Paradise Cracked

by Jeff Hook

  Ezra used that opportunity to escape the embrace, wriggling out from Guffy’s big looping arm, then backpedaling to get farther away. Guffy gave chase without ever moving his feet, extending his arms as Ezra batted them away. The chase only stopped when Sam came back on deck.

  “It’s time.”

  With that order, they began the part that Freddy feared most. All parts of this horrible journey were nerve-wracking, but now they were about to face up against an actual enemy crew. If they won, then it was over. They could take their cash rewards to go live out a life of luxury. If they lost, it was also over, but in the bad way: either Evyleen’s crew would kill them or they’d be back in jail the next time they ran into a government official.

  The worst part was that it all depended on Guffy.

  Guffy would throw Sink 'em Sam over to Evyleen’s ship. Sam would use his super to turn the ship to tin, making it nine times as heavy as the old wooden version and sending it to the bottom of the ocean. Then Guffy would pluck both Sam and Evyleen out of the water, leaving the rest of the enemies to drown.

  If only they had someone with Guffy’s abilities who was… serious. Sam said he’d used to have a Baltese on board who served the same purpose, back when he was a free pirate, but the Mezazi Empire would rather trust criminals than a dog.

  “Are you ready to be awesome?” Guffy said to the captain. He stretched his arms and tapped out a rhythm on the railings on each side of the ship.

  “Don’t miss,” Sam grunted in return.

  Guffy retracted his arms, then snaked the right one under both of Sink 'em Sam’s armpits, getting a solid hold that could quickly turn into a throw. “We’re gonna be heroes.”

  “Just do it.”

  The swordsmen lined up, with Syldris behind them to motivate anyone who might decide not to fight. They were there in case plan A went awry. Plan B was for Guffy to grab the enemy ship and pull it to theirs; when the two ships met the crews would start hacking each other to pieces.

  Plan A sounded great to Freddy.

  Guffy extended his arm backward over the ocean, holding a very stoic and determined Sam, and revved up to make the throw.

  That was when the wind began to howl. The ship lurched and tilted on its side, and Freddy grabbed hold of the railing just soon enough to save himself from falling into the water.

  This was Evyleen’s super: a massive gust of wind. Through the decks he could see her, arms outstretched, long hair flowing up toward the sky and glowing bright blue.

  She’d deployed her super at just the right time to cause maximum chaos. After Guffy threw, Sam could turn into tin and not be affected by the wind. Earlier, Sam could’ve turned just a bit of their own ship to tin to make it too heavy to blow away. As it was, he hung out over the ocean on Guffy’s outstretched arm, unconnected to the ship.

  Then the cannons started. While most of the crew could only see the wood of the deck, Freddy’s power let him see the cannonballs as they approached, rapidly-approaching shadows that carried very solid death. The first one hit, shaking the ship and making Freddy’s grip loosen. One came straight at him. Freddy switched off his power so he couldn’t see it coming — his version of closing his eyes — but even that didn’t help abate the terror running through him. He let go of the railing, hoping that the sea would treat him more kindly than a cannonball.

  However, the super-powered wind didn’t let him drop. It picked him up, carried him away from the battle. Everyone else was hanging on for dear life — Syldris had jammed two spikes into the deck, and the fighters had done something similar with their swords. Only Jack was shaken loose, following him on the path of the wind.

  As Freddy flew away he used his super to watch the ever-receding battle. If Sam knocked out Evyleen, then the wind would stop and they’d flop down into the ocean. It also helped him forget how far and fast they were flying away. A glimmer of distraction and hope.

  Was Guffy going to make the throw? No, Guffy had normal vision and so his view of the other ship would be blocked by their own vessel. Trying something from such a compromised position would be very, very stupid.

  Guffy tried something.

  He held onto the deck railing with his left hand and let that arm stretch out a bit, to maybe five times its normal length. Then he snapped it back to normal size in a split second, sending himself and Sam flying high over the battlefield. Guffy’s super could be used once on each arm before passing out, and he’d just used it for his left arm. This was a huge gamble.

  Then he used his super for his right arm and sent Sam hurtling toward the enemy ship.

  He missed.

  That was when Freddy began to panic.

  ——

  Stylin’ Jack was as dry as ever, even as he flew away from the schooner, carried on a devil-wind, going toward what appeared to be empty, endless ocean. It was almost as if Evyleen was directing her power to carry them as far away as possible.

  Freddy was beside him, caught in the same wind. He was, of course, screaming.

  “Calm down,” said Jack over the roar of the wind. “Our shipmates will rescue us.”

  “Aaaghaaarggh!” replied Freddy.

  “This is her super, and the Mezazi said she can’t do a partial use, so she’ll collapse afterward. Either she successfully pushes our ship away, in which case Sam and the others will be close to us and find us easily. They’ll need our talents to keep chasing Evyleen. Or she collapsed and we win, and then they can search for us without being worried about chasing Evyleen. Relax.”

  Jack knew it wasn’t as simple as that. If they won but Sam drowned and Syldris took over, they were as good as dead. If there was an extended battle, the crew wouldn’t have time to go rescue fallen non-combat crew members for quite a while.

  Still, he knew things would be fine. He might be tumbling head over heels through the air, but his clothes were dry, and as long as his clothes were dry he was in control.

  Freddy continued screaming. Jack understood. Spinning around in the air over an open ocean, being whisked farther and farther away from safety, could be rather upsetting.

  “Evyleen’s control is better than reports indicate,” he said, mostly to distract himself. The serious reports, not the stories people swapped to pass the time. Those were… almost accurate.

  “Aaaarghaaah!” added Freddy.

  “I agree, the strength and concentration is ridiculous. I’ll be surprised if she’s not laid up in bed for weeks after this.”

  Then he started calculating how long it would take them to swim back to the boat. He was halfway through the calculation of an ideal sharkless path when they both slammed into something hard.

  Which was weird, since they were hanging in empty air.

  But now the wind had them pressed against some invisible wall — an invisible wall with bumps and jagged edges that were changing by the second. Cracks started showing in the air they were pressed against, revealing glimpses of a calm sea in the midst of the tall, pounding waves created by Evyleen’s wind.

  Freddy continued screaming, his face flattened between the wind and the hard air barrier they’d run into.

  Then the air crumbled and they fell through.

  ——

  They plopped into the water, wind suddenly dead.

  The waves were gentle, but it didn’t feel that way to Jack. He was wet. He pushed hard on his power, as hard as he dared without risk of activating his super. The gentle waves around them stilled, but that was the easy part. The hard part was forming a thin barrier between him and the water, one that covered him everywhere, extending out past his clothes. He had to use fine-grained control to hold every minuscule water droplet away from him on all sides. When he moved anything, little beads of water leaked into his bubble before his power quickly knocked them away.

  This was too hard. He didn’t have enough power to straight-up levitate above the water, but he could get close. He lay on his back, as if he were floating, and then applied his power. Now he only had to p
ush one direction and he could keep his entire body dry, clothes included, without even thinking much about it. It was a bit harder with his steel cutlass strapped to his belt than if it had just been him, but not by too much. It was no big deal if that got wet; he could dry it off before rust set in.

  Freddy splashed nearby, his screams replaced by loud hyperventilation. Did that guy ever shut up? Jack redirected the splashes coming from his pirate companion. Instead of panicking, he looked at the sky and waited for rescue.

  The sky seemed to be… repairing itself. A big jagged circular crack, with edges that glinted in the sunlight, moved inward, going toward one center point. Surely it couldn’t be natural. Was it a crystal construct? Some new technology? Whatever civilization had created it must be terrifyingly advanced.

  Except there weren’t supposed to be any cities in this area. The maps claimed there weren’t even islands. This patch of ocean was not only in becalmed waters, it was utterly deserted and useless.

  The crack was almost done mending. If he looked in another twenty seconds he would only be able to see open sky, with no idea that there had ever been anything amiss.

  If it was a hard barrier, and it had only broken by slamming against it, how would they get out?

  More importantly, why was his back wet? He must have lost concentration. He pushed harder on his power, but he was, strangely, at his safe limit. This shouldn’t be! Floating on his back should be easy. Why was his power shrinking?

  Seconds ticked by in a panic as he sunk deeper and deeper into the water. His maximum safe power just kept getting weaker.

  And then, in a horrifying splash that soaked his clothes and his soul, the power disappeared.

  ——

  Jack and Freddy pulled themselves up onto the rocky shore.

  “I… I can’t see anything,” complained Freddy. “It’s… is this how it is for everyone else?”

  “You think you have it bad? I’m wet. Do you know how terrible it feels to be wet?”

  “I’m wet too.”

  Jack only grunted in return. Freddy wouldn’t understand. Freddy had probably never felt truly dry in his life, which was why he was always so nervous.

  “It’s kind of nice,” said Freddy.

  “Being wet is not nice. It’s horrible.”

  “Not being able to see everything. Not feeling like I need to look somewhere else every five minutes. It’s just what’s in front of my face. I…” Freddy got this horrible lively look in his eyes. “If I want to know what’s happening somewhere else, I’ll have to go explore.”

  “Yeah, well, good luck with that. We’re on some undiscovered, deserted—” Jack broke off as he turned to face inland.

  Houses. Not terrifically advanced, but solid and clean.

  People. People with light yellow-green skin and dark green-tinted hair, unlike anything he’d ever seen.

  A whole new race of people, hidden from the world on islands that weren’t even supposed to exist.

  And scattered along the beach, lodged in deep black stone, rare Timonite crystal deposits.

  He squatted down to get a closer look and gasped at the size and purity of the crystals.

  “Sea and sand,” he said with reverence, temporarily forgetting the water covering his body. “We’re gonna be rich.”

  1

  Devilborn

  Several hours earlier, on Tandoku Island

  Karugo stared himself down in the mirror, face determined, golden-brown hair slick with his own saliva.

  He could do it today.

  He could be normal.

  There was just one little tuft of hair still sticking up, one spiky renegade, so he licked his palm again, mouth almost dry, and carefully patted it down. As he did so, a tuft of hair popped up on the other side and formed an aggravating spike.

  Come on!

  He patted down that piece of hair, cursing whatever had made him born this way. Why couldn’t he have the rich dark green flat hair that everyone else was born with?

  He growled at his reflection then caught himself a second later, knowing that it would only make things worse. But it was too late. The last half hour’s work was for nothing as all his hair leapt back up at once, taking its typical horrifying shape: an ugly spiky mess that stuck nearly half a foot above his head.

  That was another thing. No one else would growl at a mirror. Growling was what animals did. Everyone else would thank the mirror for a job well done.

  “You shouldn’t resist it,” said his grandpa from the doorway. Toraburu, his father’s father, was the only person in living memory to be removed from the Elder Council… and one of only two people in town who didn’t show discomfort when they looked at Karugo.

  “If you have another way to make it behave, I want to know.” Would this be a lecture about using minimal force? Goodness knew he got enough of those from everyone else.

  The old man came to stand behind Karugo and put his wrinkled hands on the boy’s shoulders. “You know what that hair is?”

  Karugo looked down. He couldn’t take looking his grandpa in the eyes. The understanding was almost worse than the scorn. “A curse?”

  “It’s hero hair.”

  Silence lingered as the unfamiliar word hung in the air.

  “What’s a hero?”

  “It’s something… something very good. Something we used to have, long before…” He trailed off and frowned.

  “It’s nothing,” said Karugo’s mother. She bustled in and thrust a shirt at Karugo, glaring at Grandpa Toraburu.

  “Go to school,” she commanded. Her voice took on a hard edge, the one it took when Karugo was about to do something out of the ordinary. “Everything is perfect now.”

  ——

  Devilborn.

  He’d heard it in whispers from the Elders, the times he’d snuck up on a group of them talking. Each time, they were nearly as surprised as the last; it was as if no one else in the world had ever thought of breaking the rules.

  Karugo looked out at the ocean as he walked. They said there was nothing else out there, but how could they know? Fishing vessels went out early in the morning and came back mid-afternoon, and it was a rare day when they went out of sight. The thirty thousand people of Tandoku… were they really the only humans in the entire world? Thirty thousand, and all on one small chain of islands, and most of that on the big one they called Tandoku Island… One day, if it got too bad, maybe he would take a ship and a few days’ supplies and set sail.

  He’d wait until Grandpa Toraburu had passed, of course. Despite what everyone might think, he didn’t want to cause all this trouble. The other mothers never had cause to speak harshly to their children, because the other children were perfect. The other Elders weren’t kicked out of the Council shortly after their first grandchild’s birth. But what could he do? He couldn’t hide his hair, or his impatience, or his temper.

  He saw Ishū on his way, walking alongside his thunderbeast. Ishū gave Karugo a slow grin as they passed. Ishū was a weird one too, although in a far more acceptable manner; liking animals wasn’t exactly disruptive, and if he could get the thunderbeasts to roll up and till the fields with their spiky backs, that meant the village got more rice. Maybe it was that shared strangeness that gave them their connection, despite Ishū being twice Karugo’s age, or maybe it was that Ishū saw anything animal-like — including Karugo’s inhuman aggression — as a good thing.

  Whatever the reason, Karugo was glad of these silent moments on the mornings their paths crossed. He slowed down to enjoy it, despite already being late, and let the scene wash over him.

  Early morning sun. Dewy grass beneath his feet. An endless horizon.

  But then he had to face the giant pile of thunderbeast droppings that ruined the whole thing: school.

  ——

  All of the other students sat perfectly in their chairs looking forward, with their perfectly flat hair, diligently trying to soak up every word their teacher spoke. There was only one other exce
ption: Hishano. Hishano looked at Karugo as a hungry thunderbeast looked at a piece of almost-ripe fruit, always ready to step in at the right moment and fix things should Karugo do something out of the ordinary. Always quick, gentle, using minimal force. Hishano was strange, but as an exaggeration of the perfect Tandoku citizen. Born just a year after Karugo, it was almost as if he’d been a way to correct the recent mistake — and Karugo’s suspicions hadn’t been dampened at all when Hishano started school a year early, at the same time as Karugo. Hishano was there to ruin Karugo’s life, and the town bent over backward to let it happen.

  The class was staring at him. Why were they staring at him? He felt the familiar heat of anger, realized he was clenching his fist and gritting his teeth. He did the breathing exercises that usually helped him calm down, counting up to four as he breathed in and back down to one as he breathed out. Hishano wisely saw that there was no reason to step in, but Karugo could tell he was thinking about it.

  The teacher continued his lesson, droning on and on about the history of the world. Centuries of history, all the same. One great leader of the Elder Council after another, continuous peace and harmony. They were studying year 421, the four hundred and twenty-first year since Tandoku Island was founded and the outer devils completely destroyed themselves.

  “The head of the council in that time was Iwa the Sturdy. Do you remember what he was known for?”

  “Increasing the strength of building material,” said the class in unison. Everyone except Karugo. Why were they studying something that had happened over five hundred years ago?

  “And how did he do that?” asked the teacher.

  The class took turns listing the properties of stone blocks, the process for creating them and sticking them together, and common pitfalls to avoid.

  This was all stupid. How many of them would be builders? Maybe one out of twenty. And there was something else that bothered him.