We can keep going that way for a while. We can pretend we fit that jug, awkward nooks and all. But the longer we do, the worse it gets. The more it wears on us. The more exhausted we become. Even if we’re doing nothing at all, because simply holding the shape can take all the effort in the world. More, if we want to make it look natural.
There was a lot about being a pirate that did suit Tress. She’d learned and grown a great deal—but it had still been a relatively short time since she’d left the Rock. She was tired in a way that a good night’s sleep—or ten of them—couldn’t cure. Her mind didn’t have any more to give. She needed to allow herself a chance to catch up to the person she’d become.
She was now only three days away from the Midnight Sea, and she was no closer to thinking of a way through it. And pounding her head against the page wasn’t accomplishing anything more than getting ink on her forehead.
Tress was dreading what would happen next. And indeed, it arrived with a polite knock on her door. She nodded to Huck, who had—for some strange reason—decided she needed a valet. Did captains have valets? She thought those were for gentlemen with so many pairs of shoes they needed someone to organize them all.
Huck scampered over to the table beside the entry and called, “The captain bids you come in!”
Tress figured she could have done that herself. She was not yet accustomed to the finer points of being in charge, which often involve being too important to do things the sensible way.
Salay, Ann, and Fort entered. Tress steeled herself for their recrimination. Here, today, they would see the truth. That she had no plan. That she was an unfit captain.
In actuality, all they saw was that she had very nice penmanship. Even written backward on her forehead.
“All right, Captain,” Salay said. “We’ve been giving this voyage some thought. And the protections around the Sorceress seem almost impossible to overcome.”
“I know,” Tress said, bracing herself. “Salay, I…I don’t…”
“Therefore,” Salay continued, getting out some papers, “we’ve been working hard on ways to overcome them. We’ve got some pretty good suggestions here, if you want to see them.”
Tress blinked.
Well, she often blinked, as people do. In this case, it was a meaningful blink. It was the kind that said, Wait. What did I just hear?
“You have…suggestions?” Tress asked.
“Here, let’s get to it,” Salay said, each of them grabbing a chair and settling down next to Tress’s meeting table.
Tress drifted over, then looked with amazement as Salay laid out the first set of plans. “This was Fort’s idea,” she said. “He should explain.”
Huck says, he wrote on his board, that the island is protected by machine men, an entire legion of them, who can’t be harmed in any way. I started working on a way to distract them, until I realized you already solved this problem, Tress.
The new sign was an improvement over the other. Lines of text disappeared at the top, replaced with new ones at the bottom, so he didn’t have to stop—he could keep tapping words on the back for them, speaking more in real time.
Also, it could do different fonts.
“I…solved the problem?” Tress asked, taking the chair that Huck was trying to push over for her. Once she sat, he dusted his paws off as if he’d done an excellent job, then went to count her pairs of shoes.
You did, Fort said. With your flare gun modifications! You were already prepared to face someone we can’t kill. We just need to expand what you came up with! I figure, a legion of mechanical men can’t hurt us if they’re wrapped in vines.
See, here’s a schematic for a cannonball using the ideas you came up with. We could lure out the metal men, bombard the beach with verdant, and tie them all up. Then you slip right past!
She took the diagram. It had several parts that said “sprouter mumbo-jumbo” on it, so he obviously didn’t grasp the finer details of what she’d done. Yet, the idea was sound. Excellent, even. They already had cannonballs made to explode on a timer—she could build ones that burst with vines instead of spraying water.
“This is brilliant, Fort!” she said.
Fair trade! he said, tapping the board. Once you have your friend back, then we’ll be even. Not before.
She didn’t point out that he’d only lost his original board because of her—and so giving one back to him was already a fair trade. She was too amazed.
They’d solved her problem. Instead of being angry at her for not having the solution, they had worked out one themselves. She…didn’t need to do this all on her own. That shouldn’t have been such a revelation for her. But after spending ages walking around with everyone piling bricks in your arms, it can throw you off balance when someone removes a brick to carry for you.
“Thank you,” Tress whispered, trying to maintain her composure. She wasn’t certain if captains should cry in front of their crew. Seemed like there’d be a maritime law against it. “Thank you so much! I’ve been trying and trying to think of a way through this.”
We’re here for you, Fort said. We’re your crew, Tress. Your friends. Let us help.
“Yes, of course,” Tress said. “But…thank you.”
She looked at them each in turn, beaming.
“I’m trying to figure out why it says ‘Ask nicely’ on your forehead, Tress,” Ann said.
Technically, Fort added, it says “ylecin ksA.”
“Actually it says neither,” Salay said. “Because it’s crossed out. See?”
“Oh yeah,” Ann said. “Anyway, we might have a solution to the other problem on the island: getting into the tower. You gave us the clue to this one too.”
“Growing a tree of verdant vines?” Tress said. “To reach the top, and get in that way? I thought of that, Ann, but surely the Sorceress keeps the door locked.”
But not the window, Fort said. Where she lets out her ravens.
“Far too small.”
For a human, he wrote.
Their eyes turned toward Huck, who stood before the room’s wardrobe. He’d finished counting the shoes Tress owned. That hadn’t been difficult, as she was wearing both of them presently. So he’d moved on to making a mental list of the different types she’d need to buy.
He felt the stares. It’s a thing rats learn. So he turned, feeling like the only piece of cheese left in the larder. “What?” he said.
“We need someone small,” Salay said, “to sneak into the Sorceress’s tower through her raven window.”
“Tricky,” Huck said, “since I don’t think any human could fit through… Oh. Rat. Right.” He wrung his paws together.
We need to do this for the captain, Fort said. And the debt we owe her.
“Huck owes me no debt,” Tress said. “He wouldn’t be on this ship except for me.”
Which means he’d be on the bottom of the Verdant Sea.
I doubt he’d have made it to the bottom. Rats are rather low in body mass. He’d almost certainly have ended up wrapped in a vine ball, drifting through the middle depths of the ocean until he decomposed. But as no one in the room was versed in spore depth density and relative fluidized viscosity, they took Fort’s words as fact.