D. MacHale - Raven Rise

I saw the pier where we had tied up the pilgrim ship when the Jakills and I first discovered the city. I couldn’t bring myself to put in there. It was a place of death. The hull of the burned ship was still beneath the surface. If there were any ghosts in Rubic City, that’s where they’d be. Instead, I maneuvered the skimmer toward the large pier under which the fleet of skimmers was kept. My thinking was that the perfect place to hide the craft was among others just like it. I didn’t want somebody stumbling on it and raise some kind of alarm to announce an intruder had arrived and was poking around.

I was about a couple hundred yards out from the pier when I heard an odd sound. I had been listening to the steady drone of the skimmer’s engines for the last million hours. This was different. It was steady, but definitely a different frequency. I cut the engines. Water lapped up onto the deck as I came to a stop. Once the sloshing sounds stopped, I listened intently. The sound was faint, but distinct. It wasn’t like anything I remembered hearing in Rubic City. The steady sound grew louder. Was it coming closer? The skimmer bobbed gently on the small swells. I scanned the city. There was nothing in sight that could be making that kind of sound, but it was definitely there and getting louder. It sounded like the buzz of a machine. That was impossible. There was nothing mechanized in Rubic City. At least nothing that had worked for centuries.

I was about to hit the throttle and travel the rest of the way to the pier when my eye caught movement. Dead ahead. It looked like a dark cloud moving along a street, between the rows of tall buildings. I strained to get a better look. The cloud grew bigger. It was definitely moving. Was it a dust storm? A minitornado? Whatever it was, it had cleared the last row of buildings and was headed my way. For a second I thought that maybe there really were ghosts in Rubic City, because a big, black-looking specter was coming toward me.

That’s when I saw the lights. It was almost pretty. Almost. As the cloud grew closer, it seemed decorated with thousands of tiny, twinkling lights. Yellow lights. Like Christmas. The sound grew even louder. The buzzing sound. The lights were the tip-off. It wasn’t a cloud. It wasn’t a tornado. It wasn’t a ghost. It wasn’t Christmas.

It was a swarm of bees. Quig-bees. The weird thing was, I wasn’t afraid. Not just then anyway. My first thought wasn’t that I had to do something or I was going to get swarmed and stung by those monsters. No, my first thought was that there were quigs in Rubic City guarding the flume. That meant that this territory was once again hot. Saint Dane had sent his little demons out to welcome me. There was no chance of surprise here. He knew I was coming.

That’s when I got scared.

Iwas alone in the middle of the harbor on a tiny boat with a swarm of quig-bees closing fast. I looked around for some kind of protection. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. I feared I was done before I even set foot back on dry land.

Dry land. I wasn’t on dry land. I did have protection. The water. Could quig-bees swim? I hoped not. I figured I could dive underwater and hide under the skimmer. How long could I last doing that? Were those bees smart enough to hover around, waiting for me to run out of air? If they were smart enough to leave the city to find me, they might be smart enough to bide their time until I poked my head above the surface.

The swarm was out over the water, halfway to me. They weren’t fast. I wasn’t sure if that was good or just meant it prolonged the torture of my knowing I was about to get stung a million times. My only choice was to go into the water. I was about to jump overboard when I realized if the skimmer stayed dead in the water, I’d be dead in the water too. I had to keep moving toward shore. The throttle for the pontoon engines was on the right handle. It worked like bike brakes. I quickly tore off a length of rotted material from Loque’s pants and looped it around the handle and the throttle. I tied it tight, pulling the throttle so it engaged the engine. I didn’t want it to go too fast or I wouldn’t be able to control it. All I wanted was for the skimmer to move forward. The powerful engine hummed. The skimmer headed toward shore, closer to the swarm of quigs. I tied off the loop and jumped to the back. There were two handles on the stern at water level that the aquaneers of Cloral used to tie up and tow other boats. I was going to use them to try to steer the skimmer from behind. I had no idea if it would work, but it was the only thing I could think of. The dark, sparkling cloud of quigs was almost on me. I put my legs over the stern, grabbed one of the handles, and twisted around while lowering myself into the water. I floated out flat, letting my legs trail behind. I twisted them to the right and felt the skimmer move left. I moved them left and felt the skimmer move right. My legs acted as a rudder. It was working.

Only trouble was, I had no idea where I was going. I was down behind the stern with no view ahead. Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly the only trouble. A few seconds later it grew dark. It felt as though the sun had gone behind a cloud. It had. Sort of. The swarm of quigs had arrived. I held my breath and ducked my head underwater. The handles were above water level, which meant my hands would be too. Would the quigs realize that?

Yes. I felt a sharp sting on my right hand. Without thinking I let go and pulled it underwater. That meant I was hanging on by only one hand. In seconds the quigs would go after that one and I’d have to let go. The skimmer would power off and I’d be dead. I forced myself to grab the handle with my right hand again and pulled my left hand underwater. It was better to have one hand exposed at a time. It gave the quigs less to go after. Though I was underwater I could still hear their demonic buzzing over the sound of the skimmer engines. I can’t say how many times I was stung. I switched hands a few times, which seemed to be working. The bees weren’t as smart as I gave them credit for. Lucky me. It was a good plan, except for the fact that I didn’t know which way I was going.

And I was running out of air. Oh. That. My lungs started screaming. I waited until the absolute last possible second, then pushed my head up, gulped air, and ducked back under again. I didn’t get stung. Not once. I didn’t know how long I could keep it up. My arms were starting to feel like they were being pulled out of their sockets, and my hands were cramping. Suddenly the few stings I’d gotten didn’t bother me so much. I wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer.

I had no idea which direction I was going. For all I knew I had leg-ruddered the skimmer around and was headed back out to sea. Or traveling in circles. The next time I came up for air, I took a quick look behind me, hoping not to see Rubic City growing smaller in the distance. I saw nothing but ocean. Phew. I went back under and tried to duck below the skimmer to look ahead. It was too dark to make out anything, and my vision was blurred. I didn’t think I was in the middle of the harbor anymore, but that’s about all I could tell. I figured that I had been traveling long enough that I might soon hit land. But where? More important, what would I do when I got there?

The quigs were still after me. I knew that because I kept getting stung. Just when I thought I couldn’t hang on any longer, it suddenly got dark. I mean really dark. Night dark. I knew that couldn’t be the case. Not that fast. Night didn’t really “fall.”Itook another gulp of air, tried to take a quick look around, and saw nothing but nothing. The world had gone black. Well, not entirely. The quigs were still buzzing above me. Their glowing yellow eyes made them look like fireflies in the dark. What had happened? I ducked back underwater and pushed my head down to look under the skimmer. It was good I did, because a second later the small boat hit something and stopped short. We hit land. Or something else solid. Good thing I was below the surface or my head would have slammed into the stern. The skimmer stopped abruptly, but I kept going. My hand was ripped off the handle. I was now under the skimmer, someplace dark, and running out of air. The skimmer’s engines whined. It was bobbing against a hard surface, and with nowhere to go, it started to turn. It wanted to keep going and was looking for a way out. The engines screamed louder. I turned in time to see that one of the pontoons was headed right for me. If that thing slammed my head, it would hurt. I shifted quickly as the pontoon slid by, grazing my nose. I got hit with the stream of water that ejected from the rear. If the skimmer had been at full power, it might have ripped my head off. As it was, it only gave me a mild shove. A moment later the skimmer took off. It must have turned away from whatever had stopped it and found an escape route.