The rocks and water took his chuckle and distorted it. “You don’t know half as much as you think you do, luv. Now. Do as I say, and I won’t have to kill either of you. Turn around. Slowly. Hands where I can see them.”
Mabena’s muscles coiled as they turned back to face the opening. They could make a run for it, scamper over the rocks and back to the boat.
Casek half-turned his face. And murmured in Cornish, “Do as he says.”
“But—”
“I can’t risk losing you, Benna. Not again. Not for good.” She’d never heard his voice so low and tight. His words drifted back to English. “No more lives. It’s not worth it.”
“See, and on that”—Lorne must have prodded at Casek, given his quiet grunt—“we’ll just have to disagree.”
27
Libby sneaked one more peek around the crumbling stone wall, willing Mabena to appear as she was supposed to do. It didn’t seem right to be here without her, keeping a lookout for her instead of the tourists she’d been charged with watching for and dissuading from coming up the path through the heather.
Though how she was meant to do that she still wasn’t certain. She’d breathed a sigh of relief when the mist had rolled in thicker instead of burning off. With a bit of luck, it would keep holiday-goers inside for a few hours.
“Stop fretting.” Bram slid an arm around her shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “Moon is fine. No doubt she’s just whiling the day away with her beau.”
Oliver’s brows looked every bit as pinched as hers felt, and had ever since she arrived at his door without his cousin. He finished rolling up his sleeves and bent to pick up the gardener’s shovel he’d brought with him. “I’m inclined to agree with the worry. Casek always tends school business on Saturday mornings and would never miss a day of work.”
Bram lowered his arm. “I know you’re friends, Tremayne—”
“Ha!” Beth strode by them into the center of the ruins, turning a circle with the map held up before her. “If my brother has an enemy, it’s Casek Wearne. They may have declared a truce for Mabena’s sake, but a few days of not threatening to sock each other in the nose does not a friend make.”
Oliver rolled his eyes. “I have missed your optimistic outlook, Elizabeth Grace. Thank you for your vote of confidence in my ability to make peace.”
“I didn’t say it was you I doubted.” She turned another twenty degrees. Looked up. Narrowed her eyes. “What do you think, Ollie? Should we align it this way? It’s one of the only things in sight that could be our ‘north.’” She pointed through an opening that was squared off, through which the tower of Cromwell’s castle came and went through the mist.
Sheridan had a second shovel in his hands and looked as though he’d be happy to start digging absolutely anywhere. “Lovely view. But does it work? I mean, if we make it north? Do any of the walls line up with the lines?”
Libby almost wished Tas-gwyn had recommended they try Cromwell’s castle first. It looked more properly castle-like, positioned on the water’s edge as it was, its main tower bringing stories of princesses and dragons to mind.
She drew her lip between her teeth and reached into her pocket, where she’d stashed the piece of paper she’d read over and again that morning. Beth’s unfinished fairy tale had been niggling at the back of her mind all week. She’d meant to ask her for an explanation first thing, but worry for Mabena had taken over the conversation.
She pulled out her copy now though and glanced at it again.
Once upon a time, there was a princess. She lived on an island of rocks and bones, with no one to keep her company aside from the fairies. All her life she’d danced with them to the tunes they played on their magical pipes, the tunes echoed by deep voices from the rock itself. One day, however, the music stopped.
The princess, concerned for her fay friends, set out to find them, only to discover that every fairy on the island had vanished. Far and wide she searched, high and low. In the treetops she found no friends . . . but there was a house in the boughs she’d never seen before, one made of wood creaking and ancient, bearing the name of the fairy king over its lintel. In the pools she found no friends . . . but there was glinting metal winking up at her from the depths, the very shade of the fairies’ eyes. Not to be tempted, the princess pushed onward. In the forest glens she found a wonder that dazzled her eyes. Trees with fragrant bark peeling in fairy-wing curls. Crocuses with petals like fairy gowns. Purple-spiked flowers like fairy crowns. But none of her friends were there.
She kept on, toward the far-looming mountain from whence it was said that all fairies came. But the closer she drew to the rugged rocks, the heavier her feet grew. And the louder came the voices that used to sing along with the fairies’ pipes. The very bones were singing, inviting her to sing with them. She knew, though, that to give in—to sing that song—would mean becoming naught but bone herself.
So heavy were her feet by the time she climbed up the first rock that she could scarcely go any farther, and the winds blew cold now against her. Shivering, the princess tucked herself into a cleft of the rock and cried for her lost friends.
Still, the voices sang. “Look to the birds,” they chanted over and again. “Look to the birds, Lizza.” The princess tilted back her head and watched an eagle soar overhead. But no help came for her from his widespread wings.
The story was linked to this as much as the poems had been, she was certain. Her current guess was that it included the items from the manifests that she’d been tasked with finding. “Trees with fragrant bark peeling in fairy-wing curls”—that could be cinnamon, a popular spice to be imported. The others could be saffron and turmeric. Saffron came from crocuses. And turmeric was gotten from the root of a plant that was topped with a spiky purple flower.
But parts of it she still hadn’t been able to decipher. And there was no time like the present to clear up the mystery. “Beth? The notes you had in Treasure Island . . .”
Beth’s cheeks went pink as she darted a glance at her brother. “Yes?”
“What was the fairy tale?”
Sheridan spun, eyes gleaming. “Oh, are the fairies involved too? Piping from the cave, perhaps? Yes?”
Beth tried turning the map upside down. “It was just a story I made up to catalogue my findings. A princess—me—who lived on an island of rock and bones. The rocks of Tresco—and the bones of the Jolly Roger. Mucknell.”
As she’d imagined. “So, the journey in the story was the treasure hunt. The piping and songs represent Piper’s Hole. And each of the things the princess finds are symbols of what you were searching for. But what was the bit at the end? The song about looking toward the birds?”
“Oh.” Beth frowned. “That was just something from those letters. Didn’t you notice? He’d concluded them all with ‘Look to the birds, Lizza.’”
No wonder the fairy tale had been haunting her! How had she not made the connection immediately? “Look to the birds.” Libby met Oliver’s gaze, brows up. And then, together, they turned to the east. Toward St. Martin’s and the birds that flocked there. Had always flocked there, most likely. Because two hundred fifty years wasn’t enough to change the migratory and nesting patterns, not on an island that hadn’t otherwise changed, where the few residents still lived now as they had then. “This is your north.”