the Boy in the Book

Chapter 6 ~Skyward~

Arisa wasn’t expecting to be greeted by swords and guns when they arrived to the ship and the tiny little exploratory boat was hefted aboard, but she was. Yakov, on the contrary, was not surprised at all.

“Pirates…” He muttered, rolling his eyes as he put his hands in the air.

Arisa glanced at him in confusion for a moment before quickly throwing her hands up as well.

“How’d you guess?” asked the scraggly boy in the scarf, grinning toothily. Arisa noticed a pair of oddly long canines peeking out of his mouth that she hadn’t seen before.

The next moment a few of the larger men had grabbed Arisa’s and Yakov’s hands and pinned them behind their backs. Yakov gave Arisa a look that said not to fight, and she gladly complied, though she winced at the smell of rotten beef that came from her captors. She fought the urge to make some kind of sarcastic comment, knowing it would bite her in the butt if she did.

Amidst all of the ruckus of the pirates bustling around and preparing to set sail, Arisa noticed movement a little above her. Up on the forecastle deck and behind the steering wheel sat a little house like set of compartments that Arisa guessed was the captain’s cabin. The door to these compartments slowly opened and out stepped a set of dirty black boots… followed by the lanky and tall red coated body of a man.

At first, Arisa didn’t see his face, for it was shaded by his wide brimmed and red feathered hat. Tufts of dark brown and greying hair stuck out from under the hat and seemed to splay out in all directions. A cutlass hung strapped to his side and his callused hand never seemed to leave it for a moment as he began to walk. When the man took a step his whole body seemed to lurch from side to side, like a rag doll being pulled along by an invisible string. His shoes thumped on the deck as he made his way down the creaking wide stairs to Arisa. The brim of his hat lifted just enough for his pale and scarred face to be seen, but it was not the scars that made Arisa’s heart stop with fright. It was his eyes.

“Welcome aboard the Darby Fox, young lady.” He said in a rough, deep voice, his words slurring and running together in the strangest accent Arisa had ever heard.

He stared at Arisa with milky white and pupil-less eyes.

It took a moment for Arisa to get over her initial shock. She first turned to Yakov, open mouthed and hoping for an explanation, but Yakov seemed to have his hands tied- quite literally- and was a bit busy having a glaring match with his own two captors. When she looked back at the frightening man, he had turned away from her and was addressing his crew.

“ALL HANDS ON DECK, YOU PORK BELLIED SCOUNDRELS!” he roared, and his very voice seemed to shake the boat and vibrate through the water beneath them. “SET SAIL FOR THE MAINLAND!”

Immediately the crew sprang into action.

The crew of the Darby Fox, as mismatched as they may have seemed to begin with, appeared to work as one single unit as they opened the sails and pulled up the anchor, readying the ship for takeoff. Arisa watched their bustling movements with vague curiosity, wondering at how well they seemed to work together.

She also noticed that every single member of the crew had a certain kind of respect for their captain. They kept their heads down as they passed the strange old man, refusing to speak to him unless spoken to. However; they did not seem to fear him.

The captain’s glassy white and pupil less eyes slid around in their sockets from crew member to crew member. It was impossible to tell exactly what he was looking at for his lack of irises. Arisa wondered how it was possible for him to see anything at all, but as far as she could tell he did.

The captain turned again to Arisa and Yakov, and looked as if he had just remembered their presence. He regarded them for a moment in silence, before giving a gruff command to tie them both to the mast. Arisa didn’t bother to struggle as the two brutish men dragged her to the tall wooden mast along with Yakov, tying them back to back with the pole separating their backs.

Yakov let out a string of curses and even went as far as to spit at one of their captors. His eyes were as fiery as his bright red hair, and his face red with anger. He was rewarded with a kick in the shins from the pirate he spit at, and a stomp on the foot from Arisa.

“Hush, Yakov!” Arisa muttered. “Swearing isn’t going to do a thing in ANY situation, let alone this one…”

Yakov rolled his eyes, though Arisa didn’t see it from where she stood.

There was a jolt and a creak and the ship began to move, but Arisa stared around in confusion because they had not begun to move forward. She could not feel the wind on her face or see the scenery begin to go past.

There was another shuddering creak… and Arisa’s heart stopped at the site of gigantic metal contraptions unfolding from the sides of the ship. They looked like metal wings. The ship was not moving forward… it was moving up.

The captain’s thin lips pulled into a tight smirk as he noticed Arisa’s reaction.

“What, did you think we were normal pirates?” he asked gruffly. “Of course we aren’t so cliché…”

“HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?!” Yakov said as the ship rose faster and faster. Wind tugged at Arisa’s hair and face and tried to force her to the ground. She would be flat on the ship’s deck if it weren’t for the ropes tying her to the mast. Her vision blurred and her eyes watered as she stared up at the sky, but she refused to close them. She felt something in her soul stirring in that moment as they passed through the clouds and out of the atmosphere. She couldn’t possibly wrap her mind around this impossibility, but then again right now was focused on other things.

Things like pirates who kidnapped two innocent travelers while wearing strange hats, and captains with eyes that had not pupils and yet could still see, and ships that could fly like birds… and the universe that lay before her.

Arisa’s eyes were not just fixed on stars and far away galaxies, but on entire planets that floated in the sky so huge she thought she could touch them. Planets were as numerous as the stars in this sky, and every single one of them was different…

It was the most beautiful and terrible thing she had ever seen in her entire life. It brought tears to her eyes. She couldn’t hear a single sound, for the vastness around her seemed to suck it all away.

How does one describe the images in my mind as I write this story? How can you describe with words how Arisa felt in this moment? I don’t think I could ever do it justice.

She was staring at the end of her world. The end of her old life. She was staring at the universe; a universe so completely different from ours and so completely different from the one she had been raised to believe in.

It occurred to her how strange it was that she had never noticed all of these planets in her sky. Now that she thought about it was completely absurd. How could she not have noticed? But she hadn’t ever taken the time to stare at the stars, had she? Was it possible that she had blinded HERSELF to all of this? Whatever the answer, Arisa didn’t know. All she knew was that from now on, her life would never EVER be the same.

“Are ye done admiring the scenery yet, little girl?” said a voice that was both nasally and gruff at the same time.

Arisa’s eyes snapped back to the boat and to a rather large and burly man with a goatee who appeared to have some kind of head cold and a red scarf tied loosely around his head. Arisa was just wondering why everyone on the ship wore such odd headgear and how their hats and scarves stayed on in all of this wind, when the scarf was suddenly whipped off of his head and Arisa found herself staring at a pair of fuzzy dog ears protruding from his hair.

Arisa didn’t think it was possible to me more dumbfounded after looking up at the sky and seeing about hundred different new universes. She really couldn’t bring herself to be surprised at the revelation that every single member of this particular pirate crew had animal ears protruding from their heads… But it all did prove to be too much for her. Her vision started to grow dark, and the next thing she knew, she had fainted.