The Curse of the Crimson Reprieve: Recovering Tong's Bones

 Sailing east along the equator, the Crimson Reprieve passed through weeks of eerie calm. Then the bell sounded, and Tong’s ghost returned.

Captain Hu remembered little—only that he’d dumped Tong “in the middle of the ocean,” with no clear landmark. The sea held many atolls. It seemed hopeless.

But Salt spoke to the crew. They remembered Tong’s beaded bracelet—dyed mollusk shells, a turtle-shaped charm. Ryu took up his diviner’s rod. Three times a day, he searched the waters for that charm. The ritual endured.

Then—turquoise water. Shallow sea. Volcanic rock formations. Ryu confirmed it: the rod pointed ahead and down.

They dropped anchor over water a hundred feet deep. Salt began her ritual. Before she finished, the rod signaled again. The charm was rising.

Through the clear sea, Bo-Jing spotted three aquatic maidens and their shark escorts. He accosted them. They vanished too quickly to read their intentions.

Bo-Jing spoke with the sharks—threats, bargains, and magical tricks involving snake-transformed sticks. The sharks grew ill. Salt, in shark form, dove to the bottom and found a guarded stronghold carved from lava rock and coral. Six trident-bearing warriors stood at the gate with the vomiting sharks.

She returned to the surface. When she came down again, the sea folk were gone. A stone sealed the entryway. She circled the lair and found another, smaller entrance—too narrow for a shark, just wide enough for someone brave.

Salt returned to the surface, and consulted with Bo-Jing on their next action. 

She returned to the undersea lair as a tiny silver fish and slipped unnoticed through the reef’s crevices.

Deep amongst the sponge seaweed farms, tangled in the amber-lit depths, she found what she had come for: a human skeleton, half-buried in the clinging silt. When she assumed human form, the seaweed, came to life, its tendrils wrapping tight around her limbs and pulling her down.

In an instant, Salt changed form again—a sea turtle, sturdy and calm. She chewed her way free, taking a long, lazy bite of the weed that had meant to devour her. Sated and safe, she returned to human form and gently gathered what she hoped were Tong’s remains.

She swam the surface, and climbed onto the ship. The ghost of Tong, returned, more agitated than ever, and paced over the bones.

The ship sailed on, and three days later, they spotted an island on the port side. Changing course, they reached the island by mid-afternoon. Salt, Bo-Jing, and Ryu went ashore with Tong's bones.

It was a lonely place. Beautifully laid paths framed with coral rag, now overground. Clearings with postholes where wooden houses had once stood. Enormous heads carved from porous black stone that whistled in the breeze. And, they believed a burial ground in the form of a clearing removed from the rest of the settlement, with oblong mounds of stones laid out like a miniature city.

 There, under an open sky, they buried Tong.

The ritual was quiet. Ryu taught them a burial chant and their voices echoed in the stone heads.  As the final rocks were placed, the wind picked up and voice seemed to speak:

“Will the other two be laid here also?”

Bo-Jing put his hand to his sword.  Ryu pronounced an exorcism. Salt smiled and said nothing.