❖ ''We're at six thousand feet, Cap'n. There shouldn't be land at six thousand feet.'' ❖
Rav is apprenticed by his father's wishes on an airship as unsettling as the deliveries it makes. Dreamcatcher's owner is the only captain on the continent who...
The captain's roar woke Rav like a bucket of ice water. The man was somewhere down the hallway; in his cabin, by the sound of it. Had he realized this was sabotage?
"This demon-damned ship! This demon-damned ship!"
There was another roar, and the sound of ripped box spilling glass shards over the floor. Something slammed down at their side. It sounded like the captain was throwing notebooks. Rav lay back, his hands shaking. He was not sure his legs would support him until he was sure his last night's visit had been entirely blamed on the ship.
The captain's cabin door slammed. Two stomps later, the bathroom banged open. Rav squeezed his eyes shut and clutched the blanket to his chest.
It was more a screech than a roar this time. Something heavy scraped the floor, then hit the wall with a clang. Something metallic rattled after it. It sounded like the cage, and it didn't sound intact.
"Indra!" bellowed the captain. "Come screw this thing back on before someone falls through it! And before I burn this entire ship!"
Rav finally dared to wriggle into day-clothes and slide from his hammock. He pulled his boots on, suddenly glad the chill of the room gave him an excuse to be quaking like a kicked dog. He cracked the door.
"Indra!"
Rav leaped back. The captain stormed past without noticing. He had the dragonette's cage in one hand. Crushed by the rogue floor-panel, its dainty metal bars had been warped and battered beyond repair.
If Dreamcatcher had been a person, Rav would have hugged her.
Indra and the captain were shouting at each other somewhere at the ship's other end. Something to do with the engines. Had they broken again? Rav pressed both hands to the floor. No, the engines were both fine, and their vibrations didn't have the warped feel lent by a damaged propeller. Indra must just be maintaining them after a beating by the storm.
Rav shut the door quietly as Indra stormed past. When the man was gone, he slipped out and ran to the kitchen to ask if he could make himself useful. Better to be here and working than raising suspicion by his absence.
The ship broke out of the clouds midway through the morning. Rav stood in the lookout bay with Sanjay, calling out the first island they saw. It took two more islands to find where they were on a map, by which point the ship had descended enough to bring the sparkle back into the waves. Sanjay taught Rav how to use the ocean's wrinkles to find islands not yet visible on the horizon. They would reach the biological station's archipelago by midafternon.
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"Hold onto that line, cabin boy! Get down there and moor us!"
Rav crouched on the railing until the ship was within fifteen feet of the ground, then hopped over the side and slid down the mooring line. He hit the dock with a thump and ran along it, whipping the rope around a mooring mast before the wind used up its slack. The ship pivoted with a creak of protest. When it was held and steady, he caught the new, thicker line Sanjay tossed him and fed it into the rusty winch at the dock's end. The gears at least were well oiled. Turn by turn, Dreamcatcher settled to the ground like a nesting mother quail.
