Antigua de Fortune of the High Seas by Anna Rainbow

Author:Anna Rainbow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicken House
Published: 2021-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

ome dusk, the whale boomed its last goodbye and sank into the depths below. Tiggy searched the waters, eager to see what creature the ocean would provide next. At first, they were a mere twinkle in the distance, a shimmer of colour beneath the night-darkened waves, but as they neared, Tiggy realized the shimmer was in fact a swarm of bioluminescent jellyfish. She raced to the front of the sloop where they took up post, their ethereal bodies glowing like lanterns beneath the surface of the waves.

She leant over the bow, trying to get a better look, Marina and Miguel by her side. ‘They’re beautiful,’ she gasped.

Marina reached down and swiped through the air as if she could scoop them up and study them more closely. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Can’t stand the little critters,’ Miguel said, lifting up his trouser leg to reveal a patch of pearly raised skin, only just visible in the half-light. ‘They sting like the devil.’

Lucia arrived, a smile clutching her lips. ‘Well I never, the perfect guide come nightfall.’ She glanced at Miguel and frowned. ‘Put your leg away, Miguel, it’s hairier than a horse’s back.’

‘It’s not my fault,’ he grumbled, rolling down his trouser leg. ‘Me head hair slid down me body soon as I hit thirty.’

They watched in silence as the ghostly beacons of hope undulated before them, every colour imaginable held within their glassy forms. And as the ocean snuffed out the final rays of the sun, the glow of the jellyfish seemed to intensify. Tiggy inhaled deeply. The sea air smelt heavier at night, dense with salt and stirring the hairs on her neck with cold and the unknown. She wondered if this was what magic tasted like. She wished Padre were beside her to enjoy it too, and that familiar hollow feeling of loss began to open inside her stomach.

Just then, the sloop passed through a shimmering wall of turquoise light. Tiggy watched in awe as it danced across her skin and passed all the way across the night-bleached planks of the Resolute, from bow to stern.

‘Woah,’ Miguel muttered.

A cry from above caught their attention. ‘Land ahoy,’ Spider bellowed. ‘Land ahoy!’

Tiggy’s head whipped up. Excitement curled through her as she anticipated a speck of land appearing in the gloom ahead, perhaps the faint glimmer of tavern windows and the more powerful shine of flares marking out a port. But instead, the sight filled her with shock, every one of her muscles transforming to stone. A small island loomed in the darkness before them – a giant fin of volcanic rock rearing from the waves. It was so close. How had they only seen it now? It was as if it had appeared from nowhere. Fear encircled her chest, pushing a small scream into the night.

The eyeglass slipped from Lucia’s fingers and clattered against the wood. ‘Sweet Kraken,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘I’ve heard of the merfolk concealing things from the eyes of man . . . corals, treasures and alike .

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