A terrible roar echoed down the storm drain.

Mousey’s ears drooped as he turned to face the approaching danger with wide eyes and trembling paws. A wall of water rushed

around the corner. The waves splashed against the walls and swirled together.

In pure instinct, he turned to run, but he’d only taken a few steps before he realized that he could not possibly outrun the deluge on his tail.

With stave in paw, he tried to remember the toy boat he’d had as a child. When he blinked and opened his eyes again, the boat was in front of him, the stern facing towards him.

He leapt onto the deck of the boat, just as the rushing waters swept it away.

As the vessel tossed and rolled back and forth, Mousey fought to gain footing. His nails dug into the wooden hull, and he strained and pulled to get to the helm.

A wave struck the walls beside him, and water covered the deck. Mousey slipped and slid across the deck to the starboard side. Had his tail not caught the mast, he would have flown off the edge and into the rushing waters.

“You’ve got this!” Sopher reassured him. “Get to the helm. This is your boat, not the flood’s!”

With new determination, Mousey pulled himself to the mast, then ran to the helm. The handles and spokes were a blur when he drew near, and yet he caught them in his paws.

With a loud groan, he forced the handles to turn where he wished; away from the storm-drain’s walls.

And, for a fleeting moment, he felt triumphant.

Snap!

The sound rang out from behind him.

He jerked his head around to the source; a board in the hull which had broken in two. Water spurted up from the hole.

Of course.

He’d forgotten since last time he’d tried to conjure this boat; it was the boat his father had given him. What was once a happy memory was little more than a painful reminder now.

Mousey’s paws clenched into fists on the helm’s handles and he ground his teeth.

A bright flash, and the sail caught fire.

“Let go of your anger!” Sopher said. “Remember why this memory once brought you such joy!”

Right. What had he enjoyed so much about this boat when he was a young pup? Was it purely the games he played with it? No, something more.

A turn up ahead in the tunnel.

The water was sure to smash him against the wall before him.

Mousey pulled on the helm as hard as he could.

Less than a paw’s width from the wall, the boat changed direction, and followed the rushing waters around the bend.

Snap! Snap! Snap!

More boards sprung loose, and little iron nails sprayed through the air.

“Please, remember something good about this boat!” Sopher said. “If you don’t…”

Mousey looked ahead at the long tunnel still before them, and the darkness at the end. It would be a long time before he escaped this death-trap. They needed the boat intact.

He closed his eyes and tried to think back. Some happy moment.

“Did it hit the rocks?”

He could see it now, in his mind’s eye; an early memory. His father stood at a workman’s bench, where he kept a supply of tools, and in his paw, he held the broken toy boat.

Mousey felt tears building up in his eyes. Was it a bittersweet memory?

No. He’d been crying when he presented the boat to his father that day.

“We can fix it,” his father said. “Hand me those nails over there, would you?”

Mousey’s eyes snapped open. “He fixed the boat!”

He glanced back at the holes broken in his hull. New boards appeared to cover those holes, and hammers materialized, and nailed the boards in place.

The mast snapped in two and toppled into the water with the flaming sail.

Mousey gave the helm another sharp tug, steering his boat away from waves that would have surely pulled him under.

Then again, just as he approached the corner.

The boat followed the flow of the rushing stream, turning sideways as its rudder scratched the steel walls.

Then he was right-side up again.

His knuckles were white, his every breath labored, and his fur soaked. The water gave him a chill like the wintery hand of death holding him between its bony fingers.

But ahead he could see light.

He smiled as the rushing water spilled him out into the daylight again.

And then he fell.

The ground was far below him, and his boat plummeted, sure to crash into pieces on the rocks below.

“Mr. Lapin’s schematics!” Sopher said. “Do you remember?”

Mousey held fast to the helm, even as his body lifted off the plummeting boat. He closed his eyes and thought back to the schematics on the rabbit’s wall. There were the wings his father had stolen. No, that was no good. Surely those wings would simply tear apart in the wind. What else had he seen on Mr. Lapin’s wall?

Eureka!

He thought back to all the formulas, calculations, and equations he’d read. The measurements, and the overall shape of the thing. His body flopped on the deck, paws released the helm, and he opened his eyes again. Great wings extended from the starboard and port sides of the boat, with a wooden frame holding the cloth sails in place.

The boat, now turned into Mr. Lapin’s airship, caught air, and glided down towards the ground.

When Mousey looked where the helm had been before, there was now a set of levers and controls, with a captain’s seat swiveling just in front of them. Mousey leapt into the captain’s seat and spun around to grasp the controls. He pulled back on two levers, and the wings shifted.

The air ship soared into the air, climbing higher and higher as it went. Wind rushed through Mousey’s whiskers, and the water that had gathered in pools on the deck dried out.

“Ha ha!” Mousey danced in his chair. “We did it, Sopher! Oh, Heavens! I can’t wait to show Mr. Lapin!”

...........................

But Mousey’s celebration was short-lived.

He recalled, once more, both the quest that lay before him and the mistake he’d made. From this height, he beheld the grasslands out west, where lived the serpent whose fang he would need to steal if he was to save Button. To the south he could barely make out Fluffle, where he’d abandoned his family without a single word about where he was going.

“Sopher… I don’t know what to do…”

Her spirit appeared before him on the airship, and she sat upon the bow with legs crossed. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry about?”

Sopher exhaled long and hard. “When you decided to run off to find Zoi and save Button, I thought we should tell your mother where you were going, but I kept my thoughts to myself.”

Mousey shook his head. “Don’t take the blame for this… I should have known better. How many times did Mom scold me for not telling her before I went out to play somewhere? This time I went out to do something truly dangerous, with treacherous beasts out searching for me, and I didn’t tell her.”

Sopher rested her chin on one paw. “Well, now we have to decide what to do from here. We can go to your mother now, tell her what we’re doing, then leave again. Or we can hurry to the west, get one of Nakash’s fangs, then rush back, heal Button, and reunite the whole family.”

Mousey scratched his chin, then promptly placed his paw back on the airship’s controls. He kept the vessel flying in as small a circle as he could. “Well… if I tell Mom what I’m doing she’ll probably want to come with me. Nakash sounds dangerous…”

“But so are the beasts out looking for your mother,” said Sopher.

“True… but now she has Sir Ranae and Mr. Lapin protecting her,” said Mousey. “Besides, I think Nycht will probably tell his superiors I’m not with my family anymore, and they’ll search elsewhere for me.”

Sopher nodded. “But that also means that once you do reunite with your family they’ll be in danger again…”

“Right…” Mousey groaned and rolled his head back. “Agh! Is there nothing I can do to get Queen Felicia to call off her armies? I just want to live in peace!”

“Well, she feels threatened,” said Sopher. “That’s why her beasts pursue you. She feels you could cause trouble in her realm.”

“How do I get her to stop feeling threatened?” Mousey asked.

“I don’t think you can,” said Sopher. “Maybe… maybe the best you can do is make her afraid you might actually overthrow her.”

“How would I do that? Ah… never mind. One thing at a time. First… off to the west. I’ll retrieve Nakash’s fang and save Button. It’s the only way I can make all this right again.”