The Long Lost Shark

This is Part Four of a Four Part series (The Red Map of Captain Gato, The Marooned Cat, The Privateer Mouse, The Long Lost Shark)

Once there was an old blind woman who held a door open to her small cabin in the middle of a forest, on an island the shape of a ring with a lagoon in the center of it.

She was holding it open for a cat with a rope tied to its tail. At the end of its tail was an empty bottle of rum. Well, it didn’t have rum in it. It had a rolled up parchment and a necklace with a marble attached to it.

A mouse was riding along on the old woman’s shoulder. The cat and the mouse were tired, wet and a little confused. For some reason, the old woman thought it was not a coincidence that the cat and the mouse had found each other.

What did she mean about “finding each other”. Thought the mouse and the cat.

Once inside, the old woman found a small vial with no inscriptions on it, unscrewed the top, and let the mouse lick the opening. Almost instantly, the mouse grew into a little girl, and the old woman wrapped her in a large quilt.

The cat had been watching in amazement. He had for a moment, on the beach just minutes earlier, though he had been looking into his daughter’s eyes when he looked into the mouse’s eyes. He now knew it had in fact been his daughter. He rubbed up against her legs and purred loudly.

The old lady untied the bottle of rum from the cat’s tail and uncorked it. She shook out the map and the marble necklace. She twisted the marble and it opened up. It contained a fine red powder. She took out a pinch and rubbed it on the cat’s nose.

The cat began sneezing, and with every sneeze, grew larger and larger into a full-grown man.

The old woman wrapped him in a quilt as well, just as the little girl realized it was her father.

“Father!” she said as she ran to him. “It’s you!”

“Yes, dear.” He said as he hugged her tight. “You’ve done well.”

“I had no idea, Father!” said the little girl.

“Nor did I!” said her Father.

They all hugged.

“Let’s have a look at the map,” said the old woman. “Is it still intact?”

“Oh,” said Father. “I’m afraid I’ve ruined it.”

She unrolled it and smelled the large wine stain, and then she put her tongue to it.

“I can fix this,” said the old woman. “Did they figure it out?”

“It looked like they did,” said the little girl.

“Did either of you get a look at the solution?” she said as she found a dark glass bottle from a top shelf with some letters and numbers written on it. She rubbed her fingers across the label and smiled.

“I think I did!” said the little girl. “Right before Father tried to knock me out of the chandelier.”

“Sorry about that,” said Father.

The old woman poured the liquid over the map, and the red stain disappeared.

“The red ink on the map is Lawsone your father brought from India,” said the old woman. “It will not be affected by the liquid. Can you read the map now?”

“Yes,” said the little girl and her father in unison.

“OK, sweetie,” said the old woman to the little girl. “See if you can recreate what you saw.”

The little girl took the corners and folded them over, pulled the inside out and reversed the edges and suddenly, they were looking at a cube made out of the map.

The woman felt the box-map.

“Oh,” said the woman. “This is correct. This is how I remember it. It’s been so long.”

She studied it, as did Father. They both smiled.

“What is it?” said the little girl. “What is the map for?”

“Well,” said Father. “A long time ago, your mother drank something I had brought home from a far off land.”

“Is that what killed her?” asked the little girl.

Her Grandmother looked toward her Father as if she could see.

“Well,” said Father. “Not quite.”

The little girl was confused.

“You told me she died a long time ago,” said the little girl, “When I was really young.”

Her Father put his hand on her shoulder.

“This map,” said the old woman, “Will lead us to the liquid.”

“Liquid?” said the little girl.

“It’s somewhere on the island,” said her Father. “It was so long ago. Your mother made this map when she hid it.”

“Mother hid the liquid? Why did she hide it?” asked the little girl. “Wait a minute, what does it do?”

“Well,” mumbled her father. “It changes you into an animal of some sort.”

“What kind of animal?” asked the little girl as she looked around in the trees. “Like a monkey or a squirrel?”

“Well, no,” said her Father. “Your mother was turned into … a shark.”

“The shark in the lagoon is your mother,” said the old woman.

“She’s been in the lagoon the whole time?” asked the little girl.

“Yes,” said her father. “but now that we have this map, all we have to do is decipher it.”

“Can I see her?” asked the little girl.

“No,” snapped the old woman. “She would not have wanted you to see her like this.”

The little girl sulked, then sat up.

“This liquid can turn her back?” asked the little girl.

“Yes,” said her Father. “I had brought it home from a journey and tried it on myself. Your Mother and Grandmother had the hardest time getting me to come back to shore. Apparently, the shark is a volatile animal and cannot be easily told what to do. They finally got me to drink it again to reverse the effects, and she decided to hide it.”

“She made a map just in case,” said her Grandmother.

“In case what?” asked the little girl.

“Well, my batch was not the only batch,” said her Father. “There was a pirate named Captain Tiburon who wanted my batch. The same merchant who sold me my batch had also sold the Captain some.”

The little girl sat down as her father went on.

“He had used up most of his by attacking cargo ships and apparently found out that I had bought the rest of the batch, and he wanted mine. He was a bad man. He had attacked and plundered thousands of merchant ships. Sailors were afraid to step onto any ship headed for the open seas. No one knew how to stop him, but they knew he was almost out of the liquid. So we all knew his time was running short.”

He took a deep breath and went on.

“We heard he was on his way, and your mother hid our liquid so he wouldn’t find it, and made the map. One day, he found us, and after a brief scuffle, the last little bit of his liquid was knocked out of his hand, and fell right into your mother’s mouth.”

“Oh, no!” said the little girl.

“I had no idea where your Mother had hidden the liquid, so he left,” said her Father. “But he had swam to the island as a shark, then turned himself into a man on shore, so he had no boat to get back to his ship which was anchored just beyond the lagoon. He was very irresponsible with his liquid.”

“No one has seen him since,” said her Grandmother.

“Did mother…eat him?” asked the little girl.

“We don’t know,” said her father.

They all sat quietly for a moment.

“A few weeks after that is when your grandmother arrived to live with us,” said Father. “Just in time, too, I was getting lonely on this island.”

Grandmother smiled.

“So, how did you know these other pirates were going to come and steal the map?” said the little girl.

“Well,” said her father. “Every few weeks, I’d go to shore and talk about a great treasure left by Captain Gato. I’d make sure everyone was interested and talking about it. I knew that if I had everyone interested, someone would take the bait.”

“What bait?” asked the little girl.

“One day, as I was on shore,” said her father, “I bumped into a man I had not seen in a great while. He was called “The Professor.” He was a very smart man. I knew that if he got a look at the map, he could figure it out. I was right. I just had to get him to show us, and he did, didn’t he.”

“Well let’s get looking at the map!” she exclaimed.

They studied the map for hours. Father’s memory was failing him. Even with the map folded into a cube, he was still befuddled by the landmarks.

“Your mother was very smart,” said Father. “She sure made sure we couldn’t find the liquid very easily.”

“This tree looks familiar,” said the little girl. “But it looks smaller than I remember. And this rock has something about it too, but again, it looks so much smaller than when I remember seeing it.”

“When do you remember seeing these things?” asked her Father. “I’ve never seen these things on this island.”

“I think I saw them when I was a mouse,” said the little girl. “When I was riding in the hem of the pirate’s leg on the way back to the beach.”

No one spoke for a few moments.

“Well,” said Father. “Do you think you can remember which way they took you to the shore?”

“I think so,” said the little girl.

So they left the old woman in the cabin and hiked through the forest to the beach.

They reached the beach much sooner than the little girl expected to.

“It seemed longer when the pirates brought me,” said the little girl.

“Well,” said her father, “Let’s go back and take another look at the map.”

The little girl took a long look into the lagoon. She thought she saw a dorsal fin rise above the water, but she couldn’t be sure.

They got back to the cabin.

“So, Father,” asked the little girl. “How did you end up as a cat?”

“Well,” said Father. “After your grandmother arrived, we occupied ourselves looking high and low for anything that could help turn your mother back. We gathered different potions and liquids from all over the world, but nothing had worked.”

“That’s when we thought of the idea to find someone who could figure out your mother’s map.

“It was your grandmother’s idea to turn me into a cat so The Professor would take me on his ship.”

The little girl was impressed.

“When you talked about the treasure, did you say there was loads of jewels and gold,” said the little girl.

“Oh, yes,” said her father. “I knew he’d be interested in the booty.”

They laughed at his ingenuity, and the gullible pirates.

“Wait a minute,” said the little girl. “How about you make me into a mouse again, Grandmother, and I get into your hem, Father. Maybe I have to be small to see what I saw.”

“That is a great idea!” said her father.

“Doesn’t fall far from the tree!” said the grandmother as she unscrewed the lid of the vial and let the little girl drink from it.

Instantly, the little girl emerged from the pile of her clothes on the floor and jumped onto her father’s hem.

Father ran outside with the map in hand, showing it to her daughter every once in a while.

“Wait!” said the little tiny mouse voice. “Here’s the rock.”

He looked down at where he was standing, and there it was; a very small rock with a hole in it that looked just like the one on the map.

Then a few inches away from the rock was the tree, which was actually just a twig stuck in the ground.

Father’s eyes widened.

“I think I remember what to do!” he yelled.

He pulled the stick out of the ground and pushed it deep into the hole in the rock, which opened a small door in a nearby tree.

Inside the hole in the tree was yet another vial filled with a small amount of liquid. Father tried to grab the vial, but his hand was too big and the door in the tree was too small.

“It’s too small!” said Father. “I can’t get it.”

“Let me do it,” said his daughter.

Her father carefully picked her up and put her into the doorway in the tree. The mouse took hold of the vial as her father held on to her tail and pulled her out.

---

When Father finally returned to the cabin with her Mother, the little girl was not a mouse anymore, and was sitting on the rocking chair on the porch.

The little girl leapt from the chair and flew down to her mother and hugged her so tight, and then hugged her father.

They laughed and cried.

“Mother,” said the little girl. “Come see grandmother. She’s inside!”

“Grandmother?” wondered her mother as she turned to Father. “Who’s in the house, dear?”

Suddenly, the door flew open and there stood grandmother, but she was not her usual sweet, calm self. She had a large rifle in her hands and was pointing it directly at the little girl.

“I’ll be taking the shark liquid,” she said in a strange raspy voice.

Father took the liquid out from his breast pocket and held it up.

“Here it is,” said Father. “It’s yours.”

“Captain Tiburon!” said Mother. “I knew you’d be back.

“You’re not my grandmother?” said the little girl.

“Sorry sweetie!” said Captain Tiburon. “You’re a good girl. Now step aside and no one gets hurt.”

He walked slowly past the little girl and toward Father, holding his aim on the little girl.

“I lived on the island for a few weeks after our last meetin’, then found my way back here,” said the Captain. “You labeled your potions very well. It didn’t take me long at all to find the one that made me look like this.”

“I thought she was your mother,” said Father to Mother. “I’m so sorry.”

Father held the liquid out as far as he could, and Captain Tiburon snatched it and backed up toward the beach, away from the family.

When he got far enough away, he quickly turned and ran toward the beach.

“It’s over,” said Mother. “We won’t be seeing him for a while.”

They turned to look for their little girl, but she had gone.

“Where’d she go?” the wondered and began looking toward the house.

They found an opened vial with no inscription on it lying on a pile of clothes.

“Oh, no!” said Father.

They both turned and ran to the beach.

When they got to the beach, Captain Tiburon was drinking some of the liquid. They could not see the mouse anywhere. Suddenly, a rock flew up from the ground and knocked the vial from Captain Tiburon’s hand.

Captain Tiburon turned into a shark and fell into the water. The vial that the stone had knocked out of Captain Tiburon’s hand fell onto a rock on the beach and smashed into a million pieces.

They watched the shark’s dorsal fin swim out into deeper waters, and then disappear.

He was gone, and he would never be turned back into a man.

The little girl’s mother and father ran and picked up the mouse and kissed her and hugged her.

They took her home and made her a little girl again.

That was the day they threw away all the potions that turned people into animals.

Except for the bird one. Flying around like a bird was fun.

The End