Hunt for the Panther 3 (9781101610923) (2 page)

“Did I hear my name?” A tall, blond boy appeared behind them.

Jem grinned at Scarlet. “I didn’t mention Horace. Did you?”

Scarlet giggled. “You mean Walter? Nope.”

After several years as a Lost Soul, Smitty still refused to tell the crew his real name—“Smitty” came from “Smith,” his last name. So they continued to call him by the worst names they could think of, assuming that one day they’d guess correctly.

“We ready to go yet?” asked Smitty.

“Yes,” Jem answered, just as Scarlet said, “Not quite.”

Jem’s shoulders sagged.

“That’s fine,” said Smitty. “I’ll just go say good-bye to Sina one last time.” He turned and trotted off across the clearing.

Jem looked Scarlet squarely in the eye. “Okay, Captain,” he said. “If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for Sina. We need to get Smitty off this island before he drives her completely mad.”

Scarlet considered this. “I heard he showed up at her tree house this morning and insisted on serving her breakfast. And singing all the way through.”

Jem nodded. “Exactly.”

Scarlet held up her hands in defeat. “All right, Fitz. You win. We’ll go.”

He scrambled to his feet and pulled her up before she could change her mind. But she’d only taken a few steps toward the tree houses when she stopped and raised a hand to her forehead.

“Oh no,” Jem groaned under his breath. He’d been so close.

“Shh.” Scarlet closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she announced, “It’s the aras.”

“Of course it is.” Jem sighed.

“They need me,” said Scarlet.

“Right.”

“It could be important. I’ll be right back. You go and gather the crew, and I’ll meet you by the tree houses. I
will,”
she added when he raised an eyebrow. “Promise.”

He watched her jog off across the clearing and cursed Scarlet’s favorite birds. It was entirely possible—probable, even—that they hadn’t called for her at all, and she was just making one last effort to stall. But unlike Scarlet, Jem didn’t have the ability to channel the island’s wildlife and know when they were in distress, upset with each other, or even just hungry. So he couldn’t say for sure.

And anyway, the aras
were
important. Hunted to near extinction by pirates and King’s Men for their beautiful red feathers, the birds were a treasure beyond everyone’s expectations. They actually collected rubies, digging them out of the ground with their beaks and tucking them by the dozens inside their nests. The Lost Souls had made it their mission to protect the birds, the jewels, and the entire island from all the treasure-hungry pirates and King’s Men in the tropics.

“Is she
still
stalling?” Tim asked, appearing at Jem’s side. He pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “This is crazy!”

“She says the aras need her now,” Jem said, and Tim snorted. “I know,” Jem agreed. “But I think she’s almost ready this time.”

“That’s what you said two hours ago,” Tim said. He took off his spectacles, wiped them on his shirt, then perched them on his nose again. “Can’t you hurry her up?”

Jem gave him a withering look and began to walk toward the tree houses. The quartermaster always got twitchy when he’d been away from their ship, the
Margaret’s Hop
, for too long. “You go find Emmett and Edwin,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll grab Smitty and Liam, and we’ll head off as soon as she gets back.”

“Good luck with that,” Tim yelled back. “Last I heard, Smitty was reciting love poems for Sina. It might take even longer to drag him away than the captain.”

Jem groaned again. Getting the small crew of Lost Souls off Island X for a quick trip to port was hard enough with a reluctant captain. A lovesick crewmate he could do without.

He found Smitty standing by himself near his tree house, watching a crowd of Lost Souls play Monkey in the Middle nearby.

“Isn’t she beautiful, Fitz?” Smitty said without taking his eyes off the crew.

Jem didn’t have to ask whom he was talking about. Smitty had been hopelessly in love with Sina since they’d first met her a few weeks before. Sina and her little brother, Kapu, were native Islanders—possibly the only two who had survived the Island Fever the King’s Men brought with them when they invaded the tropics.

“If only we could understand each other.” Smitty sighed. “I’ve tried to talk to her like Scarlet does, with
my eyes.” He gave Jem an intense stare to demonstrate. “But it doesn’t seem to be working.”

Jem stifled a laugh. Smitty’s stare was more likely to stop a smelly wild pig in its tracks than express his affections. “Well, you’re not half Islander like Scarlet is. Those two have a special connection.” He couldn’t quite understand it himself, but when Scarlet couldn’t recall the right Islander words, and Sina couldn’t understand the English ones, the two friends could read each other’s thoughts.

“All right, Smit. Are you ready to go?” Jem asked. But Smitty ignored him, staring at Sina until she finally turned to look his way. He waved, but the tall, dark-haired girl rolled her eyes and turned back to the game.

“Smit!” Jem snapped his fingers in front of the boy’s face.

Smitty looked at Jem. “Actually, I was thinking I might sit this trip out,” he said. “Maybe I’ll stay here and… you know.” He gazed dreamily at Sina again.

“Not a chance,” Jem said flatly. “You’re coming to port.”

“But—”

“No buts.” A little bit of Scarlet seemed to have rubbed off on him. “You love a good port raid. You’re coming.”

Smitty shoved his hands in his pockets. “Well, that’s true. And I suppose you can’t very well go without me, since I
am
the best pickpocket in all the tropics.”

“And so modest,” Jem commented. But he was heartened to hear the smart-mouthed pirate sounding a
little more like his old self. Apparently love did strange things to a person.

“Jem!” someone called, and he turned to see Gil Jenkins standing near the pool in the clearing and waving both arms. “Come quick!”

“Oh, what now?” Jem muttered, jogging off. But as soon as he saw what Gil was pointing at, he began to sprint.

Two men were stumbling across the clearing, their clothes torn and filthy. “Uncle Finn!” Jem yelled. “Thomas! What happened?”

He hadn’t seen his uncle Finn or his uncle’s research assistant since they’d set off to collect plant samples a few days before. They looked like they’d been wrestling crocodiles rather than searching for the rare plant that Uncle Finn believed could cure baldness.

“Jem,” Uncle Finn gasped, practically collapsing into his arms. Jem staggered under his uncle’s substantial weight. “Water.”

“Here.” Liam Flannigan tossed the explorers each a canteen, which they proceeded to gulp down without even stopping to breathe.

“What the flotsam is going on?” Scarlet appeared at Jem’s shoulder, also out of breath.

“Not sure.” Jem waited for Uncle Finn to catch his breath and quench his thirst so he could start explaining. Several other Lost Souls ran over to see what the commotion was all about.

Finally, Uncle Finn handed Liam the empty canteen. He wiped his mouth with his dirty sleeve and turned
to Jem. Then he drew a deep breath. “Brace yourself, nephew,” he said. “Of all the tales I’ve lived to tell, this one is by far the most terrifying.”

A few Lost Souls gasped.

“What happened?” Jem whispered. Uncle Finn was famous for his dramatic storytelling, but this sounded dire, even for him.

“We met…” Uncle Finn paused. “The panther.”

The Lost Souls gasped again.

“The panther?” Smitty repeated. “There’s a panther on Island X?” He moved closer to Sina, putting a protective arm around her shoulders, which she quickly shrugged off. She pulled an arrow out of her bag and examined the sharpness of its point. Sina had the best aim on the island. Smitty tucked his arms behind his back and moved a few feet away.

“There is indeed.” Uncle Finn sniffed. “If you’d studied my map, you’d have seen it.”

“That’s right!” Jem reached into his back pocket and whipped out the map. It wasn’t Uncle Finn’s original map, which the explorer had drawn decades ago while first exploring the islands, but a close reproduction that Jem had made himself. Jem shivered. “What happened?”

Uncle Finn dropped his voice to resume his dramatic tone. “We were out looking for more samples of the bromeliad that cures androgenetic alopecia,” he began.

“Cures what?” Ronagh piped up.

“Baldness, remember?” Scarlet told her, pointing to Uncle Finn’s head of thick, curly hair. Until recently, he’d
been completely bald, proving that the bromeliad really did work miracles.

Uncle Finn smoothed down his hair. “We’d hiked farther west than we’d ever gone before when we got caught in a downpour yesterday evening. And then—”

“We found this hole in the side of a mountain,” Thomas cut in. “Like a cave or a den. And it looked right warm and dry—”

“So we ventured in,” Uncle Finn cut him off, shooting Thomas an irritated look. The old explorer preferred to tell his own tales. “Only to find ourselves face-to-face with…” He paused once more. “The biggest, snarliest, hungriest black panther we’d ever seen.”

Several Lost Souls shrieked. A few more ducked behind some larger ones.

“Had you ever seen a smaller, less snarly, not-so-hungry one?” Ronagh asked.

“Quiet, Ronagh,” said her brother, Liam.

“Just wondering,” she muttered to the chameleon in her pocket. “Maybe there are friendlier ones.”

Scarlet shook her head at the younger girl. “Don’t even
think
about trying to make friends with it.”

“Not on your life.” Uncle Finn gave Ronagh a stern look. “We were lucky to escape with ours. And I was lucky that Thomas has the strength of ten men and could injure the beast while I made my getaway.”

“You did
what
?” Ronagh cried, turning to Thomas.

“Just poked ’im in the eye, real quick,” Thomas said, taking a step back from the red-faced girl. “He ain’t hurt, I swear!”

“But he’s angry,” said Uncle Finn, his eyes gleaming. “So if you value your young lives, watch out for this beast. He lives up the western arm, but who knows where he might turn up.”

Jem wiped a stream of sweat off his temple, remembering the noises he’d heard the previous night, when everyone was asleep. Port Aberhard, with its Old World streets and buildings with doors that shut and locked, was looking better by the second.

Scarlet, however, seemed to be thinking just the opposite. “Maybe… maybe we shouldn’t go to port today,” she whispered to Jem. “Maybe we’re needed here.”

Jem shook his head, trying to clear it of the panther and focus on their mission. “Captain, it’s already late afternoon. Your father’s expecting you tonight.”

“But what about the crew? We can’t leave them now.”

“If we leave now, we’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. If we stay, we’ll just have to go tomorrow. You know that,” he insisted. Admiral McCray had made it clear on their last visit—when they’d arrived two days late because a war broke out between two troops of monkeys—that he expected his daughter to abide by their agreement. Once every two weeks, Scarlet had to meet him in port. If she kept up her end of the bargain, he’d let her live with the Lost Souls on Island X and keep the King’s Men away from it.

Sina slipped over and took Scarlet’s arm. For a moment, they just looked at each other, and if Jem hadn’t known about their strange method of communication,
he would have assumed they were having a serious staring contest.

Finally, Scarlet grunted. “All right. Fine. I trust you,” she said. Turning to Jem, she explained, “Sina will take care of things here until tomorrow. But we’ve got to go
now,
so we can be back as soon as possible.”

Jem let out a sigh of relief. “I’m ready. We’re all ready.” He tossed Sina a grateful look and turned to the small crew of travelers. “Let’s get going.”

By the time they reached the
Margaret’s Hop,
the sun was close to setting. Scarlet climbed aboard, followed by Tim, Jem, Smitty, Liam, and the twins, Emmett and Edwin.

Though she’d been on board a few times in the past two months, it still felt strange to be standing on deck under the mast rather than in the jungle under a tree canopy so thick it blocked out the sun. After all the years she’d spent away from Island X, she was finally beginning to feel like she belonged there again. She knew every tree on the edge of the clearing and every monkey that inhabited them—not to mention every monkey’s problems, thanks to this newfound ability of hers to channel their thoughts.

Her first language was slow in returning, but Sina was a dedicated teacher. Every morning, she made Scarlet memorize a dozen words and forced her to use each one at least twice throughout the day.

Blimey,
thought Scarlet,
I’m going to miss tomorrow’s lesson.
I should have asked Sina for some words to practice by myself. Now I’ll be behind, and I’ll—

“We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon,” Jem reminded her, appearing at her side. “And nothing will have changed.”

She shook herself back to the present. “Right. Yes. I know.”

Jem handed her some nuts he’d brought along. “If you don’t mind my saying, Captain,” he said, “sometimes it’s best to stop thinking and just… do.”