Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (36 page)

“You made these riddles?” Jim asked.

“Yes, and this is the third of three:”

Strength when weary, courage when none,

A strong knot makes two ropes one.

Many streams together form a flood,

Brother by choice and not by blood.

Who am I?

Jim paused on the path and worked to unlock the last of the riddles like a door with Peter’s pins. Whatever creature swam down below, Jim thought, had created these riddles. Perhaps knowing that would help him find the answers. It seemed the creature had been here for a long, long time. Maybe that meant all the solutions were things very near to this place. The last riddle spoke of ropes and knots and streams and floods, so perhaps it referred to ships on the sea. But the more Jim thought the less confident he became.

“Maybe I’ll just walk a little and think these over,” Jim said. His mind was a whirlwind of guesses, questions, and doubts.

“I fear there is no room left for walking, or time for thinking, Jim Morgan,” said the voice. “Cast your torch down and look at your feet.” Jim paused his foot in mid-air and did as the voice commanded.

A startled cry escaped Jim’s lips and echoed through the cavern. Jim’s foot hung over nothing but black air. He now stood at the path’s end. A sheer drop into dark nothingness was all that lay before him. Jim nearly fell over backward as he stepped away from the edge. When he finally summoned up the courage to peer back over the ledge, all
he could see was a faint speck - the far-off reflection of his torch in the waters below.

“You have come at last to end of the Path of Riddles, and the end of the contest,” said the voice. “Now is the time for answers. But before you speak, let us at least become better acquainted. Hold fast to what bravery you have left, Jim Morgan, for I am a fearsome sight to behold!”

A roar of ten ships cresting ten waves erupted from below Jim’s feet as the creature burst through the surface of the waters. Jim fell even further back from the path’s edge. He held his torch before him with two hands and fought hard to stifle the cries building up within in his chest. The waters parted and parted and parted, longer than Jim thought possible, until a dark shape rose above the pathway’s end. Jim’s heart froze in his chest as the great shadow took shape in the light of his torch.

The face of a giant sea serpent formed before him. It had a snout like a horse’s, but long as a schooner and resting upon a scaled body as wide around as an oak trunk. The monster glared down on Jim with glowing gold eyes, bigger than wagon wheels. A row of spines like fence posts ran from the crest of the great head down its long, snaking body. Though his legs trembled beneath him, Jim stood his ground as he had seen Dread Steele do in the face of the Kraken.

“You did not cry out, nor did you run!” the sea serpent said, this time so close and so loud that the words enveloped Jim and nearly deafened him. “You have courage! Men call me Percival – keeper of the Path of Riddles and last of the great water dragons of the deep - sole survivor of a once great race.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Jim managed through clenched teeth, for it was all he could think to say.

“And you are well met also, Jim Morgan,” said Percival, dipping his enormous head toward Jim in a bow. When the giant creature opened his mouth, fangs the length Jim’s arm glinted in the torchlight. The massive eyes burned as molten gold. “Are you prepared now
to answer? I admire your courage and your manners, and I hope for true you will answer correctly. It shall give me no pleasure to devour you whole should your answer prove false. But do so I must.”

“Well…thanks, I suppose,” Jim said, wondering if any of that was really supposed to make him feel any better.

“Morgan, Jim Morgan,” said Percival suddenly, lowering his head to study Jim closer. “I knew your surname the moment I heard it, but now that you stand close, I see for certain what I only guessed to be true. The man who came before you lives in your face, and a hint of him also in your smell.” Percival leaned in and breathed deeply of Jim, ruffling Jim’s clothes and nearly extinguishing the torch in the process. “A hint anyway…for you do have the most fascinating smell, Jim Morgan.”

“What do you mean when you say I smell different?” Jim asked.

“I am here to ask riddles, young adventurer, not to answer them. Why do you not ask your father yourself? For he seemed to me a very clever man, as far as humans go, anyway. Surely you know it was he who left the Shell in my care. In truth, I am surprised he sent you and did not come himself. We had a long and thoughtful conversation when I saw him last. Such conversations are so rare for me.”

“You probably had a longer conversation with him than I ever did,” Jim said. “He’s not here because he’s dead. He was murdered.” Jim nearly choked on the words. Percival bowed his head even more and twisted it to one side, staring at Jim with one wide, yellow eye.

“And your mother?” Percival asked. To Jim, for half a moment, the water dragon seemed suddenly less dangerous, but far older and more sorrowful and wise, like a kind old man trapped in a monster’s body.

“I never knew her.”

“I see,” said Percival, scrutinizing Jim with his one eye for a long moment. “There are questions I would ask you, Jim Morgan,” the serpent finally said. But then he turned his head back and rose up over Jim, towering in the dark, yellow eyes flashing. “But I am bound by magic and honor. Three riddles you have been given and three answers you must return. Wrong or right, I must fulfill my duty.” Percival
finished his speech with a growl that reminded Jim this was no kindly man, but a magical beast of the deep with teeth long and sharp enough to gnash him to dust. Fear jumbled the riddles’ words in Jim’s mind. Panic all but drowned out any hopeful answers.

“Could you not at least give me a hint?” Jim pleaded. But the beast would not be swayed.

“I have already given you hints, Jim Morgan, if you were wise enough to hear them. From what you have told me, I thought you had no need of them, for the answers are as close to your heart as they are to mine. Now, give answer or face your fate!”

“
That which is empty can never be full
,” Jim said to himself. “It could be something deep and dark,” he ventured, trying to guess without answering. “Like a hole or a cave?” He tried to measure Percival’s face, but the water dragon’s eyes gave nothing away.

“Do not attempt to fool me with tricks or ply me with pleading eyes! I am an ancient guardian and have told my riddles for far too long to great kings and warriors and desperate thieves to be shamed in such a way. Stand tall like a man. Stand upright like your father and answer!”

Jim wracked his brain, but no matter how he tried, the answers would not come.

“Silence is an answer of its own kind, Jim Morgan!” Roared Percival. It was so loud that the stone bridge beneath Jim’s feet shook and swayed. Dust and rocks fell from the cavern ceiling above. “And silence is as wrong an answer as any. I am sorry, son of Lindsay Morgan – but you have failed the test.” The water dragon reared back, mouth opened wide, glistening teeth bared and ready to strike.

FIFTEEN

im watched the sea monster prepare to swallow him whole - but it hardly mattered to him any more. His thoughts dwelt on his friends – the Cromiers’ sharp blades at their necks in the painted cave. His friends would look for him to come to their rescue from the tunnel. Knowing them, the Ratts, Lacey, and Cornelius, they would hold out hope to the very end, only to see it fail. The thought of Lacey’s tears and George’s failing smile tore a deep hole in Jim’s chest.

It struck Jim then, from nowhere, a spark at the back of his mind. The hole in his chest – in his heart. Jim thought of the emptiness he felt ever since the death of his father and the loss of his home. It was an emptiness that only went away when he was with his friends. An emptiness that could never be full.

It was the answer to the first riddle.

“Alone!” Jim shouted at the last possible moment. “You’re alone!”

Percival’s open mouth was already careening toward Jim, tongue lashing and teeth like swords, ready to tear Jim to pieces. Jim threw his arms over his head as though that would make a difference. But the bite never came. When Jim peeked through a small gap between his arms, he found the water dragon’s terrible maw shut, not inches from his trembling body. Percival turned his head to once more look upon Jim with one giant eye.

“What did you say?” the monster asked.

“You’re alone,” Jim repeated, trying to talk over the sound of his own heartbeat, which thundered like a drum in his ears. “
The sun in the day, or the moon at night
…all alone in sky. You are the last of your people. I no longer have my mother and my father. We’re the same, really. We’re both alone.”

Silence hung in the air between the dragon and the boy for what seemed like a very long time to Jim. Finally, Percival spoke in a voice more quiet than Jim imagined a great beast would possess.

“You have answered the first riddle correctly.”

Jim’s heart leapt, but his mind had already raced to the second riddle. The moment he had answered the first, he realized all three were bound by a common thread.

“
One tree up on a hilltop high, soon a forest over the countryside.
The answer to the second riddle is a family,” Jim said. “They might start with only one or two…but before long they can be hundreds and hundreds.”

“You are correct again! And the last, lad? Are you able to answer the last?” Percival asked. It seemed to Jim that the monster was cheering him on, whether against the magical rules of guardianship or not.

Jim smiled. He should have guessed this one from the beginning. The answer had been in the words shared between he and George on the riverbank in the field of the faeries that very night.

“
A strong knot makes two ropes one
. It’s a friend,” Jim said. His eyes stung and his throat tightened. “
Brother by choice and not by blood
…a friend.”

“Indeed it is,” whispered the sea serpent. “Long has it been since I have had one of those.” A smile, rowed with razor-sharp teeth, broke over the water dragon’s face. Percival the sea serpent rose up high above the path of stone and roared with his loudest voice, like a blasting of trumpets. The mighty call made Jim want to jump into the air and shout for joy.

“You have passed the test, Jim Morgan! What greater victory is there than that? Now you shall have your prize!” Percival lowered his head so that his spiked crown fell level with the pathway’s end.

“Come, young adventurer. Have you ever ridden a great beast of the deep? There may be none alive and few who ever lived who have. But I believe you have earned the right. Come now and I shall carry you to your prize, and quickly we must go, for dawn approaches. I can smell it through the walls of rock that cage me in.”

Jim took two deep breaths to steady his legs, which were all but shivering beneath him. With a running start, he leapt from the edge of the cliff onto Percival’s head. When he landed, he grabbed hold of one the spines on the dragon’s head as a handle, to keep from slipping on the wet scales and tumbling into the darkness beyond.

“Is that alright?” Jim asked suddenly, wondering if it hurt to grab the great beast so. But Percival just laughed. He laughed so hard that the cavern shook and Jim trembled from head to toe.

“But you do have impeccable manners don’t you, master Morgan? Do not insult an ancient beast of the deep, my boy, to think that your tiny hands and feet could hurt me. I could carry a hundred men upon my back for a day and a night and not grow tired. In the glory of my youth I could battle a hundred sharks and have no fear of pain or defeat! And besides all that, our trip together will be very short indeed.”

Percival swung about and Jim heard the water rush and roil far below as the dragon ripped through the underground lake. The light from Jim’s torch was hardly enough to illuminate the way, but the blast of air whipping at Jim’s hair and tugging at his clothes told him
the sea serpent moved with incredible speed. As they rounded a corner in the dark, a new light came into view. Early morning’s gray poured through a hole in the eastern side of the mountain. It lit upon a lone spire of stone that climbed from the dark waters. Atop the spire, the Hunter’s Shell glimmered upon a pedestal of coral.