Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Two - Fetching Help II: Re-Re-Kidnapping

“Joe,” I said past my panting. My heart was thudding away at my chest, like a rabbit trying to run free. It wasn’t just the sprint back to the yard, or the way I practically carried Sally to make us move faster. Well, it wasn’t just that.

“Are you guys alright?” Joe asked.

I started to nod, then shook my head. “Joe. Can the Manatee fly?”

“What?” he asked.

Sally jumped ahead to explain. “Their friend, the blonde one, she was kidnapped and taken on an airship.”

Joe turned back to me. “So... what? You want to take the Manatee?”

“We need to catch up,” I said.

“You have your own ship,” he said. “It’s a lot nicer than ours.”

“Ours isn’t made to go fast,” I said. “And it’s big besides. I think the Manatee might be faster.”

“Well too bad, we’re not just giving you our ship.”

I swallowed. “I’m asking you to come with us. Please?”

Joe crossed his arms, feet set and jaw locked in place. And then Amaryllis huffed a rather dangerous sort of huff and stomped up in front of the boy. She reached out and grabbed him by the lapels with her talons to pull him close. “Listen to me, you stupid human boy. One of my best friends is in trouble. Now, Broccoli here is too kind a soul to just take your stuff to save our friend. I’m not.”

“Are you threatening me?” Joe asked. His eyes were darting around, to Amaryllis, then to his friends who didn’t seem to know what to do any more than I did.

“I’m saying that if it was one of your friends, I don’t doubt you’d do what you had to do to save them, right? Awen’s been kidnapped by some men that I plan to fry.” Sparks of electrical mana snapped and crackled in the air around her. “Do you want to join them?”

“The Manatee’s never flown,” Joe said.

Amaryllis let him go with a shove. “Let’s at least try, damn it.”

I pressed a hand on her shoulder. I didn’t like seeing her so violent, but I could get it. I wasn’t like that, not to someone that I didn’t think deserved it, but I could get why she was so nervous.

Joe licked his lips and looked to his friends.

Sally jumped ahead and tore the tarp back off the Manatee. “Come on, Joe. Let’s get her ready.”

Joe and Oda locked eyes, then he turned back to me. “You owe us one,” he said.

I nodded. “If we can save Awen, then... I mean, even if we can’t... Just... please help us.” My hands came together and twiddled together, neither knowing what to do. “Please?”

Joe sighed and turned to jump aboard the Manatee. “Oda, get the engine going. Sally, make sure the sails are set. Do we have enough fuel?”

“Not much in the tank,” Oda said.

“I’ll be right back,” Bastion said before taking off at a dead sprint.

I jumped aboard the Manatee too. It wasn’t a big ship. In fact, I was pretty sure it didn’t count as a ship at all. I looked around for something to do, noticed how the ship had some stains and was on the wrong side of dirty in spots. So, I started tidying up.

Oda gave me a strange look, but he didn’t raise a fuss. “Engine’s primed,” he said.

We all paused as he pulled a cord. The engine spun, choked, and died before even coming alive. Oda pulled the cord again, and again, and again, to no effect. He dropped to his knees and started fiddling with something on the underside of the engine.

“What’s wrong with it?” Amaryllis asked.

“It’s an old engine,” Joe said.

“I’m aware,” Amaryllis said. “I wasn’t asking about its provenance, I was asking what’s wrong with it.”

“The spark runes are old,” Oda said. “Everything else is old too.”

“Show me where they are,” Amaryllis said. When Oda pointed to the right places, she nodded and set her talons on the spots. “This model needs the cam turning while the runes go off, right? Good, pull on one. Three... two... one!”

Sparks flew, the air filled with the tang of ozone, and the engine burped once, then twice, then it started to rumble and gurgle and shiver in its mounting. “It’s working!” Oda said.

“Check your fuel intake,” Amaryllis said. “It’s dying off.”

Oda jumped to it, quickly adjusting a few knobs and pulling at a lever. That didn’t hide the huge, proud smile he wore the entire time. “Got it! You know your engines.”

“That’s an Albatross engine, of course I know it,” Amaryllis said with a huff.

Just then Bastion returned, still running, though he now had a pair of cannisters held by his side, both of them sloshing with something liquid. He slowed down, barely even winded, and dropped one so that he could take the other in both hands. I rushed to help him carry it up. “What is this?” I asked.

“More fuel. We’re going to need to push hard to catch up to anyone,” Bastion said as he passed me the second container. “Are we missing anything?”

Joe muttered something, then sighed. “No. Come aboard. Oda, gravity down? We’ll need to push off the ground hard.”

I nodded. If the engine could lower the weight of the dinghy enough to make it buoyant in the air, then we’d still need a strong push to get us up. Or something like that. I didn’t know how gravity engines worked. “I’ll get it,” I said as I rolled over the edge of the Manatee. Once on the ground, I moved under the ship, thankful that it was mounted on some logs.

“What are you doing?” Amaryllis asked.

“Is the engine running hard?” I asked.

“We haven’t figured out how much gas we need to give it for anything,” Oda screamed.

I bunched my brows together. “Then give it lots.” My feet came up, close to my chest, my back pressing into the ground and my feet planting on the hull above me. “Get ready!”

The engine roared louder, and I felt the ship rising just a tiny little bit. Then I shoved as much stamina as I could into my legs and let out a grunt of effort as I shoved as hard as I could.

The Manatee launched up a few meters, and kept climbing.

I rolled back onto my feet, then shot up into the air after it.

I miss-timed my jump. For a moment I thought I’d miss the ship entirely, but then Bastion leaned over the side and grabbed my outstretched arm. I planted a foot on the hull, and he pulled me aboard where I rolled to the floor.

“We need a second person on the paddles!” Joe said.

He was at the ship's wheel, which was just a tiny thing near the front. Sally was moving to the back, but Bastion grabbed her arm. “Watch the sails,” he said. “Broccoli, take one of the pedals, I’ll take the other.”

“No,” Amaryllis said. “Joe, how much experience do you have as a pilot?”

“Um, none?”

“I’m taking the wheel,” she said. “Get on the pedals with Broccoli and Bastion, rotate. Sally, give us quarter sails on either bow.” Amaryllis jumped behind the wheel and pulled at a lever that had the nose of the Manatee rising a little. “Get that prop turning!”

It took a moment for everyone to settle down, but soon we were all in our positions. Amaryllis at the wheel, Joe standing awkwardly next to Bastion and I while we pedaled as if our lives depended on it. Oda stood by the engine and tapped and twisted things around it. Sally, who was surprisingly comfortable with heights, hung halfway off the side arranging the sails as Amaryllis ordered.

Once the prop got going and we caught some wind, we started moving with surprising speed. The Manatee was a lighter ship, and that was obvious whenever a gust hit us at a strange angle. Still, that lightness, combined with Bastion and I going all out on the pedals, had us moving at a speed that the Beaver Cleaver just couldn’t match.

“Broccoli! Which direction did the ship head off in?” Amaryllis asked over the wind.

“West!” I said. “West! It was a bigger ship. Red and black hull.”

Amaryllis nodded, reached down around her neck to grab her goggles, and slid them on. “Hang on!” she said.

The Manatee dipped forwards, gaining speed as it lost altitude.

“Sally! We need more sail!”

“I can’t deploy on both sides at once!” Sally called back.

“Joe! Help her!”

Joe stumbled to the front and hung off the side near the port sails. “Ready!”

“Deploy to full on three!” Amaryllis said. She was leaning forwards, looking at something that I couldn’t see from way off in the back. “One! Two! Now!”

Sally’s sail unfurled first and the Manatee jerked to the side, almost rolling as it caught the wind and sent us off-course. Joe’s sail shot open a moment later and our flight righted itself. We caught some sort of updraft that had the Manatee shifting up and into the sky.

“You never told me you were this good a pilot!” I called out.

“You’d have me working more,” Amaryllis said.

I blinked. Had we accidentally brought Rosaline disguised as Amaryllis along?

“I see it!” Amaryllis said a moment later. “At least, I think I do. There’s a magical hotspot about two clicks that way!” she pointed off above and to our left. “We need more height.”

I looked to Bastion to see how he was doing. The man wasn’t even sweating yet, which I couldn’t claim about myself. The constant pump of my legs had turned into a heavy burning sensation a minute into our flight and it was only getting worse. “Aim us up! We’ll give it more on our end,” I said.

Any amount of sore muscles was worth saving Awen for.

“Got it!” Amaryllis said.

She pulled a lever down, and the little directional flaps on the back of the Manatee changed their angles so that we were pointing up.

Bastion and I both grunted as we started spinning the pedals faster. The prop behind us started to hum just a little louder and we started to move a pinch faster.

“What’s the plan once we’re near the bastard?” Amaryllis asked.

“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I said.

“We’re not getting involved in a real fight,” Joe said.

I wanted to argue, but he was probably right. This wasn’t his fight. “Can we cut across their deck and land on it?” I asked.

“And then what?”

I shrugged, then regretted it as it made me lose my timing with the pedals a little. I held onto the edge of my seat to stay in place. “And then we grab Awen and run. And if anyone gets in our way, we beat them up.”

Amaryllis was quiet for a while, then she started chirruping in her strange birdy laughter. “A bun, a harpy and a sylph land on a pirate’s deck. It sounds like the start of a bad joke.”

“Yeah, well the joke’s going to be on them. No one kidnaps my friends except for me!” I declared.

Bastion chuckled. “No one’s going to believe my report,” he said.

“Shows that you don’t know what being with Broccoli is like,” Amaryllis said. “The day we became friends she led an undead army against a squadron of cervid mercenaries to try and save me.”

“Hey!” I said. “I didn’t just try. I totally saved you.”

“I would have figured it out,” Amaryllis said.

Bastion stared at us, then shook his head. The scallywags didn’t seem to know what to think either.

The ship we were following grew larger as we approached. It was a nice ship, with a few old scars but a lot of character.

Unfortunately, even as we came closer and its smaller details came to light, I couldn’t find it in my heart to appreciate the ship. Not after it had taken Awen.

We’d just need to take her back.

***