The ship had essentially run aground on the ocean itself. Until the seethe began again, they’d be trapped. Stuck in one place.
“Nononono!” the sprouter cried, forgetting Tress and running up the steps.
The reason for his panic occurred to Tress almost immediately. The enemy cannon was already pointed straight at them. And they were no longer moving.
A second later, a cannonball blasted through the aft hull, ripping a wide hole. Tress screamed and covered her head as the cannonball soared over her and crashed right through the front of the ship, never shattering as it was supposed to.
Tress cowered on the floor, awaiting the next inevitable shot. Then, through the terror, her practicality asserted itself. She turned, shifting wood debris off her back, and looked out through the large new hole in the hull. Across the ocean at the enemy ship, which was also stuck in place several hundred feet away.
The sea had become, essentially, solid. At least as solid as a sand dune. It was made of deadly spores, but it could be walked on. And while the people on that enemy ship might wish her harm, those on the Oot’s Dream most certainly did.
It didn’t take long for her to make the decision. She threw herself to her feet and pushed past the vine growth in the hold, making for the hole.
“Watch out!” the rat said from behind as something dropped on her. The sprouter, seeing her move, had leaped off the broken steps above to tackle her.
“Here now,” he said. “That’s a right good idea. You’re gonna give me that coat, and I’m gonna go plead for my life with those fellows.” He began to rip at her clothing, and she frantically felt around for a weapon. Her fingers latched onto something metal and she swung it up, clocking the sailor on the head. He dropped like a streaker’s trousers.
Tress gasped, panting on the floor, then glanced at what she’d grabbed. A pewter cup.
Wait, her pewter cup.
Huh, she thought. Didn’t expect to be right about that.
She searched around and spotted her things nearby, along with some other items that had been tossed around in the explosion. Then she cried out as another cannonball hit the ship somewhere above, making men scream.
She grabbed her sack, then stumbled over to the rat’s cage. “Almost forgot about you,” she said. “Sorry.”
“It’s a common human failing,” he said. “Don’t get me started on the way your people talk about my kind.”
“Brace yourself,” Tress said. “I don’t have anything to cut that cage free, so…” She raised her heavy metal cup, then swung it down and broke off the little lock.
The rat shoved out with his snout, then leaped onto her arm and climbed up her shoulder. She supposed that, with spores all over the floor, she didn’t blame him for getting up high.
“The name is…” The rat coughed. “The name is…Huck. That’ll do, as I don’t think my real name will work.”
“Something in rat language that a human couldn’t say?”
“Basically,” he said as she turned and walked over to the hole in the ship. “You?”
“Tress,” she said.
“Well then, Tress,” Huck said, “you ready to do something absolutely insane?”
“Such is, unfortunately, becoming a theme to my life,” Tress said, then stepped out onto the spores.
THE CROW
The spores scrunched under her feet.
Tress tried to breathe slowly and shallowly. Even with her shirt once more pulled up over her mouth, she felt exposed. All it would take was a single spore.
Another cannonball whooshed overhead, crunching through the ship. However, she walked carefully, slowly, to keep from kicking spores up into the air. Steady and deliberate, that was the way. Despite her entire body being taut with anxiety, knowing that at any moment the seethe could start again—and she’d sink to her death.
“Now that’s a sight,” Huck said softly from her shoulder.
Tress risked a glance back. For some reason, a flock of seagulls was beginning to gather around the Oot’s Dream. Several sailors had been wounded in the most recent shot, and one man had fallen off the side of the ship.
He was bleeding.
The poor man thrashed and screamed, spraying blood across the spores—which grew in bursts, undulating and latching onto the ship like enormous tentacles from some unseen leviathan. The sailor disappeared in the contorted explosion of vines, but she could hear him screaming in there somewhere as he was crushed, more and more blood leaking out to feed the hungry ocean. Gulls dived at the vines and attacked them with apparent gusto. What was that about?