The Forgotten Story Read online

  The imp was in way over her head, though.

  “Get off me,” he ordered.

  She laughed and vanished, reappearing beside the chair. She was standing on the gold nuggets she had tossed. In her hand was a sheet of paper. “Here is the list.”

  Before he took it, he said, “What is the prize?”

  “The prize? Oh, whoever wins gets the Sudarshana Chakra.”

  Her answer forced him to blink several times in disbelief. “Did you say the Sudarshana Chakra? Vishnu’s Sudarshana Chakra?”

  “I did. I have it.”

  She vanished and reappeared, holding the golden disk. The instant he saw it, he knew it was real.

  “How did you obtain this?” he asked, amazed.

  “I stole it,” the imp bragged with a shrug. “It wasn’t hard.”

  He didn’t believe her. Imps were indeed crafty creatures; yet could this imp actually have stolen from Lord Vishnu? Again, he searched for lies. His heart nearly stopped when he again investigated her memories and witnessed her committing the act.

  He took the jewel from her. “You have stolen it.”

  It had been ages since Filip Faix had gazed upon the Chakra. The disk was constructed of pure gold, with sharp, saw-like edges. It was one of the most dangerous weapons ever created by a god.

  Years ago, when there wasn’t much human influence in the world, Filip Faix tried tricking Vishnu to obtain the Chakra. The blue bastard found him out and turned Filip Faix into a tree as punishment. Vishnu had chosen a tree so the Trickster could contribute to the Earth while serving out his sentence.

  Filip Faix had started out as a seed on the ground and felt the soil engulf him over time. From the seed, he grew, pushing his way past each jagged pebble to break through to the surface and kiss the life-giving sunlight. A tough battle for survival, he had to admit. It wasn’t until his roots established themselves deep in the ground and his trunk fattened that he felt secure. The next five decades afterward were dull. Sometimes, he hoped a woodsman would come along with an ax. Then the day came when his roots weakened with age and he tumbled over.

  Vishnu soon appeared. He sat on the fallen tree that was Filip Faix and asked him if he had learned his lesson. Filip Faix grudgingly said he did. Vishnu offered to return him to his normal self, but if he ever attempted to steal the Chakra again, the consequence would be more severe.

  “Gimme!” the imp demanded, snatching the Chakra back. “It’s mine until the hunt is over.”

  She vanished and reappeared, now sitting on the windowsill. She no longer had the Chakra.

  “If you already have it, why risk losing it?”

  “It’s not about the dumb disk,” she retorted in a puerile tone. “It’s about the challenge.”

  Figures. The imp was simply bored and wanted to play.

  “So, what say you?” the imp asked. “Are you game?”

  To be able to regain what he’d lost would be a real treat, he thought.

  “All right,” he answered. “I accept.”

  A wicked smile split the imp’s face. “Then let it begin.”

  Chapter Eight

  Goodbye

  Pierce nearly fell off his seat. “Come again? You want me to what?”

  “Do not make me repeat it,” Taisia groaned, returning to her cutting. “You very well heard me.”

  “Why the change of heart?”

  “I told you. Grandmother Fey showed me our future. She promised there’s a chance you’ll return.”

  Pierce was astonished at this turn of events. Grandmother Fey had lied to keep him home. His wife nearly ripped his throat out if he dared to leave. Now, it appeared both were giving him their blessing.

  “Also,” she went on, “if you do nothing and they do perish because of it, I couldn’t stand watching you live with that guilt for the rest of your life.”

  Never did he think his love for her could grow more.

  “I don’t want to leave, Tai,” he reminded her sincerely. “I never planned for this to happen.”

  “No, but that witch has,” she returned, snipping away. “You love your family as much as we adore you, but do not tell me you’re not a bit anxious to challenge her.”

  After what Freya had done to his brother and the possible threat she held over his and Taisia’s children, he was damn willing to put a stop to it.

  “And, when you do return, Pierce Landcross, believe me when I say it will be the last time you ever set foot off this island.”

  She grabbed hold of a large chunk of his hair atop his head and placed the shears very close to the scalp. One snip and he’d be forced to cut the rest off.

  “Vy ponimayete?”

  “Da! Da!” he shrieked with hands raised. “Bloody hell! I understand!”

  She removed the shears. “Good. By the by, you’re telling your parents.”

  * * *

  That night, after dinner, Pierce joined Nico by the bonfire.

  “Cheers for fetching the lobsters,” Pierce said, coming up beside his cousin.

  “Certainly. Your daughter was wonderful company. She, um . . . how do the British say? Chatted my ear off. About all sorts of things.”

  “Aye, she’ll do that,” Pierce chuckled.

  “And your hair is shorter,” Nico noted.

  Pierce raked a hand through his hair. It now reached the nape of his neck. Taisia had done a splendid job of tidying up the mess Lydia had made while managing to keep some length to it—especially his bangs, which now hung to his jawline.

  “So, erm, where are you planning on sailing to next?”

  The young man’s face lit up with excitement. “I thought I’d cross the Pacific to California.”

  “Ah, I read that it recently became part of the United States. What about the Gulf of Mexico?”

  Nico shrugged. “I’ll probably sail that way in a few months or so.”

  Pierce threw up his hands. “Why wait?”

  The lad gave Pierce a peculiar look. “Qu’est ce qui’il ne va pas, mon cousin? You and Taisia have been acting strangely. Is everything fine between you two?”

  “Aye, we’re right as rain, the pair of us. It’s just—” He broke off to give himself a few ticks to find the right way to ask. “Can you give me a passage to New Orleans?”

  “New Orleans?” Nico repeated, stunned. He then whispered, “Are you trying to flee from your family?”

  “What?” Pierce asked loudly. “No!”

  “Then why New Orleans?”

  An explanation was inevitable. He only hoped he could do so without sounding as if he’d lost the plot completely.

  “You’re right, lad. We have been behaving oddly. And the reason for it is, erm . . . I think my mates are in trouble, or . . . er . . . will be in trouble, that is.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Pierce bit his lip. “It’s a long story, but to sum it up, I’ve received warning visions that some friends of mine are heading for danger.”

  “Who?”

  “The Sea Warriors.”

  “The ones mentioned in Escape from Transportation?”

  It took Pierce a tick to realize he was referring to the books written about him. “Aye, the very same. In any case, they’ll need my help.”

  “Are you sure it was a warning and not a nightmare?”

  “No, lad. It was no nightmare.”

  “How do you know?”

  “’Cause I was fully awake for two of them.”

  Pierce thought about telling him about the elm leaf and the wound to his head that he’d sustained.

  “Really?” Nico said, astonished.

  “Aye, really.”

  “Are you psychic, cousin?”

  “Eh?” Pierce asked, confused. “No. Never have I experienced a vision until now.”

  “Interesting. Does that mean you were given these visions?”

  Pierce was beginning to understand why people got annoyed with him when he asked a lot of questions.

  “Yes, s
omeone sent them to me,” he grumbled.

  “Who? Sees Beyond?”

  Again, Pierce had to remind himself about the bloody novels. “A witch name Freya sent them.”

  Nico opened his mouth to ask something else when he cut him off. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to take me, lad. I can see about getting a passage out in Lāhainā.

  “When do you wish to depart?” Nico quickly asked.

  His sudden response caught Pierce off guard. “Er, in a day or so. Enough time to get things sorted out and to gather up supplies.”

  “Do you know exactly where in New Orleans we have to be and when?”

  Finally, a good question.

  Pierce searched his memories of his first vision, when the Sea Warriors were being taken off their ship in chains. He remembered the man reading the newspaper. There was a date that read September 8, 1850.

  “Early September,” he said.

  “And where are we sailing to?”

  Pierce had thought a lot about that initial vision and the things he’d seen in it.

  The tall white building with three towers.

  Pierce recognized it from an illustration he’d seen years ago in a British newspaper. It was the St. Louis Cathedral.

  “The French Quarter,” he answered with a slow blink. “We need to dock at the Sieur de LaSalle Wharf. If the weather is favorable, we ought to reach the waterway between Central and South America in a little over a month. After crossing through the channel, it’ll take no more than a day to get to Louisiana.”

  “What sort of trouble are the Sea Warriors in. . . or, um, will they be in?”

  “They’re going to be arrested. The American South hasn’t been too happy with the Sea Warriors, who’ve been rescuing their slaves for decades. If I can’t reach them, they’ll be tried—most unfairly, I reckon—and likely hanged.”

  Pierce spared the lad from telling him about the rapes and abuse, mainly due to his own stomach growing ill just thinking about it.

  Nico oddly grinned.

  “What?” Pierce demanded.

  “I set out on this voyage seeking adventure, and it seems I’m truly going to get it now.”

  * * *

  The following morning, Pierce explained everything to his parents. Their sadness pained him, yet not as badly as the sore reaction he got from his children when he told them later on.

  “No!” Galina shouted. “You can’t leave us!”

  “It’s only for a short while,” Pierce tried consoling her. “I’ll return in four months. Perhaps a tad bit longer.”

  “That’s too many months, Daddy!” she fired back.

  Pierce, of course, hadn’t gone into the details of why he had to leave for New Orleans, and then France, only that his mates needed him. The children met the Sea Warriors once when they sailed through a couple of years ago. He reckoned that since they knew them, they’d be more understanding. Apparently, he thought wrong.

  His son stomped his foot and ran out of the house.

  “Joaquin!” Taisia yelled after him.

  “I’ll talk to ’im,” said Pierce.

  He went out the front door and called for his son. A rustle in the heliotrope tree gave the child’s location away. Joaquin had already surpassed his usual climbing record.

  “I’m not coming down,” the boy stated.

  “Rawk!” squawk Marco Polo. “Not coming down! Not coming down!”

  “Shut it,” Pierce growled at the bird.

  He honestly didn’t know why the cockatoo stayed. Pierce rescued him after finding him with a broken wing. Pierce even made the bird a perch, and when his wing healed, Marco Polo flew away. But he soon returned and hadn’t left since.

  Realizing the standoff he was facing, Pierce decided to climb up to his son instead of trying to coax him down. Pierce hoisted himself up and into the branches. He had forgotten how exhilarating it was to scale a tree. When he reached his son, they were nearly at the top.

  “Bloody hell,” he said feeling exuberant. “Haven’t done this in years. Not since your mother and I were in the forest of the elves, that is.”

  Pierce stood on a branch and folded his arms upon the branch in front of him. Joaquin sat with his back to him. “You remember when I told you that story, lad?”

  “Aye,” Joaquin sighed softly but angrily. “That’s when you met Great-grandfather Durothil.”

  Pierce had shared snippets of his life with his children, leaving out the parts about him becoming an outlaw, and all the nasty bits that went along with it. Instead, he told them about everything beautiful and wonderful in between, such as meeting their mother and finding his lost family. Anything he could share with them, he did. Besides, with The Adventures of Pierce Landcross series out worldwide, they were sure to learn everything else for themselves someday.

  “Aye. Remember meeting your great-grandfather when he visited?”

  His son nodded. “He didn’t seem like a great-grand-father,” Joaquin remarked. “He looked to be a little older than you.”

  “Aye, but he’s decades old and will probably live hundreds more after us.”

  “You told me that before, too, Dad.”

  “And I also spoke to you about the Apache privateers. How they saved your old man more than once, and that it was they who brought your mother and I here, yeah?”

  “Aye.”

  “They’re in trouble, son,” he explained in the sincerest tone he had ever used with him. “I owe it to them to save them.”

  “What about the witch?” Joaquin said unexpectedly. “The one who wants you dead?”

  Pierce was utterly gobsmacked. “How did you . . . ?” he began, when his son cut in.

  “She told me.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman. She came to me in my dreams.”

  “When was this?” he asked Joaquin nervously.

  “Last night.” A shrug. “She warned me that you would be pulled away to England and that I must be brave and let you go.”

  Pierce’s blood turned as hot as fire in his veins. Freya. It had to have been her. Then his heated blood iced with cold fear when he realized Joaquin had to be the child the witch bitch needed for this plan of hers. Perhaps it was because Joaquin was the firstborn, though only by mere moments before his sister followed. Regardless, it seemed enough to give Joaquin a ticket to sail through this shitstorm along with his father.

  “I have no intention on settin’ foot in England, son,” he stated. “I’m off to help my mates and then return home to you.”

  Joaquin twisted his body around and scowled at him. Like his father, Joaquin wore no shirt, only short britches. He was darker in skin tone than his sisters, closer to his mother, with the same dark freckles dotting his face. His wavy hair reached past his ears, long enough to tie at the crown of his head if he wanted. Taisia often noted he’d inherited his father’s handsomeness.

  “You promise?”

  Pierce curled his fingers, digging his nails into his own arm. Never before had he lied to any of his children. How could he tell Joaquin there was a possibility that his father could die?

  “I promise.”

  * * *

  Pierce traveled to Moana Village. He sat with Chief Ailani inside his hut, chatting over a bowl of beef Hakka made from the cow he’d brought. Pierce explained everything to Chief Ailani.

  “You are an honorable man, Landcross,” the chief praised him.

  “I dunno about that, Chief.”

  The fat man snorted as if Pierce had stated something funny.

  “If I don’t make it back,” Pierce went on, “I humbly request that my family be allowed to stay.”

  Chief Ailani stared thoughtfully at his guest for a long moment, then nodded with a grunt. “Your tribe will be watched after under my rule and the rule of my successor, Kale.”

  Relief washed over Pierce. “Cheers, Chief.”

  When Pierce returned home, he went into his and Taisia’s bedroom and unlocked the luggage trunk. It
had been ages since he’d opened it. Stored inside were the items from his past. The moment he lifted the lid, Taisia’s rose red gown caught his eye. The same dress Juan Fan had given her just before he and Taisia left for the Netherlands. Later, they had returned to England as a couple in love.

  He brought it out and pressed it to his face, sending hundreds of memories flooding back as he breathed it in. Setting the dress aside, he rummaged through more old clothes and other items until he found his short top hat. It was in the corner, underneath his black dapper coat. He pushed up the crumpled crown. Once he’d straightened it and the feathers out, the aged hat appeared almost as good as new again.

  Living on the island, Pierce had had little use for the hat or the dapper coat. In the coming months, however, he’d need them both. He shoved more things aside and found his gun belt at the bottom. Pierce slipped the Oak Leaf pistol out of its holster and allowed it to see the light of day for the first time in years. He held it up and admired it for a few beats. The sunlight shining in through the window hit the copper of the six-cylinder revolver. The spiraling tree branches wrapped around the muzzle, and the copper oak leaf inside a small plaque on the black cherry handle still shined as it did when he first found it onboard the Ekta.

  “Son,” came his father’s voice from behind him.

  Pierce turned to where Jasper stood in the doorway. He holstered his gun. “’Ello, Dad.”

  “You’re really leaving, aren’t you, boy?”

  “Aye,” he answered, standing with the hat, coat, and gun belt in hand. “It appears that way.” He went to stand beside the bed and set the items down on the mattress. “Don’t really have a choice.”

  “Is that what you’re telling yourself?” Jasper challenged him while stepping closer.

  “Pardon?” Pierce asked, grabbing a leather rucksack that hung from a small hook on the wall next to the framed daguerreotypes of Taisia, Joaquin, and him.