Somewhere off the eastern American coast, about a week later...
It was late evening aboard the Sea Cucumber...it was late evening everywhere, for that matter..and the mid-November night air was nippy enough that most of the crew were bundled up in heavier clothing. Chariset was in the Captain's cabin, poring over the fresh stack of notes brought by the Mailer-Daemon by light of her solitary oil lamp. With them was a long letter from Guybrush, which she was reading at the moment. He really wasn't especially gifted with the written word, but she knew his style and had no trouble visualizing the scene he described.
In the center of the Caribbean, it was monsoon season. Rain poured down in sheets from dull gray clouds every afternoon for days on end, just like this one. Nothing really had any chance to dry out. All of Plunder Island was mud and wet grass--heavy humidity and endless damp. It was enough to set anyone's teeth on edge.
The heavy rain hadn't stopped the daily visits of the green parrot, however, which was the real source of Guybrush's restless nerves. He felt trapped in the fort, not willing to go out into the rain--and there was no one to talk to out there, anyhow. His friends at the Barbery Coast all had bad cases of joint-ache from the rain and were nothing close to good company--Blondebeard's shop needed the single table for paying customers (of which there were several regulars, since the quasi-vegetarian cannibals had moved to the island and the 'El Pollo Diablo' menace had been resolved). The cannibals themselves owed him no favors, and he sensed that Lemonhead had somehow connected him with the wrath of Sherman the volcano-god on Blood Island...an incident over a year old, but still. So his naturally outgoing self had only the handful of soldier-sailors to talk with-and he'd spent all morning with them--or Elaine.
Elaine.... She was another source of confusion to him lately. For weeks now, her attention had clearly been elsewhere...somewhere other than the island and her job. He knew her better than anyone on the island, but her new focus of attention eluded him. She may have been moody, but she wasn't given to daydreaming or flights of imagination-that she should be doing it now baffled him. And that she was doing this when anonymous notes poured in from outside saying she was unfit for her job was coming close to tearing him to pieces.
"She's fit," he mumbled to himself pacing up and down a cold interior hall of the fort. "She's fit she's fit she's fit she has to be fit. There's no one else who could do her job." Guybrush might have been her Lieutenant Governor, but no one had supposed the position would be anything more than honorary. Least of all him.
And yet, over and over, she had been missing for important meetings these past few weeks. He wasn't a bad diplomat and could usually smooth things over until she made her appearance, but none of this was like her at all. He hadn't a clue what was on her mind, and that actually frightened him. Was his lovely young wife breaking under the strain of the Governorship? Was she actually going-
No. Clearly not. He would know madness when he saw it--he had faced it in the person of LeChuck often enough to recognize insanity--and there was nothing of that in Elaine. She was...distracted, perhaps, but clearly not insane.
He climbed up to the top level of the fort. The structure was a large O shape, with one wall composed of mountainside. The other three walls were the outside structure of the fort itself, and they enclosed an open-air courtyard. The hallway Guybrush was in now was open on the courtyard side, so he could look down on the little garden below while still sheltered from the rain.
When the weather was good (as was not the case now), Guybrush and Elaine would walk down there, especially in the early morning when it was still cool. Elaine appreciated gardens, though she had little patience with them, but Guybrush, who had never lived anywhere long enough to plant one, was strangely fascinated with the plants and the soil. A hired gardener cared for most of the courtyard, but Guybrush had claimed one little plot of land, planted some flowers there, and tried not to hover over them too much as they grew. When and if he and Elaine started a family, he hoped they could find a governess capable of undoing the harm caused by their children's over-devoted daddy. This was a pleasant thought, and it evoked a small smile.
It also reminded him that he had been half-heartedly searching for his absent wife. He stepped back from the waist-high stone wall and resumed his slow walk.
He found her at the very top of the fort itself, standing at the highest parapet near the cannons. She had her head up in spite of the downpour, and all of her attention was clearly and distinctly focused east. She didn't even seem to notice that her clothes and hair were sopping wet, and the white sleeves of her silk shirt were transparently clinging to her arms.
Guybrush charged out into the rain, only to get soaked to the skin within seconds. It was driving down hard, with a high wind behind it. In the gray light, Elaine looked nearly colorless, but her focus remained so total that she didn't hear him approach the parapet. In fact, she was positioned so that the wind and rain came down directly into her face, but she didn't even blink. He brushed his wet forelock out of his eyes and marched up to stand next to her.
"Elaine, what--?" he began, but she whirled on him with a fierceness that was all the more chilling for its utter lack of heat.
"Shhhhh! Can't you hear it!"
He was baffled. "Hear what?"
"The song! You don't mean to tell me you can't hear the song!"
"Elaine, I can't hear anything," Guybrush told her, meeting a look of utter disbelief.
"You're not listening," she said at last, dismissively, turning back into the rain. "It's everywhere...I can hardly hear it, but it's beautiful. So beautiful...." She strained forward, leaning out so far he involuntarily stepped forward to save her from falling. Eyes closed in the grip of some deep emotion, she began humming a meandering tune, almost completely without melody, in a minor key. It was a song that expressed a deep hunger, a strange desire for something, and it chilled him deeper than anything he had ever known. No sane mind could compose a tune like this one, which could only mean that the mind behind the song was not sane. His one and only was hearing strange music, standing in the rain without seeming to feel it--what possible conclusion could he draw? She had, all without his noticing, gone completely mad.
He stood there, staring at her with a sort of wild lostness, when Elaine unexpectedly snapped back to something that eerily imitated sanity. She cocked her head and smiled at him with mild amusement. "Plunder bunny, you're soaked! What are you doing out here in the rain?" When he, unable to react beyond astonishment, just blinked at her, she took him into her arms tenderly and gently said, "I hope you're not getting sick. It's cold season, you know. Come on, I'd better get you inside."
Guybrush let her coax him inside, but for all that he longed to trust his beloved wife, she was no longer someone he could rely upon. And he had never felt more alone and lost in all his life.
Chariset folded the letter back up with a feeling of secret dread. She then crossed the cabin to a small table next to her bed, opened the small hidden drawer, and concealed the letter inside it, next to a few other items which were too valuable to leave out in the open--or too dangerous. One of them glinted in the dim light, and she gently picked it up and drew the Necromancer's Amulet into the air. The large, flat rectangular glass pieces which composed it caught what light there was from her lamp and shone in their rainbow colors, but the most interesting stone at all was set in the very center, in a teardrop shape carved in soft stone. It was a faceted deep blue jewel, small enough to nest comfortably in the palm of her hand, still brilliant despite a thin layer of dust. She blew on it gently, eyes closed, and felt the rising warmth as the stone which was the key to the Amulet's power came alive in her hand.
It was an indescribable feeling, the rush of cold blue power along her fingers. If she looked, she knew she would see them blazing in a magical flame; if she desired, the power could cover her entire body. That single stone made her powerful enough to challenge any other being in the Caribbean--her weapon and her defense against any other magic, since the right eye of the Mask of Medusa had combined with the original Amulet. She didn't think the two were ever meant to become one, because their combined power was enough to raise the dead or stone the living. It had broken the arcane magic of Big Whoop itself. Chariset didn't think any one human was supposed to have this much power.
But have it she did, and it was her job to take care of it until some unspecified time when she no longer needed it. Then she would probably return it to the Necromancer, a thought that filled her with something close to dread.
Just then, a loud argument broke out on deck. She sighed, put the Amulet carefully in its place, belted on her coat, and ducked outside to see what was going on.
Three or four men were clustered near the main mast, light from the lanterns over Chariset's head illuminating their faces. The same lighting arrangement cast the door to the Captain's cabin in shadow, preventing the arguing men from seeing her. She would have just waded in, but some instinct told her to wait and listen.
"I tell ya, I say we just keep going. She doesn't know navigation well enough to tell we've changed course, and by the time she figures it out, we're there."
A second voice. "I don't like it. She's never done anything to us. Why should we do this ta her?"
"Why?? Are you out of your mind, man? You don't mean to tell me you don't feel it, too?"
"Look, all I'm saying is, if we want to go there, she'd probably just let us go. After we get back to Plunder Island."
A third spoke up. "Yer a bloomin' idiot, you are! She hates that island! And you think she'd just turn over her ship to a crowd like ourselves?"
The first again. "Not likely!"
"How do you mean to change course without Murray finding out?" asked her sole supporter.
"Murray's wit' us!" chortled the third figure. "He's feeling it stronger than anyone here!"
Chariset had heard enough. She marched out from the concealing shadows with enough anger in her face to show to the would-be mutineers that she'd heard the whole thing. The three men, 'reformed' skeletons, all, looked both startled and surly.
"Get me Murray," she said to the second man, the one who had defended her. As he scurried off, she turned to the others with ice in her tone. "And as for you two, get to your bunks and stay there."
The first looked rebellious. "This is a mutiny, Captain-" he began.
She responded by raising her right hand slightly. A flare of blue fire in the shape of a sword appeared there--harmless, but certainly showy. "Not anymore, it's not."
When the first one moved to speak again, she cut him off. "I can't believe you," she said with disgust. "I trusted you. I saved you from undeath....and this is what your loyalty is worth?" She made a slashing motion with the 'sword,' forcing them back a step. "I gave you your lives back. You would have followed me back to the grave when I freed you on Monkey Island." Was it her imagination, or did they both flinch at that word? "What changed your mind? What in the world was so important to you that you wanted to get back there?"
"Well...Captain...you see..." the third began, but stumbled lamely to a halt. Whatever it was, he didn't want to talk about it.
"Get to your bunks and don't talk," she finally ordered. "I'll deal with you later."
Murray came up at that precise second, as the two shuffled reluctantly away. Her anger still at full-force, Chariset whirled on him. "What are you thinking? Why in the world would you want to be part of a mutiny??"
"What?" He looked completely taken by surprise, but she wasn't fooled.
"You know what I mean. How could you, Murray? I took you on, knowing your history, knowing that you wanted to kill my brother--I still took you on. I made you one of my most trusted crewmen. What more did you want? Did you want to be Captain?? Was being First Mate not enough for you?" Now she was just unleashing her anger on him, but at the moment, she didn't care. "Well? Explain yourself."
"Chari, you don't understand what we've been through," the brown-haired man replied. "There's this song..."
Her eyes widened as slow realization dawned. "You're mad. You're all mad. Every single one of you who used to be undead--it's catching up with you and now you're going insane..."
"Chari, no...it's not like that at all."
"Don't call me that!" she snapped.
"'Captain,' then." Murray was looking angry in his own right...and not at all dismayed by the blade of blue flame. "When have you ever known me to attack you? When did I ever even hint that I might still have something against your brother?"
"Never, which is why this is such a surprise now."
"And when have I ever lied to you? About anything?"
She was furious at his stubbornness. "You're lying to me now. You were in league with men from my crew to change the course of this ship and steer us directly to Monkey Island! And you were going to do it behind my back!"
"And do you know why?"
"What's to know?" she retorted hotly. "You're the one hearing strange music in your head. When do madmen need a reason to do what they do?"
"I'm not mad!"
"You're not? You're hearing strange songs in your head--songs no one else hears--and you want to send us secretly back to the very place that nearly killed you last time. Either you're mad or you're trying to have me murdered. Either way, you're dangerous."
"Well, if that's the way you want to argue....most of us here are hearing this music. Just a handful of you aren't...or say you aren't. So who's to say who's really mad here? Can you be so sure you aren't the mad one, and we're not sane?"
This had gone on too long--she'd lose the respect of the rest of her crew if she argued much longer on the open deck with her First Mate. " I refuse to listen any more to a madman," she declared. Singling out two men whom she knew had never been undead, she told them, "Take this man to the brig and lock him up. I'll deal with him when he's come back to his senses."
There were gasps and astonished looks, but she'd expected that. What she hadn't expected was the look of open hurt in Murray's eyes as the two men seized his arms and led him away. He went without a struggle, but his obviously hurt pride and the damage that she had clearly done to their relationship cut her unexpectedly deeply. He's not mad, she realized. Whatever he might be, he's not mad.
They vanished down into the hold. Chariset stood for a second in the shocked silence, then rounded on her crew. "What are you standing around for? You know what you have to do. Go do it!"
Slightly fearfully, the crew moved away. She 'dropped' the blue sword, sighed, and trudged, frustrated and confused, back to her cabin.
Murray sat on a pile of straw down in the Sea Cucumber's lone cell. That a ship this size should even have a brig was amazing--it looked like it had been hastily made out of a spare portion of the hold. It even boasted a small antechamber, a heavy door with a barred window, and a tiny porthole. The porthole let in some light, but not much.
Suddenly, a faint glow appeared through the window in the door, followed by a burst of yellow light so bright (after the hour or so in dimness) that it hurt his eyes. Soft footsteps followed, and the jingling of keys.
"Murray," said Chari's voice. "I've come to let you out."
The former demonic skull had his own load of disgust to get off his chest. "Finished with our little temper tantrum, are we?" he sneered.
A sigh. "I might have acted in anger out there, but I was still trying to be reasonable."
"Reasonable?" It was his turn to mock her words. "You have no idea what's going on, not a clue what I'm going through, and you still accuse me of being mad so you don't have to listen to me. I don't see any reason in that."
A brief silence from outside--he couldn't see her face, so he had no idea whether she was silent in thought or anger. "I think I do," she said slowly. "You hear a song..all the time. It's calling you south, to the Caribbean. It's calling everyone who used to be undead."
She paused, and took a deep breath. "And it sounds something like this." She sang half a dozen notes in a low, clear voice.
By the third, a shiver ran down his spine. By the end of the tune, he knew that she knew exactly what he was experiencing. "How do you know that song?"
She passed a sheet of paper through the bars. It was inscribed with crude musical notation. "Guybrush sent this. He's been able to send letters from time to time, and this was in the last batch he sent." Before Murray had time to puzzle over that, she was describing a situation just as long and tangled as the scene aboard the Sea Cucumber--Elaine's strange behavior, Guybrush's fears for her sanity, and more. If Chariset had come straight from that letter to her confrontation with him, small wonder she thought he had gone insane.
"But I know you're not mad," she concluded. "So I want to hear from you what exactly has been going on."
He drew a shaky breath. "All right," he began. "It's a song, but it comes and goes. And it seems to affect some of the crew more than others. When it's on, all I want to do is run...but we're out in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing but ocean for miles. And somewhere in there, I just know that, if I could get to Monkey Island, I'd be all right."
"Why Monkey Island? What will do you when you get there?"
"I don't know. It feels like..."
"Like?"
"It feels like I'm being called in by a serpent," Murray finally admitted, putting a name to the fear he'd been feeling for nights on end now. "I feel like...like if I answer the call, I'm going to die...but I can't help it! And when it comes, I don't care any more whether it kills me...I have to go."
She reached through the bars of the door in an evident attempt to take his hand. He reached up and enclosed one of her hands in his own; she placed her other hand on his and stroked the back of his hand in a clear gesture of comfort. "No one will kill you as long as you're part of my crew, Murray," she said in a low voice. "Because anyone who tries will have to answer to me...and the Necromancer's Amulet."
A slight tingle of power warned him just before a strange blue flame came to life over their joined hands-called up by her determination, no doubt. But this time, the fire turned red, rose above their hands into a strangely heart-shaped cloud, and dissipated.
Chari's face was backlit, but he got the sense that she was blushing. "Err...sorry about that.." she began.
"Why, Chari," Murray said, trying to hide an irrational hope behind an air of innocent astonishment. "Whatever was that for?"
She was trying very hard not to flounder on her verbal feet..and not really succeeding. "Well...Murray...you said you were supposed to be my love interest..."
"Which I did," he said, not helping at all, but concealing a smile as best he could.
"And...well..when I had you thrown into the brig, I realized how much I would miss you if you weren't..."
"Weren't with you?" he prompted.
Softly, "Yes."
He reached through the bars, greatly daring, and touched her face. She shifted her grip, not to pull away, but rather to gently hold his hand against her cheek. In a voice gone strangely hoarse, he said, "I've felt the same way....for months, Chari."
"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked, just above a whisper.
"How would that look if we were openly seeing one another...even if I thought you were interested? You're the only woman on a ship full of sailors--the only way we have peace is to assume a completely hands-off policy about you." She stiffened slightly...the only sign he had that he had surprised her. "I wanted to talk to you about this a long time ago...but there's no way to have privacy on a ship this size."
She leaned her head on his hand for a few minutes, just enjoying the dark, private silence of the hold. "I wish I could argue with you, but you're too right," she finally sighed. "We can't take the chance until we're back in the Caribbean, on dry land."
Another long moment of silence. Then-"I suppose I'd better let you out now."
"No, don't!"
She raised her head from his hand. "What? Why not?"
"Because.." he swallowed hard. "Because I might do something to you if I'm free. I told you that the song affects some people more than others...well...it hits me hard. I can't think...I'd do anything. And that song wants you dead, Chari."
"First Medusa, now the Sirens," muttered Chariset, thinking aloud. "Someone up there is in love with Greek mythology. Well then, I guess we'll have to find you some earplugs, Murray."
"What do you mean?"
"I have an idea...but it'll have to wait. We need to get into safer waters...and, all magic aside, I really want to be home. It's been a long few months lately, and I want to be on dry sand again."
"I can only hope we'll have time to walk on the beach someday," Murray said.
"So do I," she said,
slipping away on some mysterious errand of her own.
She was back shortly before dawn, holding something in her hand that glimmered in the faint light. Before he could realize that she was carrying the Amulet, she had already slipped it over his neck. Instantly, he felt a strange wash of relief come over him.
"I know it won't work forever," she said. "But it'll hold for now."
Murray touched the Amulet which had once brought him back from undeath reverently. "I can't believe you trust me with this."
"Love trusts," was all Chari would say.
There was a bad song attack a few weeks later....two men had to be sent to the brig and locked in with Murray, but Murray himself weathered the assault with commendable bravery. But then, just as things were beginning to be unbearable, they skirted a long peninsula of land and broke out at last into crystal-clear, aqua waters. Chariset breathed out an audible sigh of relief when they finally left the American coast and began skirting the shallow waters around the gigantic island between them and little Melee. Her crew, Caribbean-born, all, couldn't resist the temptation to cluster at the rail and stare down, delighting in the ability to look through 300 or 400 feet of water to see the ocean floor below.
She was no exception. Although blocked by the occasional dark patch, the sand shone white below the Sea Cucumber's keel, and, this close to an island, fish and coral were in profusion. One large patch of coral flashed brilliantly in the light just before their shadow fell over it.
Wait a minute.... Coral doesn't flash. What in the world is down there?
Chariset called one of her crew up and pointed out another dark patch which glinted suspiciously. He picked up his spyglass, peered at the ocean floor--then let out a curse and scrambled back.
"What? What is it?" said she, startled.
He handed her the glass--she put it to her eye and gazed down.
Empty bone sockets met her gaze. The dark patch was composed entirely of skeletons.
However, these skeletons were moving. They were clearly and distinctly following the boat. The glints of light had been off of the swords they carried as they stalked her, obviously meaning to cut her down. Walking skeletons, she realized, can't swim....but they don't need to rest or breathe, either.
"What now, Captain?" asked the crewman.
She turned what must have been a grim face on her sailor. "Unless we can find some way to defeat them, none of us can go to shore. The moment the water is shallow enough that they can stand up, they'll attack."
"So we're trapped on this boat?"
She nodded. He
indulged himself in another curse, but she swore him to secrecy before
he could get away. Let him...and Murray...and Guybrush...be the only
ones to worry over the fact that the Sea Cucumber had just become
their prison.