"Save your flattery," I said; "and bring our friend back!"
Harmony held frog Eddinray as he attempted to leap from her cupped hands. "Restore him to me!" she begged. "Restore him, please!"
"I will do as you ask angel,” he replied, leering at her with watery eyeballs. "On one condition — one little prerequisite…"
"You'll get no payment from us!" I protested, pulling my sword and slashing at the free air between us. "Nothing at all!"
Unperturbed, the corpse stepped from his maggoty pile, slid his leg under Harmony's face then revealed his simple condition. "A kiss, angel exile from Heaven. You will bow to your knees, and you will kiss my foot."
An outraged Kat cursed him, but still had the good sense to keep his distance.
"You can't make her do that!" I yelled. "It's against everything she believes in!"
"That is the cost!" he returned, sharply. "And your only way across this bridge. Now kiss…"
Harmony let go of her frog to smear the tears from her cheeks.
"You don't have to do this,” I said to her. "I don't want you to!"
"I have to,” she said, examining the croaking Eddinray. Already, it was clear she would do anything for him; thus swallowing back centuries of pride, she crouched to her knees and bent to the decayed foot of Mephistopheles. However, as she pursed her lips an inch from the kiss, Kat sprang toward the crumbling, Mephistopheles and was supernaturally reduced to a ginger cat, caught in the corpse's own grip.
"No!" shrieked Harmony, falling back.
Mephistopheles held the cat outstretched as it scratched, pawed, and wailed.
"Fool." the corpse said, rattling this animal by the scruff. "The brave have very few brains in their heads."
Glaring now at the bouncing frog, he kicked the amphibian over the bridge's edge. "You bastard!" I roared. "You fucking bastard!"
He laughed hard, resulting in several teeth dropping from his mouth. He next threw the ginger cat after the frog and into the chasm, and it meowed all the way out of earshot.
"Careful!" he barked at me. "You have already lost two companions — and look there goes another!"
All of a sudden, in a blink of time, another enchantment transformed Harmony into a minuscule white butterfly with a clasp around the wings. Snickering like a child, the wearer of the crown bent, picked up this beautiful insect, then flicked it over his shoulder to join Kat and Eddinray in the pit. "Harmony!" I cried, watching her disappear.
Friends gone, I was alone. Absolutely alone. "What do you want from me? What do you want?"
"An explanation,” he curtly demanded, the bridge now disintegrating with the entire location around me, a vortex of ash stirring in the background. "Why has the scientist sent you?" he demanded. "Answer immediately!"
"The 9th Fortress!" I cried.
"Do not dare patronize me!" he screamed, clutching my cheeks and lifting me off my feet. "What is your true mission? Tell me your objective or I carve my names over your chest!"
I could only think of one idea in this vacuum of swirling doom, one single thing left to do. I slid my dagger free from its pouch, and as I drew the weapon, the corpse instantly released me and staggered back. It was my dagger — he was petrified by it. "You…you keep that away from me! " he baulked, gasping as if out breath.
"You keep it away!"
His fear genuine, a stupid confidence consumed me. "The power of God!" I roared. "In my fucking hand!"
"Keep it away!" he screeched, covering his face with stick arms. "Be gone from here! Be Gone!"
Was this my true mission? To destroy the blackest soul? I lunged for that prized kill with all my energy and hate, then suddenly found myself falling…and falling.
***
I thrashed in the darkness as a ferocious wind pulled me one way then another. Sound came to my ears before Terra firma, a rousing clash below, as if the two largest creatures in the jungle were fighting for supremacy. Light followed — whites dashing here and there, topped with spurts of random foam. It was water, it was ocean, and I hit it hard. Spluttering to the surface, the ocean was bold black, and a thunderous sky struck that sea with white bolts
"Help!" I yelled, gulping salt water. "Anyone!"
"Fox?" a faint voice returned. "Are you there?"
"Here!" I bellowed back. "Is that you Kat? I'm over here!"
I searched the rising and falling ocean for any sign, and saw the black angels first. This was the most I had seen gathered in one location — over fifty — tossing soul after soul into the sea; each person with a stone block attached to the soles of their feet. I submerged in a hurry as one of those human anchors bared down on top of me. Both stone and man broke through the water, and before I could return for air, I witnessed this figure's drowning descent not an inch from my face. Gargling desperate, he snagged his arms around my legs then dragged me with him to the weeds.
Struggling, I witnessed many others sink alongside us, all to experience the full and crushing weight of the sea. Breath rapidly depleting, I challenged this man's grip with every ounce of energy, tugging, pulling and prying; but his bulk was too heavy and his arms too powerful. Suffocating now, I begged his own anguished expression to show mercy and let me live. Like mine, his was a normal face craving air and another chance; but searching deeper, I saw something in this man that profoundly touched my heart — the pitiful remorse, the recalling years of regret playing like a movie over his drowning eyes — but too little for redemption, and all too late for rescue.
I expressed sorrow with the last of me, sorrow for the both of us; then abruptly and amazingly, I found myself free of him. Only he could explain, but the man willingly released me from his arms, and sunk alone to his fate.
Breaking the surface, I wretched the salt water from my lungs. Kat's call was clearer now, but with scant energy to swim, I expected my end sooner rather than later.
"Men overboard!" a new voice howled over the waves. "Men overboard!"
There was a long whistle too, followed by a tall ship battering the water aside. Three massed and fully rigged, it was a sight of sails fat with wind and rope tails blowing in the gale. Her sailors were thin silhouettes over the deck, but each scurrying to our aid. Fierce lightning cracked the masthead and its electric light revealed the name of this glorious ship, stretched golden across the stern — Bounty.
31. We Buccaneers
Seven men hauled us onboard using muscle, mitts, ropes and rings. Restored to our mortal bodies, we lay on a sopping deck before hardy sailors, their faces aged by salt and time.
"Merci!" said Harmony, breathlessly ringing the water from her gown.
"Thank-you all so much!"
"We're lost!" I chattered. "Where are we?"
The sea pounded this ship from all sides, as if angry for losing us.
"Pretty girl!" sneered one of the men, curling Harmony's hair through his hands. "She'll wish she was back in the water when we're through! Am I right lads?"
This grubby sailor laughed with the rest, only to be interrupted by a younger man, the runt of this litter.
"Back!" he exclaimed, separating them from us.
"Name's Hallet," he said to me, "John Hallet. You are safe now mister! You and your people. For the time being at least!"
Filling his naval jacket with pride, there was a kindness on Hallet's boyish face, and honesty in the eyes. It was his voice I heard bawl over the ocean and his whistle too — John Hallet was our saviour.
"Take what they have!" yelled one, built like a barrel. We were suddenly manhandled by these sailors, confiscating our weapons and flasks. We fought to prevent this but the water made us weak, even Kat slumped a temporary shadow of his former self.