The Pirate's Wish (3 page)

The speaker was a manticore.

Now, I’d seen a manticore or two before, locked away in cages, and those were frightening enough. But I ain’t never heard one speak – I didn’t even think they could. And this one was bigger than the caged ones, only about a foot shorter than me even though she stood on four legs instead of two.

She padded up close to me and leaned down and sniffed with her pretty human-looking nose, then settled down on her haunches, her scaly wings pressed flat against her back, her tail curling up into a point behind her head. Hadn’t been darts she’d flung at me, but spines, and poisonous ones at that, if the stories were anything to go by. I kept my eye on that tail.

“I only shot at you when I thought you were an ally of the wizard-human,” she said. “I do not care for the taste of girl-humans.”

“Oh. Alright.” I stood up, slow and careful. The manticore followed me with her eyes, which were the color of pressed gold.

“Perhaps you can help me,” she said.

Well, that stunned me into silence.

“Do you have a way off the island?”

It took me a minute to find my voice, and even when I did all I could do was stammer out the most drawn-out
“
no” in the history of time.

The manticore looked disappointed.

“What do you need to leave the island for?” I asked, mostly in a whisper.

“I’d like to go home, of course,” she said. “The wizard-human had kept me imprisoned for almost three life-cycles. I made my escape four days ago.”

She licked at her paw. My stomach twisted around and I stumbled backward, one foot splashing into the spring.

“And how…” I said. “How did you–”

“I ate him.”

She said it all matter-of-fact, like we were bartering trade in a day market. Sweat prickled out of my skin.

“I told you, girl-human, I do not care for the taste of your sort’s flesh.” She sniffed. “If you do not have a way off the island, why did you come here at all?”

“We were marooned.” I hadn’t meant to tell her, but I was so unnerved it spilled out anyway.

“We? There is another human?” She smiled, which was terrifying, her mouth all full of teeth. “A girl-human or a boy-human?”

I didn’t want to answer that. So I changed the subject.

“I may be able to get you off the island,” I said, quick as lightning. “But you’ll have to wait.”

“You said you had no manner of escape.”

“I don’t. But a friend – a girl-human, like me, she might be bringing a ship and crew.”

The manticore’s face lit up. She fluffed out her mane. “And this friend-girl-human would be able to take me to the Island of the Sun?”

“Sure.” I’d heard of the Island of the Sun. It’s in the west, not lined up with any of the major shipping ports so not much use to anybody. Except, apparently, manticores. Papa’s crew always said it was a wasteland. “But you’ll have to wait till she gets here, like I said. And I don’t know when that’ll be.”

“That is acceptable.” The manticore stood up and arched her spine, wings fluttering. Her tail curled above her back. “I shall accompany you back to your dwelling.”

Naji
.
My stomach twisted again. Hopefully he hadn’t come back yet, and I could find a way to warn him. At least I didn’t seem to really be in danger – that would keep him from swooping in to save me.

“It’s small,” I said. “It’ll remind you of your prison, I’m sure of it. You’d be better to live out in the woods…” I swept my hand around and the trees rustled.

“Don’t be absurd, girl-human. You will leave me when the friend-girl-human comes. Show me the way.”

My brain spun round and round. All I could think about was Naji skulking in front of the fire, unaware that I was bringing in a monster keen on eating him. Was this how it all ended? Me not being able to out-talk a manticore and Naji winding up as its dinner?

“Why do you dally?” The manticore’s voice echoed through my skull.

“Uh, I need to get some clean water. Hold on.” I felt around in the underbrush for the water bucket. The manticore regarded me with her big gold eyes. I dipped the bucket into the spring, and watched as the water flooded in. Every now and then I dipped the bucket so the water flowed back out again, blocking the manticore’s view with my back while I did it. All the while I scrambled to come up with some way out of this mess. Could you strike a deal with a manticore? Stories always made ’em out as monsters, teeth and claws and nothing else.

“This is taking too long,” the manticore said.

“Sorry.” My heart pounded. I let the bucket fill completely and then stood up. “Look, you gotta promise me something if I’m gonna help you off the island.”

“A promise?” The manticore smiled again, teeth flashing. I regretted my words immediately.

“Look, if we’re gonna help you, me and my friend, you can’t run around eating every man – uh, every boy-human – we come across, do you understand?”

“No,” the manticore said. “You would starve me?”

“Of course not! But you’ll have to be, ah, selective.”

The manticore unfurled her tail, the tip of the spine glistening. “I’m always selective with my meals,” she said. “I only ate the wizard-human out of desperation. I have never cared for the flavor of his sort. Much too stringy.”

“Uh, that’s not exactly what I meant…”

The manticore curled up her lip into a toothy little sneer.

“Why don’t you just ask me before you eat anyone? In exchange for getting you off the island?”

“I can agree to those terms.”

“And you have to
not
eat the guy if I say no.”

For a moment the manticore pouted. Then she licked a paw and ran it over her mane. “We shall see.”

Good enough. And if she didn’t like the taste of the Wizard Eirnin, maybe she wouldn’t have no interest in eating Naji, neither.

We walked side by side back to the shack on the beach. I sure as hell wasn’t letting her walk behind me, though she didn’t seem to much care one way or the other. She moved real quick even considering her size, though branches snapped, and leaves and pine cones showered over us every time she knocked into a tree. She made more noise than me or Naji ever did.

When we came to the shack, I smelled fish and wild onions frying on the hearth. I stopped. He came home, found me gone, and started cooking?

And then my heart started pounding again, cause now I had to find a way to warn him.

The manticore stopped outside the shack. “You are correct,” she said. “This is much too small for me.”

I prayed to Kaol and every other goddess I knew that Naji would stay inside. “Let me go in first, let him know–”

“Him?” One of her eyebrows arched up. She ran her thin pink tongue over her perfect lady’s lips.

“You promised you’d ask,” I said, and then I bolted inside, slamming the door shut. Naji looked up at me.

“I really expected you to do that sooner,” he said.

“What?” My breath was coming too fast, and I tried to rein it so he wouldn’t think anything was wrong.

“Run off. I didn’t think I could truly keep you locked in the shack.” He went back to stirring our meal. “I assume you went to get water? It seems like it was an uneventful trip.”

He looked at me again, and I could only stare back at him, stricken.

He frowned, and his eyes darkened. “What’s wrong?”

I set the water down in its place beside the hearth and tried to come up with the words. Course, I didn’t get the chance, cause the manticore bounded into the shack, damn near knocking the door off the hinges.

Naji was crouched in fighting stance with his knife drawn before I even saw him move.

“Ananna,” he hissed. “My
sword
.”

I picked the sword up from where it was propped up against the wall and tossed it at him, but I kept my eyes on the manticore. “You
promised
,” I said.

Naji whipped his head around at me.

“Yes, but you did not tell me you had a Jadorr’a in your stone-nest.”

She said “Jadorr’a” the way I might’ve said “sweet lime drink” or “sugar-roses”.

“Ananna, what have you done?” Naji asked me, his voice low. He sounded angry, which if he was like any other man meant he was scared.

The manticore let out a little grumbly noise and crouched low like a cat about to pounce.

“Kaol, couldn’t you just eat some fish like a normal cat?” I shouted.

But both of ’em acted like I hadn’t said nothing.

And then the manticore’s pretty human face twisted up in a grimace. “Jadorr’a!” she said. “You’ve been cursed.”

Neither me or Naji moved.

“You hide the smell well, but… there, there it is again.” She shook her head, mane flying out in a big golden puff.

“You can’t eat him if he’s cursed?” I said.

“Of course not! It taints the flavor of the meat and will pass onto me, and besides which, from the smell of it, this is not a curse I want to possess.” She sniffed the air again.

“So, you’re not going to eat him?” I said.

“Not until the curse is lifted.” She sniffed once more, her nose wrinkling up at the brow. “Three impossible tasks,” she said. She turned to Naji. “I shall help you.”

Naji looked at a loss for words, which might’ve been funny in any other circumstance.

The manticore sat back on her haunches. “It’s very warm in your stone-nest.”

“We have a fire going,” I told her.

Naji shot me a dirty look.

“You promise you ain’t gonna eat him till his curse is lifted?”

The manticore shuddered. “I told you, I cannot abide the flavor of cursed flesh. It tastes half-rotted.”

Naji stayed in fighting stance.

“Girl-human, you were correct in assuming that I would find your stone-nest too similar to the walls of the wizard-human’s prison. I shall make a nest nearby. Is that acceptable?”

I didn’t dare look at Naji when I answered “yes”.

The manticore nodded and backed out the door, the snap and stomp of her footsteps drifting through the cracked stone walls.

Naji finally let down his knife and sword. He turned toward me. Kaol, I wanted to run out onto the beach and dive into the cold black sea. Anything to get away from the expression on his face.

“What–”

“She bullied me!” I said. “She asked if I knew a way off the island and I was trying to keep her from finding you and – and
eating
you and–”

Naji held up one hand.

“You don’t have a way off the island.”

“I will when Marjani shows up. Look, she doesn’t eat women, alright? And she won’t eat you cause of the curse, and we can’t break that till we leave. So Marjani takes us to the Island of the Sun and we drop off the manticore and
then
we fix your curse.”

Naji stared at me. “My curse is unbreakable,” he said.

“That ain’t true.” Sadness washed over me, and I wondered what would happen if I kissed him right then, and showed him at least one of the tasks wasn’t impossible.

“It is.” He sighed. “At least I know I won’t die in the jaws of a manticore. Although I can’t believe you brought that creature here.”

“I didn’t have no choice! What the hell was I supposed to do? She kept shooting spines at me.”

Naji looked at me sideways. “She wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“Yeah, but how I was supposed to know that?”

Outside, the manticore roared, and it sounded like a trumpet announcing the winner of the horse races in Lisirra. Naji tossed his sword onto the table and looked defeated.

CHAPTER TWO

I was sick to hell of eating fish. Even onboard Papa’s ship we never ate this much fish. There’d be dried salted meats, and fresh seabird, if we were close to land. But here on the Isles of the Sky it was nothing but fish, flaking like paper and just as tasteless.

“Then go hunting,” Naji told me one evening when I complained. “I’m sure your pet manticore will be happy to accompany you.”

“She ain’t my pet.” I flung a piece of fish down to the strip of tree bark we used as plates. In truth I’d thought about hunting before, cause I’d seen flashes of these graceful horsy animals through the dappled light of the trees, but I didn’t know the first damn thing about hunting game. If I had a pistol, maybe I could do it.

I didn’t tell Naji none of that, though, cause I knew he’d make fun of me. He was still sore about me bringing the manticore around.

“Finish your meal,” he said, like I was some little kid.

I glared at him and shoved the food away, sending the fish splattering across the floor.

“Finish it for me,” I said, and stomped out of the shack.

I walked down to the shore edge to calm down. I made sure not to get too close to the signal fire, but I could see it glimmering off in the distance, golden swirls twisting up toward the sky. And the smell of it was strong, too, on account of either the breeze or the island shifting us downwind: it wasn’t so much like wood burning at all, but like blood.