-Chapter Thirteen-

Karlene woke only a few hours later. She’d only been awake for half the day before her escape, after all. Wakefulness aside, she had no desire to leave the nest of pillows and down-stuffed blankets; a second one had been draped over her at some point. Soft sunlight made its way into the room through the milky panes of the round portholes. One was even open slightly, allowing a breeze to whistle its way in. She could make out the passing of clouds through the gap, the striking blue sky behind them. She didn’t smell the sea, anymore. They must be over land.

Over land, she thought again to herself, and raised a hand to rub at her face. Sleep had not helped her grasp of her new reality, but she was beginning to think nothing but time would. Although, if she had her way, she’d be on her way home before enough time had elapsed for that to be a possibility.

Realizing she had nowhere to go, really, she let herself settle further into her makeshift bed, and examine the room. It was just as garishly colored as she remembered, every hard surface covered in something plush, or silken, or painted. A desk was bolted to the floor across from her, even it’s glistening mahogany marred with layers and layers of bright, swirling paint. The bed was empty, but she’d noticed that first thing upon waking. The remaining bedding was rumpled, the pillows exiled to the floor. Apparently, Axion was a violent sleeper.

Eventually, comfort turned to stiffness, and Karlene stumbled from the nest and stretched. She forcefully did not let herself contemplate how long it had been since she’d bathed, or changed her clothes, or attended to any other hygienic details. Milly and the drudges had looked as if they’d bathed once a year, and were used to it. The same with Sid and the others once they’d all returned home. Among them, it had been easier to ignore her own wretchedness, but now… She resisted the urge to lift her arm and sniff.

The ship had to have a bathroom of some sort. A head, she thought it would be called. She needed such a commodity for other reasons, despite having eaten and drunk little, but mainly she wanted to see if she could at least wash her hands and face.

Despite the obviously grand nature of the cabin she was in, she saw only the one door she’d entered through, so she’d have to venture out to find what she needed. The challenge she’d set herself turned out to not be much of one. Once outside, the very first door she poked her head through revealed the wet dream of at least one bathroom designer somewhere. Pale gold tiles covered the floor and went halfway up the walls, prevented the wood from absorbing damp and mold and ick. A structure of...ceramic? Fired clay? and brass was recognizable as a toilet. There was even a sink, though no mirror. A pull cord dangling from above flushed both the toilet and drained the sink, using finite measurements of water. The ship had to have a limited supply of fresh water, she assumed.

Then again, a mad man with a box of dials strapped to a fork had fixed her ears, so who knew if they had some sort of magic water filtration?

She did what she could with just water and privacy, wishing desperately for a proper shower, or at least toothpaste -not even the brush! just the paste!- before venturing back out again.

Lacking information, she set out to find Axion. The sooner they came to an understanding of what was going to happen, the sooner she could be on her way home. If these people jumped to alternate worlds all the time, it couldn’t be difficult to find hers. Sid and his goons had found it, after all. Multiple times, if intuition served her. Wouldn’t there be some sort of Alternate Dimension Rolodex?

There were only four doors in the hall. Two were the master cabin and the water room, one was storage of some sort, and the fourth exposed another set of steps. She followed them down, and found another hall, this one extending what had to be the length of the ship. At the far end, there was no door, just a widening of the hall into a brightly lit dining room of some sort. She spied the ends of long tables and benches, enclosed lamps swinging gently overhead. She could hear the murmur of casual conversations, and spotted the shoulders of the speakers, just barely visible. They were short, bulky men wearing rough clothes with suspenders, their trousers rolled up to the knees and secured with narrow ropes. Their feet were bare. She didn’t think Axion was among them.

She turned and went the other way down the hall, stopping at the very end. She’d start here, and work her way down. She reached for the ornate brass door handle, and pushed the door open.

Warm light greeted her, a steady illumination that at a glance had no obvious source. It was as if there were no walls, no ceiling, and sunlight was allowed to come in from all directions. Yet, there were definitely walls -though they were hardly visible behind the endless shelves and cabinets- and a ceiling. Bulkheads and overhead, she reminded herself faintly.

She stepped into the cabin, her hand leaving the door handle. The door -hatch- swung gently open, stirring the air. As it did so, she saw fine particles in the air shift and swirl, like motes dancing in a sunbeam. Except, she realized with a start, it was these particles that were giving off the light.

Glowing dust motes.

They were where the light was coming from. The air itself, for all intents and purposes.

The light began to fade almost imperceptibly at first, but quicker as more of the motes floated out of the room through the open door.

“Ah, yes, that’s one of the parameters I am still working on.” The voice was unfamiliar, since he hadn’t spoken the last time she’d seen him, but somehow Karlene wasn’t surprised when she turned and saw cotton-candy man. Except his hair wasn’t dual tone anymore, but a shocking shade of virulent orange. He grinned, sheepishly, even as he motioned urgently at the door.

“You’re letting the light out, dear.”

“Oh, sorry.” She shut the door, and the light stopped dimming. She looked back at him, her surprise under control. She gestured to his head. “Nice change, though I think I preferred the pastels.”

The man beamed at her. “Truly? It’s one of my pet projects, you know, hair that changes color on its own. Imagine! So much time and effort is spent to keep one’s hair current. Wouldn’t it be nice for the average folk to be able to do it on their own? With just hardly a thought for it!” He reached up and pulled a random strand down where he could see it, making himself cross eyed in the process. “The color is the issue, of course. Two at once is considered the minimum, but jewel tones is the current fashion. I can get the dual colors, of course, but they’re never bright enough. Now, if I stick to one color, vibrancy is no issue, as you can see, but it’s still just one color and…” His eyes uncrossed and he looked past the strand of carrot orange in his fingers to blink at her.

“How are your ears?” He asked abruptly. She reached up a hand to rub at one.

“Fine, thanks,” she said. They really were. Not even sore anymore. He beamed at her again.

“Marvelous! That was another project of mine, of course. Just a prototype, but glad to see it worked. Might I quiz you on it? Perhaps run a few tests?”

“Uh…”

“Wonderful! Just over here…” He trailed off as he moved away, weaving between tables that were bolted in place and laden with what looked like a mad scientist’s lab, all wrought in glass, and crystal, and all sorts of things that she was pretty sure were a bad idea to have on a ship. Granted, they all looked secured in some way, all the shelves on the walls had lips on them to keep things from sliding off, and all the cabinets had latches. Still…

Something about her observations niggled at her. When she followed him to the back of the room and spotted a forlorn looking chaise lounge beside a small end table, it clicked together.

“Are you...a doctor, of some kind?”

“Of some kind, most definitely,” he agreed, gesturing to the lounge as he sat in a plush armchair next to it. He’d grabbed a notebook along the way, along with a pen. She half expected to see quill feathers and a bottle of ink. He grinned at her when she sat.

“Call me Dox.”

She smiled back, a genuine smile. “Karlene.”

“Karlene? Hm, don’t like that.”

She blinked at him, jaw dropping open a smidge. She made a sound halfway between a cough and a laugh, not sure how to respond. “I’m...sorry?”

He flapped a hand at her, sending his pen flying. He didn’t seem to notice. “Not your fault, not your fault. You were hardly there for the choosing. Aira, I think, would have been better. My daughter’s name, you know.” He had begun patting his long, stained jacket with its many pockets stuffed full of anonymous things. “I know I just had a pen…”

Karlene leaned down to where the pen had come to a stop by her foot. She handed it to him, deciding not to comment on her impending re-naming. It was a pretty enough name, but aside from liking her own just fine, his words about it belong to his daughter, past tense, made her bite her tongue.

“Ah, thank you, Aira.” He winked at her, and she wasn’t sure if maybe he actually now thought that was her name or if he was teasing. She gave a hesitant smile in return.

“Now then,” he went on, crossing one leg over the other and propping his notepad on one knee. “How did you injure your ears in the first place?”

“An exploding stone wall right next to me,” she answered. He nodded and scribbled something in his book.

She got an idea.

“My turn,” she said. “How do you keep track of the different worlds that, ah, the keyholes and gates go to?”

Dox blinked at her, likely trying to recall when he’d agreed to a give-and-take arrangement. She hoped his scatterbrained mannerisms meant he’d either think he’d merely forgotten and just go with it, or not care, and just go with it. One or the other must have been the case, because he didn’t try to deflect.

“Average travelers don’t,” he said. “The Library of Realms does. Now, how close was that explosion, exactly?”

“About as far from me as you are now. Where is the Library of Realms? Can anyone get inside?”

“Dear me, are libraries private where you’re from? Terrible. Yes, anyone may enter, anyone may request travel charters. Were your ears your only injury?”

“No, I’ve got some pretty spectacular bruising. Want to see? You didn’t answer my other question.”

“One answer for one question, I think that’s fair. And yes, I’d like to see. I have a balm here somewhere…” He stood, put down his book, and began rummaging in a drawer nearby. “The Library of Realms is where all the grand Libraries are, in Cloudhold.”

“And Cloudhold is where?”

“At Enoi’s imperial capital, of course.” Despite his ‘of course,’ Dox didn’t seem to find her questions odd, and he didn’t ask why she didn’t seem to know things that warranted an ‘of course.’ So, she ventured further.

“Why do you need Dropling blood to access these, ah, keyholes?”

Dox made a triumphant noise as he pulled a small crystal container the size of his palm from the millionth drawer he’d rifled through.

“That’s an extra question, again.”

“Sorry,” she said. She actually thought she snuck a third in there. “What was your last question?”

“Have you ever injured your ears before?”

“Does swimmers ear count? No, not really.”

“Ah, that explains it…” He handed her the crystal bottle and picked up his book, scribbling in it while he sat back down. “What is swimmers ear? And Dropling blood is needed because Enochian blood is too precious to waste for the travel of others, so some thousand years or so ago some brilliant bloke came up with the idea of using their bastards instead.”

“Swimmers ear is… Wait. Bastards?”

“Yes, bastards. Half-blooded offspring of the Enochians. Was it your mother or your father who gave you your Enochian half?”

“I…. Neither.” Karlene’s head swam.

Dox scoffed. “Well that’s hardly possible.”

“I…”

“No matter, many Droplings don’t know their parentage. You were explaining this ‘swimmers ear?’”

Karlene tucked away her knew info for later examination. If she let herself get too bogged down by what Dox’s words might mean, she’d be unable to focus enough to learn anything else useful.

They talked as much about everything as they did anything. Karlene found herself laughing, though half the time Dox had no idea what had her in stitches. Which, of course, made it all the more amusing and set her off again.

She found out that the similarities between his name, ‘Dox,’ and ‘Doc’ was coincidence and not a reference to his profession. It was actually his name, or at least an abbreviation; he’d waved away requests for the full version.

“It’s a horrible name,” he told her. “Not right at all. I’ll never understand it, the habit of naming things before you’ve even seen or interacted with it. Better to meet the child first, then name it.”

The light began fading again, soon after they’d begun talking, though Dox didn’t notice until he stood to fetch something related to their conversation and nearly tripped.

“Ah, the luminator needs refilling…”

“The luminator? That the thing putting light into the air?” She asked, smiling. He’d told her about too many of his projects during their conversation for her to ever remember them all, even if she’d understood what he’d said they were supposed to do.

“Of course, of course. Imagine! Not needing to meddle with bulbs or gas or oil or wax or…” His voice became too muffled to understand as he buried his head in the depths of a cabinet, emerging a moment later with a glowing canister. He brought it to one of the many contraptions strapped to one of the tables, a mound of brass tubes and ornate dials. He pressed a button somewhere, and with a click and hiss another canister, this one dark, was ejected. Dox removed it and replaced it with the glowing one. A moment later, a geyser of faintly glowing particles was puffed up into the air. It kept puffing until the room was filled with a steady, warm glow once again.

“Much better,” he said, beaming at the thing. Then his face fell. “Still need to figure out how to keep the particles from leaving the room every time a door or window is opened… Hmm… I wonder…”

It was as if she’d been forgotten, or had never even entered the room. Amused rather than offended, she watched him putter around the ‘luminator’ with no less than three tools in his hands at any given point. He never once looked in her direction. Some, she knew, would classify this man as insane and recommend daily doses of a pharmacy’s worth of pills. To her, he was harmless and sweet. And clearly a genius, even if half the things he’d told her about didn’t yet exist or work right, foreign physics notwithstanding.

A rumble from her stomach made it impossible to continue denying that she hadn’t eaten since… She couldn’t remember, actually. She couldn’t recall if she’d actually eaten any of the moldy bread Sid had brought the morning after Diom’s interrogations. How long ago had that been? Only this morning?

Karlene left Dox to his tinkering, being careful to slip out of the room as quickly as she could, letting as few as possible of the luminator particles out. There was still a slight puff of golden light that managed to escape, swirling around her feet as she pulled the door shut. They danced in the invisible gusts of air before settling on the floor. It looked like someone had tossed a handful of golden glitter at her feet.

If nothing else, she thought, she had to admit there were many strange things about this world that were undeniably beautiful.

She glanced up right as a pair of sailors, not the same one’s she’d seen earlier, made their way down the stairs, never looking back her direction as they headed to the other end of the corridor. They greeted someone inside, loudly, patting their bellies. The scent of something cooking hit her, then, and she found herself following them.

It was the largest space she’d seen on the ship by far, easily three times the size of Dox’s lab. Long trestle tables occupied most of it, with barely enough space between the benches to sidle your way down the length of the tables. The end of the room nearest the entryway -it had no true door, or hatch- was occupied by a long, low bar crowded with stools. Behind it, visible through a large hatch, was a small kitchen. A galley, she corrected herself. The wooden bulkheads to either side of the hatchway leading to the galley were filled with shelves and cabinets like in Dox’s lab, though these were filled with bottles of varying sizes rather than books and tools. Most of them were without labels, but she knew the sight of whiskey and gin when she saw it.

Her stomach twisted, and she thought that if she hadn’t been so nauseatingly hungry, she might have gone right for one of those bottles. God knew, if she’d ever needed a drink, it was now.

Laid out on the bar was a basket of hard-looking bread rolls, stacks of empty mugs, wooden bowls, and a tray of tin spoons. When she approached, she saw a large hole was cut into the surface of the bar, covered by a lid. She lifted it, and just like at a buffet there was a cauldron of stew set into the hole, it’s rim level with the bar. Without hesitating she grabbed a bowl and filled it. A fingernail tapped against one of the rolls confirmed it would need a few hours soaking in acid to soften it, so she passed them up.

She found herself a seat in the far corner, ignoring how the sailors had been eyeing her since she’d walked in. The stew smelled too good to pay attention to much else. Meat and potatoes in a thick gravy, bits of carrot and peas and onions bringing color to the otherwise monotone meal. It could have been grey gruel for all she cared; she was starving, and it was delicious. Or maybe it was delicious because she was starving? Either way, she polished off every bite and was seriously considered helping herself to seconds when a shadow stretched over where she was sitting. She looked up at one of the sailors she’d followed, and suddenly the stew was not settling so well.

The man was large, clearly due to heavy labor rather than heavy eating. He had three gold hoops in one ear, and two in the other. He eyed her curiously, and openly, with absolutely no indication that what he was doing was rude or, more notably, downright creepy. He worked one hand over a few days’ worth of stubble, scratching at the underside of his chin while he examined every inch of her, particularly any skin that was visible.

“Huh,” he said eventually. “You musta pissed someone off real bad, dropling, for them to take back their mark.” He shrugged, then reached for her. “Oh well. No matter to me ‘cept that it’s my gain.” He winked at her, as if they were in on a joke together, and grabbed at her arm and pulled her out of her seat. Too stunned to pull away, heart pounding, Karlene was dragged along down the length of the table to where the other two sailors were sitting. Without ceremony or introduction, her sailor sat back down and pulled her roughly onto his lap. He resumed his conversation with the other two while reaching for his spoon with one hand and occupying the other with finding the hem of her shirt and-

Finally jolted out of her stupor, she leaped free as if scalded. She backed away, breathing hard, knowing she absolutely did not want the explanation she’d been working her way up to demanding before that beefy paw had begun wandering.

The three sailors stared at her, one of them amused, the other two -including Mr. Wanderpaw- looked perplexed. She didn’t know or care why they seemed confused by her refusal to be felt up by a stranger, she just kept backing away. Until she hit something. Something hard, and warm. Startled, she sucked in a sharp breath of surprise as she whirled around at the same time something grabbed at her arm. She made to swing, feeling panic build, but her fist was caught in a hand made of iron.

“Sir!” The scrapping of wood on wood told her that, behind her, the sailors were standing. It was Axion holding her fist in one hand, her opposite upper arm in his other. He looked past her, at the sailors, and gave a perfunctory nod before hauling her out of the mess, not speaking a word the entire time she was dragged back to the wrecked-picasso cabin they’d slept in.

He pushed her inside and shut the hatch behind them.

“I think, and I could be mistaken, but I do think I told you not to leave this room without me.” He didn’t seem angry, she noted, just perplexed. Like the men downstairs. She tossed up her hands.

“I needed the bathroom!” She went and plopped down on the bed. “Then I got to talking to Dox, then I was hungry. What do you want me to say? Did you expect me to stay in this room and wet myself and starve?”

He tilted his head at her, eyebrow raised. “A resounding no to the first, and as for the second, I brought you food hours ago. I knocked, in case….well, in case. When you didn’t answer I assumed you still slept. So I left.”

In all honesty, she hadn’t recalled him telling her not to leave until he’d mentioned it. It wasn’t like her to be forgetful, but that was under normal circumstances. She set her jaw, preparing to apologize since that was what adults did when they made trouble for people who had done nothing to earn that trouble. Before she could, however, Axion waved away whatever she’d been about to say with an imperious gesture that had her swallowing the apology.

“No matter,” he said. “Leontis wants to see you.”

She blinked. “What does blondie want with me? Pretty sure I’ve been written off as less than human and therefore beneath his angelic notice.”

“If not for your association with me, you would be,” he replied, his tone serious. “Do not forget that. Come on.” And he turned, clearly expecting her to follow. She did, after only a moment’s apprehension. Something, some emotion, sat in her gut like a stone made out of something vile, and it took her a moment to figure out what it was. Not only had those men clearly thought there was nothing wrong with expecting her to go along with being molested, they also hadn’t seemed to fear reprisal. And they’d been right; Axion himself didn’t seem perturbed.

A shiver of unease stroked a finger down her spine, and she swallowed back the suddenly ill feeling building at the back of her throat. She’d begun to think of Axion as a friend, shared trauma aside, or at least someone that was on her side. She thought, maybe, she needed to revise that.