Sword - Sent to afterlife

Arabella said to Louis, "I will hate ye, every day. And after the hanging, maybe I'll have some peace." She laughed, a strange, broken sound. "My great--my only--wish is that my mother may find you, wherever she may be--in this world, the next, or anywhere in between. May justice be done. And let it be done by her hand."

The Sword of Cortes began to glow again, and everyone in the mill knew what was happening. The air rippled as it had before. And Louis writhed and howled . . . then vanished. Jean said something in French that Jack suspected wasn't very polite. Tumen looked around wildly. Fitzwilliam stamped his foot upon the place where Louis had been, but his buckled shoe hit only the floor. Jack realized it was all over. Left-Foot Louis had disappeared--for good.

For a few long moments, the crew of the Barnacle stared at Arabella in horrified fascination. "Impossible," Arabella whispered, gazing at the still-glowing sword in her hand.

"Amazing, isn't it, how many impossible things are nonetheless true?" Jack folded his arms and studied the empty spot where Left Foot Louis used to be.

"The Sword of Cortes did this," Fitzwilliam said, leaving Jack to wonder why Fitz always needed to state the obvious.

"You wished that justice might be done by your mother's hand, and then he disappeared." Tumen kept staring suspiciously around the mill. "Her mother is dead. So where did the pirate go?"

"The afterlife," Jean said, as though it were obvious. "He took the ropes with him, so he's still tied up, wherever he is. I hope he stays tied up forever, Arabella."

"I killed him." Arabella tossed the Sword of Cortes to the mill floor, where it clattered against the wood, and then held her hands up to her quivering mouth. Arabella tossed the Sword of Cortes to the mill floor, where it clattered against the wood, and then held her hands up to her quivering mouth. Fitzwilliam took one step toward Arabella and made an attempt to touch her shoulder, but she jerked away from him. "I killed him, just the same as if I'd cut his throat."

"Oh, no, you didn't!" Jack protested. Then it occurred to him that he didn't know that, exactly. "It doesn't count if you didn't mean to kill him. It's a rule somewhere. In some sort of code or rule book somewhere. Really. I'm sure of it."

Tumen looked skeptical. "I'm not sure that's true."

Jack frantically waved off this objection. "Besides, Louis could still be alive!"

"Alive?" Arabella said.

"Yes, if you consider somewhere in the afterlife alive. But it does seem like a pretty dead type of being alive to me."

Arabella was now shivering violently, as though she were freezing instead of sweating in the heat of the warm Caribbean afternoon. Jean shrugged. "He could be alive. Stranger things have happened, right?"

"I don't think so," Tumen said.

"But it's possible!" Jean was grinning now. "We know these things, in Creole lands. The living and the dead aren't as separate as you think. Haven't you heard of a zombie before?"

Arabella went pale. Fitzwilliam said, "If we could refrain from speaking about zombies, I think that would be best."

"Not helping a bit," Jack agreed. "But I meant what I said. There is a great possibility that Left-Foot Louis is still alive."

"How do you know?" Tumen asked.

"Because--think of what Arabella said last. Right before Louis did that spiffy vanishing thing. She said, 'May justice be done.' What does that sound like to you, eh?"

"Justice. You mean--the law?" Arabella sounded a little more hopeful. "The Sword might have sent him to a jail somewhere?"

Jack felt encouraged. In truth, he didn't have the slightest idea where Louis had gone, and he didn't much care, either. The main thing was that Louis was gone. And the second-to-main thing was getting his first mate back into shipshape condition. "Exactly. Precisely. Jail," Jack continued. "Probably dropped Left-Foot Louis right in front of the closest magistrate, just like you wanted. Not too shabby."

"She also said that she wanted justice to be done by her mother's hand," Tumen reminded Jack.

Arabella wilted again, and Jack scowled at Tumen. "Look here--did you ever hear of the figurative sense of things?" Jack said. "Fitz here could fill you in, I am sure, what with all his correcting of people's English and such. Justice is served by her mother's hand, symbolically."

***

The Pirate Chase, Chapters 7-8