The Betrayed Marionette

~.~.~

The darkness was impenetrable. Relentless. All-consuming.

She had never known anything like it. Not even on those darkest nights spent under the watchful eye of their former Captain, nor even those despondent evenings when she had sat atop her balcony and felt disheartened at the lack of life beyond the horizon had she ever understood anything quite so overwhelming, for the night, it drowned out all within it.

Amu could hear the heavy footfalls of frenzied men and the hissing of coals sizzling away in the darkness. They were shouting, swearing, whooping, hollering, but far more frightening - far more alarming - Amu could hear the jungle breathing all around them; she could hear the unnatural swish of the foliage as something, somewhere, apparently encircled them, filling the clearing with terror and mayhem - filling the peak with fear.

Her thoughts were a mess. Her direction was scrambled. Chaos had truly descended, but in the dead of night there was nothing to shine light on their peril. There was a chattering all around them - an odd, empty sort of noise that had every hair on every inch of her body standing on end; that set her teeth on edge; made her feel as though she'd been bodily plunged in ice. It pressed down upon her senses; made her eardrums feel fit to burst. It was like an echo. A jabbering. As a creature not of this world.

Suddenly something slick and shadowy swished around her - encircled her like a shark surrounds its prey. Amu cried, turned in full to face it, but the thing was gone and in her panic she found herself tumbling over the hem of her own skirts. She stumbled, falling headfirst into the edge of the dying fire pit - the last embers dying, bringing forth no light at all, yet still as red hot as the moment they were kindled. She hissed in pain, her cries drowned out by the commotion, until suddenly, unexpectedly, someone grabbed at her shoulder.

Amu screamed-

"Amu!"

-only to startle.

"Ikuto!"

"We can't stay here!"

"Ikuto! Something's-!"

'BANG!'

Her words were cut off by the ear-splitting sound of gunfire. The flash of fire was brief, but it lasted long enough that they could descry the rush of the greenery. Branches were whipping; vines flung aside as though some invisible draught were flying beside them. The trees were moving, swaying as though beings possessed, like ancient dancers to a hypnotic rhythm. But there was no wind. No rush of cool sea breeze. The air tonight was thick and humid and teeming with fear and, as the darkness returned, there rang an unearthly jabbering throughout the clearing, rebounding from the rock, peaking and troughing into a frenzied crescendo-

"Run!"

Ikuto grabbed her by the wrist. The pirates' screams were shrill and frenzied. The unearthly whooping echoed off the face of the peak.

They ran.

Ikuto slipped his fingers into hers and, their hearts hammering, retreated into the greenery. There were footfalls all around them. The crew were abandoning the safe house and the altar aside, yet the further they went, the louder the crescendo became - magnified in their ears, mingling with the frantic pulsing of their own adrenaline. In the distance, the men were panicking. As Amu tightened her grip on Ikuto's hand, a piercing, howl-like cry reverberated through the air, tearing the breath from their lungs, rumbling through their feet.

High above hoards of roosting seabirds burst forth into the air in a calamitous panic, raining down leaves and twigs and bits of debris into their path. Amu held on to her lover tighter, hardly caring for the bite of her nails on his skin or the sweat of her palms or to the irrepressible thumping of blood in her ears, but the foliage was starting to snap behind them. They heard the branches 'thwack!'-ing and 'crack!'-ing through the night as though something was on their tail, following their path, running them down into the deep, dark corners of the jungle and awaiting the perfect chance to pounce, but a quick glance over their shoulders told Amu there was no one there. She gasped, shivering as they splashed across a little stream. A leaf frond smacked against her cheek, narrowly missing her eye, and soon Amu's face was raw and slick with blood. The air was full of iron. But she didn't care. The cracking and snapping of leaves was growing louder; closer; more powerful! Ikuto pulled her off the path, deciding upon a new direction, but in this darkest night, hindered by shadow, too late they knew they'd made a mistake. Blind and grasping through the darkness, neither of them had realised...

They'd reached the edge of the ridge. Before Amu and Ikuto knew it, it was too late.

Down they went, tumbling like ragdolls down the edge of the cliff-like drop. Their hands were ripped apart. Amu heard Ikuto gasp and snarl in pain, heard the flattening of the plant life as he made his descent, but she could not follow. She yelped, bouncing painfully through rock and rubble and thick, tangled roots, whacking occasionally off the sides of tree trunks for what seemed for an age as she rolled blindly down through the undergrowth - through damp leaves and creepers and thorn-studded vines that tore at her flesh and tugged on her hair like unseen talons bursting from beneath the soil, reaching for her as she cried in pain.

Finally, Amu came to a stop. Head spinning, she landed heavily amongst a bunch of twisted, gnarled tree roots that had wound about a fallen boulder at the foot of the ridge. For a moment, she saw stars. For a moment longer, her chest felt fit to collapse. Burning and bruised and utterly winded, Amu lay face-down, slick with blood in the soggy earth, and gasped, fighting for breath. A breeze rustled through the trees. But it was a natural breeze, tinged with salt and the tang of the sea, and, though all seemed stiller than it had a moment before, Amu felt a blinding flicker of panic.

Amu opened her eyes, but could see nothing. Despite the darkness, she felt the looming presence of the tallest of trees all around her…

But all was quiet. This place was, in comparison, undisturbed. Amu lay there, breathing heavily, too afraid to break the deceptive quiet.

The clouds had rolled back now and here and there where the forest canopy broke there filtered down little gossamer slivers of moonlight, outlining just barely the twisted, distorted shapes of the trunks as they pounced out from the dark of the undergrowth. The jungle was utterly forbidding here. Like a tropical twist on a fairy tale so full of mangled, deformed beings that, had it not been for the heat or the palms or the colourful flora come daytime, Amu might have been convinced that she'd found herself in the heart of one of the forests that so often characterised the deep, dark places in her favourite childhood books.

But what monsters lurked here in this desolate wood? What terrors? Trolls and wolves and all manner of beasts prowled beneath the green-leaves in the Black Forests north of her birthplace, but here the fronds seemed to whisper with the voices of the otherworldly...

"Ikuto?"

Silence.

"Ikuto!"

The quiet was disconcerting.

Clawing her way up the trunk of the tree as leverage, she at long last found her feet. Her body ached beyond a doubt, but nothing major seemed broken, though her ribs rattled with every short breath and whenever she propped herself momentarily against the trunk of a tree Amu found that a jolt of pain ravaged her right breast at the merest touch.

He could not be far, Amu reasoned, but as she squinted through the darkness she could not help but feel that familiar flicker of fear for him, for who knew what was in this jungle? Amu did not know entirely what had happened, but she knew that, whatever it was, she could not stay here in one place for too long.

Bravely, Amu stood on her own two feet, and boldly headed off into the undergrowth, but this place was a labyrinth and she found herself turned around bewildered more times than she could count. It was as if the jungle was shifting around her, luring her elsewhere, trying its best to trap her into one place. All seemed to press in. The sounds around grew closer. The air seemed heavy, sucked painfully from her ears. Her heartbeat was pounding, her breathing ragged…

And then Amu heard it…

What was it?

The crew?

No…

A heartbeat?

The thumping of ancient drums?

A cold sweat drowned out all of Amu's senses, chilling her to the bone as she stood fast, breathless, terrified beyond her wits. The beating was endless; growing in strength; 'thump-thump! Thump-thump! Thump-thump-!'…

'Thwack!'

Amidst the cacophony Amu heard the rustle of tree branches and panic struck within her heart. Mobility returned to her. She turned to flee-

"Amu?"

-only to find herself running headfirst into Ikuto's chest.

"Ikuto!"

A welcome wave of relief had Amu's heartbeat thrumming back into its normal, steady pace. The caress of his hands on her shoulders; the familiar smell of salt; the lull of his voice… It was a remedy for fear no words could describe. And as the jungle settled back down into silence, Amu relished in it. She threw her arms around him, holding him tight, burying her face into the comfort of his shirt and uttered with a shaky breath;

"Oh, Ikuto, I'm so relieved!"

Ikuto pulled her aside, finding a little dell in which to stop and catch their breath. The night was still again, but laced heavily with an edge neither of them could ignore - a nail-biting tension that the futile breeze could not wash away. They stuck close to each other, just able to see each other's shadow in the darkness.

"Amu," Ikuto cupped her face in his palms; "are you alright?"

She nodded. "Yes,"

There was a pause.

"Did you hear it?" Ikuto asked with an air of reluctance hard to ignore.

"Ikuto…" Amu could barely bring herself to whisper. "Wh-What-What was that?"

But Ikuto was at a loss for words. He shook his head in a silent response, though she could not see it, and looked around. He didn't know what had quite happened back there by the safehouse and, if not for Amu having been there as a fellow witness, he might not even have believed his own eyes. Finally he found his voice;

"There's something not right about this place…"

Amu had known that almost from the start, even if she had been too afraid to believe it. Undoubtedly this place was cursed. Haunted. Supernatural. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was there. It was real. It could be felt in every breath of the wind; in every shifting of shadow; something otherworldly crept in every dip and hollow of this sprawling jungle until the entire place simply thrummed... And it was enough to strike terror into the hearts of all of them - no matter how seasoned a sailor one was. And, speaking of sailors;

"Where did the others go?"

Ikuto deflated beneath her touch as he realised their predicament. The men would be scattered across every corner of this isle by now. Or, at least, if they had any sense they would have fled, but to navigate in this darkness was impossible and it was still an age until the dawn could shed light upon this accursed isle and lead the way to sanctuary.

"They should make for the safety of the ship." Ikuto reasoned. And he took her hand once more; "Come on."

What followed was nothing short of a mission to return to the Shining Black. They were determined despite the darkness to push forward and flee this foreboding place. Ikuto led the way, feeling his way through the dark, one hand outstretched to brush away the shrubbery and the other tightly wrapped around Amu's wrist, pulling her with him - and a good thing too, for she thought for a moment that, if not for his persuasion, she might have not found the courage to move at all. But they pushed on, their footsteps loud as cannon fire in their ears, their foreheads slick with a cold sweat that chilled them to the core, straining with all their might to listen out for any sounds of movement within the trees.

They tried to go downstream, for Amu thought she'd heard a little stream somewhere off to their right, but their way was difficult and fraught with peril, for they were off any beaten path that might have wound its way through the jungle and all the while they moved they felt the darkness creeping in. This place was all-seeing; all-knowing. Many invisible eyes seemed to peer from the shadows. Snaps of twig and branch distracted them at every turn. At first they seemed to be going in one direction, but the black was impenetrable, the jungle disorientating, and Amu was sure that she was running right, but soon it was apparent that she was headed left. The forest was deceiving. It was like entering the labyrinth again. Sudden unexpected dips and valleys opened up as if from nowhere and threw them off their course. Amu felt that this entire place was sentient as she watched the shadows of the leaves twitch and shudder in ripples all around them, drawing closer and closer with every heartbeat.

And then a calamitous 'bang!'; the sound of gunfire! A shout from afar and a hideous scream!

They stopped dead in their path, hands intertwined, intending to face the commotion and turn towards it, but it became apparent that neither could decide from whence it came. Left or right? Behind or ahead? The sound was muffled to their ears amidst the greenery. Amu gripped Ikuto's clammy hand tighter and felt his pulse beat through his palm - felt it race and jump just as hers. He rubbed his thumb over hers in what she thought was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but by the sound of his shaky breath he was anything but. And Amu couldn't blame him. Here in the open the two were alone. Vulnerable. Lost in the night.

"Which way was that?" Amu breathed.

Ikuto shook his head, but didn't respond. He tugged at her hand - a silent prompt to continue on. Their plan to try to follow the branches of the river was a solid one, but the ground was hard and packed. There was no water here. They realised they must have run past it in the confusion.

They turned, intending to backtrack and find their old path but it was not to be, for them in the distance they heard a hollow, empty sounding howl.

It was not the wind. It was not the monkeys.

It was chilling. Cold as ice and as dark as death.

"Ikuto?"

But Ikuto's voice was trapped in his throat.

Twigs started snapping behind them. Echoes rang in their ears. The whooping of disturbed and awoken primates became sinister and monstrous in the dark - if indeed they were monkeys at all. Something was coming - they saw it there in the trees! Panic gripped at their hearts!

They fled.

Downhill they went, feet pounding against the jungle floor as the howling intensified somewhere behind them. They jumped roots, flung back branches and all the while the night encroached ever quickly.

"There-!" Ikuto whispered all of a sudden and he pointed at a half-dead, ancient-looking tree that lay ahead of them, it's roots spread out for metres across the forest floor like the fingers of the intricate, web-like delta that ran throughout the isle itself. "Inside!"

Amu saw then that the trunk was hollow - an opening gaped on its side just wide enough for a person to squeeze through. Ikuto motioned for her to clamber in, held her waist as she climbed the winding roots to reach the gap. She stuck her foot inside-

"OW-!"

-only to find herself kicking flesh.

There was a pause. A moment of madness. Amu stuttered - at a loss for words.

"K-Kukai?"

The tension was completely broken. All panic left them. Then the darkness shifted and two familiar figures, freshly torn from each others' embrace, popped out from within the old trunk.

Ikuto's composure dropped just long enough for him to flash his sister a cheeky smirk. "Oh? What's this, then?"

Utau's voice was piercing. "Shut up, Ikuto!" Was her oh-so witty response.

"Cap'n-!" Kukai burst out, scrambling to his feet and trying to pick his way out of the trunk. "I-I can explain!"

Ikuto leaned towards him, a menacing glint in his eyes; "Watch your step, Souma."

As if on cue Kukai tripped on a root, tumbling out of the tree and onto the jungle floor.

"Well this is a surprise." Ikuto drawled once the two were back out in the open.

Kukai scrambled to his feet, pale in the face, and swallowed. He opened his mouth to speak when a breath-like exhale rustled in the leaves around them, encircling them in this impenetrable forest. Their hearts faltered, but, luckily, nothing followed.

Once their nerves were settled, Kukai hissed.

"There's somethin' fuckin' unholy in this jungle, man!" He swore. "I told ya! We've stirred up somethin' unnatural! I'll bet ya anythin' that the ol' Cap'n unsettled somethin' evil!"

"Don't be dramatic, Kukai!" Amu burst out, more out of denial than anything else, but it was wholly unconvincing. For the first time in possibly the entirety of their long friendship, Amu saw Utau looking utterly afraid.

"We have to get back to the beach." The blonde said.

A breath. A lull. A rush of air that made Amu's skirts fetter about her ankles.

And then… Just faintly… They heard it.

A humming. A rhythmic, ancient muttering filtering through the trees…

They bolted - legs pumping; hearts pounding; panic surging through their veins. Soon they lost all sense of time - all sense of direction. They could have been racing through this forest for hundreds of years and never known it, for all that clouded their thoughts was the desire to flee.

Every sound was amplified in their ears. Things were creeping unseen in the trees. Amu swore that as she ran she saw things shift all around them. Things bold and black and made of shadow just like the thing she had seen in the dark corners of her dreams swirled all around them, swooping alongside the path, vanishing and reappearing over and over and over again, just discernible against the darkness, yet never slowing, never breaking from their exhausted little group and it was maddening, for they could never truly see - only feel their presence as they were compelled by every instinct to run from the trees.

They could not put their finger upon it - could not be rational, for to be in this jungle was to lose one's mind; lose one's sanity as they went tearing off into the fray, becoming lost and utterly bewildered within the trees. Banks closed off and rivers split and paths well-trodden became inexplicably inaccessible to them where only a day before they might have been…

And then, just when they felt they could run no more, it began again.

A chattering in the bushes.

A howl.

A breath of unnatural air.

And they knew then that the jungle was watching them - honing in on them. It was awakening from sleep. The shadows seemed to darken as they paused to gape in horror, the gaps between the trees becoming as black as the starless void above.

Ikuto cried; "Run! To the ship!"

They didn't need to be told twice. Off they fled, the jungle writhing behind them, near-stumbling downhill as the terrain steeped, the chattering echoing in their ears, punctuated by the snapping and breaking of foliage until they thought they could hear the sound of heavy footfalls thumping behind them, renting the earth as they went. As they ran, a vine inexplicably sprung to life where once there were none and wound itself round Amu's ankle. She snapped forwards, crashing face-first to the ground and smacking her chin on a root.

"Amu!"

Amu twisted and turned onto her side and found her leg entirely caught as though fingers had burst forth from the earth and sought to swallow her whole. Kukai lunged forward, knife in hand to free her, only to find himself tripping over thin air, thrown off-track by a newly-raised root. He toppled into a low-lying shrub and found himself too trapped about the greenery. He thrashed, yelling, scrambling dumbfounded in the dirt, but his knife made short work of it whilst Ikuto unsheathed his blade and slashed at Amu's binds. He helped her to her feet, but they were too breathless to move. Amu was shaking; the darkness creeping in closer and closer; the chattering was morphing - shifting into voices and whispers in a language they've never learned.

Desperate, Utau reached for her tinderbox. She cursed; struck a match - a tiny match that seemed to glow much brighter here on this empty night, shining clarity on things unseen. The whispers peaked… And then stopped, as though shrinking away from their little light and as Utau wielded the quickly-burning match the shadows seemed to lessen, slinking back into the depths of the jungle.

Out of breath and utterly dumbfounded, they waited, panting heavily, covered in dirt and sweat.

Nothing happened.

The air was still; the night calm. The tension was gone and whatever had followed them had left with it.

Slowly, shakily, they edged towards one another and, using up most of Utau's matches, their breaths unsteady and fingers burned, they picked their way through the foliage until the sandy stretch of the beachline lay before them and the air cleared with the cleansing smell of the salt and as the sun rose over the far horizon and shed light on the leaves and the trees and the shadows of the canopy - all now eerily still and silent in the morning light - Amu looked back on their events of the night and remembered it all. The swooping shadows. The howls. The chattering. The figure crouched in the path of the forest…

And, as they departed, each and every man of the Shining Black swore they could hear in the distance, just barely noticeable above the gentle wash of the waves and the cries of birds, a just-audible beating - a chanting, echoing down from the peak of the isle, whispered in every nook and hollow of the jungle in ancient, long-dead voices.

~.~.~

A/N: My favourite pirate novel (and one of my favourite books in general tbh) is 'On Stranger Tides' by Tim Powers which is absolutely full of supernatural elements. I even used one of the lines from the book as the quote for the start of this fic. I don't think this story would feel complete if I didn't include some 'spirits' myself and I'm so glad I did. This was so much fun to write!

I apologise for the shorter chapter. I've had little time to build on what I'd already written. It didn't feel right to add any more, everything else I added felt out of place, so I limited this chapter to just the pirates on the island.

Anyway, thank you for reading. Til next time ~