” Estelle said.

  The old woman snorted. “It was good, wasn’t it? The best? The kind of lovemaking that would have him gladly in your bed every night for the rest of your life?” She nodded, when Estelle was lost for words and cackled. “I am not too old to remember what it can be like. You should grab him with both hands.”

  “I would like to right now. Preferably around his neck,” Estelle mumbled.

  The old woman cackled. “Only love can hurt so much. It is a double edged sword, is it not?”

  Estelle dropped her gaze to the ground. She could not believe she in love with Gregory, but the witch may be her only way to save her home, and her father. Estelle clenched her teeth. She would need to tell her anything to make her believe she accepted her word as truth. She would leave the old woman with no doubt that she trusted what she said to get her to take her to Gregory. “Take me to him. Take me so that he can tell me face to face how he feels.”

  The old woman weighed her up with a lengthy stare. Estelle tilted her chin, keeping her attention riveted on her. “There is something you need to know. You have to protect Gregory from the Evil One. This god, this entity, feeds on souls to live in this world.”

  Estelle shivered, remembering how it tried to suck her in Jack’s mind. “Has it taken Jack’s soul?”

  The woman’s voice was deadpan. “Jack Cutlass had no soul to begin. There was nothing here but an empty vessel for it to use. And use Jack it has.”

  “Is that what has happened to my father? Has this god eaten his soul?” Estelle asked quietly.

  “Jack sold your father’s soul, acting as he had every right to do so. The god has accepted it in trade for Jack to use its power. To defeat Jack will mean that you will have to fight the god which has imprisoned more souls than your father. If I only knew how to release those poor souls, I would have done so many years ago, but instead I learned that my powers alone cannot defeat the god. It is too strong, but together, you and Gregory have a chance.”

  “You are stronger than I,” Estelle said.

  “But it is the love you share, you and your man, that the spirit does not understand. That is its downfall. It thrives on misery, power, ambition, the dark sides of human emotion. It does not have the capacity to know love and that it the thing that it seeks to destroy the most. I have no love. I have never really known it. But the two of you … I can see it bind your lives into eternity.” The old woman shook her head. “If you could see, it is something to behold.”

  “Then I cannot stand by and let Gregory fight this god by himself. I cannot stand by and let this thing devour his soul. You have to take me to him so that we can fight, together,” Estelle said.

  The hurt that Gregory left would not be erased, her anger simmered. If only she could make the woman believe that she still loved Gregory then she might have a chance. She ignored the quick slice of pain that carved into her heart at the thought that she didn’t love Gregory. It would not do to immerse herself in the pain. She told herself it was not love, it was the sham of his words, his actions, that had her hurting so badly. And he would pay for that. “Please, you have to understand how I feel.” That, at least, was the truth.

  The old woman shook her head. “It is risky. Dangerous. You are so angry now. There is a real chance that you both will not survive. I cannot have you both killed. There will no other chances.”

  Estelle pressed. “I need to get to him. There will be no chance if the god takes Gregory’s soul. You said that together we have a chance, but apart then there is no way this thing can be defeated. And I will not get my father, or Gregory, back ever again. I could not live if that happened.”

  Estelle rose and sat next to the old woman, ignoring the stale smell that emanated from the woman’s clothes. “You do have power. You have the power to keep us together, you have the power to give us a chance to defeat this god, and to rid the world of Jack Cutlass and his evil deeds. That alone is power indeed.” She placed her hand over the top of the old woman’s as she rested it in her lap. Despite the aged, pockmarked skin, her hand felt warm, soft and smooth beneath her touch and Estelle was momentarily surprised. “Please. Can you help me? Help Gregory? Take us both to where the god is. Give us a chance to save the world. To save ourselves. You are my only hope.”

  The old woman stared into the flames. “You are very good with words.”

  “As I am with a sword,” Estelle said. She leant towards the old woman. “If we are the only ones that can do this, you need to give us a helping hand.”

  The old woman sidled a quick glance at her and nodded. Her face was set into grim lines and there was a seriousness behind her eyes that Estelle had not noticed before. “If this is the way of the fates, so be it.”

  She muttered some unintelligible words, circled her hand through the air above them and Estelle was instantly in the middle of a windstorm so great she had to close her eyes against the force of it. She felt as though she had no body, that there was no earth below or above her, that she was surrounded by empty space. Then her feet hit solid ground and she stumbled, hitting hard with her hands and knees.

  She opened her eyes. The stony earth bit into her palms. She glanced around. She was no longer in the bush, the terrain was mountainous and rocky. Sparse trees grew intermittently between crevices, but the whole landscape was completely alien to the lush surrounding she had just been in. She rose despite her shaky legs. Stones cracked underfoot. Other than that, an eerie silence created a void around her. Amazingly, she had never seen this side of the island. She wondered what magic had kept it hidden.

  It was then that she saw the cave entrance. It was just like the rough painting she’d seen in the cave. It filled her with the same intense sickening dread that had overcome her then. Her hand went to her sword and she withdrew it, holding the hilt with both hands straight out in front of her.

  There was no mistaking the dark power that lived in the blackness of the cave. It secreted from the shadows, exuding a dank, staleness that tainted the air and clung to her clothes.

  There was a noise behind her, the sound of footsteps crunching through the loose gravel. She went into her attack stance, feet apart, knees bent, sword positioned to kill, saw nothing but huge grey boulders blotting the skyline. Her eyes darted, looking for motion, anything that would steer her to the source of the footsteps. She could only hope to take whoever was coming in surprise and make sure her first thrust was a lethal one.

  The footsteps came closer. Whoever was moving, was doing it carefully. She kept her ground, fighting the instinct to run and hide.

  Her tongue flicked out to wet dry lips, but it came away scratchy and dry. A trickle of perspiration ran down the side of her face, but still she did not move, dared not move. Whoever was coming was only now behind a large boulder that she stood the other side of.

  A footstep crunched towards her. She held the tip of her sword high to slice through the heart that would soon not beat. She pressed her palm onto the end of the hilt, so that she may drive her sword in harder. The footsteps were now only very close. Close enough to begin her hastily laid plan. She moved soundless and fast, thrust — and then screamed knowing it was too late to stop slaying the last person she would ever want to kill.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Her sword was defle
cted and glanced off the face of the boulder with a sharp metallic clink. The force of the hit reverberated up her arm, numbing her hand. It fell harmlessly to the ground as she stared horrified into Gregory’s equally shocked face.

  “I am glad that you are as good a swordsman as I,” Estelle said, her voice shaking.

  “As am I,” Gregory added dryly. “I do need to ask, however, how it is that you are here at all?”

  Estelle drew her sword from the ground. “As do I.”

  Gregory shook his head. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  A quick red hot stab of anger flared, inflaming her words. “I have every right to be here. It is my father who has been caught up in this … this thing. It is my life that has been irrevocably changed and it is you — especially you — that should have known all that. To leave me asleep and steal away after we … ” Estelle swallowed the hard lump that rose in her throat.

  Gregory took a step towards her and she raised the tip of her sword to pin his chest. The end slit the material of his shirt. Surprised, he looked from the tip to her eyes. “Estelle, you have been through too much in your life. I came here to protect you.”

  “Haven’t you realized that I don’t need protecting,” Estelle said, not bothering to hide the heat that swathed her voice.

  “Then I was wrong. Forgive me.” He spoke in low tones that sent a heated chord straight to her heart. His face was stricken, his pain obvious.

  She swallowed hard, shaking her head, wishing she could, but absorbed the pain, the suffering that immersed her, drew her down into a cavern that screamed revenge and it was all she could do but flow with it. She shook her head, trying to clear the iron clad bleakness from her mind, but it would not shift, slowly invading every corner of her mind.

  “I cannot,” she whispered.

  The air around her ankles grew cold, exuding from the emptiness of the cave. A seeping chill immersed into her feet and quickly clawed up her legs. Despite the perspiration that prickled her skin, her body was permeated with a desolate cold. Her hurt, her pain was forgotten, replaced by an all-consuming rage, a desire to main, hurt, destroy, murder. Nonsensically, there was a sense of curiosity that tainted the baser emotions.

  Beyond her control, she pressed the tip harder into Gregory’s chest, felt the tip break his skin, watched as the small red spot on his shirt spread into a spreading circle, was mesmerized by it.

  “Estelle, what are you doing?”

  The rage became an all-consuming, and she devoured. She looked into his eyes, hated him, detested him for doing what he did to her, making her feel what she did, was disgusted in herself for allowing herself to be in any way transformed by him, to believe that there could be any good in men, was repulsed that she had thought that she was in love with him. In this moment, this very instant, she wanted to destroy him for making her feel anything at all. It was as if all the warmth the world could provide was gone, left by an infinite void of dank bleakness.

  It enveloped her, consumed her, made her anguish self-righteous, evolved until she was a vessel of savage fury, until everything she had ever seen, heard and felt she hated. And it was this hatred that she was going to take out on Gregory. The man who had taken her first attempts of trust, made her love fall in love with him and then had taken that all away with a turn of his back. And she embraced the malevolence until it fed off itself in a churning cycle of scorn and hate.

  “Doing what I should have done the first moment I saw you,” she said between clenched teeth and swung her sword in an arch through the air, aiming at his throat.

  Gregory blocked her thrust and lunged backwards. She stepped forwards, sword sweeping across from her waist. He retreated, narrowly missing the tip of her sword that would have slashed his stomach. She reacted quickly, lunged once, twice, swinging her sword in a right and left arch, hoping to cut him anywhere she could. The potent anger was making her wild, her thrusts frenzied. She was out for blood and she wanted to see it come from him.

  Gregory stumbled, not able to break her attack, his back hit the boulder and he was blocked, only able to fend her off. She sensed victory. She raised her sword, hand level with her head, wrist cocked for the fatal blow. She took the hilt with both hands and slashed downwards, her only savage desire to split his skull in two.

  Gregory dropped his sword, grabbed her hands between his. She fought with all her strength to bring the sword down on his head. The sinews stood out at the base of his neck with his effort. His mouth opened in a grimace that contorted his face.

  “Estelle, stop,” he ground out.

  She couldn’t reply. The words stolen as she concentrated on the blood she thirsted to see. She pushed harder, palms digging into the hilt of the sword. Her mind lusted for death, his death. She let the dark passion engulf her mind, swathing any urge to stop. She sank deeper into the depravity of it, started to enjoy it.

  “I will not stop until you are nothing but blood and bone beneath my feet,” she said. She pushed harder, the tip of the sword dipped towards his face and she laughed. It was a maniacal sound and one the drove her more fully down her path.

  “Estelle, this is not you,” Gregory said.

  The murkiness in her mind enveloped his words until she heard nothing more than ‘kill me.’ The words repeated over and over in her mind, until they screamed with an otherworldly shriek that filled every inch below her skin and filled every pore of her body. She winced with the all-consuming noise in her head, squeezing her eyes shut, fending off the wailing by putting her hands over her ears.

  Kill me, Kill me, Kill. Him.

  The words scarred her brain, bled into everything that was her. Pulled her into a void that contained nothing but the want to kill, the want to main. A huge black wave of despair crashed around her, drowned her with the might of its force, drained her of the ability of thought, of her own desires. She was sinking against her will. She fought to regain control of her mind, but still she was buried beneath an ever building wall of pitch blackness.

  Estelle cracked her eyes open, just so they were the smallest of slits. “Gregory, help me. It’s inside. Can’t … get it … out … ” she whispered. She crumbled with the assault.

  Kill. Him.

  “No,” she screamed but she didn’t know if it was in her head, or if she actually said the words. She was buried alive, suffocating.

  “Estelle, tell me what’s happening to you.” Gregory held onto her shoulders, feeling her muscles bunch and tighten beneath his touch.

  She wrenched her head from side to side, struggling with some internal creature. He felt so inadequate, not knowing what to do, how to help her. All he could do was stand and watch her writhe in agony while he was helpless at her side.

  Then she stilled. She slowly straightened, uncurling from the agony that had racked her moments before. She stood, statue like, sword raised to engage. Her face was slack, features bland. The only emotion were the dim clouds that permeated her eyes, bleeding the bright spark that he was so used to seeing.

  She was a shell, an empty vessel, showing nothing of the passionate woman he had seen since the first moment he had laid eyes on her. Gone was her vibrancy, her fiery temper, her headstrong willingness to throw herself into anything she wanted to with every inch of her soul. Here, before him, was just a dull version of the larger than life woman.

  Chillingly, he recognized the others he had seen just like this.

  Most recently Elias Stonebridge and the rest of Jack Cutlass’s crew.

  He wanted to shake her back to him, to wake her to life. He wanted the animated version of Estelle in his arms. Staring at her, wanting her arguing for all she was worth, laughing, smiling, loving him, was an agonizing torture. His hands clenched and unclenched, hanging uselessly at his sides. If he could do something with them, pull whatever it was that had her in its grip, out from her, he would, no matter
the cost, no matter the pain. But all he was able to was stare inadequately, unbelieving, at her.

  “Estelle!” His voice was a croak that fell from parched lips.

  He stepped towards her, fell back. She was the same as her father. A lifeless vessel, a receptacle for the evil spirit that had taken so many others.

  “Estelle, come back to me,” he said.

  “She cannot,” a dry voice said behind him.

  Gregory turned to see the old woman behind him. There was a mixture of pity and remorse on her wizened face. “You are full of magic. Turn her back!” he demanded.

  The old woman dropped her gaze, brushed past him and strode brazenly to the entrance of the cave.

  “Stop!” Gregory called. He stepped towards her, held his hand out to stop her, but she ignored him. There was something about her directness, her purposefulness that pulled him back, wordless.

  The old woman opened her arms as if embracing the cave and yelled. “I have given so that I may receive. Give me back which was once mine in exchange for another.” Her crackled voice echoed in the dim of the cave.

  The air sparked and crackled. The hair on his arms rose with the invisible energy that snapped like a living entity around him. The old woman shook, like a thousand lightning bolts were piecing her body. She rose on her toes, head thrown back, mouth opening in a silent death-scream. Her arms jerked bonelessly out at her sides, her hands flopping like stringless puppet limbs. Her hair fell from its bun and tumbled in stringy, dry, grey strands.

  There was a hum, like a thousand bees all at once. It started off softly, as though he wasn’t quite sure if it were there or not then erupted into an earsplitting cacophony that had him cuffing his ears to block out the noise.

  Leaves scattered across the ground, kicked by invisible fingers of the wind that soon whipped into a blast of freezing air. It tore at his clothes, making him squint with the particles of dirt that slammed into his face.