Tigerheart (9 page)

Captain Slash would have spent the balance of her withered life in loneliness and despair had not events transpired that she could not possibly have expected.

For her brother, Captain Hack, eventually went to his end within the mouth of the serpent.

He did not elude that demise, as some might have you believe. He did not trick nor treat his way out, or otherwise elude the jaws of death through some wave of an authorial hand.

Dead is dead, even in the Anyplace, although the Noplace is another matter—but we shall speak of that much later.

However, the serpent—in its eagerness to make certain that Hack did not perform some miraculous escape—snapped shut those powerful jaws just a hair sooner than it really should have. As a consequence, although it devoured the man deftly enough, the man’s shadow was severed from him by those razor-sharp fangs.

This was about as disorienting as you might imagine it to be. Hack’s shadow floundered around in the air for a moment, unable to see, for it was in fact quite blind, as newly freed shadows generally are. Unsure of what had transpired, the shadow flung itself toward familiar haunts and solidly attached itself to the individual standing in his customary place. That person, of course, was The Boy, dancing a jig at the helm of the pirate ship and reveling in his new position as captain.

So if you have been wondering why, in tales you doubtless heard before this one, The Boy had been—shortly after Hack’s death—strutting about demanding clothing that was a duplicate of Hack’s and slicing his hand downward in imitation of an ax, now you know.

But here’s an odd thing about shadows: Like spirits who are condemned to haunt the areas in which they passed on, so, too, are shadows restricted to the area where they were loosed from their flesh-and-bone partner. In the case of Hack’s shadow, it could not depart the Anyplace. So when the
Skull n’ Bones
initially sailed beyond the Anyplace’s borders to return Gwenny and her brothers home, the shadow of Hack remained behind.

Alone. Adrift. Afraid.

In its miserable state, with its pirate crew scattered or dead and its greatest foe triumphant, it sought out the only creature in the Anyplace who it thought might tend to it.

Imagine ex-Captain Slash’s surprise when the shadow of her late brother came slinking to her late one Anyplace night. Word of Hack’s demise had reached her ears, for nothing remained secret for long in the Anyplace, and she had been deep in the depths of mourning when the shadow presented itself. By that point, the shadow had acquired enough of Hack’s impeccable good form to bow deeply in Slash’s presence.

Do you think for a moment that Mary Slash reveled in her brother’s state or considered for half a heartbeat the notion of tossing the shadow out into the cold? If so, then clearly you have not been paying attention. She welcomed her brother’s shadow as she would a prodigal son. She provided it darkness and a place to huddle and grow in strength and power. Mary would continually whisper to it, tell it great tales of its former owner’s deeds, and scheme along with it to plot its next move.

The simplicity of it was such that, since you now know of the events directly preceding the events of this tale, you likely have once again divined what I am about to tell you. That is because modern children are so much cleverer than parents, who require that things be spoon-fed to them and are not even much good helping with mathematics homework. So if we roll our eyes at their ineptitude, surely we can be forgiven our impatience with them; for we love them as they love us, but they are not always the brightest of creatures.

One night, when The Boy was sleeping deeply, the shade of Captain Hack insinuated itself within his shadow. The first attempt had been in a state of panic and confusion and during daylight to boot. At nighttime the shadow was far more powerful, drawing strength from all the surrounding shadows. How tragic that The Boy habitually slept with a flickering candle nearby! Without that night-light, his shadow would not have been present for Hack’s shadow to invade. But it was and it did.

Very slowly but steadily this time, the shadow of Hack took control not only of The Boy’s shadow but of The Boy himself. “Control” might be overstating it, actually. What it did was influence him in directions that it desired him to go. It encouraged him to gather a band of Vagabonds who were, for the most part, of far more dubious moral fiber than their predecessors. Captain Slash was welcomed back aboard the
Skull n’ Bones,
introduced to the newly christened Bully Boys as The Boy’s mother. They, knowing no better, accepted the explanation. With the aid of Captain Slash, the daunting band of cutthroats that was to constitute the new crew was gathered from all around. Hack’s shadow, having firmly attached itself now to The Boy’s shadow and gaining strength with every day, was even able to depart the Anyplace when the pirate ship’s journeys took it out of the area.

An early victim to Hack’s influence was poor Fiddlefix. It was the shadow that cajoled The Boy, all unknowing, to declare his lack of faith in pixies that nearly expunged Fiddlefix from the lives of men and boys.

So now you know.

And here is the most interesting bit: The Boy now knows as well.

How? Because I have told you, and The Boy is watching over my shoulder as I explain all of it to you. (He does not read words on paper, but thought is as clear as sunlight to him; and for you and I to think, it is the same as The Boy knowing it.)

Even as you digest that kernel of information, The Boy is busily telling the other players in our drama about the true nature of things. Imagine, if you will, Gwenny shuddering in dread at the realization of how The Boy’s very personality has been usurped by his most repellent of opponents. And Fiddlefix…ah, she is sobbing great, racking tears, filled with relief to learn that The Boy had not, in fact, forsaken her in a devastating act of cruelty. Paul is much relieved, for he did not relish the notion of The Boy as villain, nor was he taken with the idea of acting the part of hero when he wasn’t entirely certain he was up to the job.

We will spare you the reactions of the others except to say that they were similar in some ways and different in others.

Here is what happened next.

Chapter 9

What Happened Next

F
oul villain!” Paul cried out, for it was because of Hack’s scheming that he had been forced into a battle with The Boy and so felt extremely ill used.

Likewise did Paul see that The Boy’s rage was a mighty and terrible thing. The Boy’s compact body was fairly trembling with indignation. Its charade now revealed, the shadow made no effort to mimic The Boy’s movements but instead simply stood there mockingly, thumbing its nose at him.

As this was happening, Gwenny and the Vagabonds clambered up the anchor chain and landed on the deck. The pirates and Bully Boys paid them no mind at first, so entranced were they by Paul’s and The Boy’s antics.

Paul lunged forward, attempting to stomp on The Boy’s shadow. The Boy quickly followed suit, bellowing “Get out of here!”

“I’ll get him!” Paul said, and sword in hand, he slammed it point down squarely into the middle of his shadow’s chest.

This had precisely the effect that you could reasonably presume it would have: namely none at all. Actually, in the interest of full disclosure, we will reveal that he did manage to chip some wood off the deck of the
Skull n’ Bones.
In comparison to Paul’s intentions for the efficacy of the blow, however, it would have to be considered a tremendous letdown.

It did, however, cause a deal of guffawing among the pirates who were looking on at the spectacle; and Gwenny and the others felt great chagrin on Paul’s behalf. The Boy, however, firmly lined up behind Paul’s intentions.

“Get out! I said get out! I command this ship and I order you to go!” He then proceeded to make matters worse by embarking on his own attack at the shadow again and again with his blade. That was the difference between Paul and The Boy. Paul, having tried something once and finding it had no effect, ceased. The Boy, oblivious, kept on doing it in the hope that, sooner or later, it would succeed. Unfortunately it continued to have no effect on the arrogant silhouette, although it did prompt the pirates and the Bully Boys to laugh all the harder. This might have actually worked to the benefit of our young heroes, if their enemies had laughed so hard that they collapsed and dropped down dead from an excess of merriment. At least to Paul, however, that certainly did not seem the best strategy to pursue insofar as taking the day was concerned; and he was starting to feel a degree of embarrassment on The Boy’s behalf.

“Boy!” he said, trying to keep his voice low. He took a couple of steps toward him and whispered again, “Boy!”

“I’m busy!” The Boy said, continuing to stab at the deck.

“No, you’re really not,” said Paul. “I mean, yes, you’re occupied, but ‘busy’ means that you’re accomplishing something; and regrettably that’s not happening here.”

The Boy paused in his assault and assessed the damage he had inflicted upon his enemy…which was to say, of course, none at all. He also became aware that the pirates and the Bully Boys were laughing at him. This rankled him more than his ability to express. Despite the fact that the Hack-infested shadow had been meddling with his mind, he remembered all too clearly that he had been in command of these men and boys and they had snapped to at his every order. To see now the sneering, the derision on their faces made him feel as if there had been some grand joke going on the entire time to which he was the punch line.

His cheeks flushed bright red. It was almost too much for The Boy to comprehend. It was bad enough that he felt personally violated by his greatest enemy’s infusing himself into something as personal as his own shadow. But now he was being subjected to something that he had never experienced in his life: humiliation. He had known danger of all manner; he had known threats upon his life and had nearly been stabbed to death on more than one occasion. Never, though, had he been laughed at, and there was a thudding deep in his head as blind rage crept in behind his eyes.

It was because of all that—combined with the fact that, in the final analysis, he was still a boy—that he allowed his emotions to take over rather than common sense.

Some time previous—a lifetime it seemed to some—The Boy’s shadow had become severed from its master. It had happened during one of The Boy’s journeys into the nursery in which Gwenny and her brothers had dwelt; and Gwenny’s father had attempted to impede his abrupt departure upon discovering The Boy’s presence. The Boy had fled out the window, but Gwenny’s father had slammed the window shut quickly enough to snag The Boy’s shadow. Gwenny had undone her father’s action by stitching the shadow back onto its master’s feet, reuniting them. Those stitches had remained in place all this time. They were not like medical sutures that eventually dissolve into the body; they were merely normal thread, holding the shadow in place through Gwenny’s deft stitching.

Now, seized with a desire to divorce himself from the humiliating shadow as quickly as possible, The Boy swung his sword—not at his umber opponent—but at his own feet where the shadow was joined to him. He proceeded to slice deftly through the threads that kept his shadow a part of him.

This struck Paul as a marvelously clever solution to the problem, for he sympathized with The Boy and understood the embarrassment he must be feeling, being held to such derision by the pirates and Bully Boys. But Gwenny was far more mature, being a girl and all, and thus intuited instantly that The Boy’s actions were staggeringly unwise. “Boy!” she said. “No! Don’t!” Hearing her say that, Paul realized the danger and lunged forward shouting, “
Boy! Wait!
”

Too late. Alas, too late.

In a heartbeat, The Boy’s deft manipulation of his blade parted the last of the threads that kept his shadow attached to him. The instant he did, a fearsome wind washed over him, chilling him to the bone. He had no idea whence the wind originated. It was as if a door had been swung open that led to somewhere that The Boy had never explored and had no desire to. There was loud, fiendish laughter, and The Boy shouted for it to stop immediately.

“What laughter?” Paul said, which did little to quiet The Boy’s unexpectedly and unusually jangled nerves.

It was Mary Slash who said aloud that which Paul was already beginning to surmise. “That,” she said, her voice sounding curiously youthful, “was a mistake.”

The shadow of The Boy slowly peeled itself up off the deck and stood upright. It remained completely flat, as slender as a piece of paper. It was already holding a sword in its hand, since it had been mockingly imitating The Boy, and now it assumed a perfect fencing pose.

“En garde, Boy!” called Mary Slash triumphantly.

“Get away from him, Boy!” Paul said in alarm, his attitude the exact opposite of Slash’s.

Ironically…and yet, not surprisingly…it was the urging of Mary Slash to which The Boy attended. He lunged at the shadow of Hack, which eluded his thrust through the simple expedient of standing sideways, presenting nothing except its wafer-thin edge toward him. The Boy thrust this way and that, and was utterly unable to make contact. The shadow made no riposte, seeming to enjoy The Boy’s frustration.

Switching tactics, The Boy swung his cutlass in a sweeping arc. It made no difference. The blade passed harmlessly through the shadow, not slowing in the least. The Boy brought the sword back, and once again it did nothing against the shadow. It did, however, provoke even more laughter from the pirate crew.

“Stop it!”
said Paul. “Stop that laughing at once!”

The Terrible Turk ceased his chortling long enough to fire a dangerous glare at Paul, and his mighty beard bristled as he said, “Or what?”

“Or…it will go badly for you,” Paul said, mustering his nerve.

The Terrible Turk laughed curtly, and then drew his sword. It was everything that Paul could do not to tremble in its presence, considering that the Turk’s scimitar was practically as big as Paul himself. Irregular shouted out a wholly unnecessary warning as the Turk came in fast at Paul. Paul did the only thing he could: He vaulted over the Turk’s head, his power of flight carrying him safely onto the rigging. With a roar, the Turk turned and started hacking at the rigging, trying to knock Paul from his perch.

The Boy, meantime, was having no success against his opponent. Nor did matters improve as the shadow, apparently becoming bored with just standing there and letting The Boy make futile thrusts at it, moved to the attack.

Paul, concerned with his own predicament, still found the time to cast glances in The Boy’s direction to see how he was faring. He was assuming—and we cannot blame him for this—that the shadow would be as helpless against The Boy as The Boy was against him.

So Paul was much shocked to see such was not the case.

Instead the Hack-shaped shadow glided forward, light as air, and swung its sword in a leisurely arc that was evocative of The Boy’s. But the outcome was completely different. The Boy turned sideways automatically to avoid the thrust, and that was what saved him, for the tip of the shadow blade sliced through The Boy’s upper arm. The result was wholly unexpected: a loud, pained yelp from The Boy, clutching at his arm as his eyes widened in pain. There, on his forearm, was a visible wound, with a trickle of blood welling up from it.

There was no whooshing of air to alert The Boy that the sword of his enemy was coming back at him. His warning was an alarmed cry from Paul, and The Boy backflipped, arcing upward in a lighter-than-air somersault.

The shadow watched him for a moment…and then, with even more grace than The Boy had displayed, went airborne and bounded upward after him.

“He’s running away!” said Mary Slash, and she began laughing uproariously. “The Boy is running away!”

“I am not!” said The Boy, and indeed he had not been. Instinctively the young warrior had been seeking the higher ground, and now he turned to face his pursuer. He tried crossing swords with the shadow, which was hovering just below him. His sword passed right through the shadow blade, but then the hatchet upon shadow Hack’s wrist came around quickly. The Boy had never realized how much he had counted upon sound—the swish of air, the rustling of clothing, the scraping of boots upon the ground—to warn him of the direction or speed of attacks. He realized it now, though, for the hatchet cut across his face, and another gash was raised. If he had moved a hair slower, his head would have come tumbling off his shoulders.

There were gasps from the youngsters, seeing The Boy so easily scored upon. Once had seemed a fluke, but the second touch was extremely disheartening.

Paul was helpless to come to The Boy’s aid. Instead it was all he could do to clamber out of the way of the Turk, who had given up cutting at the rigging and was instead climbing up toward him.

The other Bully Boys and pirates, seeing an opportunity, moved toward Gwenny, Irregular, and Porthos. Gwenny and Irregular looked ready to defend themselves, but it was Porthos who was the most daunting of them all. He was holding a sword in one hand and a belaying pin in the other, and there was a look of quiet determination on his face. Big Penny and Yorkers tried coming in from either side, and were surprised to discover themselves flat on their backs moments later. Yorkers had been slapped across the face by the flat of Porthos’s blade; while Big Penny’s head was swirling, thanks to being bashed in the skull with the belaying pin.

Pirates and villains in general are cowards by nature. So, even though the pirates outnumbered the young people, they were hesitant to press their advantage, since no one wanted to be the first to be smacked around by Porthos. Plus the fact that Yorkers had a face left at all meant that Porthos had issued a warning. If he had used the edge of his blade rather than the flat, Yorkers would have had a bare grinning skull staring out at his shipmates rather than the bewildered look he was sporting.

To Fiddlefix, everything else was irrelevant. Only The Boy mattered to her. To that end, the pixie soared toward the shadow, spitting out a string of profanity that all sounded like the chiming of bells. To say there was a stark contrast between what she was saying and the way that it sounded would be to understate it: It was akin to hearing a ballerina cursing like a sailor.

But before she could get near enough to have any effect on the situation, she was knocked off her course by a well-thrown belaying pin from Mary Slash. Fiddlefix tumbled toward the deck, her glow flickering.

“Fiddle!” called out Paul, and his impulse was to go after her. But he had his own problems to deal with. Nor could The Boy intervene, for the shadow did not slacken its attack. It came at him again and again, pressing its growing advantage.

Mary Slash was dancing. It was an odd thing to see in such an old woman, but her movements belied her age. Her feet were moving deftly, and she was up on her toes, bouncing to the right and left, back and forth, and then in a small circle. Her arms stretched over her head, the sun glinted off the curve of the blade upon her wrist. As she spun, the hem of her garment spiraled outward so that she looked like a twirling bell. And her laughter, which had at first sounded crackling and elderly, became lighter and airier with each thrust of the shadow’s weapon toward The Boy. The more The Boy found himself unable to attain any sort of advantage, the more the shadow struck at him with impunity and the more deliriously happy Mary Slash became.