"What, don't ye trust me?" Jim asked playfully.
"I don't know, seems a little suspect."
"Ha! If ye can't trust a fat cook or a grey-haired captain, who can ye trust?"
"If that's the standard measurement of trust, I think I'll surely spend my life labeled a scoundrel."
Jim laughed hard and wobbly, patting his big belly. "Eat like I do, and ye'll fill out, just like me."
Minerva looked him up and down again as she washed her hands. "I'm not sure I want to fill out quite that much."
Jim struggled not to laugh as he replied. "Well, maybe ye'll fill out a bit up top then," he added, cupping his hands to his own ample boson.
"Hey! You just said that I'm still growing!" Minerva snapped, whipping him with the towel at the same time.
"Uh huh. Look, all I'm sayin' is that if yer tryin' to catch the eye of a gunner, it's not a bad idea to have a few cannonballs hanging around."
Minerva blushed and turned to victimize some vegetables with a knife. She didn't realize that anyone else knew about her feelings for Gunner.
Jim laughed again, but it was starting to sound like his mean laugh. "Ah, don't worry, girl. Ye'll grow into a woman, one day."
Minerva's knife connected firmly with the cutting board a few times while she thought. One day seemed like a painfully long way away.
"What if I don't?" she asked. "What if I'm this size forever?"
"Yeah, what if? Ye can what if yerself till the day ye die."
"Seriously, Jim. Do men really care that much about, um, the size of my cannonballs?"
"Aye, some do. Some don't. Now, ye might catch a sailor's attention with a bit o' endowment, but yer personality is what matters most. Hard to believe, I know, when ye look at how us pirates carry ourselves, but it's true. Besides, any sailor that concerns himself only with the size of yer cannonballs ain't a man worth showin' yer cannon to."
When Minerva returned to the deck after lunch, Luff and Leech met her again, and were very repentant. "Sorry about – this morning," they said.
"Yeah, you are now, I bet." Minerva made an angry face and pushed Luff into a large spool of ropes. "How is it today?" she asked, once they were up in the rigging.
"Overcast – but dry. Lots of scrubbing – but the lift holds."
The Skyraker was sailing high in the air, and off in the distance she could see a tall forest ahead of them. A much shorter forest spread away from it in all directions.
"Is that where we're headed?"
"The Loftwood – and Reshampur."
"For repairs?"
"If we're lucky."
"Why do we need to be lucky?"
"Lord Arach runs the place – and he is fickle. Not always friendly – to crews with marks. We won't know – until we get there."
"Is he actually a lord?"
"Yeah, but — it's also a sign of respect. Without Arach – there's no silk. Not for pirates, anyway."
"So, all the pirate sails come from there?"
"Most of them."
"Why are the trees so tall?"
"Because they float. Thanks to the spiders – that live in them."
"Spiders?"
Somehow, Minerva never had made the connection. The sails were made of silk that came from spiders. There would be plenty of spiders wherever the silk came from.
Luff and Leech spotted her apprehension immediately, and jumped to either side of her. "They're bigger than – a man's head, too."
Minerva squirmed in place, trying not to think about it.
"Sometimes they swarm – in the thousands."
Her knuckles went white.
"They fly, too! And one bite – could kill you!"
Luff and Leech clamped their hands down on her arms with a smack.
"Okay, that's nice. I'm going back to the kitchen now." Minerva grabbed the nearest rope and made to climb down.
"Wait. Don't go. We really do – need you."
"You have a poor way of showing it," she barked at them.
"Okay. Okay. No more stories."
Minerva climbed back onto the spar and yanked her broom from Luff with as much of an indignant glare as she could manage.
"Did you know—" one twin started, but Minerva punched the other one in the shoulder before he could add to his brother's sentence.
Chapter 52
Optional Comprehension
By sundown, Minerva was more than ready for bed. She still offered to deliver Nezzen's food to him, despite her fatigue, because she watched Big Jim do it once, and resolved to never let him do it again. Throughout the event she was certain that he was going to fall to his death. It was as much a service to her own nerves as it was to him.
"Ah, Miss Minerva, welcome. How are you this evening?"
"Very tired," she said, handing the elderly man his supper box along with her hairbrush.
"I heard you received extra duty."
"I did. I spent it working with Jim, though, so it wasn't too bad."
"I see. How are your lessons with Lintumen? He is still teaching you about magic, is he not?"
Minerva's hair scratched softly under Nezzen's expert strokes.
"I think so. I'm not really sure, to be honest." She wanted to say no.
Scritch. Scritch.
"Everything he says is so cryptic," she said, carrying on without a reply. "It's like he'd rather just have me learn it on my own so that he can do that stupid I-knew-you'd-figure-it-out smile that he does."
"Lintumen is a difficult man to understand. He knows a great deal, about a great many things. Often, he does not understand what it is like know less than he does. To him, there is no greater pleasure than seeing another mind expand and grow. He can't help himself."
Scritch.
"So why doesn't he just tell me what I need to know?"
"Is an apple not that much sweeter when you've climbed the tree yourself to get it?"
"I suppose."
Nezzen almost never urged Minerva to say more than she wanted to. In effect, it made her want to say more than she thought she would.
"He told me something bad, the other day," she said.
Scritch.
"He said that he saw two futures for me. One future sounded normal. In the other, my friend would die, but I would get everything I've ever wanted. He said I didn't get a choice in which future it would be."
"Which future would you choose?"
"I would sacrifice myself to save my friend."
"I see. What if the choice, as Lintumen said, is not your own? What if your friend makes the same choice to sacrifice themselves, as quickly and easily as you just did?"
Minerva conceded defeat with a sigh.
"The death of a friend is always a sad thing, but it is not always a bad thing. For the sick and ailing, death might be a blessing that eases their pain. Similarly, courage and sacrifice are both choices that can lead to death. Would you fault a friend for choosing either of them?"
Minerva took the brush from Nezzen. "Lintumen was showing me the options, not interpreting them for me, is that what you're saying?"
"Only a fool would assume that they could fully interpret the ramifications of a choice that had not yet been made."
"Thank you, Nezzen. I feel better now." Minerva slid forward to drop out of the nest, but Nezzen stopped her.
"Before you go, there's something I want you to see." Nezzen brought out a beautiful, leather-bound cylinder from beside him. "Take this."
"Please, Nezzen. No gifts tonight. I really don't feel like I deserve it."
"It is not a gift." At that, he opened the case to reveal a spyglass made of polished brass and black-stained wood. A gold tasseled rope coiled around it loosely. "Look through here, to the horizon behind me, and tell me what you see."
Minerva peered through the thin gap between the cloth roof and the wooden rail of the crow's nest, allowing time for her eyes to adjust to the fading light. In the distance, near the horizon, she saw two silhouettes.
&n
bsp; "I see two ships," she said.
"What colors are they?"
"I'm not sure. Red and green, maybe. It's really hard to tell."
"Mast count?"
"Two. On both of them. Who are they?"
"The Arbalest and the Ballistae," Nezzen said. "Two of Captain's Blacks allies. I doubt he's with them, however."
"Did they fly through the rain, too?"
"Most likely. They've been behind us for some time now. I suspect the captain has seen them, as well."
"Will they attack us in the Loftwood?"
"Unlikely. Lord Arach does not tolerate confrontations in his forest. It disrupts the spiders."
"Then what do we do? Can we outrun them?"
"Maybe. Maybe it won't matter what we do."
Minerva leaned back from the edge. She was much closer to Nezzen than ever before, and from this distance, he looked more ancient than Lintumen. She could hear him laboring to breathe under the weight of his own chest, and she suddenly realized that unless he could get someone to carry him back up, his next trip down from the nest would likely be his last.
"I'm sorry, Minerva. I lied to you."
"About what?"
"My gifts. They are not gifts that I give because of any selfless desire to comfort someone. I give them because they represent everything I hate about myself. They are the embodiment of my own selfish fear. I want to get rid of them."
Minerva couldn't respond. All the shining golden beauty around her suddenly sounded like a heavy burden to bear.
"Did you know that this ship is cursed?" he asked. "If you believe in such things."
"In what way?"
"Cursed to be alone. We pirates say that the ship itself will accept command from no man. I have been up here a long time, and I have seen more captains come and go than I can count. But I am a coward, Minerva. Not once have I fought to protect her. Not once have I used a weapon against any man that sought to take her as their prize. I stole my spoils from the shares of my fallen comrades and dragged them up to my nest. All my life I have chosen cowardice over courage. Selfishness over sacrifice. Now I am old, and I no longer have the option."
"You are not dead, Nezzen. You always have the option."
"Do you really think so?"
"I cannot accept any alternatives."
Nezzen smiled warmly. "I cannot see the future like Lintumen can, but I can see the present far better than he ever could. We will complete our repairs in the Loftwood, and when they are complete, we will run. We will run for our lives, because we cannot fight the force that Captain Black has sent against us. There may yet be an opportunity for courage and sacrifice for us all."
Chapter 53
The Loftwood
From a distance, the Loftwood bore the appearance of any other forest, except with exceptionally tall trees. As the Skyraker drew closer, however, it became apparent that the height of the trees significantly exceeded any reasonable expectation.
The ship also began to encounter spiders flying on nets of webbing strung between their legs. Sometimes they landed on the sails, or even on a person, before being quickly shooed away. Minerva did her best to ignore the arachnids. If they landed nearby, she moved to another part of the sail and kept working.
As they neared the edge of the woods, the tree line completely dominated the landscape. The trees were not only floating in the air, held in place by countless strands of webbing strung between their canopies, they were also massive. Each single tree was composed of a monstrous mass of writhing trunks, sometimes wider than the length of the ship.
Under the canopy, the sun quickly vanished, and spiders flew everywhere, like grotesque fish of the skies. Minerva was slowly losing the ability to ignore the increasing size of the spiders, and she began flicking them off her clothing. Luff grabbed her arm unexpectedly as she moved to swat a spider the size of her foot from her shoulder. It was still climbing towards her face when he gently picked it up and placed it on a sail.
"Their bite – really is lethal," the twins said warningly. The way they said it made it clear they weren't playing games this time. "They're harmless – unless provoked. Just pick them up – and put them on the sails."
Minerva hated spiders, as she hated all things with more than four legs, and she really wanted to get down from the masts where the creepy beasties seemed to enjoy landing with the most frequency. As the ship flew onward into the dark, she pawed at her shirt, sweaty-handed, every time she saw one of the critters fly by, and her stomach refused to descend from her throat. To compensate, she buried her mind in her work, doing her best to disassociate from what was going on around her.
Soon it was so dark that the crew needed to light lanterns on deck to move around. Random shards of light that pierced down from above accented their path deeper into the woods.
"How does Captain Glass know where to go?" Minerva asked Luff.
"He's following – the spiders. See the sparks – from where they fly? We can fly – where they can fly."
Minerva took her eyes away from concentrating on the sails for a moment to look at the pitch-blackness around her. Every so often, a tiny streak of blue sparks streaked through the air. The shadows cast by the arcing electricity easily revealed the trees around them, lighting the way for the Skyraker. With every strobe of energy, she saw thousands of shadowy spiders flying about in the darkness.
The thought of the numbers made Minerva's skin crawl, but she couldn't look away. There was something so curious and terrifying about them. Sometimes they flew between the masts and sails, sending tiny bolts of lightning into the cloth around her. She could feel the ship tremble as it received a sudden burst of lift, and the further out she looked the more it felt like gazing off into a living canopy of stars.
"What's that, out over there?" she asked, pointing towards a dim cloud of light in the depths of the trees.
Luff followed her outstretched finger, but didn't reply. As the light grew slightly brighter, Leech skipped over to his brother. The twins whispered to each other quietly, and Leech walked to the end of the spar for a closer look.
A few sparks of lightning bounced out from the mass into a nearby tree, and the faint sound of a crackling buzz found its way through the boughs towards her.
"Riggers! Get down!" Leech ran back up the boom as fast as he could, yelling frantically. "Get off the sails!"
Luff grabbed Minerva by the shirt and dragged her screaming off the spar. Luff controlled their descent with a counterweight held by his other hand, but they still landed hard on the deck below and tumbled aside. Minerva felt her hair stand on end, and the crackling sound rapidly transformed into a cacophonous thunder.
"What is it?" she asked, standing up and looking around, but no one answered.
Luff hauled her back down again by the arm, hard enough to send pain shooting through her scar.
"Ow! Hey!"
"Stay down!"
As the other riggers descended, the twins lay frozen in place, stricken with fear. Even Cloudscorch hadn't driven them from the sails in such a hurry. Minerva wanted to get a better look at what had them so terrified, but all she saw over the port side was a growing cloud of lights.
That's not lights, she realized, and her eyes went wide. That's lightning.
What she was seeing wasn't a cloud at all. It was millions of spiders, shocking and blasting their way through the trees in a massive swarm. As it approached, it swelled in apparent size, until even the Skyraker must have seemed like a miniature toy caught in a sea of fireflies.
The twins ran for the helm, shouting for the captain to cut loose the top sails. Captain Glass stood silent and stricken, staring into the lights. The twins began to repeat their command, but Minerva heard only the first half. The cloud of spiders had reached the Skyraker, and everything around her went bright as the whitest snow, drowned in the chorus of a million blistering bolts of lightning. Her nose filled with the scent of burnt metal and the Skyraker shuddered. What she felt was numbing agony cours
ing through her body.
Chapter 54
Spider Storm
Minerva struggled to move. Every time she tried, her arms and legs jerked uncontrollably. She couldn't hold her head up without suffering painful shocks to the ears and cheeks, but she could see the twins pushing for the helm. They moved in lurches, standing and falling to their knees, striving valiantly.
Someone grabbed her by the leg, dragging her away, and she turned to see Gags hauling on her foot as he pulled her towards the sterncastle. He swatted at the tiny wisps of thunderstorm all around him, barely able to keep his legs upright. They were almost into cover when the rocking of the Skyraker grew unmanageable, and he fell beside her. Together, Minerva and Gags pushed and dragged each other into the cramped space beneath the stairs of the sterncastle, seeking refuge from the onslaught. Gags pulled in his arms and feet, choking hard from the exertion.
Tiny spiders swarmed every open space of the ship. They flew in circles, never landing, and the more they grouped the larger their bolts became. When they struck the sails, a white-hot flash lit the darkness, and the ship quaked in response. Something old and wooden splintered, adding a deep crackling rumble to the storm.
Overburdened with energy, the Skyraker lifted hard and fast. Nobody was in the sails, and nobody was at the helm. A small tree caught in the path of their ascent tore down through the rigging as they rocketed upwards. It cratered spectacularly on the deck, sending a spray of twigs and debris everywhere.
The Skyraker listed sharply from side to side as the spiders swirled around. At the far end of the deck, Olbus dragged sailors to their feet and threw them into cover. Gags grabbed Minerva by the arm, holding her back when she went to help Olbus.
Above the chaos, the twins continued to cry out. "Cut the hammers! Loose the main!" they bellowed.
"What does that mean?" she shouted at Gags, hoping he could find the strength to talk.
"They need hurk to release hurk the hurk hammer sails. Let them hurk go."
"Let them go? Separate from the ship?"
Gags nodded, gripping his throat. "Less. Lift."
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