Pirates and Peonies

13. The Pendant's Prisoner

© 2013, Chenille Whitehead. Except as provided by the Copyright Act 1956 no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

13. The Pendant's Prisoner

Blue. All around her is blue, stretching out forever in all directions. She is floating in it. Water, she realises. I must be in water! But she cannot swim. She thrashes her legs, in panic, hoping she can somehow reach the surface, but to no avail. Cecily knows she is sinking. The blue is quickly turning black as she is sucked deeper into the abyss. Something tugs on her right leg, dragging her down further. She looks down to see fingers wrapped around her ankle. She screams. Bubbles rush out of her mouth, escaping their dying prison. All goes black.

***

Cecily opened her eyes to the darkness of her chamber, her heart beating hard in her chest. Cecily rarely had nightmares, so it took a while for her to calm down, the familiar rocking of the ship slowly lulling her back to sleep. She closed her eyes, but moments later a sudden pain in the right side of her neck jolted her awake again. What on Earth? She brought a hand up to her neck to investigate, finding that the chain of the pendant appeared to be clinging to her neck tightly. She tried to loosen it, but it wouldn't budge, and she felt the sharp pain again more acutely. Groaning, she sat up and reached over to the bedside table to light the candle.

To her absolute horror, the pendant appeared to be floating mid-air, pulling her neck to the left. She grasped it with two hands, intending to yank it over her head, but it would not yield an inch. Instead, the sapphire jewel began to glow faintly in her hands and tugged on her neck even more. She began to panic. What was happening? Why couldn't she get it off?

Cecily climbed out of bed, preparing to run for help. She didn't care about the trouble she'd be in, she just wanted to get the demonic pendant off her neck, before it strangled her to death. To her surprise, however, as she got out of bed, the chain slackened its hold a little and the jewel manoeuvred itself so that it was facing the door, as before. How peculiar, Cecily thought, her fear subsiding into curiosity. Cecily found that whichever way she turned her head, the sapphire would always face in the same direction- towards the door. The closer to the door she stepped, the less it hurt her. It was as if it was beckoning her, trying to guide her somewhere. What could this mean? Should she let it guide her to where it wanted to go? If she played along with it for long enough, maybe it would eventually slacken enough for her to slip it off her neck. The idea seemed a bit far-fetched, but she didn't know what else she could do. Staying in her chamber wasn't going to do her any good. By the morning her neck would be black and blue, or worse...she could be dead.

Opening the door, Cecily gingerly stepped out of her chamber and into the quiet, deserted corridor. If not for the glowing sapphire in front of her, all would have been pitch black. The pendant was bright enough to allow Cecily to see about a metre in front of her, so she was able to navigate her way down the corridor without bashing into anything and causing any noise.

It soon became apparent that the pendant was guiding her to the captain's quarters. Perhaps the jewel simply wanted to return to the chest in which she had found it, Cecily reasoned. She wondered if the room was unlocked. She had been the last to leave the room after dinner that evening, but that didn't mean someone had not returned later to lock it. She doubted the captain would allow the room, full of gold and treasures worth thousands of guineas, to remain unlocked after dark. Captain Montgomery seemed far from idiotic.

Sure enough, a minute later she found herself in front of the beautifully carved door of the captain's "treasure trove", as she had begun to refer to it as. To her surprise the door was unlocked. Was someone in there at that moment? Surely not...Who in their right mind would be up at this late hour?

Stepping into the room, she found it empty of human presence. However, there was a lit candle on the large round table, suggesting that someone had been there recently, who was bound to return soon. Feeling the tide of panic rise again inside her, Cecily attempted to rid herself of the pendant once more. However, no matter what she did, the pendant held on tight. In fact, it began to glow brighter and seemed to pulse with life. Oh dear, Cecily whimpered as it began to tug at her neck even more than before. This plan had really backfired. How could she have ever thought this was a good idea?

The jewel lead her to a bookcase against the wall. The same bookcase, she realised, that she had seen reveal a secret doorway a month before, while taking lunch with Captain Montgomery. Sure enough, she saw that it had been left ajar. The Captain must be inside, engaging in secret ship matters. The necklace obviously wanted her to venture inside, but there was no way she was going to oblige. To go inside, would be to commit suicide. The captain wouldn't believe her if she told him her pendant made her go in. It would sound absurd, and even if he did, he'd still throw her overboard for stealing from his treasure chest. No. She had to get this necklace off now and get as far away from this room as possible before someone found her there.

She tried to duck her head out of the pendant's reach, hoping that this strategy would work better, but it just made things worse. The jewel seemed to realise what she was trying to do and actively pulled her against the bookcase, making a loud thud as she hit against the books hard. How is it doing this? She tried to pry her face from the books, struggling with all her might. This wasn't going to work. If the pirates didn't kill her, this demon necklace would. She was going to have to go inside.

As if the jewel had acknowledged her defeat, the chain loosened its grip enough to allow her to pull herself free from the bookcase and open the door to enter the secret room.

Cecily was surprised to find herself in a small, rectangular space, completely devoid of any furniture and windows. The only item she could see was a small painting, surrounded by a circle of ghostly white candles, in the centre of the room.

Cecily breathed a sigh of relief. She was certain she'd find Captain Montgomery in the little room, who would discover she had stolen the pendant and send her to the brig to await her death. Admittedly, this play of events was still very likely to occur, but for the moment she still had some time to try and remedy this awful situation.

The pendant appeared to be stretching out towards the painting in the centre of the room. The sapphire jewel pulsing like a beating, blue heart. Cecily tiptoed quietly towards the circle of candles. The flames from the wicks were long and unwavering, the atmosphere so still that it felt tense. Her stomach tightened in anticipation and unease.

Entering the large ring of candles, Cecily knelt before the painting. It appeared to depict a lake, surrounded by woodland and a cloudless starry sky. It was beautiful and incredibly realistic, with colourful and sharp detail. The lake was clear with a full white moon above it, casting magnificent dabbles of light across the rippling surface beneath. There were little schools of brightly coloured fish and, to Cecily's pleasure, beautiful creatures that were half woman-half fish. Mermaids, she recalled from her nanny's stories. Their scales glimmered in the moonlight, and she thought she could almost see their hair flicker with a light breeze. One mermaid was particularly beautiful, with deep red, curly locks of hair, deep green eyes and a look on her face that was so sweet, so inviting that Cecily couldn't help but smile at her despite her immediate predicament.

Leaning forward, Cecily took a closer look. It was as if the painting was beckoning her towards it. She took a deep breath in through her nose and thought she could almost smell midnight honeysuckle and the crispness of the air depicted before her.

Without thinking, she reached out her hand towards the painting, as if to brush a finger against the painted leaf of a foreground tree. Just as she made contact with the painting, however, a shock ran up and through her arm like a fast spreading fire. Cecily let out a scream in terror as the pain spread throughout her body.

The flames from the candles grew large and violent, forming a flickering wall of fire around her. The sapphire pendant around her neck began to hum, getting louder and louder until her own screams were drowned out by the noise. Just as the pain became so unbearable that she thought she might pass out, there was a flashing white light and...

Cecily disappeared, leaving the strange room as still and as silent as it was before, with no trace of her ever having been there.