Big Whoop waited calmly in his throne room, watching the last of the settlers getting established on the very island on which he'd marooned Guybrush. Oh, the irony...especially since that Guybrush would not be bothering him again, not ever. He'd toyed briefly with the idea of going down to inform Chariset that her brother was dead, but reconsidered. Entertaining as her reaction would surely be, it would be even more fun to send Elaine down to tell her in person. The red-haired woman had outlived her usefulness.
In the meantime, it would be amusement enough to see Guybrush's former crew deal with this news that their Captain was dead and gone, burned to a cinder in a ring of magical flames. Such a pity, since that group had shown every sign up until now of being willing and able to work together...until now. He smirked. They were remarkably calm, but eventually the loss of that Threepwood would hit home...and that would be that. Not wanting to miss this, he watched with outwardly calm yet rapt interest.
Ah..there... Two of the crew members were having an argument. Hardly surprising, it was the man named Murray and an elegantly slim pirate with one eye. A third joined them-the mousey little fop named Horace. Big Whoop slightly regretted losing Murray, who had been an able soldier, but Horace was no great loss.
He couldn't hear sound, but the issue appeared to be whether or not to move on...Horace had a map and was waving and pointing to it. Murray was arguing for traveling elsewhere, the one-eyed pirate was arguing just as strongly against. Horace was putting in a point half-heartedly for either side.
Something halted this heated debate in mid-gesture--the two participants stopped short and stared at the door to the Captain's cabin. The monster smirked again. What member of this motley group had named himself leader now?
A long pause, as though someone inside was speaking to those outside, then the door opened a crack. Big Whoop caught sight of only a glimpse of the occupant....one tired eye, a long nose, a faded blue nightshirt....and tensed in every magma muscle. No....it couldn't be...
"What's wrong, Daddy?" A cool hand rested gently on his shoulder as the owner of the voice hovered beside his ear to see better.
Despite his frustration, Big Whoop smiled a little. Odia was his greatest achievement. She had the delicate-boned grace of her mother, the luck of her father, a face that was neither long nor round but cutely triangular, and intelligent blue eyes. Her black hair, imperfectly confined by a red ribbon, strayed over her shoulders and tickled his nose. And every gene of her remarkable heritage was his to use as he pleased.
Don't misunderstand me, Reader--Big Whoop never would and never could have loved anyone but himself. His every moral fiber was bent towards one purpose--his own enrichment. Yet even with all this taken into account, if that unfeeling heart could have cared for anything in the world, it might have been for his 'daughter.' Anyone else he would have destroyed without hesitation--but he would have hesitated just a second before killing her.
All her love for him, genuine love, would buy her an instant more life, and that was all. Still, he almost felt fondness toward her.
"It's nothing serious, Precious. Just a loose end Daddy hasn't tied up yet." She smiled a little and so did he as they gazed into the pool of lava. That Threepwood had gone back inside the cabin, where he shambled over to a window seat as though every joint ached. He sat down heavily, chin in hands, clearly trying to brood and just as clearly too tired to think straight. Good. Let him suffer.
"He still doesn't look all that dangerous, Daddy," Odia ventured.
"Has he ever looked dangerous?" She chuckled at his pained tone. "But he is. In fact, he hates you. Even more than he hates me."
She narrowed her innocent eyes...for a girl named 'Hatred,' she had a very scant grasp of the concept. "But why?"
He feigned a thoughtful expression. "I...I don't really know why. But I'm sure he does."
"Why?" she asked again.
"He has to. No one would act that way towards you who didn't hate you."
Her puzzled eyes spoke volumes. A slight throat-clearing pause, as though what he was about to say was difficult and painful. "Odia, it's time for you to learn the truth about yourself. You see, that man there.....he is your real father."
Her hand on his magma-skin went clammy and cold. "I always knew....you couldn't be....but I.." she shook her head. "That can't be! He's your worst enemy! I'm nothing like him!"
"That last is true, dearest daughter." Big Whoop cupped his own hand around her chin and gently lifted her face towards the light. "For so long I feared that his taint was in your blood, but you are too pure to be anything impure." Technically true, a legal move in his little game. It was his turn, and he was going to use it well. "I spared you for as long as I could, but you are old enough to know the real story..."
He had a piece of bait waiting for just this moment.....and conversational angling was his favorite pass-time. Time to cast.
And so the 'real story' was told--minus certain details, of course--the story of a young couple who landed on the island, where they encountered a strange and foreboding cave in a place held holy by the locals. There, the man (apparently afraid to risk his own skin) sent his pregnant wife into the mountain with an escort of one--and then fled to the end of the Caribbean, leaving them stranded. Big Whoop as a matter of course had taken them in and cared for them.
But then the bride and escort were abducted from the depths of the island by a third party, the equally conniving sister of the husband, herself a spirit. Big Whoop had previously (fairly and impartially) judged her guilty of crimes against humanity and had taken steps to right the balance, but she broke the contract they had painstakingly negotiated. Acting entirely on her own, she spirited the two out of Big Whoop's protection but just 'happened' to leave Odia behind. Big Whoop could not say so himself, but he could strongly imply that the sister-spirit had wanted the body of the woman's child for herself, and imply he did. The rightful owner of that body, the baby spirit that was Odia, had simply been discarded.
A convoluted plotline, and one with more logical holes than Swiss cheese in paragraph form, but since it was all clearly a betrayal of her, Odia listened in uncritical horror. Big Whoop was a good storyteller, and he left her clearly torn between shock and outrage, with a good deal of rejection thrown in.
They had left her behind, all of them....
Big Whoop hastened to reassure her that he had been outraged at their behavior, and rightly so. After all, the Threepwoods had a long history of a cruelty to him as well. Perhaps it was only to be expected. But he wasn't after revenge...oh no...he only wanted the balance of right and wrongs to be restored. It was dangerously imbalanced, even now after all he had done to put things right, because of the actions of this Guybrush and his sister. But now there was no way he could stop the situation.
"Why not?" asked Odia, drawn in despite herself.
Because that Guybrush had managed to elicit from him a promise that Big Whoop would never kill him on the premises. And Guybrush was darn hard to kill anywhere else. "I thought I had him cornered just a moment ago...but there he is. I can bruise him, I can even hurt him....but I can't do the one thing that would bring balance to this world. I can't bring him to justice."
"But maybe...I could.." A nibble on the line.
She would destroy her own father for his sake...not just his sake, of course, but for the sake of clearing accounts?
Odia took a deep breath, beginning to realize what exactly 'clearing accounts' might mean. "What did you do to the sister?" she asked finally.
Big Whoop let himself smile just a little, inwardly. It was a hesitant strike, but the bait was well and truly taken. "Let me show you."
Two days later, Odia hovered in the center of the Big Whoop's "back room" alone, looking at all the frozen, still faces of her family.....and she felt nothing but shame. "How could you do it?" she demanded of the block which contained the woman Chariset, her blood-relative. "How could you abandon me?"
But I didn't.... she thought she heard a sad voice whisper in reply. I'm doing everything I can to get you back...
"Lies," Odia growled, tone low but fierce. "You would say that. I'm descended from a long line of liars and oath-breakers." Disgust was a bitter taste in her mouth.
We are the only ones who can tell you the truth, that distant echo of a voice protested, but Odia was already gone.
Chariset sensed the presence fading and slumped back into the darkness, defeated. Odia was bound for Blood Island, with intent to attack Guybrush and take him alive....she didn't care how badly she had to hurt him to do so. Then away to Big Whoop...and there was nothing she could do about it, no way to warn him. She leaned her head back against the wall, eyes closed, feeling sick in her very soul.
Some time later--it might have measured in hours or days--a thread began to unravel in the fabric of her little world.....and a Presence looked in. Where before had been darkness, suddenly there was a great Light--and she found herself meeting a strange Regard, from an Eye that saw everything. A Something had discovered her tiny hole in the cosmic wall.
That gaze pinned her mid-way through a desperate scrabble backwards against the wall and held her fast. She was the cornered mouse under the cat's paw.
"I see you, Spirit." The voice resonated in her tiny prison--if she needed her ears to hear, she would have been deafened.
"What do you want?" Chariset felt suffocated, as though a weight were crushing the breath out of her.
"I want what I have come for."
A pressure that was completely indescribable closed around her then, as though every air molecule in the world had suddenly pressed itself to her side. If suddenly her clothing in the world of the living had turned into solid stone and enveloped her from neck to ankle, that might have been something like the grasp of this Hand--except that stone could only touch her body. This was a Hand that seized her very soul..
"You."
All Chariset could remember in that instant was a moment from her childhood. She was a little girl with a live guppy in her hand, running to show her catch to Mommy. She ran and ran--but when she opened her grubby little hand to show off her prize, the tiny fish was crushed and dead in her hand. Now I know how that felt, she thought wildly. I'm so sorry, guppy...
The Hand dragged her away, up and out of the temple, and then everything became Light.
"This is what we used to call 'The Monkey's Eye'," Lemonhead explained, leading the attack party into a deep crater at the western end of the island--an extinct volcano, from the looks of things. The sad remains of an old fort stood on one rim, abandoned.
Elaine had never been to this side of Monkey Island before...mostly because she had never been free to explore the island before. She confided quietly to Holly on the careful hike down to the bottom that, if she weren't so worried about her baby/her family/the prospect of a giant lava monster destroying their entire world, she'd be whole-heartedly enjoying this. Even as it was, she was having a fairly good time. Elijah, riding her shoulder, seemed to share the mood of general cheerfulness.
The path was narrow, rutted, and overgrown--it wound in endless circles down the inside of this crater, whose walls were far steeper than she had imagined. There was a high bank on one side, a long drop down on the other, and the path itself curved in a U under their feet, more of a rut than a trail. Elaine carried a walking-stick about five feet long, with a hook at one end to catch anyone who might fall over, and she carefully kept herself between Holly and the edge. In front of them was Lemonhead, behind them was a column of sailors, with Largo and Nic bringing up the rear. All of them, she realized, glancing back, looked just as cautious about the steep and narrow trail as she felt.
"How much farther is it?" she called to Lemonhead.
"We're about halfway down," he yelled back. "We put a shrine to the great Monkey Spirit at the bottom of this hollow, but no one's been here in years."
So it seemed. The path was lined with green jungle growth, and the wall to Elaine's right, was clearly decorated with symbols and paintings but overgrown and uncared-for. She wondered if the presence of the fort had anything to do with it. It had been used once, surely....probably by owners who wouldn't appreciate cannibal rituals going on in their backyard.
"If this is where the Monkey Spirit lives, why did you build the Monkey Head?" she asked their guide.
He looked slightly uncomfortable (no mean feat, for a lemon). "This...didn't make a good place to worship. It's not very accessible. Besides....most people who come here and meet the Monkey Spirit don't want to come back."
She frowned a little, puzzled....Holly looked blank. "What does that mean?" the little red-head half-demanded.
"It means...." he paused. Elaine waited patiently. "You're not going to believe this, but the Monkey Spirit makes it very clear that he doesn't want to see anyone more than once." Picky spirit, thought Elaine. "Once, sure...he'll talk to you if you know the right words. But if you try to go back, you just...can't."
"You do know the right words, right?"
"I think so. It's been a while."
"You think so?" This from Holly. "You mean, you aren't sure?"
"It has to be one of two....I just can't remember which one."
Ah, that wouldn't be a problem, Elaine thought. They'd just send two of the soldiers in, one with each, and find out which one was right. She suggested as much to Lemonhead.
"That'd work," he agreed reservedly. "But you'd better have brave volunteers for your little experiment. The Monkey Spirit wouldn't be happy with someone who gave him the wrong password." Something in his tone suggested that 'not happy' was the very least of what he would be.
"We have brave men," she replied. "I don't want anyone to get hurt, but I think we'll be all right."
"Perhaps I can be of some assistance," offered a new voice from her left. Elaine's eyes widened--whoever said that must have been standing in mid-air..
She was. Chariset Threepwood, Elaine's sister-in-law, was standing motionless on absolutely nothing as calmly as if she did this every day. She was wearing flowing white robes but with a white bandana tied around her head and silver hoop earrings, looking like a pirate angel. A sunbeam made the loose strands of her brown hair into a bronzish halo around her face.
The spirit cocked her head to one side, a completely Chari-ish mannerism. "Want some help?"
Lemonhead had turned a much paler shade of yellow at the sight of Elaine's ghostly companion--most of the troop, up to and including Nic, her former navigator, seemed to be in shock--so Elaine took the initiative. "I'm not sure if you can help with this one, Chari," she began slowly. "We need to speak to the Great Monkey Spirit--" the ghost was frowning a little "--but we don't know the right password."
She brightened considerably. "Oh, that. I know all about spirits."
Just then Holly, who was apparently Elaine's self-appointed bodyguard (something the ex-pirate governor found amusing) recovered enough to push forward. "Who're you?" she demanded without preamble.
"Holly, I'm surprised at you." Chariset folded her arms mock-indignantly. "All that time I spent with you on Myth Island and you don't even remember me?"
As the little red-head gaped at her, Chari softened her tone. "Well, I remember you, and Elaine, and Nic..." she gave a nod to each member of the party in turn, even to Largo at the end of the line. Almost plaintively: "You still don't know me, Holly?"
"Chari?"
"None other."
"But....how?" Holly's abbreviated gesture indicated both her spirit form and the fact that she was out now, in broad daylight.
"I don't have time to explain. If you want the password, listen carefully." She beckoned Elaine closer and whispered in her ear, "The words are Ab-Na-Sa-Lam. Good luck to you."
Without another word, she vanished.
Elaine had dealt with hostile spirits before, but even a friendly ghost gave her the metaphorical creeps. She shook off a cold shiver and turned to address a line of nervous soldiers.
"My sister-in-law risked her afterlife to get us this password," she told them directly, trying to sound business-like and untroubled. "The very least we can do it use it. Mr. Lemonhead, which way to the cave?"
"Right down here, Governor. Of course, any who wish to can wait here..." His tone was meaningful, and the nervous murmurs which had been building subsided.
"Lead the way." She turned smartly on her heel and followed after, trailed by Nic and the soldiers...and an exceedingly reluctant Largo.
The voodoo priestess had to use all her will to keep from getting her bulk out of her chair and pacing in anxiety. Her vaguest intuitions were stronger than most people's thoughts, and not the faintest premonition of evil touched her mind. But something was wrong. She knew that something must be. She hadn't heard a thing but good news from Guybrush and Elaine--and that meant that something must be wrong.
I need.....something...some better source of information. I need something like the Daemon...
A thread of insight danced through her consciousness.
Dared she do it?
If Big Whoop takes over, none of us will live to regret our decisions, she decided. This isn't precisely right, but neither is it precisely wrong...
She summoned Polly to her right hand. "Go find the Necromancer for me," she said. "Tell him I need him to come here with whatever equipment he uses for a spirit-summoning, and to hurry."
The parrot was gone with a flash of feathers. Good. With any luck, he would be here before she lost her nerve.
Elaine paced five slow steps into the mouth of the tunnel. Five more. The dark earth reflected no light from outside, nor did the tunnel feature anything like lamps or torches. But it had been well-built--the floor remained even, and the walls were lined with some kind of tile in patterns. Not a single tile had fallen from its place--her tentative touch on the opposite walls determined that. Five more.
Twenty-five paces. "Okay, Holly, bring them in!"
A slow shuffle of feet, while the light behind her was reduced to a few flickers by the bodies of her crew in the doorframe. "Come on, come on," she urged under her breath. "We haven't got all day."
The truth of the matter was that the close quarters and darkness of the cave reminded her too much of Big Whoop's lair--now the escape route was closed. She wished she had the luxury of being able to lose her nerve and stay outside, with Nic and Largo. Be calm, be calm.... She took two deep breaths, but the tightness in her chest didn't lessen. Just a few minutes and you can go back.
"Is everyone here?" she asked when the shuffling had come to a halt. Elijah shifted on her shoulder with a faint rustle of feathers.
"Everyone, Governor." That was Holly, using the honorific for the first time since Elaine had known her. Holly's own nervousness was evident in her tone. "How much farther is it?"
"About two dozen steps in, the tunnel should curve. Then you'll be right in front of the shrine," called Lemonhead from outside.
"I'm twenty-five in already," Elaine called back.
"Then you should be right at the curve. Keep your hands on in front of you, so you don't run into the wall."
She did so. Two paces on, her hands encountered tile. Wall to the left, empty space to the right.
"Hug the corner and watch your step," she advised the men. "Wait here....I'll go first and give him the password."
"I'm coming with you," Holly immediately insisted. Elijah bwaaaaacked.
Elaine hesitated. "All right, but stay close. I don't know what we're up against."
They slipped around the corner into a blackness that was slightly more gray. Two more steps and they could see the walls, three more and they could see each other. Five more, and they could see the Monkey Shrine..
It wasn't too impressive, as idols go--a low, thin column in the center of the tunnel with a squat monkey-creature perched on top. But just as Elaine was mentally dismissing the tiny statue, two red gems set in the face flared with light--she had the distinctive impression it had opened its eyes and looked at them.
And knew them. "Welcome Governor Elaine Threepwood. And welcome to your guests, Ms. Holly Feed, Mr. Elijah.." The words were neither spoken nor thought--they were written in the air between them and the small monkey. "What can I do for you?"
Ah. Apparently this was a receptionist of sorts. "We need to speak with the Great Monkey Spirit," Elaine started, feeling on much more familiar ground. Bureaucratic procedure was an old, familiar game to her. "Can you arrange a meeting?"
"That depends..." If the monkey had been able to lean back and steeple his fingers, Elaine had the impression he would have. "Why do you need to see him?"
"We have reason to believe that a resident of this island is stealing power from the island spirit. He appears to be borrowing from the life-energy of other people to cover his own debt, keeping them in captivity under the pretense of justice." If I'd known board meetings were just like talking to the spirit of an island, I'd have enjoyed them more, she thought lightly, all the while keeping her businesslike mein in place.
"I see. This is a serious charge indeed, and one which needs to be dealt with immediately, if it is true." The words faded from sight, and Elaine got the impression the spirit was thinking. "And you are not someone who would lie, even though I see that this is a matter which concerns you personally. Very well, I shall admit you..." The letters vanished again, and she unconsciously crossed her hands over her stomach. "If you can provide the correct password."
"We can. The password is Ab-Na-Sa-Lam."
There was a dead silence.
Behind the receptionist, a pair of red eyes, either of which would be bigger than Holly, flared open.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" demanded the largest monkey head Elaine had ever seen, in blood-red letters five feet high. The ground trembled. Elijah bwaaaaacked in terror, nearly deafening his bearer, spreading both wings wide. Holly's eyes had gone round, and she was backing away.
"I...I said Ab-Na-Sa--"
"I HEARD WHAT YOU SAID!" The eyes blazed incandescently, dazzling her vision with green afterimages. "THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE THE NERVE TO SAY IT TWICE, LET ALONE ONCE, ASTONISHES ME."
"Run, Holly," said Elaine in an undertone, interposing herself between the girl and the idol. To the Spirit: "We were given that phrase as the password, Monkey. Are y--"
"THEN YOU WERE DECEIVED."
Footsteps in the hallway--the men were running.
"I was given that password by someone who would not lie!" Elaine's own blood was beginning to boil at this point. "How dare you call my sister-in-law--my dead sister-in-law--a liar!"
"IGNORANT WOMAN! THERE IS NO POINT IN PUNISHING SOMEONE FOR STUPIDITY, SO I WILL LET YOU LIVE. WAKE UP AND SEE THE TRUTH, GOVERNOR! HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR MY FORBEARANCE, YOUR DEAR DEAD SISTER-IN-LAW WOULD HAVE GOTTEN YOU KILLED!"
"She wouldn't do that!"
"I GROW TIRED OF YOUR DENIAL. LEAVE THIS PLACE BEFORE I BECOME TRULY ANGRY."
"Now you listen to me, you monster." Gone was caution and reason--Elaine was going to get through to this thick-headed, hide-bound entity. "Wake up and smell the seaweed. You've sat here safe on the other side of the island for centuries while my family and now my sister-in-law and my daughter have been used and exploited--and now you actually have to do something about it. You had your price for your power--you didn't care where it came from or who had to suffer for it. But now you've been called on it....and instead of actually going out and righting a wrong, you're sitting here stalling me with this nonsense on passwords!" She actually spat at the base of the column. "I used to think there was only one monster on this island--now I know I was wrong. You and Big Whoop are two of a [unprintable pirate obscenity] kind!"
Silence.
The monkey's red gaze bored into her own, but she held her ground. She was an angry mother fighting for her child, and nothing was going to move her from this spot.
But the air was vibrating with an invisible force--the Monkey Spirit's silent shriek of rage--and then a wall of wind and fire slammed into her and shoved her viciously against the back tiles. She curled herself around her abdomen, instinctively trying to protect her child--and the scouring hot wind dropped completely. Unsupported, she fell to the cave floor just as another rushing blast of pure fire swept over her head.
"BEGONE!" The words hummed in the rush of the flames as they howled over her, scorching her clothing. Fire hissed and crackled over her shoulders, but she curled into a ball and endured.
A small eternity crept by. "WHY WILL YOU NOT GO, WOMAN??"
She dragged in a scorching-hot breath. "Because we need your help!"
"WELL, YOU PICKED A FINE WAY TO ASK FOR IT!"
Without warning, she was seized in a whirlwind of force and dragged down the tunnel, rolling and tumbling, completely disoriented. It dropped her just outside the cave mouth, facedown into the sand, with the nonchalance of a housewife throwing out the trash. Next to her was a disheveled and abused red parrot.
The soldiers clustered around her, taking her hands, helping her to sit up. More words were ringing in her mind. "BEGONE, WOMAN. NEVER RETURN."
"It was the wrong password," she croaked at Lemonhead's dumbfounded expression.
"I'd...guessed as much." He coughed delicately. "So what do we do now?"
Elaine looked over her scorched and blackened clothing. "I don't know," she admitted. "Chari made a mistake and gave us the wrong password--at least, I think it was a mistake. And I...lost my temper in there."
"Well, according to the rules, no one who went in can return. That leaves....you two."
His gaze was resting on Nic and Largo, who blanched. It was clear than neither of them wanted to go in after seeing Elaine come out.
She sighed. "Give me a few minutes--I've got to and write to Guybrush and tell him we've hit a snag. And change. And after that....I'll think of something." I hope.
Late afternoon. The Sea Cucumber dropped neatly into existence on a calm sea well off the coast of Blood Island. From the first instant her keel touched water, her Captain sensed trouble.
"Mr. van Helgen?" Guybrush called to the tall pirate who was helping Wally and Murray determine exactly where their destination island lay. "Does something seem....wrong to you?"
The elegant man paused and looked around. "Something does seem slightly off, but I can't pinpoint a source.."
Guybrush looked up--and saw the problem. "The sun. Does it look....reddish to you?"
"There must be a great deal of smoke in the air," commented van Helgen. "It seems to be coming from--"
"Over there!" Wally was pointing off towards the western sky.
"Over there," echoed the barber pirate.
"On Blood Island." The sense of wrongness intensified.
"Maybe it's just the volcano," offered Murray.
"I hope so," Guybrush replied "But we've got to hurry and warn the Goodsoups, even though it's probably nothing serious." We seem to have a habit of destroying islands, he reflected.
"Aye. Never hurts to be on the safe side." And with Haggis' backing, not that it was critically important, the men of the Cucumber practically skipped her hull across the waves. Ten minutes later, the cone of Mt. Acidophilus came into view.
A cone that was spouting lava like a mountain possessed. Clouds of black, billowing smoke puffed up--smoke signals of the damned--and the surrounding countryside was catching fire. Lines of orange separated green jungle from blackened, smoking wasteland.
At the edge of the ocean, the last holdouts remained. They were standing on a narrow spit of the land at Blood's southernmost edge, a little rise of land on which was perched a lighthouse. They were cornered. A finger of lava had made its way towards them with uncanny accuracy and had rushed up the spur just far enough that there was no escaping back to the mainland. The small and desperate huddle of people was trapped.
To make matters worse, the wind was picking up, and the waves began crashing into the island with tremendous force. The Sea Cucumber wallowed in the swells, found her balance, swayed again. Some kind of tremendous storm was in the making.
"We've got to get in there and save them!" yelled Guybrush over the roar of the surf.
"But how?" protested van Helgen. "We can't get the ship to the mainland and we can't get a rowboat onto that spur."
"Can you get the Cucumber in next to the lighthouse?"
"Are you mad?" Murray had joined the conversation. "Look at those rocks! Look at the waves! If we try to drop anchor in there, we'll be dashed into the spur."
"This is from Big Whoop--I'm sure of it. Murray, we brought this on them!"
The deck pitched, throwing them all off-balance. The cannons strained at their ropes. "Guybrush, you don't know that! Listen, I know it sounds hard, but sticking around here to get ourselves killed won't help anyone. And there's just no way to get out there and get those people on board."
Guybrush, thinking hard, scarcely heard him. "Wait a minute--Elijah!"
"What are you talking about?"
"Where's Elijah? Or Polly? I've got an idea."
"Elijah's with Elaine, and Polly's back on Plunder. Why?"
Another bad swell. Guybrush got a two-handed grip on the port rail and held on, nails digging into the wood. Elijah, come here. We need you.
The red parrot appeared out of mid-air--and was blown back ten feet by the unexpected rush of wind. He wallowed back, head low, where Guybrush freed a hand and caught him.
The crew reacted predictably to the appearance of the parrot out of nowhere, but Guybrush ignored their startled expressions, removing the thin spirit-cord he'd been wearing around his neck--the cord that carried a small purplish stone of summoning. He wound it carefully around Elijah's neck, giving him one end to hold in his beak.
"Listen to me, Elijah," he told the bird over the howling wind. "Go up to that group of people and make sure that each person is touching part of this. Then grab the cord and bring everyone back here, just the same way you come here. Do you understand?"
"Bwaaaaack!"
Elijah launched himself into the storm, circling around to the lee of the lighthouse. "What was that all about?" asked Murray.
"I think Elijah can..carry them over to the ship. We need to buy him some time."
Nine men out of ten would demand to know why Guybrush thought a parrot could carry several people through the air--but Murray was the one out of ten. "All right, Threepwood. If you say he can do it, he can. How much time do we need?"
Guybrush flashed him a real smile. Maybe this would work out, after all. "Not long, I hope."
"Good, because that's what we've got!"
The Sea Cucumber shuddered as a large swell hit her, side on. No rain yet, thankfully. "Horace!" called Haggis. "Where's your map?"
Guybrush caught sight of the small man hiding in the shelter of the doorframe of the Captain's cabin. "Stay there!" he called, as Horace tried to come out into the wind. "Be ready to send us to Monkey Island as soon as those people are on board."
Horace, only too glad not to have to figure that part out, nodded and remained where he was, holding the map out of the wind. Two fat raindrops, warning shots, splatted onto the deck.
"Whatever you're planning, lad, you'll have tae do it fast," Haggis shouted. "She can't take much more of this."
"It won't be much longer," Guybrush yelled back. "Clear some room in the center of the deck--we're going to have some guests drop in."
He had no idea why a parrot was out in the middle of the storm, nor why it flew right up to him, nor why it wanted him to hold something. But the moment he touched the strange white cord....
A dim world without a sun. Sad spirits drifting through a parody of a real town, a real world. A gentle giant and a woman with sad eyes. And over all, a shadow laced with overtones of despair, a monstrous creature made of lava.
But over everything was an all-pervading idea, a sense of unity. Family.
And 'family' was a concept that Griswold Goodsoup understood very well indeed.
"I get the sense that this bird can be...trusted," he told the squat, broad-shouldered man beside him, huddled under the scant shelter of the lighthouse. " Maybe someone sent him to lead us out of here."
"If you say so." Mort, the gravedigger, had a voice which could only be described as 'reedy,' but he and Griswold had been friends and bar-mates for years. "I mean, it's not like we have anywhere else to go."
"This is a bad omen!" The speaker was the local doomsayer, and she was good at it. "No good parrot would be flying around in a storm like this!"
"Do you have any...other suggestions, Madame Xima?"
She scowled. "Well, no."
The three huddled against the wall as the wind picked up. Smoke was rising in billows from the ruined Blood Island before them.
"We certainly don't have anything to lose if we..." began Griswold.
"I don't see the harm in...." Mort, simultaneously.
A sigh from Xima. "There's nothing here. Let's just go."
Griswold addressed the sodden red parrot, waiting in the rain with apparent patience. "All right, bird. What do you want us to do?"
Elijah grasped the cord carefully in one foot, maintaining a perch on the broad back of the man the other two called Mort with the other. He was doing his job. All three held one strand of the thread. Now, to launch himself back to the Guybrush-man-Chari-brother-person...
Elijah! Come back here right now!
The Elaine-woman-Guybrush-man-mate person! She was calling him! He was late, and now he would have to jump back to where she was.
Without a second's hesitation, he flung himself across the gap of space, completely forgetting that he dragged three other people with him.
All was disorientation-and then, out of nowhere, sunlight. They were on a beach Griswold had never seen before in his life. Xima and Mort were sitting on the sand, dizzy and disoriented.
His mind was spinning. Where were they?
"Who are you? What are you doing here?" A red-haired woman stormed across the sand, trailed by half a dozen men and a small girl.
Griswold's mind, quite understandably, now ceased to work altogether. He had held a cord for a parrot and now he was on a completely different island on a calm sea with an angry woman demanding to know why he was there.
"I....I don't know, madam..." He backpedaled, throwing up both hands helplessly. "I just followed this parrot, and.."
"Elijah!" For some reason, this doubled the woman's fury. "I don't know why you're messing with this bird, but you'd better start explaining yourself."
"Madam, I don't know!" He felt desperate. "We were out in a storm and this parrot came up with this cord--"
She caught sight of the thin white line with a reddish stone dangling from it and gasped. "Guybrush..."
"I really should be going.."
"Oh no. You're staying right here until I get to the bottom of this."
"But I don't know anything!"
"We'll find that out." Men were circling around behind them.
"I haven't done anything!" Why wouldn't she just leave them alone? "We were in a storm and the parrot came and wanted us all to touch this rope--and we did--and suddenly we were here!"
She hesitated. "So you don't know how you got here?"
"No! I don't even know who you are! Or that woman with the sad eyes, or the lava monster, or--"
"WHAT?" Her tone climbed the scale. "You know about Big Whoop?"
"I know that my home was destroyed by a peaceful volcano," he retorted. "If it hadn't been for that parrot, we would all have been killed. It was almost like something was trying to destroy the island."
"I think...something was," she responded slowly, showing her first signs of doubt. "Excuse me a moment." The woman drew aside for a brief consultation with the red-haired girl, a native man wearing an enormous lemon mask, and a couple of the soldiers. "Big Whoop only attacks people who helped Guybrush...or me," she murmured in an undertone that carried just far enough to reach Griswold's ears. "Do you know any of these people?"
Apparently no one did. "I suppose we may as well find out who they are," she said, sounding resigned. "We really didn't need this complication right now."
The girl shrugged. "Let me give it a try." To Griswold: "Who're you?"
"Holly, you really need to work on your interview skills."
"Hey, you do it your way, Elaine, I do it mine."
Wait a second. "Did you say Elaine? As in the famous governor who destroyed LeChuck?" Griswold struggled to find his conversational feet. "I once had a Governor Elaine as a guest in my hotel, over a year ago--on your honeymoon, if I remember right."
She was frowning but listening. "That was miles from here, on Blood Island. The barkeeper kept calling Guybrush....'Vegetable,' or some nonsense."
"Vegetable--that was his name! A lanky man with...uh...unpronounced features."
"And loves to tell stories?"
"That's the one. I can hardly believe I nearly forgot about him."
"Which makes you.....Griswold? Of the Goodsoup restaurant chain?"
"At your service, madam." Finally someone who recognized the proud name of his ancestors....he wished he had lapels to adjust.
"Well, the man you call Vegetable is my husband, Guybrush. And last I heard, he was headed to Blood Island to see the famous volcano."
"If he was, Governor, I'm afraid he might be in trouble. That same volcano almost killed us. If not for that parrot--"
"Which he must have sent to rescue you. That explains everything." She chewed her lower lip briefly. "Mr. Goodsoup, I apologize for the discourtesy. You must have been through a lot. Let me show you and your friends to a tent while I try to get things sorted out."
"Elaine, are you sure this is such a good idea?" whispered a dark-haired man with a sharp-eyed look about him. "These people could be anyone."
"I know, Nic, but they don't have anywhere else to go. And Griswold's seen Big Whoop-and maybe Chari, too. Maybe they can help us."
Griswold thought briefly of the huge lava-beast and suppressed a shudder. This was a matter that affected an entire family name, he could see that now--and if he held anything sacred, it was family and heritage. Yes, he would help them.
Rain splattered the tiny piece of paper, blurring the inked lines, but not before Guybrush managed to read it over once. "Elaine says they landed where she is, on Monkey Island--everyone's all right," he called to the Barbery trio, Murray, and Horace, waving the note in the air. A gust of wind snatched it from his fingers, into the turbulent sea below. The ship creaked and groaned under their feet.
"Great news, lad! Can we go now?"
"I still need to go in there and try this spell. I'm going to jump over now, with Elijah--the rest of you get the Sea Cucumber out of here. Get far enough away to be outside of the storm and wait--I'll jump back and we can take off for Monkey Island."
Haggis just blinked at him. "Lad, you're certifiably insane."
"I know it looks bad, but Elijah can always get me out if I get into trouble--"
"Which you will, lad, I guarantee it."
Guybrush dashed his wet hair out of his eyes. "If I don't go in there, then we put our lives in danger for nothing. What use is it going to be if we saved the Goodsoups and then let Big Whoop take over? How long do you think they'll last, once he takes over the Caribbean and kills us all?"
He sighed. "I suppose you have a point, laddie. But you're not going in there alone."
"Of course you aren't." That was Murray. "Going alone isn't even an option."
"Fine....me, Elijah, and Murray. Give us an hour--if we're not back, sail on. We'll all meet up at the rendevous point on Dinky Island."
"I don't like it, lad. Big Whoop almost killed ya last time."
"I don't either, Haggis....but this curse is on my family. I'm the only one who can put it right."
A shocking instant of disorientation, a second's dizziness, and they stood on blackened earth under a yellow sky. The volcano shuddered and trembled, shaking the ground, filling their ears with its roar. Guybrush clutched the packet of herbs the Voodoo Priestess had given him in one hand, the blue stone in the other, and climbed slowly up the crater, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling. Murray, his face grim, followed behind.
Pieces of ash drifted like snow past his face. The heat, already intense, was creeping towards unbearable. He blotted his forehead on his sleeve and pushed on.
And then they were at the crater itself, lava pouring from one end like blood from a wound. They were high, high above the surface of the molten rock, sitting on the mountainside over the volcano's vent. Scorchingly hot winds blasted up at them.
"Here goes nothing!" yelled Guybrush over the roar of the furnace below.
He tossed the bag of herbs into the air, watching it float down....down....unbearably slowly, as though it sank through water instead of air. The cauldron bubbled and seethed to welcome it--
Without warning, the surface of the lava went utterly still. Its color faded rapidly from bright red-orange...to red....to dark red....and then a band of gray swept it from one side to the next.
The bag of herbs landed on solid, cold stone.
Guybrush stared in disbelief--and the mountainside caved in under his hands. It swept him away in a wave of earth, leaving Murray and Elijah untouched just a few feet away, watching as their friend tumbled down the side of a crater, somehow always on top of the moving earth, never buried.
From Guybrush's point of view, of course, he had no idea exactly what had happened until he landed spang on the solid gray rock below.
Sparks danced in his field of vision. What on earth--? Why wasn't he dead?
"Hello, Dad," said a female voice.
Guybrush got unsteadily to his feet. Somehow, he had landed in the exact center of the crater--in the exact center of a pattern of cracks which was forming within the caldera.
The new stone heaved, shook, broke apart like a spring-thawed river.....except for the large circle on which he stood. He stood trapped on an island in the very heart of the volcano.
And not alone. "Odia?"
A spirit-woman was walking across the surface of the boiling rock, as though reminding him that he couldn't do the same. "Why, Daddy. It's been a long time."
All he could do was stare. She was beautiful enough to break hearts, with Elaine's surefooted stride and Chariset's eyes--the same eyes their mother had. That he had to face her down now, when all he wanted was to love and be proud of her, was almost enough to break him in two.
"Whatsa matter? Cat got your tongue, Pops?" She smirked at him, but he sensed a real anger behind her cat-and-mouse banter. "I knew you'd show up sooner or later, you deadbeat."
That hurt. "Odia, listen to me. Whatever Big Whoop's told you about me is a lie. I love you. I never wanted to leave you behind."
"Ha! You'd know about that, wouldn't you, King-of-Lies? Big Whoop is the only one who's ever told me the truth."
"Big Whoop's the only one who's told you anything! He never let us speak to you. All you've heard is one side of the story."
"Pah. I don't have time for this. You think you can turn me against the only person who's ever loved me? You think that, just because you never cared about me, no one should? Ha. Big Whoop's my Daddy now."
Guybrush felt that sentence like a physical knife through his heart. Big Whoop, you should have just killed me, frozen me, anything but this! "Odia....I love you," he repeated helplessly.
If she knew what she was doing to him, she didn't care. "Then prove it." She reached out, grasped the thin spirit-cord he'd been wearing (with its stone of summoning), ripped it from his neck, and dropped it into the lava. It sizzled once and was gone. "Now. Surrender to me and come with me to see Daddy--" he visibly flinched "--and we'll sort this out, once and for all."
If he surrendered, he would die. That was not even a question.
But, whispered some instinctive voice from he knew not where, if he took that blue stone he was holding and threw it at her, into her spirit-substance, the magic of the stone would cancel out the magic that sustained her. She would be disintegrated, but her power over nature would fade out--it might be enough to settle the volcano and free him.
His life, or his daughter's. Only one of them could live.
No father should ever, ever have to make that choice.
But he never hesitated. Without a word, he met her eyes and slowly and deliberately cast the stone aside, out of his reach. It rolled, hit the surface of the lava, and vanished.
"I won't fight you, Odia," he said quietly. "I surrender."
Chalked lines framed a geometric pattern on the floor, each angle of which was supported by a candle of symbolic color. It was more complex than the simple pentagram which is the popular conception of such a set-up....it was four different geometric shapes, each in a different color, each overlapping to shelter an area in the very center. When those like the Necromancer wish to call up spirits without harming them, this ornate pattern was chosen. It took hours to set up, but neither he nor the priestess was taking any chances.
The time was midnight. The only illumination was from the candles and the stars as the old priest chanted phrases committed to memory through long usage. The Voodoo Priestess hovered anxiously by, waiting for her turn to take up the ritual. She couldn't believe her own daring, but there was no turning back now.
The green candles abruptly extinguished themselves, while the green chalk lines on the floor took on their own light, forming a glowing shape on the floor. The light extended upward into the smoky air, giving the impression of walls.
Blue candles out. White. Yellow. The pattern, now complete, blazed in all-colors in the darkness.
"I see you, Spirit," intoned the priestess.
She pushed her awareness in and down, seeking the spirit world of Monkey Island, finding the signature of the life-form she sought.
The soul was aware of her--it tried to run or struggle, but she caught it with her 'hands' and carried it up, out, 'releasing' it into the center of the glowing pattern on the boards.
Only then, perspiring and breathing hard from the effort, did she open her eyes. Something in reality snapped indescribably...and a flare of multi-colored light, blossoming the way ink blooms in water, erupted into view, contained by the colored walls, focused and reshaped.
It coalesced into a
human shape, and then it was Chariset Threepwood, disoriented and confused,
who stared at them from within the confines of the geometric design.