Snared: Voyage on the Eversteel Sea

by Adam Jay Epstein

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” Thrush said, coming up behind Wily.

  “Did you build it yourself?” Wily asked, fascinated by this incredible machine.

  “I can sail it better than anyone in Panthasos or beyond,” Thrush continued. “But I, even with the most detailed schematics, could never have built this beast. This was constructed by a brilliant inventor, the most brilliant one ever to live. You might recognize the name. I believe your father named you after him: Wily Snare.”

  It was true. Wily had been named after the famous inventor who had written his father’s favorite book, Wily Snare’s Book of Inventions. Never once had Wily seen one of his namesake’s inventions turned from an idea into an actuality, though.

  “I didn’t know any of his inventions still existed,” Wily said in awe.

  “We’ve worked hard to keep this one in good working condition. The brine elves change the gears and levers once a month to keep them from corroding. And we make sure never to pass too close to the Salt Isles, where the air is so corrosive it rusts metal within hours. In fact, it’s the only place this ship is forced to steer clear of.”

  Wily watched as the winches and pistons turned the oar handles in perfect synchronization. Ever since he’d found a copy of the book of inventions in Squalor Keep, Wily had been fascinated by the illustrations within it (even if he had trouble reading all the words), but to see one of these machines in action was a special treat.

  “Approaching the open sea,” a brine elf shouted from the bow of the ship.

  Wily moved to the side railing and took in the view. Two jetties of stone formed the narrow exit of the harbor, only wide enough for a pair of ships to pass safely through at one time. As they slipped out of the mouth of the bay, Wily looked at the vast ocean ahead. It left him in a state of complete awe. It was a similar feeling to when he had first experienced the Above and looked up at the sky, stunned by its impossible vastness and beauty. More surprising than the magnitude was how the sea seemed to be in a constant state of motion. Wily understood how water rushed in a stream, in one direction from the highest point to the lowest, but he couldn’t figure out what was making these rolling waves of water surge across the level ocean. As the Coal Fox pulled farther away from shore, he watched as the sunlight caught the tips of each rolling wave for a moment before each dipped into the dark blue again. The crew shut off the oars as the wind took over, the sail pushing them swiftly ahead.

  After many minutes of gazing, Wily’s attention turned to Thrush and one of the brine elf crewmembers, who were talking quietly by the wheel of the ship. The brine elf held a closed wooden box with a small door on its side.

  “Send them out,” Thrush said with a glance to the open sea.

  The brine elf opened the door slightly and began whispering inside. When he was finished talking, he opened the box’s door wide. A trio of gray gulls flew out and took to the sky. Two of them circled the ship before beating their wings and soaring off to the west. The third gull flew to the top of the tallest mast and took a seat on the high perch that Wily had heard referred to as the crow’s nest.

  Thrush, seeing Wily’s curiosity, explained that these were guide gulls, trained to find things in the vastness of the ocean and report back to the ship once they had accomplished their mission. They would be able to locate the ship Wily’s father was on and then return to give direction on how best to pursue the Squall Singer.

  As Thrush was just finishing explaining, Pryvyd hurried past the two of them to the railing. His face was a pale shade of green and his lips were chapped and dry. He had pulled off his gauntlet and was wiping his face with his palm. Odette came up alongside him and gave him a pat on the back.

  “Are you feeling seasick?” Odette snickered. “The same Knight of the Golden Sun who was dreaming of fleeing Panthasos for the Salt Isles? Come now, I know you’ve been on boats before.”

  “Never one that tossed and bobbed like this one,” Pryvyd said as he gulped a lungful of air.

  Righteous floated up to Pryvyd’s side and hovered near. It was clear the floating arm was enjoying this too.

  “Oh, don’t give me that,” Pryvyd said to Righteous. “If you were still attached to me, your knuckles would be just as pale as mine.”

  Righteous just waved a finger as if to say, Not true.

  Wily saw Roveeka sitting at the bow of the ship, her legs dangling through the holes in the railing. As he walked closer, he could see she was using one of her knives, Pops, to carve a piece of driftwood.

  “What are you making?” Wily asked as he sat down next to her.

  “I was trying to make a birk,” Roveeka said. (She was still confused by the word bird and always seemed to get it wrong.) “But I cut off the head.”

  “I’m sure we can find you another piece of wood,” Wily said as the salty spray splashed against his bare ankles.

  “Nah,” Roveeka replied as she took long strokes with her knife. “I feel like this knotty piece of driftwood deserves a second chance. I’m not ready to toss it into the sea quite yet.”

  Roveeka tilted her head up to glance at the guide gull still sitting in the crow’s nest at the top of the mast. She attempted to carve the bird’s head again to the very best of her ability, which right now seemed to be a bit lacking. Wily turned to the ocean before him and stared into the distance. There was nothing to see besides clusters of gray clouds and the occasional fish fin sticking out of the icy waters. His mind wandered, thinking about how he would confront Kestrel Gromanov when he finally caught up with him. Moshul would grab him tight and shake him until he couldn’t take it any longer. He would make his father wish he had never left the prisonaut.

  When he snapped out of his long daydream, he realized his mind was not the only thing drifting: the boat was too. They had come to a portion of the ocean that was completely calm; not even the gentlest breeze fluttered through their sails.

  “We’ve reached the Drecks,” a brine elf called out from the side deck.

  “This is why the Coal Fox is the most valuable ship on the seas,” Thrush said from behind the wheel. Then he shouted to the crew members: “Bring down the sail. And crank up the oars again.”

  A mohawked elf hurried over to a large bronze lever near the mast. With a strong pull, the lever made a grinding sound. Wily peered over the railing to see the oars jut out from the side of the ship. With each synchronized pull, they sent the Coal Fox racing forward.

  “Stay this course,” Thrush said as he stared out at the clouds ahead.

  The charter ship plowed into the heart of the Drecks, passing mounds of dead fish that bobbed on the surface of the water, filling the air with a foul odor.

  “Debris from the entire ocean drifts here and swirls around endlessly,” Thrush said as he pointed to a mass of floating wooden cups and chicken bones. “You can see that the ocean has become a dumping ground for what land folk don’t want. And it all ends up here. Keeps growing and growing every year. Even a small ship can find itself stuck here with no way to escape. Look out there. A whole island of seaweed.”

  Wily could see a mass of pale green vegetation drift by in the distance. Although he couldn’t be sure, it seemed like there might even be animals scurrying on top of it. Wily felt a heavy tap on his shoulder. Moshul was now standing beside him and pointing to a patch of water much closer, where half of a boat drifted past, its hull cracked and splintered.

  Moshul signed something to Pryvyd, who was no longer looking quite as green as before. The calm ocean seemed to have calmed his stomach.

  “I’m not sure what caused it,” Pryvyd replied.

  “It must have hit a reef,” Thrush said, spotting the broken ship. “Without a set of oars, whirlpools can be quite dangerous here. We’ll be able to steer right around them, though. Nothing to worry about for us.”

  Moshul pointed to another mass of wood. It appeared to be the other half of the boat.

  Just then, something flew out of the water. A sea bass, roughly the size o
f a cow, soared through the air and landed on the deck with a horrifying thud.

  “Did that fish just jump out of the water?” Roveeka asked as she dropped the piece of driftwood she was still attempting to carve.

  “I don’t think it jumped,” Odette said. “I think it was thrown.”

  “What makes you say that?” Roveeka inquired.

  “It’s missing a head.”

  Wily looked down at the sea bass and found a most disturbing sight. The fish’s eyes, mouth, and neck were all gone, cleanly bitten off by what had to be a giant set of teeth.

  “Are you sure that boat hit rocks?” Wily called out to Thrush with rising fear in his voice. “Because the rocks I know don’t have giant teeth.”

  “Or leave sucker marks,” Odette added, pointing to the side of the giant fish.

  Moshul suddenly looked terrified. He hated anything with tentacles, no matter how big or small. And clearly whatever had killed this sea bass was awfully large. Thrush peered over at the fish and his whole attitude changed.

  “That’s bad,” Thrush said. “Those are the marks of a salvage squid. On rare occasion, they come to the Drecks to feast on an easy target.”

  Moshul signed something quickly.

  Odette responded with words and signs. “Well, I don’t want to be an easy meal either.”

  “Turn the ship around!” Thrush screamed to his crew. “Use oars and sails. Use everything!”

  The crew scrambled across the deck in a panic, pulling lines and raising the sail. Another brine elf started pressing buttons on the panel near the oar lever. Thrush turned the wheel as he peered out into the still waters.

  “Over there,” a brine elf screamed, pointing behind the ship. “I saw something move beneath the surface.”

  “By Glothmurk!” Thrush muttered to himself. “This isn’t what I signed up for.”

  “If we turn back,” Wily said with alarm, “my father will get away.”

  “If we don’t turn back,” Thrush replied, “we’ll be at the bottom of the ocean with the sea ogres.”

  The Coal Fox was about halfway through its turn when a giant tentacle burst from the water, slid onto the deck, and wrapped itself around the leg of a brine elf.

  “Get it off me,” the brine elf cried as she was lifted high into the air.

  No one on board had a chance to do anything before the rubbery arm plunged back into the sea with the elf still gripped tightly in it.

  “Can you talk with it?” Odette asked Wily.

  “Squid are not much for reason,” Wily answered. “Even the nice ones have only two-track minds: grab and eat.”

  “Keep turning the boat around,” Thrush commanded his crew.

  “Shouldn’t we be getting out our swords and bows?” Pryvyd called to Thrush as he pulled his shield and Righteous drew its blade from Pryvyd’s holster.

  “And what good do you think an arrow would do to a salvage squid?” Thrush said. “Not even your golem throwing a punch would do the trick. And right now, your golem doesn’t look like he is going to do much more than hide in the corner.”

  Wily looked over to see that Moshul was curled up at the center of the deck, cowering. Roveeka was standing beside him, patting him gently.

  “It’s okay to be scared,” Roveeka said. “Everyone gets scared sometimes. I know I do all the time. Most of the time actually. Just stay next to me.”

  “Actually,” Odette said as another tentacle came sweeping across the deck, “we could really use his help right now!”

  There were now five of the creature’s eight arms out of the water. Two were wrapping suckers around the bow of the boat while the other three were swiping crew members off their feet and into the sea.

  “It’s too late!” Thrush shouted.

  Wily was desperately trying to come up with an idea for what they could do. He wished the oars had turned the boat around a little faster. They would have been free and on their way. He looked at the sails and the lines. Is there a way to build ourselves out of trouble? There’s no time to construct a whole new machine, not with the squid attacking us. Then the beginning of an idea came to him: Maybe I don’t need to build a whole new machine, but just modify the one that has already been built.

  “Odette! Roveeka! Moshul!” Wily shouted. “Come with me.”

  Wily ran to the hatch leading belowdecks and flipped it open. He bounded down the steps into the hold. The maze of gears, pulleys, and levers reminded him of the maintenance tunnels inside Carrion Tomb, where he had spent many quiet hours greasing the gears of the crushing walls and refilling the poison in the darts of the blowgun tunnel. Wily grabbed a pair of wrenches off his toolbelt and handed one to Roveeka and the other to Odette.

  “Start unscrewing the lug nuts on the back of each of these handles,” Wily said as he pointed to the oars attached to the rowing machine. “Like this.” He pulled out his screwdriver and with twelve quick turns of his wrist popped four screws free. An oar fell to the wooden floor with a clatter.

  “Detach the oars?” Odette asked with alarm. “How is that going to make this boat go faster?”

  “We’re not going to be using the oars to row.” Wily picked up the oar and handed it to Moshul. “Snap the paddle off.”

  Moshul took the long piece of wood in his hands and cracked the wider end of the oar off, leaving only a pointy splintered end.

  “Just like that,” Wily said with a big grin. “Do that to all of them.”

  As the words came out of his mouth, the ship made an unpleasant creaking sound, as if the hull was being strained by the force of the squid’s mighty arms.

  “As fast as you can,” Wily added urgently.

  Wily set off on his own task. He detached the piston that had moved one oar back and forth and repositioned it so he could stick the oar handle directly inside it.

  “If we are not making this ship row faster, what are we doing?” Odette asked as she continued to unscrew the bolts with the wrench.

  “This automated rowing machine is using all the same mechanics as one of the traps I had to maintain in Carrion Tomb: the blowgun tunnel.”

  “That’s great to hear,” Odette answered. “But still not understanding.”

  “Instead of using the oars to row,” Wily said as he hammered, “we’re going to make the pistons fire the oars out like darts. Very big darts.”

  Wily picked up the oar Moshul had snapped and shoved the smooth tip into the open piston and pointed the splintered tip toward the porthole. Wily reached into one of his pouches and pulled out a small vial of pale cobra venom. It was the same poison he had used in the trip-wire tunnel back in the tomb. He placed three drops on the very tip of the splintered oar.

  Above, Wily could hear the screams of the brine elves. Below, the wooden hull was creaking louder. Water was beginning to leak through the seams on the sides of the ship. There was no time to waste.

  Odette, Roveeka, and Moshul helped Wily as he raced around inside the cabin. They converted five of the seven other oars into sharpened spears, lacing each one with the poison. Before they could start on the sixth, a tentacle slid in through the porthole near Wily, squirming and searching for something to grab. Wily jumped back but not fast enough: the tentacle wrapped around his leg, the suckers vacuuming tight to his clothes and skin. Wily knew from experience with the cave squid in his youth that once an octopod tightens its grip, there is little chance of breaking free. Wily grabbed tight to the gears of the rowing machine as the aquatic beast gave a sharp tug. His fingers were not going to be able to hold on much longer.

  WHAP. Moshul’s giant green hand came smashing down on the salvage squid’s tentacle. It must have greatly startled the creature because it released its grip long enough for Wily to slip free and drag himself to cover.

  “Thanks,” Wily signed to Moshul. “I know that must have really frightened you.”

  Moshul signed back as Odette translated.

  “Terrified. But I was even more scared you were going to be hurt.
”

  The four companions put the last oars into place. With the machine ready, Wily and the others ran back for the stairs to the main deck. When they reached the top, Wily found that things were much worse than he had feared. The mast had been snapped from the ship, and the salvage squid was swinging it like a club, causing the entire crew to duck as it swept it low over the deck.

  “What were you doing down there?” Thrush screamed. “The ship is barely moving at all now. There’s no way we can escape at this speed.”

  Wily ran to the wheel as he shouted. “We need to lure the squid to the surface. Get its body out of the water and around the ship.”

  “Are you crazy?” Thrush yelled. “That’s exactly what we have been trying to avoid!”

  “Trust me. It’s our only chance.”

  Thrush glanced at Wily with a look of utter disbelief. Then he spun around and shouted in his loudest voice.

  “Everyone stop fighting the squid. Let it take the ship!”

  The brine elves looked horrified. They dropped their swords to their sides and backed toward the center of the vessel. Only Righteous continued to fight.

  “You heard the captain, Righteous,” Pryvyd shouted. “Stop fighting.”

  If Righteous heard its former body’s command, it didn’t pay him any heed. Wily ran up to the hovering arm’s side.

  “Please,” Wily said. “Back off.”

  Righteous reluctantly lowered its weapon. It floated away from the enormous rubbery arm it was doing battle with.

  Wily hurried over to the lever that activated the machine below. The squid’s tentacles slithered farther across the deck, the suckers making loud squishing sounds as the squid latched onto the gray wooden planks.

  “Do it now!” Odette shouted.

  “Not yet,” Wily said with bated breath. “We only get one shot with this.”

  The Coal Fox was trembling like a small animal being choked to death. Then, bursting from the deep, came a triangular head with two eyes as large as dining room tables. The salvage squid had a black beak that snapped, mumbling in Gurglespeak as it did.