Dreamcatcher | ONC 2020 Honourable Mention | ✔

Chapter Two

The end of the boardwalk opened up onto an expanse of modified islands and water the size of a small city. Docks crowded every flat surface: docks of wood and earth, plank and log, riveted metal and tight-packed reed. Floating logs made walkways between them. Nimble dockhands skipped across these in every direction and at every pace, their steps sure and their brown skin darkened to rich earthen tones by the sun. The soaring, lichen-spangled pillars of mooring masts sank their roots into the brackish water, itself a murky green so opaque it reflected the clouds.

With the sun just high enough to light the masts properly, traffic in the port was sleepy. Women on a plump houseship heckled a mechanic over something to do with an engine, and an ant-like line of workers shuttled crates from a mail carrier to a freighter that would take them inland. The large, gilded ship of what must have been a maharaja was parked alone in a corner of the port. Its gondola had been replaced with the replica hull of a carrack, made entirely of balsa wood and styled almost beyond recognition. A pearlescent sheen on its envelope gave it away as Skydragon skin, a rarity now that Skydragons had been hunted to extinction for exactly this reason. It must have cost a fortune.

Rav dragged his eyes from the spectacle. He had to find his new employer, and fast. Already he could see the specks of incoming airships in the blue dome of the sky. Once those landed, mayhem would massacre his chances of finding the right captain. He followed the snoring mechanic from the ferry across logs and docks, then through the trees of an island to the spectacular mooring mast on the other side.

He emerged into shadow. Overhead loomed the great, scarred fabric envelope of an airship bigger than his uncle's estate. It was so long, he could have walked for minutes and not travelled it end to end. Its propeller blades were arranged in wheels two stories tall, and coal buckets crept up towards its belly through a webbing of ropes so thick it looked like a waterfall.

Rav searched for its name. Ocean liners did not paint them on their envelopes in the latest fashion: long days at sea would quickly erode paint or dye to an unaesthetic smudge. Rav jogged until he could see the sunlit side of the gondola, and squinted at the scrolling black lettering.

March of the Elephants

No. No, that wasn't the one he was looking for. Fear, hot and sweet, nibbled deeper into Rav's chest. He was supposed to be getting on an ocean-going ship. He had not seen another vessel large enough to fit that description. What if it had left without him? What if he had gotten the day wrong and come too late? But Father had bought him the ticket to the ferry dock on the mainland. If that had been wrong, this at least wouldn't be his fault.

Rav tapped a nearby worker with a shaking hand. "Excuse me? I'm looking for Dreamcatcher."

Pity softened the lines of the man's face. Rav's heart plummeted. The ship was gone. He'd taken the most basic instructions and still failed Father.

"She's over there, son." The dockhand turned Rav around and pointed back the way he had come. "But I wouldn't wake the captain; just catch him when he shows his face."

Rav stumbled off in too much of a daze to remember to thank him. His neck kinked from scanning the docks. Had he remembered wrong? No, Dreamcatcher was an ocean traveler; that much he knew. It was the only ship on the continent that had been to every nook of the sky that nobody else would travel to. Father had thought it a good choice for toughening up his youngest son.

The weight of the years leading up to this apprenticeship built like the air's thickening morning humidity, suffocating him. A bird's chirp brought him back to flight school, mocked for not wanting to pitch a bird's nest he found on his ship into the ocean. An engineer's papers turned the scene to his private lessons. A map in a navigator's hands was too painful to look at, a keen reminder of subpar grades in math and perfect ones in world geography.