The spark flared up, like a midnight fire as the coals shifted. I reached toward Tress and blanked my mind as I forced out a string of words.
“Listen, this is important,” I said to her. “I promise. You must bring me to your planet, Tress. Repeat that.”
“Bring you…to my planet?”
“Yes, yes! I can save you if you do that.”
“But you’re already here!”
“Here what?” I said, having deliberately forgotten what I’d said. “Planets don’t matter. For now, look for the group of six stars, Tress!”
Tress hesitated. Six stars? Unfortunately, in that exclamation, my strength was spent. I sat back, adopted a goofy grin, and decided to do some empirical research regarding the flavors of different toes.
With a sigh, Tress returned to her quarters. She’d left the door open for Huck, and so wasn’t surprised when she arrived and found…
Whimpering?
She burst into the room to find the ship’s cat—Knocks—crouched and staring under the bed, tail waggling. Tress threw the thing out the door and slammed it, and in the silence that followed she could distinctly make out the sounds of a hyperventilating rat.
“Huck?” she asked, getting down on her hands and knees, peering beneath the bed. She made him out in the corner, squeezed into the space between the wood of the bed’s leg and the wall. As he saw her, he came timidly toward her, and she scooped him up, feeling him tremble in her hands.
“It’s gone,” she said. “I’m sorry, Huck.”
He didn’t speak—a rare occasion where he seemed completely without breath or words. He just cringed there in her hands, looking more…well, like a rat than he ever had before.
Finally he spoke, his voice trembling. “Perhaps you can leave the door locked from now on. There’s a crack in the floor, and I can squeeze in that way, after climbing the post in the hallway below.”
“All right,” Tress said. “Are you…going to be okay?”
Huck glanced at the door. “Yeah, sure,” he whispered. “Give me a little time. I…still can’t believe they got a cat.”
“You’re intelligent, Huck,” Tress said. “You can handle a common cat.”
“Sure. Yeah. No problem. But Tress…I don’t know. It’s always watching. Prowling. Cats are supposed to sleep twenty-six hours a day. How can I use my intelligence, how can I plan, knowing it’s watching?”
After a few minutes, he seemed to relax. He nodded to her, so she set him on the footboard, then lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling—which was the upper deck of the ship. She could hear sailors crossing it, feet thumping. Wood creaking as the ship rocked. Spores made a constant low, hushed sound as they scraped past. Like a whisper. Someone had carved parts of the ceiling with a knife. Crude little patterns of crossing lines.
“I hope your day has been better than mine,” Huck said, perched on the footboard of the bed. The entire thing had a nice railing to keep her from rolling out as the ship swayed.
“It’s been somewhat frustrating,” Tress said. “But not life-threatening.” What she wanted wasn’t nearly so important as what he needed, and she felt guilty for focusing on herself. “Your problem with the cat is more pressing. Maybe we could keep it extra well fed, so it doesn’t want to hunt you?”
“Cats don’t stop hunting because they’re full, Tress. They’re like people in that regard.”
“Sorry,” she said. “We don’t have cats on the Rock.”
“Sounds like a wonderful place.”
“It was sweet and tranquil,” she said. “And though the smog above town is pretty terrible, people tend to treat one another well. It’s a good place. An honest place.”
“I’d like to go there someday. I know you’re thirsty for adventure, but I’ve had plenty.”
“You could go,” Tress said. “You don’t need to stay with me, Huck.”
“Tired of me already?”
“What!” she said, sitting up. “That’s not what I meant!”
“You’re too polite, girl,” he said, twitching his nose. “I’ll assume that you know less about rats than you do about cats. Try to imagine what it’s like to be roughly the size of a sandwich, and to have most of the world consider you as tasty as one. Trust me, you’d do what I have.”
“Which is?”
“Find a sympathetic human and stick close to them,” Huck said. “Besides, I have a good feeling about you, remember?”