Chapter Text
Day One: Sun and Moon, Music
The Wildsea thrashed from horizon to horizon, greens and golds stamped into a grim, flat shade beneath a glowering sky. The coming storm would scour the canopy and drive buckshot rain into its depths. Any smart crew would be anchoring their ship to a sturdy tree and battening down, but the Unicorn was a rescue ship. She was making sure that everyone could.
Where most ships tore through the treetops with whirling blades, the Unicorn’s sleek ghost oak hull stayed aloof, only touching them with the occasional scorching caress of lightning. The outboard voltaic runners broke up her gallant silhouette, but their speed was well worth it.
Ship’s Surgeon Cavendish - a grand old Chthonic name, befitting her steely eyes - stood at the helm. Golden hair and a long blue jacket flew in the wind. Delicate hands gripped the wheel with assurance, and long feet, bare on the deck, were streaked with smooth patches of bark that complemented the fronds winding through her hair. The Green in her longed for the sun, but the Red refused to falter.
She was the Unicorn’s owner, but not her master. Cavendish lacked some talents, chief among them being people. Better to focus on the body, and leave the heart to others.
She’d learned that lesson long ago.
Ahead, flares burst in the churning sky. Their clients were still in distress, but not immediate danger. Good. She poured on speed, tilting the wicked spike of the Unicorn’s prow to slice through the highest branches. Messenger spirits whirled around her like heat shimmer, but this range called for flares.
In the stern, Parker sent up their reply. Help approaching. Prepare to be towed.
“We’re making good time!” Cavendish called over the chopping wind. “We’ll have no trouble sheltering, when we’re done.”
“I hope so,” Parker said, sliding up next to her. She looked like a fellow ardent, but her skin was white silk, her hair was shining thread, and her eyes were smooth blue jewels, all supported by a frame of ivory and wrapped in a green cloak. Piloting this immaculate doll was a tzelicrae, a swarm of spiders joined into one mind - that being Parker. “I’d soak through.”
(“Parker” was an obscure Low Sour name - she’d gotten tired of people butchering “Tzachkta.”)
"Where is the hat I gave you?" Cavendish asked in halting Knock, the spider-tongue. “Did you trade–no–lose it? ”
"Never," Parker replied, pulling her silk face into a smile. It was only uncanny if you weren’t used to tzelicrae - and she was Cavendish’s oldest friend.
Lightning split the sky and the Unicorn’s runners sang back. Cavendish held on as they lunged ahead in a spray of twigs and leaves, and Parker laughed.
After another round of flares confirming their ETA, the captain emerged, strode to the Unicorn’s prow, and snapped out a spyglass. From behind, the ketra was a tall flower topped by a bloom of pale pink tentacles. Cavendish was still sometimes shocked to see her transformation after just a year in command.
Captain Sucy had once been bent and withered by long hours in night farms, tending to strange fungi and deadly plants. Her tentacles had hung like lank hair, hiding a round face full of sharp teeth but revealing one huge, glossy red eye in the mottle of black across her brows.
Since then, she’d replaced her bones with sturdy ironroot reinforced with silver rings. Her mantle spread with new vigor, revealing that she’d only had the one eye all along. A fine yellow jacket had replaced her tattered robes, and heeled boots clicked with authority on the deck. Sucy now cut a commanding figure, as long as you didn’t know her.
“All stop!” she called. Somehow, her flat, nasal voice easily cut through the wind.
Cavendish was surprised, but obeyed without hesitation. She pulled back on the helm and pressed a foot to the brake panel beneath. “All stop!” she called back, not at all confident that her reply carried.
Sucy turned and her mantle settled into a demure “hairstyle,” shielding her face except for that mesmerizing eye, and curling up at the ends. “Get Hannah and Lotte,” she said to Parker. “They should already be up here. Come on."
“I’m here,” Lotte said at her elbow.
Sucy stiffened for a moment, but otherwise hid her surprise. “Oh. Hey.”
The ship’s “horizoneer,” a kind of diplomat and storyteller, was a mysterious little creature, even to herself. Beneath the wispy, watercolor image of a girl with tousled brown hair was a fragile body of ghost oak and reef-steel. She was both the spirit of an ancient wreck brought to life, and a lost spirit from her own crew. What did that make her? In romantic moods (most days), Lotte would call herself a memory. In melancholy moods (all the other days), she was a pile of driftwood.
“I got you, didn’t I?” Also, sometimes, she could be a bit of an imp.
“You’re gonna get marooned,” Sucy grumbled. “That’s what you’re gonna get.”
Lotte covered her mouth and giggled.
Hannah came back with Parker a moment later. Her skin was almost as perfect as Parker’s, and even cuter, with a quirky face and a ponytail held up by a large bow. On the other hand, she didn’t even try to move like an ardent - her body just glided along, silently skating on her boots, pale jewel eyes fixed ahead because she didn’t use them to see. “Here,” she said simply.
Sucy cracked her knuckles, and then her neck, and then her back - three shocking, metallic gunshots. She could have easily placed the silver bands to avoid disturbing noises, but why would she do something like that?
The others didn’t twitch.
“We’ll dive two hundred meters from the crash site and bring our tow cables over on foot,” Sucy said. “So make the dive nice and shallow, say 10 meters. Me and Parker will go, with Hannah taking the lead. You’ll have your work cut out for you, Han, so have fun!”
Hannah smirked and nodded. (Her control was getting finer, Cavendish noticed.) The great serrated blade she used to carve paths through the Wildsea was already at her side. Point down, its hilt was level with her shoulder.
“Shouldn’t I come?” Lotte asked.
“What, you don’t trust us to do the talking?” Sucy chortled at her panic. “We can’t all go in case they explode, or something. Besides, we’ll be their saviors! That’ll smooth over any trouble. When we’re towing them home, then you can extort them.”
Lotte’s hand-flapping tizzy abruptly hardened - eyes narrowed, fists at her sides. “You mean 'negotiate.'"
“You’ll get us a good deal,” Sucy said, slapping her shoulder. It made a hollow, wooden tonk as Lotte’s ghostly form puffed away, then resettled. Rebuffed.
“We’re not bandits,” Lotte insisted sullenly.
“They’ll be happy to repay us, I’m sure,” Cavendish cut in. “If you all will excuse me, I’ll ensure that the medical bay is ready.”
Checking took no time at all; the bay was always ready. Cavendish braced herself through the dive, wincing at the crunch and scrape of the graceful hull smashing through layer after layer of branches, then started back up when she heard their anchors strike home.
She arrived in time to see Hannah rampaging off, hacking through the tangled growth like the Unicorn in miniature. Once she had a good lead, Parker hopped out to stalk silently across the branches while Sucy gracefully brachiated above her. Each trailed a bundle of wobbling, twanging tow cables.
And then it was just Lotte, Cavendish, and the groan of sweet stormwind through the trees. Messenger spirits raced back from the party and swirled around their heads, anxiously reporting, all’s well, all’s well, before darting back along their path. They didn’t like it when the crew separated.
Lotte hummed a calming tune, and the spirits’ dance slowed. Cavendish joined her at the rail and added the bass part, only a little off-tune. They shared a soft look, then Lotte started pattering her hands on the rail, the sounds of metal, wood, and flesh interweaving to accompany their voices. Cavendish settled for thumping on every off beat.
They weren’t just passing time. Like many sailors’ songs, this was a prayer to the treetops.
Their client was the Sanor Si, a venerable old freighter crewed by ektus from the far east, where the Wildsea crackled beneath a harsh sun and leaves fluttered like gold flakes. Her longjaw, the mighty saw slung beneath her hull, had roared into a hidden patch of brillobriar and gotten snarled.
With no time to reach port before the storm hit, the Unicorn towed her ward into the lee of a mighty tree, a fortress wall of steel-hard bark, and nestled beneath its branches in a web of anchors. The captain came aboard to negotiate while his crew hauled their fragile cargo over for safekeeping.
Ektus were tall folk, with tough, thorny skin like the cacti of the lost desert. They had no faces, seeing with the light-sensitive blossoms adorning their bodies, and listening with hidden membranes. The captain was shorter than his fellows, perhaps because his head split into three fruiting cladodes.
"I am Captain Helgin ," he said in Saprekk, the tongue of the desert. "I cannot thank you enough, though we have little to offer."
Lotte nodded and replied in the same, pushing her high, woodwind voice through Saprekk’s rolling tones. "We understand. We will only ask for what you can give."
Cavendish was along for moral support, standing awkwardly by her side. At first, she tried to maintain eye-contact with the blossoms on Helgin’s left shoulder, but when it became clear that he didn’t really care, she turned to watch the crew plodding aboard with crates and canvas rolls.
This showed great trust - brigands pretending to be rescuers could tear away with the cargo and leave them to their fate.
She spaced out, listening to Lotte’s voice fluting over Helgin’s rumble, but then snapped back to attention when two ektus came aboard with a rounded chunk of amber. That type was highly valuable, coming from the deep forest, hundreds of meters down… but the sap itself was irrelevant. Within it slept an Amberclad - a young woman sealed in the forest’s blood long ago, possibly centuries, alive but perfectly frozen in time.
The Amberclad was curled into a ball around a fat white bird, eyes screwed shut, brown hands tensed with tufts of feathers poking between them, dark hair suspended in a gauzy halo. Her face was round and soft, but her limbs were long and hard. Cavendish’s breath caught, then huffed out in confusion as she took in a thick orange coat and dangerously short skirt. The miles of strong, slender leg had almost distracted her from wondering what kind of climate this person was dressed for.
“We’ll take her,” Cavendish blurted in Low Sour, grabbing Lotte’s arm and pointing, and then, even though the ektus understood, took care to repeat in Saprekk. "The Amberclad. We can free her. We can take her."
Lotte gave her an annoyed look, but rolled with it. "That’s acceptable? The trade wouldn’t hurt?"
Captain Helgin paused for a worryingly long moment. It should have been an easy choice. If he hadn’t been planning to trade the Amberclad away to some researcher or collector, this would be a rescue for no loss. One of his fellows lightly hit his flank with the back of a fibrous hand, and he finally said, "Yes. It’s generous."
"And no need to move her," Lotte said cheerfully. "Very easy! We can celebrate now. Shelter with us?"
The crew of the Sanor Si stepped back and conferred, then three of them came forward, while the other two plodded back to their own ship. Helgin was among the leavers.
Lotte sighed as their guests got to work shifting the Amberclad to a safer spot on deck, beneath an amberglass canopy in the stern. “Sucy’s not going to like this,” she said. “She’s gonna yell at me.”
“I’ll handle Sucy,” Cavendish said.
“Oh, you will?” Sucy asked, two feet behind them.
Lotte jumped away with a little scream and almost fell over.
“Gotcha.” The captain looked happy enough. “And don’t worry; it’s a good trade. She looks hilarious. I’ve been wanting a new guinea pig for a while! Cavendish here is too alert.”
Lotte quailed but Cavendish met her gaze evenly. “Like I said.”
“Ahh, you’re so much fun.” Sucy strode off to pester their guests.
Lotte took off her glasses and wiped them with her scarf; a bit of showmanship, as neither the glasses, nor the scarf, nor even her eyes existed physically. “Sooner or later,” she pledged. “I’ll get used to the Captain.”
Cavendish gave it 50-50 odds. Still, she nodded firmly. “Of course.”
Watching the storm was terrifying, but listening to it belowdecks would be even worse. The crew and their guests gathered beneath the stern canopy, then Hannah drew a heavy canvas cover over the open end. There they sat in a loose cluster to watch the shadows of branches writhe in savage winds and pummeling rain.
Thanks to pockets of vacuum in the canopy’s amber, the thunder and rain sounded far off. Their cradle of branches creaked and groaned occasionally, reverberating through the hull, but they otherwise rested in eerie quiet. All the same, there was little conversation.
Cavendish sat right on the stern’s rail, back to the storm. Parker snuggled against her arm; the scuttle and patter within her wasn’t creepy anymore, just a comforting heartbeat. (Which reminded Cavendish of the ominous throb in the ship’s core, but best to forget about that.) Lotte sat on her other side, gazing into the Wildsea with a distant smile.
“It hardly looks real,” she said softly. “Like we’re dreaming.”
Cavendish shook her head fondly. She’d never imagined that a walking shipwreck would be so sentimental.
“I feel a song coming on. Do you think…?”
She always needed to be encouraged. “I think so,” Cavendish said, reminding her uncooperative face to smile. She was hardly better at it than the tzelicrae. “We could use a distraction.”
Lotte smiled back, recognizing the effort, and unslung her battered old ajna. She was instantly the center of a circle, giggling bashfully. With a slow, steadying breath, she set the instrument in her lap, and readied her bare hands. Her image swirled away from them, revealing long, metal-jointed hands of pale wood, the left fingers tipped with elegant picks, the right strung with a bow from wrist to little finger.
The ajna was meant to be played in a duet with the ancestors, the living bowing, and the dead plucking. Naturally, Lotte played both parts.
The first notes were uninspiring, tinny and tremulous, but as she picked up speed and her breath started misting, the music swelled into a phantom orchestra. Every ajna player was different. Her voice was the mix of a soft heart and a tense, quivering mind, a comfort in hard times.
Parker bobbed her head to the music, while Hannah’s silk rippled. Sucy had turned away, but her tentacles twitched and swayed, dancing even as she refused to. Cavendish didn’t realize it, but she was swaying in her seat, with the start of a dopey smile. Joy was rare on the treetops, and she barely knew what to do with it.
One of the ektus started to thump the beat on the deck, but then fell quiet. Nobody wanted to intrude on the thrumming bass and ringing heights of the old song. Ancient. Cavendish doubted if anyone else in the circle knew it - though the Amberclad might, if she could only hear.
“Sing, Cavendish!” Lotte cried.
Cavendish opened her mouth to say, “Absolutely not,” but what came out instead was,
“In the year of '39 came a ship in from the blue
The volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weigh
For the Earth is old and grey, little darl– ”
At that point, she saw that everyone was staring in horror, and choked off. She didn’t think it was that bad! But then, realizing that they were looking past her, she turned to see that the Amberclad was stirring. Eyes twitching behind their lids, fingers flexing in the bird’s feathers.
Stirring in her impenetrable, airtight prison.
“It’s–it’s your voice,” Lotte gasped. “She’s drawing strength from–keep singing!"
Cavendish’s throat closed, but Parker helpfully thumped her back, driving out a cry that she wrung into the next note, sort of. She couldn’t remember the lyrics of the song Lotte was playing, so she belted out a half-remembered lullaby her mother would sing, and her accompaniment followed.
“Stay awake, don't rest your head
Don't lie down upon your bed
While the moon drifts in the skies
Stay awake, don't close your eyes..."
Sucy twisted her head to the side with a sharp crack. When Hannah and Parker (and the befuddled ektus) turned to her, she thrust a hand towards their stowed foresting gear, rolls of picks and pitons, and snarled, "Well?"
They fell upon the amber, chipping, chiseling, and chopping. Extracting an Amberclad was a delicate operation, but a rush job would be better than suffocating. The woman’s eyes, a red so deep they seemed brown, were wide open and fixed on Cavendish’s, terrified. Wiry muscles jolted and struggled. A slender throat pulsed for air that wouldn’t come.
“Everyone back,” Hannah barked, then swung the flat of her hacksword into the amber level with the prisoner’s shoulders. A godly SLAP made everyone flinch, and Lotte snap one of her strings.
Hannah wound up again, but Sucy caught the back of the blade before she could swing. “Are you nuts, or just stupid? You’re gonna break her in two!”
CRUNCH. The Amberclad’s fist burst from her prison. She was still scared, but getting angry, too, flushing red and bucking wildly in the little space she had.
“What kind of a mutant freak–?” Sucy sputtered, then Hannah swung again and the amber fractured. A leg kicked out, more amber fell from her forehead, and the prisoner took her first, gasping breath in centuries. Twisting to protect her bird, she drove her shoulder through the last bit of her shell and then staggered in a drunken circle on the deck.
Cavendish caught her, then wobbled under her surprising weight. The fat bird hopped free and fluttered up to perch on Lotte’s head, who, like everybody else, was too stunned to react.
“How do you… feel?” Cavendish asked, feeling like a moron.
“Your voice,” came the thick, drowsy reply. She spoke an old form of Chthonic, slathered in the accent of a lost world. “Your voice is really pretty.”
“Er, thank–” Cavendish started, then, with well-honed reflexes, spun her new friend away just in time to dodge about three gallons of gold, glowing sap vomited onto the deck.
Sucy started cackling. It was as warm a welcome as she could give.