The Quill Pen Read online

  The Quill Pen

  by

  Michelle Isenhoff

  The Quill Pen. Copyright © 2011, 2015 by Michelle Isenhoff. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover image by Mikey Brooks at www.insidemikeysworld.com.

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Amy Nemecek.

  Lexile score: 730L

  Candle Star Press

  www.michelleisenhoff.com

  For Micah.

  I dearly love your enthusiasm for life.

  Table of Contents

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

  8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

  16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

  Titles by Michelle Isenhoff

  Audiobooks by Michelle Isenhoff

  About the Author

  1

  _______

  “Aye, I’ve heard of such an island.”

  Seven greedy pairs of eyes watched the old seadog tip back a pint of amber liquid, dribbling much of it into his beard. He set the empty mug on the counter with a palsied hand. One of the seven signaled the barmaid for another.

  “Aye, its feet are made of silver and gold. Its mountains drip with diamonds.” The old man wiped his mouth on a dirty sleeve and punched a crooked finger at the listeners. “You could scuttle a ship with the profit of one day’s barter.”

  As the seadog reached for his new pint, the eyes winked out one by one, slipping into the night. They had heard all they needed to hear. An eighth pair lingered, heavy-lidded and patient.

  The old man hardly noticed his shrinking audience. His eyes had turned inward, grown haunted. A tremor sloshed foamy liquid into his lap. “Aye, I’ve heard of such an island. A shadow land, host to some unknown Evil. Its rivers weep with the blood of its people.”

  The listening eyelids widened slightly. The seadog met them, his face heavy with nameless fear.

  “You’ll pay a great price for what you take away. I know,” his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, “because I’ve been there.”

  ***

  The ocean seldom presents a viewer with the same panorama twice. Its watery coverlet changes hue according to its mood, and clouds smear varied patterns across the horizon. Sometimes the waves lie quiet and still, content in their peaceful dreaming. Other times they toss restlessly, disrupting the boats that sleep on their surface. But on rare occasion, when something extraordinary disturbs it, the sea thrashes out an angry nightmare, smashing the rocks that hold the foot of its vast bed.

  Micah Randall perched at the edge of that bed, at that place where the familiar met the unknown. He was drawn there sometimes, when his imagination grew pasty with routine. Or when dull, dusty streets blanched the colors from his memory. Then he would peer out across the surging water, imagining what might lie just beyond his range of vision. But he never ventured from shore. He hardly dared consider it. He simply stood at the brink of the ocean, the waves barely lapping his toes, and wondered.

  All around him, the seashore pulsed with nature’s heartbeat. Micah heard the dry scratch of a hermit crab scuttling over sand. A cottontail rabbit, its downy coat ruffled by an ocean breeze, peeked out at him before trying a taste of sea grass. Overhead, gulls wheeled and bickered over some tidbit they had scavenged, and far, far in the distance, a whale played in the space where sky and water merged.

  Micah soaked up the sounds and the smells and filed them away in his memory. He would recall them later, pulling them out like a sack of hoarded treasure. They were his weapons against the darkness. Against the walls.

  He settled his chin onto his knees, wrapping his arms around tan, bare legs. His limbs were too knobby, even for a thirteen-year-old. They’d raced ahead of the rest of his body so he resembled a blue heron, that storklike water bird that fished among the reeds in the shallow marshes. And like the ungainly bird, he appeared all angles when he walked.

  As he kept vigil, an early raccoon, its body fat and rolling after a summer of indulgence, waddled to the water’s edge, stopping to paddle its hands in a tide pool. It drew forth a fish and sat on its haunches to eat, regarding Micah blandly, as if some instinct assured it had nothing to fear. After wiping dainty fingers over its muzzle, the animal sauntered leisurely into the underbrush.

  Micah marked its retreat through swaying grasses, wishing he’d been born one of the wild ones. He longed to tuck himself into some woodland hideaway like a coon or a deer or a possum. If only he could follow the zigzags of some hidden game trail, he’d disappear into the wilderness and keep on going. But such thoughts were futile. Micah could never be a deer or a coon. He was a fish in a tide pool.

  The shadow of the huge white pine on the hill behind him reached dark fingers toward the water, signaling the end of Micah’s liberty. He ruffled the sand from his hair, spilling shaggy locks over his glasses then flinging them aside like a dog shaking water from its coat. With a final scan across the water, he gathered his shoes and his towel and trudged inland, the trees closing behind him like a rear guard.

  The trail he followed curved along a narrow, sheltered cove. On either side, the coastline reached out rocky arms to embrace the harbor, protecting it from ocean storms like a mother shields an infant. Trading schooners seldom braved the narrow channel anymore, opting instead for the deeper harbor of the city twenty miles south, but a dozen little fishing sloops sheltered at the end of the inlet near the mouth of a marshy river. Micah could already see two or three furled sails through the branches of the trees.

  A few hundred yards father on, the footpath would broaden into Water Street and wind through a sleepy village where stooped, weathered buildings resembled the land so closely they seemed to grow from it. Passing between them always sent Micah’s imagination skimming back in time, back to when life on the coast held excitement. What had it been like, he wondered, to live through the pirate raids, the witch hunts, the battles fought there long ago?

  Unfortunately, those stories had played out to their ends and become nothing but legends for old-timers to exaggerate over a game of checkers. Nothing like that ever happened anymore. The decaying harbor was mostly passed over, and each day Micah tended his duties like a puppet performing the same tired show over and over. Sometimes he wished he could just write out a future for himself—one of his own choosing—like he could jot down one of those old tales.

  Micah passed over the last secluded stretch of wilderness that lay before the village limit. Trees pressed tightly against the path, and rising above them Micah caught a glimpse of white gingerbread railing. The old Parsons place. It lay behind a fringe of woods, near to the water, its high widow’s walk setting like a crown atop the trees.

  The house featured in all the local folktales, and Micah was more inclined to believe them than not. Only once had he dared a peek inside the property. He’d slipped through the heavy, rusted gate that did little anymore but frown at trespassers and peered around the trunk of the last tree. And he had seen it. He shivered with the memory, even in the yellow light of afternoon.

  “What are you doing?”

  Micah jerked, dropping one of his shoes. He made a careful show of turning around, then crumpled at the sight of his interrogator. “Gabby,” he panted, “you frightened me!”

  A young girl grinned at him. “Did you think I was the witch?” she asked.

  The girl wore a boy’s linen shirt and breeches and carried a basket of herbs slung over one arm. Dark, wavy hair streamed loosely around her face, and her skin, bare to the knee, shone the color of acorns. In a town of solidly English stock, her exotic appearance raised
the eyebrows of every good housewife, and her scandalous apparel sent them crashing back down.

  “Widow Parsons isn’t a witch,” he protested, more to reassure his own thumping chest than the grinning girl.

  “You don’t know that she isn’t.”

  “And you don’t know that she is. What are you doing here?” He glanced around instinctively, but they were alone.

  She twirled in a careless circle. “Who’s going to see us? There’s no one around but the trees.”

  “You never know.” His eyes shifted nervously, landing again on the railing.

  She followed his glance and the corner of her lip twitched with amusement. “You know what they say about it, don’t you? That on stormy nights you can still see her up there.”

  He’d heard the story many times, and since that night peering through the fringe of trees he’d been convinced. According to legend, the home’s first mistress had the widow’s walk built after her husband failed to return from a voyage. She paced the narrow balcony for years, watching the harbor, refusing to believe he was dead. But her vigil was in vain. Like so many of the town’s sons, the old captain had been lost to the sea, his name now long-forgotten.

  Micah gulped. “That’s just a story and you know it.”

  She leaned close, enjoying her game. “I do know it,” she smirked. “But I’m not sure that you do.”

  He had never told Gabby about his sojourn into the widow’s yard. About the light in the window or the dark figure on the balcony. She’d just tease him as she was doing now. But he remembered that night clearly, the wind whipping his hair under his glasses and rolling clouds over the moon.

  “Have you tracked me down only to laugh at me?” he grumbled.

  “Of course not.” She crossed her arms, her manner shifting like an ocean breeze. “I’ve come to scold you.”

  It was Micah’s turn to smile. “Scold me?”

  “Yes! You haven’t visited in so long that my parents think you’ve gone the way of the rest of the town!”

  “Oh, Gabby, that’s plain foolishness. My father just keeps me so busy.”

  “At the seashore?” she prodded, one foot tapping the dirt.

  He shrunk just a bit. “Guilty,” he admitted.

  Laughter voided her chastisement. “You haven’t seen the garden since you brought the seeds. Corn, beans, turnips, lettuce! And the pumpkins are growing magnificently. You really must come see!” she exclaimed, tugging at his arm.

  “Slow down, Gabby,” he chuckled. “I can’t come right now. I’d miss dinner.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, bother dinner.”

  His smile dripped into sadness. “You know what would happen.”

  She sighed. She knew.

  “I’ll come soon. The next time I can sneak away.”

  “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  With a final, satisfied smile, Gabby darted away.

  2

  _______

  Micah had lingered too long. He hustled up Water Street as it twisted westward, winding between old shops, meandering with the contour of the cove until it teed into Main Street and the new section of town. Here streets bisected at right angles, and the buildings stood straight and clean and evenly spaced. Mossy timbers gave way to whitewash and the acrid scent of lye. But today Micah paid them little mind.

  He directed himself toward the largest, grandest house on the street. Its intricate woodwork hinted of paper snowflakes, like those the children cut out to decorate the schoolhouse at Christmastime. Foundation stones nestled in a perfect wreath of green grass, boldly accented with summer blooms. His footsteps slowed with sudden reluctance. The house was beautiful, fashionable, and untouchable.

  Micah pulled open the front door, releasing the aroma of roasted chicken. It poured over him, setting his stomach to rumbling, wetting his mouth and verifying his fears. He knew with doomed certainty he was too late. Shoulders slumped, he followed his nose to the dining room.

  The sprawling table was laid out with pretty pink-flowered china and enough silver to feed ten people rather than three. At an early age, Micah had been schooled in the importance of cocktail forks, dessert spoons, fish knives, and the proper placement of napkins. The lessons hadn’t interested him any more than they would a turtle, but he was a Randall, and they’d been drilled into him regardless.

  A sad-eyed serving maid was just clearing away soup dishes in preparation for the main course. At his entrance, a sudden stillness froze all sound, warning Micah of the price he would pay for loitering. He shivered involuntarily.

  “You were told to be home on time for dinner.” Each word was a cold, granite pebble. On the far side of the table with the whole room under his eye, the figure of Micah’s father presided over the meal like a medieval king. Or like a statue of one, anyway, hard and stony. His brows pulled themselves into a heavy cliff that overhung narrow, unforgiving eyes. “Were my instructions too difficult to understand?”

  Micah hunched his shoulders against the familiar onslaught.

  “Now, Gerald, there’s no harm done,” Anna Randall gently admonished her husband. “He’s only missed the first course.”

  But Gerald plowed on as though she hadn’t spoken. “Disobedience is cousin to rebellion, and I will not tolerate either in this household. You have held up dinner and straggled in looking ragged as a gypsy. Get upstairs and put on some proper clothing, and be quick about it!”

  Anger burned a hole in Micah’s stomach. In his bedroom, he tore off his clothes, listening with satisfaction to the sand whispering onto the polished hardwood floor. Words he’d never dare utter to his father flared on his lips.

  Would the world end if he had to eat cold chicken? Did bare feet make him less of a Randall? Was he really such a burden? An embarrassment? A disappointment?

  This scolding was simply the latest chapter in an old, old story. Rules, dictation, impatience, anger. No matter what he did, even when he followed the letter of the law with perfection, he could not please his father. He envied children allowed to decide their own path, to choose their own friends, to learn from their own mistakes.

  He yanked something clean from his wardrobe and forced down his resentment, burying it in the same way the cook banked the fire in the stove each evening. But he dawdled as long as he dared, managing to draw a severe frown from the monarch when at last he slid into his seat.

  Cold silence filled the dining room, every scrape and clank of silver a sharp accusation. Micah could feel his father’s frown upon him, so he obstinately selected a salad fork with which to tear apart his chicken. It was a minor rebellion and all he dared attempt.

  His mother tried to ease the tension. “Did you have a nice day at the shore, dear?”

  Micah swallowed and nodded.

  “Tell us about it.”

  He began hesitantly, casting a timid peek at his father, but soon became caught up in his account of the colors of the wildflowers growing among the boulders and the antics of the terns playing in the surf. He described the soothing rhythm of the waves and the way the sunlight glittered like sequins on the water.

  “It sounds lovely, dear,” Anna responded when he talked himself into silence, but her gracious words lacked the weight of true conviction. Speaking to his parents of such things was as useless as reciting poetry to a horse.

  His father broke in. “I don’t see why you waste your time lollygagging on the beach when there’s work to be done.”

  “Now, now, dear,” his mother consoled, patting her husband’s hand. “He put in plenty of hours in the shop and earned his time off. How he spends it is up to him.”

  “I could have used your help today, Micah. Why, when I was a boy, I snatched up every opportunity afforded me to build up capital.”

  Micah didn’t believe his father had ever been a boy.

  “That’s how I began my store, then the mill, then the livery. You won’t accomplish anything
dangling your feet in the water.”

  Micah could feel his frustration level mounting. He loathed the idea of running a business, but how could he tell his father? How could he explain the lure of the outdoors to someone who viewed everything as numbers in a ledger? How could a man who walked only straight, evenly spaced roads be expected to appreciate the melancholy of the marshes, or hear the wild call of woodlands, or find satisfaction in the strength of the tides?

  Even if Micah could work up the courage to argue, his father would just tell him to stop talking foolishness. He couldn’t possibly understand the desires of a boy lost somewhere between childhood and manhood.

  So Micah sat silently and waited. Waited for the drone of the lecture to stop. Waited for his father’s next barked instructions. But deep down, his soul waited for something he couldn’t even identify. Something old-timers might one day rehash over checkers. Something children might whisper about fifty years from now.

  Something…

  “Tomorrow I’ve hired you out to a neighbor. She asked for a strong back to help clean out her attic. She’s no pauper, and she’s agreed to pay you good money for your time. When you’re done, you’re to report directly to the stockroom.”

  Micah sighed. He could be waiting a very long time.

  ***

  The package was tainted. The man could sense it there in the next room. The feeling sneaked over the railing with the native who offered the gift. But what could he do? How could he protect the others?

  The man contemplated his options. Should he protest? He had no authority to speak out. Such an action could prompt severe punishment. And his warning wasn’t likely to be heeded anyway.

  Should he steal the gift and destroy it? This, surely, would lead to his death if he was caught.

  But he couldn’t do nothing.