by S G Dunster
Suddenly, inexplicably, we were free.
We fled, speeding away at a terrifying pace, leaving the dark, tentacled cloud in the far distance.
With what turbines? I wondered dizzily. With what . . . how were we moving?
My stomach swooped, the wind resistance flattened my face. The ship rocked, and rocked, and rocked. It was too much speed for the stabilizers connecting the balloon to the ship, keeping us afloat. The Whippoorwill rocked, dipped down, rose up, swung wildly, doing its best to buck us off like a monolithic mechanical bull.
I must have passed out because I came to my senses in my sumptuous captain’s bed, with Lil bent over me.
“Ouch,” I exclaimed, feeling a sharp pinch on my upper arm—her nails, digging into my flesh. “Get away from me!”
“Good, you’re awake. Get up.”
I sat up slowly and she backed away, sliding off the side of the bed to land on the floor. Pain shocked my hand. I looked down. The tip of my index finger was a scabby mess.
“How’d you do that?” Lil asked, pointing at it.
“It . . . the shadow.”
“It hurt you?” Lil grabbed my hand and stared at my wound. “It takes your flesh,” she muttered. “The blyks. They take your flesh.” She threw it down, leapt off the bed, and went to the window.
It was dim inside the cabin. Through the bay window I could see stars. They were bright and beautiful, but I didn’t like them. Even though I don’t know many constellations, I knew that these weren’t right. And the moon hung there, swollen and somehow obscene.
“They’re watching us.” Lil pulled down the roman blind and tied it off savagely. “We’re over the mists again, but the sky’s followed us. Their sky.”
“Whose?” I grumbled, squinting at her.
“You know, now,” Lil replied. “You’ve seen it. You know.”
I looked at the grandfather clock, standing against the wall. It had been bolted on, as had much of the wall decorations in my cabin. Good storytelling on my part. An airship wouldn’t be safe with barely-secured objects coming loose and flying around.
The airship. Suddenly, thoughts were coming back. Realizations. Memories. “How are we flying?” I asked, leaping onto the floor myself, stumbling, because it had been a little premature. My legs weren’t quite awake. Lucky for me, I’d piled the carpet an inch thick—as soft a cushion as the pillows on my bed. “Didn’t the cyclone break off the paddles?”
“But I fixed them,” Lil replied. “I got us out of there. Come see.” Lil patted the chest-pocket of her overalls, and something squirmed. Satie poked her bony little head out, eyeing me cheekily. Her yellow eyes, mesmerizing in the dim light, held mine for a moment, and then she disappeared again.
“You made her again.”
“I made her live again,” Lil corrected.
“Eap,” I said. “The cyclone. The blyks. Eap . . . stopped it.”
“Yeah.” Lil looked away from me. She slid a finger into her pocket and stroked Satie.
I frowned. “What’s wrong? Is Eap okay?”
“You’ll have to come see. I think so. He’s resting.”
Lil lead me down the hall and through a door—the cabin closest to the Saloon. It had been Dane’s. I stopped in front of the door, my throat suddenly all tight, a stupid lump rising in my throat.
Dane. She was gone.
What was happening to my Whippoorwill? My story? Dane had been my girl, central to the plot, maybe the whole reason I wrote it.
I’d seen her. I’d touched her. Dane. We’d joked, talked. I bet, if she hadn’t died . . . if they hadn’t taken her . . .
How did that work? First Aelfur, now Dane. How could something so easily take a telling and make it nothing? Were these people—Grimms, Wolf and Rook—so powerful, then?
I closed my eyes. I knocked.
“I’m quite all right. You may enter,” Eap’s calm voice, with its southern lilt, came through clear and strong.
I let my half-held breath go and opened the door.
There he lay in Dane’s bed—yellow and gold silk, piled with velvet pillows. The yellow made his skin look even sicklier. He was rumpled, his face gaunter than usual. His face had a lot of bandage on it. It was wound around his head, looping diagonally from his crown down over his left eye and cheek.
“If you’d oblige me with an inch of port,” he murmured, holding out a tiny, bell-shaped glass, nodding at a rectangular decanter sitting on the dresser.
I picked it up and nearly dropped it as I brushed the glass. Pain shot through my hand. His hand was steady as I filled his glass full with rich, red liquid. He looked at my finger. “You were bitten,” he said.
“He touched the blyk,” Lil said. “That’s what happens? They take flesh?” This time she framed it as a question.
“They are a mass of disembodied spirits. They are always seeking fleshy containers,” Eap said. “If they can take you whole, they’ll possess you for a while. Or if not, they’ll take pieces of you. Become solid for a second. Blyks are hungry. Driven by appetite. Stuck starving for eternity.”
“Hm,” Lil said.
Eap’s moustache twitched and his visible eye crinkled slightly in amusement. He tossed the port back, set the glass on the bedside table, and sighed. “Judging by Logan’s expression, I must look a perfect corpse.”
“No,” Lil said, a mild puzzlement crossing her features. She glanced at me, then back at him. “You look fine.”
“Are . . . you okay?” I asked him.
“He’s just lost an eye,” Lil said. “That’s all.”
“An eye?”
“He did it on purpose,” Lil replied. “He ripped out his eye and threw it. To distract them.”
“So we could escape.” Eap sat up straighter. “You’d rather be a meal for maggots? The boat would’ve gone up completely, and us with it. It’s the only defense against a blyk.”
“What,” I said. “An eye?”
“Flesh.” Eap gestured for us to come closer. As we did, he sighed, and waved for us to step back. “I can’t look at both of you that near with one eye. Listen, children. What is more real to any of us than our own flesh? What do we tell more intimately, more often, than each particle that makes up our experience—skin to touch, tongue to taste, eyes to see? If thine eye offend thee, cast it out.” He grinned then, horribly, and shoved away the bedcovers. “I really am quite all right. I just wanted a little coddling. I suppose that’s too much to expect when working with the young.” He swung his legs over the bedside.
“Why would an eye distract them from a ship full of people?” I asked.
“It was an easy take. A blyk will devour anything that will give it a moment to feel contained, or fed. I fed them my eye, offered it, and we got away. Thus ends the story. Come.”
“No, wait,” I said. “I—is that why the wolves, they took—but Dane’s not real flesh.” I fell back into my puzzlement, and my heaviness. Dane. I couldn’t handle it. Her screaming, the bloody mess they’d made of her. How terrible it had been, how truly awful.
“No, that show of violence and gore was completely unnecessary,” Eap said. “Figments like Dane aren’t strong food for Blyks. Ethereal tellings like that only bring them a wisp of sustenance—momentary. Figments just fade into the shadow. That grisly display was a telling, and it was meant for you.”
“For me.”
“It was intended to terrify you . . . to petrify you. Slow you, us, down. Unfortunately for them, you have more substance than that. More guts. More bucolic fortitude.” He gave me another grin and fairly skipped over to the door. “Come. We’ve fended them off, but they are looking for us. Watching us. We can be sure they’ll regroup soon. And in the meantime,” the smile faded from his face, “it is imperative we find Hans. The four of us—you, Lil, Hans, and I—we may make something of a showing against them. The problem is,” he held the door, and I stepped out, “now the Grimms know this as well. And we still aren’t quite a match for them, I think. No
t without Hans.”
“So they’ll be trying to— “
“Find him before we do, the plummy bastard.” Eap grabbed his hat from a hook on the wall and shoved it on his head, over the bandages and all. “Hiding like a startled hare in the woods, when his only hope of safety is up here with us. He may care so little for his own life that he’ll let them come for him. But I care too much about my own skin,” he tapped his temple, and the bandages disappeared, leaving in their place a small eyepatch, “to have to give up any more bits of it. We must conference. Puzzle out ideas about where he’s gone off to.”
We walked out onto the deck, and I stopped, shocked. The entire stern had been encased in black metal, and the paddles were now metal blades—sleek, pointed, two dozen of them, whirring so fast they were great, blurred disks in the sky behind us. “How fast are we going?” I asked.
“That’d be seventy knots, sir,” Marco’s voice called from the pilot’s room. The door was ajar, and we were passing right by. “With them new blades, and the rocket-adaptations on the engines below— “
“Lil,” I growled, turning on her.
“This isn’t about the integrity of your precious steam technology,” Lil said.
“You always thought they should be rocket engines. I told you that on a wooden ship— “
“That’s why I made the lining in the engine room all metal, and everything in the stern and blades. It’s working, isn’t it?”
“Bickering will only waste breath,” Eap interjected. “Come to the main salon. Logan, bring all your crew.”
“One of them’s dead,” I snapped.
“You can try to remake her,” said Lil. “She wasn’t ever really real. Why’re you crying over her anyway?” She smirked. “Reliving some fake, tender memories?”
“Shut up.” I closed my eyes, trying to think of something other than a pale, flailing arm, the growling and screaming and ripping and bleeding. “I don’t think I can make her again. I—”
“No,” Eap said. “Don’t try. Don’t worry. We’ve got plenty of solid figments to run this craft. Now that Lil and I have seen and gotten to know your characters, we reinforce your telling with every thought and interaction. They will grow and evolve as our relationships with them evolve. Dane’s death will help with that.”
“Great. I’m glad her dismemberment and disemboweling could be a handy tool.”
“Don’t think of it. It’ll be a pebble in the Grimms’ pot.” He put a clammy hand on my wrist, and I worked hard not to shiver it off.
I decided, as we walked to the salon, that Arapahoe and Selah were already there, waiting for us. When we walked in, there they were, seated at an old oak table. The room was much smaller than the one I’d put there, lined all with dark oak and round windows, reinforced with metal and bolts.
“Wha— “
“I made some changes, too,” Eap said. “It’s much easier to defend a small space.”
“I’m not sure I like the modifications.”
Selah frowned belligerently at her surroundings. Her ruffled dress was hitched high over her knees, and she was wearing tall, metal-studded boots and a scarlet coat. Her dark curls were caught back from her face and gleamed in contrast with the coat.
“Stop drooling.” Lil popped me on the chin so I bit my tongue. I made a grab for her, and only got the end of a braid, which she twitched away contemptuously. I sat at the table, eyeing her furiously, tasting blood.
“What are we doing?” Arapahoe had a set of tiny glasses perched on his strong nose. His shining hair was free, spilling over his shoulders. Eap’s map was spread out on the table in front of him—or a version of it. A much-blown up version, sickle-shoreline carefully copied, with fountain pen Xs here and there and names written in an elegant hand.
“I hope you’re not upset,” he said, taking the glasses from his nose and looking at me. “I’ve taken the liberty. We’re over an unknown landmass, likely an island, though the sea is not visible through the clouds constantly surrounding the shore. We landed here.” He touched an X he’d drawn on the upward slope, about a third of the landmass above the sickle tip. “Gauging direction and speed, right now we’re just about here.” He pointed offshore—quite a ways offshore. I felt dizzy again, disembodied.
“The sky reaches all the way out here,” Eap said. “They are spreading themselves thin.”
“The Grimms, you mean,” I said. “Not the blyks?”
“Yes.” Eap’s good eye met mine. “Both. The blyks are the hands of the Grimms. They have utter control over them. They could just come after us, but instead they merely watch. I have to deduce that they are spreading their search broadly. They must be very desperate then, to find him. Hans. To take us out separately, to not let us join company. A good sign, wouldn’t you say?”
“Why would you say that?” Selah said, giving Eap a dark look. “And who are we looking for, if I may be so bold to ask?”
I tried to answer, then shook my head. “Another fugitive,” I finally replied. “Another who has information we need.”
“Ah,” Selah said, sitting back, rubbing at a temple with slender fingers. “And this fugitive is worth risking the Whippoorwill?” Her eyes raised slowly, then bored into mine. It was as close as Selah had ever come to questioning her captain.
“The Ship is at risk as we speak,” Eap answered for me. “And will continue to be, as long as our enemy has strongholds on the continent.” He tapped at the map.
“We’ll need to have a memorial for Dane, for the crew’s sake,” Arapahoe said, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “I know it’s not an efficient use of time right now. But morale is very important. With all the changes,” he eyed Eap and Lil in turn, “they’ll need to know their higher ups care.”
“I care,” Selah said quietly. “I’m just worried.”
“We all care. You’re right, Rap.” I glared at Eap, who’d raised a brow and opened his mouth to speak. “As you said, relationships need to evolve if we’re going to continue to get more . . . solid. Things need to be as normal,” I emphasized the word, “as possible in the middle of all this change to the crew’s routine.”
Arapahoe gave me a puzzled look. Selah leaned her chin on her hand and stared at the map.
She was right. It was sad. For me, for them. And that was okay. It was all right that I was sad. Lil’s jabs, that was because she didn’t use her feelings much. She didn’t know. Her tellings . . .
No, that wasn’t true. Satie. Lil had grieved Satie.
And then cheerfully remade her.
I looked from Selah to Arapahoe to Lil. Maybe she was right. Maybe I should just remake her?
But then, I thought, picturing Selah’s sorrowful expression, I’d have to retell a whole lot. And wasn’t this . . . didn’t it solidify things? This feeling inside made Dane real. Made all of us real.
“I’ll arrange the funeral,” I said. “We will have it tonight.”
Eap gave me a nod—fierce, a stab of approval. “It is right to,” he said. “I shall recite at it.”
Lil gave both of us slightly incredulous looks, glanced at the ceiling, and shrugged.
“But we’re being followed,” Eap said. “We cannot forget that. At any moment, it could be the joining of fronts. We have to start thinking . . .” he paused, “outside the boundaries of what we’ve experienced already.” The words seemed to seed some thoughts. He fell quiet, swirling the liquid in his glass.
“Hans,” Lil said quietly. “The Grey Man. Where to find him.” She put her chin on her fist and glared at the worn oak grain of the tabletop. “You haven’t seen him for a while.” She aimed her remark at Eap.
“Years,” Eap agreed. “He left Grandeur behind completely when Rose had her first episode.”
“Rose,” I said. “You keep mentioning her. Who’s Rose?”
“Hans’ companion,” Eap replied, putting a little inflection into the word. “He brought her down with him when he came to the Caldera. Tricked her, in fact.” His ey
es narrowed and lines formed around his mouth. “But Rose may or may not be relevant now. She’s likely long gone to the blyks. She was trying to leave. That was what inspired her dissolution into madness. She wanted to . . .” he paused, “she wanted to leave. So that she could die.”
Lil shuddered.
“So she was manipulated to come down here,” I said. “Trapped.”
“Well,” Lil said, the reproach flying a mile over her immaculately braided blond head, “I’ve been talking to him for months. I’m sure I know something.”
“Let’s have some food,” Arapahoe suggested. “And some spirits. Get the blood flowing in the right direction.”
One of the long-legged waitresses approached us, swishing her skirt and giving me a wink.
“What direction’s that?” Lil muttered, giving me an evil glance. “North or South?”
“Speaking of dirty minds,” I threw back at her. “Food sounds good.” I nodded at the spindly-legged, pigtailed girl standing silently at the door. “Dinner, please.”
“Supper,” Eap corrected. “It’s evening hours.”
“Right,” I said. “We call it dinner now. Supper’s something my grandma says.”
“Odd, the things that change so easily on the crust,” Eap murmured, “while others remain fixed and immobile as . . .” he shook his head. “There is nothing. There is nothing to put there.”
“Nothing is fixed and immobile,” Lil agreed. They shared a look, maybe the first mutually appreciative one I’d noticed.
We sat quietly, waiting for the food. I was thinking. Lil was thinking. Eap was thinking. Selah and Arapahoe seemed very much like they were thinking, though I knew they were figments of my telling, and so the thoughts they were thinking would be a reflection of the thoughts I was thinking, of what I made them think. Wouldn’t they?
How confusing. How ridiculous.
“The blyks,” Selah finally said. “Please tell us about them, Eap.”
She was making an effort. I gave her a small smile. She returned it with warmth, and my cheeks heated up. I looked down at the table, tapping my finger on it. I wished Dane was at our table.