Crown Phoenix: Night Watchman Express

by Alison DeLuca

  Chapter 1

  The Storm

  eil sat back in the boat and let the oars drop. The palms of his hands, long unused to prolonged rowing, were scarred with welts and blisters. His chest ached as he gasped for air.

  The sun overhead was fiercely hot, but the heat felt as though it would change soon. “Storm,” Neil said dully to himself. He knew that he really should pick up the oars and try to row closer to the big island, but somehow he ceased to care if he arrived there or not.

  Once Mana had been loaded from the cart onto the boat, the two men had pushed off from the shore and headed towards the big island. After waiting for about half an hour, Neil crept up to a fishing dinghy that lay dragged up on the beach, well away from the incoming tide, and dragged it down to the water. Sin number one: stealing a boat, the worst crime possible for the son of a fisherman.

  At the water’s edge, Neil had hesitated, unsure of what he should do next. Miriam’s message from Mana to him was – Make it to Lampala. In the end, he jumped into the boat and rowed after the large sailing skiff, which had disappeared into the distance at that point. Sin number two: leaving his friends behind.

  Why had he done it? Was it because of his extreme bravery and loyalty to Simon and Miriam? Or was it because he just hadn’t been thinking? In all honesty, Neil admitted it was probably the latter.

  He could just imagine what would happen during the next few weeks. After their disappearance was discovered, Simon’s parents would go on a rampage. The event would be credited to Neil, who had been born to parents who gutted fish for a living. The Marchpanes would hold his own mother and father responsible.

  As the summer ended and the term began, his name would be duly crossed off the register, and his scholarship would be cancelled. Sin number three, he thought, was abandoning his family and their plans for his future, which were to support his parents eventually. That one was the worst sin of all.

  Neil groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, more against his rushing thoughts than the burning sun. His parents would be bewildered by the fuss and publicity, frightened, and angry. At that point they would realize that their son had left them for good, perhaps taking his two rich friends with him.

  However, somehow he just couldn’t turn back. There had been something very defenseless about the way Mana had been sitting in the cart beside the drunken, singing driver. Perhaps if he found her, she could help him find Simon and Miriam as well, and he could clear his name.

  And after that - what? Maybe, if his parents forgave him, they would take him in and he could go fishing for his father. Forget the careers they had envisioned for him – teacher in the local school, clerk in a greengrocer’s, or, what his mother most hoped for, a curate.

  It would be back to mending nets and watching for the large shoals of fish that came in during a storm, and rushing out in the cold and wet, getting soaked by the huge waves and the rain in order to get a bigger catch. Sitting in the little boat, Neil knew that he had just irrevocably changed his life for the worse.

  Remembering the storm at hand, Neil opened one eye and looked at the sky. A yellow haze moved over the sun, in front of an ominous pack of dark clouds. He sat up and winced as he picked up the oars. As the rough wood bit into his blisters, he admonished himself, “Don’t complain, you big useless idiot. You used to be able to row for days. Just start to move and don’t stop.” But I just want to lie down! his back complained. “Well, you can’t,” Neil retorted and realized that he was arguing with parts of his own body. Loneliness had made him goony.

  To keep his mind away from his aches and pains, Neil thought about Simon and how they had become friends. When he had walked into his assigned study, that first day at Firbury, and seen Simon, he originally wanted to turn around and run back home. There was no way that he could become friends or even talk to this bright-haired, handsome, athletic, well-dressed, rich boy he had been assigned to as a study-mate! But Simon had turned around, and instead of howling with derision at the sight of a shabby charity case with glasses, had immediately stuck out his hand and said with a grin, “Name’s Simon. You must be Neil. Want a toffee?”

  After getting over his astonishment, Neil had accepted the hand and the toffee, and they had gone on to become friends. They both liked mechanics and mathematics, although Simon was also a fast runner and a bruising rider. Neil wouldn’t have known which leg to throw over a horse and would probably end up sitting facing its bottom. When it came to geometry and algebra, however, Neil left Simon far behind and was even able to help him with his lessons.

  Popular with girls, as well as with the other boys, at Firbury, Simon was soon inundated with invitations to parties. He refused to accept any of them if Neil wasn’t invited as well, and soon the son of a fisherman found himself sitting down to tea and jam buns with the sons of dukes and other unimaginables.

  The wind suddenly buffeted the boat, and a few icy drops of rain stung Neil’s face and blurred his lenses. He reached under the wooden seat and felt for the glass collecting-bottle that was surely kept in the bottom of the boat. Yes, there it was. He could now get some rainwater and have a drink.

  There was a wrapped packet as well, and Neil opened it eagerly. Just as he had hoped, it contained a flat cake of ship’s biscuit. The food was hard and stale, but it was something he could chew on. He managed to gnaw off a large bite, and he munched on it gladly. At that moment, after following trains and carts all night and a boat for most of the morning, it was delicious, even though it was dry as sawdust and threatened to choke him with crumbs.

  The rain picked up and Neil licked the bottom of the collecting bottle, picking up a few drops with his tongue. It was cold and wet, but it let him swallow the dry food. The wind smacked the boat again, and he had to grab the oars so they wouldn’t slide into the water. Holding them with one hand, he managed to wrap up the rest of the biscuit in its greased paper, and he steadied the bottle with his feet.

  When Simon had invited Neil to spend the summer at his house, he couldn’t believe it. To stay in a large manor, with real servants, and ten-course meals, and no family underfoot had seemed like a dream. He had met Miriam, the daughter of a millionaire, and had eventually become friends with her. Of course, he thought to himself with a snort, she acted more like a boy in the lower years at Firbury School than a rich young heiress. In fact, she usually had ink smeared on her clothes (especially when she was in the throes of writing a story) and her hair never stayed tidy.

  Like a bull charging at a red cloak, the next gust of wind hit him in the back and nearly pitched him forward. He lost his grip on the collecting bottle, and he heard a clink as it skittered merrily across the bottom of the boat. Neil was preoccupied, however, with getting the prow (if you could call it that in such a tiny fishing skiff) down as he met the oncoming waves so he wouldn’t be bowled over backwards.

  The waters roared higher and higher, and the dinghy was lifted up by the surf and subsequently dropped so that Neil was bounced uncomfortably on the hard, wooden seat. There was no need to row any longer; all he could do was to clutch the oars and try to guide the boat in what he believed was the right direction.

  The storm increased, and he had to let go in order to keep his seat and not get pitched out of the boat; one oar immediately slipped through the oarlock and was lost in the ocean. Rain pelted him horizontally, and the wind that had been at his back now shifted so the water was blown into his face. “Blast,” Neil swore, feeling the light pullover that he was wearing quickly got soaked, and he shivered uncontrollably.

  In the manner of some violent storms, the wind died down quickly, and the waves suddenly calmed and flattened. Neil, who thought he was going to end up in the deep, suddenly realized that the boat was no longer rocking violently.

  He let out his breath in one whoosh, not knowing until that moment that he had been holding it in his lungs. “Whoa!” he said to no one in particular. “That was close!” He felt for the collecting bottle and realized that he must hav
e lost it in the storm.

  The wind and rain might have gone, but he was now in a worse position without a way to guide the boat or to collect water to drink. He also had no idea what his position was, since the wind had blown him off course. He pushed at the ocean waves with his one oar, cursing to himself. What a ridiculous position for the son of a fishing family to be in!

  The sun reappeared and burned the back of his neck. Neil continued to steer as best he could through the calmed sea, but finally his body gave up. His arms simply would not respond. Neil flopped onto his back and covered his face, and after a while he slid into an uncomfortable sleep. Some time passed. He slid in and out of dreams about water, the sound and taste of it, and woke to hear the waves sloshing against the side of the boat.

  He had to fight the urge to reach over and gulp a mouthful of the salty, lethal sea. His parents shouted at him to sit up and get a move on. “Wake up, Neil!” his mother screamed. “They will put her into the cage! And your sisters and I are in trouble as well. . .”

  With a start, he opened his eyes and realized that he had been dreaming, and the sun was now a smudge on the horizon. The day had come to an end.

  Apathetically, Neil closed his eyes again. Darkness claimed him quickly, but this time he saw Mana. She sat in a cage made of some dark, heavy wood that was suspended from a stout iron chain, and her head was bowed over her clasped hands. Neil could see rocks and blue water beyond the bars of the cage, which hung over a high precipice. If she did manage to escape from the prison somehow, she would fall and be smashed on the spiked, hungry stones below her.

  Neil saw the scene so clearly that he could hear the loud waves against the rocks. The cage twisted in the sea breeze. Mana looked up and stared straight into his eyes. Her mouth moved, and although Neil couldn’t hear her words, somehow he knew what she was trying to say. You must try, he saw her say. You must not give up. You must keep going.

  Neil tried to speak back to her, but his swollen tongue wouldn’t move in his mouth. The attempt, however, woke him up again and he looked up at a bottomless sky littered with stars. He blinked, not sure if he was dreaming or awake, and Mana’s silent words echoed in his head.

  Help me, somebody, Neil said to the stars. I am too tired to care about myself anymore. Just help me rescue her if it’s at all possible, and help me to find my friends.

  The stars glittered back in an uncaring way. Neil repeated his exhausted plea and tried to sit up but couldn’t.

  Did he feel the boat move? Perhaps it was a dream brought on by thirst and fever. It bumped once or twice against something and seemed to travel steadily. As he watched, the stars began to slide past him, and the boat appeared to pick up speed.

  Neil closed his eyes again, not daring to hope. After a time, how long it was he had no way of knowing, he suddenly heard something – a rhythmic, liquid noise.

  He shook his head and managed to pull himself upright, staring forward. There it was again – and suddenly Neil knew what it was he was hearing – the hiss of waves on a beach.

  “What?” he said, his words furred with thirst. The boat bumped again, and he turned to squint at the water behind and beneath him. Did he see a long, pale shape, or two, beneath the surface?

  Suddenly there was a more violent bump, and the boat overturned. Neil rolled into the sea and sank, arms and legs waving in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. He broke surface, gasping and turned around in the water, listening for the waves. He set out for the sound, swimming with his very last reserve of strength.

  His hand suddenly touched something hard, and he realized that he had reached a hard, wet stretch of sand. He pitched forward and lay with his head on a rock, coughing and retching. The stars wheeled above him, and in an instant they were all extinguished in velvety darkness.