Heyna's Tale - Chapter Five (cont.)
Tachizame
Ship? As they walked to the end of the dock, Heyna saw nothing but the harbor. No masts, no rigging, no ship. She hesitated. Kay grabbed her roughly by the arm and dragged her the last few feet to the water’s edge. The first mate pointed down. There below them, she was shocked to see what looked like a giant, oblong piece of glass gently bobbing on the rolling surface of the harbor.
Kay chuckled at Heyna’s expression. “Never seen nothing like that, eh? It’s shuuikan. Under sea boat. She’s not the biggest, but fast! None faster, eh?”
A gangplank lead down to the strange deck. As she stepped on to it, Heyna saw that it was not glass, but some weird translucent metal. There was a low swooping gunwale, and the water lapped against the hull only inches below and splashed over the deck. There was no place to sit or stand. Hatches were almost flush to the surface. Only a low narrow protrusion amidships rose above the deck.
“Prepare to make way,” said Kay.
The crew split, some going aft, some forward. A crewmember opened one of the flush hatches and descended. Others of the crew attended to huge ropes that tethered the ship to the dock. Heyna followed Screeble up a narrow ladder to the top of… what? She had no words for this place.
“We command from here.” Kay said. “Conn.” The conn was oval and there was another hatch flush to the raised deck. There was a protective wall all around, chest high to the dragons, except for the stern where the ladder came up. Heyna looked out on the harbor. She was below eye level with the dock. It was strange to be so close to the water.
“We travel under the water?” Heyna asked breathlessly.
“Under sea when we got to, but faster over,” Kay said.
“Now, heading.” Screeble growled. “Which way?"
“South Southeast,” Heyna replied.
“Heading! Know your geometry? In degrees, kit. Wakary?”
Heyna was actually quite good at geometry, as all builders must be. She visualized a protractor and overlaid it on the map in her mind, with zero degrees as due North.
“165 degrees.”
“Sure?”
“That heading gonna take us nowhere,” Kay said. “Nothin’ that way.”
“165 degrees,” Heyna repeated.
“How far?”
“1,253 leagues.”
“You joking with us? 1,253 leagues? Ain’t nothing there!” Kay said. “Got no charts for the area. No soundings. Cap!”
Screeble looked hard at Heyna.
“You twistin’ us, Heyna of the Paititi, servant?” He sneered the word, servant. How did he know she was a servant?
“No. It’s there. You’ll see.” Was all Heyna replied.
“Tide!” one of the crewman crowed, “Tiiiide!” drawing out the word into a long dragonish ululation.
“Cap?” Kay said to Screeble. Screeble grumbled and spit.
“Cap?” Kay asked again.
“Tanoth sink me for a fool… But, sure. Make way, heading one six five degrees when we clear the harbor.” Screeble looked sharply at Heyna. “Isle be there, kit. Better be!” Screeble turned to Kay. “Take her below.”
No turning back now. Kay opened the hatch and took Heyna down a long ladder into the belly of Tachizame, the under sea boat.
*
First, the smell! By the Trees! The smell was not just dragon stench, but a thousand known and unknown scents, fish, metals and not metals, seawater and freshwater, brimstone (or farts), smells she had no name for assaulted her nose. Faintly, very faintly, she smelled Erda, even more faintly, Gryphon.
Second, the hull was transparent in spots, translucent in others, and dark opaque metal in yet others. All the shapes formed an elegant streamlined superstructure not unlike a Ryujin body swimming. Heyna gaped and wiped her glasses, marveling at a view of schools of fish darting about just outside the hull, thousands in myriad colors and all shapes and sizes, illuminated as they darted in and out of rays of brilliant sunlight. Below, the light faded to a dark gray where darker shapes floated, waiting.
Third, she heard the sound of the engines thrumming. Heyna touched the hull and felt… Power. Power that brought the magnificent ship to life. Power like that of a giant sea creature drove them out into the harbor. The fish disappeared in the wake of the Tachizame, replaced by slanting rays of the sun illuminating a gradient of light from light green to black from the surface to the depths.
The Ryujin crew stood to their stations around the command deck. Kay stood before an oval table covered with charts. Bulkheads, two fore and two aft, described the large room. Screeble relaxed on a central lounge. Kay issued orders, never checking with the captain. The Ryujin crew, male and female in all the iridescent hues of that people, calmly and efficiently guided the boat through the harbor.
“Harbor cleared,” Kay said. “Steer one six five.”
“One six five, ai,” replied a dragon at a console that was covered by dials and equipped with a wheel.
Heyna felt the power shift. The boat seemed to stall. The bow sliding sideways to the right, starboard, that’s right, and port is to the left, she reminded herself. After a long moment, the engines roared and the Tachizame leapt forward into the deep. Bubbles formed off the bow and trailed, ephemeral emissaries of their passage.
Suddenly, a pod of dolphins appeared, surfing the bow wave and frolicking in the wake of the mighty ship.
“Mammals!” the dragon at the helm shouted.
“No time for hunting,” said Screeble. “Go steady, and take the kit forward.”
A red dragon with flashy golden swim fins appeared at Heyna’s side and gestured to a door in the port side of the forward bulkhead. She threw a lever and the door swung outward to reveal a narrow passage with machinery to starboard and that uncanny transparent metal to port. Structural supports were dark blue and swept in graceful arcs across the hull. A dolphin swam up and looked at Heyna, then shot up to the surface and leapt clear of the waves. Mammals, she thought, like me.
“This way.” This dragon’s tone was more polite and less accented than Screeble’s or Kay’s.
“What’s your name?”
“Me? I’m Ak’ne. This way.”
Ak’ne lead her through more doors, past living quarters and a galley, where the stench of rotting fish made Heyna gag. They went forward until they came to a dead end, then up a ladder through a hatch into an open room with lounges shaped for dragons. It was open on three sides, or rather the hull was transparent looking forward, to port and starboard. At the front end, the floor was likewise transparent. The room was empty. Ak’ne dropped onto a lounge and watched the dolphins.
“You hunt them?” Heyna asked.
“You cut down trees? Everybody eats something.”
“I didn’t mean…”
“No offense taken.”
“This is an incredible ship,” Heyna said. “What is it for. I mean what do you do? Is it a pleasure yacht?” Ak’ne chuckled.
“Pleasure? Sometimes.” She gave a look that made Heyna uncomfortable. “What are you about? Why are you taking us to this mythical isle?” Heyna thought carefully about what to say. She didn’t trust these dragons and didn’t want to give them too much information.
“I’m an explorer.” Heyna said and Ak’ne laughed again.
“No Erda explorers for a thousand years. You crazy? That’s it, you must be insane.”
“I want to do something no other Erda has ever done,” Heyna said quickly. “If that makes me crazy, well…” She rolled her eyes and did a little drunken dance. Better they think that she’s nuts than give away her true motive, to infiltrate the Ryujin capital and steal back her best friend and her brother. As she thought this, she realized how crazy that really was.
“Maybe. Maybe. Or maybe there’s something to this myth. Maybe there is treasure. If so, you’ll have some partners.” Ak’ne pointed to stern and chuckled again. Heyna took in the churning waters just beyond the crystal hull. The dolphins had gone and there was nothing but bubble trails, the green-gray expanse in all directions, and the dark of the deep beneath the keel.
“What do you use this ship for?”
“Boat. She’s a boat.”
“Okay, what’s she for? Surely not passengers.”
“Oh, this and that.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Not slaving… Usually.” Ak’ne laughed at Heyna’s alarmed expression. “Just kidding. Today, we’re a passenger liner. In your honor.” Ak’ne gave a little nod from her lounge.
“Do you carry cargo?”
“When it pays.”
“Piracy?”
“When it pays.” Ak’ne chuckled again.
“Raiding?”
“We’re Ryujin so we’re all thieving pirates, right?” Ak’ne said harshly. Heyna nodded. Yeah, you raid.
“Slaving?”
“I’m against it, but…” Ak’ne looked pained. “Captain says take slaves, we take slaves.”
“I’m just making conversation.”
“Of course. Of course,” Ak’ne said with a sigh. “Well, the Tachizame is officially chartered by the royal council of Shitachishimo for, ‘tasks as assigned.’ Between assignments, we fend for ourselves. So, we do this and that. Whatever pays.”
“I see,” Heyna said, and wiped her glasses which had fogged over.
“You’re pretty young to be an, ‘explorer.’ What does your family say about that?”
“They’re…” Heyna almost said, they’re dead, but didn’t want to encourage that line of conversation.
“They’re not like me. They are happy being servants to the Quetz. I want something different.”
“Revolutionary, eh? I can respect that.”
“No…” Heyna said reflexively, but thought better of it. Yes, her thoughts and desires did lead her in directions that Erda just did not take or even think about. She didn’t want to be like those who worked for others. She didn’t know what that would mean for her life. She hadn’t figured that part out yet. But she’d think about that later, after she got her family back, Xico and Jaz. “…Er, maybe. Yes! I guess you could say that. But just a personal revolutionary. I don’t want to tell anyone else how they should live.”
“Make a good privateer, you would,” Ak’ne said. “Ever think of signing for a crew?”
“Me? No… but on a ship like this… wow, I might consider it.” Heyna was surprised to realize that she meant it. “Is it fun?” Ak’ne laughed.
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You get used to the whiz and wonder of it. Other things are harder to swallow. Some on this crew have tasted Erda meat. So… maybe not this boat, eh?” Heyna shivered.
” Ak’ne looked forward and was silent for a long time. After a while, Heyna spoke again.
“How long?”
“How long, what, Heyna?” It was still strange to hear a dragon had address her by name. Heyna was going to ask how long it would take to travel 1,253 leagues, but something in Ak’ne’s expression changed her mind.
“How long have you been on this boat?”
“This boat? Not long. Couple of years. Been crew of one boat or another my whole life.”
“Is this what you want to do?”
“Unlike you, I never imagined there was any alternative.” Ak’ne stared out at the ocean for so long that Heyna was surprised when she spoke again. “My society is not democratic. It’s feudal. We belong to our lords and go where we are sent. Screeble is my lord, so I must follow him. It is death to disobey.”
“Why don’t you run away?”
“I didn’t say that I was unhappy!” Ak’ne snapped. “I would never betray my lord or my king! It’s just that…”
“It’s just that you sometimes wonder…”
“Yes.”
They sat for a long time in silence, an hour or more, when a sharp sound penetrated the hull. The engine sound had not changed. The sound startled Heyna.
“Is that an alarm?” Ak’ne chuckled as the sound was answered by a low moan, and then by many other sounds at various pitches and frequencies. Heyna trembled.
“See your face, Kit!” Ak’ne laughed out loud. “Look there!” Ak’ne pointed. Not far off, a group of giant sea creatures were swimming. Leviathans! The largest seemed as large as the Tachizame itself. The smallest was not much bigger than a dolphin.
“That’s whale song,” said Ak’ne. The leviathan chorus went on for a long time, and Heyna and Ak’ne listened.
“Love their songs, don’t I.” Ak’ne said wistfully. Then her expression hardened. “But when we hunt them, they… they scream, and it’s not so pretty.” Ak’ne looked down as she said this. Was that Ryujin shame that Heyna smelled?
Heyna didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t imagine killing such incredible beings. Two things came to her mind at once, that Ryujin were monsters who would kill leviathans and who had killed her parents, and that Ak’ne was different.
Maybe Ryujin were like everyone else, good, or bad, driven by their culture and upbringing to do what they did without really thinking about why they do what they do. Heyna listened to the leviathans for a long time until their song had completely faded away.
“How long to travel 1,253 leagues?” Heyna asked.