Deepwater's Daughter

Chapter 1

"Have you ever been aboard an airship before?" the satyr asked. The clop of his black hooves on the gangplank drew Ysara's eyes downward, the very direction she'd been trying not to look.

"Me?" she answered, her voice little more than a squeak as she choked back her fear of the yawning gulf beneath the narrow walkway, "No... never!"

"Are you all right?" the satyr boy asked, looking back with concern in his honey-colored eyes. The faintest hint of a smile teased at the corner of his thin, rather serious-looking lips.

Ysara looked down again and realized she had stopped moving. Her long, serpentine tail simply refused to propel her an inch further across the bridge of rope-bound wooden slats that tethered the great balloon-ship to the city's only mooring tower. Orange light from the airship's gas-lamps played across the cloud-dampened gangplank, and the night wind imparted a sickening sway to everything around her.

"I..." Ysara gasped, trying to master her fear. She clutched her medicine staff and leather satchel tightly to her chest, feeling the bite of the wind through her patched brown cloak and faded olive tunic. "Naga don't usually go up this high," she admitted at last.

"You get used to it," the satyr chuckled, "Take my hand." As he reached toward her, the jacket of his black uniform opened to reveal the crimson shirt he wore beneath, and this too parted slightly at the throat to reveal a patch of downy white that contrasted sharply with the sleek gray fur that covered his face, hands, and his goat-like legs beneath his knee-cropped sailor's trousers.

"Come on," he said, "I won't let you fall."

Ysara pulled her gaze away from the satyr's throat to find her hand already in his grasp, though she did not recall reaching out to him. His fingers felt very warm, and surprisingly un-calloused.

"Soft," she thought aloud.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing!" she murmured, willing her tail into motion again. With a few convolutions of her serpent-like lower body, Ysara made it across the gangplank to the relative safety of the airship's deck.

Ysara looked up at the bulging mass of rope-bound canvas that blotted out the night sky above her. She understood the concept of balloons, but, until tonight, she had never dreamed that she would ever see one large enough to support an entire warship beneath it.

"Master Geffen," a white-haired satyr barked as he clopped across the deck toward them on splayed hooves. His hunched shoulders rolled with the gentle sway of the deck, and his long, spiraling horns bobbed with each step.

"Lieutenant Mangle!" the young satyr replied, quickly releasing Ysara's hand to bring his fist up over his heart.

The old satyr returned the salute, his narrowed eyes turning on the naga girl now. His scowl revealed his crooked, yellow lower teeth and his upper front gums, stained nearly black. "What's this then?" he demanded, and Ysara flinched at the syrupy stink of redweed on the lieutenant's breath.

"The physician the captain requested," the young satyr replied, his voice strangely tense.

Ysara gave him a curious look. She thought about correcting him, but then physician seemed a rather sophisticated title compared to woodwitch, potioneer, leech-wife, or any of the other, less-savory, titles she'd earned for her service to the people of Brahmel.

"Put her on the scale," Lieutenant Mangle sighed, waving his hand toward a brass-topped platform affixed to the deck nearby.

"What?" Ysara demanded, her coppery eyes gone wide.