It was weeks before Anna dared to touch the pendant again. She lived around it, trying to forget the strange beam of light in the sky, willing herself to ignore the name carved so purposefully within. She spent her days with Luke and Jesse, roaming the beaches and rowing boats in the narrow channels between islands. Sometimes she would climb alone to the highest ledge overlooking the cove and watch the three ships roll slowly at anchor. But Anna avoided even looking at her reflection in a mirror, for fear of seeing the necklace hanging at her neck, and she tucked it inside her shirt so no one would ask.

To make things worse, she began to have nightmares of hurricanes and dark shadows, rooms full of smoke and fire dancing on water. There were voices she had never known, and hands she had never held, all reaching out to her at once. She would wake, her eyes flashing wide open in the darkness. For some reason the scream always remained, stillborn, in her throat; instead, there was a forgotten name on her tongue that she could never quite remember by the time she had calmed enough to think.

It was one of those nights. Heart crashing in her chest, Anna lay flat on her bed, looking up at the rafters of her ceiling. After some time she felt her muscles slowly relax again, and then she padded slowly to the window. She gazed out at the plantation’s orchards and fields as they rested in the moonlight, and noted the gathering clouds in the sky. They were full and heavy with the monsoon rains, and soon the morning would dawn crackling with lightning.

Anna was not ashamed to admit it: she was afraid. It was different this time. The dream had been as vivid as reality—she could have sworn that her eyelashes had singed in the heat of a thousand raging fires, that she tasted ashes and the salt of tears. But her room was on the other side of the house, and there were too many corridors to stumble through before she could reach either of her brothers. She hadn’t gone to them, or her father, in the wake of a nightmare…not since she was a child. And those nightmares had never been like this…

Or had they?

Sighing, Anna let the curtain fall back across the panes. She paced her bedroom floor, feeling the smooth grain of the wood beneath her feet. Unwittingly, her hand flew to the pendant that had comforted her for so long…she was in such a state of agitation that she failed to notice at first. But as soon as she did, she dropped it with a startled gasp. Standing very still, Anna looked down at it, shining golden even in the dark. She stayed that way for a while, just looking at it, a thousand questions flying frantically through her mind like birds trapped in a house full of windows. They beat themselves against her skull, trying to escape, trying to reach answers that were just beyond the glass…but it was impossible. There was no way out.

Returning to the window, Anna unclasped the chain and held the pendant on her palm. She shivered, remembering what had happened the last time she opened the locket. Running her fingers over the intricate designs of flowers and vines, and then the barely noticeable hinges of the locket itself, Anna considered opening it again. Sarah…

She found herself walking across the room, turning the knob and opening the door. In an instant she was out in the hall, her hand trailing on the smooth wood of the banister as she kept going. Beyond the dark staircase leading down to the entrance hall she could make out nothing but a few shadowed shapes of chairs and tables. Anna went on, letting her feet take her to the back of the house, right to the door of her father’s room. She saw Luke’s door just a few more steps away, and even closer was Jesse’s. But no…she had to ask Father. Father would know. She couldn’t think of anyone else who might have given her the necklace, since it had been hers when she was born…unless it was Mother…

Mother. Anna let the word filter through her consciousness, as she stood there with one hand on the knob of the Pirate King’s room. She had strangely few memories of a mother…most likely because Rosalia had died giving birth to Jesse, and Anna had only been five or six then…

Anna paused her train of thought then, a new idea stretching thin tendrils of realization through her troubled heart. Why couldn’t she remember anything from that part of her childhood…? Why couldn’t she remember her mother’s face, only her arms and the smell of perfume? She had never thought of it before…but it was true, now that she concentrated on it. There were so few memories of the years when she was small. There were plenty from the time she was eight—dueling Luke with wooden swords, screaming whenever he held up a new speckled beetle or writhing grass snake, tickling Jesse as they swung in a hammock, watching the carpenters workingon Matanza’s figurehead, Father filling her hands with a cascade of coins…

Father. Anna turned the knob and swung the door open. She followed the sound of snoring to her father’s bedside, and gently shook him awake. He woke with a start, hand reaching immediately for the dagger he kept always at his side, even in sleep.

“…Annie?” The Pirate King slowly unclenched his hold on the dagger as Anna nodded quickly and sat herself at the foot of his bed. She could hear the cove beginning to churn with the coming of the storm. A night breeze carried in the anticipation of rain.

“Annie, love, why are ye up so late tonight? Can’t ye sleep?”

“No, Father, I had a nightmare.” She was about to elaborate on it further, when a shift in her movement caused the necklace to glimmer slightly in a patch of moonlight from the open window. And it was then that a thousand things seemed to happen at once.

Anna gasped as the Pirate King suddenly tore the pendant from her neck. The delicate golden chain on which it had hung for seventeen years snapped and fell to the floor. Before she could so much as cry out in protest, and before the Pirate King could do as he planned and hurl the locket from his window into the sea, there came a sudden cacophony of bells: the island’s sentry watch.

In the cove, three ships bearing the standard of the Royal Navy weighed in at anchor, jolly boats hitting the choppy water as cannons were readied and guns loaded.

In his bedroom, Luke sat up and was running even before his feet touched the floor. He burst through his door just as Jesse came leaping out of his own room, belting his cutlass to his waist. Nearly crashing into one another, they ran for their Father’s room.

Luke stopped short at the open door at a strangely familiar, and yet completely unfamiliar, sight: his father, illuminated in a flash of lightning, standing at the open window. Reaching for the doorframe to steady himself, Luke shook his head as though to rid himself of the vision. A raucous order from the Pirate King and a cry from Anna brought him back to reality.

“Luke! Jesse! Take care of your sister!”

Regaining his senses, Luke swerved just in time as his Father charged out the door. The bells were tolling louder now, and more frantically than ever. He wanted to call out to his father, and the notion was absurd but he felt it in his bones: he had been given the same instructions before.

Anna had heard the locket hit the floor, although the sound had been barely audible in the noise and confusion within and without. Taking advantage of the circumstances, she dove for it. Jesse was already at her side, pulling her to her feet urgently, but he had not seen what she hid with the curled fingers of her fist. Luke crossed the room in three strides and took her by the wrist. Jesse, at Anna’s elbow, pushed her as gently as he could towards the door.

“Let’s go,” Luke said, and his voice was as grim as his face. Tightening his hold on Anna’s wrist, he took a step forward, and then another, while the storm gathered strength outside. He knew what his father had meant.