White Rock Island
An unusual old woman, a secretive crew, and a private island
Although it’s not absolutely necessary for your enjoyment of this story, my two-part short story “The Rifter” provides context and backstory for Olga Fitsimons and her unnatural abilities.
Read “The Rifter: Part I”
From my perch on the top deck of the Polaris, the sea, still and quiet as bated breath, glows red in the setting sun. Sucking a drag from my evening cigarette, I prop my feet on a stool to air my bunions. “What’s that old rhyme? Something about a red sky being a bad omen at nighttime?”
“You’re thinking morning.” Vera leans against the side of the ship, her hands fidgety. “There’s nothing wrong with a red sky at night.”
“So how’s it go, then?”
Vera, her usually sharp tone muted and dull, gnaws at one of her nails. “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight.”
I squint my ancient eyes at her. Something’s off. On every other dubious delivery job I’ve witnessed since I took up with this ship, the crew has been in and out, dropping off their crates of what-have-you and disappearing before any nosy by-lookers get suspicious. But this time they’re lingering. Waiting around the corner of an uninhabited island in the little archipelago.
The crew has done their job; they’ve been paid. The rich old man has his painting. So why haven’t we made for a populated harbor to spend the night?
I know shifty when I see it. It looks like a captain who just earned an absurd amount of money on a delivery shutting himself up in his cabin. It looks like a mechanic who darts his eyes toward the island’s tree line and slaps a wrench into his palm like an overactive drummer. It looks like Vera – whatever she does on this boat – chewing on the nails she just painted yesterday.
I may be old, but I’m not blind. Something’s fishy. And I don’t just mean in the water.
Whatever the old rhyme says, I don’t see anything good coming of this red sunset.
A bump and a splash interrupt the quiet night, and I wake with a start, flinging my withered arms out in a flailing defense.
Wood splinters, and tiny flecks of wood sting my hand. I surge up to a sitting position, only to see, in the clear white moonlight shooting through my porthole, a fist-sized hole in the nightstand bolted to my cabin floor.
My old shoulders droop. I’m just about fed up with objects breaking all around me.
I just won’t mention the broken nightstand, that’s all. It’s not as if the crew regularly visits my cabin. When I’m ready to move onto a different ship or city, I’ll just neglect to mention the broken furniture. Who puts a nightstand that close to a bed anyway?
My ears catch something - careful splashing outside, more than waves against the hull. I peep out my porthole and look down to the sea where we’re anchored.
We’ve moved since I fell asleep.
Now we’re bobbing just fifty yards from the shore of White Rock, right back at the island where the crew dropped off that painting hours earlier.
Below me, the dinghy is in the water, swaying on the waves that lap against the ship. Sebastian the mechanic turns toward the moon, and its light catches on his young, pockmarked face.
For a moment, in the moonlit distance – I see Henry. Dark hair, big eyes, cheekbones sharp with youth and never quite enough food. My little Henry.
But I shake my head, and Sebastian’s face is back, reflecting the moonlight.
Captain Desmond, long and lean, drops with a heavy thump into the dinghy, then Vera, slinking down the ladder like a cat. In the moonlit ripples, the little rowboat drifts silently away from the ship.
I sigh and pull out my flask. I knew this wasn’t a simple delivery job.
Classic, really. I’ve seen plenty such heists in my time. Deliver something valuable, get the lay of the land, earn the rich old man’s trust, then sneak back in the dead of night and steal something for another buyer. Though it seems a bit out of this crew’s league, if you ask me. They’re more the type to deliver a couple boxes of contraband and then slip out before the law’s any the wiser. Wonder how much money it took to convince them to step outta their comfort zone.
Oh well. No skin off my back as long as they pull this off.
Through my porthole, I watch Captain Desmond, Sebastian, and Vera drag the dinghy onto the shore of White Rock and creep along the rough, chalky beach toward the forest. If they’d asked me, I’d have said it’s a fool’s errand to be sneaking around an unfamiliar island stealing things on a night with a bright full moon. But nobody ever asks me. That’s one of the many insults of old age. Nobody thinks to ask the old lady for advice.
The three of them, their shadows snaking along the chalky white rocks that give the island its name, tiptoe along the beach, then disappear into the trees. I sit back and hoist my feet up on the half-busted nightstand that holds my whiskey and smokes. Only thing to do is wait. They’d better come back in one piece and with whatever it is they’re supposed to steal, or I’ll be having a strongly worded discussion with them about my fare. If they want to keep me, a paying passenger, around to make their little smuggling operation look legitimate, they’d better make it worth my while.
Something on the shore glints in the moonlight. I snap my eyes back to the porthole so fast that my neck pops.
On the beach, the bright full moon flashes on a long piece of dark metal. A man stands up from behind a boulder, and the flash of metal reveals itself as an unnecessarily large gun. The man holds something up to his face, and although I can’t hear a word he says, I know exactly what he’s doing.
Apparently, the rich old man isn’t as trusting as he seems, if he sent his stooge down to patrol the beach.
I give an exasperated sigh and haul myself to my feet. This young crew, green as beans and twice as foolhardy, is not going to get me stranded out here in the private cove of some eccentric millionaire.
Good thing they’ve got me as a passenger. At least there’s one person around here with a little bit of sense.
In a cramped storage space, I find an oar and a spare rowboat with a few holes in it – probably from some ill-advised skirmish. Feeling high and mighty and resourceful, I drag the dinghy onto the deck and toss it into the cold, salty water.
Then, less gracefully, I hook my cane over my arm, clamber down the ladder into the dinghy, and set off, paddling toward White Rock.
But it turns out that riding in a leaky dinghy isn’t much different than swimming. By the time I get that vaguely boat-shaped, useless hunk of wood onto land, I’m dripping wet and even crankier than normal. I thump my cane along the rocks as I hobble up the beach.
The little smuggling crew tried and failed to go unobserved. But my strategy has nothing to do with stealth.
The guard on security detail stands up from behind his rock. “Stop there!”
Just a kid, really. Or am I just old enough that everyone looks like a kid to me?
He stomps toward me, his gun pointing down at the sand. Doesn’t even bother to point it at me. It’s almost enough to sting my pride. Probably thinks I’m Captain Desmond’s senile grandma who’s prone to wandering off.
“State your business.”
This kid’s bluffing. His voice is gruff, but with the itch of ill-fitting clothes, not with the hard-earned roughness of a difficult life. I slip on my sweetest smile.
“Could you say that a bit louder, son?” I tap my ear, jingling the earrings which dangle from my sagging lobe. “My hearing’s not what it used to be.”
I’m bluffing too, but I’ve had decades more practice. My joints may be creaky and my strength brand new and unpredictable – but there’s not a thing wrong with my hearing.
“State your business, granny.”
“I’m tired of being cooped up on that boat. Thought a walk might do me good.”
His bushy, unkempt eyebrows furrow. “Ma’am, it’s the middle of the night.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead, which won’t be long. Where’s a good place for an old woman to stroll in these parts?”
The kid licks his lips with a frown. “Ma’am, head back to your ship now, or I will escort you back myself.” He steps toward me.
“That’s sweet of you, son. Mind if I just rest a minute?” I waddle and thump my way to a boulder.
He follows me, gun still pointed at the ground. “You have exactly one minute to get back to your rowboat and head back to that ship. This beach is private property.”
“Speak up, honey.” I prop my cane against the boulder.
He rolls his eyes and leans down, his mouth inches from my ear. “This beach is –”
I grab the lapel of his jacket. With a quick shove, I knock him against the boulder, and he crumples to the ground like paper.
I reach down to his face, my hand shaking more than I’d like and my heart doing a tap dance. Guess I’m still not used to it, this bizarre strength.
He’s breathing. Good. Nice enough kid, for a mercenary security guard.
I slip his gun from his limp hands and drop the magazine into my palm. Squatting down despite the creaks and pops of my old joints, I rifle through his pockets, his boots – anywhere he might hide ammo.
I straighten up and hurl his rifle toward the deep water of the bay. It dings the side of the Polaris, and even from where I stand, I know I made a decent dent. I’ve learned to do a whole host of things in my long life, but throwing isn’t one of them. I can throw harder and farther now than I could two months ago, but that has done nothing for my aim.
I tuck the pistol into my sweater pocket, along with an extra mag of ammo. I don’t have plans to shoot anyone tonight. But always good to have a fallback.
Still, aside from my preternatural strength, I’m relying mostly on my other great advantage – the element of surprise.
There’s only one trail through the thick forest. It winds along, trees arching overhead, their branches growing together into a ceiling which blocks out the light of the moon.
Ahead, flickering lights poke through the trees.
A creaking pain shoots down my leg from my ancient hip, and under my breath I curse the uneven dirt of this godforsaken island.
Then, the trees thin, and a house – huge and white, with windows even darker than the night around them – stands in a clearing where the trail ends. Not a soul anywhere, from what I can tell.
Where are the other guards?
I hobble around the clearing, clutching my cane in my lumpy old hand, sticking to the shadow of the trees. From a side door, I catch the deep rumble of a man’s voice, though I can’t make out the words. I take one tentative step out from the shadows.
No gunshots, no shouts.
I take another step. No sound except for the voice coming from the house.
Trying to thump my cane as quietly as it is possible to thump a cane, I waddle my way to the door. I stop, pressing my ear to the crack.
Captain Desmond’s voice interrupts the rough murmur. “It’s really not necessary to –”
There’s a thump and a grunt of pain. “Nobody asked you.” The deep voice, raspy from a lifetime of smoking – not unlike my own, really – hisses from inside.
My old brain races. There’s at least one man in there with a gun.
And, though I may have the advantage of surprise, stealth isn’t my forte. Sneaking into the house and attacking the guards from behind would involve far more climbing over and through obstacles than I’m willing to try, and there’s a good chance I’d wind up stuck halfway through a window and be a sitting duck for the old man’s goons.
Best to come in loud and hot and let the kids escape in the confusion. That’s the kind of plan that fits my skill set.
Taking a breath, I pop my neck, stretch my gnarled fingers, and tighten them around the handle of my cane.
My intention is to kick the door open and yell something snarky to distract the guards. What happens, though, is something else entirely.
I aim my foot at the door and kick with all the strength in my skinny old leg. A fiery pain shoots from my back down to my ankle – my sciatica again. What on earth kind of supernatural phenomenon gives an old woman more strength than Goliath but doesn’t cure her raging sciatica?
My foot connects with the old wooden door, but instead of bursting open, I break right through, leaving a foot-shaped hole in the door and sending a shower of shards and splinters into the house. I hop up and down, scrambling to yank my foot back to my side of the door.
Through the hole, I catch a glimpse of the room.
There’s that moment of silence that tends to happen when an old lady kicks through a door – it’s not long, but it’s enough for me to see an interesting tableau. My crew, their hands up, stands back to back in the middle of a darkened kitchen, surrounded by a trio of hired thugs.
That one moment is all the crew needs. Considering that they’re first-rate smugglers and fourth-rate burglars, they’re quick-thinking little sneaks. They scatter. Vera and Sebastian leap past the guards and take off through one door, and Desmond darts through another.
Did the crew realize that little old Olga was their savior?
Unclear.
I punch through the jagged remains of the door, yanking boards out of my way, and push into the house.
The thugs are useless. Not one of them fires a shot at little old me.
Two of them run into each other as they take off after the crew. The third, the old one, swings the butt of his gun at me. Maybe his delicate sensibilities don’t accommodate shooting grandmas.
I hold up my wizened hand – my reflexes are faster than ever. The gun pounds into my palm, but I catch it fast. I flick my arm to the side, and the man goes flying. He crashes into a row of pots and pans on the wall, sending them clanging to the ground.
He rolls to his side with a groan.
With one hand, I grab my cane and bring it down with a tap. Just a tap. I don’t want a dead man on my hands.
But he’s a quick one. He spins out of the way, and my cane taps the kitchen floor hard enough to put a hole in the old wooden boards.
Guess I misjudged my tap. Good thing he moved in time.
The guard jumps to his feet, screeching something so creatively vulgar that even I haven’t heard it before.
He grabs a frying pan, brandishing it at me as he backs away. “I know what you are!”
With one shaking hand behind his back, grabs a doorknob.
I hobble toward him, my leg still burning from hip to ankle. “That makes one of us.”
He swings the frying pan and misses. With the rubber tip of my cane, I poke him in the chest.
He flies backward through the door, which splinters.
But he doesn’t fall into a room. He falls down a staircase.
He tumbles, his hands scrabbling for the railings. With terrible, crashing thumps, he rolls down the stairs. One last, sickening bump, and he lies still on the basement floor.
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m hauling my protesting joints down those stairs. I reach the bottom faster than I would have thought possible and bend down to the man.
Don’t be dead, please don’t be dead.
I’ve seen enough death to last a lifetime, a long lifetime. Not another dead man, please. Not at my hands. Not again.
He’s missing the obvious signs of death. His neck’s not twisted at an angle; there’s no pool of blood around his head.
His chest rises with a breath, and I almost let out a sob.
But I catch myself, I swallow it down. I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
Turning to the stairs, I listen for movement, but I hear nothing aside from the creaks and pops of an old house.
I haul myself back up the stairs, my bones whining every step of the way. I just hope those kids find what they’re looking for and get out, because I’ve reached my quota of guard-incapacitations for the night.
I creep down hallways stuffed with paintings, sculptures, ancient vases – whoever it is they’re stealing from is apparently obsessed with wasting his money on anything and everything made in the name of art – until my ears catch the dull bumps and crashes of a fight. My cane and I hobble in that direction. Maybe I can be helpful, if I can ever get there.
As I waddle into a marble-floored foyer with a soaring staircase, the captain stumbles into the room.
Even in the darkness I can tell that his lip is bleeding, and he’s got a doozy of a black eye forming. Still, he takes only a moment to recalibrate before he starts barking orders. “Olga, get back to the beach and wait at the dinghy.”
There’s a clatter behind us, and a moment later, Vera and Sebastian come sprinting down the stairs. Vera’s steps are light as a cat’s, and an impressive stream of curse words slips out under her breath.
“The code didn’t work.” She stops in front of Desmond, hissing under her voice. “We got to the safe but couldn’t get in.”
“Didn’t work?” Desmond shakes his head, holding his fingers to his temple.
A distant thumping pounds from upstairs. Desmond grits his teeth. “We’re compromised anyway. Go.”
Vera and Sebastian shoot into the darkness of the hall. The captain snaps his head toward me. “What are you doing off the ship?”
I hobble past him after the rest of the crew. “Oh, me? I was just out for a stroll.”
Vera and Sebastian swing open a side door, but the doorway fills with the bulky form of a black-suited guard, his silhouette blocking our escape into the woods beyond.
With a faint shriek, Vera dodges around the guard, but his arm comes down hard on Sebastian, who falls to the ground with a painful smack.
Desmond breaks into a sprint, leaving me behind.
Something heavy and round rolls from Sebastian’s pocket, thrumming against the wooden floors. The guard stops, his eyes fixed on the little object. His face blanches, and this massive, fierce-eyed man lets out an audible gasp.
Sebastian scrambles toward it, but the guard dives forward, snatching Sebastian’s leg. He reaches for the radio strapped to his shoulder.
Desmond’s foot knocks the radio from his hands, but, through a grunt of pain, the guard’s voice breaks the muffled quiet. “Code Green! Code Green!” he hollers into the cavernous house.
Captain Desmond’s foot swings toward the man’s face, but the guard rolls to the side and kicks the captain’s legs out from under him.
Desmond hits the ground with a heavy thud, and in the moment it takes him to catch his breath, the world slows.
The guard’s hand darts for the pistol at his hip. Finger on the trigger. Out of the holster. Barrel pointed straight at –
Sebastian.
“Tell your thief to give it back,” the guard says, his breathing heavy but his hand steady, as he turns his eyes to Captain Desmond. “Or he’ll be the first to go.”
My chest aches. I see it again – the pockmarked face, so young; the eyes, cocky and naïve and bright and afraid.
Why do the young never realize how beautiful they are?
His eyes can’t go dark and empty. I can’t watch the light drain away, slipping out of sight like rainwater through a grate.
I won’t watch that again.
Never again.
I don’t will my body to move, but it does. I don’t tell my withered arms to swing my cane through the air with all the force hidden in their sinews.
But there’s a crunching sound, like a bird’s skeleton crushed underfoot, and the gun skitters across the marble floor. The guard clutches his shattered hand and screams, a high, keening sound.
The slow world spins faster, faster – its muffled noise coming back to my ears as the captain whirls on Sebastian with palpable fury.
“What did you take?”
Sebastian’s face is so white that I can see his freckles even in the pale light. He shoves the little round thing back in his pocket. “I didn’t think –”
“Just go!” Desmond hauls him to his feet and pushes him out the door, and Vera and Sebastian sprint toward the woods.
With an aggravated sigh, I move my groaning limbs as fast as they’ll go. “Sure, leave the old lady behind.”
“Olga, get a move on.” The captain grabs me by my skinny old elbow and pulls me forward. If he’s suspicious about my arm strength being a little excessive for an ancient woman, he hides it well.
“That’s Mrs. Fitsimons to you,” I snap. “And I think you could show a little more respect to the lady who saved your sorry excuse for a burglary crew.”
The road back through the woods goes a whole lot quicker with Desmond tugging me along. Good thing I’m a tough old lady, though, because he pulls hard when he’s scared.
We emerge onto the moonlit beach and scramble for the boat.
Vera and Sebastian are already at the dinghy, waving at us to hurry. I can’t help but let out a grumble. How fast do they expect an old lady to go?
The poor kid I knocked out earlier pops up from behind a boulder as we hobble past, his hat askew and his eyes wide. “Stop right there!”
Hoping Desmond doesn’t look too closely or think too hard, I stick out my cane and swipe at the kid’s legs. He drops like a sack of potatoes.
Desmond shoots me a look, but then his eyes turn back to his boat. Whatever strange things his crotchety passenger may do, that ship is what’s first on this captain’s mind.
When the chalky rocks of the island are out of sight and the groans of the lone pursuing motorboat have faded into the clear night wind that whips around us, the captain suddenly slams his fist on the helm and whirls on Sebastian. “What did you take?”
Everyone is silent. Vera busies herself with her nails. I watch Sebastian and the captain, because I’m old and have no shame.
Sebastian, his eyes downcast, slides his hand into his pocket.
His hand emerges, the strange, heavy round thing cupped in his palm. The quick little ship slices through waves with a gentle rushing whisper as we leave White Rock far behind us.
No motorboats chasing after us yet. Not that they could catch us, if the captain’s estimation of his Polaris is correct.
The captain’s voice is low. “You risked our entire operation for a snowglobe?”
Sebastian examines the floor with sheepish eyes.
“You endangered your whole team so you could swipe a knick knack.” Desmond’s voice is just shy of a growl.
“Is that St. Basil’s Cathedral?” I hold out my hand, and Sebastian drops the snowglobe into my palm. Sure enough, there it is, the Russian wonder in all its beautiful, eccentric color – the place I’ve longed to visit all my long life.
The captain’s eyes snap onto me. “I don’t care what it is, and you had no business being off the ship, Olga –”
“How do you know what it is?” Sebastian peers through the rounded glass at the miniature cathedral with its ice cream scoop spires.
Desmond presses on, his voice rising. “You’re a liability to the crew –”
I squint into the globe, taking in the delicate stripes, the tiny detailed windows. “You think someone names their kid Olga for kicks? My family goes a long way back in Russia.”
The captain pushes his fingers against his temple in defeat.
Sebastian takes the snowglobe back, and his nimble young fingers start their magic, poking and tinkering with anything that looks like it might move. He’s a natural born mechanic, that boy.
Vera hoists herself onto a crate and sits with her elbows balanced on her knees. “The code was wrong, anyway. We couldn’t have gotten into the safe.”
Desmond sighs and starts digging through cupboards. He clinks a glass down on the table and pours himself something that looks a whole lot stronger than water. “Arthur’s not gonna be happy if we come back without the ring.”
I give a snorting laugh. “You could give him the snowglobe instead.”
There’s a faint click, and Sebastian gasps.
His eyes are so wide that they’re more white than brown. In one hand, he holds the top of the globe, where St. Basil’s Cathedral sits in the snowfall. In the other hand is the heavy wooden base.
“You broke it already?” I scoot myself over for a closer look.
Sebastian reaches into the wooden base and pulls out something dark, something that shimmers in the pale moonlight.
It fills up his palm as he holds it up to the light. It’s black, darker and deeper than a starless night, but its faceted sides glisten in the bright moonlight.
I catch my breath. “That’s a black sapphire.” I’ve spent plenty of time in jewelry stores, both legal and shady, but I’ve seen only one other black sapphire in my long life. And it was a pebble compared to the stone that sits in our mechanic’s grubby hands.
The color drains from the captain’s face like watercolors in the rain. “Set a course for New York. We gotta get rid of this thing, and fast.”
Thanks for reading! Olga’s stories, with the use of present tense and Olga’s crotchety old lady voice, are a fun stretch of my writing muscles, and Olga & co are quite old friends of mine. I’m not planning to turn Olga’s adventures into any kind of regular serial story at this point, but there’s a good chance that they’ll pop up every so often with a new harebrained scheme or spot of trouble.
If you enjoyed this and would like more Olga stories, please let me know in the comments!
Ooh she’s fun. I will go back and read her earlier stories … and subscribe!
"I know shifty when I see it....It looks like Vera – whatever she does on this boat – chewing on the nails she just painted yesterday."
Great story, great visuals, action, humor. Well done Bridget.