She shouldn’t have bought the book.
But she hadn’t had a choice.
Angela Coastline’s hooves shook as she slowly turned the grimy yellow page. The writing on the old page was faded ink, but she could still read it.
Twenty-first of the Moon of Frost, 1872. 7:39 AM. 32°19’ N 55°28’ W. First mate woke up screaming, flailing at himself as though his skin were aflame. Nothing we did would awaken him. When the doctor tried to give him some laudanum, he drew his cutlass and cut the doctor’s foreleg off before leaping over the side. The carpenter managed to put on a tourniquet, but the wound is already gangrenous and stinking of rot. The whispering among the crew is getting louder.
So are the voices, pressing at the back of my skull. I can hear them, snarling and spitting curses at me.
They get louder when I pass his cabin. I spotted the carpenter skulking in the halls outside his cabin, hoof at his rosary and a dark look on his face.
I’ve never been a praying pony. But the alicorns help us all.
Angela swallowed and placed her face in her gloved hooves, her heavy breathing muffled by the mask that she wore to protect her from the dust and mildew that clung to the book. The jenny shook her head and brushed her sand-yellow mane out of her face, adjusting her glasses. Stay on task, Angie. You’re just here to restore it.
She examined the pages, trying to stop her brain from decoding the faded words as she made mental notes on the extent of the damage and formed a plan of attack on the forces of filth that had overtaken the ship’s log. Brushes for the dirt, wax paper and hydrogen peroxide for the mold, glue for the tears…ink to restore the lettering…
2:13 AM. Woke up to scratching at the door. Looked out with the lantern to find hallway empty. Lookout reported nothing. Can’t sleep. Pistol cold in my hoof. Voices telling me to end it…
Angela pulled herself away from the book, closing her eyes and forcing herself to suck in air through the mask. Perhaps she should forget the ink.
But better that the book was here, among the anonymous shelves of the Historical Society, than out in the open.
A rapping at the door made her look up. A pale blue hippogriff was standing at the open doorway of her office, confused concern in her light yellow eyes.
“Angela, there’s a couple of ponies out front who wanted to talk to you,” she said.
“Thank you, Seacrest,” Angela nodded, standing up. She carefully closed the book and slowly put it in a plastic bag, which she sealed shut. She removed the mask and gloves, balling them up and tossing them into a trash can, then picked up the bag with the holding strap in her mouth. With the cautious steps of a butler bearing a platter of glasses and red wine, she proceeded to the lockbox standing on a shelf in the back of the office.
“You okay, ma’am?” Seacrest asked hesitantly.
“‘M fine,” Angela replied, removing the keys from the left hoof pocket of her jacket. She inserted the smallest key into the lockbox, opening the metal door with a squeak of hinges. As she placed the bagged book into the lockbox, she caught a glimpse of the golden letters embossed onto the cover, faded but still legible.
TMS Merry Celestia.
Clearing her throat, she closed the lockbox and secured it once more. “Right. Let’s go meet our guests,” she said, following her assistant out of the office. She closed and locked the door behind her, returning her keys to her left pocket before proceeding down the halls of the Portsbeak Historical Society. The aged wood creaked beneath her hooves, the sound as comfortingly familiar as the sound of waves breaking against the beach. Through the windows, still streaked with the rain from earlier, she could see the hazy glow of the streetlamps illuminating the cozy houses of her hometown.
She heard the voices of their visitors as she entered the main room of the Historical Society, a grand study with rows and rows of bookshelves lining the walls, each bearing precious tomes from the previous inhabitants of the Griffish Isles. Paintings, portraits, and photographs were hung wherever there was space available. Here, General Ironbeak in his colorful regalia, painted after his victory over marauding pirates; there, a painting of a whaling ship at work, harpooners racing out in their rowboats to catch up to their target. Glass display cases contained exhibits from the isles’ rich history, from ancient earthenware to precious china and tableware to navigational instruments, each trinket carefully tended to.
One of the stallions, a broad-shouldered brown earth pony wearing a red and black coat and a black fedora and bearing the cutie mark of a boxing glove, was currently examining a sextant from the sixteenth century. His companion was a white stallion with black hair wearing a purple suit and sunglasses, which were also upon his flank. He leaned against a thin white cane looped about his right fetlock, listening to his companion’s lecture. Angela vaguely recognized them both.
“You adjust the arm of the sextant until the sun or the north star is just touching the horizon,” the brown stallion was explaining to his friend. “Then from that angle, you can do a quick and dirty calculation to determine how far north or south you are.”
“How’d they determine…” The white stallion frowned in thought as he daubed his lips with a napkin. “East-west? Is it latitude or longitude? I can never remember.”
“Longitude,” the stallion with the fedora replied. “And until they made good chronometers in the 1760s, that was mostly guesswork.”
“You seem to know what you’re talking about,” Angela smiled as she entered the room. Seacrest quietly took his leave, returning to his task of sorting the backlog of donated books in the backroom.
The two stallions turned to her with wide smiles. “Miss Coastline, thanks for seeing us,” the stallion in the fedora said, doffing his hat. “I’m Left Hook, and this is my friend Blind Luck.”
“Fitting name,” Blind Luck chuckled, gesturing at his shaded eyes as he tossed the napkin into a nearby trash can.
“Pleasure,” Angela said, shaking both of their hooves. “What can I do for you?”
“We’re visiting the Griffish Isles to do some research on local legends,” Left Hook explained. “We’re planning on doing a book on ghost stories and whatnot. We came by here this morning to look around--”
"He looked, I listened," Blind Luck smiled.
"But we had other things to attend to, so we didn't get to see you," Left Hook continued.
A memory clicked in the curator's mind. "Yes, I think I saw you this morning, but we didn't get a chance to talk,” Angela nodded, trying to ignore the ominous chill up her back and focus her thoughts on her guests and not on the book sitting in the lockbox in her office. “Well, I can assure you gentleponies that the Portsbeak Historical Society will be open for your research.”
Left Hook smiled. “I was hoping that you’d say that,” he commented. “Speaking of which, I think I see something that we can start with.”
His eyes turned to a painting on the wall depicting a group of ponies in richly adorned colored capes standing amidst a circle of carved monoliths and great stone tables. A large flat stone in the center bore elements of a ritual feast: bread, grapes, and goblets of wine, which the revelers were currently passing around.
“Ah, the standing stones of the Griffish Isles,” Angela said, nearly sighing with relief as she stepped up to her guest’s side. “This particular example is one not too far from here, just east of the village of Saddleshire.”
“Those symbols on their capes,” Left Hook commented, peering closer to study the embroidered symbols: a golden eye looking down upon an inkpot that was issuing forth a curved rainbow. “Those are Faust and Speranza worshippers. Around the sixth century, right?”
“Very good,” Angela nodded approvingly. “Local archeologists found evidence that early worshippers of the alicorns gathered around the stones, long before Apocrypha wrote her Revelations in 1157. This particular painting was made only about twenty years ago when religious implements were found by archeologists around the monoliths.”
“But they didn’t build the stones,” Left Hook pointed out.
“No, they didn’t,” Angela acknowledged. “No one’s sure who made those stones or what they were made for.”
“Don’t tell me,” Blind Luck clucked. “The aliens made them.”
Angela sighed. “That’s a common myth--”
She turned towards the other stallion and grunted in surprise, stumbling back as he rammed into her. The white cane clattered to the ground as they tumbled against each other, limbs entangling and disentangling. Angela grunted as her rear hit the floor painfully.
“Oh, sorry!” Blind Luck gasped out, fumbling for her foreleg and helping her up. “Sorry, I’m so stupid, I--”
“Quite all right,” Angela gasped out, massaging her ribs. “Anyway, the monoliths were there before the founding of Equestria. Some ponies believe that they represent calendars, some believe that they are arranged as a form of protective charm. Perhaps one day we’ll know what they were for.”
“The two of us have a few ideas,” Left Hook admitted. “And that’s not all we want to research.”
“Oh, there’s plenty where that came from,” Angela assured them. “We have some good old-fashioned ghosts, the black dogs, boggarts, giants…”
“We’re more interested in…tangential stories,” Blind Luck commented.
“Monoliths are neat and all,” Left Hook said, walking away from the painting back to the displays of nautical equipment. “But everyone loves a good ghost ship story. Like the Merry Celestia.”
The stone in Angela’s throat dropped into her stomach.
“It took us years to track down the last crewpony from the Neigh Gratia,” Left Hook continued, smiling at the curator. “I can’t tell you how disappointed we were when we found out that he’d died just a couple of months ago…or how relieved we were when we found out that you’d bought the logbook.” He gave her a winning smile. “We were hoping to see it.”
Angela took a moment to compose herself. “I’m sorry, but the ship’s log is too fragile for viewing,” she said. “There’s still a lot of renovation work to do--”
“Not a problem,” Left Hook waved it off. “We know a brilliant renovator who can have it looking freshly printed before you can say ‘haymaker.’”
“I’d prefer that the work be left to myself,” Angela frowned.
“I don’t mean to disrespect you,” Left Hook corrected himself. “But we’re working on a timeline and--”
“I’m sorry, but the ship’s log isn’t going to be available to the public,” Angela cut him off. “You’ll have to put in a request with the society if you want to view it.”
“Very well,” Left Hook said. “Then we’ll buy it from you. How do three hundred thousand bits sound?”
Angela’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not for sale,” she said firmly. “What do you even want it this badly for?”
Left Hook sighed and placed his fedora on a display case of sea charts. “Knowledge,” he replied. “Discovering what happened to the Merry Celestia so we can share it with the world.”
“And did you ever consider that things such as this aren’t meant to be shared?” Angela answered.
“Knowledge shouldn’t be hidden away, hoarded like an old dragon’s treasure,” Hook said. “Knowledge is meant to be sought out, revealed. Especially the hidden corners of the world.”
Angela lowered her glasses to fix her guest with a piercing stare. “Some knowledge shouldn’t be sought,” she replied evenly. “Especially not by ponies who don’t know what to do with it.”
“What makes you think that we don’t?” Left Hook pressed.
“You’re talking like this is a game,” Angela scolded. “Like it’s a Hayana Pones or a Compass Rose book. But what happened to the Merry Celestia is not something out of a pulp novel.”
“No, but it was real,” Left Hook continued. “And no one gains anything by hiding the facts away.” He took a breath. “I’m telling you this because I want you to understand the weight of what you have here.”
“I understand the weight of it completely,” Angela said coolly. “Which is why I’m not selling it.”
Left Hook sighed and placed his hat back on his head. “That’s fair,” he admitted. “Sorry you don’t see it our way.”
“You’re welcome to peruse the rest of the library,” Angela said. “But the ship’s log is off-limits.”
“Well, that’s kind of you,” Blind Luck said from behind her.
Left Hook glanced at his watch. “But I think it’s time for us to get going. Thanks for your time.”
“Of course,” Angela said stiffly.
“We’ll be seeing you,” Blind Luck grinned at her, patting her on the back as he and Hook exited.
Angela frowned at the stallions’ backs as they trotted down the hallway and out the front door into the cool darkness of the winter evening. It wasn’t until the door closed behind them that she allowed herself to relax, sighing deeply.
“Bloody amateur treasure hunters…” she grumbled, turning and heading back to her office. The creaking of the boards brought her no comfort, so great was the pressure building in her head, thumping with every beat of her heart. She fumbled in the pockets of her jacket for a moment before extracting the keys from her right pocket and unlocking her office.
It wasn’t until she’d fully stepped into the office and closed the door behind her that she remembered that she’d put her keys in her left pocket.
Her heart sunk into her stomach as she rushed across the room. The keys sang as she pulled them back out, nearly dropping them in her haste. She unlocked the door and opened it wide, already knowing what she’d find.
The safe was empty.
They had the ship’s log of the Merry Celestia.