The Dark Goddess [3]

Here is the third installment. Please, please be brutally honest, tear it to shreds!!! I am feeling a little cocky about this piece so I could really use an ego-check!!

Jo stood at the helm of the Dark Goddess, the salt-laden wind tangling her raven curls. It was hot and humid, causing many of the sailors to work bare-chested. She could feel their animosity simmering below the surface but so far none had challenged her. Until that happened, Jo tried to go about her day as normally as possible. Pegg sat nearby; canvas covering his bottom half as he deftly stitched a patch onto one of the torn sails.

“What be on yer mind little lass?” Pegg questioned.

It had been four days since her Father had died. Try as she might, she was not able to find this black chest he had spoke of. She had searched the bookshelves lined with some of her Mother’s favorite books. She had dug through her Father’s chest that held his clothes; holding his shirt to her nose to inhale his musky scent that still lingered on the fabric. Jo had even looked in the weaponry closet, dazzled by the glittering gold they had found.

“Did my Father ever mention a black chest to you?” Jo made sure her voice was just audible enough for Pegg to hear. Whatever was stored in this mysterious chest was obviously valuable for her Father to have hid it so well.

“A chest? No, I don’t be remembering no chest. Why do you ask?” Pegg scratched his scruffy chin and Jo wondered if the flea infestation had been taken care of.

“Right before my Father died he told me about a black chest in his quarters,” Jo confided.

“Can’t find it can ya?” He asked, smiling crookedly.

Josette laughed slightly as she shook her head. “I’ve looked everywhere!”

Pegg stared past her to the Caribbean waters through which they sailed. He squinted at the horizon as if concentrating. Did he know a something? Could he help her find the elusive chest? Jo’s heart was in her throat as she impatiently waited for Pegg to break his contemplative silence. When he returned to sewing without a word, Jo let out an exasperated sigh. Then, mumbling under his breath so only Jo could hear, he asked, “Did ya check the bookshelves?”

Jo scrunched up her freckled nose. It had been one of the first places she had looked. “Just books.”

Pegg smiled knowingly. “Aha, have you ever heard the old saw ‘Never judge a book by its cover’?”

Jo cocked her head in confusion. Why did the old man have to talk in riddles? She hated riddles.

“Not everything is as it seems on the surface,” Pegg supplied. He smiled broadly when realization lit Josette’s aquamarine eyes.

“William!” Jo shouted to the navigator who was lounging on the deck. “Come take over.” The blonde man hurried up the stairs to the quarterdeck and took the helm into his hands. Jo crooked a slender finger at a smiling Pegg. “You’re coming with me.”

Pegg tipped his head in compliance; the sail would have to wait. Jo purposefully lead the way to her newly acquired quarters, flinging the door open. Samuel had repaired the broken lock and Pegg pulled the door closed behind him. Jo stood in front of the massive bookshelves that consumed the entire right hand wall. She examined the leather bound volumes housed there. The Tempest by William Shakespeare, The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nashe, The Seventh Letter and Laches by Plato, and a number of works by Socrates and Aristotle.

A thick black book with gold lettering stamped on its spine caught Jo’s eye. It was John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Jo had no idea what the book was about and so she reached for it to pull it off the shelf. The instant the volume was in her hands, Jo realized that it was no ordinary book. The sheer weight of it surprised her. Curious she carried it over to the table and opened the front cover.

Inside, someone had created a crevice among Milton’s poetry. There, nestled in the hollow was a black box measuring about six inches by three inches and about four inches deep. Pegg explained as Jo pried the chest out of its snug hole. “Your Father used to hide doubloons and pieces of eight in that book all the time. And then a few years back he stopped using it all together. Or so I thought.”

Jo’s hands were shaking with excitement as she pulled the key from around her neck and fit it into the lock. “I was expecting something a bit bigger,” Jo admitted, as she turned the key until there was an audible pop. Slowly, as if the situation called for reverence, Jo lifted the lid. Inside were an assortment of yellowed parchment, a miniature of her Mother, and three gold doubloons.

Jo was extremely disappointed. Why would he hide his Letters of Marque? It made sense to hide the love letters her Father had written to her Mother, but under lock and key? Jo riffled through the papers feeling her spirits sink. What was so important about a couple of old papers? Sighing, she spun away from the table beginning to pace.

“Ugh! This just doesn’t feel right!” She exclaimed running a hand through her tangled curls. “Why do I feel like I am missing something?”

Pegg knew her question didn’t require an answer. His curiosity getting the better of him, the bald man limped over to the table to examine the chest’s contents. He smiled at the love letters and picked up the doubloons. “I guess he still kept some money in there,” Pegg commented jingling the coins in his fist. Jo ignored him, too wrapped up in her own contemplations. Pegg slyly pocketed the coins, taking notice of one of the pieces of parchment. “Look, it’s a map.”

Jo hurried over to the table, nearly ripping the map from Pegg’s hands. It was a detailed map of the Caribbean and the surrounding areas. There was the Gulf of Mexico bordered on the North by Louisiana and Florida and on the Southwest by Mexico and New Spain. There was Jamaica carefully wedged between Cuba and Hispaniola. But what caught Jo’s eye was the triangle her Father had drawn on the map. Its apexes stretched between Florida, Puerto Rico, and the tiny island of Bermuda. A prominent ‘X’ had marked the middle of the triangle.

“There‘s something there on the back!” Pegg exclaimed.

Jo flipped it over and attempted to read the words. “Konacan dragocjenost. Fontana od mladost.” Jo felt like hitting something. “Damn but I’ve never seen this language before! I don’t know what those words mean.”

“This is it lass.” Pegg assured her. “This is what your father wanted you to find.”