Prologue

When Little Jane Silver was small a story was told in Smuggler’s Bay, the tiny island town she and her family called home. Like many a story spun in those parts, it was told over the surface of a scarred wooden table, in the taproom of the Spyglass, the town’s only inn. Though the inn was a ramshackle place, whose wooden walls warped in the winter and splintered in the summer, it was known to all sailors in the Caribbean, for there was no finer place for a drink and a tall tale.

The drink would be supplied by Jonesy, her mother’s cousin, and the tall tales by Little Jane’s father, Captain Long John Silver the Second. Like many of his tales, the story told that night featured his favourite recurring character, namely himself.

The audience for Long John’s story that night was the new British magistrate of Smuggler’s Bay. Along with an unasked-for rule of law, the magistrate had brought with him enough unwanted opinions left over from his days as a preacher in England to swiftly turn the free-living folks of Smuggler’s Bay against him. On even the windiest of afternoons, the magistrate could be seen standing outside the Spyglass Inn, lecturing everyone who tried to enter on what a “vacuous vestibule of villainy” it was.

For weeks, Little Jane’s mother, Captain Bonnie Mary Bright, had stared darkly out the window at the magistrate, trying to think of a way they could rid themselves of him without risk of blame or bloodshed. Seeing her at the window, the magistrate would back up a few paces under the withering glare of her mismatched eyes, and pause in his lecturing, but stubbornly refuse to abandon his post.

So the standoff continued, day after day, with the magistrate still unable to take the hint. The folks of Smuggler’s Bay were beginning to lose patience. Something had to be done, and Jonesy had a few suggestions about how he might settle the magistrate’s hash for him with his fists, but Bonnie Mary held up her hand for peace and thought harder. At last, just as tempers were starting to fray, she came up with a plan to drive the magistrate away without getting them into any trouble.

Immediately, she called Long John in from their ship, the Pieces of Eight, to explain. The ship was docked in the harbour in anticipation of the rainy season. Long John was busy supervising the painting of the new figurehead for the hull. As Bonnie Mary explained her plan, Long John sucked his pipe, deep in thought, breathing life into the story he would need in his mind’s eye.

When the new magistrate next appeared, Long John was there to greet him, leaning on the fence outside the Spyglass. He wore his best hat, topped with his jauntiest feather, and a midnight-blue captain’s coat trimmed with great quantities of gold braid for the occasion.

“Hullo!” Long John cried out in a warm, cheerful voice and stuck out his powerful left hand toward the magistrate, the one with H-O-L-D tattooed across the knuckles. The letters F-A-S-T graced his right hand. Together they read HOLD FAST. These words together were thought to keep one’s hands steady on lines in a gale. They were common enough marks for a sailor, but the sight flustered the magistrate. He had been little used to seeing such things in his former life as a country preacher.

“I-I-I’m a servant of the regent!” sputtered the magistrate. “Don’t you dare hurt me! I shall write to the King of England if you do! Stay back heathen!” he yelled and brandished his umbrella like a sword.

The pirate’s blue-green eyes wrinkled up at the corners as if he might burst out laughing. “Go on! Why in the world would a bloke of me sort want to harm a grand man like you, anyway? I ain’t a bad fellow.”

The magistrate stood his ground. “Yes, well, how exactly am I to know that?”

“Look here, me good man, don’t be ridiculous,” explained Long John reasonably. “I ain’t no threat to you. All you’d have to do is run, see? I got no gun and it ain’t likely I’d catch up, what with me bad leg and all.”

The magistrate, who for the first time bothered to look at something other than the man’s offending tattoos, noticed with some shock that most of the sea captain’s right leg was actually not a real leg at all, but a wooden column covered in fanciful carvings. He noted a proud rooster with raised talons, a ship at full sail, and a pair of mermaids, their tails intertwined, all carved into the wood with the greatest of care.

“Now who be you to hang about these parts calling me a godless man?” grinned Long John. “I’ll have you know I was shown the power of the Lord nigh on fourteen years ago in the forests of a savage land. Come in, let me get you some vittles and brandy and I’ll tell you about it!”

Stunned, the new magistrate followed the sea captain into the “vestibule of villainy,” somewhat soothed by the offer of food and drink.

Inside, Little Jane sat by the hearth, legs crossed, one foot jiggling excitedly as her mother braided her hair. Little Jane had been listening to the entire conversation, of course. Due to her parents’ habit of forgetting to modulate their voices below the loud booming range required for giving orders aboard ship, eavesdropping took little effort.

“Sit still,” admonished Bonnie Mary, and Little Jane bowed her head as her mother separated another bunch of her unruly curls. Little Jane sat still, intrigued by the prospect of a duel between her father and the magistrate for command of the island. Gleefully, she pictured the crew of the Pieces of Eight hanging on her every word as she gave them her first-hand account of their captain’s victory. That would surely get their respect and attention!

The idea that her father might not emerge victorious from such a duel simply did not occur to her. At age eight, Little Jane still believed her parents were possessed of mysterious powers of invincibility, powers that also alerted them whenever she was in danger or up to something naughty. (This was partially her father’s fault, as when Little Jane was an impressionable three-year-old, he had drawn a small pair of eyes on the back of one of his hats in an effort to convince her that he did indeed have “eyes in the back of his head” and would know if she tried to eat the contents of his snuff box again).

Long John, however, was painfully aware that he might not be as invincible as his daughter supposed. He recognized that even if he did emerge victorious from such a duel, it would be bound to attract the attention of a number of important people far away from Smuggler’s Bay, people whose attention their little island preferred not to attract. After all, Long John and Bonnie Mary had not survived this long as pirate captains by being incautious.

So Captain Silver pulled up a chair instead of a pistol. He poured the magistrate a generous glass of his best brandy and soon the men were talking like old friends. Little Jane kept her ears wide open, listening to the shifting roll and pitch of her father’s voice, like the steady rise and fall of waves on the sea, as he began to tell his tale.

“Well, I were a mighty rough customer in them days. Not that I ain’t still a bit of a rogue, mind,” Long John said with a wink to the magistrate, “but back then, let me tell you, I was a right hellion! Drinking, duelling, gambling, and carousing from sunup to sundown. Finally me captain’d had enough of me and decides to teach me a lesson, he does. I was deep asleep, dead to the world, when they drop me poor self off the leeward side of a windswept isle, all on me lonesome, so’s to teach me a lesson.”

“They marooned you, Papa?” asked Little Jane, scooting closer to the fire to better hear his story.

“Aye,” said Long John. “They went off to Erris Head in the Irish Sea to refit, intending to come back for me in a day or so — once I’d been scared good and proper. But it was far worse than even they intended, for there were a wicked glamour about the place few knew of!”

“Glamour?” asked the new magistrate, puzzled.

“I suppose in your former profession they’d call it black magic,” said Long John with hoarse dread.

“Witchcraft!” exclaimed the magistrate.

“Aye, aye, but that comes later. First, I tramped through the forest, scavenging wood for me fire, when I comes upon a queer little house all made of earth. As I approached, seeking shelter, I hears a sweet, high voice from above and it’s crying out warning — warning to me, in the tongue of the Celts. So I looks up, and bless me soul, but there, hanging above me, is a cage of pine boughs in full green needle, and in the cage — a poor Celtic princess, imprisoned nigh on three hundred year by a wicked Druid wizard what sought her girlish beauty!”

“I say!” marvelled the magistrate.

“She couldn’t have had much ‘girlish beauty’ still left if she were there three hundred years,” remarked Bonnie Mary tartly.

“Er … I believe I had mentioned the sinister glamour the evil Druid had set upon the place,” intoned Long John solemnly. “It must’ve kept back all them ravages of age and such.”

“Yes, but the young lady … what did you do?” asked the magistrate.

“Weeeeee-eell,” said Long John, taking a long draw on his pipe. “The lass told me her jailer were away for a time gathering herbs for his potions, and how very much obliged she’d be should I choose to lower her prison and set her free. ‘Nothing would be easier,’ says I.

“Well, I’d just secured her release from the cage, when blimey! If that poxy old Druid don’t burst out of the trees and set to with his spells. Well, the girl, o’ course, she’s off to parts unknown, and that Druid, he attempts his wicked enchantments on me person! And I, dashing young flash I was in them days, would have none of it, and promptly spit him upon me sword like so!” In demonstration, Long John gave a quick thrusting gesture with his bread knife in the magistrate’s direction, causing the poor man’s heart to flutter in his chest something terrible.

“Then, off I plunges into the woods again with a thank-ye to my sweet cutlass here. Yet soon I knew how lucky I was to walk the forest by day, so alive it was in the gathering dark with the sounds of animal malice. I quickened me pace to make the beach before all light was gone, but the goings were slow … powerful slow. So I stopped a moment to catch me breath, and I sees how a stick on the ground had a most curious shape. It were like no stick I’d ever seen, with wooden branches all splayed out like … like …”

“L-like what?” asked the new magistrate, his voice shaking.

Long John closed his eyes and shuddered. “Like a man’s hand.”

“Dear Lord,” whispered the magistrate.

“And then I seen that them trees all around me wasn’t of natural proportions for trees … but they was right in shape and size for somethin’ else …”

“What?”the magistrate asked breathlessly.

“Men,” groaned Long John. “They was trees what used to be men!”

“Good God!”

“And I pinched me skin and seen it had gone all brown, rough, and senseless as old tree bark. I wanted to run, but found I was held fast, me foot stuck in the ground! I tried to wrench meself free, but now I was stuck up to me ankle in the soil, unable to budge. That’s when I realized … I’d grown roots! Aye, roots tough as little iron anchors stuck down deep in the ground.

“And then the rest of the change began to take place! Me soft flesh went all to hard wood, heavy and stiff. And I sees with sick fascination that awful bark, all cunning-like, making its way creeping up me thigh and I knew that none could help me now. I’d be a spruce by sunup!”

“Heaven help you!”

“Aye, sir, it did, for it was then and only then did this poor sinner turn to our Lord and pray! Pray as I done long ago, a poor innocent child unschooled in them rotten vices of the world.”

Little Jane tried for a moment to picture her father as a child, unschooled in “them rotten vices of the world,” but found it quite impossible.

“And like magic itself them holy words beat back death’s hand and the advance of the Druid’s devilish magic,” continued Long John. “And in the darkness I felt the blood return to me veins as the wicked tree sap left ’em. Beneath the crust I felt me flesh stir to life once more, me false skin of bark crack and fall away like scales from a fish!

“But then I saw that some changes was too long set to reverse. Me foot, which had first went to root in the earth, had gone to sap and timber all through, and I’ll be if it didn’t remain that way, good as any tree. And though I prayed again, I come to figure that the Lord above, blessed cove what he is, left me this as a reminder and punishment of me wicked ways. And I trust it’ll stay stubborn wood till I’m old and grey,” he said wistfully, giving his peg leg a little knock, as if to demonstrate its wooden nature to all.

The preacher jumped at the sound. “M-m-my goodness, how terrible!”

“Ah no, it ain’t so bad. I tell you, though I plod God’s green earth on this bit o’ timber the rest of me days, I praise Providence for his mercy what chose to save me from such a fate as befell them other men,” he said, his voice taking on an eerie whisper. “Them what is to this very day still dropping leaves in that cursed forest over the mouldering bones of their godless master!”

“Lord above!” cried the former preacher, his face white as the cap of a wave.

“Ah, well,” shrugged the pirate with a slight smile. “’Twas a time and place quite far from these sunny shores. And I thank ye, Reverend, for bendin’ an ear to this poor old sailor’s tale. Bless your heart.”

With that, Long John placed a pouch upon the table. The new magistrate took it in his hand, feeling the circular shape of the coins within through the rough weave of the fabric, much larger and heavier than any he ever handled in his life. For a second his mind danced with possibilities. What he could achieve with this in a ministry in some truly ungodly place — like New York City!

“Sir,” he protested, “are you certain?”

“For your good works, Reverend, should you ever wishes to continue your ministrations to the heathen abroad, may they never be interrupted again by lack of funds,” intoned Long John as fervently as any prayer. “Perhaps it’s Providence, as well, what brought ye here, on your way to fulfilling your secret desire of ministering to them. The world is filled with signs, ye see.”

“But how did you know? Who told you of my wish?” asked the new magistrate, wide-eyed.

“The wise man pays attention to what dolphins says,” replied the pirate cryptically. “The bloke what picks a shellfish in his prime, he too must disclose a jaded squid.”

The new magistrate bobbed his head sagely, as if this made the commonest of sense.

Bonnie Mary turned her back and Little Jane guessed rightly from the slight shaking of her mother’s shoulders that she was trying to stifle a laugh.

“To generosity, brave youth, and fair maidens!” exclaimed the magistrate, impetuously raising his glass. “And may Providence ever smile upon thee!”

“Aye! And thee, too, holy reverend! Thee too!”

With that, they raised a hearty toast and drained their glasses.

The former preacher was pleased to discover the brandy at the Spyglass much to his liking. He absorbed nearly a whole bottle himself, and then called for another. Bonnie Mary rose to get one, but Long John stayed her hand.

“No,” he said chivalrously, “let me.” He stood and plodded off to the cellar, the still-wooden part of him thumping heavily on the scarred floorboards as he went.

The former preacher stared at Long John as he walked, wondering if he could pick out the places in the wood where the pirate had cut off his tree roots in order to set himself free.

“Your father is really a remarkable man,” he said to Little Jane with a shake of his head.

Little Jane nodded absently, still caught up in the swirling currents of her own imagination, so deftly stirred by her father’s story. It would be years before she stopped having nightmares about being turned into a Mexican swamp cypress or a knobbly European bladdernut tree.

The new magistrate left on a packet ship the next day with his sack of gold to build his new church in an exotic place called Trenton, New Jersey. With the last in a long line of new magistrates gone, Long John and Bonnie Mary returned to ruling the island from their little ramshackle inn as they pleased.

Peace reigned again on Smuggler’s Bay. Well, for the time being, at least.