by Scott Monk
‘And this is when other people started disappearing?’
She crossed herself. ‘One or two at first. The marines treated it as nonsense. They told us that these people had left unexpectedly or stowed away on a cruise liner. But then some more well-known citizens vanished – people like Father Valentino, Romano the play wright, Mayor Marcello of the Thirty-eighth Island, Salvatore the sergeant-at-arms, Lord Aldo and – and –’
‘Your brother,’ Luke finished for her.
‘Why would the monster want him?’ Michael asked.
She began sobbing again. ‘My brother is a lovely, lovely man. He is well-respected among the Jewellers’ Guild for his integrity and knowledge.’
‘Has … has he been acting strange recently?’
She blinked at him like it was a rude question, then nodded. ‘Several weeks ago, he returned home early and locked all the doors. When I asked him what was wrong, he said not to worry. Later that evening I found him asleep in his study with letters and drawings detailing the monster’s movements. He was also holding a nugget of gold that I’d never seen before. From that night onwards, he became obsessed with finding the creature – even contacting your Hall for help. I believe he learnt a secret that ultimately cost him his life.’
She broke down again.
‘Do you know that secret?’ Michael asked.
‘Is it in any of those letters or drawings?’ Luke pushed.
‘No. Guido feared my life would be in danger too if he shared what he’d uncovered,’ she said. ‘And all his documents have been stolen. I have my suspicions what was in them, though. I hear whispers among the politicians’ wives.’
‘What are they saying?’
‘That the creature is not acting alone.’
The boys traded glances. She’d just confirmed what they’d learnt that very hour.
‘Lady Isabelle, this is why your brother was kidnapped,’ Michael said. ‘It’s called a dead man’s ring. It receives secret messages from the person controlling the monster.’
‘What secret messages?’ she asked.
‘Give me your canteen,’ he ordered Luke, who rummaged in his pouches. ‘Have you ever seen it before?’
‘No. It just looks like a signet ring.’
‘Your brother gave it to me. He said to use it to help the lost. I thought he meant poor people, but he really meant the people who are missing. It only works after it’s dunked in water. The ring starts to buzz –’
‘What’s wrong?’ she queried, when he fell silent.
‘It’s buzzing again!’
Luke handed him the canteen and they urgently wet the dead man’s ring, which popped open with a new holographic message.
‘Father Valentino’s Church. Now.’
‘Get out!’ Michael roared as a tile fell from the roof. Somebody was spying right above them.
‘Go! We’ll hold them off!’
Michael drew his sword as Lady Isabelle fled through the back exit. Luke stepped outside and struggled to get a reading on his radar. ‘Wait! To the left! The monster’s chasing after Isabelle!’
The boys screamed into the fog, hoping to alert the marines. No more hiding. It was time to fight.
They cut off the monster before it tried to swoop on Isabelle. It bobbled in front of them, as tall as two men and without fear. It didn’t run, lope or crawl. It didn’t have a body, arms or feet – just a pair of fluorescent eyeballs hovering above two mouths sawing with fangs.
‘Leave her alone!’ Luke shouted. ‘Come and get us!’ He powered up his jetpack and clenched his fists. ‘It’s cannonball time!’
He blasted straight at the creature, focussing his attack on its belly. As he swung a punch, his knuckles failed to connect with anything solid and he zoomed right through. His visor flashed WARNING! COLLISION IMMINENT! as he overshot his mark and sped towards a wall. Only fancy flying saved him from splattering against the brickwork.
Michael was next. Releasing all his fear in one yell, he ran at the monster and lashed out. His blade cut high and deadly. It connected with the creature’s head and split it in two. Both hunks of meat thumped to the ground as the other eyeball and mouth spun away.
‘YES!’
He’d killed the monster!
17
‘Hero’ wasn’t the first word Samantha used to describe her brothers when she found them at the crime scene. It was ‘stupid’. In fact, she repeated it so often it gave the large crowd of onlookers the impression it was the only word she knew. Wrapped in her pirate coat and suffering from a bad case of pillow hair, she stood over the beheaded carcass, scratched her beard then snorted. The cobra hissed at her brothers, who averted their gaze. ‘Stupid,’ she said, before walking back to the palace.
The brothers wished the snickering rubberneckers would do the same, including the swashbucklers, who stood cross-armed and laughing.
‘What’s the manner of this disturbance?’ Captain Cavalli demanded, snapping his marines to attention. ‘A messenger brought news of a creature being killed.’
‘Not the one we were expecting, sir,’ his sergeant answered. ‘It seems our friends here from the Hall got a fright.’
The captain shone his lantern over the body of the ‘monster’ cleft in half. Instead of a hideous creature double the size of a man, he found a gruesome fish with fangs and an orb dangling from its forehead. Except now that it was dead, the orb no longer glowed. ‘Is this a joke?’ he asked, kicking half the fish with his boot.
‘How was I supposed to know it was a deep sea angler?’ Michael said. ‘There were two of them floating together. They looked like eyes.’
Captain Cavalli glared at the brothers then barked, ‘Sergeant, send these people home. I’ll personally escort our heroes here back to the palace.’
‘But the monster was here,’ Luke said. ‘We saw it. Ask your men.’
‘And pray tell, what did this one look like? A barracuda? Or a goldfish?’
The crowd laughed as the brothers fell into step behind the captain, each burning with shame.
‘Fools!’
Captain Cavalli’s angry bellow was loud enough to wake the dead. It was a fitting description considering where he held his secret meeting: the royal crypt. Silhouettes of sarcophaguses and their ornamental kings and queens were thrown on the stony walls by a low-burning lantern, which was almost kicked over by the raging marine.
‘How close did our young heroes come to meeting their deaths?’
‘Very close, sir,’ a teenage boy answered from a darkened corner. ‘At the last moment, the sharks chased them in the wrong direction.’
‘How fortunate! Their own stupidity saved them. I guarantee it won’t happen a second time!’
Cavalli stopped and double-checked the door to the crypt was sealed from prying ears, then asked, ‘What of Lady Isabelle?’
‘Taken.’
Cavalli bared his teeth and pointed at the teenager. ‘She brought doom on her own head. I clearly warned her not to ask questions, like her brother. Now she’s met his fate.’
‘What of the swashbucklers? My spy in the Sandcastle Tavern says she hired them and a handful of crab-hunters to investigate the link between Guido’s disappearance and the Broken Isles.’
‘My men will deal with those cutpurses – arrest them for loitering or carrying concealed weapons if need be. The monster will dispatch them next if they don’t return to whatever unloved moon they travelled from. In the meantime, you continue watching our young heroes, for I suspect they’re about to encounter more of the monster.’
The teenager stepped into the light and pulled back his blue hair into a ponytail. ‘As you wish,’ Aurelio said.
18
The first warnings of disaster came just past noon. Buoys chimed as the harbour grew restless and the horizon turned purple then black. Lightning split the sky and boiled the sea, drawing tourists from the marketplaces and galleries on the western islands to the waterfront. Choruses of excitement rose with each thund
erclap until a hard grey rain fell and people sprinted for cover. Waiters rescued table umbrellas. Merchants threw tarpaulins over their gondolas and shouted at others to move. Painters snapped shut their easels, and zoo animals shrieked in their cages. Busking harlequins watched as their afternoon crowds streamed away.
Buffeted by the strong winds, Luke touched down outside a bait shop on a southern island close to the volcano. He hopscotched over puddles and fresh horse manure to reach a small white building with a green dome and round windows.
‘Phwoar! What is this place?’ he asked, cupping his nose. The main chamber was square and high with faded mosaics of dolphins, starfish and seahorses swirling around a large staid pool. Wooden benches rotted along all four walls, next to dead ferns shrivelled up in terracotta pots. ‘And what is that smell?’
‘It’s the public pool,’ Samantha said, walking in from an adjacent room, also holding her nose. ‘Although I don’t think it’s been used in ages.’
Unable to breathe in any more of the putrid stench, Luke rummaged through his pouches until he found eucalyptus balm to smear across his top lip. His mum had told him some police detectives used it to deal with the smell of corpses. He threw the small blue tub to Samantha.
‘Look! Something’s dead on the bottom of the pool.’
‘I think it’s a stray dog.’
‘Glad I left my swimming costume back home then. Why are we even in this dump?’
‘First, where’s Michael?’
‘He wasn’t in his bed and the chair was moved when I woke up.’
‘What? He’s still sleeping with that wedged against the door handle? It’s bad enough that you’re sleeping in his room now. Hasn’t it been a week since you supposedly killed the “monster”?’
‘Mock us all you want. Lady Isabelle has been kidnapped.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s still trying to find her.’
‘I think that’s what he’s doing now.’
‘Then you’ll have to bring him here. This is our Knock-Knock Door.’
‘In this hole? No way!’
Lightning whitened the room, followed by thunder. Then, unexpectedly –
Fish attack!
Hundreds of purple-pink creole wrasse hurtled through the front door, fleeing the rain, darting straight for Luke. He crouched into a ball as they ricocheted off his hips, shoulders and arms. Some flopped on the ground next to him, stunned, while most cowered deep in the change rooms.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, helping him off his backside.
‘Now I know what it feels like to be hit by a hundred golf balls.’
‘At least you didn’t kill any this time.’
‘Hardy har-har.’
She disappeared into an adjacent room then returned with a cracked pitcher of water.
‘What’s that for?’
‘To find a Knock-Knock Door.’
‘Are you kidding?’
‘Think about it. What do we know about these Doors? First, they’re well hidden. Second, they ask riddles. Third, they’re found near lots of water. And most importantly, fourth, their one giveaway is their weird magnetism. If we go through all these rooms and tip out this water, then hopefully it’ll lead us to another Door, just like that cola bottle we smashed.’
‘That’s a dumb idea.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s quite smart.’
‘If it’s so smart, wouldn’t the rain be streaming in here too?’
Stunned, she looked at the window. After another flash of lightning, she dribbled out the water to prove herself right. It just puddled at her feet. She repeated the experiment in the change room with the same results. More thunder hammered the city and she screamed in frustration. ‘At least I’m trying! We’d get home quicker if you and Michael weren’t wasting time fishing.’
‘We’re doing what we were sent here to do, Sam: catch the monster. Isn’t saving lives just as important?’
‘People die every day back on Earth. I don’t see you trying to rescue them.’
‘When was the last time you saw a monster walking down the main street?’
‘Not monsters. People die in wars or of starvation or disease.’
‘This is different. We can do something about it here.’
‘You’re wrong. You can do something about it on Earth, too, but you chose not to. There’s no difference at all.’
He wrestled with a smart comeback – one that never came. Smugly, she explored deeper into the building, finding more pools and scaring the wrasse. ‘Okay, so you’re right about the Door not being here. We’ll try looking elsewhere. I need you and Michael to find a map of the city so we can mark off all the places that – Luke? Luke!’
But he was gone. Turning from the main doorway, she kicked a bench, chopped a terracotta pot then tossed dead ferns into the water. She grabbed the pitcher and threw it against the brickwork then stood in a corner, controlling her breathing. When a silhouette appeared behind her, she whirled on it, thinking it was Luke, only to hesitate when she faced a teenager with wet blue hair and a coral pipe.
‘Begging your pardon, Captain Sam,’ panted Aurelio, drenched with rain. ‘It’s Sir Michael. He’s in danger.’
19
Armed with a wooden staff, Captain Cavalli circled the garrison’s stony courtyard and lunged. He speared it straight at Michael’s belly then thrust it upwards, trying to land a crippling blow. Michael batted it away and counterattacked with a jab to the ribs, but the older boy easily fended him off. Jeers roared from the balconies as forty marines pumped their fists and egged them on. Cavalli smiled through the rain as he feigned another attack and forced Michael off balance. Michael stumbled back between archers’ targets but forgot the straw dummy. He collided with it, and, startled, gave the captain his opening. Cavalli chopped his staff down hard and crunched Michael’s fingers. The golden gauntlet absorbed the impact but not the jarring. Clang! Michael dropped his weapon, allowing the captain to strike again. The blunt end punched him in the chestplate and down he went. All the marines cheered.
‘You are vanquished,’ Cavalli said, poking the staff under Michael’s chin. ‘Yield.’
The sky thundered as Michael batted aside the weapon and sat up to shake the tingling from his knuckles. ‘I yield.’
The marines applauded a third time as their young captain twirled his training staff and triumphantly strolled away. Prime Minister Pasquale appeared beside Michael and helped him to his feet. ‘Sir Knight, are you not the mightiest of men? The most honoured of the honourable? Stop toying with this scoundrel. He might be a pup, but he still has teeth.’
He slapped Michael on the back and pushed him into the centre of the open courtyard. The marines cheered again as Cavalli welcomed the rematch.
The captain chose a defensive stance this time, allowing his opponent first strike. Michael lashed out with his staff, but his inexperience showed. Cavalli parried, twisted and knocked the weapon aside before hammering him in the guts. The armour took the blow but Michael still crumpled in half.
‘Yield, sir.’
‘I yield,’ Michael coughed, feeling more tingling across his body.
The marines roared as Cavalli strutted around the younger boy. Amid the cheers, the first whispers poisoned the triumph. Some were questioning the Gold Knight’s willingness to fight.
Shattered, Michael stayed on the ground as Pasquale knelt beside him. ‘My liege, don’t dishonour these boys by taming your sword arm. They are as proud as you and I. Fight the captain as if he was the Giant of the Lost Lake and show these marines how it is done!’ He then lifted him up despite his protests.
Cavalli leant against his staff and asked, ‘How fare you, my liege? Have you lost your heart for battle?’
‘Show respect, young captain,’ the Prime Minister answered for him. ‘Your trousers are far too clean for a fighting son of Pacifico, and our liege here has just promised me he’ll sit you in the mud.’
Howls filled the garrison as Cavalli accep
ted the challenge. Michael tried calling off the fight, but his pleas were deafened by the noise.
‘Sergeant!’ Cavalli yelled. ‘Let’s make this interesting, shall we? Steel against steel!’
He threw his wooden staff at the young officer, who exchanged it for a sheathed sword. Cavalli drew his blade and tested its balance. Michael froze. No way had he agreed to this!
‘Your sword, my liege?’ the sergeant asked, crossing the courtyard to Michael’s belongings.
Thunder drowned him out. This was crazy! He knew he had to flee. He retreated one too many steps, though, for his sword leapt from the distant bench and jumped into his hand. The marines cheered as one.
‘No, I didn’t mean – It’s my armour –’
Captain Cavalli attacked.
One, two, three – the blade slashed at Michael’s head. He ducked the first then blocked the others. Cavalli swung wide and low, catching Michael’s sword again. But rather than a stalemate, it was a trick. The captain stabbed forward and almost skewered the younger boy. Michael swept his hip away before being killed.
Frustrated, he lashed out and punched Cavalli’s chin. It connected and sent him flying. The forty marines fell silent as their captain skidded across the wet stones, stunned by the extraordinary blow. Groggy, Cavalli staggered to his feet as Michael flexed his gauntlet. How did he do that?
‘Yield!’ he said, pointing his sword.
Cavalli smirked. ‘I think not.’
The captain attacked with greater ferocity this time, spurred on by the punch. He swung, cut and thrust. No one embarrassed him in front of his troops.
Michael wilted under the renewed zeal. Their swords clashed again and again, his arm growing heavy. His defences couldn’t outlast the captain’s fury. He was just a boy – not a knight.
