Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull Read Free Page A

stars in her hands.
    “The way you read your book, you would think
it
certainly didn’t, wouldn’t you?” Jim said, hastily standing. He quickly folded the letter and jammed it back into the box. His ears were burning just a little at the edges.
    “I wasn’t making fun, Jim,” Lacey replied, her own cheeks flushing a bit. “I’m quite serious, you know.” She stepped inside the roomand came to sit on the hammock, where Jim joined her, reopening the box just a bit to peek once more at the letter inside.
    “Of course it never says anything different, Lacey. My father only wrote the one note. It was all he had time to do.”
    “But it is a magic letter, isn’t it?” Lacey asked in a whisper. She peered warily at the box, as though some sorcery may even have been at work that very moment. “I would think a magic letter could do all sorts of things if it wanted to - and have all sorts of secrets - don’t you?”
    “I suppose it might,” Jim replied with a shrug. To Jim, words that hid in his father’s note from all but moonlight were magic enough.
    “Is your necklace magic as well?”
    “I don’t think so.” Jim took it out of the box and handed it to Lacey, who turned it over carefully in her fingers. “My father used to wear it all the time. He said it belonged to my mother.”
    “Why don’t you wear it, Jim? I think it would look fetching on you.” Lacey opened the chain and moved to loop it around Jim’s neck. But Jim caught it in his hand and simply laid it back in the box, shutting the lid with a soft tap.
    “Not yet, Lacey. Maybe never. I don’t know.” Lacey nodded slowly, looking down and playing with the tattered cover of her book. After a moment though, she smiled again and straightened herself up on the hammock, putting on her best, noble airs. “I think you shall make a fine Lord,” she said. Then she laughed at Jim’s blushing ears. “Lord Jim Morgan, greatest Lord of them all. And do you know how I know for certain? The stars tell me so!” Lacey held up her book before her face and peered over the cover mysteriously at Jim. “They tell me that tomorrow is the start of a new adventure for us!”
    “Oh really?” Jim said. “Do they tell you how long it will take for George and the others to ruin their new clothes?”
    Lacey, who was smart enough to know when the boys were teasing, shook her head and gave Jim a light punch on his shoulder. “Goodnight Jim Morgan,” she said. “You’ll see tomorrow. A great journey will begin.” Then Lacey tiptoed out of the room and went down the stairs to her little room across from the Ratts’.
    “Goodnight, Lacey,” Jim called after her.
    Jim was hardly sure that stars and constellations meant anything more than lights and pictures in the sky. In any event, tomorrow was indeed going to be the best day of his life. He smiled at the thought and breathed deeply of the ocean air. In only a matter of hours his little box would sit on a proper nightstand beside a proper bed in a proper home, where he, his friends, and his remaining possessions truly belonged. Avoiding the bother of changing into nightclothes, Jim simply kicked off his shoes, hung his jacket and hat on a rusty nail, and blew out his lantern. He leaned back into his hammock and in a few gentle swings fell effortlessly to sleep.
    The wind and the waves rushed the little sailboat toward the pristine shores of a white sand beach. Jim Morgan stood at the prow, breeches rolled up over his knees. His hands were full with a wooden sword and a rope for the sail, tools for dream adventures too glorious and epic to exist anywhere but a young boy’s mind. Jim’s smile stretched wide over his face and he crowed at the top of his lungs.
    Standing tall on the green hill beyond the beach, Morgan Manor came into view. Her tall iron gates were stanchioned with the bold letter M. Her orchards and gardens stretched all the way to the dark forest beyond. Home, Jim thought. He was finally sailing