-Chapter Twelve-

They stumbled free of the rubble, emerging into sunlight that showed them a dense forest to their right, and an unobstructed field to their left that ended at the cliff overlooking the bay. Instinctually, Karlene shied towards the forest, where there was cover. A hand on her arm brought her up short, and Axion dragged her the other direction, his hands still bound awkwardly.

“Diom will see!” She shouted. She could hardly hear herself, so she had no idea how loud she actually was. She gestured wildly up at the fort. Diom’s room had been facing over the cliff towards the bay, where they were now running to. She had a terrifying vision of the winged behemoth sweeping down to pluck her from gravity’s grasp. Or worse, see them running and just make that horrible gesture, that casual twisting of fingers.

Axion was pointing as he ran, grinning widely. Her gaze followed his finger and her attention was caught by a flash of brilliant red...something rising up from over the edge of the cliff. It rose higher, and the more of it that became visible, the more Karlene’s incredulity grew.

“You have got to be kidding,” she gasped.

It was a dirigible. Or at least something like one. The giant, elongated balloon part kept her from being able to call it anything else. Images of the Hindenburg and other bad ideas with helium and fire rose to the front of her mind as the deck of the thing, suspended beneath the bulbous red balloon, came into view and she saw figures scurrying about. One in particular, swathed in black and red, was waving wildly to them. The figure had wings.

“Faster!” She heard Axion shout, his voice muffled but discernible. She shook herself free of his grip, and picked up her pace. More winged people or no, if that floating death bag would take her away from this place and Diom, she’d ride it all the way to hell.

Something -not sound, she still could barely hear- made her look back. A winged figure stood atop a rampart, and although she could make out no details, she knew every line of him was contorted with cold rage. Below, smaller figures scurried out from the fort, chasing after them. Unless Diom took flight -and why hadn’t he?- they wouldn’t catch up before they were aboard the dirigible.

A ramp was extended from the hull of the ship. It clattered against the ground just a few feet ahead of where the ground sheared away. As they neared it Axion reached out a hand to her and pushed her ahead of him, making her stumble. She caught herself and sprinted across the ramp, looking fixedly ahead and not at the long falls that were bare inches to either side of her. She felt the boards vibrate beneath her feet, could almost hear the clamor of Axion’s boots at her heels.

Then they were aboard and the ramp was being drawn back, someone hollered a shout loud enough for even her to hear, and the ship’s deck surged beneath them as the balloon abruptly hauled them all higher and higher.

Karlene moved to rise, but a heavy arm over her shoulders kept her down. A moment later she realized the why as there was a shower arrows hitting the hull and arching over the railings to drive into the deck. One arrow hit, quivering, a mere handspan from her face. More arrows flew, and she had a only a moment for a horrible idea, a dread, to occur to before the inaudible sound of fabric tearing was followed by an almost innocuous hiss, and then-

“Brace yourselves!” A voice boomed out, loud enough to make her skull vibrate. Beside her, Axion’s arm shot out to grasp a metal loop that was bolted to the deck. She reached out and grabbed it, too, at the same time the vessel plunged a sudden, gut-wrenching dozen feet, then stopped before dropping another ten, pause, then a dozen more.

The ship had begun to spin, it’s starboard side tilting precariously, and every time they sunk abruptly in the sky Karlene’s lower extremities experienced a moment of weightlessness before slapping the back down hard enough to bruise.

Hard shocks began to shiver up the deck, rhythmic and precise. A great gust swept over the vessel, and a rushing, whistling hum filled the air. The start-and-stop falling ceased.

Hands pulled at her, and she jerked away in startlement. She looked up at Axion as he held out calming hands, his hair teased into something truly frightening by the wind.

The wind.

They were moving.

Horizontally, not vertically. They’d stopped falling.

She looked around as she stood, willing her limbs to stop shaking. She looked out over the railing; the fort-topped cliff was far behind, while the ocean horizon was before them in a great long slash of blue-meeting-deeper-blue.

She saved looking up for last, knowing she wasn’t going to understand what she would see and finding herself decidedly not eager to be even more confused than she’d been.

Pleasant surprise flickered through her, however, when she realized she did recognize what was going on over her head. Sort of.

Propellers. A giant pair of propellers, spinning happily away where the balloon had been. Her best guess, a vague best guess, was that the propeller blades had been inside the dirigible balloon. When it had been punctured by arrows and deflated -and where was the red fabric?- the propeller blades had been deployed. She remembered the rhythmic, almost mechanical thumping that had shaken the deck as they’d begun to fall.

She turned, noting Axion was speaking to the winged man in the red coat who’d waved them aboard, and went to the railing. She looked over, and nodded to herself when she saw great curved arms extended from the hull, each bearing downward facing propellers of their own. Stabilizers, she thought.

She leaned on the railing and let her head fall into her hands. Her moment of relief at seeing something that made sense -more sense, at least- was quickly being doused in a deluge of common logic. The propellers were not big enough to lift a vessel of this mass. If it were made of aluminum, or carbon fiber, then maybe. Maybe. But solid wood? No. And what was powering them? She heard no roar of engines, and any engine big enough to rotate those things would have made the laughing conversation going on behind her impossible to hear, especially with her busted ears.

Karlene turned, rested her back against the wooden railing, and slid down it. Adrenaline was all well and good, but the crash it guaranteed would beat the worst sugar high every time. Her face returned to her hands, fingers working at the bridge of her nose, her temples, sliding into her hair to interlace at the back of her neck.

Her ears were ringing, blood and other fluids leaking from them still. The initial explosion in the kitchens had given her one hell of a bruise across her back, and somewhere along the way something had given her a long slice across her left bicep that was just now making its presence known with pulsing, stinging throbs timed to match her heartbeat. Dully, she thought of infections and scars and other potential problems that would go unseen and untreated without MRI machines and real doctors.

The thoughts flitted across the surface of her mind, unable to find purchase in the worn-down landscape of her overtaxed brain. She hadn’t forgotten, as much as she’d wanted to, Sid’s revelations. These people were just as likely to use her as a walking portal battery as the last group. At least Sid and the others had known who she was and where she was from.

Had she jumped from one fire into another? She’d escaped Diom, but who was to say this other winged man in red couldn’t also do that horrible thing, that Unmaking?

Karlene lifted her head, letting her hands fall down to hang between her upraised knees and looked around.

Surprisingly, no one seemed to be paying her any mind. Had she not been too exhausted for anything other than analytical survivor’s logic, she might have been offended. As it was, she was glad she was able to watch as Axion and the red-coated man were brought folding chairs and a folding table. Another person followed with a loaded tray. They both waited while the crewmembers that had brought the portable furniture set up their little tea party, hardly paying them any mind even when they sat and accepted mugs of something steaming.

She was surprised when Axion looked up, spotted her with a casual glance, and gestured. At once, one of the crew filled another mug and brought it to her.

“Thanks,” she said. The crewman raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing.

Karlene kept watching the two seated men, distracted enough that she almost took a sip. She paused. The last time she’d been given something hot to drink after an ordeal, it had ended with her being a brainless slave. No thanks. She set down the mug beside her, regretting the loss of the warmth and hydration.

Axion was making grand, melodramatic gestures, and laughing the exuberant laughter of the adrenaline-filled and newly rescued. She didn’t know him well enough to say for sure if it looked forced or not. The other man was much more subdued, though he smiled widely enough that Karlene had no doubts he was glad to have Axion back.

Whatever her misgivings might be about her own immediate future, it was clear Axion was well and truly rescued.

She eyed the wings that spread themselves casually out behind Mr. Red Coat, flexing and retracting in much the same way someone might stretch out a limb in the sun. The light played off the feathers, and Karlene noticed they were different from Diom’s. Where his had been a soft ivory, these were almost harsh in their whiteness, with a blue glow to the faint shadows cast by each feather. Where the sunlight hit them straight on, Karlene had to blink to dispel the rainbow sheen that appeared.

He was blonde, of course, like Diom. The blue eyes didn’t help the comparison, either, nor the sparkle of white teeth that flashed when he grinned. Wonder where his harp’s hidden, she thought.

Something in Axion’s tone and posture changed as she watched the reunited friends. Her busted ears kept her from being able to make out exactly what they were saying, but if she focused she could pick up inflections. Axion’s voice had gone from jovial, almost nonchalant at times, to… Well, something that let her guess what part of the retelling he’d gotten to. His eyes were down, no longer looking directly at Redcoat. He also, with a sudden deliberateness that she could feel, did not look at her.

Karlene’s breath stuck in her throat, and she shivered. She wouldn’t want to talk about the Unmaking, either.

Redcoat reached out, and with a deliberateness that told her he didn’t touch others often, laid a hand on Axion’s shoulder. Axion’s reaction was instant, and nearly unnoticeable to anyone not watching as closely as she was. He stiffened, and at once his entire awareness seemed, to Karlene, to be focused on that hand. A reaction to being touched during a bad memory? She’d thought Axion more self contained than that. Then again, she wasn’t eager to be manhandled again, either.

Abruptly, Redcoat looked at her, and quite plainly asked Axion to explain her presence. Axion motioned to her, a clear summons.

She wanted to be annoyed at the imperiousness of the gesture, but whatever else may come, he had gotten her away from Diom. She figured she owed him this much.

As she approached, Axion resumed speaking to Redcoat, clearly introducing her. She caught her name through the underwater muffle, and a few other words that told her he was telling Redcoat how they’d met.

She did not, she realized, catch anything about keyholes, gates, Als’casomething, or other worlds, though she couldn’t be sure. She glanced to Redcoat, trying to see something, anything, on his face that might clue her in better. He was looking at her, rather than Axion. No, not at her, at the trickles of blood that had dried in dark, flaking rivulets down the sides of her face and neck. He raised a hand and gestured, calling out something. A name, she thought. He said something to Axion then, who blinked suddenly and also fixated on the red trails.

“Can you hear me?” He asked her, and though he had spoken louder than he had been she still half had to read his lips and infer from context.

“Barely,” she confessed, and her voice sounded like it had been filtered through soggy cotton to her own ears.

A man emerged from the hatch that Redcoat had gestured to earlier. He was wingless, thankfully, and wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched precariously at the end of his nose. A wealth of blue-and-pink hair was swept back in a sleek tail, and with his form being pale and tall he looked so much like a walking paper stick of cotton candy that she gave a half snort, half laugh at the sight of him. She managed to turn it into a coughing fit at the last moment, and Axion reached up to pat her on the back awkwardly. She gave him a look, and he dropped the arm with a shrug.

The man came towards her, and she noted a leather satchel in his hand. At once, she thought of the night she’d been taken, of Sid with his leather bundle, with that slender knife. She backed away, unable to hide her sudden panic. Axion reached out again and grabbed her by her left forearm, standing as he did so. He was talking, his words quick and low, too low for her to hear.

“Stay away!” She said. “No more!”

Redcoat was standing, looking at her oddly, looking at Axion’s hands now holding both her arms, keeping her from backing away further. He barked a question, and Axion shot a distracted response over his shoulder. She caught ‘explain later.’ Or something close. Cotton-candy man had set his satchel on the folding table and removed a tool that glinted in the light. She stopped struggling, and blinked at it.

A tuning fork? The last time she’d seen one of those had been an elementary school science experiment. She raised one hand to touch an ear. All right, she thought. No knife. No etchings on the deck. If Cotton-candy man wants to try to fix my ears, I can work with that. She stopped pulling away, took a breath, and nodded. She’d be embarrassed about her panic attack later. Or not- she rather thought her reaction had been justified.

Tuning fork in hand, the man approached. She saw it wasn’t quite a true tuning fork; while it did have the two prerequisite metal prongs, there was also a contraption on the handle that looked like something out of a Jules Verne acid trip. Tubes of glowing liquid jutted out from a brass box with dials and numbered wheels, and as he came closer the man turned a few of the dials before nodding to himself.

The man looked to Karlene, and held out the tool on the flat palm of one hand, his other hand held out, also flat, palm towards her. Waiting for something?

Her permission, she realized. She looked up into the tall man’s gently smiling face, into eyes that looked just wild enough to make that stupid cotton-candy colored hair work for him.

She’d been kidnapped, manhandled, tortured, starved, used against her will for arcane things, and this man with his ridiculous hair was asking her permission to help?

She could have kissed him.

Instead, she just nodded. Smiling, the man raised the thing to the side of her face, and gently tapped her temple with it. As she expected, the prongs began to blur, and a high pitched whine that she thought only she could hear began to bore into her ear canal. It wasn’t quite painful, not yet, but it certainly was uncomfortable. She fought to keep from flinching away. She felt five years old again, trying to earn the promised reward of icecream if she behaved for the doctor.

There was a pop, the sensation of pressure being released, and a sudden sharp pain that made her gasp.

Then, she could hear. Out of that one ear, at least. The muffled sounds of the deck sharpened into sounds she could understand once more. Cotton-candy man went to her other ear, and this time she was prepared for the pain. She worked her jaw when he was done, eliciting a few more pops.

“Better, I trust?” Axion had released her arms and stepped back.

“Yeah,” she said, rubbing at one ear gingerly. It was sore, but now she could hear fine. She knew enough about anatomy to know that she had no idea how her ears had been fixed by a madman’s tool, knew that a tuning fork shouldn’t have fixed busted eardrums. All she knew is that she could hear again.

Right then and there, she resolved to stop questioning the whys and hows of this world’s ability to turn her -admittedly infantile- understanding of science and physics on its head. All she would do was drive herself insane.

“Thanks,” she said to Cotton-candy, and immediately felt awkward when he beamed at her. She looked at Redcoat, and took a deep breath. It wasn’t his fault he looked so much like Diom, and he was clearly in charge of the ship that had come to her rescue. So, she pushed herself to step forward and extended a hand.

“I’m Karlene. Thanks for the rescue.”

Beside her, Axion snickered as Redcoat raised an eyebrow and frowned at her hand. He made no move to take it. Her hand hung, suspended in the air by her tired arm. She let it drop.

Not quite willing to give into the awkwardness, she pressed, “And...you are?”

Axion began laughing. Without thinking, she gave into the spike of annoyance she felt and turned towards him to give his shoulder a rough shove. If it was an overly-familiar thing she normally would not have done to a near stranger, well, she was of the opinion that witnessing each other’s insanity-driven suicide attempts counted towards at least six months of acquaintance.

Axion choked out what sounded like an apology, though she couldn’t be sure who it was directed at. He straightened and collected himself as she turned back to Redcoat.

“You may call me Leontis, for the duration of our voyage at least,” he said. He was grinning, too. There was something she wasn’t getting, and she abruptly didn’t care what it was. She rubbed her face with her hands.

“Nice to meet you,” she said with a tired sigh. “And really. Thank you.” She made herself mean it. Not that she didn’t, exactly. It was more like she was out of energy, out of emotion, and he deserved more than that. She remembered Diom, and Milly, and she shuddered. A lot more.

Leontis nodded absently as he flicked out a wingtip to discourage a large flying insect from landing on the pristine white feathers.

“You were a…” he paused, seeming to rethink his words. Then he shrugged again and continued. “Your rescue was not the goal, so your thanks is unnecessary.” He looked past her, at Axion. “You will take my cabin,” he said to his friend. “The girl should stay with you. The crew will just see an unclaimed Dropling, not your…” he seemed to struggle for the right word and it struck Karlene that this golden boy was not nearly as smooth as he wanted to be, and knew it.

“His what?” Karlene’s hands went to her hips. Leontis looked at her, actually looked at her, for the first time since she’d come aboard. His gaze bore into her, and for a moment she wondered if this man and Diom were related afterall. A shiver of fear climbed up her spine, and she took an involuntary step back. A hand placed between her shoulder blades kept her from taking a second step.

“She is a friend,” Axion said firmly. He gave her a push, enough to move her forward. He kept pushing her past Leontis, towards the hatch. “My thanks, Leo. For your cabin, and for thinking of my friend. I would not have thought of...that.”

“I know,” Leontis said, raising his arms to stretch upwards casually.

“Arrogant,” Axion snorted, still walking away. He’d spoken loudly, plainly, and with heaps of affection.

“Disrespectful,” came the reply, the tone and volume and sentiment mirrored.

Axion snorted. “Foolhardy.”

“Vain.”

“Monosyllabic.”

“Good night, Squire.”

Axion let loose laugh as he opened the hatch and ushered her through. She took this to mean he’d won their little exchange. Had it not been for everything else, she might have been amused. Instead, all she managed was a twinge of loneliness.

Axion led her down a set of narrow steps to a lower level, where a long corridor ended at another wooden hatch, this one engraved with a scene of birds in flight, their plumages stained different shades of wood tones. It was the least gaudy decoration she’d seen since arriving. Axion pushed it open, and she followed him in, letting a finger trail over a thrush’s flared wingspan. The carving was so intricate, she almost thought she felt feathers.

Inside, the cabin was more in tune with what she’d come to expect. A ruby carpet was laid over a deck that had been painted indigo blue. The hull retained its wooden color, but nearly every splinter of it was covered with tapestries. The bird theme continued, with most of them depicting flocks of swans on sapphire pools, bluejays against a sunset pink sky, other birds she didn’t recognize set into equally colorful scenes. Each one would have been beautiful if not for the violent clash of colors surrounding them.

The bed was the worst; silk sheets and bedspread, both dyed gold and sewn with red, green, and blue embroidery. It was a work of art in and of itself, but the orange velvet pillows destroyed the grand effect. She was actually glad when Axion’s movements made it obvious he intended to sleep in it; he swept the bedspread and one of the plainer pillows off the bed and onto the floor.

Karlene stared at the pile of gold silk, blinking. Something small and childish in the back of her mind hooted with laughter, recalling every hour of her misspent youth buried in fairy tale books where, in this scenario, the handsome stranger would have either insisted she take the bed, whilst innocently striping down to snug breeches, or even better- have insisted she share the bed with him, some oh so convenient quirk making it logical, or even necessary.

Oh, she wanted to laugh.

“Do not leave this cabin without me,” was all her companion said before falling into the bed face first, still fully dressed. By the sound of his breathing, he was asleep within moments. The sudden, still silence of the room became permeating. Axion’s soft breaths were not enough to break its hold, and Karlene found herself swaying with exhaustion despite having woken up mere hours ago.

She wasn’t sure why she was still standing by the door, staring at the makings of a bed far better than anything else she’d slept on since arriving, even better than the itchy straw-tick bed from that morning. She let loose a groan and forced herself to pick up one foot, then the other, and shuffled towards the pile of silk and down and cotton. She collapsed into it, aiming her head towards the pillow, and sighed when the softness enveloped her. A scent, something between lavender and camomile, wafted around and into her. She had enough time to contemplate trying to work one flap of the tangled bedspread around her, but before she could actually move to do it, she was asleep.