The Pearl Fox

Outside a Dream

Tall sailing ships were visible in the far distance of the South Green Sea. Smaller boats powered by steam cut through the waves quickly. Disk shaped fishing trawlers appeared stationary at the shallower coasts, as their vast nets were pulling mostly seaweed and some tuna. The choppy rippling sea glittered beneath the sun. 

"Why can't we just get on a boat and sail to Island Starnut?" Flora asked, because the island was just five leagues across the channel from where she stood on the beach. Being here was part of her investigation although she couldn't help but feel like it was a holiday at the Black Coast. Vandox didn't reply so she prompted him with an idea. "That could be where they've gone?"

"They're not on the island," Vandox told her. "We've looked into it and the police have no leads out there."

They walked across black soft sand covered in shells and urchins. Along the Black Coast were black basalt cliffs that reached five hundred feet high. It was a dark beach full of animal bones, washed up at the tide, and fossils that were trapped within the rocks for millennia. The place was full of rainbow seashells and speckled pebbles. On their search they came across the bones of sharks, narwals, fish, marine reptiles, all draped in seaweed. An old Blue Path temple ruin sagged against the cliff midway up, with eroded steps that used to lead from the entrance down to the beach, and another set of steps leading up the cliff face to the top. All of its treasures and secrets had been looted years ago. 

"Remember that we're here to locate two missing men," Vandox reminded Flora. "And a woman who vanished here recently. So we're looking for three people now."

"Well, this is police work. It's daytime and we're both the Night Patrol," she replied, distracted by a large animal skeleton that was just poking up through the sand. 

"You're right, and wrong too," Vandox said. "The police give assignments to the Night Patrol because of our psychic gifts. We can see things their officers can't. We know things they don't."

"Those psychic gifts are not working because we can't find them."

Vandox chose to say nothing. She was told it doesn't always work that way. Flora picked up a conch shell, then admired the patterns. She looked at the beaded stones, starfish, red algae weeds like strands of hair. The smell of the ozone filled Flora with memories of childhood when her parents took her to the Black Coast every Summer. The tide was out, and foam bubbles from the surf ringed around the small rocky islets and fringe coral reef. 

Vandox kept picked up pieces of driftwood, and removing bundles of yellow seaweed from large pebbles, in the hope of finding something, anything that might offer a clue. The police searched here, and found nothing. Then sergeant  Willow made Vandox and Flora come out here to pick up anything using their extra sensory talents as members of the Night Patrol. Vandox did locate Rebik Helder, and since then, it emerged that the village was repopulated by tax dodgers who were protected by their priest Unjic. It had been Unjic who stole from the coffers of his own temple, the pyramid Temple Daphne, to purchase coal and oil, to bring energy back to Southernville 2. He tried to hide the people from the officials, so he used his authority as a priest to rob from a bank in Dream Rocks city. Unjic had even gone as far as to visit West Wind Town to steal books and potions from a wizard named Offillwewyn so that he could learn more about trickery and illusions. 

Flora picked up a big tulip shell and couldn't find room for it in her satchel that was filled with other seashells. She'd collected cockles, lightning whelk, worm snail shells, conches, clams, a spiky sea urchin, edible kelp, red algae, tasaka and purple lettuce. She wanted to cook the sea plants in boiled water, then eat it with scampi, lemon and spiced pepper. Then something shone beneath the animal fossils and seaweeds. It was the remains of a dead man, still in clothes that were tattered and covered in sand and sea weeds but there was no mistaking it, the patterns of a Night Patrol uniform.

"Vandox!" she cried. "I found someone!"