by Ted Neill
“More accurately, hundreds of thousands,” Omanuju said. “We are in regions of the sea claimed by nature alone.”
More rocky islands that were home to hordes of pelicans passed beneath the Elawn. Never had she seen such numbers of sea birds, or such varieties! Gabriella even spotted storm-petrels circling in the air. She knew them by their distinct, almost bat-like fluttering. They only came to Harkness in the spring, but in much smaller numbers. Here they seemed limitless. After a few minutes, the Elawn swept past the island home of the petrels. Next came a series of smaller rocks, just barely peeking out of the surface of the sea. A high tide would almost cover them. The topmost points were covered with a yellow residue. Steam rose when a large wave slapped over them. When she looked at one of the petrels flying over the island, the bird became blurry, as if the air in between was shimmering, like the air above a hot fire.
“Why does the air shimmer like that?” she asked.
“Fumaroles,” Omanuju said. “Also known as the ‘dragon’s breath.’ When we get closer, you’ll notice the smell.”
Soon the air became foul with the scent of rotten eggs, making Gabriella gag. She had heard sailors talk of such islands.
“There are not really dragons sleeping inside, are there?” she asked, her hands tightening on the railing.
“Not on these islands,” Ghede said, turning to the levers beside the ship’s wheel.
There was some bluefish left over from the day before, which Ghede insisted they finish before it went bad. Gabriella mixed it with a few sprigs of rosemary that she found among other herbs in one of the ship’s lockers. Like the biscuits, she did not try to understand how old the herb was or how it was so well preserved. Omanuju said the airship was ancient, yet the rosemary smelled and looked fresh. She shrugged off the contradiction. She was learning not to question and to just accept the mysteries the Elawn presented.
“Like blue men and flying ships,” she said to herself. “They just are. It’s not my job to explain or even understand.”
It was a mantra she had developed for herself in the past days, her way of coping with things her mind was not able to accept. But this time, Ghede overhead her talking to herself.
“That’s the spirit, lass!” he said. “What are the gods but a riddle? What is life but a mystery to be experienced? The only way to understand it is to live it, and even then we’ll fall short.”
“Well said.” Omanuju looked up from one of his books. Gabriella had the sense that the philosophical tenets he was reading would be lost on her and felt it best to keep her mouth shut while Ghede still thought her wise. No point in disabusing him of the notion, she thought.
Bluefish was a bony fish. After Gabriella had finished lunch, she sat at the stern picking at her teeth with a bone that was thin as a nail clipping. She was ready for an afternoon nap, but for a few minutes she reveled in the sight of the clouds gathering behind them to the west. Perhaps she would see more birds. From the Elawn, she had learned to love the endless variety of vistas offered by the clouds. At times they formed flat layers that looked like landscapes with the ocean a lake in their midst. Other days, their surfaces bunched and undulated like trees of a forest.
Gabriella liked it least when they were within the clouds for any extended time. It was the unrelenting whiteness that disturbed her, as if they had sailed into a void and the world had been erased, or worse, the Elawn and her crew had. Colors on the ship seemed to fade as did the memory of greens, yellows, and deep bright reds. When they emerged from a bank of white clouds, the color of the sea spread below like deep blue ink spilled from a well.
A solitary bird was following in their wake. By its wingspan, Gabriella knew it had to be one of the great seabirds, likely an albatross. She put off her nap a bit longer, hoping the bird would gain on the Elawn so she could identify it. Her brother, Dameon, loved birds. No, he hated the noise they made, but he loved identifying them. He had learned to tell them by their black shapes against the sky. If she had any knack for that, she owed it to him. She knew Dameon would have enjoyed the variety of birds they had seen so far: gulls, garnets, kestrels, puffins, pelicans, and petrels, and so many of them. She stopped herself short of admitting it would have been worth bringing him along. Already the trip had been far too dangerous, and she was enjoying her freedom far too much. It would be enough to tell him about the birds she saw when she returned to Harkness. Perhaps then he might even be cured, and she would be able to converse with him like other boys his age.
The movement of this bird’s wings was strange. So was the shape. If she did not know better, she would say the wings looked bat-like, but Gabriella figured that was a trick of the distance. After a while, she grew excited. It was not an albatross or a storm petrel, but something new, an unknown species. The neck was long like a pelican, but the beak looked like a duck’s. The tail, too, was strange, long and flailing as opposed to flared. She had once seen a stuffed bird from the southern continent, where there was no winter, only summer year round. That specimen had brilliant plumage, as if it were glazed, and a long, streaming tail that swung behind it. This bird to their stern must be a bird like that, she concluded. As it moved closer, she could see the sun reflecting off its body like glass.
She gave up on guessing. She thought of asking Omanuju, but he was engrossed in his books, trying to glean what he could on Nicomedes and what lay ahead of them. She was reluctant to ask Ghede because she suspected he would realize she had nothing to do but watch birds, and the skipper would be quick to find a chore for her to do, whether it was practicing knots, gutting fish, or scrubbing the deck. But curiosity eventually got the best of her so she climbed the companion ladder to the mid-deck to find Ghede. He was leaning far back in his seat, his feet propped up on an overturned pail, his fingers laced together behind his head. His eyes were closed, and she would have thought him asleep if his lids had not opened just a crack at the sound of her footsteps. His golden eyes caught the sunlight like bright jewels.
“Yes, ma’am. Looking for a task?”
“Perhaps. I never thought adventuring could be so boring. But right now I’m vexed as to what type of bird that is astern. My brother is much better at categorizing than—”
“Demon’s feet!” Ghede cried, turning in his chair and nearly falling from it. He swung his legs to right himself, then pounded on the deck with his fist. “Omanuju, you’ll want to stow your books!”
He checked over the levers and the wheel, then raced from bow to stern tightening knots and locking hatches, leaving Gabriella alone on the mid-deck wondering what it was she had said. All the while Ghede was constantly checking over his shoulder, his brow furrowed, as the bird grew as it came closer.
Omanuju folded back a page and closed his book. “What is it, Ghede?”
“The girl is bad luck. A magnet for fiends she is.” Ghede spat, nodding astern.
Omanuju looked to the bird and went rigid. “Is that what I think?”
“Indeed,” Ghede said, securing a line to a cleat. “Farthest west I’ve ever seen one.”
“Seen what?” Gabriella asked, but her companions acted as if she had not spoken at all.
“She may have saved our lives, spotting it when she did,” Omanuju said.
“Don’t count us saved just yet.” Ghede returned to the wheel and yanked a lever. The ship pitched upward at such a sudden and steep angle that both Omanuju and Gabriella had to catch themselves on rigging to keep from falling.
“You best be strapped into the sickness seating,” Ghede said as he raced along the mid-deck flipping locks and pulling open two hatches. Gabriella thought at first they were stowage lockers, but the undersides of the doors revealed wooden seats and foot wells. Leather belts hung from the shoulders of the chairs, and Ghede gestured for her to strap herself into one.
“I’ll secure Adamantus,” Omanuju called, running back to the stern.
“Don’t dawdle,” Ghede said as Gabriella climbed down into one of the seats. He plan
ted a foot next to her elbow and tightened the harness around her. “I can already feel those sylphs are not far off, and this will bring them running!”
“Sylphs, those black things from the pots on Harkness, they are back?”
“They grow larger when they feed on our fear.” Ghede checked the buckle at her waist.
“Whose fear? I’m not scared of a bird.”
Ghede clicked his tongue. “You will be.”
Omanuju slammed the double doors to the cabin, locked them, and scrambled up the slanted deck to take his place beside Gabriella, strapping himself into his own harness. The air had grown noticeably colder as they climbed, and Gabriella wished she had her cloak. She was sickened by their increasing height but did not understand the panic of her companions.
“Omanuju, what is going on?”
“Well,” he said, testing his harness, “Ghede is right. We did not expect to see any until we were well past Foyle Island. This one is far afield. Must be a wandering male.”
“Male what?” Her stomach lurched as Ghede pulled the nose of the ship higher. The air was biting cold now, and Gabriella’s teeth began to chatter.
Omanuju swallowed and paused. “I’m not sure how to explain this exactly.”
“How well do you know your species of dragon, lassie?” Ghede asked from behind them. “Ever heard of a wyvern?”
Her bowels felt watery. Omanuju answered for her, “Wyverns: they have the largest wings of any dragon. They are the long fliers of the species, like albatrosses among birds. Unlike all other types of dragons with six limbs, four legs, and two wings, wyverns have only four limbs—two legs and two immense wings. They do not possess the gift of speech like high dragons.”
“Careful, old man. The girl has gone whiter than my shrouds,” Ghede said.
Gabriella blinked her eyes and did her best to focus. She believed she was awake so this was not a dream, even if it felt like one. She turned, twisting against her harness, praying that this was still some sort of joke, another test perhaps. But the wyvern had drawn closer. Gabriella was stunned. The long spiked tail, the bat-like wings, the jaw she had mistaken for a duck’s bill, the metallic glint of scales, had come into focus.
“How could I have been so stupid? I thought they were just in fairy stories,” she heard herself say.
“Just like bodiless demons trapped in clay pots?” Ghede laughed bitterly.
“Like blue men and flying ships,” she said, sullen. “What is life but a mystery?”
“Sorry, lass, you get the bad with the good.”
Omanuju reached across the space between them and took her hand. “I’m sorry Gabriella, I meant to tell you.”
She remembered her own statements in the house of healing, her insistence of what everyone knew to be true, that dragons were not real. “I’m such a fool.”
“We’ll be all right, Ghede knows what he is doing.”
I hope, she thought to herself.
The snap of the wyvern’s wings could now be heard over the wind. The creature was close enough that Gabriella could make out overlapping teeth at the edges of its mouth. She squeezed Omanuju’s hand tighter. As she did so, a new awareness came over her, like a cold spot on the inside of her skull. She recognized the feeling this time, remembering it from the day they left Harkness.
“The sylphs,” she said. “I can feel them.”
“I can, too,” Omanuju said. “They have grown strong off our own fear.”
“Does that mean you are scared, too?”
“Yes.”
The Elawn was pitched so dramatically now that standing on the deck would have been impossible. Supplies tumbled against one another in the stowage lockers below decks. She fought with herself not to look astern. Instead she focused on the clear bright sky and the thin ceiling of wispy clouds scudding above. A wind shook them as they passed through the layer. Gabriella was lying back in her seat now, her feet almost level with her head when she heard a loud cry off the port quarter. Gabriella knew it was impossible to pretend any longer. She turned, any movement difficult with the straps pressing on her chest and lap.
She would have thought it impossible for a lizard to fly, but she saw that—despite the heavy scales—the wyvern was clearly a creature of the air. The wings were wide and translucent. The movement of its neck and limbs was fluid and graceful, much like a swan. The scales shimmered with an almost vain quality. The wyvern was a perfect balance of beauty and terror, like an executioner’s sword encrusted with rubies and pearls. Just as it was clear it was a creature of flight, it was also a predator. Its claws were long and sharp, teeth crowded in its mouth like a shark’s. The luminous eyes were full of a hunter’s malice.
Was it the fear making her light-headed, or the altitude? The Elawn had never punched through such high clouds, which spread all around like stretched cotton replacing the sea. This second tier of the sky was frigid despite the powerful sun. Gabriella trembled. She crossed her arms over her chest. Omanuju took long slow breaths in the thinning air. Gabriella felt as if she had just run for miles. Over the starboard quarter, like two stains on a tablecloth, pulsed the sylphs.
“I’m so sorry, Omanuju. I did not mean to be—”
“Afraid? You can help that as much as you can help being human,” he said. “I’m scared as well, and I imagine even Ghede is scared.”
“Fear is useless in a storm,” Ghede said from behind them. “It needs to go overboard like ballast.”
“Ghede, will the sylphs affect the wyvern as well?” Her teeth were now chattering.
“It is the other way around. Those demons are likely to avoid our friend down there.” Ghede cast another look back over his shoulder.
“Why?” she wheezed
“Because dragons are full of magic. Some of that magic can be powerfully destructive, even to the bodiless, like the sylph.” Gabriella tried to concentrate on Ghede’s words, but it was becoming difficult. Her body was shaking. She noticed a film of white frost forming in Omanuju’s whiskers.
“That’s the thing about dragons,” Ghede said, his tone speculative. “They are the highest, most superior form of physical life on this little ball of Earth. The perfect blending of magic and flesh. Amazing, really, and quite intelligent.”
“Intelligent enough to be reasoned with?” Gabriella asked, hope building in her chest.
“Not wyverns. They can be dumb beasts. Killing and eating is what they do. Big flying barracudas, that’s all they are.”
“I think I would definitely be less afraid of a barracuda.”
Ghede continued almost as if he were talking to himself. “It is a case where greater intelligence does not necessarily equal a better being. I mean, you humans have language and brains, but look what you do with them. Now a wyvern, they just are what they are. A wyvern just is. A lot to be learned from that.”
“Ghede?” Gabriella asked. The cold was becoming so terrible that Gabriella only ached to be warm again, even if that meant descending and facing both the sylph and the wyvern. The ship’s wooden boards popped and moaned as they contracted in the cold. “Ghede, aren’t you cold?”
“No, but I bet you are. This is as high as we can go, I reckon, before you black out.”
“Thank the stars,” Omanuju added, his head swaying as if he were drunk.
Ghede leapt from his seat and dropped the sails. He moved over the sloping boards as if gravity did not affect him, or maybe he had his own gravity that kept him glued to the deck of the Elawn. Gabriella tried turning to see if the pursuers were gaining, but the effort made her sight dim. She heard Ghede climb back into his seat. After a deep breath the blackness receded from the edges of her vision. Ghede’s blue hand clutched the black lever, one she had not noticed before. She was not sure if it was the thin air or if what she saw was true: the end of the lever was carved in the shape of a skull.
“Hold on.” With a heave, Ghede swung the lever forwards. Gears shifted below the mid-deck. Hidden wheels turned. The Elawn fell, b
ut not just a slight dip. It plummeted as a ship in the sky ought to.
“Ghede has flipped the stone,” Omanuju yelled over the wind, and Gabriella had a vision of the great, black stone slowly turning over in the hull below them, its gravity-banishing quality reversed. “The top side does not repel us from the earth.”
Gabriella did not need an explanation. They fell out of the sky like an anchor. She screamed, lost consciousness, came to, and watched in silent horror as they passed through the layer of highest clouds and the sea reappeared below them.
Now she was terribly awake. The rush of air over the deck was more powerful than any gale wind she had ever experienced. Her hair snapped and flailed around her like black flames. She would have screamed again if she did not have to use so much effort to pull the shooting air into her lungs. This was air turned solid with the force of water, pushing and twisting her body. Even as it shot past, she felt it growing thicker.
Ghede pressed one of the pedals. The Elawn pitched nose down. Over the bow, an island swung into view. It was rocky and flat with wide canyons cutting it apart. The wind had reached a certain ferocity and remained constant. Gabriella no longer felt as if she was pulled against her harness. She felt oddly weightless. She strained again to turn and look for the wyvern and the sylphs.
Ghede must have wondered where they were, too. He pushed the pedals. The side sails flapped. The Elawn dipped and spun around once more. Now they were falling stern first wobbling as they did. Beyond the bow railing, the wyvern was dropping, his wings folded like a bird of prey. Behind him, spiraling like funnel clouds, were the sylphs.
Ghede spun the ship back around. The island and the sea moved closer. Gabriella did not know if she liked this view any better. The island was large, and she hoped they might be able to find a place to hide, but they were set to fall into the sea a quarter of a league away. She wondered if that was Ghede’s plan, and he had just shown mercy in not sharing it with her. A sudden death, splintered to bits and then sinking into the abyss was preferable to death by wyvern and sylph combined.
