Brigit's Flame, April, week #1 and Musemuggers
Title: Buried With Treasure
Author: Keppiehed
Word Count: 3,700
Prompt: A story which is in some way related to pirates, and which is told from the perspective of a dead character who is either in the story or referenced by it. The character must be dead when telling the story, although his or her demise can be before, during or after the events of the tale itself. And “Cliff”.
A/N: Written for submission to Fringeworks “Dead Men’s Tales” anthology as per the option #3 at musemuggers and for week #1 at brigits_flame.
“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!”
Captain “Red Locks” Perrow tried to blink his eyelids to shut out the glare of the hot Caribbean sun and tell his subordinate he could shove his cutlass right up his own arse because he happened to be vegan, thank you very much, when he realized he didn’t have any eyelids to blink. Damn. Was he still a corpse?
“Now, Captain, there’s no need to panic. The situation is as follows: You’re a corpse.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve been reanimated for profit, he tried to say, but all that came out was an extended “Uunnghh.”
“That’s just the lingering effects of the hoodoo. You’ll be fine in a moment,” the cheerful voice said. “Uh, fine being a somewhat relative term, of course. No, I’m quite sure you’ll be fine. Donny Knuckles over there has been reading up on witchcraft and he assures me that everything is kosher so far. Wave, Donny, so the captain knows who you are.”
The captain tried to focus on the pirate, but all he could see was a blur of motion. It was too damned bright without eyelids.
“Ah, it’s all right. Plenty of time to get acquainted, I say. Now, sir, I realize you’ve been through a lot but there are some things I’d like to ask you-”
Captain Red Locks didn’t know why he couldn’t move his arms, but he did know what made everything better. “Get me rum!” he shouted, or something to that effect. Rum was a cure-all, even in death.
“Now, Captain, rum isn’t going to help,” the man said. “What I need to ask-”
“Rum certainly will help,” Captain Red Locks said, pleased that his jaw was responding at last. “Or at the very least a visor of some sort, because that sun is blasted bright. Why can’t I move? And who are you to be speaking to me?”
The man cleared his throat. “Er. I’m Roger Gribble, ship’s accountant. You’re a skull, sir. I thought we explained that a moment ago. Donny, you said he would retain information.”
Donny Knuckles shrugged and opened his well-thumbed copy of Hoodoo for Dummies. “It says right here that he should be ‘in the same mental state as he was when he was rendered deceased.’ ‘Snot my fault if he was a simpleton when he died.”
“That’s a metric ton of helpfulness, thanks, Donny. The point, sir, is that you should be able to comprehend that we’ve used magic to bring your corpse back to life to tell us the location of your legendary treasure,” Roger said.
Captain Red Locks would have waved his arm around if he’d been in possession of one. “The last time I was zombified I had an actual body,” he said. “This is a major downgrade. Also, I had the honor of speaking to the ship’s captain, not some ruddy bean counter.”
Roger nodded in sympathy. “I understand your disappointment, sir, I really do, but please try to realize that we’re in a bit of a pinch here. Payroll issues and all. We simply didn’t have the means to bring all of you back to life, so we-I-made an executive decision to bring back only the most necessary part. After all, you don’t need your legs to tell us about your treasure, do you? Let’s be logical. We’re also in a bit of a jam with regards to timing here, so if you could be a dear and just tell us where you stashed the loot? That would be splendid.”
“Don’t remember,” Captain Red Locks said, sticking out his bottom lip. Or he would have, if he’d had lips.
Roger frowned. “Come now, don’t be like that. I’m sure you do remember quite well. The stories say you had the greatest treasure on the seven seas, but there’s never been a single glimpse of it in all these long years since you died. Everyone has tried their hand at finding it but no one has ever managed to discover where you hid it. Your horde has attained a mythical status, and a quest to locate it is almost a precept of modern-day piratical life. You can’t forget something in as grand a tradition as that!”
“I can.” Captain Red Locks sniffed. “I did.”
Roger paced the deck. “What do you want in return for telling us the location? I’ll give you anything. By ‘anything’ I hope you recognize I’m employing the use of hyperbole and I really mean ‘whatever falls within a reasonable rate of exchange’, of course. I’m a man who calculates rate of return on investments in both simplified and compound interest for a living, so don’t let’s be silly.”
A dull ache was forming behind Captain Red Locks’ superciliary crest (once he’d raided a vessel carrying a scientist and he’d kept the pilfered chart of the anatomy of a human skull displayed in his quarters ever since) as he realized how much he disliked accountants. Times had, indeed, changed when actuaries made the deals rather than men of action. He thought through his list of demands. He’d been all over the world and seen everything there was to see-twice-and he’d been brought back to life and even traveled with the circus for awhile as part of an aerial acrobatics troupe the first time he was a reanimated corpse. There wasn’t anything this clerk could offer him that he hadn’t already had. He was tired now and just wanted to be left alone. “You must promise to re-bury me with a part of my treasure so that I can be left forever in peace. And also get me some kind of sunglasses, because I’m getting a headache from the perpetual glare.”
Roger thought for a moment. “Granted.”
Captain Red Locks cleared his throat. “Then I will give you the first clue. We must go to the place where:
My thunder comes before the lightning;
My lightning comes before the clouds;
My rain dries all the land it touches.
What am I?”
“What sort of trickery is this?” Roger asked.
“I didn’t keep maps,” Captain Red Locks explained. “The way to my hideouts was always in my noggin.” He would’ve tapped his head for emphasis, but he figured Roger got the gist even without his appendages for clarification. “Say, does anyone have any gum?”
The Quartermaster stepped forward and offered a stick. “It’s just strawberry, sorry.”
Captain Red Locks grimaced. “Hey, it’s fine, really. Thanks, me heartie.” He was nothing if not polite, after all.
“No problem.”
Roger tapped his foot. “So can’t you just tell us where this place is? I don’t have time for all your nonsense. The timecards need to be balanced, you know. Have you ever had a mutiny because you can’t pay for time and a half? It isn’t pretty. So knock it off with the poetry and just tell us where the treasure is buried.”
Captain Red Locks sniffed. “It isn’t poetry. It’s a riddle. And I can’t remember; I always went by the verse.”
Roger groaned. “But what does it mean?”
Captain Red Locks thought. “I don’t know. It’s amazing that I remembered that, to be honest. I can also recall my old footlocker combination, isn’t that weird?”
“So weird,” Roger agreed. “Are any of the crew good with riddles and the like?”
Blackjack Davy Duncan raised a hook-hand. “I am, Mr. Gribble. The mateys and I tell each other word games to pass the time on second watch, and that one’s easy enough. I think Cap’n Red Locks is talking about a volcano.”
“Yes! I am!” Captain Red Locks said. “It’s all clear now. A volcano. Indeed.” He blew a big pink bubble.
Roger blinked. “Well, which one? There are hundreds of volcanoes. We could sail for a month of Sundays and never find the right one!” Being excellent at math, he knew exactly how many days that was and he didn’t want to be stuck on the ship for even a fortnight of Sundays, if it came to that.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but it’s easy to tell which one he meant,” a sailor by the name of Knee-Biter McGillicuddy said. “See, if you know the geological activity of one-hundred fifty years ago, which would put us at old Captain Red Locks time … no offense intended, sir ...”
“None taken,” the captain said around another bubble. Age was largely just a number, he’d always felt, and he was about two hundred eight years young and counting.
“Anyway, if you match up the differences in active volcanic eruptions in the centuries, there are three dormant volcanoes for the entire region where Captain Red Locks was known to roam. Only one of those is on an island, the most likely place for a pirate’s plunder, due to its relative inaccessibility for the general public. That puts us on the course straight to the Seaweed Cliffs,” Knee-Biter said. Then he blushed, because he hated public speaking. It was why he’d gone into pirating work in the first place.
“The Seaweed Cliffs!” Captain Red Locks said. “I swore an oath never to return there!”
“What? Why?” asked Roger.
Captain Red Locks cracked his gum. “Oh, I just always wanted to say that. It sounds so dramatic, don’t you agree?”
Roger began to look as if he was regretting the entire endeavor. “Tell the Sailing Master to chart a course for the Seaweed Cliffs,” he said.
The crew settled into its routine of hauling ropes to hoist various sails, and the captain chomped on his wad of gum and relaxed as they cruised across the open ocean. A powder monkey finished his job of restocking the orlop and the allure of a talking skull proved too great a temptation to resist. He crept closer, examining the bone. “Is it true you were a famous captain from a long time ago?” he asked.
Red Locks forgot he couldn’t nod without a neck, and he ended up just rattling himself on the deck. “The swashbuckliest,” he said. “Captain Red Locks Perrow, at your service.”
“I’m Nick Flint,” the boy said. “Why do they call you Red Locks?”
“Well, I wanted to be Dreadnought, but it just wouldn’t take,” the captain said. “I had a deaf boatswain-sorry, ‘hard-of-hearing’, he was so sensitive about that!-and he was always saying “Red Locks, Red Locks” no matter how many times I corrected him. Also, I had curly red hair. But still, who wants to be known by a key trait of their their physical appearance? It’s like when the lads call you ‘No-Legs Nick.’”
The boy stared. “No one calls me that. I was just born without legs.”
“Fair point; My hair was gorgeous so it’s hardly the same. Still, ‘Dreadnought’ had a lovely ring to it. I wish it would have caught on.” Red Locks blew his wad of gum over the railing. It had lost the strawberry flavor a long time ago and now merely tasted like a mouthful of chewed-up erasers.
“I have some stuff to do.” No-Legs Nick (as the captain was to think of him forevermore) inched away.
“Me, too,” Red Locks said, trying to look busy. “Me too.”
The ship sailed for a few hours, and a cry from the crow’s nest signaled their arrival at the Seaweed Cliffs. Roger held him up to see the volcanic skyline. “We were serendipitously close to the Cliffs when we found your skull. We’re almost there. Now what?”
The next part of the riddle popped right into his mind. “Clue the second:
What always runs but never walks,
often murmurs, never talks,
has a bed but never sleeps,
has a mouth but never eats?”
“That’s a cinch!” Blackjack Davy said, waving his hook around in his excitement. “A river?”
“Of course!” Roger said. “Even I could have come up with that one. So, we follow the inland stream, is that the course?”
“I guess,” Red Locks said.
Roger narrowed his gaze. “What do you mean, ‘you guess?’”
“I dunno; it’s just been a long time, you know? I always had a head more for words than for navigation. Funny how I ended up as captain of a whole crew of people with basically no practical skills to speak of, now that it comes to it.” Captain Red Locks cleared his throat to break the somewhat uncomfortable silence. “No matter; we’re here now! River, you say?”
“No, you nitwit! You said!” Roger shouted.
Red Locks looked around the fast-approaching isle. “Yeeesss. I’m sure it will be fine. The river. After all, who makes up a mapping-riddle and then doesn’t follow the directions in the rhyme? Anyway, have you ever tried to come up with the correct rhyme for ‘sleep’? It’s devilishly difficult, I tell you. I couldn’t think of one and in the end went with that near-rhyme of ‘eat’. I hope no one noticed.”
“Barkeep?” Roger asked.
“Dustheap?” Blackjack Davy said.
“Kneedeep?” Knee-Biter McGillicuddy suggested.
“Upsweep?” No-Legs Nick called from under decks.
“Little BoPeep?” said the erstwhile necromancer, Donny Knuckles.
“Phsaw, I say,” Red Locks said. “As if kneedeep has anything whatsoever to do with a river. Come now.”
The ship sailed around the treacherous Seaweed Cliffs and anchored in Rum Cove (a distressing misnomer, much to Red Locks’ perpetual disappointment). A scouting party disembarked at the mouth of Cannibal Estuary (less a misnomer than Red Locks might have hoped) and made their soggy way up the Coconut River Valley.
After an hour of sloshing through the jungle, Roger pulled Red Locks’ skull out of the pack in which they’d stashed him. “We’ve been walking for a long time. We’re at the heart of the island. We have to be close. Where is it, damn you?”
Red Locks looked around. “This just isn’t ringing any bells.”
Roger shook him. “Think harder! We’re at the edge of a fiscal cliff here. And an actual one, which is where your head is going if you can’t remember where the booty is.”
“Fine, fine. Clue the third:
Whoever makes it, tells it not.
Whoever takes it, knows it not.
Whoever knows it, wants it not.”
“Wait, that’s the auditor’s secret passcode!” Roger said. “The answer is counterfeit money. How did you infiltrate our order? Is there a mole in the Comptroller’s Club? And more importantly, are you scamming us?” His hand shook with suppressed rage while the rest of the band of pirates looked on in horror and exhaustion (they were a bit out of shape to be tromping around a jungle proper, to be honest, though Donny Knuckles had a nice set of pecs going on).
Red Locks laughed. “No, just having a wee bit of fun with you. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Last clue, really:
Reaching stiffly for the sky,
I bare my fingers when it's cold.
In warmth I wear an emerald glove,
and in-between I dress in gold.”
They all turned to look at Blackjack Davy, who scratched his head. “It’s a tough one,” he said, repeating the phrase. “Some kind of lady, is all I can think. But I don’t think it’s right.”
“Nope,” Captain Red Locks said.
“Gloves when it’s warm?” Knee-Biter asked. “I don’t know. A statue of some kind?”
“Uh-uh.”
“They all had a turn guessing, but the riddle stumped them. Captain Red Locks grinned.
“Wait,” Donny Knuckles said. “Do you know the answer?”
“It’s a tree!” the captain shouted. He would have done a jig if he had feet. Only No-Legs Nick knew his pain.
Roger clapped a hand to his forehead. “Your clue led us to a tree in the middle of a jungle?”
The crew groaned.
“Of course I remember which one,” Captain Red Locks said. “One that looks like a cloud. It seems I should’ve had a riddle for a cloud, but I don’t. At any rate, it has a really weird shape. I’ll know it when I see it.”
“This was one hundred some-odd years ago!” Roger said. “The tree is probably dead; or worse, it wasn’t real to begin with. Your memory’s been scrambled since we revived you!”
“This was a fool’s quest, Gribble!” Knee-Biter said. He grabbed Red Locks’ skull and hefted it into the brush.
The captain’s world tilted as he rolled over and over. He was glad not to have a stomach or he would’ve been sick all over himself; as it was, his gorge was fighting the good fight to rise up against him. He came to rest deep in the forest, and when his vision stopped whirling he saw the canopy above him. The sheltering branches formed a familiar spiky green cloud. “Come quickly!” he yelled. “My treasure is here!”
The crew found him lodged in the roots of a dragon tree. Roger leaned over him. “You said something about treasure?”
Captain Red Locks didn’t blink. “This is the spot. Under this very tree is my heart’s greatest treasure.”
“Look!” Blackjack Davy nudged at a spot of soil near the base of the tree. “There’s an indentation … something is here!”
They unpacked their spades and began to dig (even Blackjack Davy, who had a difficult task shoveling what with his hook for a hand). They didn’t stop their work, even when night fell. Donny Knuckles took a moment to light some candles to ward away the deepening gloom, but they continued to chip away until a scrape broke the rhythm. “I’ve hit something!” Knee-Biter said.
“Sounds like metal. Could it be a chest?” asked Blackjack Davy.
“Get down and see!” said Roger.
They knelt around the hole and lifted a weathered box from the dirt.
“Is there more?” Roger asked. “That’s a rather small chest to contain the world’s greatest treasure.”
“It is just the size it needs to be,” Captain Red Locks assured them.
Knee-Biter held his shovel to the rusted lock and it gave way almost instantly. “This is it,” Roger said as he lifted the creaking lid of the little box. Donny Knuckles shoved a candle forward and they all peered together with a collective intake of breath.
A second later there was a mass recoil. “It smells!”
Blackjack Davy waved a hand in front of his nose. “What’s that stench?”
“It’s a rotten corpse of some vermin!” Roger said. “Explain yourself, Captain!”
Captain Red Locks didn’t have an endocrine system anymore, but he felt a rush of adrenaline as if he did. “With pleasure! You’ve made a fatal error, good sirs. That isn’t vermin; that’s my trusty parrot, Treasure!”
“Say what?” Donny Knuckles asked (he always had been a bit of a colloquialist).
“What I mean to say is that my beloved parrot, appellated Treasure, was stricken with some form of avine ailment and was carried off this mortal coil to fly in the clear skies of heaven,” Captain Red Locks said. “Besides the fact that a pirate without his parrot is a laughingstock, I realized that the greatest treasure lies not in doubloons or in earthly wealth, but in family, the kind I was denied with the departure of my dearest Treasure. I spent my remaining years telling everyone of my secret, that I had found the greatest treasure a man can find: love.”
Roger sank to his knees. “Are you kidding me?”
Blackjack Davy snickered. “He was in love with a bird!”
“Not in love … but indeed I did love him. And he loved me. Treasure was my boon companion, the only thing in this world I could trust,” the captain said.
Blackjack rolled on the ground, tears of laughter streaming from his eyes.
“Shut up, you idiot! It isn’t funny!” shouted Roger. “Don’t you understand? We’ve been following the ravings of a lunatic for over a century!”
“Oh. I probably should have mentioned that he had a reputation for this sort of thing,” Knee-Biter said. “They called him Lead Rocks Perrow, since everyone knew he was apeshit crazy at the end there. They suspect it was lead poisoning from the make-up he used to paint his face.”
“I was a bit of a dandy,” Red Locks admitted.
“Yeah, always on about one crazy thing or another. In fact, he was so saturated with lead by the end that I’ll bet even his skull is seeped in the stuff. We’d better not touch it any more,” Knee-Biter advised. “Best just … cut our losses. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather die of scurvy like a respectable pirate.”
“Fine. Let’s go,” said Donny Knuckles.
“Wait, what about the mutiny?” asked Roger, trembling. “There’s no money now, and Tuesday is a pirate holiday. I can’t afford to pay out double time!”
“It’s fine, Roger,” Knee-Biter said. “We knew this was a bit of a side-trek. We found old Captain Red Locks Perrow’s treasure, though, and that’s bragging rights! No need to specify what it is to folks, exactly. We just gained a bunch of sea cred. We can hang on until the next big score.”
Roger nodded. “Thanks, guys. The captain will be pleased with your loyalty. He’s sure to crack into his store of rum to reward you. Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Red Locks said. “You promised to re-bury me with the treasure. Don’t welsh on a deal, now. I held up my end, now you do your part.”
Blackjack Davy sighed. “He has a point. It’ll only take a minute.”
“You’ll take the spell off, right?” Red Locks asked. “I mean, no one wants to be underground for all ti ...” He was interrupted when he was thrown into the chest and the lid slammed shut, leaving him in complete darkness. There was some tilting as if he were being lowered into the ground, then he could hear soft mounds of dirt piling onto his new grave. The stench of rotting bird feathers was still quite pungent, but being with Treasure’s remains didn’t bother the captain. He didn’t have the glare of that burning sun in his eyes anymore, and he could sing all the shanties he liked. His new home suited him to perfection. He let himself grin and started his song. “One hundred bottles of beer on the wall...”
Yes, he was going to like it here.
Author: Keppiehed
Word Count: 3,700
Prompt: A story which is in some way related to pirates, and which is told from the perspective of a dead character who is either in the story or referenced by it. The character must be dead when telling the story, although his or her demise can be before, during or after the events of the tale itself. And “Cliff”.
A/N: Written for submission to Fringeworks “Dead Men’s Tales” anthology as per the option #3 at musemuggers and for week #1 at brigits_flame.
“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!”
Captain “Red Locks” Perrow tried to blink his eyelids to shut out the glare of the hot Caribbean sun and tell his subordinate he could shove his cutlass right up his own arse because he happened to be vegan, thank you very much, when he realized he didn’t have any eyelids to blink. Damn. Was he still a corpse?
“Now, Captain, there’s no need to panic. The situation is as follows: You’re a corpse.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve been reanimated for profit, he tried to say, but all that came out was an extended “Uunnghh.”
“That’s just the lingering effects of the hoodoo. You’ll be fine in a moment,” the cheerful voice said. “Uh, fine being a somewhat relative term, of course. No, I’m quite sure you’ll be fine. Donny Knuckles over there has been reading up on witchcraft and he assures me that everything is kosher so far. Wave, Donny, so the captain knows who you are.”
The captain tried to focus on the pirate, but all he could see was a blur of motion. It was too damned bright without eyelids.
“Ah, it’s all right. Plenty of time to get acquainted, I say. Now, sir, I realize you’ve been through a lot but there are some things I’d like to ask you-”
Captain Red Locks didn’t know why he couldn’t move his arms, but he did know what made everything better. “Get me rum!” he shouted, or something to that effect. Rum was a cure-all, even in death.
“Now, Captain, rum isn’t going to help,” the man said. “What I need to ask-”
“Rum certainly will help,” Captain Red Locks said, pleased that his jaw was responding at last. “Or at the very least a visor of some sort, because that sun is blasted bright. Why can’t I move? And who are you to be speaking to me?”
The man cleared his throat. “Er. I’m Roger Gribble, ship’s accountant. You’re a skull, sir. I thought we explained that a moment ago. Donny, you said he would retain information.”
Donny Knuckles shrugged and opened his well-thumbed copy of Hoodoo for Dummies. “It says right here that he should be ‘in the same mental state as he was when he was rendered deceased.’ ‘Snot my fault if he was a simpleton when he died.”
“That’s a metric ton of helpfulness, thanks, Donny. The point, sir, is that you should be able to comprehend that we’ve used magic to bring your corpse back to life to tell us the location of your legendary treasure,” Roger said.
Captain Red Locks would have waved his arm around if he’d been in possession of one. “The last time I was zombified I had an actual body,” he said. “This is a major downgrade. Also, I had the honor of speaking to the ship’s captain, not some ruddy bean counter.”
Roger nodded in sympathy. “I understand your disappointment, sir, I really do, but please try to realize that we’re in a bit of a pinch here. Payroll issues and all. We simply didn’t have the means to bring all of you back to life, so we-I-made an executive decision to bring back only the most necessary part. After all, you don’t need your legs to tell us about your treasure, do you? Let’s be logical. We’re also in a bit of a jam with regards to timing here, so if you could be a dear and just tell us where you stashed the loot? That would be splendid.”
“Don’t remember,” Captain Red Locks said, sticking out his bottom lip. Or he would have, if he’d had lips.
Roger frowned. “Come now, don’t be like that. I’m sure you do remember quite well. The stories say you had the greatest treasure on the seven seas, but there’s never been a single glimpse of it in all these long years since you died. Everyone has tried their hand at finding it but no one has ever managed to discover where you hid it. Your horde has attained a mythical status, and a quest to locate it is almost a precept of modern-day piratical life. You can’t forget something in as grand a tradition as that!”
“I can.” Captain Red Locks sniffed. “I did.”
Roger paced the deck. “What do you want in return for telling us the location? I’ll give you anything. By ‘anything’ I hope you recognize I’m employing the use of hyperbole and I really mean ‘whatever falls within a reasonable rate of exchange’, of course. I’m a man who calculates rate of return on investments in both simplified and compound interest for a living, so don’t let’s be silly.”
A dull ache was forming behind Captain Red Locks’ superciliary crest (once he’d raided a vessel carrying a scientist and he’d kept the pilfered chart of the anatomy of a human skull displayed in his quarters ever since) as he realized how much he disliked accountants. Times had, indeed, changed when actuaries made the deals rather than men of action. He thought through his list of demands. He’d been all over the world and seen everything there was to see-twice-and he’d been brought back to life and even traveled with the circus for awhile as part of an aerial acrobatics troupe the first time he was a reanimated corpse. There wasn’t anything this clerk could offer him that he hadn’t already had. He was tired now and just wanted to be left alone. “You must promise to re-bury me with a part of my treasure so that I can be left forever in peace. And also get me some kind of sunglasses, because I’m getting a headache from the perpetual glare.”
Roger thought for a moment. “Granted.”
Captain Red Locks cleared his throat. “Then I will give you the first clue. We must go to the place where:
My thunder comes before the lightning;
My lightning comes before the clouds;
My rain dries all the land it touches.
What am I?”
“What sort of trickery is this?” Roger asked.
“I didn’t keep maps,” Captain Red Locks explained. “The way to my hideouts was always in my noggin.” He would’ve tapped his head for emphasis, but he figured Roger got the gist even without his appendages for clarification. “Say, does anyone have any gum?”
The Quartermaster stepped forward and offered a stick. “It’s just strawberry, sorry.”
Captain Red Locks grimaced. “Hey, it’s fine, really. Thanks, me heartie.” He was nothing if not polite, after all.
“No problem.”
Roger tapped his foot. “So can’t you just tell us where this place is? I don’t have time for all your nonsense. The timecards need to be balanced, you know. Have you ever had a mutiny because you can’t pay for time and a half? It isn’t pretty. So knock it off with the poetry and just tell us where the treasure is buried.”
Captain Red Locks sniffed. “It isn’t poetry. It’s a riddle. And I can’t remember; I always went by the verse.”
Roger groaned. “But what does it mean?”
Captain Red Locks thought. “I don’t know. It’s amazing that I remembered that, to be honest. I can also recall my old footlocker combination, isn’t that weird?”
“So weird,” Roger agreed. “Are any of the crew good with riddles and the like?”
Blackjack Davy Duncan raised a hook-hand. “I am, Mr. Gribble. The mateys and I tell each other word games to pass the time on second watch, and that one’s easy enough. I think Cap’n Red Locks is talking about a volcano.”
“Yes! I am!” Captain Red Locks said. “It’s all clear now. A volcano. Indeed.” He blew a big pink bubble.
Roger blinked. “Well, which one? There are hundreds of volcanoes. We could sail for a month of Sundays and never find the right one!” Being excellent at math, he knew exactly how many days that was and he didn’t want to be stuck on the ship for even a fortnight of Sundays, if it came to that.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but it’s easy to tell which one he meant,” a sailor by the name of Knee-Biter McGillicuddy said. “See, if you know the geological activity of one-hundred fifty years ago, which would put us at old Captain Red Locks time … no offense intended, sir ...”
“None taken,” the captain said around another bubble. Age was largely just a number, he’d always felt, and he was about two hundred eight years young and counting.
“Anyway, if you match up the differences in active volcanic eruptions in the centuries, there are three dormant volcanoes for the entire region where Captain Red Locks was known to roam. Only one of those is on an island, the most likely place for a pirate’s plunder, due to its relative inaccessibility for the general public. That puts us on the course straight to the Seaweed Cliffs,” Knee-Biter said. Then he blushed, because he hated public speaking. It was why he’d gone into pirating work in the first place.
“The Seaweed Cliffs!” Captain Red Locks said. “I swore an oath never to return there!”
“What? Why?” asked Roger.
Captain Red Locks cracked his gum. “Oh, I just always wanted to say that. It sounds so dramatic, don’t you agree?”
Roger began to look as if he was regretting the entire endeavor. “Tell the Sailing Master to chart a course for the Seaweed Cliffs,” he said.
The crew settled into its routine of hauling ropes to hoist various sails, and the captain chomped on his wad of gum and relaxed as they cruised across the open ocean. A powder monkey finished his job of restocking the orlop and the allure of a talking skull proved too great a temptation to resist. He crept closer, examining the bone. “Is it true you were a famous captain from a long time ago?” he asked.
Red Locks forgot he couldn’t nod without a neck, and he ended up just rattling himself on the deck. “The swashbuckliest,” he said. “Captain Red Locks Perrow, at your service.”
“I’m Nick Flint,” the boy said. “Why do they call you Red Locks?”
“Well, I wanted to be Dreadnought, but it just wouldn’t take,” the captain said. “I had a deaf boatswain-sorry, ‘hard-of-hearing’, he was so sensitive about that!-and he was always saying “Red Locks, Red Locks” no matter how many times I corrected him. Also, I had curly red hair. But still, who wants to be known by a key trait of their their physical appearance? It’s like when the lads call you ‘No-Legs Nick.’”
The boy stared. “No one calls me that. I was just born without legs.”
“Fair point; My hair was gorgeous so it’s hardly the same. Still, ‘Dreadnought’ had a lovely ring to it. I wish it would have caught on.” Red Locks blew his wad of gum over the railing. It had lost the strawberry flavor a long time ago and now merely tasted like a mouthful of chewed-up erasers.
“I have some stuff to do.” No-Legs Nick (as the captain was to think of him forevermore) inched away.
“Me, too,” Red Locks said, trying to look busy. “Me too.”
The ship sailed for a few hours, and a cry from the crow’s nest signaled their arrival at the Seaweed Cliffs. Roger held him up to see the volcanic skyline. “We were serendipitously close to the Cliffs when we found your skull. We’re almost there. Now what?”
The next part of the riddle popped right into his mind. “Clue the second:
What always runs but never walks,
often murmurs, never talks,
has a bed but never sleeps,
has a mouth but never eats?”
“That’s a cinch!” Blackjack Davy said, waving his hook around in his excitement. “A river?”
“Of course!” Roger said. “Even I could have come up with that one. So, we follow the inland stream, is that the course?”
“I guess,” Red Locks said.
Roger narrowed his gaze. “What do you mean, ‘you guess?’”
“I dunno; it’s just been a long time, you know? I always had a head more for words than for navigation. Funny how I ended up as captain of a whole crew of people with basically no practical skills to speak of, now that it comes to it.” Captain Red Locks cleared his throat to break the somewhat uncomfortable silence. “No matter; we’re here now! River, you say?”
“No, you nitwit! You said!” Roger shouted.
Red Locks looked around the fast-approaching isle. “Yeeesss. I’m sure it will be fine. The river. After all, who makes up a mapping-riddle and then doesn’t follow the directions in the rhyme? Anyway, have you ever tried to come up with the correct rhyme for ‘sleep’? It’s devilishly difficult, I tell you. I couldn’t think of one and in the end went with that near-rhyme of ‘eat’. I hope no one noticed.”
“Barkeep?” Roger asked.
“Dustheap?” Blackjack Davy said.
“Kneedeep?” Knee-Biter McGillicuddy suggested.
“Upsweep?” No-Legs Nick called from under decks.
“Little BoPeep?” said the erstwhile necromancer, Donny Knuckles.
“Phsaw, I say,” Red Locks said. “As if kneedeep has anything whatsoever to do with a river. Come now.”
The ship sailed around the treacherous Seaweed Cliffs and anchored in Rum Cove (a distressing misnomer, much to Red Locks’ perpetual disappointment). A scouting party disembarked at the mouth of Cannibal Estuary (less a misnomer than Red Locks might have hoped) and made their soggy way up the Coconut River Valley.
After an hour of sloshing through the jungle, Roger pulled Red Locks’ skull out of the pack in which they’d stashed him. “We’ve been walking for a long time. We’re at the heart of the island. We have to be close. Where is it, damn you?”
Red Locks looked around. “This just isn’t ringing any bells.”
Roger shook him. “Think harder! We’re at the edge of a fiscal cliff here. And an actual one, which is where your head is going if you can’t remember where the booty is.”
“Fine, fine. Clue the third:
Whoever makes it, tells it not.
Whoever takes it, knows it not.
Whoever knows it, wants it not.”
“Wait, that’s the auditor’s secret passcode!” Roger said. “The answer is counterfeit money. How did you infiltrate our order? Is there a mole in the Comptroller’s Club? And more importantly, are you scamming us?” His hand shook with suppressed rage while the rest of the band of pirates looked on in horror and exhaustion (they were a bit out of shape to be tromping around a jungle proper, to be honest, though Donny Knuckles had a nice set of pecs going on).
Red Locks laughed. “No, just having a wee bit of fun with you. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Last clue, really:
Reaching stiffly for the sky,
I bare my fingers when it's cold.
In warmth I wear an emerald glove,
and in-between I dress in gold.”
They all turned to look at Blackjack Davy, who scratched his head. “It’s a tough one,” he said, repeating the phrase. “Some kind of lady, is all I can think. But I don’t think it’s right.”
“Nope,” Captain Red Locks said.
“Gloves when it’s warm?” Knee-Biter asked. “I don’t know. A statue of some kind?”
“Uh-uh.”
“They all had a turn guessing, but the riddle stumped them. Captain Red Locks grinned.
“Wait,” Donny Knuckles said. “Do you know the answer?”
“It’s a tree!” the captain shouted. He would have done a jig if he had feet. Only No-Legs Nick knew his pain.
Roger clapped a hand to his forehead. “Your clue led us to a tree in the middle of a jungle?”
The crew groaned.
“Of course I remember which one,” Captain Red Locks said. “One that looks like a cloud. It seems I should’ve had a riddle for a cloud, but I don’t. At any rate, it has a really weird shape. I’ll know it when I see it.”
“This was one hundred some-odd years ago!” Roger said. “The tree is probably dead; or worse, it wasn’t real to begin with. Your memory’s been scrambled since we revived you!”
“This was a fool’s quest, Gribble!” Knee-Biter said. He grabbed Red Locks’ skull and hefted it into the brush.
The captain’s world tilted as he rolled over and over. He was glad not to have a stomach or he would’ve been sick all over himself; as it was, his gorge was fighting the good fight to rise up against him. He came to rest deep in the forest, and when his vision stopped whirling he saw the canopy above him. The sheltering branches formed a familiar spiky green cloud. “Come quickly!” he yelled. “My treasure is here!”
The crew found him lodged in the roots of a dragon tree. Roger leaned over him. “You said something about treasure?”
Captain Red Locks didn’t blink. “This is the spot. Under this very tree is my heart’s greatest treasure.”
“Look!” Blackjack Davy nudged at a spot of soil near the base of the tree. “There’s an indentation … something is here!”
They unpacked their spades and began to dig (even Blackjack Davy, who had a difficult task shoveling what with his hook for a hand). They didn’t stop their work, even when night fell. Donny Knuckles took a moment to light some candles to ward away the deepening gloom, but they continued to chip away until a scrape broke the rhythm. “I’ve hit something!” Knee-Biter said.
“Sounds like metal. Could it be a chest?” asked Blackjack Davy.
“Get down and see!” said Roger.
They knelt around the hole and lifted a weathered box from the dirt.
“Is there more?” Roger asked. “That’s a rather small chest to contain the world’s greatest treasure.”
“It is just the size it needs to be,” Captain Red Locks assured them.
Knee-Biter held his shovel to the rusted lock and it gave way almost instantly. “This is it,” Roger said as he lifted the creaking lid of the little box. Donny Knuckles shoved a candle forward and they all peered together with a collective intake of breath.
A second later there was a mass recoil. “It smells!”
Blackjack Davy waved a hand in front of his nose. “What’s that stench?”
“It’s a rotten corpse of some vermin!” Roger said. “Explain yourself, Captain!”
Captain Red Locks didn’t have an endocrine system anymore, but he felt a rush of adrenaline as if he did. “With pleasure! You’ve made a fatal error, good sirs. That isn’t vermin; that’s my trusty parrot, Treasure!”
“Say what?” Donny Knuckles asked (he always had been a bit of a colloquialist).
“What I mean to say is that my beloved parrot, appellated Treasure, was stricken with some form of avine ailment and was carried off this mortal coil to fly in the clear skies of heaven,” Captain Red Locks said. “Besides the fact that a pirate without his parrot is a laughingstock, I realized that the greatest treasure lies not in doubloons or in earthly wealth, but in family, the kind I was denied with the departure of my dearest Treasure. I spent my remaining years telling everyone of my secret, that I had found the greatest treasure a man can find: love.”
Roger sank to his knees. “Are you kidding me?”
Blackjack Davy snickered. “He was in love with a bird!”
“Not in love … but indeed I did love him. And he loved me. Treasure was my boon companion, the only thing in this world I could trust,” the captain said.
Blackjack rolled on the ground, tears of laughter streaming from his eyes.
“Shut up, you idiot! It isn’t funny!” shouted Roger. “Don’t you understand? We’ve been following the ravings of a lunatic for over a century!”
“Oh. I probably should have mentioned that he had a reputation for this sort of thing,” Knee-Biter said. “They called him Lead Rocks Perrow, since everyone knew he was apeshit crazy at the end there. They suspect it was lead poisoning from the make-up he used to paint his face.”
“I was a bit of a dandy,” Red Locks admitted.
“Yeah, always on about one crazy thing or another. In fact, he was so saturated with lead by the end that I’ll bet even his skull is seeped in the stuff. We’d better not touch it any more,” Knee-Biter advised. “Best just … cut our losses. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather die of scurvy like a respectable pirate.”
“Fine. Let’s go,” said Donny Knuckles.
“Wait, what about the mutiny?” asked Roger, trembling. “There’s no money now, and Tuesday is a pirate holiday. I can’t afford to pay out double time!”
“It’s fine, Roger,” Knee-Biter said. “We knew this was a bit of a side-trek. We found old Captain Red Locks Perrow’s treasure, though, and that’s bragging rights! No need to specify what it is to folks, exactly. We just gained a bunch of sea cred. We can hang on until the next big score.”
Roger nodded. “Thanks, guys. The captain will be pleased with your loyalty. He’s sure to crack into his store of rum to reward you. Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Red Locks said. “You promised to re-bury me with the treasure. Don’t welsh on a deal, now. I held up my end, now you do your part.”
Blackjack Davy sighed. “He has a point. It’ll only take a minute.”
“You’ll take the spell off, right?” Red Locks asked. “I mean, no one wants to be underground for all ti ...” He was interrupted when he was thrown into the chest and the lid slammed shut, leaving him in complete darkness. There was some tilting as if he were being lowered into the ground, then he could hear soft mounds of dirt piling onto his new grave. The stench of rotting bird feathers was still quite pungent, but being with Treasure’s remains didn’t bother the captain. He didn’t have the glare of that burning sun in his eyes anymore, and he could sing all the shanties he liked. His new home suited him to perfection. He let himself grin and started his song. “One hundred bottles of beer on the wall...”
Yes, he was going to like it here.