Chapter eighteen: The zipper

Trigger warnings for those who need them

Snakes and getting eaten alive.

It’s windy and wet in Charalia.
The trees still dead from the winter kill.
I follow the assessor dutifully and nervously.
He is an old man with severe eyebrows. His cane taps on the pavement as we head towards the parking lot.
As he explains I feel the panic in my stomach soar as despite knowing in my head he should be speaking Charan, I cannot decipher his words.
“Excuse me could you repeat that?” I ask politely.
“Hechmecktrop darstimeglitak praterimentofiliastikapok”
“I don’t understand, I’m sorry I-“
“Hechmecktrop darstimeglitak praterimentofiliastikapok!”
“Could you maybe talk a little slower?”
“HECHMECKTROP DARSTIMEGLITAK PRATERIMENTOFILIASTIKAPOK!”
“Yelling doesn’t make it more understandable I-“
We stop.
My blood runs cold as I gaze into a pair of massive, cold, yellow eyes.
A green snake. Its head the size of a steamship, lays curled up on the parking lot.
Crushing whatever dared to park there first.
The instructor looks at me “Kregteriolina mev” pointing to the beast.
“I, what?”
The instructor claps his hands and the monster unhinges its maw and opens wide, nearly folding its head clean in half.
He points again.
“No. No I’m not walking in there. Are you crazy?”
He grabs my hand.
“No! Let go of me!” His arm doesn’t budge despite my protests.
I try to resist, pull back but suddenly the ground feels slippery and slick making my boots skid along them as if the ground were made of ice.
I try to grasp at something, a lamp post, a tree branch, anything!
But all I reach is air.
The inside of the mouth is soft and pliable. The tongue, narrow yet massive enough to be dragged down while I scream and yell bloody murder.
Then with the sound of old rust and steel the jaw descends down on us again.
Taking all the light with it.
And then I died?
I think.
Wait?
I open my eyes and find that same dinky looking green interior of the state-issued ships and my derriere seated firmly in the captain’s chair.
This is madness!
I wipe away sweat and tears as the instructor talks to me, dismissing my distress.
He wants me to take off although I’m not entirely sure how I know that since he still talks in strings of gibberish.
He’s telling me if I don’t fly I can kiss my flying certificate goodbye.
Dana would be so disappointed if I didn’t even manage to take off.
I pull out my handkerchief, dry my eyes and tells myself “Time to make Dana proud of you.”
I press the pedal to open the air valve and not much later the ship ascends with little fanfare.
The instructor holds his tongue as I fly.
Maybe things can be normal from now on?
I take a breath.
Okay so all I need to do now is pass the exam.
Confess to Dana.
Go back to Venusia and find my killer there-
“HALT IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!”
My shoulders jump as three police officers rush into the cockpit.
One of them tries to grab my arms.
“Hey! I’m trying to fly here!”
“You, take over from her.” Menfrey orders the instructor as I get lifted off my seat.
The instructor salutes jauntily as he takes my spot behind the wheel.
“Now wait a minute, why are you trying to detain me!? Where did you even come from?”
“Miss Elizabeth Chattoway you are hereby under arrest for the crime of traveling with a false passport. Running away from home and harbouring the fugitive Hui Go.”
“What? That’s ridiculous! Menfrey I thought we were supposed to help one another!?”
“I’m afraid that was a deal I struck but Alice Castella, not Elizabeth Chattoway.”
“But-“
Menfrey addresses the man behind the wheel “Please turn back to the island of Venusia, we will retrieve mister Go there and then fly back to Choumuri where they belong.”
“Wait, no! You can’t! The kashuya will kill him if he goes back there or worse.”
“He should have considered that before shooting his own brother in the head.”
“But the kashuya are criminals!”
“Murder is murder miss.”
This is going nowhere.
There’s no reasoning with dogs.
I have to stop them!
Hui is in danger!
I stomp with my boot on the foot of the nameless officer and lunge to the wheel.
I grab it firmly and yank it off to the right.
The assesor yells his gibberish as the ship rolls onto its side.
We’re losing altitude.
Fast.
If I’m lucky we all survive the crash and just the ship gets ruined.
Giving me valuable time to find a phone and tell Hui to get out.
And if I’m not lucky…
I just really hope I’m lucky.
The window explodes in a shimmering shower of glass shard but miraculously they all miss me.
Then the negative pressure pulls the straight out the ship.
I scream as I plummet through the air.
Looking up into the yellow eyes of a massive green snake.

I shoot up in bed and hit my head on the overhead shelf.
“OW!?”
I try to take a breath. The sun’s streaming in.
It’s okay now, it was just a dream.
Just a…wait what time is it?

I crash into the room with my bags full of books and my hair still a mess.
I really need to cut it. It’d be s much easier to get up in the mornings if I didn’t have to comb it all and pin it into configuration each morning.
“Are you ready to go?” Dana asks me while looking at the clock.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“You’re planning on bringing half the library?” she sounds suprised.
Maybe she doesn’t know me as well as I thought she did.
“Tonya gave me the script to the play and I’m going to read it and I think I have a vague recollection of a fairytale that goes similarly in one of my old Cygnian fairytale books but I don’t know which one so I decided to bring all of them so I can find it on the boat plus all my notes of course.”
“You want to keep investigating outside the city?”
“As far as I can manage, I can’t talk to suspects so I’ll run into roadblocks at some point. But since a lot of this investigation business is just reading, I figured I could do some on the boat.”“All right, then gimme a bag to carry, you’re gonna pull your back out like that.”
“Oh, you don’t have to.”
She pulls up an eyebrow at me “I know, but I’m offering anyway.”
“Uhm, yes thank you.” I didn’t mean to have her carry my stuff but I can’t say I’m surprised either.
I feel a bit bad about taking all the the fairy stories now.
“Ah look who finally woke up.” Xuiyo lets out sarcastically as he enters the room.
“Sorry I-“
“S’okay, I packed up your breakfast, have a good trip.”
I accept the cloth wrapped box and hug him “Thank you.”
I hug Hamala next, who came in after her boyfriend.
“Good luck with the certfication.”
“I fix a license, you fix a location?”
Hamala chuckles “Sounds good to me.”
And then it’s time to go.

We leave the ship and cross the massive parking lot, back to those giant gates that we had to get false passports for the pass over three months ago.
I’m glad Marigold and the other could help us in that regard. I wouldn’t want to risk leaving and being unable to return.
Especially not without my ship.
There’s a harbour where long, narrow boats lay by with destinations written on the sides.
“Which one do we need again?”
“Halagat through Banksee.”
“Oh! They’re in alphabetical order we just need to head this way!” I let out excitedly grabbing Dana’s hand and dragging her along.
We pass by Ankerang and Devoid and Dana nods approvingly “I wonder how it’s departing in twenty minutes with the size of the cue out front?”
“Maybe they just leave people waiting for the next one?”
“I sure hope not.”
As we wait in line my eyes float about the ships and the seagulls flying overhead. I feel a touch of melancholy for the beach and the sense of waves crashing into my little legs.
I wonder how close we are to that beach?
We flew so far to flee the Kashuya. But we also flew over Cygne to come here.
Maybe these are even the same seagulls.
Well, not the exact same ones, they’re long dead but the same species, maybe even the same group.
“Hey look, one of the boats is gonna take off.” Dana puts a hand on my shoulder and shakes me away from my inner thoughts.
I look at where she’s pointing. The bridge to lead the passengers on gets uncoupled from the boat and a large mesh canopy is drawn over the seats. It’s like a bug-net but covering the entire ship.
Then a loud whir starting low and ramping up to a harsh whine push rips through the water and shoots the vessel out into the blue with remarkable speed.
I uh.
I thought boats were slow?
Didn’t Cygne and Charalia team up to take over Jaobai exactly because boats were too slow to supply the battlefield for extended periods of time?
“What do you think?” Dana asks.
“I uh, they’re a lot faster than I thought they would be.”
“Well we’re travelling a nearly three hundred kilometers in only a day, aside from flying, a zipper is pretty much the fastest choice.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think they’re mechanical marvels. They’re hydrodynamic and practically cut through the water like a hot knife through butter. I can only imagine the motor underneath those seats. It can’t be much bigger than a race-car engine but it moves at least ten times the weight. It’s wild.”
“I guess that does make them sound pretty amazing.” Anything Dana’s enthusiastic about sounds amazing to me. She just tells it in such a way that makes me feel excited.
That is, if we get to go onto the thing.
There’s a clock counting down to the next send off and we’re nowhere close to the start of the line.
“So what if we don’t get to go on this one?”
“We’ll have to wait for the next one which will depart in six hours.”
“Six hours!?”
A gentleman with square glasses looks back at me disapprovingly. I quickly look away trying to pretend that wasn’t me and failing horribly.
Dana shrugs dismissively “I remember a time when they only went once a day.”
“Ah, right, sorry.”
I think the mates on the boats got told to hurry it up because roughly ten minutes later we walk through a narrow gangway with rows of wooden benches on either side.
I subtly steer Dana way from the man with the glasses and into what seems to be a row with a young couple.
I wonder where we’re supposed to leave our luggage? I don’t see overhead racks like the train would have and no one tried to take our bags as we came in.
That is until Dana opens up the seat itself to reveal a wooden box underneath.
“You wanna keep your bag with you or in the box?” she asks while tossing in her own luggage.
“I’ll uh, oh if you let me into the bag for a second I’ll pull out my write-ware and then the rest can go into the box.”
“I don’t know how wise it would be to try and perch ink bottles on a ship.” she warns me.
“Good point, I’ll just grab a pencil then.”
A minute or so later we’re sitting down and I notice some people brought cushions to sit on for the trip. They get pulled from duffel bags and the depths of their bench-box.
A loud whistle tears through the air and then two big man walk through the isle holding poles with the mesh attached, raising them up over the passenger’s heads as they make their way to the other side of the ship.
I expected the mesh to be finer, from a distance it looked like you could barely look outside but I can still see clearly through the mesh as long as I look at it straight on and don’t try and figure out what’s ahead of us.
I reach into my bag.
think I’m going to read the play first, I’m still curious to how the play is supposed to end and hopefully it passes some of the time.
The low rumbling starts and rises and then I’m pushed back into my bench with a force reminiscent of the first time I ever flew an airship.
The water sprays up around us but somehow the mesh between us is enough to keep the droplets out.
It looks rather pretty, like an upside-down waterfall.
I just hope we’re not going to be accelerating like this the whole trip or else I won’t get any work done.

Hours later I fold the booklet back shut and put my elbow on the railing. With my head on my hand I peer out over the sea through the mesh protective layer.
The sea looks so much bigger from this vantage point.
There are no islands, no ways to orients oneself.
It’s like it could go on forever.
The play sure is something.
I think I would have liked it if everything had gone as usual.
Especially the part where Mariella comes back from the dead to expose the gardener for the horrible man he is.
But now that Donna’s actually dead…
That feels a bit wry.
I check my watch.
Still three hours to go.
I look beside me.
Dana has taken the opportunity to sit back and fall asleep in her seat.
Her head is rolled to the side, mouth slightly open.
It looks both comical and adorable at the same time.
Maybe on the way back I can lean on her shoulder as we fall asleep together.
That’s be nice.
But for now I’m still her student.
Three hours is a long time, I can read up on the test and then cross reference all the performers with their appearance on stage.