The Clockhaven Chronicles (1st Ed): Captive Sky, Truant Heart

Chapter 5

                                                              5

His cough finally abating, Avery had slipped into a fitful sleep. The rash young redhead refused to leave his side. She sat against the adjacent bulkhead, mute and transfixed, her soft azure pools fixed upon the supposed subject of the tale, her posture rigid. In like fashion, his gaze never faltered. They sat that way, locked in cold stares, studying one another.

   She had been here when he had arrived, but only now was he truly seeing her. She was certainly not a child, but nor was she yet a woman. What would have caught his attention first were her cool blue eyes, were he not already staring into them. The exact shade of blue was impossible to describe and he silently cursed himself for not being able to assign a suitable comparison. A sharp, but well proportioned nose set those fathomless eyes apart. It complimented her angled Gaelic face and was as helpless in drawing attention from two soft, pouty lips as it had been from her eyes. Her hair was full and the hue of spun copper in sunlight. She had it tied back and up. He assumed it was to make it easier to cover with the ragged forage cap seated in her lap, worried by her dirtied fingers. Her upswept hair revealed a soft, slender neck and shoulders that fell into two budding breasts, a narrow waist, and finely rounded hips. To his credit, old Avery had done what he could to obscure her developing looks and shapely form; to his disgrace, he had failed on every account. What baggy clothes he had had to give her, she had pulled tight to her body and knotted in some fashion, accentuating every detail, every curve. It was enough to make any normal man’s heart race. Pilfered at the moment before her full bloom, it was easily understood what she was intended for.

   He digested this information within the span of a single breath. The young woman rose to her feet, giving a furtive glance toward Avery to gauge the depth of his sleep, and then began to make her way across the expanse of deck. Careful to avoid the refuse and human debris that littered the space between them, she paused for brief moments at a time to see her way and to gaze again at the prisoner.

   As the distance closed and intermittent ambient light cast the man’s battered form from the shadows, she came to see how vastly different he was to her imagination’s initial estimation. Before her eyes was a man, ragged and unkempt, not some myth or legend. His dark shaggy hair was matted with grease, grime, and dried blood. It spilled off his head onto a dark and scarred profile, obscuring one fierce grey eye and the grotesque vacant space where another once sat. Cruel lips, drawn in a slight grin, were cracked and peeling from want of moisture. His jaw and chin were covered in weathered whiskers. Despite days without food, his lean athletic build sat proudly in the ruins of what might have been a finely tailored suit. His wrists, shackled to two slips of chain, were every bit as raw and chafed as his full lips and hung at either side of his head. His presence was punctuated in every moment by the slow rhythmic beating of a clock.

   She did not see him; there was no way she could have. With her attention drawn to the prisoner, she had failed to notice the burly sentry guarding the hatchway…but he had noticed her. His massive hands pulled and pressed at her young flesh, struggling more to contain her sudden fury than to see its original purpose. The sentry heaved his weight and pushed at her legs, toppling her to ground. Sky screamed in terror as he landed full upon her. The stench of his gangrenous breath and soiled odor choked her as much as his weight; she struggled and screeched hoping to force him away. The sentry tried his best to establish better purchase on her writhing form, but to no avail. His satisfaction would have to wait until she could be appropriately subdued. As he raised his hand to strike, a raspy voice called from the void.

   “Unhand her!” Avery spat the words as he launched his fragile body at the thug.

   The sentry shrugged and threw his shoulder into Avery, sending him sprawling to the deck. Avery would not be stopped, however, and scrambled to grab the gritty, sore-covered arm once more. Again, Avery was thrown to the ground, but this time, the irritated sentry rose to his feet. He pulled Sky, semi-conscious, her clothes in tatters, to stand with him.

   “You old bastard,” he bellowed at Avery, “How dare you touch me! How dare you interrupt my...’fun’.” The last word held the very essence of malice and, without another syllable uttered, he drew his pistol and shot Avery dead.

   Sky renewed her pleas for help and began to sob; the sum of the last several days, the assault, and now the loss of Avery in such fashion had strained her delicate grasp of reality. The brute laughed and returned his attentions to the reward wrestling to break free of his arms. Calloused hands again began to roam her young body…and then suddenly he stopped.

   There was a slight muffled gurgle, rancid air roughly passing through her hair, and then the hulk fell away from her. Looking to where he lay, she saw the life snatched from his bedeviled eyes. Red foam bubbled from his nose and mouth; there was one awful spasm and then the fiend was gone.

…tick-tock…

   There rose a stillness before another set of hands reached her. They were just as rough in touch and cold, but there was an unmistakable tenderness in their grip. She hurriedly attempted to cover herself...to flee…blind to rational thought.

…tick-tock…

   Though she struggled and shrieked, none came to her rescue. Shame overcame fear as the captives collectively turned their backs to Sky’s continued plight. No one had come to her rescue; no one would. The Hargroves and Avery were gone. She was lost and she knew it. At last, the welling dam of her held emotions broke and she began to weep. She felt as if the world was falling away…and yet, these new hands held her close, somehow holding her together. A subtle cadence battered the space between them, carefully accounting the time until their eyes met again.

   “Breathe; you are safe now.” His voice was deep, but made jagged by thirst. A solitary grey eye cut into her, searching for something.

   Staring into the hollow of the lost left eye sickened Sky. She turned, revolted. The shock of his appearance, however, gave her something to cling to. It was an ugliness apart from the world she was living in. Moments past. Defiantly, she moved to return his gaze and somewhere in that monstrous hollow, she found the strength to compose herself.

   “I...I...am Sky,” she managed at last.

   “Hello Sky. You may call me…Byron.”