by C. R. Grey
“Not going to play that game,” said the man. “We both know who you are, and what it means.”
The man yanked on the rope, pulling Tremelo up off of the log. He was led a few paces away, where the man went about tying the rope to a tree.
“Can I look forward to some more lively talk, when we reach our destination, at least?” Tremelo asked. “You haven’t even made a direct threat on my life yet, and I love those.”
“I’m taking you to the queen,” came a gruff reply. “That threat enough for you?”
Tremelo almost wished he hadn’t asked. Of course, it had been a possibility he’d considered, but to hear it said out loud made him shudder: he was being taking to Viviana. He’d thought—why, he didn’t know—that he’d have more time before it came to this. She would almost certainly kill him. And then, without even a thought, she’d continue her plan to drive Aldermere into complete darkness. Animals would be turned, in essence, into machines. Humans would feel bereft without their kin, and then, as humans do, they’d adapt. They’d become cold and uncaring. Would it take generations, he wondered, for Aldermere to forget that it had ever had something so precious as the Animas bond? Or merely a few years under Viviana’s rule? Would the fighting continue without him? He imagined the RATS and the Velyn losing hope. Even Bailey, the child whose spirit seemed unquenchable, could not be asked to carry on without him. Instead of saving the kingdom, he’d merely be a blot of ink in the history books that would chronicle Viviana’s terrible reign.
The man finished tying the ropes.
“Get some sleep, Trent Melore,” he said.
“Not likely,” Tremelo whispered to himself. He leaned his head back against the bark of the tree. His elbows bent at an uncomfortable angle, and the ground underneath him was littered with sharp sticks. But he knew it wasn’t the physical conditions that would make sleep impossible. Instead, it would be the terrible, dark thought that now played through his mind like an ominous song: Even kings can die.
GWEN THOUGHT FOR A moment that the tiger’s echoing roar was a part of her dream: she’d been lost in the Dark Woods, unnerved by the closeness of large animals just out of sight in the trees. But when she opened her eyes, the roar still echoed. She sprang up and ran to the railing of the ship’s deck. But Bailey and Taleth were safe, sitting peacefully together at the canyon’s edge. Gwen breathed deeply and allowed her heartbeat to return to its normal rhythm. Phi stirred in her blankets.
“What’s wrong?” Phi asked. She sat up, her eyes barely open.
“Nothing,” said Gwen. “Everything’s fine.”
Phi pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and stood up to join Gwen at the railing, rubbing her eyes. “You’re a bad liar.”
“I’m just anxious. When I was traveling to Fairmount from the Gray I used to play that harmonica when I couldn’t sleep.”
Phi nodded, freeing up the blanket so Gwen could huddle under it too. “Maybe you could hum some of the tunes?”
Gwen tried a few bars she’d remembered learning. She was suddenly filled with a sadness and nostalgia for the Elder, her old mentor. She’d lost him and her bond with the owls, one tragedy on the heels of another. “The only thing I’ve gained out of all of this is uncertain visions.”
“And new friends,” Phi added, which made Gwen smile. Phi’s company almost made her forget that the vision she’d had was of Bailey dying at their king’s hand. She glanced once more at Bailey and Taleth in the distance. She wanted to go to them, but thought it best not to disturb their solitude.
“Want to take a walk?” Phi asked Gwen.
The two girls walked across the deck to look out over the strange caravan of Defiance. Below on the ground, a few campfires were still burning. Gwen straightened her cloak and climbed down from the ship. Phi followed, the blanket still wrapped around her.
Annika and the Tully sat together by the closest fire. The Tully waved when she saw Gwen approach.
“Having trouble sleeping?” the Tully asked.
“Bad dreams,” Gwen answered, as a vision of Bailey flashed in her mind. Phi looked at her sideways, but didn’t add anything.
Annika held out a piece of the apple she was slicing. Gwen nodded thanks, and ate it slowly. A brown jackrabbit hopped over to the fire and began scratching its long ears with its equally long back paw. Annika ran a hand through her hair, tucking it back behind her blue scarf.
“Do you really think you’re going to find an army out here?” she asked the girls.
“Ani, leave them be,” said the Tully.
“I don’t know,” Gwen answered. “But we couldn’t stay where we were.”
Annika sliced another piece of apple and ate it in one bite.
“Well, that I can understand,” she said.
Gwen watched the jackrabbit until it hopped away. She was aware of the eyes of the two women watching her over the fire.
“What’s your Animas?” Phi asked the Tully, perhaps hoping to ease the tension.
“Same as my name,” she answered. “Animas Tullyhorn.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a tullyhorn,” said Gwen, mystified. “Sorry,” she added, afraid that she’d offended.
“All gone,” said the Tully. “Died out when I was just a small girl. I saw one only once. Wings out to here”—she stretched her arms out wide—“and a beak like a rhino’s horn. Magnificent. I changed my name to honor them when the last one died.”
“What happened to them?” Phi asked, leaning forward.
The Tully shrugged. “Things die, that’s life. The Plains used to be better for a lot of creatures. But Nature shifts. ’Cause of us, ’cause of time, who can tell?”
“We’ll all be lucky if any of us sees our kin through another hundred years, if things keep going the way they are,” Annika interjected. “Nature’s shifting again, but I don’t like the feel of what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?” Gwen asked, though she was sure she knew.
“Changes in the world around us are to be expected,” said the Tully. “But we’ve seen a fair amount of animals leaving their kin for the Otherlands, like they’re running away from something unnatural. The bond is hurting.”
“That’s exactly what we were trying to say earlier! It’s all because of Viviana,” Gwen said, rising to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Annika’s pocket watch glint in the firelight. “I’ve seen it, too, with my own kin. They’re avoiding humans because of Dominance. Because of what Viviana has done.”
Annika glared at Gwen.
“No one person has that much influence over the bond,” she said. “I think you children are letting the powers that be in Aldermere sway you with stories. Trust me, one ruler is just like another. Nature, on the other hand, is one of a kind.”
Gwen studied Annika as she stared, steel-eyed, into the fire. Annika, Gwen could tell, might not care about politics, but she cared about her world.
“You’re right to be distrustful of the kingdom,” Gwen went on. “I grew up in Parliament. I know what those people were like.” Annika raised her eyes and looked at Gwen over the flames. Gwen pictured the Elder as she spoke—his kind eyes and his threadbare cloak manifested in her memory as though his ghost had just appeared beside her. “Some, like my mentor, were wonderful, but sad. He knew that terrible things were happening in the kingdom, but that he could never do enough to help. But so many others were schemers and locusts. No one blames you for thinking ill of them.”
“Your friends do,” said Annika.
“No,” said Gwen. “That’s where you’re wrong. Our friends—Bailey, Hal, Tori—they’re not fighting for what Aldermere was. They’re fighting to save what Aldermere could become. Tremelo—that’s the king, Viviana’s brother—he could remake the kingdom into someplace where there are no corrupt Parliament members who argue but get nothing done. He sees the bond as something that can be used to help people, which is something Parliament could never accomplish. But Viviana wants to use the
bond to do to the animals exactly what those traders did to her. And to do it, she’s disrupting Nature itself. It’s beyond politics or who owes who. What Viviana is doing will affect the entire kingdom—you and your people included. You said it yourself. A shift is happening. You can’t ignore it.”
“She was a scared girl once. She showed me kindness and I’d go so far as to call us friends, once.” Annika stared into the fire, and Gwen knew she was thinking of that friendship. She wondered if Annika felt for Viviana the way that she felt about Bailey, Phi, and the Elder.
“You’ve given us much to think about,” Annika murmured after a long silence.
Gwen met the sparkling eyes of the Tully, who nodded solemnly. She knew they were done speaking to her. Rising, Gwen looked out past the rigi tracks, where the ships creaked in the night wind, to the last streaks of light across the canyon.
“Good night,” Phi said to the women, standing to join her. They left Annika and the Tully gazing into the orange-blue flames of their campfire.
“You didn’t tell me you had a bad dream….” Phi said.
“Yeah, not a big deal,” Gwen replied. “I can’t really remember it anyway.”
Bailey had returned to his bed by the time they climbed back up to the ship’s deck. Taleth lay curled next to him like an enormous house cat. Her tail swished and twitched in her sleep, and Gwen had the feeling that the tiger was dreaming of some sort of battle.
She and Phi lay down next to them. Phi closed her eyes and her breathing steadied within minutes, but Gwen stared up at the stars and waited for sleep.
Just before dawn, the loud crack of the unfurling sail in the wind caused Gwen to bolt awake. Annika stood on the prow of the ship, smiling down at Gwen and the others.
“It’s time to make sail,” she said, her voice loud with a captain’s authority. “Wake up, you lubbers.”
Gwen rubbed her eyes. Her friends were already awake. Phi and Tori hastily rolled up their blankets while Hal and Bailey checked their rucksacks for their supplies. Taleth was at the prow, her front paws propped up on the railing—she was sniffing the air and looked both relaxed and alert. Lukas, Annika and the Tully’s son, swung overhead on a strong rope, whooping.
“Time to sail!” he shouted. “To the canyon!”
Gwen stood. Wind cascaded over the deck, sending whirls of sand into the air.
“We’ll make good time to the pass,” said Annika. “As long as we get moving while the wind is strong and in our favor.”
The line of landships behind Annika’s creaked in the wind as sail after sail unfurled and snapped. The decks were crowded with women and children pulling and fastening ropes. Gwen pulled her cloak around her to guard against the sandy wind. Annika, seeming not to care, let her scarf whip about her head; her focus was on the southern horizon.
As one, the sails filled, and the ships of Defiance surged into motion. The deck swayed and bucked at first, and the boards under Gwen’s feet shuddered. But after a moment, it was as though the heavy hull had caught up with the urging energy of the wind, and the ship glided along the rigi tracks. They were traveling at the canyon’s edge. Its red rock looked like a ribbon across the dry brown sand. Gwen watched the desert slide past them from the railing of the deck. Phi and Bailey joined her there, while Hal and Tori stood at the prow. Bailey climbed up on the railing to get a better look, and stood a foot above all of them. Gwen resisted the urge to grab his shirt and pull him back down. He looked thrilled. Taleth padded up next to him and rubbed her neck on his legs. A funny sight, since she was enormous.
Lukas, done with swinging, jumped down onto the deck.
“I love fording the pass,” he said. “Mom and Mam hate it.”
“How come?” Bailey asked. He sounded excited, while Gwen felt terrified.
“What happens?” she asked him.
Lukas scratched his brown, wavy hair and had the look of a child who was trying not to smile.
“I guess you’ll see,” he said. He pointed out toward the canyon. “We can’t do it here. Too wide. Too dangerous. We go a bit north, where the canyon gets narrower. But it’s still deep!”
Bailey, Tori, and Hal joined them. Hal clutched the railing; his face was drained of color.
“I think I’m getting seasick,” he groaned.
“We’re not even at sea!” Bailey said.
“Yeah, we’re not even at sea!” Lukas repeated. He looked up at Bailey, pleased to see him laughing. All the while, Hal closed his eyes tightly and shook his head.
The fleet sailed several miles along the deserted track; after an hour, Gwen had become accustomed to the gentle rocking of the ships as the sails carried them onward. But then Annika sent up another shout:
“Detatch!”
The word echoed as the deputy captain of each ship down the line called out the command, and after a moment, a giant clunk shook the ship. Gwen heard a loud clicking noise and, along with her friends, rushed to the edge to peer over the railing. Taleth’s ears perked up. Below them, six mechanical legs were unfolding from the hull of the ship—three on each side, making the ship look like a giant wooden insect. With a thud, the end of each leg landed on the ground, sending up puffs of sand. Then the legs extended, and the entire ship rose several feet in the air.
“We’re not on the tracks anymore!” Phi gasped. “Look!”
“No, thank you,” groaned Hal, who sat with his back against the railing.
Lukas, even more excited than he’d been earlier that morning, jumped and danced on the deck.
“We’re going to the pass! We’re going to the pass!” he sang. Bailey grinned ear to ear, and leaned so far forward Gwen thought she’d faint on his behalf. His squirrel kin skittering around in little gray circles, little Lukas bounced on his toes.
The ship’s legs proved to be a bit unwieldy; Gwen stumbled for the railing and nearly fell when the vessel took its first step forward. Bailey caught her from behind.
“Hold on, silly!” said Lukas.
“You okay?” Bailey asked as he led her to the railing. She nodded. Sometimes it was hard to look at him without seeing him struck down, just as he was in her vision.
“Sure, sure. The view is just a little distracting,” she said motioning to the canyon.
“Part of the adventure, right?” he said. She forced a smile to match his. Good, kind Bailey—as far as he knew they were making progress toward their goal of finding an army. But Gwen knew the truth: that she’d convinced them to come because they were running away. It seemed the best option at the time, but now she considered whether or not she could change the future….
As the ship scuttled closer, they could now see a series of ropes spanning the width of the ravine, lodged into the rock.
“Do we cross using those?” she asked Lukas. They didn’t look nearly strong enough to hold up the entire ship.
“Sure do!” he crowed. Gwen looked down at Hal. Bailey patted Hal’s arm, and Taleth nudged his hip with the top of her head.
“I’m sure they know what they’re doing,” he said. He met Gwen’s eyes, as though he was trying to reassure her too.
Gwen’s fingers dug into the wooden railing as the ship creaked toward the ravine’s edge.
“Descend!” shouted Annika.
The Tully unspooled a rope tied around a beam, and it swung across the front of the ship. The vessel’s prow tipped downward before it stopped, perched precariously at an angle and pointed toward the deep gash in the desert. Annika hauled a rope to the edge of the prow and tossed it over one of the ropes that already spanned the canyon, creating a loop that she secured with a clamp attached to the ship’s mast.
Gwen didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t help herself—she peered down into the canyon and immediately felt dizzy. She couldn’t even see the bottom, only the thin patterns of rock formations as they grew closer together on their way down, obscuring the true depth of the canyon. Her vision telescoped and blurred.
“Prepare the cannons!”
Annika yelled.
“Cannons?” Phi whispered.
“Okay, everyone,” Lukas announced over the sound of the wind, “cover your ears!” He placed his own palms over his ears. Everyone scrambled to do the same as a blast fired.
“Again!” yelled Annika. Another woman lowered a lit torch to the cannon’s back end, and everyone on deck braced themselves. It thundered again, and Gwen watched, aghast, as a rope attached to a metal harpoon was shot across the canyon. The harpoon sank into the red rock on the other side, accompanied by a shower of displaced stones. The blasts were echoed all along the edge of the ravine; the other ships were lined along the canyon, each firing their own ropes across the chasm.
“Lock them!” commanded Annika. Her shout was repeated down the line, and the women on each deck ran to secure the ends of the ropes to metal clasps attached to the front of the ship.
Lukas leaned out over the railing next to Bailey, watching as the ropes were tied down.
“Any minute now!” he said.
“Surely the ship can’t be supported by just a few ropes?!” Gwen asked. Her heart had begun beating wildly; she imagined the ropes snapping with the pressure of so much weight.
“Mom said those are just in case,” Lukas said, grinning. “You might all want to hold on, though.”
Gwen and her friends took his advice without a word and braced for whatever would come next. At the prow, Annika clutched a rope and raised her other arm high.
“Release!” she shouted.
Gwen couldn’t help but scream as the ship tipped forward off the rock. The slack ropes hanging from the line grew taut, but not before the entire ship shuddered, and a pair of sails unfurled not from the mast, but from the sides of the hull.
“Wings!” shouted Phi. “The ship has wings!”
“Holy Nature!” Bailey said in an awed tone. When Lukas copied him he smiled, then got serious again and shook his head. “Don’t say that!”
The canvas caught the air and the white sail billowed. The ship seemed to float as it swung forward on the line. Annika and her crew tugged on the ropes that had been harpooned into the canyon, leading the flying ship across.
