time. But sometimes they bite. Because we’re already half dead, they can’t kill us. But they leave these scars.’ He held up his hand to display the pale, white rings. ‘And it hurts like you wouldn’t believe. Like something has got inside your body and is ripping up your insides. A bite from one of the Blue-Ringed Octopii will stop a live man’s heart in under a minute.’ He added in a sad voice, ‘But our hearts stopped long ago so they present no danger to us.’
‘I don’t suppose you know where the captain is, do you?’ Lex asked.
‘He spends most of his time up on deck.’
‘Up on deck?’ Lex repeated, his heart sinking. ‘You mean… out there?’ He pointed towards a dark porthole, the black ocean pressing against it in an unnerving manner.
‘Yes.’ The sailor nodded. ‘He wanders the deck. Most of them do.’
Well, that could certainly be a problem. For whilst the cursed crew might not need to breathe, Lex did. In the past he could have magicked himself up there but he no longer had that option? not since Lucius had burnt all his magical enchanted hats, blast him. Lex made it a habit to always carry one of the little mini-hats he used for calling cards as the Wizard in his pocket (you never know when the chance might arise to pinch something), but all they were good for was lighting pipes. They couldn’t help him breathe under water. Indeed, now that he thought about it, Kala hadn’t actually mentioned what was supposed to happen when someone finally found the captain’s medallion. She wanted it returned to her but there was no easy way for a human to reach the surface of the sea unaided and Lex could only hope that the Gods would pull them out of there the same way they’d sent them down.
But he would worry about that later? once he actually had the captain’s medallion. And that task in itself had become more complicated now that it wasn’t merely going to be a question of plucking the thing out of a dead man’s hands. If the captain was wandering about up on deck? walking and talking, as it were? then he might not want to give the medallion up. And then there could be trouble.
‘What’s the captain’s name?’ Lex asked.
‘Jed Saltworthy,’ the sailor replied.
The name was vaguely familiar but Lex couldn’t place it. ‘Decent enough bloke, is he?’ he asked, without much hope. After all, this was a cursed ship.
‘He’s the most foul, villainous man ever to roam the Seventeen Seas!’
‘Ah,’ Lex said, not surprised, but not exactly happy to hear it either. Almost as an afterthought he added, ‘What’s the name of this ship?’
The sailor gave him an odd look. ‘Don’t you know? This is the Scurlyshoo Death!’
Oh. Shit! Now it all made sense. The captain’s name and the octopus decor all fell into place as Lex recalled the story. One hundred years ago there had sailed a magnificent ship called the Golden Dawn, captained by a handsome, noble, fearless man named Jed Saltworthy. Until, one fateful day, they were attacked by a giant octopus. It rose up out of the sea, entwined its long tentacles around the ship and almost took the entire thing down to the bottom of the sea with it.
Fortunately, Captain Saltworthy managed to chop one of its tentacles off and this caused the octopus to retreat in agony, but not before it had flung the captain across the deck where he unhappily landed right on top of the broken navigation wheel, one of its jagged giant spokes going right through his leg. He survived the accident but his leg did not. They had to chop it off just above the knee.
The captain was fitted out with a peg leg and the ship was repaired. But it was also renamed. The Golden Dawn had perished in the battle with the octopus but, out of the ashes, the Scurleyshoo Death had been born, for the ship’s new mission was to kill any and all octopuses that it came across, even the harmless ones. But the captain never forgot Gloria, as he had? for some inexplicable reason? decided to name the octopus who took his leg. He would recognise her at once for the fact that he, in turn, had taken one of her tentacles. And so he sailed the seas vowing to track Gloria down and kill her if it was the last thing he ever did. But then, one day, a tornado sank the ship and the Scurleyshoo Death and its crew and captain were never heard from again.
‘Captain Saltworthy must be absolutely incensed to have his beloved ship overrun with octopuses!’ Lex said.
The sailor gave him a pitying look. ‘Far from it. This is his plan.’
‘This is his what?’
‘His plan. When the years passed and he couldn’t find Gloria, he turned to black magic. He cursed himself, us? the entire ship. We can’t die until the octopus dies.’
‘Well, how long do these things live?’ Lex asked. ‘Surely she must be dead by now?’
The sailor shook his head. ‘They can live for six hundred years or more,’ he said. ‘Little horrors. They should have gone down to the Lands Beneath with all the other monsters!’
As one of only four people ever to have gone down to the Lands Beneath, Lex knew that the myths were untrue. There were no monsters down there. Just glass men. On a giant chessboard, so to speak. All the monsters were up here. But there was no point telling the sailor that.
‘I still don’t see how having the ship overrun with octopuses can be part of the captain’s plan to kill Gloria.’
‘The Squealing Blue-Ringed Octopii produce offspring once every one hundred years,’ the sailor replied. ‘The captain managed to find Gloria’s nest using his black magic. All the octopuses here are Gloria’s young. The captain maintained the air pockets in the ship so that, when the babies left the nest, they’d come straight here. Gloria is away hunting at the moment, but as soon as she comes back she’ll follow her children here, believing the ship no longer poses a threat. And that’s when the captain will strike and we’ll finally be free from this terrible curse once and for all.’
Lex gaped at him. Gloria, the most legendary octopus in the world? to the extent that some people believed her to be a myth? was coming here to this ship where her babies had been lured on board by her mortal enemy! One thing Lex knew was that wild animals didn’t tend to react very well when someone threatened their young. When Gloria showed up there was going to be a rather horrible scene and Lex was very keen not to be here when it happened. He was also slightly horrified to find out that the nasty little suckers they’d encountered so far were merely the baby version, for they were quite, quite bad enough as it was.
‘Can you point us in the direction of the deck?’ Lex asked.
The sailor gave them directions and Lex set off, up the stairs, feeling uncharacteristically bleak. The problem was that, if he had to go up on deck to get to the captain, he would not be able to talk, for he would be surrounded by water. And without his golden tongue, what was he? Just some skinny city kid with an over-inflated opinion of himself. He could have throttled Lucius in that moment for losing him his enchanted hats. If he’d still had them he could have performed some spell on himself to enable him to go up on deck and yet still be able to talk. And breathe, obviously.
The sailor had told them that the best way out on to the deck was through the bridge. Which was slightly unfortunate as Lex was fairly sure that was where Jeremiah would be heading. But once they got up there, if the conceited twit was still on the bridge, Lex was fairly confident in his own ability to trick him somehow and send Jeremiah off in the wrong direction.
It was not a simple route to reach the bridge. They had to weave in and out of other rooms, including a once-grand, stately dining room that had clearly been for the captain’s private use. The massive walnut table was screwed to the floor, as were the ornate wooden chairs down its length. They were all now covered in a coating of barnacles. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, although almost all of its crystal was broken. This room might once have been used for impressive dinner parties, with lots of food and wine and stories of sea monsters and adventures. But now it was rather a sad, forgotten sort of place, smelling of damp and decay and seaweed and dead ships.
An impressive bronze statue was fixed to the centre of the great table and Lex wasn’t surprised to see that it was an octopus. When he looked closer he saw that it was Gloria herself? he could tell from the fact that she only had seven tentacles. Despite the fact that time and the elements had faded their colours, when he looked at the omnipresent paintings on the walls, he could see that these, too, were all of Gloria.
‘The man must have had a screw loose,’ Lex remarked. ‘If he hated Gloria so much then why did he surround himself with paintings and statues of her like this? The bloody place is like some sort of shrine.’
‘One card short of a full deck, for sure,’ Jesse agreed.
Finally they made it up to the bridge? thankfully without encountering any more octopuses. There were maps
