The captain raised one black hand and gestured dramatically in front of Emile’s face, “Net so loud! Yeh try’ne teh get us ‘rrested? Git below, an’ all coun’ it.” The captain swempt Emile up onto the ship and led her surreptitiously to a trapdoor in the deck. Emile climbed down a ladder and Gypsum simply dropped through the hole and landed in the belowdecks with a thud. There were crates and packages strapped to the wall and to the floor everywhere Emile could see, but the captain quickly shut the trapdoor and moved what looked like a very heavy crate aside easily. Beneath it was revealed to be another trapdoor, this one ingeniously made to look as though it were part of the floor.

There was no ladder this time, as it was only a very short drop, and inside Emile could see many people crammed together almost shoulder to shoulder. In the dim light it was hard to tell what they looked like but they smelled of fear and desperation. The captain stood above the hole and looked expectantly at Emile. Emile began handing up the chips of gold and the captain was counting them greedily and making them disappear into a pouch on her belt. Once all of the money had exchanged hands, she looked down at Emile again and said, “Yeh ‘ave stay down ‘ere until we git ou’ the ‘arbor.” With that she unceremoniously closed the trap door and Emile was forced to sit down as there wasn’t room to stand.

Emile couldn’t see, the darkness was complete. She tried a couple of times to make conversation with the others who were cramped below the deck but they shushed her before she could get two words out. Feeling sad and scared, she hugged Gypsum close to her chest, and closed her eyes and tried to breathe through her mouth. I hope pa is getting better, or at least not any worse. For the first time Emile started to wonder if it was a mistake to leave. Her pa might have already recovered on his own, and here she was trying to traipse across the continent without so much as a note and no way to contact him. It was cramped and smelly here and she was scared, she didn’t understand why all these other people were on the ship, or why they were hiding. It was pretty obvious why they were leaving though, Cartson City is a terrible place, I hope I never have to come back.

Time passed imperceptibly in the darkness. Emile may have dozed, she felt as though she was dreaming, her mind and Gypsum’s dancing a tango of dreams. Emile’s thoughts were matched the darkness and Gypsum’s thoughts were reassuring. After what could have been hours or days, the trapdoor opened and one of the sailors called down, “You lot can come up and stretch your legs a bit, we should be safe for now.”

Emile was the closest to the hole, so she was pushed through by the impatient refugees. They looked as if they had been hiding in the secret chamber for days, the men had scruffy beards on their faces, and the women all had bags below their eyes. They all looked like their muscles hurt from the cramped quarters, and their clothes all looked dirty and disheveled. Very few had anything more with them that what they wore on their persons, and those with bags clung to them protectively as if afraid they might be taken if they loosened their grips.

The deck of the ship was drowning in sunshine, and Emile was very grateful for the fresh sea air after the suffocation of hiding below. Many of the others that had been hiding were walking unsteadily as if their legs had forgotten how to carry them. Emile was quite unused to the motion of the ship, and the rocking back and forth was making her feel slightly dizzy. Her stomach lurched and she realized it had been almost a day since she’d last eaten anything, and that had just been an apple. She took her bag off and began rummaging until she found some hard cheese and travel sausage. The other refugees on the decks eyed her and her cache of food hungrily. There were so many of them staring at her and the food she was holding. Pangs of regret that she didn’t have enough to share stirred in her heart.

“They must have some food for you on the ship!” She cried out to noone in particular, looking defiantly at all of the greedy eyes around her. The refugees all looked away, suddenly shame-faced. They turned their attention on the crew, and began lamenting how much they had paid for passage on the ship. The crew seemed unperturbed and at the same time unwilling to share any rations. Finally, the captain made an appearance again.

She was a squat creature, sleek and elegant. She was the only Otterman on the ship and when she landed on the deck vaulting from the platform that ran around the outside of her cabin all eyes fell on her. Slightly hunched, and barely taller than Emile she was still a commanding presence. “Yeh lots ‘ungry? Eh? Thin’ yeh pay’ fer room en’ boar’? Yeh jes’ lucky I le’ yeh’ lot on deck! Gruel et sundow’!” She cast a hard glance around taking in each and every face in turn. Her long whiskers were twitching wildy, and her tail thumped the deck between words punctuation her already clipped sentences. Her eyes finally fell on Emile, and the meal the girl was eating. “Es net meh faul’ if’n a li’l ‘irl is the on’y one of yeh lot teh brin’ food!”

The refugees looked abashed, but they bled away from Emile and clustered into tight little circles on the deck, obviously content to while away the few remaining hour before the sun went down. Emile stuck to her place just below the captains quarters. She wanted to talk to the captain alone and find out what she could about the Ottermen empire. She had heard storied of a fabulous pleasure island where no one worked and everyone played all day, but if anything the captain seemed to be harder working than the rest of the human crew. Emile watched her coming and going from her cabin, she swung from the rigging above with ease, and worked with each of her sailors for a few minutes before moving on. Occasionally she would return to her loft cabin above for a while, but she always came back out to check on every facet of how the ship was running.

Gypsum nuzzled Emile’s hand, and Emile felt her hunger pangs. Reluctant to let her go, Emile thought of rats, and the boxes in the belowdecks, and Gypsum was off like a hare leaving Emile alone, staring into the deep sea. The water was glistening like so much gold in the setting sun, and Emile’s mind drifted. Her pa was counting on her, but her certainty was faltering. No! A wizard will help me! She kept trying to reassure herself that she was doing the right thing. She pulled her map from out of her pack, and tried to read it in the fading light. According to the map she was just outside of the capital, but it was hard to tell with the map shrunk small enough to fit in her hands. She was afraid to enlarge it at all in front of all these strangers, so she put it away.

When the sailor came around with the ladle and a bucket of some grey paste for her to eat, she shook her head and he went on. There was a barrel of water strapped to one of the masts, and she drank from it a few times before finally heading down to the cargo hold. Gypsum was curled up in a ball in the corner, and Emile hugged herself close to her dragon. She slept fitfully, lulled in and out of sleep by dreary thoughts and the motion of the ship.

By the morning light Emile crawled up the ladder to the deck of the ship. All of the refugees were still sleeping or at least pretending too, scattered around the the cargo in protective knots of those they were familiar with. On the deck above, Emile watched the sailors going about the work of sailing the ship. She was curious about the rigging and how the sails worked, but all of the shirtless sailors looked very busy at their tasks. The captain was nowhere to be seen, so she tried to content herself staring over the baugh of the ship at the distant coast.

Her map revealed that they were at least halfway down the coast now. One more day at this rate. There was very little food left in her little pack. Self-consciously she nibbled on a hard piece of cheese, and watched the motion of the water.

There seemed to be another ship in the distance. It was bearing down on them, moving faster even than the ship Emile was on. As it grew closer she spotted them, the black flags flapping in the heavy wind. Voices were shouting now, she could hear the sailors ushering the refugees below, she felt heavy hands on her shoulder, and pulled her eyes from the ship for a moment to see a sailor trying to pull her away from the rail. He was shouting in her face, and Emile felt a moment of fear before the burst of green fog reached his face. The sailor fell onto his back, unmoving.

Emile looked down at the little dragon, she felt relief and gratitude mingling with regret. Well, he was being rude. Her eyes were pulled back to the ship bearing down on them in the distance. It was close enough now that she could see the women and men scurrying back and forth on its deck, swords held high, jeering. A man in a black billowing robe was standing at the bow of the other ship, lightning crackling in his hands. He’s controlling the wind. A vicious looking black spike jutted out of the nose of the pirate’s ship, with many rear facing hooks. Emile finally saw the captain, she seemed to dive out of the water next to the ship and landed, shaking out her fur, sending water flying everywhere. She was screaming, and the sailors were moving this way and that, pulling ropes and tying them off. Emile looked at the ship with its black sails and black flags, it was so close now, it was going to collide. Everything slowed down, and she looked down at her hand, and saw the way things could be. The ring she was wearing could see the motion of both ships as well, could see all of the motion. Sailors and pirates, even the water itself. The ring thought that the ships didn’t need to collide.

Emile clapped her hands together and raised her left hand out in front of her, palm up. It was not a difficult thing, not really, the concept was simply like a puzzle picture, like seeing a pattern. The ring knew that the ship was going to stop, and Emile knew it as well. Her mind emptied and all fear and worry drained away in that moment.

Water sloshed mightily in every direction from the pirate ship, the men and women on the deck were all thrown forward, including the man in the black robes. Some fell over the sides, most grabbed onto something. The two ships were less than an arrows shot apart, but the pirates ship was no longer moving, though the strange unnatural wind was still bellowing around its sails. The man in the black robes straightened himself up and started barking orders. Strange looking devices were brought forward, and huge arrows with ropes trailing behind them sailed over the side of the ship. They thudded heavily into the wood, and caught with their gnarled hooks. The ropes were thick and heavy things.

The Otterman captain and her sailors did their best, they ran from rope to rope, cutting at them with their boot knives, but it was too late for many of them. The pirates came sailing over the side of the ship the way the arrows had, sliding on the ropes with their blades or strange wheeled devices.

Emile felt power. She felt fatigue too, but it was like a fly buzzing around the inside of her mind, the swell of power in her left hand was like the tide. Like the sun. The first pirate to reach her was a red faced man, and he cackled madly as he tried to grab her. Gypsum reared up on her hind legs, but before she could bellow the green fog, Emile struck the man in his midsection. Her hand punched through his stomach with the force of the ship. Blood spattered in every direction, and drenched her face. She wiped it away absentmindedly with her right hand, and with her left hand she whipped up and through his body, splitting everything above his navel in half.

She heard the pirates shrieking now, they were saying mage. Mage! Mage! And they were backing up. The man in the black robes on the other ship started summoning a ball of fire. Emile could see the words he spoke. He was going to try and burn her. This simply wouldn’t do. The ring on her right hand understood burning, and with a flick of her mind, she let the ring know, that yes, it was correct to believe huge streams of electric energy were recoiling between her hand and everyone near her. The beam of lightning struck the nearest person, whether he was one of the pirates or a sailor was no longer a concern. The lightning branched out, and every person it struck fell to the ground. It raced across the ropes back to the pirates ship, and she could hear the man in the robes stop summoning his fire. He was quick though to get a shield up. He ran now. Emile summoned more lightning, she saw out of the corner of her eye the Otterman captain dive off the side of the ship with a fearful look back at her. Gypsum seemed to be caught up in the same fever that was ushering Emile to summon more lightning. The lightning was like sunbeams breaking through the green clouds that covered the entire deck. Nothing moved, the decks of both ships were on fire.

Where is he! Emile felt the flies of fatigue now in her mind, many, many of them. They wanted her to disagree with the jewelry. They buzzed in her mind and said that no, no more lightning could come. She mentally batted them away, and launched still more crackling bolts at the ship with its now burning black flags. The masts were cracking on both ships, and Emile looked around panting. Sailors and pirates, burned and paralyzed littered the deck of the ship. The tall mast fell, painfully slowly, and she raised her left hand and thought that it needed to stop. It was going to hit her. The ring on her left hand made a good argument, and the mast was slowed somewhat, but it was still going to fall. The flames licked around her, and Gypsum nuzzled her, nudging her towards the edge. I hope you can swim. Emile and the dragon jumped off the side of the ship, and hit the icy water.

As soon as she was under water, the mail coif she wore wrapped itself tight around her face. A tiny stream of bubbles, sucked out of the water itself it seemed, filled her nostrils. It was a curious tickling feeling, the air being pushed into her lungs through her nose. She had no time to think about this though, Gypsum found her under the water, and Emile wrapped her right arm around the dragon’s neck. Images, images of ships sinking and the after effect, the effect of the water and everything around it being sucked under with the ships. NO! We’re not going down like that, Gypsum!

Emile could barely see under the water, she kicked with her legs, and tried to get her bearings. The two ships were collapsing, she could see fiery debris all around above her in the water. How long can you hold your breath? Emile dove deeper, and brought the little dragon with her. They swam as hard as they could. Air tickling her nose and filling her lungs strangely. I have to get away from the ships.

In the darkness it was hard to gauge anything, but Emile swam and swam. She didn’t know how deep she was. Gypsum seemed to be content under the water, and so they swam. Emile decided that they should try and surface. She let go of the dragon momentarily to get her bearings, and she realized she didn’t even know which way was up. The bubbles! In the darkness, in the stillness, she could feel the bubbles when she breathed out, she could feel them and followed them up. Soon she saw the light of the sun, and soon she broke the surface. Where there had once been two ships there was now only chaos. Detritus, the remains of the ships like skeletons floating in the tossing waves.

Emile panicked for a moment waiting for Gypsum to break the surface, when the dragon did she hugged her. She thought of love and warmth, of all her affections. How are we going to get to Two Lanes now? Gypsum’s response was images of flapping wings, images of birds in the sky. Can you fly? No? Well, the amulet might be able to get us out of the water at least.

In the stillness, floating in the sea water, Emile was suddenly much more aware of the buzzing in her mind. She thought of the necklace round her neck, and the necklace agreed that she could levitate. Emile focused on believing this, on thinking about it the way the amulet did, and she wrapped both her arms around Gypsum. Slowly, painfully slowly the two were lifted out of the water. Once they were just above the water, Gypsum flapped her thin wings mightily, and helped with every bit of strength she could muster. The speed was like glaciers, like mountains rising. Emile’s focus waned, but she kept it up, she’d never felt so tired in her life, but she knew that if she stopped focusing she would sink back to the water like a stone.

Just above the water they floated, Gypsum tugging them through the air with the mighty wingbeats. I just want rest. Emile’s mind drifted and the girl and the dragon began sinking again. It was like a whipcrack in her mind, images of sea creatures snapping at legs, of sharp teeth and snake like bodies coiling around her, images of swarms of tiny fish picking bodies clean, their silvery scales glistening. She raised her head and looked at the dragon, somewhat hurt. You’re right, it’s just until we get to the coast.