Dreamcatcher | ONC 2020 Honourable Mention | ✔

Chapter Six

The captain had said there were no mountains in this ocean. Rav ran to the deck after the others. He nearly crashed into Sanjay as the crew stopped dead.

Ahead was land. It was not a mountain.

Like a mountaintop severed and cast to the sky, a peaked hill held itself serenely in the clouds. Roots feathered its fringe and dangled into open space beneath it. Its beaches were made of more roots, these ones inflated like airship envelopes with tapered ends. They gave way to vegetation further up the hill, which stood taller than Dreamcatcher was long.

Rav had seen floating plants before, but nothing on this scale. Nothing close to this scale. Next to those beaches, the airborne green clots that formed in mainland forests looked like a breeze-skipper next to March of the Elephants.

A prod from Indra woke Rav to reality again. He and the crew eased out the new sails. Clouds haunted the island's slopes, and the breeze died as Dreamcatcher steered towards those soft shores. When the two came abreast of each other, Sanjay tossed a grappling hook and snared a thick, woody root eight feet out.

"You're lightest, cabin boy," said Indra. "Go down and moor us."

Rav hastily knotted himself a safety line. With a deep breath, he swung himself over the railing and jumped to the ground.

The whole side of the island dipped slightly. Rav dropped flat and gripped a root for dear life. The ground was not soil, as it had first appeared. Beneath the living plants, a sponge of thick, leathery, dead bubbles continued into the island's depths. Was this whole hill nothing but an accumulated mass of floating plants?

A coil of rope landed with a thump beside him. A dozen feet away was a small tree with a root system that looked big enough to fill a room. If that wasn't solid enough to moor an airship to, nothing here would be. Careful to move gently, Rav crawled to it and secured the rope. Sanjay tossed another from the back of the ship. The trees dotted the hillside, and Dreamcatcher was soon tethered. Rav breathed a sigh of relief. Now they could make repairs. It might not be solid ground below them, but it was solid enough to stand on.

The captain was on deck when Rav scrambled back up the rope ladder Manish dropped for him. Dreamcatcher's owner was watching the island. The keen interest in his smile made Rav shiver.

"Now this is something I've never seen before," he said softly. "What's it like down there, cabin boy?"

Rav was struck by a sudden and intense desire not to tell. This was a man who commissioned poachers just to spangle his own airship. The plants on this island were not in the book Rav had brought, nor in any of the others hidden beneath his bed at home. He doubted they were in any book in the world. What the captain might do with that fact, he did not want to know.

"Answer me, cabin boy. I asked you a question."

Those hooded eyes pinned Rav like a butterfly in a collector's shadow box. The captain was still smiling, but there was no warmth in it now.

'Answer me, boy,' said Father.

"It—it's plants," said Rav. He grappled around the large knot that had filled his chest and throat. "Floating plants."

The captain snorted. "I can see that much myself, boy. Did you see anything interesting?"

"Just the plants."

"Go back and look."

Rav's head jerked up. What? No. He couldn't. Not for this man.

The captain pointed to the rope ladder. "Go. Come back when you've found something interesting."