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OF PRIESTS AND PIRATES

K ENNIT WALKED THE TIDELINE, heedless of the salt waves that washed around his boots as it licked the sandy beach clean of his tracks.

He kept his eyes on the straggling line of seaweed, shells and snags of driftwood that marked the water’s highest reach.

The tide was just turning now, the waves falling ever shorter in their pleading grasp upon the land.

As the saltwater retreated down the black sand, it would bare the worn molars of shale and tangles of kelp that now hid beneath the waves.

On the other side of Others’ Island, his two-masted ship was anchored in Deception Cove.

He had brought the Marietta in to anchor there as the morning winds had blown the last of the storm clean of the sky.

The tide had still been rising then, the fanged rocks of the notorious cove grudgingly receding beneath frothy green lace.

The ship’s gig had scraped over and between the barnacled rocks to put him and Gankis ashore on a tiny crescent of black sand beach which disappeared completely when storm winds drove the waves up past the high tide marks.

Above, slate cliffs loomed and evergreens so dark they were nearly black leaned precariously out in defiance of the prevailing winds.

Even to Kennit’s iron nerves, it was like stepping into some creature’s half-open mouth.

They’d left Opal, the ship’s boy, with the gig to protect it from the bizarre mishaps that so often befell unguarded craft in Deception Cove.

Much to the boy’s unease, Kennit had commanded Gankis to come with him, leaving boy and boat alone.

At Kennit’s last sight, the boy had been perched in the beached hull.

His eyes had alternated between fearful glances over his shoulder at the forested cliff-tops and staring anxiously out to where the Marietta strained against her anchors, yearning to join the racing current that swept past the mouth of the cove.

The hazards of visiting this island were legendary.

It was not just the hostility of even the ‘best’ anchorage on the island, nor the odd accidents known to befall ships and visitors.

The whole of the island was enshrouded in the peculiar magic of the Others.

Kennit had felt it tugging at him as he followed the path that led from Deception Cove to the Treasure Beach.

For a path seldom used, its black gravel was miraculously clean of fallen leaves or intruding plant life.

About them the trees dripped the second-hand rain of last night’s storm onto fern fronds already burdened with crystal drops.

The air was cool and alive. Brightly-hued flowers, always growing at least a man’s length from the path, challenged the dimness of the shaded forest floor.

Their scents drifted alluringly on the morning air as if beckoning the men to leave off their quest and explore their world.

Less wholesome in appearance were the orange fungi that stair-stepped up the trunks of many of the trees.

The shocking brilliance of their colour spoke to Kennit of parasitic hungers.

A spider’s web, hung like the ferns with fine droplets of shining water, stretched across their path, forcing them to duck under it.

The spider that sat at the edges of its strands was as orange as the fungi, and nearly as big as a baby’s fist. A green tree-frog was enmeshed and struggling in the web’s sticky strands, but the spider appeared disinterested.

Gankis made a small sound of dismay as he crouched to go beneath it.

This path led right through the midst of the Others’ realm.

Here was where the nebulous boundaries of their territory could be crossed by a man, did he dare to leave the well-marked path allotted to humans and step off into the forest to seek them.

In ancient times, so tale told, heroes came here, not to follow the path but to leave it deliberately, to beard the Others in their dens, and seek the wisdom of their cave-imprisoned goddess, or demand gifts such as cloaks of invisibility and swords that ran with flames and could shear through any shield.

Bards that had dared to come this way had returned to their homelands with voices that could shatter a man’s ears with their power, or melt the heart of any listener with their skill.

All knew the ancient tale of Kaven Ravenlock, who visited the Others for half a hundred years and returned as if but a day had passed for him, but with hair the colour of gold and eyes like red coals and true songs that told of the future in twisted rhymes.

Kennit snorted softly to himself. All knew such ancient tales, but if any man had ventured to leave this path in Kennit’s lifetime, he had told no other man about it.

Perhaps he had never returned to brag of it.

The pirate dismissed it from his mind. He had not come to the island to leave the path, but to follow it to its very end. And all knew what waited there as well.

Kennit had followed the gravel path that snaked through the forested hills of the island’s interior until its winding descent spilled them out onto a coarsely-grassed tableland that framed the wide curve of an open beach.

This was the opposite shore of the tiny island.

Legend foretold that any ship that anchored here had only the netherworld as its next port of call.

Kennit had found no record of any ship that had dared challenge that rumour.

If any had, its boldness had gone to hell with it.

The sky was a clean brisk blue scoured clean of clouds by last night’s storm.

The long curve of the rock-and-sand beach was broken only by a freshwater stream that cut its way through the high grassy bank backing the beach.

The stream meandered over the sand to be engulfed in the sea.

In the distance, higher cliffs of black shale rose, enclosing the far end of the crescent beach.

One toothy tower of shale stood independent of the island, jutting out crookedly from the island with a small stretch of beach between it and its mother-cliff.

The gap in the cliff framed a blue slice of sky and restless sea.

‘It was a fair bit of wind and surf we had last night, sir. Some folk say that the best place to walk the Treasure Beach is on the grassy dunes up there… they say that in a good bit of storm, the waves throw things up there, fragile things you might expect to be smashed to bits on the rocks and such, but they land on the sedge up there, just as gentle as you please.’ Gankis panted out the words as he trotted at Kennit’s heels.

He had to stretch his stride to keep up with the tall pirate.

‘An uncle of mine — that is to say, actually he was married to my aunt, to my mother’s sister — he said he knew a man found a little wooden box up there, shiny black and all painted with flowers.

Inside was a little glass statue of a woman with butterfly’s wings.

But not transparent glass, no, the colours of the wings were swirled right in the glass they were.

’ Gankis stopped in his account and half-stooped his head as he glanced cautiously at his master.

‘Would you want to know what the Other said it meant?’ he inquired carefully.

Kennit paused to nudge the toe of his boot against a wrinkle in the wet sand.

A glint of gold rewarded him. He bent casually to hook his finger under a fine gold chain.

As he drew it up, a locket popped out of its sandy grave.

He wiped the locket down the front of his fine linen trousers, and then nimbly worked the tiny catch.

The gold halves popped open. Saltwater had penetrated the edges of the locket, but the portrait of a young woman still smiled up at him, her eyes both merry and shyly rebuking.

Kennit merely grunted at his find and put it in the pocket of his brocaded waistcoat.

‘Cap’n, you know they won’t let you keep that. No one keeps anything from the Treasure Beach,’ Gankis pointed out gingerly.

‘Don’t they?’ Kennit queried in return. He put a twist of amusement in his voice, to watch Gankis puzzle over whether it was self-mockery or a threat. Gankis shifted his weight surreptitiously, to put his face out of reach of his captain’s fist.

‘S’what they all say, sir,’ he replied hesitantly.

‘That no one takes home what they find on the Treasure Beach. I know for sure my uncle’s friend didn’t.

After the Other looked at what he’d found and told his fortune from it, he followed the Other down the beach to this rock cliff.

Probably that one.’ Gankis lifted an arm to point at the distant shale cliffs.

‘And in the face of it there were thousands of little holes, little what-you-call-’ems… ’

‘Alcoves,’ Kennit supplied in an almost dreamy voice. ‘I call them alcoves, Gankis. As would you, if you could speak your own mother tongue.’

‘Yessir. Alcoves. And in each was a treasure, ’cept for those that were empty.

And the Other let him walk along the cliff wall and look at all the treasures, and there was stuff there such as he’d never even imagined.

China teacups done all in fancy rosebuds and gold wine cups rimmed with jewels and little wooden toys all painted bright and, oh, a hundred things such as you can’t imagine, each in an alcove.

Sir. And then he found an alcove the right size and shape, and he put the butterfly lady in it.

He told my uncle that nothing ever felt quite so right to him as setting that little treasure into that nook.

And then he left it there, and left the island and went home. ’