Ship of Dragons

by C. Greenwood

  “Eat another one!” sneered the pirate below and hurled a second orange. This one was launched toward Basil. It flew between the bars of his prison to fall into his lap.

  There came sounds of cruel laughter from below as crewmembers gathered to watch us being pelted with fruit.

  I took a closer look at the seemingly hostile pirate who was so helpfully supplying us with sustenance. There was something familiar about the dark-haired figure scowling up at us from beneath a floppy-brimmed hat. It was the ship’s cabin boy, I realized. Only this cabin boy was no boy at all. It was Basil’s sister, Nyssa, in disguise. Having run away to join the pirates long ago, she had found her loyalties divided the last time we were prisoners aboard the Sea-Vulture and had ultimately helped us escape. It seemed she was still trying to help us in the only way she could.

  I held on to the orange in my hands and waited for the spectators to disperse below, before beginning to peel the juicy fruit with my fingernails. I looked across the distance at Basil to see if he had recognized his sister as I did. But if he knew her, he didn’t show it. He simply tipped his hat in a gesture of mockery toward the skinny figure in the distance and sank his teeth into the unpeeled orange.

  I followed suit, not caring anymore about the bitterness of the peel, and savored the sweetness of the juice inside. It wasn’t cool, but it was wet and refreshing. Suddenly our situation seemed slightly more bearable. With the hot sun sinking below the horizon and my mouth no longer dry, I began to summon a little hope. We had Nyssa on our side even if there was nothing she could openly do for us. And I had suddenly remembered one welcome fact about being trapped aboard the same ship as Ulysses. Somewhere on his person or in his cabin, the pirate captain held the key to unlock the nathamite shackle from around my wrist. If I could ever get my hands on that key and break free of the magic-blocking bracelet, we might have a chance.

  As the stars began to glitter above, my spirits revived.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I lost track of the number of times the sun and moon chased one another across the sky while Basil and I sat hunched in our cages. It had been no more than two or three days, I thought. But the glaring heat, combined with my thirst when the oranges ran out, made me dizzy and confused. Basil fared no better. Occasionally we tried to hold conversations across the distance between us, but there was little to say, especially if we did not want to be overheard by our captors below. Eventually we were given food and water, which helped with the dizziness.

  That gave me enough strength that I was feeling stronger and more aware of my surroundings on the day when a dark shoreline came into view far off in the distance. I tried to make it out as we drew nearer, but there was nothing familiar about the brown blur at the edge of the horizon. I would have to wait until we were nearer to make it out.

  Not long after I made the discovery of the shoreline, the pirates lowered my cage. To my confusion, they didn’t bring Basil down with me. He remained in his little prison dangling from the yardarm while my cage dipped and swayed precariously as the pirates lowered it on its chain. When I had crashed onto the deck, my door was rattled open. The nameless pirate with the dark braids pulled me out.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, eyeing the key he had used to unlock my prison but knowing I would never get my hands on it.

  He didn’t answer.

  I must have spent more time in the cage than I realized, because I found now that I was so stiff I could hardly stand. The pirate with braids, together with another one-eyed sailor I had seen before, took each of my arms and half carried me across the deck while other crewmen looked on. My muscles screamed in protest at the unaccustomed exercise. But by the time we reached the door of the captain’s cabin, I was able to stand upright on my own.

  I didn’t bother asking what Captain Ulysses wanted with me now. I had a feeling I was about to find out for myself.

  When the door was thrust open, the cabin’s shadowed interior came as no surprise. I had been here once before. Everything was familiar to me, from the long desk before the bowed window to the tall wooden structure along the wall that made a ticking noise and loudly chimed the hour just as I entered the space. My escorts left me alone inside the doorway and slammed the thick door behind me.

  I took in the scattering of papers across the broad desk and the many maps and drawings pinned to the walls, depicting the ocean and its islands. The flickering light of a lantern reflected off the polished wood paneling of the walls. The space was a curious mixture of roughness and opulence, right down to the finely upholstered chair in front of the desk. It reminded me of Ulysses himself, who could sometimes speak and dress with hints of educated elegance and other times lapse into the gruffer manner of his underlings. Whoever he had once been, he had not always been a sea rat.

  As if my thinking of him had summoned the pirated captain, a shadow suddenly detached itself from the wall. I realized Ulysses had been watching me from a corner.

  “You be wondering why I have sent for you,” he observed. “No doubt you and Seastrider are growin’ bored in your cozy accommodations.”

  I didn’t tell him that I was as much a Seastrider as Basil. As far as I could tell, he had never worked out that we were step-cousins, and I didn’t mean to give him that information now, not if there was a chance he could find a way to use it against us.

  Instead, I said, “I saw a shoreline in the distance. I’m assuming this is the Bleak Coast, the destination you spoke of. Tell me, why do you bring us to such a place? What is supposed to happen there?”

  A strange light came into his eyes, a light I had seen once before, the last time we spoke in this place. It was the light of madness.

  “A wrong is to be righted,” he said gravely. “The past is to be undone.”

  “What wrong?” I prompted. “How can the past be changed?”

  The magical minute glass suddenly seemed to be burning a hole in the inner pocket where I had hidden it. Surely he could not know of its existence, could not guess of its power to turn back time?

  But no, if he had known of it, the powerful relic would have been taken from me by now. Besides, his focus was not on me. He looked past me, toward the tall wooden box against the wall, a frame carved with the shapes of dragons, encasing a face like that of a sundial. The curious object filled the room with a soft ticking sound as the shiny metal pendulum in the lower half of the box swung back and forth. Again I wondered what could power such a machine. Magic?

  “Time is not the fixed thing we imagine it to be,” Ulysses told me in a hollow, detached voice. “It is fluid. Flexible. One only has to know how to reset it in order to escape its cruelties.”

  It was a strange line of thought, especially for a pirate.

  “Even assuming what you say is true, how do you know such things?” I asked.

  “I have studied ancient texts,” he said, beginning to pace around the room. “In my zeal to rewrite the past, I have traveled the world in pursuit o’ the answers I seek. I sailed to the far corners of the earth, met with wise ones, and learned things you wouldn’t imagine possible.”

  My mind flashed back to my dream, the one of him walking through a rain-soaked bazaar in some distant foreign part of the world. I shook the troubling image aside. At least now I had a guess how he had stumbled across knowledge of magic like mine. I supposed his studies must have also led him to familiarity with the magic-blocking effects of nathamite, the material my shackle was made of. Maybe he had acquired the metal bracelet in one of his “far corners of the earth.”

  Captain Ulysses went on talking about the texts he had studied, but his words about time alteration made little sense, so I stopped listening. My attention caught instead on his blue coat. For once, he wasn’t wearing the garment, having left it slung over the back of a nearby chair. I noticed a bulge in one of the pockets and the glint of something metallic sticking out of the top. I caught my breath. Could it be exactly the thing I had hoped for, the key that would free me of the natha
mite shackle? Basil’s sister had once told me the key I wanted was somewhere in the captain’s keeping, but I had hardly dared to hope I would find it so easily.

  While the pirate paced the length of the room, continuing to lecture about time, I kept my eyes glued to him even as I edged over to the chair and the coat. I waited for a moment when Ulysses’s back was turned and slipped my hand surreptitiously into the coat pocket.

  The pirate continued speaking. “Once I realized what was possible, all that remained was to find some source of magic like that I had read about in the texts. I knew back at the Blue Mermaid when I beheld your glowing hand that I had found my magic source.”

  I fumbled blindly in the pocket until my fingers closed around something cold and metal. I looked down to find it was a thick brass key, one that looked as if it could potentially match my shackle. I began to draw it out.

  Suddenly strong fingers clamped around my wrist. I started and looked up to find myself staring into the clear gaze of Ulysses. The light of madness had gone from his eyes, and he now appeared completely in possession of his mind.

  My heart dropped as he drew my hand firmly from the coat pocket. I had been so close. Even as I contemplated making a desperate struggle to wrest out of his grip and try again for the key, the captain raised his voice and called out two names. An instant later the door burst open and my two escorts from earlier barreled into the room. Ulysses jerked his head at the men, and they immediately crossed the room to take hold of me and drag me out of the cabin.

  Out on the deck, I wasn’t sure what would happen next. Would I be returned to my cage or punished in some way for my attempt to steal the key? I still didn’t even know if it was the right key, one that might have freed me from the nathamite.

  In the distance ahead, I glimpsed the shore I had noticed on the horizon earlier. It was closer now, and the blurs of brown and green were beginning to take the shapes of mountains and tree-covered rises.

  But there was no time to stare at the foreign shore and wonder exactly where it was we were destined to land. Ulysses had followed us out of the cabin, and now a crowd of crewmen had begun to collect around us to see what would happen. I was aware of Basil dangling above our heads, also looking on.

  “Is this what you were searching for?” asked Captain Ulysses, who was now carrying his blue coat. He reached into the pocket and fished out the shiny key I had been trying to steal moments ago. “Why be you so desperate to obtain this key? Maybe you think it has some value?”

  He waved the key mockingly at me. “Maybe you think it be the key to your freedom, the key to unlocking the nathamite shackle?”

  There was no point in saying that was exactly what I had hoped.

  Ulysses nodded to the men on either side of me. The pirate with the dark braids and his one-eyed companion both released me and stepped back. Surprised to find myself set free, I stared in confusion as Ulysses stepped closer.

  “Well, girl, you be right,” he said to me. “This pretty little key be the answer to all your problems, a shiny bit o’ metal that stands between you and your magic. Would you like to have it?”

  My eyes followed the key, but I kept silent since it was obviously not a question I was meant to answer.

  Ulysses seemed untroubled at my lack of response. “Don’t just stare, girl. Take it,” he insisted, opening his fist and offering the key to me.

  It lay in the flat of his hand, glittering in the afternoon sun, the key to my and Basil’s freedom. In a matter of mere seconds, I could be rid of my shackle and free to embrace my magic, free to create an invisible shield to protect me from the pirates.

  Of course, I knew it was a joke or a trap. It could be nothing else. Yet it was irresistible. I barely hesitated.

  In a single, quick motion, I swept the key out of the captain’s hand, inserted it in the lock of my shackle, and turned it. There was a soft clicking sound. I hadn’t been sure until that moment whether this key was truly the right one for my bracelet. But the shackle opened now, releasing its grip on my wrist. I let it fall to the deck, where it handed at my feet with a thud. I flexed my fingers and rubbed at my wrist where the bracelet had left a pale ring.

  For the first time in a long time, I was free.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I didn’t stand there in amazement for long. I reached out to embrace my magic, ready for the feeling of safety it would instantly grant me. I grasped through the emptiness and found… nothing. My magic wasn’t there. Not even a wisp of it.

  “What’s happened?” I muttered under my breath.

  I opened my eyes, not even realizing until now that I had squeezed them shut. My magic-touched hand still glowed with its reddish-purple light. But I realized for the first time that the glow was different. It was fainter and fitful, like the flickering of a lantern. The nathamite had blocked my magic, but without it, I was suddenly weaker than ever.

  I looked up to find Captain Ulysses evidently enjoying my consternation.

  “What have you done?” I demanded. “What’s wrong with my magic?”

  Ulysses spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. “What have I done?” he repeated. “What could I possibly do to affect your powers?”

  He hesitated as if in thought, before adding, “Oh, there might be one small matter I forgot to mention. It is a minor thing really.”

  He stomped three times on the deck as though giving some signal.

  The stomping was followed by a strange shiver that worked its way up through the boards beneath my feet. The timbers groaned and shifted. A gap began to open beneath me, and I realized I was standing atop a massive trapdoor that was quickly swinging open. I stumbled backward to avoid falling down into the darkness below. All around me, the ring of watching pirates fell back as well.

  Barely making it to safety in time, I stood to the side and watched a platform rise up through the yawning mouth of the open door. On it was an object the likes of which I had seen only once in a dream. I looked upon a complicated contraption of sleek metal and belts, cogs, and gears that made up an impressive machine about twice the size of a man. Despite a few patches of rust and the general air of neglect, the contraption glistened in the afternoon sunlight.

  Dread wriggled through my stomach, the same dread I had felt the first time I laid eyes on this monstrous work of modern machinery. I had no idea what it was or what power it had over anyone. I only knew that it filled me with fear.

  Ulysses looked on the machine with pride. “Behold the culmination of all my hard work,” he announced to the general gathering.

  He looked to me. “You asked, girl, what be wrong with your magic. The answer be that I have acquired somethin’ far better than the nathamite shackle you previously wore, somethin’ capable o’ not only blocking power but harnessing it for a purpose.”

  Now that he said the words, I recognized the shiny metal the thing was built of. Nathamite. Far more nathamite than the smaller amount contained in the shackle I had worn. If that shackle had been able to muffle my magic, this creation contained enough of the mysterious metal to smother it. No wonder the magic glow of my hand was flickering like a candle in the wind. This close to the machine, there was no hope of tapping into my power. I was more helpless now than ever before.

  * * *

  A few hours later, Basil and I stood together against the ship’s rail, watching the approaching shoreline draw closer. Basil’s cage had been lowered from the yardarm and the prisoner released immediately after Captain Ulysses’s display of power in the form of his magic-harnessing machine. Clearly our captors no longer harbored any fears of another escape.

  Now we looked on the land that awaited us. The Bleak Coast, the place we had journeyed for days to reach, had a wild and desperate look to it.

  “Sailors tell tales of the Bleak Coast,” Basil told me, keeping his voice low, although none of our captors were within hearing distance. “It is said that these are evil shores where no ships land, because the spot is cursed.”
r />   “Cursed?” I asked. “Cursed how?”

  He shrugged. “They say something terrible happened to the last inhabitants of this place, some cruel destruction befell them. Nobody says what it was, only that doom hangs over all who land here.”

  His words did not surprise me. I had a bad feeling from the moment I set eyes on this place. There was no pale sandy beach of the kind I was used to. Instead, there was only a shoreline of broken gray shale. Rocky peaks ran right down to the sea, and beyond I glimpsed green rising hills. But the very trees here were different than those back home. There were no delicate fronds of bright green dancing in the breeze. Instead, tall shadowed trees with reddish trunks stood like thick giants spying down over the bluffs and shoreline.

  The Sea-Vulture dropped anchor not far from that shale-covered beach, and we watched as the pirates prepared a dinghy, clearly intending to go ashore. If they were aware of the supposed doom that attached itself to all strangers who landed in this place, they were apparently unafraid of it. Or if they did fear it, they feared the displeasure of their captain more and did not dare disobey his will.

  The dinghy was lowered over the side of the Sea-Vulture, a dozen crewmen scrambling down a rope ladder after it. Basil and I were in the rear, prodded to climb down the ladder by other pirates who remained aboard the ship. Taking my seat in the gently rocking dinghy, I was relieved to at least be putting some distance between me and the nathamite machine still sitting on the deck of the pirate ship. Maybe if we rowed far enough away, we would be out of range of the block of nathamite and I would regain my powers. I didn’t hold out a great deal of hope for it. Something told me Captain Ulysses would not make such a clumsy mistake. He would have measured the distance I could travel away from the device without the nathamite losing its hold. But even the captain was not infallible. I would not give up and wouldn’t stop testing my magic at intervals.