The Quest to the Uncharted Lands

by Jaleigh Johnson

  “Which makes things more fun for me,” Stella said, giving him a sugary smile. “Don’t forget, those tricks you mentioned also got me on board this ship without anyone being the wiser. I didn’t even need an invisibility suit. I’m sorry, Cyrus, but whether you like it or not, I’m in this too.”

  Cyrus opened his mouth to argue, but then seemed to change his mind and snapped it shut. He sighed, the air hissing between his teeth. Stella took that for as much of an agreement as she was going to get.

  However, her satisfaction quickly faded. She might have accepted that Cyrus was from the uncharted lands, but that didn’t mean she trusted him. She sensed he wasn’t telling her everything about his power, and that worried her, especially in light of what had just happened with the nightcallers.

  Stella had collected so many unsettling mysteries—about this strange boy and about the expedition. But she was nothing if not a patient explorer, and she vowed to unravel every one of them, no matter how long it took.

  After three days of fixing up the window and attempted snooping around their level, Stella still hadn’t gotten the hang of sleeping in the cargo bay. She woke from a restless, miserable night’s sleep to the smell of dust and wood filling her nose. She opened her eyes, but it was too dark to make out her surroundings. Was it dawn yet? She tried to raise her arms to stretch and bumped her hands against some kind of obstruction.

  Stella blinked, her eyes adjusting to a dim light shining down from somewhere above her, but she didn’t understand what she was seeing. A wooden ceiling, inches from her face. She turned her head and found a wall right at her nose. A ball of panic knotted her stomach, and a whimper rose in her throat.

  She tried to turn, to sit up, but she was trapped. Someone had locked her inside one of the storage crates. Light slanted in through cracks in the wood. There was no way out. The box was the size and shape of a coffin, the walls closing in on all sides.

  “Let me out!” she screamed, but her voice came out a muffled whisper. She couldn’t catch her breath. There wasn’t enough air in the box. Frantic, she pounded the crate with her fists, kicking and thrashing, hoping someone outside in the cargo bay would hear her. She didn’t care who it was.

  “Help me! Please, somebody help me!”

  “Stella, be quiet,” a soft voice whispered in her ear.

  Stella’s body jerked. She thought she recognized the voice, but she couldn’t remember where she’d heard it before. She thrashed harder, her heart beating wildly. She was making enough noise for the whole ship to hear. Why didn’t somebody come?

  “Stella, please,” the voice begged, more urgently this time.

  Wait, she remembered that voice now. It had a name, though it wasn’t his real one.

  Cyrus.

  He was here in the cargo bay with her. But why didn’t he open the box and let her out? Had he been the one to trap her? Again she opened her mouth to scream.

  “Stella, open your eyes!”

  Stella woke to find herself sprawled on the floor of the cargo bay. Cyrus’s hand covered her mouth, his other hand pressing down on her shoulder. He was crouched beside her, but he wasn’t looking at her. His head was cocked, and he appeared to be listening to something.

  Then Stella heard it too. Voices in the cargo bay, crew members talking, and the banging and scraping of crates and other heavy objects being moved around.

  Slowly, awareness came back to her. She wasn’t trapped in a box. She’d just passed another night in the cargo bay of the Iron Glory, hidden away behind a stack of crates in a tiny makeshift camp near the engine room.

  But the dream had felt so real. She must have cried out in her sleep, and Cyrus was trying to calm her, afraid one of the crew might hear the noise and come over to investigate.

  Stella forced herself to relax and reached up to touch Cyrus’s arm to let him know she was awake and that she’d heard the noises. He looked down at her, nodded, and took his hand away from her mouth. Stella looked up at the pale gray light filtering in through the high windows. She guessed it was just after sunrise. The crew was down here early to start their day.

  The voices and sounds of movement drifted closer to their hiding place. Stella tensed. Beside her, Cyrus went utterly still.

  “I’m telling you, it wasn’t an accident,” one of the crewmen was saying. “I know a chop-saw cut when I see one. Hey, are you listening to me?”

  The sound of metal clanging against the floor made Stella jump. “You’ve been flapping your mouth for the past hour, Kal,” said another voice, tight and full of anger. “I don’t mind so much you doing it down here when we’re alone, but you keep yapping in front of the crew and you’ll start a panic. You heard what the captain said: no jumping to conclusions and no accusations against anyone until we know for sure it was sabotage.”

  Stella barely managed to stifle a gasp. Cyrus met her eyes and mouthed sabotage, as if he couldn’t believe it either.

  “Well, if it wasn’t done on purpose, it’s the shoddiest workmanship I’ve ever seen,” the crewman Kal muttered. “Those cables should have been checked and double-checked before takeoff. They’re what’re keeping us tethered to the gasbag. Should have known better than to trust the Dragonfly territories to build this ship.”

  “See, right there, you’re letting your mouth just go and go without checking with your brain first,” the other crewman said. There was more loud clanging, and Stella guessed he was throwing tools around the cargo bay. “If someone really is trying to sabotage this mission, don’t you think the very first thing he or she wants to accomplish is to get us at each other’s throats? And you just want to help things along, don’t you?”

  “Aw, Dain, you know I didn’t mean anything by it,” Kal said. “I just don’t like it, that’s all. I want this mission to succeed as much as the next guy, but we’re barely in the air three days and this happens. It’s not a good omen, is all I’m saying.”

  “I know,” Dain said, his voice quieter now. “But it’s no use worrying until we find out more. Come on, let’s go get some breakfast, and then I want to check the gasbag again. I’ve been seeing some odd cloud patterns. Think we might be headed into rougher weather soon.”

  Their voices gradually drifted away, and then came the sound of boots pounding on the metal stairs before the cargo bay fell quiet.

  Stella sat up and brushed damp hair out of her eyes. She was bathed in sweat from the nightmare, her shirt soaked, but she was too caught up in everything she’d just heard to care.

  Cyrus said it before she could. “If what we just heard is right, it means someone tried to cut the cables holding the Iron Glory’s gasbag or weaken them so they’d snap on their own.”

  Dread churned like a poison in Stella’s gut. “You think it might be the same person who used that whistle on the deck, the sound that lured in the nightcallers?”

  Cyrus’s jaw worked, his mouth set in a grim line. “Yes,” he said. “I think you were right to be suspicious. I think someone is trying to sabotage the ship.”

  “But that’s crazy,” Stella said, desperate for it not to be true. “We’re flying over frozen mountains right now. If we crash, we’re dead, and so are they.”

  “Maybe whoever it is doesn’t want the ship to crash,” Cyrus said. “Maybe he just wants to damage it enough so that we have to turn around. Or maybe…maybe he’s crazy, and he doesn’t care what happens to him.”

  Neither of those possibilities boded well for the mission, especially with the heightened tensions between the Merrow and Dragonfly crew members.

  “We have to do something,” Stella said. “If someone’s trying to sabotage this ship, we can’t just sit around and wait for him to strike.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Cyrus asked. “It sounds like the crew is already investigating, and there’s not much we can do from down here.”

  Stella crossed her arms. “Says the boy who has an invisibility suit in his knapsack,” she said dryly. “We’re in the best position to se
arch for the saboteur because he or she will never know we’re there, and we’re not part of the ship’s personnel.”

  “That’s true,” Cyrus acknowledged, “unless you have another nightmare and someone ousts us from our hiding spot.”

  Stella flinched, but she quickly recovered and gave him a frosty look. “Thanks for bringing that up,” she said. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

  She reached for her alchemy case and pretended to rummage through it, organizing the vials and powders for the hundredth time since she’d snuck on board the ship.

  It was easier to ignore her fear of tight places during the day, when the cargo bay was filled with sunlight. But at night, it was different. The crates loomed larger, the air grew hot and stale, and the walls pressed in on her. In the darkness, lying on a hard metal floor, Stella missed her bed back home. She missed Noveen and the sounds of the city at night. Here, she lay awake for hours, listening to the creaks and groans of the ship. Its swaying motion made her light-headed and sick. Even now, when the wind was calm and she could barely feel the ship moving, Stella found she had no appetite.

  She risked a glance at Cyrus and caught the skepticism in his eyes. “You don’t believe me?” she asked.

  “Just seems like the nightmares are getting worse, not better,” he said, frowning. “From where I’m sitting, you’re one bloodcurdling scream away from bringing them all running down here.”

  “I know!” Irritated and embarrassed, Stella slammed the flap of her alchemy case closed. “It’s not as if I can control my dreams. I don’t mean to make all that noise.” Bad enough she’d risked being caught, but she’d had to have a nightmare in front of Cyrus. Cyrus, who acted so sure of himself, never seemed bothered by the motion of the ship, and who over the past three days had demonstrated the appetite of four starving chamelins. Did nothing ever shake him up? It was infuriating.

  “Whatever’s bothering you, we can fix it,” Cyrus said reasonably. “What is it you’re dreaming about?”

  “Nothing,” Stella said curtly. She didn’t want to talk about this with him. “They’re just dreams. They don’t make any sense.”

  “You’re lying,” he said. “I can tell. Come on—spill the secret. Or are you afraid I’m going to shout it up and down the halls of the ship?”

  Stella clenched her jaw. The boy was insufferable. “I dream about being trapped in a box,” she said, and shuddered at the memory, the dream still fresh in her mind. “It’s like a coffin. I can’t get out.”

  “You’re claustrophobic,” Cyrus said, nodding as if he understood. “Some of the other members of our expedition felt the same way too. They couldn’t stand being belowdecks on the airship and could only relax when they were topside.” He snapped his fingers. “That’s what you need—fresh air. You take the invisibility suit first and make a sweep of the ship for the saboteur, and we’ll tackle two problems at once.”

  Stella gazed with longing at the high windows and the pale sunlight filtering through them. “It would be wonderful to walk around on deck,” she said. To be surrounded by miles and miles of endless, cloud-filled skies.

  “So it’s a plan.” Cyrus beamed. He was already pulling the suit from his knapsack. “We’ll do a walking lesson first, to give you a feel for how the suit works,” he said, holding the suit out for her, but Stella hesitated before stepping into it.

  Cyrus was offering her an incredible gift. He could have insisted on using the suit himself and left her behind in the cargo bay. Instead, he was offering her a chance to stand on the deck of the Iron Glory and feel the wind on her face. It wasn’t something she’d expected from him, a boy she barely knew and didn’t entirely trust. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “For helping me, I mean. It’s nice of you, Cyrus.”

  He shrugged as if it was nothing special. “Like I said, I can’t afford to get caught down here. If this solves the problem, it’s great for everyone.”

  Of course, Stella thought, trying not to let the disappointment sting too much. It wasn’t that he cared about her comfort. He just didn’t want her endangering their hiding place.

  “Besides, I can’t sleep at night with you thrashing around and making a fuss,” Cyrus went on, shooting her a grin. “You kicked me last night.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I did not.”

  “I have the bruises to prove it!”

  She could tell he was joking, but his words made Stella wonder. “Don’t you ever have bad dreams?” she asked. “What do you do to chase them away?”

  “Nothing,” Cyrus said. He shrugged again. “I don’t have nightmares, or if I do, I never remember them.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Guess I’m just lucky.” He held the suit out again. “Come on, if you’re going to do this, you need to get practicing. We’re wasting time.”

  Stella let the subject drop and focused on getting into the invisibility suit and following Cyrus’s instructions on how to move around. He was a good teacher, more tolerant than she’d expected, but a couple of times she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and noticed that he appeared lost in thought, a sorrowful expression on his face. When he caught her looking, he just pasted that bright grin on his face and found some subject to tease her about.

  But Stella saw through him as easily as he’d seen through her. He’d been lying earlier. He did have nightmares that he remembered. If that look on his face was anything to go by, they were bad ones, though he never betrayed any hint of distress during the night.

  Unlike her, he must have learned to bury his fears deep.

  After a couple hours of practice, Stella had mastered the art of moving around in the invisibility suit. It turned out that the hardest part wasn’t making herself walk slowly. She was used to being patient and meticulous when conducting alchemy experiments in her parents’ lab, and she was able to apply the same discipline to using the suit.

  The tricky part was controlling her other movements. Gestures like turning her head too quickly or lifting an arm too fast would create a ripple in the air and reveal the outline of her body. The effect only lasted a few seconds, but as Cyrus pointed out, a few seconds was all it would take for a crew member to spot her if anyone was looking her way. Stella imagined it would give the unfortunate man or woman a terrible shock, like seeing a ghost.

  Once Cyrus was satisfied that she had the basics down, Stella practiced on her own for the rest of the day while he cleaned up and organized the supplies in their hideout, occasionally throwing out comments or suggestions on her movements.

  As sunset neared, Stella finally headed topside, excitement humming within her.

  It was everything she’d imagined.

  She stood on the main deck of the Iron Glory, leaning over the bow railing as mile after mile of snowcapped mountains passed beneath her.

  A dozen or so crew members moved up and down the deck, watching the skies, performing navigational tasks, or just getting a breath of fresh air like she was. A frigid breath, at that. Every one of the crew wore heavy winter coats buttoned to their faces, thick hats, and gloves to protect their hands. The temperature had been steadily dropping over the last twenty-four hours, and it was well below freezing now.

  Gripping the rail, Stella found herself lost in a misty white world as the airship drifted into a cloud bank. Mountain terns soared up alongside the ship, quicksilver specks of brown that basked in the warm air currents emanating from the propellers below. The small birds were much more relaxing to watch than the frenzied, frightening nightcallers. And then, just when Stella thought they were truly adrift in the mist, the clouds broke apart, again revealing the vast plains of snow and stony peaks spread out below.

  That view of the Hiterian Mountains brought tears to her eyes.

  We’ve never seen the world like this, Stella thought. In just a few days, the Iron Glory had already ventured farther into the mountains than any explorer from Stella’s part of the world had ever been. No matter what else happened on their journ
ey, she would never forget the sight of those mountains. She felt as if she were standing at the very top of the world. Not bad, considering she’d expected to spend the entirety of the journey stuffed away in the ship’s cargo bay.

  It would have been the perfect moment, if only she could have shared it with her parents. Their absence was an ache inside her that refused to go away. If anything, the revelation that the ship was in danger had made it worse. Stella worried about her mother and father all the time. What were they doing right now? Were they thinking of her, missing her as much as she missed them? Or were they happy to be away, sharing in the adventure of a lifetime…without her?

  There was one way to find out, Stella concluded, her hands tightening on the rail as she looked down at her invisible form. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it immediately. She needed to make a sweep of the ship anyway. There was no reason she couldn’t pay a secret visit to her parents along the way.

  First she had to make a circuit of the main deck. Stella turned and cautiously headed for the stern, where a group of crew members were gathered around the cables attached to the ship’s gasbag. She crept as close as she dared to eavesdrop on their conversation, but it didn’t take long to confirm the truth of what she and Cyrus suspected.

  As Kal and Dain had said, four of the metal cables attached to the ship’s gasbag had been sawed almost all the way through. If the crew hadn’t seen it in time, the cables likely would have snapped, and the resulting strain might have brought the whole ship down.

  The idea of four identically frayed cables was enough to convince Stella that there was a saboteur on board.

  Not on my ship, she vowed, stepping away from the group and heading for the hatch that would take her back to the cargo bay. Not while her parents were on board. She and Cyrus would search the ship top to bottom every day if they had to, but they would find whoever was responsible for this.