Dreamcatcher | ONC 2020 Honourable Mention | ✔

Chapter Thirteen

The door swung shut. Its click did not register through the buzzing that had enveloped Rav's body and head. Alone in the dark room, he felt the floor beneath his knees.

His fingers found their way through the bars. They did not brush the silky wing they should have found. He tried again, and again, until something firm and velvety met his fingertips. It was cold. It was not breathing. The cage slid from his grip and rattled to the ground. Rav pulled his knees up to his chest and started to sob.

She was gone.

He had just killed the world's last Skydragon.

The horror of it forced open a yawning pit in his stomach. He wanted to throw up. He rocked back and forth instead as the sobs entrenched themselves, deeper and deeper, until they were tearing up the very base of his being. Raking him with thorns that sank in and did not let go.

There were so many times he could have released her. The cage had not even been locked. He could have snuck in while Indra fetched the captain after the key broke, or after they left, when the door opened again. He could have slipped the cage latch when Indra sent him in alone today. And in all the time he'd spent moping in his hammock after supper, he could have gotten the dragonette out, returned her to the island, and gone back to bed without anyone noticing. He even still had Indra's wire in his pocket.

Nothing had stopped him but an order from a captain he didn't even want to listen to. Was that really it? Nothing but an order?

That just made it worse.

The ship rocked him gently as the tears kept coming. For the lost mother and the missing siblings and the baby who had lived alone until she met him on the island. For the small moments they had spent together when she was still alive and well. For the brightness of her eyes and her manner then, now snuffed out. Forever.

When he had cried himself out, the tears subsided into a wretched calm. It soothed his aching throat and the knot in his stomach, then swallowed his whole body, bit by bit. Nothing but an order. Had he really thought he could protect anything without disobeying orders? He had never been worthy of looking after the dragonette in the first place.

Rav shut his eyes and let everything disappear into the soft fabric of his pillow. The image of an open notebook appeared, filled with his writing. He stuffed it away. A tidy box of glass bottles replaced it.

He was no better than the captain.

He rolled over and blocked the image of the box, too. Up sprang the reproachful look of the dragonette as he raided her home.

The ship rocked again.

Wasn't the sky around the island normally calm? Rav pulled his pillow over his head. The sky itself must be livid at the death of its most beautiful species. Maybe if Dreamcatcher was punched from the air, it would pay for this. A gust of wind whistled along the outside of the hull. The ship's rigging creaked, then thrummed like a stringed instrument. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

No. Not thunder. Please not thunder.

Suddenly wide awake, Rav leaped to his feet. Already he could hear the patter of footsteps up on deck. A gust wrenched the ship, and Dreamcatcher's nose swung in a wide arc, her front mooring rope torn loose. Rav winced for the tree it had been tied to. He wrestled the lid off the nearest crate. Nobody had come for ropes yet. That meant nobody was tying things down. Rav snatched an armload and stumbled from his room.

The ship shook with the wind now battering it from every side. The slam of the hatch indicated his crewmates' return; moments later, Manish was in the galley with quick hands and a padded crate for their remaining food supplies. Indra's toolbox snapped shut in the engine room. Sanjay ran past from the bow and disappeared into the navigation room, his footsteps drowned out by the mounting howl of the wind.