Tempest surveyed the situation with anger thrumming in her sap. The moment the water had sucked her down, she’d known: It was all a trap. The gorgeous beach, the well-kept road, the shining city, the careful scrubbing of flesh, and the dip in what must’ve been some sort of antibacterial marinade. She’d known something was wrong, but she’d gone along with it and ignored her gut.
Guts, she realized, were always to be trusted.
The moment she saw the queen’s smug face and the capacious white bib over her cooking apron, she knew that Mort’s triumph at being right regarding the existence of cannibals would most likely end at the edge of a serrated knife. She did a quick head count around the pot to ensure all the sailors were accounted for, carefully avoided looking down at anyone’s jiggly danglers, and then hunted around the room for Captain Luc. They were in something halfway between a ritual chamber and a kitchen, which did not bode well. The captain was no longer on his fine perch and was instead confined to a fussy cage in the corner, the door firmly shut as he beat himself against the metal bars.
“This is an outrrrrage!” he shouted. “Ye can’t go arrrround eating my crrrrew!”
Queen Hannabelle turned to him and smiled graciously. “Watch me, glitterpigeon,” she said.
“Wait!” Morgan called next. “What can we trade you for our release?”
The queen shook her head and held out her arms. “Your flesh. My people are hungry.”
“Then maybe hunt like normal people? Or raise a few chickens?” Al said. “I mean, instead of waiting for strangers to come around. Most civilizations have figured this out already.”
The fire was high and well-stoked, and the water was getting hotter. Tempest had to doggy-paddle to save her feet from the bottom of the red-hot tureen. She could just see over the edge, and the view was chilling. The people of Clan Nabi were cheerfully preparing for a great feast, raking the coals in a huge oven full of metal racks and greasing what looked like an enormous sausage grinder. Children roasted vegetables and fruits over a grate while wearing bibs with chubby little stick figures of people stamped on them. Tempest hated to admit it, but these people did, in fact, look very happy and sleek and healthy. And like they had no qualms about eating pirates.
“You are not the first visitors to question our ways,” Queen Hannabelle said as she sharpened a knife with unnecessary violence right in front of them. Zip zop. Zip zop. “But you see, eating nu ham is what has allowed us to flourish. Instead of spending our time moving goats around, growing corn and grain for feed, plucking chickens, and rebuilding big fences, we wait until a ship stops by and gather up our next harvest. We have meat, and we have timber, and we have whatever else is on board. Books and scrolls, magic potions and clothing. It’s the most elegantly simple solution to all of life’s problems.”
“But it’s stealing!” Al roared. “And murder!”
The queen stared at him. “You are pirates, are you not? All pirates do is steal and murder.”
“We’re not really that kind of pirate,” he shot back, slightly chastened. “So far, we’ve just rescued a bunch of otters and tried to save our centaur from kidney thieves.”
At that, an excited murmur went up around the crowd.
“A centaur!” Queen Hannabelle’s face lit up with lurid glee. “We’ll send a contingent out to your ship to collect it. I hear their internal organs are succulent.”
“That is so ignorant!” Morgan wailed.
“If it makes you feel better, your internal organs are succulent as well,” the queen reminded her, resuming her knife-sharpening as several of her people ran out through a grand door, carrying ropes and cleavers and long sausage forks. “In fact, pretty much all internal organs are healthy and delicious, if prepared the right way. Don’t even get me started on bone marrow. And brains! Like butter! So good on toast.”
“That’s it,” Tempest muttered to herself, her arms tiring from treading the water. “Queen Hannabelle, have you heard of mad human disease?”
The queen cocked her head. “I have not.”
“It’s awful. You get it from eating the brains of humans who’ve eaten sick cows. It drives you insane, and your body pretty much rots around you.”
The queen considered this, and the pirates waited with bated breath that actually smelled like bait because they ate a lot of fish.
“Even if you’re lying, we can’t risk it,” the queen finally said, and Tempest exhaled in relief.
“So we won’t eat your brains, I suppose. We’ll use them for tanning leather. We make really cute water-resistant shoes here.” She held out her foot, and Tempest almost complimented her flesh-sandals before she realized her gambit had failed and the Nabi still intended to eat her and her friends.
“Maybe eat one of us at a time?” she offered, hoping a route to escape might present itself later on. “So the meat won’t go bad?”
Queen Hannabelle rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Do you think our food hasn’t tried to talk us out of dinner before? You’re not unique. You’re just chatty bacon. We’ve developed methods to preserve meat with salt, with acid, with smoke. We’ve spent centuries building our unique culture around nu ham, and I don’t think that’s going to change because some spotty-wristed girl with limp hair likes to argue.”
Tempest took a deep breath, feeling rage bubble up from her burning feet. How dare the queen speak to her that way, insulting her skin and hair, patronizing her while in the process of killing her? Morgan tried to pat her arm in a calming sort of way, but she pulled away. She could feel something happening to her, but she wasn’t sure what it was, so she tried to edge away from the others. “Stay back,” she whispered to Morgan and Al. “I’m not sure…what…is going to happen now…”
“Don’t be so sensitive,” the queen said. “It’s not personal.”
“I told you she was weird about her moles,” the handmaiden whispered to the queen, and as they had a private laugh, Tempest felt her hair lift up, her toes and fingers beginning to spread and change.
With a snap like lightning striking, Tempest’s arms stretched out in either direction, somehow both flexible and hard, somewhere between a branch and a vine. Leaves sprouted along her limbs, and she reached for the edge of the tureen and lifted herself free of the steaming water. Her toes had shot out like roots, and she used their tendrils to clamber out of the water and stand, dripping, on the stone floor below. She was naked, and yet she wasn’t. Rugged brown bark had sprung up to cover her skin like armor. Her hair writhed overhead, a nimbus of branches and leaves.
“I’m not meat anymore,” Tempest growled. “So who wants a little fiber in their diet?”
“What—” the queen began, but Tempest reared back and punched her right in the nice white teeth.
Of course, it wasn’t a woman who had cracked those canines—it was a dryad in full temper, and the queen flew back, her head turned the wrong way on her neck and her teeth sproinging out like popcorn. Seeing Hannabelle lying on the ground like that, soft and meaty, aroused something Tempest had hoped never to feel, and for just a moment she craved the hot gush of blood.
But no. She would not stoop to the level of Clan Nabi, and she was not yet a willowmaw, and she had friends to save. As the queen’s people abandoned their feast preparations to scurry around their broken ruler, Tempest turned to the tureen, wrapped her vine fingers around the hot edges, and pushed it over, spilling her friends and hot water over the floor. The water drained away in a creepily efficient grate, and naked pirates struck the ground and struggled to their feet before plucking up the various barbecuing accoutrements strewn around the room, brandishing them as weapons. Clan Nabi was caught defenseless, nothing but bibs between them and the death they were so accustomed to doling out. It was swiftly apparent they weren’t trained in any sort of self-defense, that they had grown all too comfortable and complacent with their cruel ruse, and Tempest soon had Luc out of his cage as the crew demanded—at spatula-point—new garb from their previous captors and cooks. Soon the pirates were dressed in the robes and jerkins the Nabi had taken from past visitors, and the Nabi were naked and tying their bibs over their groins. Only Tempest remained unclothed, clad solely in her hardening bark.
“Arrrre ye okay, lass?” Luc asked, his claws clicking against her woody shoulder.
“I’m not dead,” Tempest said, her voice creaking like an old tree in a wind.
“That ain’t what I asked.”
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she said, her voice as mournful as willows soughing in the wind. “This shouldn’t happen…until I’m old…unless I use my powers…”
“Listen up,” Luc squawked in her ear. “It’s not time. You’rrrre Tempest, a nice lass who swabs a mean deck. You like law books, you’ve a fine mind, and you’rrrre kind to yourrrr frrrriends and always stand up for yourrrrself. You’rrrre brrrrave but soft, so just rrrrememberrrr what that feels like: being soft. Think of little grrrreen leaves in sprrrring, aye? Soft bunnies and wee ducklings.”
“But I’m so hungry,” Tempest moaned, envisioning branches snapping up tender little birds and tucking them into her trunk.
“Then we’ll get ye some nice harrrrdtack, or maybe some fish.”
“I’m a vegetarian. But I also just really want to eat people.”
“Then you’d be as bad as Hannabelle and herrrr Clan Nabi,” Luc argued.
Tempest’s leaves shook as her branch tendrils reached out for Mort, who was frozen in place, white as the toga he was dressed in.
“Trees are beyond good and bad,” Tempest said, her mind half lawyer and half monster.
“Look, you don’t want to eat Mort,” a new voice broke in. It was Al, standing just out of reach. “Think how terrible he’d taste. A Mort torte? Abort, abort! Nobody wants that.”
Laughter burbled up through Tempest’s trunk, making her branches quiver. “Mort torte. With a glass of port!” she wheezed.
“You wouldn’t want to eat Milly Dread either,” Al went on. “Unless you like leather. Probably break a branch on her hide. No Milly Dread bread.”
“Or smirky jerky,” Tempest giggled, her tendrils backing away from Mort as she considered Milly’s edibility.
“And Captain Luc—”
“Leave me out o’ this, you!” the bird squawked.
“I bet when you pluck him, he’s about the size of a winged rat. And his first name is Filthy. You’d probably get flukes.”
“Luc…flukes…”
“Would make you puke,” Al added.
Morgan ventured up, tentative and quiet, and put a hand on Tempest’s shoulder. “C’mon, Tempest. You’re the nicest person I know. Come back to yourself and let’s go save Vic.”
Surrounded by her friends, looking into their eyes instead of at their meaty buttocks, Tempest took a deep breath and focused inward, feeling the rough ticktock of her heart in its woody cage. She thought of soft things, of sweet things, of friendship and tea and the sea, and she let the anger drain out of her system. Sap pooled around her ankles, and leaves fell from her hair, and bark crumbled away like an especially bad sunburn, and her warm brown skin was soon skin again. Luc fluttered up from her shoulder as she shook off the last of the treeish trappings.
Only her arm showed any change: The scaly parts had grown together, creating a patch of woody bark about the size of a shoe, something that could not be easily overlooked again. She’d been so careful not to use her healing powers that she’d forgotten that rage could end her just as quickly as mercy. Rubbing at the bark, she reminded herself that she’d saved dozens of lives. That it was worth it.
“Oh, no,” she muttered. “I forgot. They’re still going after Vic and Qobayne!”
“Aye, lass, that they arrrre. Ye done good. But we must now get to The Puffy Peach and see what’s become o’ the grrrand dame.”
He was worried about his people too, Tempest realized, even if he couldn’t say it outright.
Armed with pokers, forks, machetes, spatulas, and a wayward pineapple corer, the strangely dressed pirates ran out the door that the last batch of Nabi had used. The stone road led back into the city, where dozens of people wearing bibs and carrying silverware cried out in dismay as they passed. The defenseless guard at the gate couldn’t stop them, and soon they were barreling through the jungle, well-moisturized and smelling of garlic and oregano but furious at nearly being eaten. Right when the paving ended and the jungle truly became jungle again, a giant hippopotamus burst into their path, grabbed Mort with its curving ivory teeth, and dragged the screaming man away into the heart of the thick green foliage, leaving only splattered plops to mark the trail.
“Mort!” Feng lunged after the hippo, taking a few steps after the fleeing betonkus and waving his spatula.
“It’s too late to save him!” Luc shouted to his perch. “We can’t fight the beast! We have no rrrreal weapons! On to the ship!”
But Tempest saw Feng trembling under Luc’s claws, his face shattering as the last of his three close friends disappeared. First Frij and Queefqueg, and now Mort. Poor Feng. There was no time to comfort the man, however, no time to remind him that perhaps the deaths of his friends could usher in a new era of personal meaning and growth and help him become the man he was meant to be. No time to tell him that loss and tragedy were what shaped a life and gave a person meaning, that such loss might very well spur him to become the hero of his own story.
No, they had to run on, back to the ship, to save what could be saved.
But as they emerged from the forest, they saw the worst thing they could imagine coming from The Puffy Peach’s stretch of beach: a plume of smoke.