The Withheld was a three stories high and seventy-eight cubit log resting atop four landing legs. Its bark-coated wooden hull was heavily scorched with hex burns. The decks were busy with about ninety-eight crew. Inside were varnished decks and bulkheads cut into the log that smelled of hemlock. The crew were of the same sort of yew-wood creatures as the port authority. Some were small as house plants, and some were tall and bulkier than old oaks, ducking their heads as they passed through hatchways. I could hear their wind-flute language throughout the ship.

  “We are going to find father this time,” said one of them to another. “I just know it.”

  Find Father? I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. I pulled my mask off and put it back on again, readjusting in case it didn’t hear them correctly.

  Crawling all over the decks and bulkheads were more of those tiny, green insects like the ones in the port authority’s office. They paid me little attention, favoring the yew-woods, crawling up their legs and arms to whisper in their ears from time to time. The yew-woods mainly seemed content to ignore them.

  “Are you actually made of wood?” I asked one of them digging in his footlocker in the crew cabin. The creature looked at me, then his face turned grave, and he returned to what he was doing. It seemed a lot of things found me offensive.

  The ship lifted off, stowed landing anchors, and passed under the pavilion and into the sky. The wind flowing over the bark-covered hull sent a roar through the passageways as the log-shaped craft flew sideways through the expanse–the broad side receiving the brunt of the resistance. Not how I would have designed a ship if it were me. I recoiled when my hand or foot touched a puddle of sap that oozed from the walls and floor, which was a most unpleasant feeling for a furry creature. The click-clack of wooden feet on the decks above and below mingled with the clink-clank of the ship’s gears was constantly in my mind, even when I slept. I had a peaceful rest that first night aboard and arose when someone shook me awake for my shift in the morning. I slid on my jacket and climbed the ladder to the machine shop.

  My station on board Withheld was perhaps the easiest job I’d ever gotten as a professional voyager. Surprisingly, the first mate never asked to see my reference letters or papers. He didn’t ask me how much experience I had. All I had to do was lift my sleeves and show clean forearms. I spent most of my days tending cargo in the hold, made up of simple provisions.

  I found myself bored in the first fortnight that passed. Too many voyagers were on deck, tending to cargo crates and barrels in the hold. All that needed to be done was check that the cold goods stayed iced and the dry goods stayed dry. You could only check riggings so many times a shift before it became redundant. We filled much of our time with busy work, swabbing decks and the like, lubing gears and tuning mechanisms until the evening shift emerged from below and relieved us.

  Two fortnights passed, and the ship still hadn’t changed realms. Something was wrong. Two fortnights would have been enough time to circumnavigate the realm of Poughkeepsy Relics two times. I needed to figure out what was going on.

  “Where are we?” I asked a passing yew-wood voyager in the corridor.

  “In The Infinite Beyonds,” he said.

  “I figured as much on my own,” I said. “Should we not have changed to Falsick Beds by now?”

  The mate walked away without answering.

  “All hands, prepare stop!” the first mate ordered through the voice pipe. The crew scurried in compliance, grabbing riggings and handles and braced themselves.

  “Stop?” I said to a nearby yew-wood. I looked out the porthole and saw nothing but open sky around us. “Why would we stop here?”

  He ignored me.

  “I beg pardon,” I told another, tapping him on the shoulder.

  “What?” he said.

  “Do you know what we’re doing?”

  “Aye,” he said.

  There was a pause for a few moments.

  “What are we doing?” I said.

  “Stopping, pup. Didn’t you hear the order?”

  “Aye, I heard plain as the ears on my head. But what the hells are we stopping for?”

  The voyager turned around and returned to his business, reaching into a yardbird cage and removing a couple green eggs. I tapped him on the shoulder again as he started walking away. He ignored me again and kept on walking. Panic filled my gut at the thought of having boarded the wrong ship.

  “Can anyone tell me the ship’s heading? We’re supposed to be going to Falsick Beds.”

  “Then Falsick Beds would be our destination, wouldn’t it?” a yew-wood said.

  The creature’s eye popped out of its socket and hit the deck at our feet like an acorn, then rolled down a drain as the ship rocked sideways. The voyager turned back to his work, ignoring his lost eye. The ship stopped, and the wind stopped rushing against the hull. I tried asking another, then another, until I became aware of the first mate glaring at me from down the corridor.

  “You there!” he shouted, pointing at me. “Back to work!”

  Rain echoed through the ship as I stepped up the ladder after my shift. Hunger was in my belly, so I went to the mess decks for chow. Thirty other crew sat quietly as a coffin, eating their rations. There was no merriment, no camaraderie, no friendships. It was the strangest crew I’d ever floated with.

  I grabbed a wooden bowl from the stack, and the cook served me a sloppy ladle of porridge. I squeezed in lemon and added a few strips of bacon from the pan, then walked over and sat next to a yew-wood sitting by himself.

  “Hello,” I said, and he smiled at me. “What’s your name?”

  “I am Finial,” he said.

  “Burgeon.”

  I didn’t want to dissuade him from having a conversation, and I would take great care in being friends to get him to admit where the ship was going. But I was never good at making friends. I thought maybe some casual conversation would earn his trust.

  “It seems the ship has seen many ports?” I said. “Why, do you suppose, are most of the crew made of yew-wood?”

  Finial’s acorn eyes rolled around as though he were searching inside his head for the answer.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “I’m not sure,” he said.

  I nodded and smiled. His eyes returned to his bowl of steaming dirt, and he spooned brown clumps into his mouth.

  “Do you …” I started to say, then thought better of it.

  “You should not ask us questions,” he said, his face twisting with distress.

  My first impulse was to ask why, but that would be another question. What was he so afraid to tell me? Where were we going? Had I been kidnapped? Was I about to become one of the cautionary tales you heard about in places like Port Poizus? The mate was becoming more and more agitated as I spoke to him. I decided to leave him be and try to make friends again later.

  I finished my dinner and meandered down the corridor. An idea perked my ears as soon as I stepped out of the galley. The non-yew-woods, the other creatures on board! They would be able to tell me what was going on. I slid down the ladder to the crew quarters a moment later. A grizzly creature with thick brown fur sat hunched over in the corner, whittling something with his claws. There was more than twenty cubits between decks, but he still appeared massive sitting on his haunches.

  “I beg pardon,” I said, trying not to anger him. “You’re Mr. Bairian, aren’t you?”

  “Aye,” he huffed.

  “Is there any chance you know the ship’s heading?”

  Slowly, he turned his head to look at me. I could feel his eyes glaring at me through his iron mask.

  “You boarded a ship without knowing its destination?” he growled, the lips curling over long, sharp teeth.

  “N-nay,” I stammered. “I was told the destination was Falsick Beds, but I know this is not the way to get there.”

  Mr. Bairian’s demeanor softened.

  “Who told you we were going to Falsick Beds?”

  “The port authority.”

  He chuckled.

  “You mean the yew-wood thing sitting behind the counter?” he said. “You’ve been had, pup. That creature was an impostor – probably kicked out of the office by the real port authority moments after you left.”

  “Why would he lie to me like that?”

  “Yew-woods need voyagers of other races who don’t fall apart whenever they open their mouths. Creatures aren’t foolish enough to board with them.”

  The ship began to rock violently. The lamps swayed on their brackets.

  “Weather’s turning,” Mr. Bairian said.

  “Why did you board the Withheld?”

  I could smell sadness mixing with his musk. I thought he might start weeping. He turned to face the corner, bringing his attention back to his whittling.

  “Please tell me what our heading is,” I said. “I need to know.”

  “Bugger off.”

  Mr. Bairian reached back and shoved me off my feet. I landed flat on my back. I stood back up in anger, then quickly checked myself. I knew better than to pick a fight with him. He’d snap me in half with a flick of his wrist and gulp my broken body in one bite. So I brushed myself off and peeked at what he was whittling. It was a small statue of a sad-looking thing of his kind, with what appeared to me to be a bosom.

  The skies were tumultuous the next morning. The ship was still stopped, hovering far above the clouds, and nobody would tell me why. I kept my eye on the ladder leading up to the bridge while I worked that day. I found an opportunity when the first mate stepped down the ladder and disappeared down the corner. I dropped what I was doing, briskly walked up the steps to the helm, and up to the charting table.

  “What are you about, mate?” the yew-wood pilot said, glaring at me from the helm.

  I ignored him and riffled through the charts on the navigation table. If I could discern our position, I could abandon ship and fly back to the pavilion.

  “You better have a good reason for being on the bridge,” the pilot said. “The skipper will have you flogged for this.”

  “The skipper has no right to keep voyagers in the dark about a ship’s heading,” I said. “Kidnapping and indentured servitude are against the law, and the Armada will hang him for it.”

  Looking at the charts maddened my already befuddled mind. There weren’t maps but nonsense notes, like logs in no discernible order. FATHER may be here, they said, and FATHER may be there. We are moving from the port of Yupsay to Hipsix after receiving word that FATHER may have been seen there …

  “What the hells?” I said.

  Indentured servitude and kidnapping were indeed illegal, as were inaccurate logs and charts.

  “What are you about?” snapped the first mate, walking onto the bridge.

  “Just getting a look at our heading.”

  “What?”

  “Our heading. I know the ship is not en route to Falsick Beds. I wanna talk to the skipper right now.”

  “Nay,” said the first mate. “You will leave the skipper whole and never implore him to speak.”

  “Leave him whole?” I said.

  “You know something about our heading?” the first mate said.

  “I know nothing, and none of the crew on deck will tell me. I demand to know where you’re taking me!”

  “You listen good,” he said as one of those green bugs crawled up to his shoulder and started chirping in his ear. “If you know where he is, then we bode you tell us.”

  “He?” I said. “Who?”

  “Father, of course.”

  “Father? Your father?”

  The first mate appeared confused. Then he pointed at my wings.

  “You’re a flier,” he said. “Could you scout out and look for him?”

  “Who is him?” I said.

  “Father!” he said.

  I was more lost than that ship ever was. I scratched my ear.

  “Could you fly out?” the first mate demanded.

  “I could if I knew what I was looking for.”

  “You foolish pup, I told you. Father!”

  My face must have been a cocktail of confusion under my mask.

  “If you’re going to be of no help, then get off my bridge and get back to work!” the first mate said, returning to the scribblings on his charts.

  “You crew the decks,” he said. “We will deliver you to a port safely in due time.”

  The first mate’s head fell off his neck, rolled off his shoulder, onto the deck, and down the ladder with a clack-clack-clack as it hit every step on the way down.

  “Damn it all!” the head shouted down the well.

  The first mate’s headless body went down the ladder. I looked down the well to see him pick up the head, pop one of his eyes out of the socket, and toss the head to a passing voyager who carried it away. The first mate returned to the bridge and went back to work, holding his eye up between his leafy fingers as he scribbled on the unmapped charts. I didn’t know what to do at that point, but it was clear that the whole ship was utterly insane.

  Three fortnights passed, and I still had no idea where I was. Every time I tried to speak with one of the crew they lost a piece of themselves or refused to talk at all. I kept my eyes on the horizon in case I saw something I could fly for, but one never appeared. One evening, I hopped into my rack and noticed one of the yew-woods looking at me queerly. He was missing an ear.

  “I’ve never seen a creature of your kind,” he said, much to my surprise. “What realm are you from?”

  “The Loyal Trench, originally.”

  “Can you fly?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled at me. I wondered if that could have been the end of the miserable silence.

  “Where are you from?” I said.

  The yew-wood pondered carefully for a moment. A tiny green bug crawled out of his satchel pocket and whispered in his ear.

  “Erroneouskite Sound,” he said, sighing with relief. “Yes, that’s right.”

  The yew-wood’s missing ear started growing back, much to his relief. The insect on his shoulder celebrated, dancing up and down in celebration.

  “Might you know the ship’s heading?” I said.

  The yew-wood sat on his footlocker pondering with his chin resting on his fist. I could hear the insect squeaking frantically in his ear, flailing its tiny arms.

  “Yes,” the yew-wood stammered. “We last heard father was seen in Thirsty Taints. So Thirsty Taints be our heading.”

  The yew-wood’s wooden skin started to shimmer like polished mahogany as fast as one could break into a sweat. He bound from his seat on the footlocker, dancing around merrily. The rest of the crew celebrated along with him, dancing and shaking his hand in congratulations. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of joy for them, though I had no idea what to think of the whole thing.

  “Thirsty Taints be our heading,” he said, happy as a child. “Thirsty Taints it be, yes, and you’ll be happy and safe when we arrive. It’s a joyous place filled with the most reputable creatures in the Infinite Beyonds.”

  The yew-wood froze where he stood. His newly varnished skin dripped. His newly grown ear fell off. His uplifted mood turned. He collapsed into a pile of wooden parts on the deck. The other yew-woods scooped up his parts and quietly carried them away. The green bug slumped in the corner, crying into his tiny hands.

  The bell rang, vibrating an ambiance through the ship’s corridors. The ship lurched forward. I looked out the porthole to see Poughkeepsy Relics finally change to the mist that took the shape of a thoroughfare. When I looked back at the bulkhead, something caught my attention. The lamps swayed to and fro, casting spotlights over the decks. I saw an eye looking at me through a hole. An eye that was fixed, not looking around like an eye would. It was a wooden yew-wood eye that had been glued into a notch. Then I noticed the grain of the bulkhead itself, not a wood grain at all, but the outlines of yew-wood body parts. The entire ship was built from the lost pieces of themselves.

  ******

  A wooden creature's nose falls off his face onto the ground. Do you pick it up and hand it to him? Let us know in the comments!