"All of us an ample share of the treasure, and used it wisely or foolishly, according to our nature."
Roxanne blinked at the last sentence of the book, and then frowned.
She hadn't remembered the story ending so abruptly.
No—no, surely there should be a description of what they had chosen to do with their shares of the treasure.
Roxanne had read the book before, though, admittedly, not this copy. Great Aunt Rachel had always been adamant that this book was not for reading, especially by reckless little girls who couldn't be trusted to know the value of a book.
Some days, Roxanne suspected herself of having become a librarian specifically to spite Great Aunt Rachel—though of course, the job at the library was only temporary, until Roxanne managed to get enough money together to start publishing the newspaper.
Great Aunt Rachel hadn't known about Roxanne's plan for her paper—perhaps that was why she'd willed the book to Roxanne, after her death.
Roxanne had been surprised, to say the least. But then, perhaps by becoming a librarian, she had somehow managed to accidentally impress, instead of annoy, the old woman. A rather irritating thought.
Great Aunt Rachel been given the book, she was fond of telling anyone who couldn't get away quick enough, by one of her patients back in Peshtigo, before he'd had to go into a nursing home. She'd been the kinds of nurse that stays with people in their homes. Evidently, this patient, Dan Seavey, had, in his younger days, been a sort of sailor on Lake Michigan.
And he'd been arrested (wrongly, Great Aunt Rachel insisted), on the charge of piracy.
He'd been found innocent, and had eventually been employed by the government, then later retired and moved to a town in Wisconsin.
He'd given Great Aunt Rachel the book, she said, as a thank you, and also (at this point in the story, Great Aunt Rachel always looked arch) because he'd rather taken a fancy to her. Great Aunt Rachel had always been a handsome woman.
So the book had come to Great Aunt Rachel via her accused pirate, and then to Roxanne after her great aunt's death, and now it was, quite soon, going to become the property of Lady Scott, the richest woman in Metro City.
It had been very lucky, Roxanne thought, that she'd accepted young Wayne Scott's invitation to come to the Scotts' May Day picnic. Otherwise she might never have spoken to Lady Scott. They'd gotten onto the subject of lake piracy, somehow, and Roxanne had mentioned her great aunt's association with Dan Seavey. Lady Scott had been terribly interested, especially when Roxanne mentioned that she had a book that had once been his. Evidently, lake pirates in general, and Dan Seavey in particular, were one of Lady Scott's pet interests. She'd offered to buy the book then and there, for a price that was, Roxanne thought, extremely exciting.
If she managed to scrape together a bit more money, after selling the book, she might have enough to fix the old letterpress machine that stood in the corner of her bedroom. And when she got the letterpress machine working—
—The Metro City Reporter. Six pages, two cents, bi-weekly publication plus special editions as need arose.
The thought of giving up the book gave Roxanne no pangs of regret; she had her own copy of Treasure Island. She'd chosen to read Great Aunt Rachel's copy tonight, before handing it over to Lady Scott simply because her great aunt had never allowed her to read it when she was a child and she relished the chance to break that rule at last.
Besides, it was a good book, well worth re-reading.
…but that final page didn't seem right somehow. No, it didn't seem right at all.
Roxanne went to the bookshelf, pulled down her own, more beloved copy of Treasure Island, and flipped to the last page.
Yes, she was right; there was the description of what they did with their portions of the treasure. Great Aunt Rachel's copy must be missing a page.
Roxanne replaced her copy on the shelf and went to her desk to examine the other copy. Damn; she'd told Lady Scott that the book was in excellent condition. Was Lady Scott liable to notice that the story ended too abruptly? Roxanne thought not—perhaps she could get away with not telling Lady Scott about the missing page?
Except—Roxanne, looking down at the book, frowned.
There was no space for a missing page; the page with the line about ample shares was pasted to the inside of the back cover. Had one of the previous owners noticed the book was damaged and tried to repair it?
Roxanne ran her fingertips over the last page—and then her frown deepened.
That was strange. There was something underneath the pasted page. A small square of folded paper, it felt like. What on earth…?
She hesitated a moment, and then her curiosity won out over her better sense and she picked up the sharp knife she used for book repair from her desk. Carefully, she inserted the tip of it beneath one edge of the pasted page and then, still carefully, she sliced downward and around the edge of the paper, cutting the page from the back of the book.
It came up fairly easily; whoever had glued it down had only put paste around the edges of it, leaving the middle clear. There was only a faint stain of paste in a border around the edge of the last page and around the inside of the cover.
And there was, indeed, a folded piece of paper.
It was yellowed and looked rather old; Roxanne picked it up with care and delicately unfolded it.
There was writing on the page; a sort of list divided into two vertical columns placed side by side. The first column seemed to be a list of locations, some of them actual place names and some of them just vague descriptions of a general area.
The second column was a bit harder to understand; most of it appeared to be objects of some kind: cloth, jewels, money—usually there were several objects listed in the second column next to each location.
One of the entries in the second column caught her eye, though, because one of the words listed did not fit with the other objects.
The entry read:
Pearls, feathers, chimera.
Chimera? A chimera was a mythical monster, made up of the parts of different animals. What was the word chimera doing listed next to feathers and pearls?
Chimera.
Her eyes moved over to the associated entry in the first column—perhaps there might be some clue there…
Cave. Smugglers' Cove.
She took a sharp breath. Smugglers' Cove.
There was a Smugglers' Cove here, in Metro City. That was what everyone in town always called it, that odd little inlet that nobody bothered trying to get to because of the difficulty involved.
She wasn't sure if there was a cave in Smugglers' Cove, but—
—but certainly there was no proof that there wasn't a cave, and if there was a cave, then—!
(Pearls. Feathers. Chimera.)
Roxanne folded the list up carefully in its original creases and, after a moment's thought, placed it in the drawer where she kept her stockings and lingerie.
Lady Scott was only paying for the book, after all. There had been nothing said about any list.
It was cold down on the shoreline, Roxanne knew, even in late spring. She put on her warmest woolen stockings when she dressed in the morning, and wore a coat and scarf as well.
"You're very bundled up today, Miss Ritchi," Lady Scott said pleasantly, after the book and the money—so much money!—had changed hands and a polite cup of tea had been drank by each of them. "I do hope you're not feeling ill," she continued.
"Oh, no," Roxanne laughed. "It's my day off today, and I thought I might go for a walk down by the lake."
"Ah, of course," Lady Scott said, smiling, her hands stroking absently down the spine of the book in her lap (she hadn't put it down since Roxanne had handed it to her), "have a pleasant walk, then."
It was not, really, a pleasant walk, but then, Roxanne thought, that was probably fortunate—it meant no one else was walking near the shoreline's edge.
So there was no one to ask inconvenient questions when Roxanne moved to the mostly-unused end of the beach, or when she scrambled up over the big, slippery boulders that divided the main part of the shoreline from Smugglers' Cove.
Or when she tore the knee of one of her stockings climbing down the rocks to the other side.
Roxanne was a more than a little out of breath by the time she made it down to the ground again, and she knew she must be flushed. It wasn't simply the exertion, though, she admitted as she picked her way along the rocky shoreline towards the cliff face to look for any sign of a cave—it was also the excitement. She felt like a child again, and not just because of the torn stocking.
Roxanne was quite a young woman, still. And besides, hers was the sort of soul that craves adventure no matter the age of the body. Her place as Metro City's librarian was a good one, but it was sadly lacking in adventure.
Well, Roxanne thought gleefully, she was certainly having an adventure now.
Of course she knew she wasn't actually likely to find anything. There must be dozens of little inlets called "Smugglers' Cove" scattered all over the shoreline of the great lake—it wasn't exactly an uncommon name. And there was nothing to show that Dan Seavey—for Roxanne had decided, in her own mind that the writer of the list had indeed been Dan Seavey—had meant that the treasure was hidden in this particular smugglers cove.
For she had also, in her own mind, decided that there must be treasure. If you were going to have pirates, then you might as well have treasure. Pity the paper was a list, rather than an actual map, which would have been much more romantic.
True, the feathers seemed a bit odd, and the note about chimera seemed very odd—but pearls were pearls. And she was extremely curious as to what Seavey could have meant when he wrote chimera.
Roxanne searched the cliff face for a quarter of an hour before, at last, she found the crack.
It was not, she admitted to herself as she eyed the crack, the ideal cave entrance. She'd be able to fit, but only if she turned sideways, which seemed rather worrying to Roxanne—what if she got stuck?
(Local Librarian Lost, Roxanne thought, picturing the headline on a newspaper. Metro City Citizens Fear the Worst.)
But Roxanne was certainly not the type to let a bit of danger deter her from the promise of pirate treasure in a secret cave, and so she squeezed into the crack in the cliff face.
The narrow passage went on for some time, turning gradually to the right, so that, as she moved further from the entrance, it began to get darker. She had thought to bring an electric torch, though—Roxanne believed in doing an adventure correctly—and she pulled this from the pocket of her coat now and switched it on.
The passage ended not six feet further along, opening up into a wider area, about the size of her bedroom in the library apartment, and the ceiling was high enough that she did not need to stoop.
The walls of this room were honeycombed with different openings, quite a few of them large enough to allow for a person to walk or crawl through.
And nothing to show which one of them she was meant to go through to find the treasure.
Roxanne damned the writer of the list in her mind—why couldn't they have written more clear directions? Did they really have that good a memory, to be able to recall the exact hole they needed in this particular cave?
Oh, but surely they hadn't, Roxanne thought in frustration, surely the writer's memory couldn't have been that good, because otherwise the wouldn't have needed to write the list at all!
She turned back to the opening she had just stepped through, the one that led out to the lake. If she was going to explore one or more of these tunnels, she would need to make some sort of mark to let her know which of them would definitely lead her back to the safety of the beach. She had no intention of getting lost down here.
Roxanne bent and picked up a stone from the cave floor, then straightened up again intending to scratch a mark—
—and saw that somebody already had.
There was a neat X marked onto the cave wall, right at eye level, in white chalk.
Roxanne's breath caught. So someone had been down here—and perhaps that someone really was the writer of the list.
And if they had marked this tunnel, the way out, then they might very well have marked the tunnel that led in—
It took some looking, but she did find it, eventually, another mark, again at eye level and in white chalk, next to a different opening.
This mark was not just an X; it was a pair of letters. Initials.
D. S.
Roxanne covered her mouth to hold back a laugh of pure, amazed shock.
D. S.
Dan Seavey.
She hadn't, she realized, ever thought that any of this would actually be real. It had been a sort of game, pretending to herself that this might be the Smugglers' Cove of the list, that this might be the cave of a pirate, that there might be treasure.
But now—looking at the initials on the cave wall, Roxanne realized, for the first time, that all of that might really be true.
She took a steadying breath—and then another—and then she stepped through the hole marked with Dan Seavey's initials.
There was another passageway, this one leading steadily downwards. At first she able to walk comfortably, but after a while, she was forced to stoop, and then, at last, to crawl.
Fear and doubt welled up inside her as she moved to her hands and knees. The thought of getting stuck was more frightening than ever, and this couldn't—couldn't really be what she was hoping.
Of course it couldn't.
But she kept moving forward, anyway. She'd come this far, and she was damned if she was going to turn back before she absolutely had to.
Her determination was soon rewarded; the passage widened again, and Roxanne rose to her feet with relief.
As she moved forward now, she could hear the sound of water—dripping and also a rushing noise, like a river flowing.
The passage rounded a bend and then opened up into a great, dark cavern.
Although the cavern itself was dark, the ceiling, high above her head, glowed softly blue—bioluminescence, of course; moss or insects or something.
There was a large pool in the center of the cavern, and it, too, glowed gently blue. And at the edge of the pool, there was—
Roxanne blinked.
Furniture.
Furniture that had been set up as if in a sitting room. Lots of rugs, all different patters, layered over top of each other, arranged with their edges overlapping, and one long rug that led down to the edge of the pool. A low table, with a single stool—and a pair of odd, low divans, covered with pillows.
A low bookshelf, with books on it—and another low shelf that contained—
Roxanne moved closer, stepping onto the rugs—stepping into the 'room', and shone her electric torch over it all.
The other shelf contained tools; a small saw, a hammer, a box of nails—wrenches and pliers and all kinds of things. Which explained the furniture, she supposed, seeing the rough edges of the shelf, examining the way everything was made of small pieces of wood that had been cunningly fitted together. Whoever had made this 'room' had carried everything here in pieces, and then assembled it themselves.
Roxanne knelt down to look at the books.
(The complete works of Jane Austen, a biology textbook, a slim volume about botany, several pulp novels, and a dictionary.)
There was an orb made of overlapping bits of metal standing on the shelf next to the books. It was about the size and shape of an ostrich egg, but flat on one end, so that it could sit safely on the shelf. At the top of it, there was a little brass ball. Roxanne placed one fingertip on the brass ball absently, and then jerked her hand back in shock as, with the sound of gears turning, the orb folded open, the pieces of metal blooming like a flower.
It was a flower, she realized, staring. The inside of the orb had been painted a vibrant pink color, to mimic the petals of a flower, and there was a metal rod standing at the center of the petals, topped, still, with the brass ball—pistil and stamen. She reached out and hesitantly touched the brass ball again, and—click click click—the petals folded up again into the orb.
Roxanne looked around the rest of the room, noticing all of the numerous metal trinkets that were scattered throughout it.
Something that looked a bit like an elaborate toy train set had been assembled on the floor near her left knee. There was a flat metal box, about three inches high and three feet wide, and atop this, a track wound wound around a group of nine little metal pillars. The pillars were, like the orb, made overlapping metal pieces, and something that might have once been the engine car of a toy train stood waiting on the tracks.
There was a brass ball on top of the toy train's smoke stack. Roxanne reached out a finger and touched it.
She was prepared for the sound of clockwork, this time, but instead there was music—tinny music, like the kind that might come from a music box, but was actually issuing from the little metal pillars. As the music played, the train's wheels started to turn and it began to move along the track. And as the train moved past each of the metal pillars, they unfolded—not into petals, like the orb, but into branches, painted green.
"Trees," Roxanne whispered. "Singing trees."
Behind her, there was a splash.
She turned suddenly, her heart in her mouth, swinging her torch around, the beam of white light hitting the surface of the pool.
"Who's there?" she said, her voice echoing in the emptiness of the cavern.
The music of the mechanical trees wound down, leaving the cavern in silence.
Slowly, very slowly, Roxanne rose to her feet. It struck her all at once, how very, entirely strange the little false room was, and suddenly the wonderful little mechanical toys, the furniture, the books—suddenly it all seemed menacing.
There were ripples on the surface of the pool.
Another splash, back near where the lake met the far wall of the cave. Roxanne jerked her torch up in the direction of the sound. It was too far for the torch light, though, all she could see was a vague, dark shape.
A dark shape—and eyes. Huge, inhuman eyes that shone green in the light of the torch like the eyes of a cat.
(tapeta lucida, babbled Roxanne's mind, entirely unhelpfully. that's what makes eyes glow like that in the dark. People don't have tapeta lucida; that's why their eyes don't—)
"Run," the dark shape said, and Roxanne saw the flash of sharp white teeth.
She reached behind herself, feeling for the metal orb, not taking her eyes away from the dark shape.
Her fingers closed on the orb and she picked it up, feeling the weight of it, wishing it was heavier, wishing she had a real weapon.
The dark shape—moved. It was a slithering, sinuous motion that sent more ripples across the surface of the pool.
"Run," it said again.
(but Roxanne knew, oh, she knew in her heart, in her bones, that if she turned her back on the dark shape to run, it would dart forward and—)
She lifted the orb, feeling herself trembling.
"No," she said.
There was a long silence; Roxanne could feel her heartbeat against her ribs, in her wrists, in her throat.
"—please run," the dark shape said.
And Roxanne—stared harder into the shadows at its tone.
(pleading. fear. it was—it was afraid of her. It was afraid of her.)
"No," she said, her voice shaking a little less than before. "No, I'm not going to run."
"Please," it whispered, drawing back. "Please, you have to run. You have to. Please."
Roxanne took a step forward.
"No," she said, and took another step forward, then another, and another, until she was standing at the edge of the water.
She could almost make out a form, now, in the shadow around the green eyes, but she still wasn't quite close enough.
Roxanne held the metal orb threateningly, just in case the creature should think of lunging for her. She heard it take a quick, sharp breath.
"No!" it says. "No, don't—you'll break it!"
Roxanne blinked, glanced at the orb in her hand.
Break it?
(the careful, painstaking craftsmanship of the mechanical toys. Was the creature the one who—)
"It's one of my favorites," the creature said in a small, wavering voice. "Please don't break it."
Roxanne swallowed hard.
"Come into the light," she said, "and I won't."
There was a long moment of silence, and then the dark shape sank down beneath the water, disappearing.
One heartbeat—two—Roxanne thought of running—
And then—
The creature rose slowly up through the dark water in front of her, moving with that sinuous, alien grace to the edge of the pool and into the shallows.
Into the light, where Roxanne could see it.
The top half of the creature's body was almost human, but the proportions were odd—the arms and neck too long and thin, the smooth, hairless head too large and strangely shaped.
There was—there was a sort of delicate, upstanding membrane, a kind of frill, on either side of the creature's head, going from the base of its neck to the back of its head. Smaller frills on its shoulders, webbing between its too-long fingers, and more webbing—fins?—along the bottom of its forearms. The creature had gills on either side of its ribcage and its skin was blue, an impossible sky blue.
And the lower half of its body—
(Roxanne understood now, why it moved the way it did in the shadows on the other side of the lake.)
The lower half of its body—
—it had a tail. Was a tail, the kind of tail that fish have, except there were no scales, just that smooth, flawless blue of its skin. Two fins on the lower half of its body—ventral, Roxanne's mind supplied dazedly; ventral fins. And the whole thing ended in two large caudal fins, just like the tail of a fish would.
It was—it was absolutely the most alien thing that Roxanne had ever seen in her life.
And it was absolutely, entirely beautiful.
Chimera, she thought. That's why the paper said chimera.
She took a deep, unsteady breath.
The chimera flinched, shoulders curving inwards. Its neck and shoulder frills curved, too, folding in towards its body, and then out, like the leaves of a sensitive plant touched by an un-careful hand.
"Have you come to take my skin?" it asked.
...to be continued.
notes: Dan Seavey was a real person, the only person ever arrested on a charge of piracy on the Great Lakes-and he did, in fact, retire and move to Peshtigo Wisconsin, and then later go into a nursing home.
He was arrested for piracy in 1908; Great Aunt Rachel's connection with him sets Dangerous Currents around 1928.
The line quoted at the beginning is, of course, from Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.