by Kai Meyer
She’d scarcely finished thinking of him when he was standing in front of her.
“Jolly?” he asked incredulously, and for a tiny moment she actually weighed the idea of stopping. But then she simply ran on, rammed her shoulder into his belly, and saw him collapse like a marionette with snapped strings. She leaped away from his clutching hands, escaped the grasp of another man, and two steps later reached the harbor wall. Without hesitation she pushed off and jumped.
She landed with both feet on the waves without sinking. She stumbled and almost fell, catching herself at the last moment. What was this? Polliwogs could only run on saltwater. But this was a lake! She’d intended to dive under the water like all the others, so in the middle of the confusion she could look for the worm unnoticed. But obviously enough saltwater flowed in from the passage to the sea to bear a polliwog.
Then make the best of it! Get moving!
She sprinted forward as fast as she could. The surface seemed to boil with all the turmoil, the suction of the sinking ships, and the quantities of air bubbles that were foaming up from the wrecks. There were men in the water everywhere, some paddling in panic like children. Others grabbed at her when they guessed that the polliwog running past them had something to do with this catastrophe.
Behind her a whistle sounded. Was that an alarm signal? Or was the Ghost Trader trying to call the sea horses to him?
Jolly didn’t look around. She didn’t want to see if Bannon had given the order to shoot at her with pistols and rifles. And if he didn’t, if he remembered in spite of everything how important she’d been to him only a few weeks ago—well, so much the better.
Smoke bit into her nose and her throat. At least two of the sinking ships had burst into flames. Before the water could close over the fire and extinguish the flames, it had already spread to the masts and sails. Flying sparks and rags of torn cloth bore the fire in all directions. Soon two or three neighboring ships that had until then been lying safely in their anchorages were burning as well.
Shots whipped past. Whether on Bannon’s instructions or from another direction, Jolly didn’t know. She only hoped that her friends hadn’t been discovered. In front of her, the water flowed over the deck of a sinking ship, and she had to cut a sharp turn to avoid being caught in the vortex of the wreck. A powerful current arose beneath her, and for a moment she was fighting in vain against the roaring surge. But then she reached a broad lane between two undamaged ships that offered her protection from the shots on the shore. Her goal was a sloop some fifty yards away from the quay, which was one of the last ships to begin to sink. She hoped to find the worm somewhere nearby. Her advantage over the pirates and natives was that she could move faster on the surface of the water.
A dull thump sounded beside her, and suddenly a feathered spear rose from the wall of planks. Several cannibals appeared on the ship to her left, not in the outfits of the sailors but in leather aprons and strange bands they had wound around their arms, legs, and bellies.
A second spear missed her. A third clattered into the water beside her, brushing her leg, but only with the shaft. Then she was out from between the two hulls and, on a zigzagging course, approached the ship where she guessed the shipworm might be.
“Worm!” she hollered across the water. She could see no more than ten yards in front of her, because the smoke was now befogging the entire harbor. At least it protected her from the men on the shore.
“Worm!” she cried again, looking around her.
Beside her a ship leaned to the larboard. She just managed to jump out of the range of the tipping mast. Again and again she called for the Hexhermetic Shipworm, at the same time having to avoid a hail of spears, which whistled down from one of the other ships. Now someone with a pistol opened fire at her from somewhere, but he gave up after two shots. Occasionally she still saw men in the water, but the farther she went from shore, the fewer they became.
“Worm! Damn it, where are you?”
She was slowly becoming aware of how crazy her plan was. How was she supposed to find the tiny fellow out here, somewhere in the water between the ships, in the waves, in the smoke, and under the attacks of her enemies? But she didn’t give up hope.
The Hexhermetic Shipworm had inflicted more damage on Tyrone’s fleet than Jolly and the others would have thought possible. The Ghost Trader didn’t have to grumble so loudly: Just the fact that Tyrone had suffered such a defeat in his own harbor damaged the reputation he’d enjoyed among his men. Tyrone, the mad ruler of the Orinoco, suddenly didn’t seem to be half so mighty.
“Jolly!” came a wail somewhere to her right.
There was something in the water that looked like a piece of wood and was being rocked up and down by the waves. It was moving itself forward with wiggling, serpentine winding, but was obviously too weak to resist the play of the waves much longer.
“Worm!” Beside herself with relief, she bounded over to him, pulled him out of the water, and pressed him to her. She cradled him in her arms like a newborn, and even pressed a smacking kiss on his shell head. His breath was rattling, and his short legs dangled lifelessly from his body.
“So … exhausted…,” he panted, “from much … eating.” He belched so loudly that it echoed from the walls of the nearby hull.
“Don’t worry,” said Jolly, starting to run again. “I’ll take you to safety.”
“I think … I couldn’t have … much more.” He fell silent. He seemed a little heavier in her arms. He’d fallen asleep. He was snoring.
At first she was quite drunk with joy, but reality caught up with her all too quickly. They couldn’t go back to the quay and to their friends. It was now thronged with their enemies. Perhaps Tyrone had even come down to the harbor by now.
She considered briefly, then decided against a return to shore and ran out into the lake, away from the burning and sinking ships. She hoped with all her might that the others had been able to get away in time. If she managed somehow to get out into the delta, away from the tent city and the huts at the foot of the fortress, then, yes, perhaps…
She stumbled and forced herself to concentrate. Every step counted, every minute she distanced herself farther from the eyes and the bullets of her enemies.
Having eaten his fill, the Hexhermetic Shipworm slumbered peacefully in her arms as she bounded over the water. Everywhere lay ships at anchor, no longer so close together out here as nearer shore. It was only occasionally that she saw men on board, but they posed no danger to her in the approaching dusk.
Jolly was gasping with exhaustion when at last she reached the inlet. To her right and left, torches were burning on the beaches of the tent city. Still, she had enough strength to run on. Men were observing her from both sides of the shore. Some waded right into the water toward her, but after a few steps the channel was too deep. Now and then a few bullets whistled past her ears, but most of them went so wide that they didn’t even make her jump.
She reached the eastern arm of the delta river and followed it out to the Atlantic Ocean. The worm stirred in her arms, purred and rumbled something, and fell asleep again. Breathing hard, she carried him farther, along beneath the fortress, towering dark and threatening above her. She followed the coastline toward the southeast at about a stone’s throw from land.
The sun had finally gone down and now the night spread quickly over the jungle and the sea. Tyrone’s fortress melted into the sky; soon it was distinguishable only as a lighted point in the distance. The noise from the lake on the other side of the spit carried out over the ocean. Along the way Jolly had seen several dark outlines rushing past her under the surface of the water in the opposite direction. She clung to the hope that it was the sea horses, following the Ghost Trader’s signals.
The fortress was falling farther and farther behind her. The black wall of the jungle moved closer and gave way to the sandy beach on which Jolly and her companions had come ashore. In the dark she could make it out only as a ghostly line, a vague shimmer where the sand reflect
ed the moon.
With her last ounce of strength she turned in the direction of the shore, fell to her knees in exhaustion, and let herself be carried the last hundred feet to the beach by the surf. With the shipworm in her arms, she rolled away from the foaming froth onto the land and remained lying there. She no longer felt her legs, and she was too weak to drag herself into the protection of the palms.
She drew up her knees, wrapped her body protectively around the worm, and fell asleep on the spot.
Sometime, perhaps soon, perhaps much later, she awoke to the sound of several voices. The night was pitch-dark. Clouds must have come up, for neither the moon nor the stars were visible. She had sand between her teeth. The worm also awoke and wordlessly pushed closer to her warm body.
Jolly sat up in the sand. She was dizzy, and her legs hurt. She felt a cramp coming in her left foot and quickly moved it back and forth a little to limber it.
The voices were coming from the sea, carried in on the salty wind.
She jumped up, moved slowly to the palms, and sought protection behind a trunk.
She heard crashing and splashing. Something was moving out there. A dark knot of shadows drifted apart, hardly more than a black spot in front of the darkness of the night ocean.
“That isn’t them,” the shipworm whispered peevishly.
Jolly placed a finger on her lips. Her heart was thumping so hard that she was afraid the entire palm would shake with the vibrations.
“Jolly?” Hardly more than a whisper and nevertheless unmistakable. Soledad’s voice!
Jolly leaped out from behind the palm and stumbled over the soft sand. “Here we are!” she replied, and she had trouble lowering her voice. She would much rather have screamed with relief. The worm also relaxed. Before he’d rolled himself almost into a ball, but now he stretched out and nearly slipped out of her hands.
She could hardly make out the princess’s face in the dark, but her slender body and her voice were unmistakable.
“Hurry, Jolly!”
“I’m so glad you made it!” Jolly looked over at Soledad. “Are they all there?”
“Yes, don’t worry.” Soledad embraced her briefly, which made the shipworm grumble angrily because he was squeezed between them. “And the little one is all right, it appears,” said the princess, with a glance at the cursing bundle. “Anyway, well done, little man.”
“Man?” snarled the worm. “Men are humans. And I’d rather be a stone than a human.”
“We’re not sure if they’re following us,” said Soledad to Jolly.
“Tyrone?”
“Not he himself. His people have enough to do to douse the ships. Besides, it’s too dark to run out.” She pulled Jolly to the water with her and waded out into the surf, while the girl ran along on the waves beside her.
“Who, then?”
“Kobalins.”
Ice-cold fear rose inside Jolly. Uneasily she remembered the night that the Carfax was followed. Her eyes slid over the sea’s surface, but it was too dark to see anything.
“We aren’t sure,” said Soledad, as she fought against the waves with difficulty and they approached the spot where the others were waiting on their sea horses.
“Don’t ever do that again, Jolly,” was the first thing Walker said when they’d come close enough.
“Don’t listen to him,” Buenaventure contradicted from the saddle of his sea horse. “He’s glad to see you. He just doesn’t want to admit it.”
Jolly grinned, even though she could hardly see the two of them. She quickly ran over to them. “Guess who I brought with me.”
Out of the darkness Buenaventure stretched out his hands, tousled her hair approvingly, and fished the shipworm out of her embrace.
“Looks as if we have something like a real hero here,” he said to the worm.
The remarkable creature proudly stretched out to his full length. Parts of his shell scraped against each other. “Quite true. I think someone should forge this great deed into verses. A mighty epic about the heroic battle of the Hexhermetic—”
“With a tragic outcome,” Walker interrupted, “if I hear a single rhyme.”
“Fishbrain! Philistine!”
Jolly helped Buenaventure stow the scolding worm into his knapsack. The hero slid in, fell silent immediately, and breathed a contented sigh. She noticed that something was left sticking to her fingers, something fine, soft, like spider-webs, but she didn’t think anything of it and wiped it off on her trousers.
“Hurry!” The Ghost Trader steered his sea horse next to Soledad’s. The princess pulled herself into the saddle. Jolly leaped up behind her and shoved her hands and feet into the holding loops.
With rallying cries they urged the sea horses to start moving. Soon they were whistling over the black sea.
“We really spit into Tyrone’s soup in a big way,” Soledad called joyously over her shoulder when they were out of hearing distance of the coast. The sea wind whirled her hair into Jolly’s face.
“I thought a few destroyed ships wouldn’t be enough to weaken him,” said Jolly.
“Not that. But he knows that we’ll warn the people of Aelenium. So he has no other choice now than to run out tomorrow morning and begin the attack as soon as possible.”
“And that’s good?”
“Well, he has to go through the Antilles captains’ territory. A fleet like that won’t be overlooked, and they’ll ask themselves what’s become of the great land campaign against Caracas he promised them. The captains will realize that Tyrone has taken them in.”
“So no more attack on Caracas?”
“Hardly. Without the Antilles pirates, our people on Tortuga and New Providence will think three times about whether they have a chance. And the Antilles captains won’t tolerate the passage of Tyrone’s fleet. They’re proud men, and Tyrone’s treachery will injure their honor deeply.”
“Does that mean they’ll attack him?”
“Quite possibly. They have no chance against such superior force, but I guess they’ll attack his flanks and rear. With a little luck they’ll weaken Tyrone considerably. And that again will be to Aelenium’s advantage.”
Jolly leaned forward in order to look into Soledad’s face. “How do you know all that?”
The princess laughed, and for the first time in a long time there was no sound of bitterness in it. “They’re pirates, Jolly. And men. If I learned one thing from my father, it’s the ability to think like one of those fellows. Believe me, it’s much easier than it looks.” Soledad had said something similar to Jolly once before, about Griffin and Munk, and she’d been right that time, too.
“Kendrick was wrong,” said Jolly.
“What do you mean?”
“When he said no pirate would follow a woman. I think you’ll be quite a good pirate empress someday.”
The princess shrugged, but Jolly sensed her proud smile in the dark.
They saw no kobalins that night, and not on the following day, either. The friends spoke little and allowed the sea horses no rest. The shipworm remained hidden away in Buenaventure’s knapsack; Jolly guessed that he was writing his heroic epic. Vaguely uneasy, she remembered the substance that had stuck to her hands.
The comrades breathed a deep sigh when, early on the morning of the third day, the fog wall appeared on the horizon. High over them fluttered the parrots, and for the first time the mysterious birds acted almost frolicsome.
Although Jolly could hardly wait to see Griffin again, she was the only one who felt no relief. She was unhappily anticipating her meeting with Munk.
But even that dismay paled in the face of the task that lay ahead of her. She looked past the fog to the northeast, over the breadth of the endless ocean. Suddenly she felt panic rising.
Somewhere out there lay the Crustal Breach, many thousands of feet under the sea, in icy cold and everlasting night. She had recognized her opponent and made her decision. Aelenium was only a station on the way, not the destination.
> The rising sun filled the heavens with gold, and the comrades rode straight into the light. But Jolly’s descent into the shadows had begun long before.
