The Final Days of Springborough
Chapter 44: The Sea-Legged Captain

To hear his sister speak of being able to see and hear spirits of the dead, was something Jonathon James was not expecting when he returned home from the ship. Even as she described Jimmy being around when they were down by the docks, Jonathon hoped upon hope that it was still just something of her imagination. The funny thing was that he hoped that his sister had gone slightly crazy due to being alone for so long, and had conjured up a friend. Jimmy, a spirit of someone nobody knew or remembered, was one thing. Being able to prove you saw the ghost of the Ex-Queen to her royal grandchildren whom you just met was quite another.

“Where is she?” Princess Kyrstin asked, tears had begun to float in her eyes, and trickle down her cheeks.

“She’s on the chair over there,” Brynn said, pointing to the great, ornamental chairs at the far end of the room.

“The throne?” Thomas asked, a bit of superiority in his voice. “Even if Grandma’s spirit was here, I highly doubt she would sit on the throne. She hated that chair; said it brought too much attention.”

“What’s going on?” the Giant said, right next to them. J.J. looked down at the bear who had calmed down, and was now just breathing heavy. He could feel the breath of the beast on his feet.

“Brothers, this is Brynn. I met her by grandma’s cottage when the bear first attacked me. Brynn shot it with an arrow.”

Patrick turned to Brynn angrily.

“You-!” He briefly let Lucky Bear go, and the Bear was instantly back on his feet. Patrick put a hand down again, before the Bear could attack, but the animal made no motion to, so Patrick just kept his hand on its fur, stroking him calmly.

“She saved your sister’s life, Patrick!” Kyrstin snapped, reminding him of what was important. Patrick stood there, keeping his head down.

“She had said she saw grandma’s ghost then-“

“I saw your grandmother’s ghost before then, actually. I was in the woods, hunting for food, and I came across her spirit. She looked panicked, said she had been murdered, and begged me to save Kyrstin’s life. I didn’t know what she meant, or anything of the story before then, but I ran in the direction she pointed, and found the Princess at the mercy of the bear. I shot an arrow into him, and took her to my hut for safety.”

“And what of my grandma’s spirit?” Thomas asked.

“She disappeared. Spirits can only travel so far out of the range of their bones, as far as what I know.”

“And how do you know these things?”

Brynn stole a glance at a part of the room that didn’t hold anyone as far as J.J. could tell, but she saw something. It was very disconcerting how Brynn would randomly look off, and share looks with things only she could see. When someone is lost in thought, staring at nothing with a blank look on their face, it can be unsettling. When someone is lost in conversation, with expression and body language replies, others want to get their distance.

“I first knew I could commune with the dead with a guard named Jimmy, a Springborough guard who was tasked by the King to look out on the waters for weather because the royals were planning a trip out to sea. Jimmy had come out during a fog, and did not see the edge of the cliffs in time, and had fallen to his death. Because his bones were on the rocks, he could not venture from the cliffside and so we had become friends.”

“Jimmy?” Corson inquired to Brynn, still not quite believing Jimmy’s spirit was in the room.

“He says ‘Hi, Corson’. He’s standing right over there.”

Corson, believing her, looked in the direction she was pointing. But, like everyone else in the room, only saw an empty space where apparently the spirit stood. The teacher of steel tried to hide his disappointment, but he could not. He looked, and squinted, and swallowed with a dry mouth, and finally he looked away, back at the throne chair, wishing he had the young girl’s ability for just a second.

“If Jimmy’s bones are on the rocks, and you say spirits can’t travel long distances, how is it that he is able to be here?” the blonde prince inquired.

J.J. produced the finger bone from his pocket.

“I had found this when my ship crashed. I pocketed it not knowing, not really thinking about it. I guess it’s a piece of Jimmy that allows him to follow us.”

And then, it was Patrick who came to the realization first.

“Which means there’s a piece of Grandma here.”

At that, all eyes of the room first looked at the throne where Brynn, the necromancer, stated that the Ex-Queen’s spirit was now watching them congregate in the Great Hall. In unison, they all turned to the bear that Patrick had claimed for his own, the bear whose new name was Lucky. The animal was perhaps the least lucky product of mother nature in a room that coincidentally held five orphans, two seriously injured guards, a couple of knights, and two dead people.

Patrick stood between the bear and the room. The giant child was impressive in height. Now standing before them, everyone, even the men in suits of armor had to look up to the child’s face. And without being told, everyone knew that there was no chance of a fair fight. Patrick, the royal giant, could rip them limb from limb if he so chose. The only way of getting to the bear was either by poking a member of the royal family with a sword, which would, undoubtedly, bring certain death to the poker when King Daniel arrived back to the castle from wherever he went, or by reasoning with the youngest, most immature child in the room. Neither option sounded like it would have a winning result.

Kyrstin and Thomas stepped forward toward Patrick. The moment seemed so intimate, so between-close-family-members, that Jage had to look away. He focused on the guard whose ankle had been bitten through, who had pulled himself to a faraway wall. Another knight, one with well manicured, dark facial hair and very white teeth crouched over him, and had wrapped the wound with a piece of torn cloth, which the wound had already begun to bleed through.

“Patrick, we have to get the ring out of the bear’s stomach,” Kyrstin said, her voice soft but stern.

“We don’t even know if the ring is in there!” Patrick shouted loud, panicked, making the task of keeping him calm immediately moot.

“The bear has the ring,” Brynn interjected, and she talked in spurts in the spastic way of delivering a message someone was shouting at her. “The bear- ate the ring- with her finger.”

Patrick looked at Lucky who looked up at him, shame in the bear’s eyes as if he knew what he had done was bad, and disgusting. The giant looked at him, sad that his pet had done such a disastrous thing.

“It wasn’t- his fault- the Queen had been attacked- while she was mashing- blueberries- forest blueberries- for a jam. Her hands were covered- the bear was starved when he came in- only ate her ring finger because of the blueberries.”

“When I came upon the bear, he was eating out of my basket,” Princess Kyrstin said, coming to the bear’s aide.

“But, Queen Grace’s body wasn’t at the cottage. Not just her hands, but not a trace of her at all. And who attacked her?”

“She doesn’t know who attacked her. She says it was a man in a hood. He wanted the ring. He must have come into the cottage when she was out gathering berries. He was there when she came in- came behind her. Grabbed her finger- ripped it off. It had fallen into the bowl of berries. She fought as hard as she could.”

Brynn continued, speaking for the Queen who talked of wrestling with the unknown figure. Once the ring went missing with the finger, the figure got even more ruthless, ripping the Queen down to the ground, and continuing to attack her. Queen Grace felt herself being pulled outside, and she tried to fight it as much as possible, but she was dragged out, down the ramp which was her door, and out around to the back of her cottage, where she was allowed one moment of rest before being raised into the sky, over the woods.

“She doesn’t remember- what happened next. When the bear ate the blueberries, and her finger, and her ring from the bowl- she was returned to the cottage.” Brynn concluded to a silent room.

And Jonathon offered his only thought to the whole occasion, as he was the farthest from the scene, and the closest to what developed.

“That must have been when the storm started.”