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Emrys opened his bag and took out the wooden board wrapped in cloth when the sleeping quarters were empty. The quarters were small and cramped, housing everyone but Mari, who remained in the Captain’s Quarters. He turned back to the door, hoping to keep this gift private until he presented it to Mari.
The roar of the engines, the wind, the valves managing the helium all made it impossible to hear footsteps approaching. Quickly, he unwrapped the cloth and ran his hand over the smooth wooden surface. The halflight of morning pierced through the gloom of the dark room from the two small, circular windows. He removed the cloth entirely and stared at the gameboard he had made for her before they left.
The lacquer seemed almost like polished stone. The black spaces and the white spaces so bright they might reflect his face under the right kind of light. It was a mobile version of the gameboard for Stones. Rather than a single, solid piece of wood like most people had in their home, it had a hinge in the middle that allowed the board to fold. When folded, the stones could be stored within, allowing for light and easy and convenient travel.
The board he had made for Mari balanced this portability with the ornate versions people kept in their homes.
Was not the Matauc way to have such fine and beautiful boards. His aunts and father preferred the rustic, beat up ones that had been around for generations, worn smooth and polished by use, by oily hands resting lazily on the board rather than by any deliberate craft.
She wasn’t a Matauc though. Nor was he.
And he would never be going home.
It flowed through him so easy and pleasant. Like a weight rolling from his shoulders that had been there since the day he was born.
They’d be at Morrigan University possibly as soon as the evening. Maybe not until the next morning. But he’d be there. Finally.
The rest of his life was beginning and Emrys felt overwhelmed by the possibility, by the grand vista before him. The dull ache of the lord of bone’s bite remained as a constant reminder, but Emrys never had to stand in the shade of Chalon Forest again. Already, he was over the water, high above the seas.
He rewrapped the board and held it to his chest. Took a breath. Went to the door of the sleeping quarters and put his hand on the doorknob. Took another breath and opened the door.
Now that they were steadily in flight, the crew had less to do and mostly sat around reading or arguing in Farois and that other language they spoke. At the far end of the ship, Mari stood at the wheel monitoring some gauges, and Fionnuala stared out into the distance.
Trying to go as unnoticed as possible, he made straight for Mari.
The crew, of course, noticed immediately. Benoit spoke in Farois, “What you got there?”
Emrys smiled and kept walking but Mari heard the question and turned to see Emrys walking for her. She smiled and it swam through Emrys.
A looseness.
Like a lazy river lapping against him, through him.
“Good morning, Emrys,” she said.
He swallowed and greeted her and stopped before her. Fumbling with words, struggling to speak as she smiled at him, her expression growing more confused as he babbled. Finally, he stretched out his hands holding the board wrapped in cloth and said, “I got this for you.”
“For me?” She took it, her eyes open wide. “Heavy.”
He swallowed. “Open it.”
Her eyes darted to the crew and Emrys turned to them as well.
All eyes on them. Lyosha squinted, leaning forward to make it out. Benoit stood, craning his neck. Yana stood and came over and said, “What’s that?”
Mari smiled and Emrys saw the anxiety there.
He was embarrassing her. “Maybe open it later, in your room.”
“Boo,” Benoit called. “Open now.”
“Yes,” Lyosh said in his heavy accent, “open now.”
Mari laughed in a strained way and Emrys knew he was a fool. Forever and always. He knew too little of how to behave around beautiful women.
She unwrapped the cloth, wrapping it around her right hand as she went, and revealed the gameboard. “Oh my,” she said.
He swallowed.
Yana folded her arms. “What’s that?”
Mari ran her left hand over it. “It is beautiful.”
“It’s a gameboard,” Emrys said. “For Stones. For when you want to play. “It opens up.”
She turned it over and the stones inside rolled and tumbled and she found the seam, where the two sides clicked together by a magnet, and opened it. She sucked in a breath.
Yana said, “Wow.”
Mari put her hands inside and lifted one of the stones. It shined green in the light but was transparent as glass. “Emrys,” she turned to him, “this is beautiful.”
He smiled, embarrassed but so foolishly in love that it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered but her.
“I wanted to give you something special,” he said. “To remember me by.”
She closed the gameboard and took a step towards him and hugged him. He let his own arms close round her and pull her closer. Feeling the shape of her, the warmth of her. She said, “I will not forget you, Emrys.”
The way she said his name. The way she felt there in his arms.
He felt complete.
At peace.
This was where he belonged. With her.
Fionnuala said, “A storm comes.”
Mari let go of him and he let go of her with so much reluctance that it took his breath away. He’d soon be at Morrigan University, and though she was coming too, it may have been the final time they truly were together.
Or, perhaps, the first time. The beginning of something perfect.
Lyosha said, “Should we go higher?”
Mari cleared her throat. He hoped it was to rid it of emotion. The same emotion choking him. Only then did he turn to the large window and see the wall of darkness in the distance.
Mari said, “Either go above it or fly around it.”
Lyosha nodded and Benoit and Yana got up and began busying themselves with maneuvering the airship.
Mari turned back to him, gameboard under her arm, and smiled. “Thank you, Emrys. Would you like to play?”
He did.
They sat at the table the crew had vacated and Mari opened her board to play Stones for the first time with a board and set of her own. Fionnuala kept staring at the storm as they rose higher and turned away from the tempest racing towards them from the south. Emrys turned north towards the clear, blue skies.
It was so strange to see how weather happened and to be so susceptible to it. He knew from reading that a storm could cause a ship to fail and crash asunder, but the possibility had seemed remote when he was on solid ground.
Floating there in the air beneath an enormous envelope of gas and standing in a small wooden ship with large windows, seeing the blackness of the storm consume the skies before them, he felt very vulnerable.
Small.
Insignificant.
The darkness of the clouds and the curtain of rain beneath them made him thinking of an army marshaling to war.
He focused, instead, on Mari.
By the end of the second game, they entered the clouds and the ship rocked back and forth, vibrating. The entire ship seemed to rattle.
Mari set a finger on the board to keep it from sliding and he did the same.
Fionnuala stared into the cloud and saw something he couldn’t. The blanket of grey and white surrounded them, pressing against the glass, obscuring even the storm from view.
The storm they flew through. Or at least the edge of it.
The ship rocked and the pieces began to slide. Mari laughed and said that it was probably time to stop.
Emrys didn’t argue but instead spent the next half hour clinging to the railing and staring far ahead, trying to keep from getting dizzy, but there was only the impenetrable cloud holding them in. The walls themselves seemed to close tighter round him.
To go from seeing for miles and miles, an endless vision in any direction, to this claustrophobia threw Emrys back into the deepdark of Chalon Forest.
His wound burned and he gasped at the pain. His scar was hot to the touch and he closed his eyes tight against the pain, trying to turn his vision once more inward. Trying to find a way to burn the infection away as he had so long ago.
But his magic remained unreliable.
The crew ran back and forth, shouting over the storm to be heard.
Fionnuala’s lips moved but she spoke to no one. Was no one even nearby. He made his way over to her as the ship bucked and rocked and trembled against the storm raging towards them. As he got closer, he still couldn’t hear her and though her eyes were open she seemed far away.
Magic.
He stared out and tried to see what she saw. Tried to be as strong as she was.
But the ship shook and jolted, as if kicked by the air itself.
Had Emrys not been holding on so tight, he would have been thrown across the ship. The pull of the earth so far below was no longer beneath his feet but behind him.
For what seemed a long time, the ship rocked and jolted and Emrys just clung tight, eyes closed.
And then they plunged back into the sky, out of the clouds. The brightness on his eyelids caused him to open his eyes and laugh.
He cackled like he’d gone mad until Fionnuala told him to shut up.
“We made it through the storm!”
Her face was grim. Her mouth a hard line and her eyes cold. She pointed in the distance and Emrys followed her finger.
Floating towards them was another ship with a black flag.
“Pirates,” Mari said. The word came like a breath. Terrible and resigned.