When I stepped into the hollow and closed the door, rain poured and streamed down the bark of our tree.

  “Dad? Are you home?”

  “Where have you been?” Dad said, trotting down the stairs.

  “Port Poizus,” I said, walking over to the fire and warming my hands.

  Dad walked up and sat on the rug behind me.

  “You were off doping with your pirate girlfriend,” he said.

  “She’s not a pirate! I don’t know where you get these ideas. And I don’t need your permission to go out anymore. I’m a commenced adult now. You’d have seen it yourself if you were at the ceremony today.”

  “You will obey my rules as long as you live in my house.”

  “Did you check yourself for Demon seeds before you came inside? I told you to watch your step when you’re out tracking. They’re all over the place.”

  “Worry about yourself. You need to shape up and stop messing around with those magic tricks. Get a job and start helping out around here.”

  “I’m not going to get a job,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m going on float.”

  “Dick is never going to hire you back, Burgeon. And even if you get passage aboard another ship, where are you going?”

  “To find Mom,” I said.

  “Your mother again?”

  “I have to get her back for both our sakes.”

  “You’ve got just as many stupid ideas as she did.”

  My face became tense and twisted. I balled my fists at my side, my wings unfurled behind my back.

  “After enduring the years it’ll take to reach her realm alive,” Dad said. “The corrupt skippers taking advantage of you, the criminal crewmates trying to claw you in your sleep for the blanket on your rack, she wouldn’t even remember your name.”

  My anger boiled over.

  “That’s not true!” I said. “How could you say something like that?”

  “Burgeon!”

  I bound into the rain, jumped off the cliff, and flew frantically into the fog. I flew in a panic of rage, flapping my wings until I thought my chest would burst. I flew until I found the updraft that took me to the realm’s fifth and topmost island. Rays of light shone through the fog, revealing the spring oasis spotted by daisies. I landed on a patch of warm grass. Water trickled down the rivulet. The bushes were spotted with white roses that glowed in the sunshine. Sharubym showed up sometime later, and we lay under the shade of our favorite tree. It was the spot where we spent most of our time together. But it seemed like she wasn’t very comfortable for some reason. I couldn’t handle any more stress, so I focused on blooming flowers and their perfume.

  “I went to see about my job,” I said, breaking an odd silence.

  “You’re still on that?” she said. “Why would you want to work for Dick again anyway? The whole port knows what an arsehole he is.”

  “I don’t want to work for him again. I have to.”

  “You have choices. You don’t have to be a voyager, you know. You can work as a servant in one of the taverns, or work for my sister’s painting business, or…”

  “I have to get out of here.”

  Sharubym’s cheeks creased into a frown.

  “I can’t live here anymore,” I said.

  “You really are anxious to leave me.”

  I knew she wasn’t going to make it easy.

  “It’s not you I’m leaving,” I said. “It’s the realm. I hate being around asses all the time. I can’t take their misery any longer. And I have to get my Mom back for Dad’s sake. He’s losing his mind.”

  “You’re losing your mind, I think.”

  “Don’t!”

  “Don’t you think your Mom would have come back by now if she wanted to? She doesn’t love you, Burgeon. Why won’t you understand that? Why don’t you stay here with me? I’m here for you.”

  I got up and started walking away. She bounded from where she was lying and followed me.

  “Wait!” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I know how much she means to you.”

  I embraced Sharubym tightly.

  “I have to get her back.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why can’t your Dad get her himself if he wants her back so badly?”

  “He won’t. His sense of loyalty to me keeps him where he is.”

  Sharubym’s eyes were wet with tears. I looked away, unable to face her. She was the only friend I ever had. I didn’t know how to cope with the idea that I was breaking her heart.

  “I’m not disappearing,” I said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  * * *

  When I woke up the following morning, Sharubym was gone. The smell of her breath and tears still clung to my shoulder. I got up and had a drink from the stream.

  “Goodbye,” I said, looking at my reflection in the water.

  I stood up, allowing my eyes to follow the path of the low-flowing water as it rushed over the island’s edge and cascaded down. I fell off the edge, following the mist as it disappeared into the fog. A short time later, the headstone top of Port Poizus came into my field of vision, and I landed on the dock.

  “Absolutely not!” I heard Dick bray as soon as I stepped on board the Hearth.

  “Morning, Dick,” I said.

  “No, Burgeon.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Dick was cleaner than most of the asses of his kind, but like them, his face was a canvas of misery, with lips pulled tightly into a permanent scowl. His glare never intimidated me.

  “Dick,” Crickle said, walking up behind him and bending down to whisper in his ear.

  “What did you say to Shinn to convince him not to show up for his post?” Dick said.

  “Sharubym’s brother?”

  “You know damn well he’s out sick,” Dick said. “I know damn well you set this up.”

  “I didn’t set up anything,” I said, shocked that Sharubym had lied to me.

  “Damn pirates and their …” Dick grumbled. “Shart-birds of a feather flock together…”

  I held my wings tight behind my back, placed my hands at my sides, and looked down at the deck, displaying the best humility I could muster.

  “I should flog you senseless,” Dick said.

  “We need to take off,” Crickle said.

  “Well, I can’t trust this pirate at the nest or the riggings, and I sure as shart can’t trust him at the helm. So what do we make of this?”

  “Put him in the furnace,” Crickle said.

  “Lift up your sleeves,” Dick said.

  “What?” I said. “I’ve crewed for you for years. You know damn well I am no pirate.”

  “Then you’ll have no problem lifting up your sleeves,” said Crickle.

  I pulled up my jacket sleeves and showed my forearms, clean and free of brands or marks.

  “Very well,” Dick said. “Below decks with you then. You’d better know it doesn’t pay but a six-pittance. And if you put one feather out of line, I’ll pluck it.”

  “Okay, Dick,” I said.

  “Get out of my sight and send Biggs up to the cargo deck when you get down there.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The crew on deck, pretending not to listen, got back to work stowing crates and barrels. Tension hung in the air like a fart.

  “What the hells are you doing here?” said a voice behind me.

  “Kairn!” I said, turning around to see an old creature with a basket-woven mask. “Good to see you.”

  “You shouldn’t have come back,” Kairn said, sticking her nose up and walking away.

  “Definitely shouldn’t have come back, pup,” Dennis said, a ten-cubit-tall creature with a gut that looked like two ale kegs strapped together.

  “Okay?” I said. “Vin! What’s the news?”

  “Go home, Burgeon!” Vin said from across the deck, leaning casually against a barrel and twitching his tail. He had a blue mask on with glowing orange eyes.

  “Go back to where you came from!” I heard someone else say from the other side of the hold.

  My ears drooped to my shoulders, and my tail dragged on the deck behind me. I never had a lot of friends before, but the mates I’d crewed with in the past had never regarded me in that way. I had been trained well by my Grandpa and Grandma. I’d always felt valued as a voyager.

  “What’s the matter with everyone, Crickle?” I said.

  “Dick has been in rare form since the last time you quit. Made conditions on board worse than normal.”

  “That couldn’t be because of me.”

  “Maybe not, but they do blame you for it.”

  I scratched my head, befuddled. This was going to be a long trip.

  “Why are you still standing here?” Crickle said. “The furnaces are below decks. You wanted on board. You’re about to get what you asked for.”

  I walked down to the end of a nearby aisle of crates to the ladder well. I had never had to work at the furnace before, not even when I was a swab or when Grandpa was showing me the ropes. It was a station nobody liked.

  “Burgeon?” an ass said when I stepped into the dark chamber. The decks below were dark except for the fire glow in the furnace windows. The smell of mold clung to the cold floor. “Who let you back on board?”

  “You’ve been promoted.” Biggs nearly leaped out of his gray hide and trotted lively up the stairs with his nose in the air. I couldn’t recall ever seeing a happy ass before.

  I got my footing as Hearth lifted from the dock and floated away. The decks creaked, and the ship swayed.

  “Welcome back,” croaked a voice in the shadows.

  Eight red eyes peered down at me from a black shadow on the ceiling. The old arachnid could still sneak up on me, even though the smell of fear was remarkable. He was three cubits long. He had an old, wrinkled abdomen that dragged behind as he crept about. Watching those eight legs ease their way across the decks and bulkheads one by one made your blood run cold, no matter how well you knew him. I knew he wouldn’t eat me, but then things had changed on board since my last voyage.

  “Hey, Spieder,” I said. “How are you holding up?”

  Spieder grumbled something under his breath. He held a cigarette up to the hole in his throat and breathed deeply.

  “Make yourself useful and light the lamps, boy,” he said, smoke wafting from his throat hole. “There ain’t no time for breaks.”

  “No breaks? Is this a slave ship now?”

  “You crossed the Dick, now you pay the toll like all of us,” he said, sucking another drag from his cigarette. “Deal with it, and stow the crying in the meanwhile.”

  “I was just having a bit of fun. Why is everyone making such a fuss about it?”

  “Fun? This is a ship, young fool. You don’t see all these voyagers hobbling about with missing arms, legs, and eyes? What should be fun about it? You want respected than you keep that puppyish, shart-for-brains nonsense in the tavern where it belongs.”

  Spieder went into a fit of wet coughing.

  “The shaman cut your throat out, Spieder. Should you really be smoking?”

  “You mind your own business,” he sputtered. “Now step to it and …”

  “The lamps. I got it.”

  “And stoke the furnaces when you’re finished.”

  I grabbed the matchbox and went down the passageways, lighting lamps as I went along. Cold air filled the corridors, and I could see my breath as the ship floated further and further into space. Then I returned to Spieder’s workshop and stoked the furnaces, shoving coal into their fiery mouths. Then, I checked the riggings holding crates and barrels to the decks. I pulled the lines tight and retied the ones that shifted loose when the ship took off. Being down there wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Most crew dreaded being down there, especially with Spieder and its reputation for being a lowly post. But there was no skipper to nay in your ear.

  I bumped into Dick on my way to the head. He looked ill-favored, as though he’d been itching to tell me a joke that I was the butt of.

  “Burgeon. We need to … We... I got a little critter in my pocket. You are going to flush the cesspipe. Then you are going to do it again. Then you’ll do it again. And you’ll do it again after that.”

  Familiarity ticked the brain behind my ears like I was in a place I’d been before.

  “Aye, sir,” I growled, and Dick turned and trotted down the dark corridor.

  “And you’d better stay on top of anything Spieder wants of you,” he said. “I would love a reason not to pay you after we make port.”

  * * *

  I was still dripping with blackwater when I stoked the furnaces later on, but at least it was warm down there.

  “Where you been, boy?” Spieder said, creeping out of the shadows. “And what be that stink?”

  “Me. Dick made me flush the cesspipe.”

  “What?”

  I nodded.

  “Flush the cesspipe? No skipper does that no more. They just replace the line if it gets backed up.”

  “Well, Dick’s a traditionalist,” I said, shoveling another lump into the fire. “You know that.”

  “That’s criminal!” Spieder said, sputtering into a fit of coughing.

  “What can I do?”

  “Tell him to bang himself. The crew would back you.”

  “They might, but he could still flog me. Or worse, refuse to pay me when I get to Poughkeepsy Relics. I’m going to need that purse.”

  The smell of sympathy mixed with the smoke around Spieder’s face.

  “Well,” he said. “Get on up to the head and get a shower. You’re stinking up my shop.”

  The noise of the busy work on the decks above slowed to a standstill, and save for the cranking of gears and the roar of the furnaces, the ship went peaceful. I was exhausted by the time I scrubbed the itch from beneath my coat. I had no desire to rack with the crew, so I set up my hammock in the machine shop next to the furnace.

  “You did good work today,” Crickle said, walking down the ladder with a bowl of porridge with bacon and lemon.

  My hands shook with hunger. The hot bowl stung my blisters like hot pokers. Crickle hopped onto the hammock and sat next to me.

  “Why are you going to Poughkeepsy Relics?” he said. “You never said what this emergency was about.”

  There had been no shortage of people saying ‘No’ to me since I left Weeping Wallows, so I was hesitant to tell him, but I was already on board, so there was nothing he or any of them could do to stop me.

  “Poughkeepsy is just one stop. I’ll be moving up from there.”

  “To where?”

  “Delinquent Undergrowths.”

  “You said you were traveling up the spectrum. That realm is down. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “That’s one long voyage, even by charter. What’s in Delinquent Undergrowths?”

  “My mom.”

  Crickle stroked his blue beard.

  “You know, the coin you’re fixing to earn on this trip won’t buy passage all the way to Delinquent Undergrowths.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So, how are you going to get there?”

  “I’m going to hitch,” I said, stuffing a piece of bacon into my mouth.

  “Hitch?” he said.

  “I’ve heard enough lectures.”

  “Apparently not. Hitch voyaging is very dangerous. Even a lot of master voyagers can’t pull that off without being killed, forced into piracy, marooned, or screwed over by skippers of ill repute. You think Dick is a hard skipper? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  I got up and started walking off toward the ladder well.

  “I’ll be fine, thank you!”

  “Burgeon, come on. You can’t just …”

  “You wanna help me, Crickle? Get me a letter of reference. I’ve been crewing for the Hearth for years with nothing to show for it.”

  “I could write you one, but you need a skipper’s signature to validate it. Dick will never sign.”

  “There’s nothing you can do for me then.”

  ******

  Would you be a creature like Burgeon, or a creature more like the Spieder? Let us know in the comments!