Chapter 58
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 57
Arthur finds himself laughing as he ducks bits of bone flying from where Darcy has a skeleton’s pelvis in her jaws and is destroying the thing by vigorously shaking her head. “Guess no one accounted for us bringing a wolf to a battle with the undead!”
“Well, I have a bone to pick with them!” Darcy laughs back, wags her tail, and finds a moment to bump her head against Arthur. They’re fighting together, this must mean she’s doing good by him!
Jack materialises out of one of the shadows and asks his captain for orders. “Their ship is taking on water. If we don’t get away from it, we may well be pulled under with it.”
Arthur nods, but says: “Suggestions welcome on how to get away from them- there’s still hardly any wind. Have we any poles long enough we could use to push away from them?”
~~~~
Limping over and holding a bloody gash on his side, John shakes his head, has to clench his jaw for a moment because he can see Darcy tense, can see that she wants to run to him but then doesn’t, instead only looks down, tail lowering. “Nay, Cap’n. But we do have ropes. Maybe our siren could tow us out.”
~~~~
“Good idea, let’s do that- if she can manage.” He looks at Lucy in question. “How do you feel about towing a whole ship?” Then he also waves at Jack to come over and look at John’s wounds- apparently, John likes to get himself wounded.
Lucy had fluttered over at hearing their conversation, and now circles around them. “I’ll do it, but somebody fix my husband meanwhile. Manly men, of course they both got bloody… Jackie, that includes you. You overlooked the splinter.”
~~~~
As he looks down at himself, Jack is both glad that this is a story, and impressed that John got this peculiarity of his right, he indeed didn’t feel at all where a piece of the exploding ship must have hit him. It’s still there, torn through clothes and stuck in his side. “Merde. Yes, I’ll see to our wounded. If you would please save us from other harm meanwhile, I’d be much obliged, my rose.”
Giggling, Lucy nods then beats her wings at Arthur to get him to run along. “Get those ropes ready for me!”
~~~~
It’s very odd to not be the one jumping in to heal everyone, but Arthur leaves it to Jack and instead runs to find ropes and tie them to the front masts for Lucy to pull. He figures, since that’s where the wind pulls at the ship, it should be sturdy enough.
~~~~
Darcy helps best she can. With her papa on the healing, she knows everybody will be alright, she’s more useful here. Once the knots are as tight as they will go, between her teeth and Arthur’s hands, she’s about to throw the rope to her mother when she stumbles as the ship tilts suddenly.
Arthur instinctively grabs at her, slings his arm around her shoulders and chest as he crouches and braces himself, even while he looks around for the cause of the ship’s motion.
“Go!” John shouts, holding on to a railing himself, gesticulating at the spot where the waves are closing over the ghost ship, the movement pulling heavy on their own hull.
Arthur doesn’t let himself be told twice, scrambles to toss the ropes to Lucy.
She snatches them with her claws but squeals in surprise and startles back as one more skeleton jumps at her, trying to bring their doom about single-handedly. It is not long for this story as both a knife and bullet hit its skull dead centre less than a second apart and Lucy can go back to focusing on her part. Her men have her back.
~~~~
That startled Arthur, but with the skeleton dealt with, he runs for the helm to help steer the ship away from the suction of the sinking ghost ship- he wonders whether it’s gone for good, or whether it’ll just reappear somewhere else. Well… whichever John is in the mood for, presumably.
Said John appears next to him, bandaged but no longer limping and gives him tips on how to steer, while Lucy throws her full weight and wingspan against the ropes to encouraging shouts from Art, cheering barks from Darcy, and gently spoken declarations of trust but also instructions on best angles from Jack.
Slowly but surely, with protesting creaks and groans from the timbers, they pull away from the suction. As the ghost ship disappears, a breeze starts stirring their sails again, too, dissipating the fog and helping nudge them along.
Out of the fog, an island looms large only a few hundred meters ahead.
“Looks like we made it, Cap’n.” John declares with a grin and a punch to Arthur’s shoulder.
“Good navigating!” Arthur tells him, glances back at the last shreds of the fog. “So do we think that was the first crew defending the treasure from the warning on the map, or are we expecting more skeletons?”
“Good decision making, too.” While John studies the island, he runs his fingers over his beard. “I’d be surprised if it was that easy. We better not let our guard down.”
Arthur nods his agreement. “Any chance of us taking that cannon along?” he asks. “Or would that be asking too much of you?”
“Lucy can carry it of course, just not below the tree cover or any caves we might need to go into.” Asking for the map, John points to the marking of the x being behind a cave entrance.
“Okay, then we’ll take it as far as we can, it’ll be a big help with anything we might meet on the way, at least.” Arthur glances out at the dark island. “Though, sensibly, let’s wait until the morning so we can see where we’re going. And let’s clean up the deck and get rid of any left-over bones- wouldn’t want them to reassemble themselves or something. Though maybe we ought to give them a proper sea burial? They were pirates like us, after all.”
John chuckles for a moment, then nods with a sigh but overplays it by quipping they better or Darcy might sneak a snack. Pointing over at a lagoon on the side of the island, he suggests that might be a good anchoring spot for them to wait on daybreak.
Arthur steers them to the lagoon, where they drop their anchor, and quips back that he can think of worse fates for your remains than being a snack to a magical wolf.
~~~~
Not that John disagrees, not that he doesn’t feel jealous of how Darcy is close with everybody on deck but avoids him, but he’s telling this story for Arthur, so he quips back with the best grin he can muster that they won’t hear the end of it if she gets an upset stomach from it and whines to her papa about it. Then he moves to put the anchor down and this time finds himself with real jealousy as he walks past the obviously happy family, Art and Jack giving Lucy chin scratches and telling her she did well while Darcy is settled across both men’s feet.
~~~~
Arthur smiles at the sight of them all piled together- he’s glad they’re having fun, too, and it’s really nice to just… have fun with everyone. He never had that before, such a big group of people being interested in spending time with him. Which reminds him that, right, Gregory is around somewhere, too, and it’s kind of weird that they haven’t heard anything from him, but… but somehow, he really doesn’t feel like going looking for him. So instead, he starts checking the deck for leftover skeleton bits.
Darcy comes over to help him and tells him her parents are seeing to dinner. Papa insists that they can’t go hiking all over an island without some proper nutrition and apparently, Daddy is wrong in thinking double rations of grog count.
Arthur laughs- much as pirates are supposed to be into grog, he’ll be siding with Dr Seward here… Then he asks her whether she’s enjoying herself, and whether she’ll be glad to get off the ship and onto the island?
Her ears perk up, sitting around a fire on the beach with her whole family? Yes, pretty please?
Not explore, but at least spend the night at the beach? Arthur considers and decides that, yes, they can do that, and sitting around a fire sounds fun! Maybe they can pack dinner and have a tropical beach picnic at night?
~~~~
Yes yes yes! Darcy’s dancing from paw to paw then jumps up on Arthur to lick his face and dashes off to tell her family before Papa makes something that can’t be brought over. This is the best day ever! All the people she loves around sharing a story! She just wishes she could talk to John… she wishes the last two weeks never happened, she wants to lay her head in his lap and just see him smile. He doesn’t smile enough. She must have been so bad for him. She’ll just make everything worse. She’ll have to just hope that he’ll find a good wife soon so he can be happy.
~~~~
Arthur, meanwhile, finishes collecting any scattered bones from the deck, and then, as the captain, gives them a short sea burial- well, mostly he puts them in a sack and wishes them ‘rest in peace’ before throwing them overboard, but… it’s the thought that counts, right?
They don’t complain at the very least, which can’t be said for Lucy being close to any food. She’s not nauseated as she should be, but after all these years the association is strong. Still, if she gets the choice between sitting on Art’s shoulder and singing as entertainment for the evening or waiting this out, nope, she’ll complain and sing and laugh with her men when they chime in.
Yes, this is the very best birthday ever- the sand is warm and silky, not rough like the one at the Whitby beach, and the food might be dream food, but it tastes just as good and strong as real food, and Arthur tells John so- it’s amazing that he can make everything so lifelike!
Rubbing his neck John grins at him. “Been doing this all my life.”
~~~~
From the corner of his eye, Jack can see Darcy’s proud look at John, then she quickly puts her head back down on Art’s lap and really, what is wrong with his poor rose petal? Still internally debating if he read it right, and what he could even say, he notices the way Lucy is glaring and relaxes. She’s much better at this; he’ll trust her to talk to their daughter. What would he know about boy trouble?
~~~~
They spend the night sitting around the camp fire, laughing and talking and, in the case of John and Art, drinking- under strict supervision from their doctor, of course. Darcy, at one point, sticks her muzzle into Art’s mug for a taste, and then pulls it back with the most revolted face Arthur has ever seen on a wolf. She doesn’t seem to mind at all that he bursts out laughing, or that the others join him, only shakes herself as if she got wet before settling back down.
Dr Seward entertains them with stories from his medical practise that are delightfully gross- Arthur meets John’s eyes at more than one point with a grin, while Lucy makes squawking parrot noises of protest whenever Dr Seward gets too graphic. Though Arthur thinks it’s mostly for show, she isn’t doing anything to make him actually stop.
Darcy sometimes looks over at John, but comes to lie down next to Arthur. Eventually, as the fire burns low and they run out of things to talk about, Arthur ends up lying on his back in the sand, staring up at the stars in the black sky- there are so many more than he’s ever seen before, and he wonders how John knew to put them all there, whether that’s really what a tropical sky looks like.
Not much later, that sky lightens with the rosy glow of sunrise. Since they’re already asleep and in a dream, obviously they don’t need to sleep, but it’s still a bit odd to experience- also, that night was nowhere near as long as a real one would’ve been, but that would’ve been boring, too.
Dr Seward produces a breakfast of French toast in the form of biscuits fried in a pan over their re-stoked fire, with eggs and coconut water and tropical fruits from the beach, while they study the treasure map to get their bearings, compare it to what they can see of the island.
It looks like they’ll have to find their way through the jungle, up the ridge they can see rising from the beach, over a pass that looks like the fingers of a hand, and then down into a marsh or swamp, to a… well, apparently a skull? From there, they should be able to find the cave entrance to where the treasure is hidden.
Of course, it’s all a lot more adventurous than that- without Darcy’s nose in the dense jungle, they would have gotten hopelessly lost and turned around. And of course, when they reach the pass, they’re ambushed by more skeletons, and it’s a good thing they have Art and Lucy and the cannon to clear their way. And down at the edge of the swamp, Arthur has just about time to notice a whining, droning noise coming towards them before something flashes past his head and a scalpel impales a mosquito the size of his palm against a tree. Arthur blinks at the insect, then at Dr Seward, who calmly pulls out netting for their heads and faces from his doctor’s bag and tells them not to get bitten, they might get infected by malaria.
Arthur doesn’t need the threat of an illness to not want to be bitten by a monster mosquito, so makes sure all his skin is properly covered, tugs his sleeves over his hands, too.
Also, sure, they all have kind of special powers in this story, but they’re also sort of similar to their real-life powers. Well, Arthur doesn’t know how good Art is at shooting things, with cannons or otherwise, and whether Lucy can turn into any birds… Well, anyway, he wonders whether Dr Seward knows how to throw knives in real life, too? …Not that he’s sure how he would ask that…
Darcy’s nose doesn’t help much in the swamp, but her paws do, as she has an easier time testing for good footing with her four feet and no shoes on. So they do find the skull- it’s an actual skull, on a pole, appropriately yellowed and creepy. If this wasn’t a story, Arthur would wonder whose it is.
~~~~
Seeing all the notes she made John incorporated so much nicer than she could ever have envisioned it, Darcy wants to do nothing more than wrap herself around John’s legs and tell him how proud and grateful she is. Her anger at him feels like it’s years old and gone. He couldn’t possibly have meant the words as hurtful as they felt. Could he?
They are words. Treacherous, useless words. But that also means that she doesn’t know what to say, how to make it better. She wants to be good for him and maybe… maybe he hurt her so it’s easier for him? Maybe he knows he needs to move on so she doesn’t hurt him anymore. He said he’d stay away, she shouldn’t make this harder on him. She might not love him, but he means so much to her.
That he put so much effort into this also means so much to her, so instead of wrapping herself around him, she goes up to the skull and howls as the instructions on the map told her to. Howls again and there is the little white mouse, wriggling out of the skull’s eye socket like the largest maggot ever (she thought the boys would like that, boys are supposed to like things like that). Thanking her friend, she follows after, telling her family that this is the right way!
~~~~
Arthur can’t tell whether the white mouse out of the eye socket is really creepy or actually cute… A bit of both, he supposes?
Anyway, they continue along their way, until they reach a low, dark opening under a shelf of rock. It’s overgrown with vines and ferns, and without Darcy’s friend to guide them, Arthur thinks they would’ve searched a long time to find it.
It leads down into the earth, their only light a lantern that’s just enough to follow the tip of Darcy’s swinging tail. That is, until the walls start to glow in soft, random patches and patterns of blue and green, until it looks almost like they’re under water. It’s beautiful- Arthur’s read about bioluminescent species, but he didn’t know they would be so pretty!
~~~~
Darcy’s tail stops swinging as she has to sit down because she cranes her head back and back and back until it doesn’t go any further. This feels… right? It’s dark and safe and lovely, and John made it. She didn’t tell him this part, he made it and she loves it and it hurts because how can she love so many things about him and then not love him properly? He’s right, he should stay away, she’s being bad and he’s so very good. Still, she doesn’t want to walk alone at the front anymore, so she nuzzles up close to her daddy.
~~~~
“It’s beautiful,” Arthur tells John as they turn off the lantern and follow the corridor into a cavern that is all blue and green light, and a few little shafts of sunlight piercing through the ceiling high above, so there are some other mosses and ferns growing along a trickle of a waterfall. A little to the side, where the daylight doesn’t quite reach and the glowing walls haven’t started yet, so it’s hard to see, is a sturdy wooden chest that looks exactly like a treasure chest ought to, with metal bands across the lid and everything.
He approaches the chest carefully, but there’s no traps around it or anything, and when he opens it, instead of the expected gold coins and jewellery and what not, there are two books and a long, rectangular wooden case on top of what seems to be another, larger box that takes up most of the chest.
Puzzled, Arthur looks at the others, to find Art grinning and Dr Seward nodding at him in encouragement, while parrot-Lucy is doing a sort of excited wiggle on Art’s shoulder that reminds Arthur of Darcy- who was busy sniffing around the little cavern, but now also gives him a wag of her tail. So clearly, yes, this is for him. He takes out the books first, tilts them towards the sparse sunlight to make out their titles- and they’re books on healing magic, one is even the one his father had annotated all over, the one he learned his current healing spell from. The slim, rectangular box contains a beautiful fountain pen with “Arthur” engraved on it, and little wells of different colours of ink. The big box on the bottom turns out to have a handle on top, and it’s also engraved with his name, and when he opens it, he finds it’s a case with equipment for caring for a horse- curry brushes, a hoof pick, even a halter at the bottom made from soft leather, with Hannibal’s name along one cheek strap. The brushes are also engraved with Hannibal’s name.
Having waited for him to inspect everything, Darcy sits down next to him and nuzzles up with a chirped “Happy birthday, Arthur-dear!”
Art echoes that and admits that the horse supplies likely will only be ready tomorrow in Whitby for him to pick up, Darcy only just told him the name he decided on for his first horse after all. Jack is next in wishing him a happy birthday, he hopes at least one of the two books is the right one, he didn’t have the exact name after all, but they both are waiting for him at his favourite spot in the library.
Lucy flies over and puts a kiss on his cheek with her birthday wishes. He’s such a big reader; he should also have something fun to write with.
Hardly daring to come that close to Darcy, John finally steps up, too, punches Arthur on the shoulder. “Nothing extra from me. I made the chest after all.”
Arthur blushes at all that, realizing that all of these are more birthday presents- even though he already got Hannibal! “Thank you,” he says, very touched, assures Dr Seward that yes, that book is the one he’s already worked with, and that he doesn’t mind at all waiting a day, and tells John that with this whole adventure and everything, well, that’s already a big gift!
Thankfully, John claps him on the shoulder so he doesn’t tear up with how much this all means to him, and, treasure found, it’s time to bring the adventure to a close. After Arthur thanks John once more for it, and everyone else for playing it with him, he wakes back up in his bed. Despite the ‘days’ the dream took, he doesn’t think more than maybe an hour has passed, and while it’s dark outside, it’s not very late. So Arthur changes into his pirate outfit, just because he wants to, and heads to the library to look at those books in real life.
Oddly enough, he’s joined by Gregory when he’s almost there, who asks him if he had fun. And then, when Arthur picks up the books in the library to admire them, he asks him what those are, and Arthur tells him they’re his, they’re birthday gifts. To which Gregory replies that, oh yes, of course, they’re from him! Arthur is very confused- how can they be from Gregory if Gregory didn’t know what they were? So he tells him that he’s pretty sure they’re actually from Dr Seward.
Well, yes, Gregory agrees, but he remembered the titles!
Dr Seward had, in fact, said that he didn’t know the right title, and that’s why Arthur got two, and he only ever had one, so… this conversation is only getting more confusing. But Gregory looks very pleased with himself, and Arthur would rather be looking into the books, and then maybe go back out to the stables to admire his new horse and make friends with him than figure out how to make sense of this, so he tells Gregory: “Well, thanks, I guess,” which makes Gregory beam all over his cat face (since he’s still in cat form, as per usual), and then Arthur turns his attention to the books.
Gregory looks on, apparently interested in watching Arthur’s reaction, but when Arthur puts them down and announces he’s going outside to see Hannibal, he heads off with a quip and a laugh about “not wanting to be eaten by Artie’s horse!”- Arthur assumes he’s going to see Darcy, and really… he doesn’t mind having Hannibal to himself.
Hannibal is still curled up in his straw, but when Arthur stops and crosses his arms on his stall door, he lifts his head, and then yawns- wide. Way wider than a horse’s mouth should be able to open. There’s serrated teeth all the way back to his cheeks.
It’s actually really rather creepy. But also really cool. Creepy-cool- Arthur has a creepy-cool horse, and he finds himself grinning at that.
Mouth closed, Hannibal’s head looks all horsey again, but now that Arthur knows what to look for, he can tell that that’s actually a seam of lips running past the short, velvety fur of Hannibal’s muzzle.
Hannibal climbs to his feet, and comes over to hang his head over the stall door and enjoy Arthur petting him and scratching his mane.
He might have a creepy-cool horse, but apparently it’s also a cuddly horse, and that’s even better.
This is definitely the best birthday ever.