Treeline

Chapter 24

Dot proved to be quite the chatterbox as he led me to the galley, though sometimes I had to strain my ears to hear what he said. Unlike the rest of his kind he didn’t seem too bothered about being close to me.

“What does this ship do?” I asked.

“Hunt beasties.”

“What kind?”

“Big ones.”

“With what?”

Spear guns; magic.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Back hunting grounds.”

“What are you?”

This question seemed to stop him short quite literally as he came to a halt. I raised an eyebrow as I looked up at his face but with the mask it was impossible to gather much at all. I figured him to be thinking.

“Nua. Like you.” Having said his bit, he continued walking.

I was just about to tell him that he and I were different species altogether and I had never heard of Nua when we stepped into the kitchen.

The wind appeared easily around me, it seemed that Captain Hally had allowed my magic back. Morai looked genuinely scared even though she was the one with holding a large meat cleaver. Bandages swathed around her hand where I bit her, completely over the top.

Before I could decorate the walls of the kitchen with Morai’s insides, a feathered sleeve blocked my face.

“No.” said Dot.

He shoved me back into the hallway. Despite the mask and only a single word I couldn’t help but feel like he was chiding me. Like one would when a sapling was about to do something ridiculously dangerous like oh, I don’t know, fall in love with a hunter and attempt to turn him into a faerie. It was the same tone that Rowan would have used. Despite myself, the wind settled slightly.

Morai’s shaky hands passed two peaches and two small black beans to Dot. He took them, gave an ever so slight bow, then hurried me back along the hallway.

“I’m going to kill her one day,” I told him as I dropped the bean into my mouth. Almost instantly I could feel the effect as the aching left my feet and the walls didn’t seem quite so closed in and dangerous.

“I know,” he replied, handing me a peach.

I took a bite. It wasn’t as juicy as I would have liked but it was far better than what I expected to be found inside an iron machine. It was odd as I felt like I had known Dot forever already yet I hadn’t spoken to him for more than ten minutes. This helped me push down the images of both Zann and Rowan which rarely left the forefront of my mind. A distraction, yes.

“Can you see the future?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

His response surprised me. A future-seeing being was rare indeed and would be rather coveted. If all of his people were the same then it was strange how they weren’t well known at all -- at least to someone like me who was tucked away in the world. I did particularly like his prediction as well as if he could actually see the future then that meant I truly would get my revenge. For some reason an uneasiness settled on my stomach as I thought of that. Probably just the peach.

We stopped outside a heavy iron door. A Dot-sized wheelbarrow of stinking meat sat off to the side.

He turned and the black shadows of his mask seemed to bore right through me. “Inside they eat me. You protect?”

I frowned. “Why would you go inside then if you know something’s going to eat you?”

“You protect?”

I wiped my sticky hands on my dress and all I received was sticky hands covered in dirt and crusted slobber for my efforts. “Yeah, I protect.”

It would have been good to know what I was to protect him from but he was already twisting open the hatch. My history for protecting hadn’t been very good of late as I’d managed to kill Zann who I told myself I would save. Somehow, I also felt like I had been the cause of Rowan’s death through my dream. Like somewhere out there lay his cold stiff body. I had no proof of course that he was dead but I couldn’t shake the feeling.

A gust of stale smelly air blew out at us from the hold. Dot didn’t miss a beat; as soon as the door was open he pushed the wheelbarrow through. I followed somewhat more hesitantly.

Hummingbirds appeared, ready for anything. As soon as I stepped over the threshold, he reached back and closed the door. At first it seemed like the room was completely dark.

Then I saw them.

The first thing that you must know is that the hold was absolutely enormous. It became clear that the hallways we had been walking along were so long and narrow because there was such little space left to put anything in the ship. One could easily fit a hundred of the Baraliches that hunted Zann I, and they’d still have room to move around.

It became very apparent that this was for bigger things.

Dot rolled off the wheelbarrow into the darkness and I had no choice but to follow, wondering desperately which way I should be facing. All around tiny blue lights flickered and glowed casting horrible shadows. The sounds didn’t help my growing panic either. Groans and clangs of the machinery behind the walls sounded but there were also lower sounds echoing through the chamber. The sounds of great beasts shifting; watching us.

Apparently we reached the right spot and Dot dumped the wheelbarrow forward. I had no idea why the meat couldn’t have just been tossed in through the door. I was looking forward to getting right out of there when Dot froze just like he did when I asked him the tricky question.

His word came just above a whisper but I heard him loud and clear; “Protect.”

The blue lights around the edges of the hull doubled in number. My head snapped this way and that, trying to find what exactly I was supposed to protect him from. It was all just a distraction though as something very large creaked above us.