Chapter 14

The Difference of a Mark

Get your grubby hands off that you little thief!” Rob howled in a fit of rage, throwing a sauce pan at Boojum. It was a good toss too, and would have been right on target had the critter not disappeared at the last possible moment.

Boojum, whose hunger refused to subside, had taken to raiding the galley of the Bridesmaid on a regular basis. This time, it was an orange, star-shaped fruit that Rob had intended to cut into equal rations. It was his job to prepare the food, and he was furious that Boojum had interfered yet again.

“Sure, disappear, you lousy rodent,” Rob said as he stomped up the steps to the main deck. “But if I catch you stealing from my kitchen again, I swear we’ll be having Boojum stew for supper!”

Boojum reappeared and scurried across the deck, hiding behind my leg in hopes of escaping Rob’s wrath.

“Take it easy, Rob,” I said. “It’s not Booj’s fault he needs to eat more than the rest of us.”

“Fine, I’ll remind you of that when we run out of food,” he said, stomping back down to the lower level in a huff.

“Wow, someone’s in a mood today,” Trista said as she passed by with a bucket of soapy water in hand.

“Can’t blame him really,” I said. “We’ve been sailing for two days now, and he’s spent most of it cooped up below deck. I wish he would lighten up a bit and join the rest of us.”

“Cut the guy some slack,” Trista replied. “He’s afraid of heights, you know.”

“I know, it’s just that at the fairgrounds he seemed so excited to know there was another Codebearer at school. Honestly, I thought we’d get to know each other better, but here we are on an adventure together in Solandria and I feel like I hardly know that guy. It seems like he just likes to keep to himself.”

“Why don’t you talk to him about it?” Trista suggested.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

Trista rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Here,” she shoved a sponge in my hand, “you can clean those windows on the deckhouse over there, and I’ll go keep him company.” With that she scooted across the deck and disappeared down the stairs to check on Rob.

With a four-day journey ahead of us, Captain Stoney had suggested we assign duties—the only fair way to ensure each of us carried his own weight. I shared the task of night watch with Stoney (four hours on, four hours off). When not on watch, I was to report to Trista who was in charge of cleaning the ship a bit. It seemed there was always something to be done. Not having seen regular use for quite some time, the Bridesmaid was a little worse for the wear.

Rob, on the other hand, preferred to stay below deck and had volunteered for the job of cook. Surprisingly, he wasn’t bad at it either. Nevermind the fact that he had a bandage on nearly every fingertip from mishaps with the sharp knives.

At any rate, the galley was decidedly Rob’s domain, which of course put him further at odds with Boojum who had a knack for wanting to eat at the most inopportune times.

A loud crunch from over my shoulder near the deck railing caught my attention; the little critter was already happily munching on the stolen starfruit.

“As for you, mister,” I threatened, “you’re starting to be a bit of a nuisance, you know that?”

His cheeks were fat with juicy pulp, and he wore a puzzled expression. Pointing to his chest, he glanced both ways as if to ask if I meant him.

“Yeah you,” I replied.

The creature swallowed a great big gulp of food and spoke. “Boojum good; Boojum help.”

“Some help!” I said sarcastically. “So far you’ve only managed to help yourself.”

At this, he dropped his head in shame.

“Sorry,” he said, holding the half eaten fruit out toward me in an effort to make amends for his mischief.

“Oh, keep the fruit. Just try and stay out of Rob’s way, okay? And no more food without asking, understood?”

“Okee dokee,” said Boojum, tossing the pit of the fruit aside and nodding his head eagerly up and down. “No Rob, no foods!”

With that he scurried back to his favorite corner of the deckhouse and curled up in a nest of blankets to eat his reward.

I set to work scrubbing the grime off the porthole windows of the deckhouse. Inside, Captain Stoney sat at a broad oak table in the center of the room, studying the navigational maps and stroking his mustache. His normally jovial mood had turned notably sour over the last day, and I wondered what was bothering him. As I finished cleaning the window by the door, I could hear him grumbling to himself inside.

“No, no, no,” Stoney said, pounding his fists on the table for effect. “It’s all wrong, blast these maps!”

“What’s the matter, Stoney?” I asked, wandering in to see if I could be of assistance.

“It’s these maps; I can’t seem to figure out why we keep getting so far off course. Never had trouble like this before and it’s driving me mad.”

“How far off course are we?” I asked.

“That’s just it, I can’t say for sure. We’re supposed to be here, near the Shard of Sinos by now,” he said, pointing his finger just to the right of the map’s center. On the map, his finger was surrounded by a large gathering of shards, the largest of which was named Sinos. I recognized the name, only because it was the part of Solandria my teacher, Samryee, had been from. That was, of course, before he had fallen in the battle of Sanctuary. Like Petrov, he was gone now.

I drove the thought from my mind. As fitting as it was to honor a teacher and mentor, dwelling on the past for too long only robbed the present of its power.

Stoney continued. “As you can see, there should be plenty of land in these skies by now. I was planning on stopping for supplies, but there’s nothing out there—nothing but the Void!”

Stoney was frustrated and it showed on his face. Clearly, he prided himself on being an expert airman and was not pleased that his skills were failing him.

“What baffles me the most is that every time I checks our course…our compass here says we’re off by a mark one way or the other. It’s never spot on when I come back to check it after a bit.”

His dirty fingernail pointed to the edge of his compass. The tick marks that surrounded the outer rim were so small and insignificant I couldn’t imagine they could make any difference at all.

“Only a mark? That can’t be so bad,” I said. “We can’t be that far off track then, can we?”

“Sure, it don’t look like much to you, but one mark can equal a hundred miles or more when you follow it out. Never underestimate the difference of a mark.”

“So, are you saying the compass is bad?”

“Nope, this one’s as trusty as a snow pup—never failed me before.” He set the compass back on top of the maps and slouched back in his chair, putting his face in his hands. Massaging his forehead, he began to think out loud. “Maybe our rudder’s out of sorts.”

I was no mechanic, but it didn’t sound like an easy fix.

“So what do we do?”

He took a deep breath, puffed his cheeks and blew the air slowly from his lips.

“Only one thing to do! I’m going to have to go overboard and check it out.”

Having made up his mind, Stoney stood up on the spot, letting the chair slide away behind him, and made ready to do what needed to be done.

“You better get Rob. He ain’t going to like it none, but I’m going to need his strength as well as yours to hold me while I’m over the rails. I’m not the smallest of men, as you may have noticed,” he said, slapping his belly.

With a wink of his good eye he stomped out the door, his mood slightly better now that he had a plan in mind.

Before long, Rob, Trista and I had all gathered around the helm, listening to Stoney’s instructions. He had strapped himself into a rope harness and wrapped the slack around several of the rails in a make-shift pulley system that would help hold his weight. A second safety rope was dropped over the opposite side, strung under the ship then back up the near side where it was fastened to Stoney’s rope, a few feet up from his harness.

“All I gots to do is get down over the edge for a quick look-see and find out what, if anything, is wrong with the rudder below,” he explained. “Once I’m down low enough, Rob, you’ll double up the rope on this railing and Hunter will take the other rope over there, to bring me under as close to the rudder as possible. Got it?”

We nodded.

“Trista, I’ll need you to relay messages to the lads and to steer the rudder when I tells ya to, okay?”

“Okay,” Trista said.

“For obvious reasons, I normally prefer to do this over land. But since that’s not an option, the main thing to remember is not to let go of the rope. Otherwise, you’ll be flying solo for the remainder of the trip, and old Stoney here will be joining the poor souls of those unfortunate enough to know the mysteries of the deep.”

Rob’s face whitened at the thought, but honestly, none of us was comfortable with the situation.

“Well, no use putting it off any longer. Here I go.”

“Be careful,” Trista said as fearless Stoney began his descent to the underside of the ship. Rob and I let the rope out inch by nervous inch until Trista motioned for us to stop.

“So far, so good,” Stoney yelled up to Trista in a voice all of us could hear. “Now, send Hunter to pull me in closer.” We followed the procedure Stoney had laid out for us with careful precision. With the rope doubled up around the pulley, Rob could easily carry his weight alone. I crossed the deck and pulled Stoney in toward the rudder with the other rope.

When at last he was in place, Trista performed a series of tests. She turned the wheel this way and that following Stoney’s commands, but in the end, all it proved was that there was nothing wrong with the rudder after all.

“Bring me up; we’re through here,” Stoney called out at last. I slowly released my rope, allowing the weight of the man to swing back to Rob’s side of the ship once more. But just as I was about to tie off my rope, disaster struck.

Rob shifted to strengthen his stance, taking a short step backward with his left foot. As he set his foot down, his heel landed on the round pit of starfruit Boojum had carelessly tossed away after polishing off the stolen snack. The slimy pit rolled under Rob’s foot, dropping him to the ground with a painful twist of his ankle.

Howling in pain, Rob released his end of the rope. The safety rope that held Stoney unwound in an instant and slipped over the edge before anything could be done about it. Suddenly, the rope in my hands became the sole lifeline to Stoney, swinging him under the rudder to the opposite side of the ship. The full weight of the man pulled me to the floor, dragging me closer to the edge.

“Hunter, don’t let go!” Trista shouted, racing to my aid.

I plowed painfully into the wooden rails but somehow, against all odds, I managed to keep hold of the rope. Trista and Rob grasped the last few remaining feet of my line before my strength gave out.

With every ounce of strength left in us, we began to pull together, hoisting our captain back up to safety.

“Let’s…not do that…again…” Stoney said, looking completely exhausted and frightened as he climbed over the rails and collapsed on the deck. Having come within inches of his death, Stoney’s usually enthusiastic voice was much quieter now. It also didn’t help to know that he had risked his life for nothing. We were still hopelessly lost in the skies, with no clue as to precisely where we were.

“I’m so sorry,” Rob apologized. “I don’t know what happened. One minute I was fine and the next, I slipped on something and my ankle twisted…”

“Still, you didn’t have to let go of the rope!” I snapped.

“I know, I…”

“You could have killed Stoney! What were you thinking?”

“I guess I wasn’t…I just…”

“You were just being clumsy, Rob,” I said, feeling the urge to point out his fault for some reason.

Rob gritted his teeth. He already felt responsible for the ordeal; my comment had pushed him over the edge. He hobbled away below deck, sickened by his mistake and unaware that it was actually the pit Boojum had thrown that toppled him.

“Way to go, Hunter,” Trista said. “Could you be any more cruel?”

“I wasn’t cruel. I just stated the obvious,” I pointed out. “Rob has to learn to be more reliable if we’re going to trust each other out here. It’s not going to get any easier. The Shadow sure aren’t going to cut him any slack if he makes a mistake.”

Trista shook her head.

“So? What good is it to claim you’re different from the Shadow if you’re going to act just like them?” Trista pointed out.

There was truth in her words, but I didn’t want to hear it. She obviously had no idea what was at stake. The fate of the Resistance depended on us making it safely to Torpor, and clumsy Rob had nearly doomed us to wander the skies alone.

“Fine, I’ll talk with him about it when he cools off,” I offered. We set to work coiling the ropes and putting away the harness.

“Well that does it then,” Stoney said with a tone of defeat. “We’re lost.”

Hearing the word lost come from Stoney was disturbing and final. Suddenly, the air seemed to lose its sweetness.

“We can’t be lost. The Author’s supposed to be with us…guiding us!”

“Well, it doesn’t change the fact that we are. We could be anywhere in the Void,” he said, pointing out into the empty skies around us. “It may be too late already.”

“What do you mean, ‘too late’?” Trista asked nervously.

“Well, I didn’t have time to pack a full supply of food or fuel to power the ship’s propeller. I figured we’d restock on one of the other shards before continuing on to Torpor. That’s not likely to happen now, so we’re liable to starve to death before we make landfall anywhere.”

“There has to be another way! Can’t you fix your compass, or navigate by the stars or something?” I asked.

Stoney sounded more than a little annoyed at my suggestion.

“Look, if I thought I could fix the compass I wouldn’t have hung myself off the back of the ship, now would I? It’s not like I’m new to sailing the skies, you know. It ain’t exactly that easy. Besides, even with a clear view of the stars, I’d only be guessing anyway. On the shards you have a horizon line to work from—out here there ain’t nothin’ but empty space. The Void is a dizzying place to be lost.”

“So, what now?”

“We hope and pray that the Author knows what he’s doing. Otherwise, we’re goners, I’m afraid. I only have enough fuel left to keep us moving for a week at most. After that we’ll be at the mercy of the winds.”

That night I lay awake in the crow’s nest keeping watch. Rob had managed to stay out of sight the remainder of the evening, probably sulking in his room. I thought it was best to leave him alone, since I was still frustrated with him and his never-ending clumsiness. This last goof-up could have ended with serious consequences, dooming us to wander the Void aimlessly without a captain.

As a result of Rob’s absence, no dinner was served but no one was hungry anyway. Considering the severity of our situation, it seemed unwise to eat until we really needed to.

Alone in the darkness, I found myself thinking about our desperate situation. My thoughts shifted from hopelessness to bitterness.

“What’s the point?” I wondered aloud. “Why would you bring us all the way out here to die?”

Silence.

I sighed, desperate for an answer. Things were never as easy as I wanted them to be. The Author’s ways were mysterious and often confusing. Still, I waited, holding Hope’s medallion out from my chest, staring at the simplicity of its design.

I missed her—Hope was always so upbeat and encouraging. She believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. I smiled as I recalled how she first gave me the medallion—the night I first flew out over the Void. I promised to return it to her one day.

Who could have known back then that three months later (or years, depending on your count) I would be carrying Hope’s medallion across the Void once more? Only this time I was on a ship, not a bird, and we were horribly lost.

You won’t be alone out there, you know! Hope’s voice seemed to say. It was only a memory yet it seemed so real…and nearby. I looked around, wishing desperately to see my friend once more, but she wasn’t there.

What was I thinking? Of course Hope wasn’t here, she was dead…and it was all my fault. I was the one who had killed her with my sword. If only I had been more careful that night in Venator’s palace. If only I had looked for the face of my enemy before attacking. Then, maybe she would be here with me even now. Instead, I had killed her. Even Rob hadn’t made that big of a blunder…yet. Now Hope was gone, and nothing could ever change that.

A slow tear dripped down my face, a tear that gave way to more. The tears I had held back for so long finally flowed freely. I sobbed alone in the darkness.

“I’m sorry, Hope,” I said, gasping for breath as I cried. “I miss you so much.”

Never alone, Hope’s voice reminded me.

I knew it was true, but it was hard to believe at times like this. I wept long and hard and finally fell into a deep, fitful sleep, haunted by ominous dreams.

* * * * * * *

Darkness, complete and terrifying.

All was silent, save for the intermittent, staccato dripping of water, echoing mysteriously through the cavernous court of night.

Then light, pure and unrestrained. A spark of fire boldly invaded the domain of darkness, springing to life against overwhelming odds. With the patience of a setting sun, the Flame descended till it came to rest above the face of a sleeping girl. The soft, flickering glow brought the only life to her otherwise statuesque face. Framed by wavy brown hair, her skin was pale, her lips a cold shade of pink.

The light expanded to reveal her full form, a white-robed body floating peacefully above a stone table, a bier, which sat alone on a platform at the top of a rock staircase.

“Release me.”

A hushed voice pulsed out from the heart of the Flame. It came from the Flame, but the voice was Hope’s. Then, as if it suddenly turned to liquid, the fire poured itself over the lifeless body. The ashen skin, which absorbed the Flames, warmed and now shone brightly from the radiant light within. An awakening power was at work as the gentle rise and fall of her chest welcomed life once more.

Without warning, another face emerged from the light’s unreached shadows, drawn by the Flame. The man’s features were dark except for a pair of silver eyes. His crouching frame was wrapped in the white garb of a Xin warrior—Xaul had arrived.

Swiftly and silently he stole up the steps, even though no one was around to see him. Sliding up to the bier, he drew himself up to full height, creating a towering silhouette against the girl’s luminous glow.

Drawing a black Veritas Sword from his belt, the Xin lifted it high. The blade of negative light flashed angrily out of the hilt. Hope’s eyelids fluttered with life, opening wide, but the hardened assassin would not fail in his mission. Turning his sword downward, he plunged it mercilessly into her heart.

With a crack of lightning and a splitting of stone, the room fell into complete darkness once more. Hope’s body had disappeared; with it, her light had all but vanished. Only a tiny sliver of a dying flame flickered from between the buckled halves of the stone bier.

His sword replaced, Xaul knelt down to snatch up the Flame. He brought the Flame close to his face, illuminating his silvery eyes and greedy grin before snapping his fist shut around it.

Echoes of an evil laugh peeled across the darkness as two eyes of fire flashed to life where once the silver pair had been.

“Noooooo!”

* * * * * * *

I woke in a full sweat to the sound of my own scream. The night was even darker than before. I climbed down from the crow’s nest and stood alone at the ship’s helm, staring aimlessly into the sky.