The Strider and the Regulus (The Star of Atlantis Book 1), page 10
What could Justus say?
A strip of wind parted the mist and showed the figures on the coast, waving arms.
“Sail ho!” cried Swift. “We be sighted!”
The bilge-sucking buccaneers were all drunk, fast asleep.
“All hands on deck!” Swift went around the little ship, kicking his pirates to life. “Peabrain, man the chase gun! Jolly Stormcrow, take the wheel!” Swift set the rudder true to north and rolled the knot along the boom, flaring the mainsail broad.
The men on the coast read the open sail and broke their line, sprinting for the Regulus.
The Strider, catching full wind, set into a sprint across the waves.
A racing stallion breaking free its gate could not have been more spirited.
“The Strider be a clipper now!” Swift laughed his heartiest laugh. “Set the course for Brandy Brook and make ye fast the jib. Or ready your biscuits for Captain Justus’s flog!”
Swift got right on making fast the jib, and the Strider responded true, jumping wave after wave, tearing north.
“Peabrain, mind the halyard! Jolly Stormcrow, take us in! A Kraken’s nest lies true to north, and there be treasure stowed.”
Swift glanced over the gunwale and found Mister Hogwash’s ropes had come untied. “If ye be undone, Mister Hogwash, look alive and mind the jib. The Regulus is gaining in our wake.”
A noise… a low noise, like dark laughter, sounded.
Swift let the rope go slack.
He peered seaward, through the mist.
In the western expanse, deep within the swirling gray mist, floated a long boat—a skiff with one bare mast.
No light shown from the skiff. Her form was etched by just the moon and stars, making her a gray hole on the otherwise black water. The skiff was quite far behind him, but close enough for Swift to hear that oars were plunking in the water.
Oars worked by a single, shadowed figure.
12
At the sound of that skiff, gliding closer, the line slipped from Swift’s hands.
The Strider’s mainsail fluttered slack. Waves rolled beneath the dinghy, offsetting her yaw.
Swift clung to the mast, his breathing quickening beyond what he could control.
He recognized the reaching feeling in his lungs as panic.
It’d been a while since an attack had set in, and he’d never had a one without Caius or Mum near.
The darkness felt like a blanket pressing his face.
He clutched at the knots on the sail. He tried to slow his mind. Forced his diaphragm to take air. Focused on easing the sail.
All his eyes would look at, though, was the gray wedge the skiff was cutting from the pattern of choppy waves.
The skiff looked like a common fishing boat—but why would any fisherman be out at night without a light?
He tried to make out whether the person in the boat was watching him. Whether the skiff really was easing his way.
A whistling wheedled through the mist.
It was a dead-breathed whistling, drawing the melody of the verse in The Star of Atlantis.
The pirate-ghost sentry to the treasure would certainly know its song.
Grog Blossom.
Swift heaved his weight onto the block. He jerked the line tight and did everything to widen the mast.
A wave washed the Strider, shoving her off kilter.
Swift nearly tumbled over the gunwale, but he grabbed the mast and leaned in, tipping her left and right until the Strider and he together mastered their balance.
A cramp started under his shoulder blade and spread into his neck. It arched his back and pinched his breath.
He gripped the mast as waves sloshed over the Strider’s side, threatening to swamp her.
The cramp diminished enough for Swift to snatch the rudder with his working arm. He steadied the boat against the waves until she was fully upright, wind fluttering her wild sail.
The cramp released him, its easing feeling like tentacles slipping away.
With its going, the panic eased.
Swift sat upright and looked back at the skiff.
It hadn’t moved.
Its rider was holding an oar flat across the boat’s breadth.
Though the skiff was a good distance off, it was pointed straight at him.
Swift scooted to the block and trimmed the sail until it again caught the wind.
The skiff moved when he did, its long oar rising, then dipping. Rising, then dipping. With each stroke, the skiff seemed to gain a meter on him.
Swift peered ahead and sighted the sheltered divot in the water.
It seemed, in every way, to be Sterncastle Cove. The Kraken-tooth rocks in its center that would give it away were concealed by the mist, but the coast had truly been stick straight leading up to this.
Maybe the Star of Atlantis was wanting to be found.
It was said to choose its discoverer. Maybe it was sending currents to draw him true, safe from dread Grog Blossom.
If that was Grog Blossom.
Pirate fantasies were well enough, but even if rooted in some truth, they were fantasies. And here he was, alone in a sailing dinghy, being stalked by an absolute stranger.
What could anyone possibly want with a boy alone on the North Atlantic, at night, though?
Probably nothing. If that were a regular fisherman, he’d likely just leave Swift alone.
But if that were a regular fisherman, what were the chances that he’d know that shanty?
And why was he closing in?
And why didn’t he have a light?
A glance over his shoulder showed the Regulus taking to sea.
His family probably couldn’t see the skiff, dark as she was on the water, quite far ahead of their hull.
The Regulus had not just sails, but an engine and could reach him in minutes.
Swift watched her, listening for an ignition.
The sails broadened, but the engine didn’t fire.
If the Regulus caught him, it would mean a world of hurt.
But the thought of his father’s furious face felt mild compared to the visions rising of the man in the skiff snatching him.
Whether that sailor was dread Grog Blossom or some loony seaman, he might really have a blade. He might really carry a gun.
A madman could make quick work of slicing Swift’s throat or lodging a bullet in him, claiming the Strider, and speeding off into the black, Swift’s body drifting out to sea before anyone on the Regulus could be the wiser.
Swift’s constricting chest prickled with the thought of that sailor holding a knife.
He slackened the Strider’s sails and focused on the Regulus, willing her to quicken and flank herself between him and the weird skiff.
Her pace seemed no more than a crawl.
And the skiff was advancing. Fast.
Swift couldn’t wait for the Regulus. He had to do something.
He spread his mainsail as wide as it would go. But even sailing at its quickest clip, the Strider had no chance of making it to the beach house before the skiff caught up.
Swift looked ahead, assessing the graying coast.
The entrance to Sterncastle Cove was narrow. Perhaps too narrow for a skiff. Certainly, too narrow for a brigantine.
But it was perfect for the Strider.
If he could reach that islet of Kraken teeth, maybe he’d find the treasure resting there in plain sight. If that were Grog Blossom on his tail—and if Swift actually managed to reach the Star of Atlantis—maybe at the finding of the treasure, the undead buccaneer would be undone.
And if that wasn’t Grog Blossom, if it were some creepy seadog really stalking him, the cove seemed Swift’s only refuge.
If he could make it there, his family would see him go in. And if the skiff followed, they’d see that, too. They’d charge the motor and call for help.
Swift glanced over his shoulder to find sails of the Regulus falling slack.
Were they prepping the engine, then?
But the great ship stayed quiet.
The only sound on the water was the slip of oars rising and falling. Rising and falling.
The skiff was still a good distance behind him, but its creep felt like the raising of a blade.
Swift kept his eyes fixed on the passage into the cove. If he were lucky, he’d glide right in. If he were not lucky, he’d tip into an eddy along the gateway.
A current snagged the Strider and shot it toward the pass. Breakers splashed the dinghy’s starboard side, soaking Swift. He threw his weight to counter the slosh.
Quick wave swept the Strider toward the mouth of Sterncastle Cove.
Swift gripped the mast and winced.
The Strider’s fate was fully out of his hands.
13
Teetering at the top of a wave, at the brink of Sterncastle Cove—
it was like hanging in Titan’s balance—the wave a scale that weighed Swift’s heart against his deeds to judge if he were fit to live or die.
The wave let go of him.
In a rush of white froth, Swift slid between the rocks.
Clutching his chest, he sank off the bench. The Strider still cradled him, but that plunge down through steep waves into the cove—it struck as the same feeling as what arrested him earlier, at the Strider’s buck—the sea swallowing him.
He crooked in the bowl until he had ahold of his breathing.
When the sense of wooziness faded, he sat up and took inventory of his ship.
The Strider was upright, surging on with the force of a strong current into the broad cove. Her sails were empty, but untorn.
High rocks drew a ring around him, casting shadows. The waves here were calm, almost flat, beneath the dense mist. The cove was void of wind.
Swift righted himself on the bench and studied the pass behind him.
He listened for any splashing—for waves striking a skiff’s hull, for oars sweeping the sea.
Minutes crept of his rapid breathing, of wind shuddering the sails, of his heart skipping.
No splash of water struck a skiff, and no voice sounded. No pirate shanty lifted behind him. He heard nothing on the water but water.
Maybe the madman in the skiff had judged the pass too small, too difficult, and moved off.
Swift unfixed his oar.
Keeping an eye out for surfacing reefs, he swept the sea, easing the Strider through the mist, further into the cove.
The cove, with its rocky walls looming and heavy mists curling, carried an unearthly quality. It was as though in the mist hung not just the smell of fish and sea minerals, but magic.
Swift strained to make out anything that might be the Kraken-tooth islet—the islet that Sterncastle Cove ought to have in its center. He could shelter there; hide, until he was sure he was unfollowed.
The farther he pulled in, though, the emptier he found the cove to be.
But its emptiness seemed suspect. It was as though a presence lingered here. Trespassing these still waters felt like slipping into a room that held somebody hiding.
Mermaids played along the Celtic coast at sunrise, sailors claimed.
Swift glanced down into the water.
Maybe a mermaid shoal was gliding underneath the Strider, at this moment—coasting closer. Maybe a shark had spotted his light and was nearing.
Gripping the oar, his heart in his throat, he peered over the gunwale.
Deep inside the translucent-gray water, right beneath the Strider, something swayed.
Swift abandoned the oar in his lap. He seized the Strider’s edge with both hands.
The something in the water shifted from a shimmer to a swelling light. It glistened, brightened, to a brilliant, electric blue.
The water seemed several fathoms deep right here—well deep enough for bigger sharks to coast. And surely it was deep enough for mermaids.
Swift glanced behind him.
The passage to Sterncastle Cove still stood vacant.
Maybe the skiff’s rider was looming—just beyond the rocks framing the entrance to the cove—waiting for Swift to sail back.
Or maybe, if that had been Grog Blossom, he’d plunged into the sea to suffer a second death.
Swift peered again into the water.
There, the bright something still slithered.
Flickered.
It was smaller than a shark would be. And sharks didn’t shimmer like that.
If a mermaid sensed seawater coursing in Swift’s blood, she’d rise and whisper ocean riddles. She’d fix her aqua eyes on his, mesmerizing him with her beauty.
And she’d vent melodies hauled from the open ocean—perhaps from the same place his pirate verse had been harvested.
Places of sunsetted seascapes where songs of the Celtic elements—songs of moons and starry skies, of forests and spirits and winds and enchantment—shanties of longing for silver and jewels, galleons and crowns—drifted in wait for a born treasure hunter to hear them.
Swift wrapped his fingers around the book, in his pocket.
The Star of Atlantis told of monsters unfathomable in these waters. Anything could be down there. Anything could be coming.
Water splashed from near the pass.
Swift jumped and spun.
The nose of the skiff threaded between the rocks.
The pass looked hardly wide enough for its sides to fit, but a second—and it was through. The figure in the skiff’s middle—close now and closing in—loomed featureless.
The figure’s empty blackness seemed unnatural. Maybe the vacuity was just an effect of the deep shadows cast by the high rocks lining the cove. Or maybe it was a hellish dimness; an undead body stitched of shadows.
Swift’s sore arms responded to the panic in his heart, and he oared the Strider quickly away, straight to the middle of the cove, where the mist loomed thickest.
The islet ring of Kraken teeth should be right here.
Swift glided straight through the center of the cove with not so much as a reef tip to dodge.
There were no kraken teeth. There was no circlet of jetting rocks as round as Earth. There was nothing at all. This cove was like the sinkhole of a dead volcano—vast and void.
Swift squared the nose of the Strider at the skiff.
It was moving briskly on the placid water, the foul whistling of its occupant piercing the dank wind.
The dark water stayed an eerie calm as the glowing something in the depths ascended.
Perhaps whistling was how Grog Blossom summoned sentry mermaids.
A shock of thought froze Swift, arresting his oar and stopping his breath—
What if the skiff’s rider hadn’t discovered him here, but had driven him here? What if the map was actually a trap? What if its cryptic letters spelled out some kind of warning?
Maybe there was no Star of Atlantis.
Maybe the map had been drawn so sailors would come searching, so sailors would find what looked exactly like Sterncastle Cove—just as he had—that their bodies might be forfeit for anything to feast upon—Kraken, undead pirate, or mermaid goddess.
In a flash of gray, the water between the Strider and the skiff broke with a silver fin.
Swift gripped the mast and watched a blue-white body muscle out of the sea.
It leapt into the air—a ten-foot thrasher shark.
It arced and twisted. Its mouth gaped, showing teeth. It plunged down close enough to splash Swift’s face.
His heart stuttering, Swift sank to the base of the Strider.
He’d been on the bow of the Regulus, a few summers back, when he’d seen a thrasher leap, just like that. Caius saw it too and told him thrashers jump to disturb the water; to stun fishes at the surface for catching and eating.
That leap meant the thrasher was hungry. Hunting.
Swift sat confounded, too full of fear to even breathe, his back tingling with the sense of the shark beneath, perhaps rising to knock the Strider with its snout.
He’d read someplace that sharks could sense not just blood in the water, but blood inside a human body, in a boat—warm meat waiting to be shucked and eaten like a muscle in a cockle.
And bigger sharks were fully capable of tipping little boats.
He had to get out of the water.
Swift peered over the gunwale at the sloshing the shark left. He lifted his gaze to the narrow pass and tried to calculate whether he had room to skate past the skiff.
The gap on either side of it was narrow, and the skiff’s rider was keeping it that way, angling, it seemed, to block him.
And even if Swift could get by, what would that seadog do?
He’d followed Swift here. Chased him into a cove haunted by sharks and who knew what else? He’d certainly not let him pass.
Swift watched the water for signs that the shark was circling back. But after a moment, the cove grew dead still again.
He couldn’t even make out the footprint on the skim where the thrasher had landed.
The rock walls of the cove encroached. The mist constricted. The light in the deeps strengthened. The shark beneath him grew hungrier. The ragged figure drew nearer.
Swift hesitated to put his oar in the water with that shark, with that eerie blue glow—but he’d have to. The shoulders of these looming walls deflected any wind that could fill the Strider’s sails. To get anywhere, he’d have to paddle.
Swift’s arms felt weak, and his back was stiff and seemed to be on the verge of cramping again. Even if he could manage to steadily oar, the Strider would only crawl.
Swift tightened his grip on the oar. He’d have to do his best to get around the skiff; to deal with its rider.
A hand-to-hand struggle probably meant someone landing in the water with that shark, though.
Swift tried to give the Strider a push, but his arms were frozen.
All he could focus on was the weight of The Star of Atlantis, heavy with its map, in his pocket.
All this peril, all this distress, was upon him because of his obsession with the Star of Atlantis.
Swift’s body seemed suddenly numb, the realization striking as paralysis, that this treasure chase might very well cost him his life.
At this moment, if he lost everything—his ship, his family, his life—in seeking a mythical pirate treasure, would the venture have been worth it? Was the Star of Atlantis worth dying for?
