Twenty-Three

Tobias

Back they went to the island shaped like a boot. This time, at exactly midnight, under the light of a nearly full moon, they took out the map. Or the pieces of it, anyway.

"What the fish did you do to the map?" asked Mary.

Tobias shrugged. "I was trying to rescue you. It's fine." He pushed the torn pieces of the map together and held it up. "Blackbeard!" he called.

Still, nothing happened.

"Maybe you broke it," Anne said. (She'd come along this time.)

"If only there was a way to put it back together," Jack said. "Like some sticky paste on a clear substance that you could use to join the pieces again."

But alas, dear reader, tape had not been invented yet.

"What does the map message say exactly?" Mary asked, and Tobias read the exact words: "‘ Get kicked by the boot at midnight, and call my name .'"

"It doesn't say stand on the boot at midnight," Mary pointed out. "It says get kicked ."

"And how do we do that?"

Mary peered over the edge of the cliff. "Perhaps he means us to jump. That would be like getting kicked."

"It also might be like getting killed," said Tobias.

"We have about thirty more seconds before it's no longer midnight," Anne pointed out. "Let's do something."

"Making people jump sounds like a thing Pa would do," Tobias said, and so, before any of them could think too much about it, they joined hands and leapt from the cliff, down, down, down, into the sea, screaming "CAPTAIN BLACKBEAAAAAAAAAARD!" as they fell.

None of them died.

What happened was this: the map (the pieces, we mean) got wet.

And when it was wet, to their great surprise, the ink did not run. Instead, another set of words and numbers formed—a second message, below the first.

Coordinates.

Mary sputtered and blew a strand of wet hair out of her eyes. "So the map just needed to get wet. No magic. Just water."

"Apparently," said Jack.

"Classic!" chortled Anne.

"It didn't have to be midnight," Mary thundered, "and we didn't have to jump, and we weren't even required to say Blackbeard's name, were we?!"

Jack shrugged.

"GAWL!" Anne cried, splashing around furiously. Then they all made their way back to the rowboat.

"Have we found the treasure yet?" the crew wanted to know when the four of them, dripping, returned to the William .

"Not yet. But soon," Mary promised. "We'll get there."

They better.

Getting there turned out to be the easy part. They located Booty Island (an equally small island, but this one shaped like a turtle) right where the coordinates said it would be. The problem then became getting to the treasure alive.

They took the William through treacherous reefs that could have clawed open the bottom of the ship. Once they passed that, they had to go through a swarm of man-eating sharks. No one so much as looked overboard, just in case the sharks could jump. Beyond them, there was a lagoon filled with shrieking eels, which did indeed shriek so loudly that some of the crew had to go belowdecks.

Finally, they took a rowboat to shore, where Tobias stopped everyone from running forward. "Wait! There will be more traps here."

Anne scoffed. "Booty Island? He should have called it ‘Booby Trap Island' instead!"

"Aye, the man loved his tricks," Tobias said. "But watch where you walk." Then, using the pieces of the map, he led them around the spear traps, snares, and pits that scattered the beach. "Now... X marks the spot." He pointed to a giant X made of felled palm trees. "There should be a cave somewhere nearby."

"Found it!" Jack tromped down a small slope and motioned directly under the X. "It looks really spooky. Darling, do you have that lantern?"

"Right here!" Anne lifted a lantern high. "Are we all ready?"

Tobias glanced at Mary, who was staring into the cave with a worried little frown. But when she noticed him watching, she sucked in a breath and put on a smile. "Let's go," she said. "I want to finish this."

"We will," he assured her as he followed Jack and Anne to the mouth of the cave. Nailed to a nearby tree was a sign. It read, Only a true son of Blackbeard may pass.

"That's ominous," Jack said.

"True son? Did Blackbeard have many false sons?" Anne asked.

Tobias shrugged. "There were always people claiming to be his. And it's fair to say that Blackbeard wasn't so good at keeping track of everyone, so who knows? Perhaps they were his. Perhaps they weren't."

He glanced at the sign again. Caesar had said all this should be his. But what if his father meant this as some kind of test?

"Tobias?" Mary touched his shoulder. "Everything all right?"

"Aye." Tobias shook away his uncomfortable thoughts and said to the group, "Now, there's a list of instructions on this. You all need to do as I say exactly . I don't know what will happen if we get this wrong, but remember the traps we had to get through just to get to the island."

"Right," said Jack, "but remember, the sign at the Kettle said to walk on the left. That's what Mary did just before the stairs gave out from under her. What if he's tricking us again?"

"He had a terrible sense of humor," Tobias reminded him, "but I don't think he's tricking us now. Let's assume he wasn't trying to kill me."

He hoped.

After a moment, the other three nodded in agreement. "All right," Mary said, "let's go down the spooky hole."

Tobias consulted the instructions. "Five paces straight ahead. Then stop."

"What if the length of our paces is different from the length of Blackbeard's paces?" Anne hissed.

They took five paces straight ahead, Tobias trying to approximate the length of Blackbeard's stride. Then they stopped.

Immediately, a boulder tumbled past, thundering over the cave's stone floor mere inches from their toes. Apparently thinking the danger was over and done with, Anne moved to step forward, but Tobias whipped his arm out in front of her and stopped her. They waited... and the boulder rolled back the way it had come. Dust and pebbles skittered in its wake, and the surf rushed and crashed behind them, but otherwise, the cave was quiet.

"Gawl," Anne said. "That could have crushed me!"

The group exhaled.

"You all right, Bonn?" Jack asked.

"I might have watered myself a little bit. But I'll get over it."

Tobias recited the next set of instructions. "Turn left, down the boulder path."

This was another tense part. But according to the map, straight ahead would lead to a spike pit, while right would lead to a dead end. A literal dead end, as it would trigger the boulder to start rolling again. And squashing would happen.

"Twenty-four paces. Pause. One pace. Pause."

At each pause, a set of daggers stabbed up from cleverly hidden holes cut into the stone.

They followed the instructions precisely, Tobias continuing to speak them aloud as he went. They kept going, passing by the wall spikes, the spurts of flame, and the second crushing boulder. Blackbeard had always said you couldn't have too many boulders.

Then they came to something a bit more puzzling: a shelf with three goblets. One was gold, one was silver, and one was the deepest black.

"What do you think?" Mary asked.

"There's a sign." Anne pointed. "‘ Drink from the cup of Blackbeard's blood. ' So that would be the onyx one, wouldn't it? Black like the beard?"

"Or gold, because he was the Pirate King ," Mary said.

"Could be silver," Jack suggested. "Because silver is the least obvious answer and he seemed like the kind of man who loved to trick people like that."

Tobias considered. All those things were true, but they weren't quite right, either. Not for this. In the year before he'd died, Blackbeard had been working on his own special rum, trying to perfect his recipe, but it had never turned out right. They'd all been vile, in fact. No one, not even Blackbeard, had been able to drink the stuff, so they'd poured every batch overboard.

He picked up the gold cup and looked into it. Something dark and murky swirled within.

"Are you going to drink that?" Mary's face twisted with disgust. "I don't think you should."

"We didn't survive getting captured by pirate hunters just so you could poison yourself," Jack pointed out.

Oh, Tobias was absolutely not going to drink it. Instead, he poured the liquid into a small recess at the back of the shelf. It drained through a narrow channel and vanished, but... something shifted.

Then he poured out the contents of the silver goblet in the same manner. And then the onyx. With each one, something inside the wall shifted until a mechanism clicked—and a nearby door groaned open.

Jack gasped. "So you weren't supposed to drink any of them!"

"It probably would have killed me," Tobias agreed. "But the weight of the liquid pressed on a lever that opened the door."

"You chose wisely." Mary patted him on the shoulder. "Good job."

They all squeezed through the narrow doorway and into another dark room. This one had man-height models of the Queen Anne's Revenge sitting in all four corners, and one in the middle. But something was off about them. Their sails were turned strangely, the acute angles all pointed into the center of the room, even though the ships were all facing the same direction.

Tobias studied the ships. Anne looked around for instructions. Mary and Jack checked the walls, floor, and ceiling for traps.

"There's something back there," Mary announced, pointing at a section of a wall. "There's a seam. Not big enough to be a door, so probably spikes or a flamethrower."

And the only exit Tobias could see was the way they'd come, so if it was a flame spurt, they'd be cooked before they could all squeeze back out.

"So what are we supposed to do?" Anne asked.

"It has to be something with the direction of the sails," Jack said. "Maybe we have to fix them?"

Tobias crouched in front of the nearest miniature Revenge . "The mainmasts are levers. Perhaps we need to pull them in a certain order."

"What order, though?" Mary crossed her arms. "There are no hints in here."

"There might be. Douse the lantern," Tobias said.

No one looked happy about it, but they put out the lantern, blanketing the space in darkness. But not total darkness.

Faint lights appeared on the walls and ceiling—even the floor. Some kind of glowing algae or mold, Tobias thought. But it wasn't growing there naturally. No, it had been placed in very specific patterns. And all at once, Tobias knew where he was.

"It's the night sky," he murmured.

Against the soft glow, he could see the others gazing about, their mouths open in silent wonder.

Tobias thought back to some of his earliest summers with Blackbeard, searching his memory for clues. And there was... something. He remembered standing on the deck of the Queen Anne's Revenge , Blackbeard pressing him to name all the constellations and the times of year they appeared. The ones here were summer: there was Draco, the dragon, and Cygnus, the swan. And Libra—the scales. That was it. Blackbeard had said, Knowing where you are is about balance. You need to trust your instruments—but also your gut. You know where you are. You know where you're going.

"Tobias?" Mary asked. "Did you figure it out?"

"Aye," Tobias said. "It's not the order the masts need to go in. It's the angle. We should point them at the five stars of Libra. It's there." He pointed out the triangle—three stars—and the two just beneath it.

But just in case he was wrong and set off the trap, he motioned for the others to wait by the exit. Then, one at a time, he pulled on the masts to point them at the correct stars.

A huge thunk echoed in the room. The northern wall moved aside. Everyone rushed through in case it closed again, and then Mary relit the lantern.

They had reached... another wall.

"What the fish," Mary muttered. "Doesn't he want you to get this treasure?"

Tobias shrugged. "I can't really tell anymore."

Jack had moved ahead of them, poking around some greenery that was growing over the stone. But there was a recess in the wall, just big enough to hold a human skull with gemstones in its eyes. And below the skull was another hole, just big enough to fit an arm into. "There's a sign," Jack announced. "It says, ‘ Give me a hand .'"

"Great. Now we have to watch Tobias trick us again, pretending he got hurt. I will not be ripping my shirt for you this time," Mary said, but there was a twist in her smile that suggested she would, of course, if he needed.

"Well, go ahead," Jack said. "Stick your hand in there."

"There's probably a trick to it," Tobias said. "He'd know I know it's like the Kettle. It's too easy to just stick my hand in it this time. Then I'll have to get a hook, assuming I don't bleed out first."

"Use your left hand, then," Anne suggested. "Since you're right-handed."

"Not helping." Tobias inspected the area, but aside from the skull and the sign, there didn't seem to be anything useful. And though he tried, he couldn't remember anything significant about a skull with gemstone eyes. "It has to mean something," he muttered out loud.

"Perhaps he just thought it looked menacing," Jack suggested. "Like, if you're here, then you're not dead, and adding jewels to the eye sockets probably means there's treasure beyond. I think we're done with the booby traps."

Blackbeard was never done with the booby traps, as far as Tobias was concerned.

"I bet he knew you'd get to this point and recognize the joke—even if it's a bad joke—and pop your hand right in there. He's your pa, remember? And you're his true son."

Tobias reached for the hole... and then stopped. "I don't know," he said softly. "I don't think I can."

"Because you don't want to get your hand chopped off?" Anne asked. "I was joking about which one to use. Mostly. I can reach in there, if you want. I've always thought hooks looked fetching."

"Because it's possible that he didn't consider me his true son," Tobias admitted softly. "The last time we spoke, I told him I didn't want to be."

"But you're the pirate prince," Anne said. "His heir. His favorite."

"And you alone understood that map," Mary said. "You guided us through all those booby traps. And who else could have gotten us past the goblet test and the miniature Revenge room? He set it up this way because he knew you'd know how to get here. He meant for you to have this."

Tobias nodded. That's what Caesar had told him also.

"It feels like a test," said Jack, "but not a trick—not in the same way."

"Just put your hand in there," Anne urged. "What do you have to lose? Besides your hand, I guess. Go on."

So with a deep breath, Tobias stuck his hand into the hole—and yanked it out immediately. "Ow!"

Everyone rushed to help, but when Tobias unclenched his fist, there was only a faint line of blood on his fingertip. "Paper cut," he said. "It really stings."

"Oh, come on," Jack said. "It's not like you got shot with a musket."

Tobias reached into the hole again and pinned the paper between his first two fingers. It scraped the edges of the hole as he drew it out. An envelope. The front simply read Toby in Blackbeard's spidery script.

"Open it!" Anne demanded.

Tobias peeled the flap open and removed a folded piece of heavy paper.

My dear Toby,

I knew it would be You to find this. And since you've found This, that means I'm so much Fish Bait by now. I hope I gave em Hell and went Screaming from this world in Spectacular Style, but I suppose, in the end, it don't Matter how one goes.

I wasn't always the Pa you Deserved. I was never much good at the Rearing part. But you always did feel like a True Son to me, in the ways that matter. I've trusted ye and Depend on ye, and maybe that wasn't Quite fair, being that you were a mere Lad, but it's the God's honest Truth.

I know you never liked standing in My Shadow, even though I believe ye to be the best choice for carrying on my legacy. You could captain your own Ship, and to my way of Thinking, should inherit the title of Pirate King that others bestowed on Me. But I can discern now that ye never wished for Such a thing. I'm sorry I never gave you a Proper Choice in the matter. I am giving you leave to make your Choice now, though. Take this Treasure and Build the life you want. Perhaps you still have Caesar—he's not your pa by blood but I know he's like a father to you, too. Perhaps he'll want to Go with you.

I should have told you I'm proud of you. Proud of the man you've Become, the way you've Grown. You're strong and Brave and loyal—everything that a Pa could ever desire in a Son.

I hope One Day you can forgive me for all the Ways I failed ye.

Love,

Your Pa

PS The key is in the Skull, behind the eyes. The gems don't mean anything. I just thought they added to the General Menace.

Tobias finished reading the letter to himself. Then, at everyone's urgent looks—and Anne's "So is there treasure or not?"—he read the letter out loud, hardly caring that his voice cracked when he got to the part about his pa being proud of him, his eyes heavy with tears.

When Tobias lowered the paper, the other three were quiet, blinking rapidly and swallowing like they had something caught in their throats.

"Well," Tobias said after a moment of uncomfortable quiet, "I guess I should check for the key."

It was, indeed, right where Blackbeard had said it would be. And the keyhole, like at the Kettle, was at the very back of the hole the note had been tucked into. Tobias slid the key into the keyhole and turned.

Then they heard a sound. A scraping sound, stone on stone, accompanied by a little squeak of gears. And slowly, so very slowly, the wall began to pivot inward, a door after all, revealing a dark passage beyond, and a long set of wooden stairs.