The Masks of Death

Fantasy pirates? Fantasy pirates.            

          The first time I died, someone had smashed my brains in with a gold brick. It was a traditional avoirdupois ingot stamped with the crown and falcon and wielded by a man who called himself Gaspar.

            I woke up in a room. Not a pretty, white, glowing room like you read about in the accounts written by mystics and mediums but a drab, ceramic feeling room that was about six degrees too cold and a few points too humid, like the underside of a cave. There wasn’t a door. My head hurt.

            I turned around twice. The room stayed mockingly puce. The last thing I remembered was laying on my back on a hot wooden deck under the knifelike Caribbean sun as some madman with an enormous mustache swung two-odd imperial pounds of filthy lucre at my head like a flashing club.

            A woman was now standing in the corner of my room. I call it my room. I was here first. Isn’t that how it works? Or is it the other way around? Whoever arrives last gets it?

            She was slender in a way that suggested death rather than youth and good breeding but her face was hidden with a silk veil in a deep-sea indigo. Her arms were pale and smooth and jutted like eels from her sleeves. She wore a dress that could have been a nun’s habit save for the swooping neck that revealed comely décolletage that somehow seemed out of place, given the rest of her. She unsettled me.

            “You are Oliver Marquette?” Her voice sounded like a cool stone felt.

            “I am.” I don’t like questioning or answering it directly, to be sure, but it seemed she had me pegged.

            “You are dead.”

            I looked around me. It felt true.

            “What am I supposed to do about that?”

            “I need you to do something.”

            “What about heaven? Am I supposed to go to heaven or something?”

            “In England, perhaps.”

            “What?”

            “You’re a pirate, Master Marquette. Not a particularly good one and not a particularly noteworthy one.”

            “I am a privateer-“ I started.

            “Your letters of marque were forged and we both know this. If you would be so obliging as to not waste my time I would be forever in your debt.”

I couldn’t read past her veil. “Well, what do you want?”

“I have something you want, and you have something I want?”

“You’re not even going to explain the heaven thing?”

Exasperation emanated like a stench. “Your religion only reaches as far as the density of its worshipers. Had you died in England or any place well populated by the English, you’d be in some sort of heaven, or in your case, hell.”

“Who are you?”

“Who I am is unimportant. What is important is that I have chosen you for a special task.”

“If I don’t accept?”

“I’ll ship you back to your god where you’ll bear the consequences of your actions. From having seen your deeds, I highly doubt you were a very good or faithful servant so outer darkness and a significant amount of teeth gnashing is more than likely in order.”

“Okay, the task?” I was getting bored of this conversation; the room was giving me some sort of mental rash. I felt restless.

“My temples are being desecrated, my people are being destroyed, my artifacts and holy places are being melted into gold and silver and shipped back across the great ocean.”

“I can’t stop all of Spain.”

“You cannot. You must be my champion. You must stop one man who has done more to harm my people than all of Spain. His name is Gabriel Thiago Ruiz y LaMancha, who calls himself Gaspar LeBlanc. He has stolen my sacred masks, thus rendering me unable to speak to my priests or intervene in the lives of my people. Without your help, they will all die.”

I detected genuine emotion in her voice. It piqued my interest. The veil trembled in front of her face.

“What can I do?”

“He has stolen four masks from my greatest temple. They are beautiful and ancient; he will not destroy them. He has taken them to his Castillo on the island of Barbados where they reside in his mansion. I am releasing you from death to be my champion. Return to earth, raise a crew, and destroy Gaspar LeBlanc and return my masks to my people. In return, I will make you deathless and ageless. Every time you die, you will return from death to continue seeking my vengeance until the masks are returned.”

“What happens when they’re returned? I just die?”

I could feel her smile. “I will let you live forever on Earth, until you choose to die. All riches that you can take for yourself, I will allow you to keep. I will help you become the greatest pirate in the world, if you take the greatest treasures in the world and restore them to my people.”

“Deal,” I said, stretching out my hand to shake. She seemed to glance at it dismissively.

“Be warned, the path will not always be one that you wish to tread. However, if you start now, you must finish it.”

“I’ve never backed down from a challenge.” I have, but that’s not the point. A good liar knows when to fold.

When she spoke, her voice held a smirk. “Good luck, Oliver.”

“Wait, what should I call you?”

She moved slightly, and a red door was behind her. “I am known to some as Mictlan.”

I woke up on ice-white sand next to sapphire water with a brigantine bearing towards me, her white sails bellied under a strong tradewind. I took a deep breath and stood up. On the back of my hand a black compass had been tattooed into the skin. As I turned, it turned as well.

“All right, Mictlan,” I muttered. “Let’s see what trouble we can get into.”