“What do you mean, 'you're Steven'?”
she asked, incredulously.
“Lapse used to talk about about
searching for another me in the other world. She was convinced that
one of the strangers would be the same as me. I never really believed
it, but now that I hear about Steven and Michelle it seems she had
the right idea all along.”
“Slow down”, she urged him, still
trying to make sense of his theory, “how do you know that the two
events are related?”
“I never told everyone the full
story”, Pack started, looking away from her. “...The night before
Lapse disappeared, something terrible happened. Lapse was always
coming up with crazy ideas, and I had to keep her in check, you know,
for her own safety. We understood each other, Lapse and I, and we
were always happy to be together.” He paused for a moment, closing
his eyes and smiling a little. “...But that night, when I said no
to her latest scheme, she was utterly devastated. She thought that I
hated her, and she looked like all the life had gone out of her. I
had never seen her like that before, and after that I never saw her
again. Something must have happened to her that morning, she was
probably so upset that she didn't make it back. When I heard about
Michelle and Steven, I felt the same thing. It's exactly the same
story. There must be some connection.”
She paused to think for a moment.
“Even if that was true, you've already heard the message, and it
didn't do anything. We must still need to give the message to Steven
in the other world, and we still don't know how to find him. Even if
you and Steven are connected somehow, it still doesn't tell us
anything about how to save Michelle.”
“On the contrary, it tells us
everything.” He turned around, looking up at the night sky.
“Whenever she wanted to find me, Lapse would follow the dullest
star in the sky. That star will take us to Steven”, he said,
pointing upwards. “We should set sail right away!”
Pack rushed back to his ship and
immediately set off in the direction he had indicated. Sister walked
to the helm of her own ship and turned the wheel to follow him,
wishing she shared his confidence as she stared upwards at the
distant star. Could this really lead to Steven? And if she found
him, would they also find Lapse? Pack hoped so, she realized, but
she still wasn't sure. Something about what he had said didn't seem
to add up, but what other leads did they have? The sun was beginning
to rise, and she desperately hoped that they would find Steven this
time.
But first, there was something she had
to do: She hurried down from the helm and opened the hatch to head
below deck. She quickly turned down the hall towards a specific
room, knowing she didn't have much time to make things right.
“I'm sorry”, she said, hugging Hope
close to her, “I didn't mean to lash out at you.”
“It's all right”, Hope said,
surprised but relieved, “I'm just glad you're feeling better. Are
you ready to look for Steven again?”
“About that...” she said, her
scepticism momentarily forgotten, “we might just have a bit of a
lead on where to find him...”
She returned to the deck just as the
sun was rising high in the sky. She pressed her paws to her chest
and hoped things would turn out better this time.
---
Suddenly, there was a deafening
explosion immediately to their left, and a shower of dirt and rocks
rained down upon them. “That was too close!” cried a nearby man
wearing a brown helmet and matching vest. “We're completely pinned
down here!”
Corsair lifted the assault rifle off
his back and peeked over the outcropping, and he was immediately
greeted by a hail of gunfire narrowly passing over his head. He
quickly ducked back down. “Can you see where they're shooting
from?”, he asked a second soldier.
“The mortar shots are coming from up
on that ridge, but we'll never be able to get to it without taking
care of those snipers first.” He motioned upward with the barrel
of his gun.
Corsair leaned to the right of their
outcropping to fire a few shots in the direction of the snipers, but
at this distance he had very little chance of hitting anything. “What
happened to our backup?” he asked, hiding himself again, “where's
Lieutenant Steven?”
“I can't get through!” cried the
first man, shaking the little black device he was holding. “It's
just static!”
More shots whizzed by overhead. “We've
got to get closer”, Corsair told them. When the next mortar shell
explodes, I'm going to make a break for that building. I'll need you
to cover me.”
“Got it”, said the second man,
readying his gun.
Unfortunately, the next shot was right
on target. “Scramble!” cried the first man as the mortar shell
dropped right on top of them, blowing their hiding place to pieces.
Corsair took off towards the building as the other two dove
backwards, and in the confusion he made it most of the way before the
snipers spotted him. Several shots flew past his head, and one
nicked him in the arm, but his comrades fired upon the snipers, and
he made it to the wall of the building safely. He immediately
started shooting back at the snipers from the safety of his new
position, but they were more interested in the others, now left
without cover. “Come on!” Corsair shouted to them, taking a
moment to reload his gun before firing another salvo at their distant
assailants.
And run they did, under heavy fire the
whole time, with Corsair proving what little support he could. The
second man seemed to make it okay, but the first was moving with some
difficulty. “I've been hit”, he said, covering the lower right
side of his stomach. The second man helped him get well behind the
wall. “Forget it”, he said, “worry about the snipers.”
Corsair fired upon them again, and to his satisfaction, he saw one of
them slump over. “That's one of them down!” he told them
excitedly, but when he turned he saw that the other man had fallen to
the ground.
“They got me... twice”, he said,
struggling to prop himself up. “My shoulder, too.”
“Hang in there!”, Corsair told him,
as he saw another one of the snipers fall. “We're going to make it
through this!” He turned back to the injured man and saw him lying
on his back, still clutching his stomach, barely moving at all.
“Hey!” Corsair told him, “You
can't give up yet!” He paused, looking at the man for a second.
“Isn't there something you still want to do when you go back?”
“That doesn't matter now”, he said
softly, as a mortar shell exploded in the distance. “...I just
wish I could have patched things up with my father. I know he cared
about me, but we could just never see eye to eye about things, we
just ended up arguing all the time. I hope he doesn't think...” he
winced in pain, clutching his side, “...that I hated him.”
“If you care for each other, why did
you fight?” Corsair asked the stranger, leaning over him.
“He didn't want me to become a
soldier.” he said, his voice momentarily clear again. “Said I
had a bright future ahead of me, that someone else could fight, that
our family had suffered enough already. But I was the one who
answered that phone call.” his voice grew hoarse. “The moment I
heard her voice I knew that I couldn't let this ever happen again.”
It was suddenly quiet all around them, allowing their hushed
conversation to be heard.
“So why didn't you tell him how you
felt? Why didn't you clear things up?”
“I always thought I'd get another
chance”. His voice was barely audible and his eyelids were slowly
drooping. “...but it's too late now... it's getting dark...”
He was right, it was quickly growing
dark all around them. Corsair could still hear the sound of gunfire,
but it seemed to be passing far overhead now. “I won't forget what
you told me”, he said to the stranger, “your story won't be in
vain”. He peered at Corsair through one eye, then closed it. To
their right, Corsair heard the sound of breaking waves, and his ship
pulled up alongside them in a nearby inlet.
“It sounds like our backup's finally
arrived...”, he heard the stranger say, but when he turned back he
was gone.
“Come on!” called Sabre, waving her
paws at him. “It's time to go!”
There was only soft dirt underneath his
paw now. “Did he make it back?” Corsair wondered. “Do they
have some place to go back to?” He took hold of the ladder and
began to climb.
“About time”, she said, irritably,
“I was getting worried I'd have to fish you out. Can you believe I
was stuck horseback riding again?”
“Did you find out anything?” He
asked, hopefully.
“I found out that riding horses gives
me a sore butt, and that it's dead boring if you don't have something
to shoot with.”
“You were supposed to be asking about
Steven”, he reminded her. She rolled her eyes.
“Who cares? That's no fun. I want
to do something exciting.” Sabre put her left paw on her hip and
narrowed her eyes. “So what did you get to do, anyway?”
“I went to some kind of battlefield
in the desert.”
“Ohhh...” she purred, leaning in
close, “I bet there were all kinds of guns and things blowing up.
Why can't I do things like that more often? You have all the luck.”
“It's not all just for fun.” he
said, walking past her to look out over the ocean. “There's
something more to it. I feel like we're only scratching the surface
of something much greater...”
“Well, we can trade any time you
like. I'll be the one plotting ambushes and dodging enemy fire, and
you can ride horses and have a picnic. Maybe you'd find something
great about it.”
“You know we have no control over who
goes where.” Corsair said, not turning around.
“You could at least sympathize with
those who aren't as lucky as you”. Her voice revealed just a hint
of tenderness behind her brash demeanour. She turned and started to
walk away.
Corsair's thoughts returned to the
stranger. He wasn't just a part of the battlefield, he had emotions
and a story to tell, just like they did. Somehow, the strangers
didn't seem so different from himself anymore. He reached over and
picked something up from the wall beside him.
“Do you want to go a round?” he
asked, tossing a wooden sword to her and assuming a fighting stance.
“We haven't done this in a while.”
“You know I'll win.” Sabre smirked,
as she turned around, caught the sword, and lunged at him in one
smooth motion.
Corsair parried her blow and struck
back at her, but she dodged to the side and came at him again. She
was amazingly quick, it was all he could do to defend himself against
her attacks. She slashed at his head, which he quickly ducked under,
and he almost thought he had her until she brought her sword down to
block in time, never letting up the assault.
She slashed low, and he narrowly hopped
out of the way, but his back foot caught on the board behind him and
he fell backwards, dropping his sword as he scrambled to break his
fall. She was on him immediately, holding her sword to his throat.
“You see?” she said, her tail flicking back and forth. “I win
again.”
With a single quick motion, Corsair
kicked out with his right leg, knocking her off balance, and batted
her sword away. She fell forward on top of him, grabbing at his
arms. They wrestled around on the ground, until finally she
succeeded at pinning down his arms and legs, with his back flat on
the deck. “You're still too slow”, she chided him fondly,
leaning towards his face. He snarled playfully at her.
“I hope I'm not interrupting
anything” a familiar haughty voice remarked derisively.
“You're not”, Sabre replied. “I've
already won.” She got off him and let Corsair get to his feet.
Lay stood there, puffing her cheek disapprovingly: “I didn't know
you liked to play rough”. Sabre collected up the swords and
scurried off.
“What do you want?” Corsair dusted
himself off.
“I've come to discuss our progress
towards finding Steven”.
Corsair's ears picked up. “Have you
found anything?”
“No, and not for lack of trying. My
crew found a couple strangers named Steven, but none who understood
the message, and the reward for giving it was almost always wet fur.”
She folded her arms. “What about you?”
“I haven't really found anything
either.” He hadn't really thought much about it, he had just been
enjoying asking the strangers questions and hearing what they had to
say. “Do you suppose we're running out of time?”
“I don't know”, she shrugged, “but
I don't think we're ever going to find him like this. I think we're
going about this completely the wrong way.”
“Do you have any other ideas?”
“No”, she sighed, “I was hoping
you would. I've tried everything I can think of.”
“Don't ask me. Maybe we should ask
Sister, she was the one who met Steven and Michelle”. He wouldn't
mind the chance to hear what Sister had learned from the strangers,
either.
“You know”, Lay said, looking up at
the stars, “you never told me how you found her. Did you just sail
around until you found her ship, or was it something else?”
“It was the Black Ship, actually”
Corsair said, an idea forming in his mind. “When I went back to
where she had been, I saw it in the distance, and I chased after it.
Something bizarre happened that morning, but the next evening she was
there.”
“You chased the Black Ship?!” Lay
asked incredulously, her smug expression momentarily broken by shock.
“But everyone knows that terrible things happen when the Black
Ship is near!”
“All sorts of terrible things have
been happening lately. Perhaps the Black Ship is the source of all
our problems.” Corsair clenched his paw. “I'm going to go after
it again.”
She regained her composure, and
actually, she seemed to be looking at him a bit more warmly now.
“Maybe it is, but how would you ever find it? No one knows where
the Black Ship sails, it appears from out of the darkness and
disappears just the same.”
“I chased it once”, he said, “it
sails the waves like any other ship. If we haven't seen it lately,
it must be hiding where we haven't been. Trust me, I've found it
twice, I can do it again, and I'll make whomever sails it tell me
where Steven is.”
“So brave”, she chuckled under her
breath, staring at him through lidded eyes and puffing her cheek.
“I'd better come along to make sure nothing happens to you.”
“Do what you want”, Corsair told
her, looking away, “but don't slow me down. We set sail
immediately.”
“Aye aye, Captain”, she said
teasingly, wrapping her arms around him and giving him a quick tap on
the cheek with her lips. He was surprised by that, but he wasn't as
frustrated by her as he usually was. She walked back towards her
ship, swishing her tail back and forth the way she always did, but
she glanced back a couple times to see if he was watching.
And so two ships sailed out towards the
gradually rising sun. Corsair stood at the mast of his ship with his
paws on the railings, eagerly anticipating the light's warm embrace.
He had scarcely felt so exhilarated. Suddenly, someone punched his
arm. He turned to look at her.
“Thanks”, she said, stepping
forward to stand beside him. “It almost made up for the horses.”
He put his arm around her as they
watched the sun rise together. “I think you'll see some action
soon, Sabre. We're headed for something big, I can feel it.”
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