Chapter Three Hundred and Eighty-Four - Small Town Charm

It was not long before we found ourself flying out over the Blue Lake, and realized that we'd went right past our destination, Codwood. Fortunately, we knew the town was the only major settlement on the northern shore of the lake, so it wasn't hard to spot it from the air.

I felt kind of bad as I looked over the Blue Lake. When I’d first read the name on our map I’d imagined that the person who named it was rather lazy, but as it turned out, the lake was really blue.

Really-really blue, like the sky at its brightest when it was without a single cloud. And that wasn’t the case right then. It wasn’t exactly overcast, but there was more white above than blue, and the lake didn’t seem to care much about that at all.

It was even glowing a little in parts along the shores, but from way up in the air it was impossible to tell what was producing the blue light.

We spun around and flew back north. By then we’d burned through nearly half of our fuel. Unfortunately, with the winds being mostly calm the day before, we had to push the engine a bit harder for a while, so we weren’t flying as efficiently as we could be.

We were pretty sure that Codwood had a port and could refuel us though, so we weren't worried.

The first I saw of the town really did make it seem like a little place. There were some three dozen buildings right up against the shore, with a rather extensive dock reaching out over the very-blue waters. Little fishing boats were berthed there, with more of them currently out over the lake.

The closer we approached, the more I saw that much of the town was hidden within the woods behind it. Homes were spaced wide apart, with plenty of trees growing up next to and around them. Strangely, there seemed to be some sort of glowing going on in the woods that made up the town.

One of the Scallywags pointed towards the airship dock, which was a rather modest space next to the town not too far from a quaint lighthouse painted a brilliant red. A pair of ships were parked there already, both a little smaller than the Beaver Cleaver. It didn’t look like they had room for ships that were much bigger than we were.

I could make out small figures ambling over to the docks with the occasional glance above. They didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, which was fine. I let Clive take the wheel and helped set the ropes and pull in the sails as we coasted lower and lower.

Soon, the uppermost parts of the docks were even with the Beaver’s deck, and we tossed out some ropes to grab on. A few workers on the docks grabbed the ropes and tied us in place, and once we were firmly lashed in, Clive shut down the engine and the constant rumble under my feet that I’d grown used to after a few days faded away.

I was eager to get off the Beaver and visit a new place, but I had my captain’s hat on and it was my responsibility to make sure everything was in tip-top shape before we headed out. That meant making sure we had fenders out between the Beaver and the hard edges of the dock and that everything was properly secured.

One of the locals dropped a gangplank over to the deck, but he waited for everything to be squared away before approaching onto the very edge.

“Howdy,” he said. He was an older gentleman, in a thick button-up and with a cosy scarf against the chill in the air. He smiled as I stepped up before him. “Permission to come aboard?”

“Granted,” I said. “Welcome aboard.”

“Welcome to Codwood,” he replied. “Are you folk traders, ah, captain?”

“Ah, I’m Captain Bunch, and this is the Beaver Cleaver,” I said. “And no, we’re not traders, we’re explorers, mostly, mister, ah...”

“Erel, but everyone calls me Mack.”

“Oh, okay Mack,” I said. “Call me Broccoli then! We’re mostly looking for some fuel and maybe some supplies, do you think you can help us with that?”

“Sure thing,” Mack said with a jovial grin. “We don’t get many stopovers, but enough that we keep a few tanks full of oil nearby. With all the fish we deal with, we have plenty of that.”

I wasn’t sure if we could use fish oil for fuel. I made a mental note to ask Awen about it later, she’d know more about it than I did. “I think that’s all we’re looking for. Well, that and news.”

“News? Whereabouts are you coming from then?” Mack asked.

“North, from the Snowlands, but we’re heading to the Harpy Mountains. We did a bit of a round trip, but flying across the other other side of the Harpy Mountains to come around to here. So we’re heading back now, I guess.”

“Ah, I see. You did say you were explorers,” Mack said with a nod. “Well, your best bet will be the inn by the docks, of course. The Go Fish Inn. The innkeep ought to help. Biggest gossip in town, and they don’t limit themselves to local troubles.”

I couldn’t help but giggle at the description. Codwood was starting to sound like a lively little place. “Are there many local troubles?”

“Hmm, not usually, but there’s always something going on. Been having a lot of new people moving in lately. Like, a lot. Some folk aren’t happy about it.”

“Really? The town’s growing, then?”

He shook his head. “It’s less that. There was a small town not so far off from there in the woods. Little place around a little dungeon. Couple of hundred good folk. Used to trade with them all the time. Fish for livestock and the like. But they’ve been having trouble and a number of them have come to live here.”

I could almost feel my ears vibrating at the news. It sounded like there was adventure to be had!

But only if we had the time, which really sucked. One day we’d head out for adventure without any sort of dire event hanging over our heads. Just heading out to find people that needed help and who could use a new friend or a dozen.

But until then... I thanked Mack for his help, then watched as he climbed off the ship and dismissed the dockworkers back to whatever they’d been up to. I had the impression that they were less dockworkers and more local workers who happened to be near the docks at times and who were willing to lend a hand.

I doffed my captain’s hat and tucked it under one arm as I skipped over to my friends. “I think it’s time for shore leave!” I said.

“Oh?” Amaryllis asked. “Who’s going to go?”

I blinked. Obviously, I wanted to go, but when I started thinking about it I realized that I hadn’t really given the Scallywags a chance to run around and explore in a long time. Clive and Steve and Gordon too had been on the Beaver for ages now!

“Oh, world, you look so pitiful,” Amaryllis said with a shake of the head. “Let’s split the crew up in halves. It’s late enough in the afternoon that we won’t be heading out until tomorrow at the earliest, and we need to refuel and restock. So let’s have half the crew do some work now and we’ll give them the morning off, and then we can rotate.”

“You’re a genius,” I said.

I ran around asking who felt like being on the first away group and who wanted to be on the second, and fortunately, things ended up being split pretty evenly. I told Awen about the fish-oil fuel, and she wanted to stay behind after getting a little to test its suitability.

Most of the more experienced crew wanted to stay back for the night as well. Caprica said that she didn’t want to attract any notice, so she chose to stay on the Beaver to guard it.

That meant that the first away team looking for news ended up being me, Amaryllis, and Calamity, which put either Awen or Clive in charge of the Beaver as the ship mechanic and pilot respectively.

“Alright,” I said as I squeezed my turtle hat on. Not for the stats, but because I’d grown rather fond of it, and it was comfy. “Let’s see what we can discover!” I said.

“Yeah! Straight to the inn!” Calamity said.

I eyed him as we disembarked from the Beaver. Was he just along to get a drink? Well, I couldn’t blame him if he was, we weren’t working on anything too serious.

We climbed down and out of the docks and found ourselves on the edge of Codwood. Like I’d seen from above, the town clearly had a lot of trees left in and around it. The homes we passed were almost all built on little stilts that ended at about my hip, so there were open crawl spaces under most homes.

It was a strange way to build a home, but I imagined that maybe they had issues with flooding? That would explain it, I figured.

“Wow, look at the fluff on her,” Calamity said.

I blinked and turned toward him. That was a rather rude thing to say! I was about to chastise him when I followed his gaze and found myself looking at a woman who was, in fact, very fluffy.

She blinked at us, aware of the attention, and I gave her a little wave as we passed. I’d never seen someone with big tufts of furry fluff clinging to so much of their body before. She had two cute little antennas too, with little bulbs dangling on their ends. And wings. And four arms.

Actually, I really wasn’t sure what kind of person they were, but they were wearing a summer dress and seemed nice, so I decided that they must be one of the locals.

We pushed on deeper into the town, and ran into even more winged fluffy people. There were others, of course. For every fluffy person there was at least two or three humans.

I discovered that the fluffy people lived in the trees! That might have explained why there were so many in the town. They had homes built into the boughs, with wooden walls and little round windows.

Almost every one of those homes had large head-sized balls of glowing golden light hanging from cords around them and illuminating the homes from different angles.

There were rope ladders too, but most of the inhabitants seemed more than capable of flying up to their front steps.

I really wanted to peek into one of those mini-homes, but just jumping up and poking my head in would probably have been super rude, so I contented myself with staring up at them as we passed.

The streets at the end of town were made of wooden planks, I noted as we pushed to the side and avoided a few carts that stank of fish and then watched as a pair fishermen argued from their boats about who had arrived first to unload their day’s catch.

Codwood was a busy little town, it seemed, and had more people in it than I’d assumed from the air. There weren’t any big signs that things were bad though. No beggars, plenty of happy kids getting up to trouble, no guards in sight even.

The Go Fish Inn took pride of place in the centre of the docks. It was a two storey building, sitting on stout stilts and with a big porch out front where older fishermen were sitting and smoking pipes under the shade of a particularly large tree in the little yard next to the inn.

“Nice place,” Calamity said as he started up the inn’s front steps. “Real homey feel to it.”

“Mhm,” I agreed. It did feel like a nice little town. Which made me even more curious about the trouble Mack had talked about.

***