James Owen - Here, There Be Dragons

They had a stowaway.

Having an extra person on board did not present any particular problems, although Aven did suggest throwing him overboard, just to save the debate. Bert suspected that the errand to fetch fresh water had been a ruse to allow the boy to sneak on board, and said so.
Charles shook his head. “Frenchmen.”
“To what end?” said John. “If the knight thought Bug should go with us, why not simply ask?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Aven. “I don’t recall giving you any authority to say what does or doesn’t happen aboard my ship.”
“Well, he’s here now,” said Charles. “What do we do with him?”
“Just what we need,” grumbled Jack. “A child to look after.”
Bug’s eyes narrowed. “I’m no younger than you.”
“Young enough, potboy,” Jack shot back.
“That’s enough,” said John. “I’ll take him on as my, uh…”
“Squire?” offered Charles.
“Whatever,” said Aven. “Just keep him out of the way.” She leaned down as one of the fauns whispered something in her ear. “No,” she said, straightening up and looking at Bug. “You can’t feed him to the mermaids. Yet.”
Bug looked at John. “She’s joking, surely?”
“Probably,” said John. “But keep close to me anyway.”
A shout from the crew brought them all to the port side of the ship, as the water began to roil with activity. Something large was rising from under the sea.
“A whale?” asked Jack.
“Too big,” said Charles.
“Just watch,” Bert said, smiling, as the shape, now obvious as some kind of construct, rose from the water.
Jack and Charles stood speechless in the embrace of the growing shadow. Rising alongside the Indigo Dragon was the magnificent, gleaming, golden hull of a ship that was unlike anything they had ever seen. It had no masts or sails and seemed enclosed, like the submarines they’d heard of from the American Civil War. There were huge fortified portholes along the sides, and various openings below the waterline that both drew in and expelled water. And fore, on the hull, was the upper body and head of a dragon. A metallic gangplank slid seamlessly from an opening in the hull and attached itself to the railing of the Indigo Dragon. Above, a panel slid silently open and an impressive figure filled the open doorway.
“Dear God in Heaven,” John said as he tried to take in the remarkable sight before them. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It is indeed,” said Bert. “Boys, I would like to introduce you to the captain of the greatest ship to sail on the oceans of any world—the Nautilus.”
A swarthy, bearded man with glistening, dark skin stepped off the gangplank and put his hands together, inclining his head in the Hindu fashion.
He smiled, and while not unfriendly, it was undoubtedly the smile of a predator. “Captain Nemo, at your service.”
Everyone was introduced, including Bug, who got a long, curious look from Nemo.
“We’re going to the council at Paralon,” said Bert.
“As am I,” Nemo replied. “There are restless forces growing in the lands to the north and the south, which must be quelled if we’re to unite against the Winter King.
“A caution, though—you’re going to catch the currents off the Shadowed Lands if you keep heading in this direction, and you’ll miss Paralon altogether. I thought your captain was better trained than that.”
Aven blushed and scowled at John and her father in turn. “How far off are we?”
“Five degrees to the south should correct your course.”
Aven withdrew to change the course of the ship, and Nemo’s eye caught sight of the Geographica under John’s arm.
“Would that parcel hold the Geographica?” he asked.
“The Imaginarium Geographica, yes,” said John.
For the first time, Nemo spoke with a slight hesitation in his voice. “May I—may I touch it, Master John?”
“Certainly.”
John again unwrapped the Geographica and proffered it to Nemo, who accepted it as if he were holding a fragile parchment that would crumble if he breathed on it the wrong way.
“It’s been through a lot,” Charles said. “It’s sturdy. Won’t break, I assure you.”
“You misunderstand my care,” said Nemo. “To those of us in the Archipelago, it is a holy book. Here in these lands there are a thousand different worlds, a thousand cultures. Some are united by fealty, some by commerce. But the only thing that unites us all, the only Grail that can strengthen us by drawing the disparities closer, is the Imaginarium Geographica.”
“Then every time the Winter King conquers a land…,” Charles began.
“Yes,” Nemo said, nodding. “The corresponding map vanishes, and we take another step backward to the barbarian cultures that gave birth to us.”
“You could always just destroy it,” Bug offered, before being silenced by Jack with a poke in the ribs.
Instead of responding in anger to the suggestion, Nemo nodded his assent. “It’s been suggested, boy, and tried. As valuable as it is, it may be better for the lands to lose it, if it means the Winter King cannot have it.”
To underscore his answer, Nemo suddenly stepped in front of Aven and dropped the Geographica on the hot brazier that sat mid-deck.
There were shouts of dismay and disbelief, and John leaped forward to retrieve it before it burned.
But there was no need to worry. The coals were blazing, but they did no more than singe the outer layer of oilcloth.
“Magic,” breathed Jack.
“Yes,” said Nemo. “The Imaginarium Geographica cannot be destroyed—which makes proper stewardship of it both a blessing and a burden.
“Guard it well, lad,” Nemo continued, dusting off the ash and returning the book to John. “It is a great responsibility to be the heart of the compass. But I knew your teacher, and while I mourn his passing, I sense that he chose his successor wisely and well.”
Nemo turned to Bert and gripped his forearms, then kissed Aven on the cheek before leaping back to the gangplank.
“Be well, my friends,” he said as the ship pulled away. “I’ll see you soon.”

As the Nautilus departed, Aven cornered John and demanded an explanation. “We’re lucky he came along,” she said, eyes flashing with anger. “Five degrees would have put us in the North Sea. We would have lost an entire day and missed the Council at Paralon altogether.”
She gestured brusquely at the Geographica. “Can you read that thing or not?”
“Of course he can,” Bug said. “He just needs some practice, right, Sir John?”
Aven snorted at the honorarium, but Bert voiced his agreement with the boy. “He’s had a rough time of it, daughter. But he’ll be up to the task in short order, of that we can be sure.”
Wordless, Aven went back about her work, followed eagerly by Jack.
“Perhaps you should spend some time in the cabin studying the Geographica,” Bert suggested to John. “Just to become better acquainted with it.”
John nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. At least then maybe then I’ll look smarter if Phileas Fogg stops by to correct my navigation.”
“Never happen,” said Bert. “Fogg hates sailing.”
“Speaking of which,” said Charles, who was looking aft, “I daresay Nemo must have forgotten something—he’s coming back.”
“What?” Aven said. “He’s ahead of us. He wouldn’t be approaching from the east.” She shoved Charles roughly aside and peered through a spyglass toward where he’d been pointing.
“That’s not the Nautilus,” Aven said. “It seems our enemy has decided to step out of the shadows and make his intentions clear.”
The fog parted, and a massive hull, broader and more forbidding than the Nautilus came into view.
It was the Black Dragon—the ship of the Winter King. And it was pointed at the Indigo Dragon at ramming speed.
“What do we do?” said Charles.
“Find something that’s bolted down and hold on,” said Bert. “Let Aven do her job—there’s nothing the rest of us can do now.”
“In London the ship pulled away from the docks against the wind,” said Charles. “Can’t it just, ah, twist out of the way and avoid being struck?”
“She’s a ship, not a cat,” said Bert, “and the fact that she has a will of her own doesn’t mean she can pirouette on demand.”
Aven was running back and forth across the deck and shouting orders, a frantic note in her voice. The ship of the Winter King was five times the size of the Indigo Dragon. The smaller craft would not survive a collision. But that, John surmised as he wrapped his arms around a section of rigging, was the point.
The only chance to even survive the initial impact would be to turn the ship as the Black Dragon reached them—but there was no way to reorient the sails to do so. Not in the seconds that remained.
This was apparent to everyone but Jack.
In his youth he’d spent a summer with a tutor who sailed, and who loved to play just such a game of daring, only to tack into the wind at the last instant and avoid the collision.
Easy with a skiff—not so easy with a galleon. Still, Jack thought it was worth a try.
Leaping atop the cabin, he grabbed a short cutlass from a surprised crewman and began severing the lines that held down the starboard side of the sails.
Aven looked on, incredulous. “Are you insane? If you cut those, the sails will…”
She realized suddenly what he was doing and ordered all of the crewmen to help him.
The gleaming black hull was bearing down on them with terrifying speed, but in seconds all the lines had been severed and the sails snapped around from the force of the wind. “Now!” Jack screamed. “Tack into it! Hit the rudder, hard as you can!”
At once Aven, John, and Charles threw themselves onto the wheel and yanked it around. With a horrible groan of straining wood and metal, the ship wrenched around to face the Black Dragon just as it reached them—and passed by, with only inches to spare.
“That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Aven called out to Jack. But while her tone was harsh, she was smiling as she said it, and his heart soared.
The companions looked up as the nightmare ship glided by, its deck populated with the worst sort of brigands and scoundrels—including Wendigo—all too surprised that the ship was still there to sling spears and fire arrows.
As it passed, Aven’s stern countenance returned. “Jack saved us for the moment, but it’s going to take time to repair the riggings, and they’ll have wheeled about by then, even at that speed. Then they’ll have us.”
“I’d hate to be wrong about this twice,” said Charles, “but now I’m quite certain that the Nautilus has indeed come back.”
Approaching at a speed greater than that of the Black Dragon, Nemo’s ship had in fact reappeared to the north of them and was swiftly drawing alongside the Indigo Dragon.
“I will never again disparage the work of Jules Verne,” said Charles.
“Right there with you,” said John.
“Were you this much trouble when you were first mate aboard the Nautilus?” Nemo called out to Aven, grinning.
“No,” Aven shouted in response. “But it was only called the Yellow Dragon then, and neither of us had developed our delusions of grandeur.”
“Get your crew working on the riggings. What happened to them, anyway?”
Aven gestured at Jack. “That idiot cut the lines. It never would have occurred to me, but it saved the ship.”
Nemo tipped his head at Jack. “Well done, young warrior. And now,” he concluded as, in the distance, the Black Dragon had turned and was regaining speed, “it seems I have a battle to fight.”
“Nemo,” Aven began.
“No,” he said, cutting her off. “You carry the Geographica. Get it and the Caretaker to Paralon. I’ll keep the Winter King occupied long enough to let you escape.”
Nemo held a clenched fist across his chest—a gesture of respect, captain to captain.
Aven returned the gesture and, shouting orders to her crew, turned the Indigo Dragon back with the wind. The ship, intuitive as ever, called upon her unique motive power and made full speed away from the fray.

Several leagues away from the battle, the damage to the ship had been assessed, and to everyone’s relief, it was minimal. With the repairs underway, Aven turned her attention, and her fury, to John.
“Enough of this! This is the second time I’ve risked my ship for you, and I’ve yet to see the reason why.”
Bert tried to intercede, but she was having none of it. “Not this time, Father. You’ve made all the excuses for him I can stomach.
“Every captain has maps of their own lands in the Archipelago, as well as of adjacent islands. Every captain, including the Winter King, can find their way around by trial and error. But only one atlas exists that contains them all, and only it can get us to where we need to be, when we need to be there. And only one person alive has been schooled and trained in the ancient languages and cultures that will allow him to interpret the directions in that atlas.
“Well,” she said, thumping a fist on the Geographica, “this is that atlas. And you,” she said jabbing a finger at John, “are the Caretaker. So can you read it or not?”
Defeated, John lowered his eyes in shame. “I can’t. I don’t know how.”