Chapter 23
Sailing in the dark was terrifying. The black water raced past the little circles of light from the lanterns; Scootaloo thought that Rainbow Dash didn’t fly as fast as the Swift was sailing.
Fog Pilot was driving the ship hard into the waves; Gari was left alone among the fore rigging, being the only one who could withstand the wall of water that crashed over the bow every few seconds. Even at mid deck Scootaloo and Morning Rain were soon soaked up to their knees.
Up in the riggings Rainbow Dash and Huck fine-tuned the topsails, intermittently shouting at the crew on deck.
“Turn on four!” Captain Gilbert bellowed after about an hour of sailing in a straight line. “Scootaloo, Rain, pull in that sail!”
The boom swished over their heads, swinging over the entire deck and making the mast creak. Morning Rain fell and slid all the way to the starboard gunwale, leaving Scootaloo to reign in the sail alone. Fortunately he returned quickly, and the Swift did not lose much speed in the manoeuver.
“All stop!” Gari cried suddenly.
Scootaloo let go of the sail and untied the rope. The gaff dropped with a soft whoosh, and Rainbow Dash tumbled to the deck.
“I told you to sit in the net,” Fog Pilot chided.
“Hey, it’s dark up there!” Rainbow Dash said. “I thought I was on a crosstress!”
On his way down Huck unhooked the two higher lanterns, leaving only the running light on the rear mast. Gordon and Fog Pilot brought out every lantern onboard, and Gari conjured an orb of white light on the tip of her horn.
Not fifty metres in front of them a big wooden ship bobbed in the waves with her sails down. Three tall masts disappeared into the black sky, each with four yards (the longest of which extended a full ship’s width over the water on either side). Her deck rose a good five feet out of the water. She looked like a morbidly obese whale compared to the sleek and low-floating Swift.
“Jackdaw!” Hailed Captain Gilbert in a loud, clear voice. “This is Swift!”
For a moment there was no response. Then a fireball lit up the night sky, accompanied by a pressure wave that even made Gari cringe.
A pair of big white wings followed close behind the flames. Onboard the Jackdaw three ponies were sprinting to middeck, brandishing wooden boards and frayed ropes. The fireball faded before the fight began.
“Huck! Compass!” Captain Gilbert barked. “Ready a dory! Gordon, you’re leading. Take my rifle!”
“Rifle?” Gari repeated, pulling her gaze off the shadowy shape of the Jackdaw. “That’s a bit excessive, is it not?”
“Not with Weatherly, it isn’t,” Captain Gilbert said through his closed beak.
The black dory swayed in the water. At twenty feet long it somehow managed to look as sturdy as a paper boat. Huck pulled in the thole pins and rowed away with surprising speed. Each time the little boat disappeared behind a wave Scootaloo feared it would be gone for good.
When they were almost beside the other ship something flashed on the dory, accompanied by a loud boom like a sledgehammer striking concrete.
All was silent, save for the restless ocean. For ten minutes nothing seemed to happen. The lanterns remained pointing forwards, while the eastern horizon turned from black to indigo to dark blue.
“Okay, I see a ladder,” Captain Gilbert said.
Scootaloo squinted into the darkness. Gari’s presence on deck was the only thing keeping her from climbing the bowsprit.
“I think that’s Gina,” Rain whispered in her ear.
It could very well have been. Scootaloo could only make out dim outlines on the ladder. She counted four, and then the dory turned and headed back to the Swift. She was about to call out, but her mouth went dry when the dory came close enough to be clearly seen.
Grace and Gina lay on the floor beneath a woolen blanket. The left side of Grace’s face was pitch black; even her beak was stained. Her mouth moved constantly, but the dory was too far away for those onboard the Swift to hear her words. Her sister had bandages around her head, and her once white feathers ranged in colour from red to pink to yellow.
Galina and Gregor sat at the rear of the dory. They at least were conscious. Galina was missing a few feathers, and her left eye was swollen shut. Gregor held a big square of gauze around his right forearm.
“Scootaloo, Rain,” Gari said distractedly as the dory pulled up on the starboard side. “Bring the first aid kit to the hold and put on the kettle. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Throwing aside her waterlogged cloak, Gari rose into the air and glided into the night towards the other ship. Her horn lit up, and panicked cries could be heard coming from the deck of the Jackdaw.
Captain Gilbert sighed. Turning to face the two children, he extended his big wings to block their view.
“Ow… Ow…” Grace moaned weakly as she was lifted with ropes onto the Swift.
Scootaloo and Morning Rain did exactly as they were told without speaking and then huddled on the bench in the kitchen. All the lanterns were still on deck, but just enough light came through the hatch for them to finish their work.
After some time Fog Pilot came into the kitchen and took away the whistling kettle. Scootaloo strained to hear the voices on the other side of the door. She did not breathe easy until dawn broke.
#
After a late breakfast Scootaloo and Rain were allowed back into the forward hold under the condition that they would not disturb the newcomers. They entered the room as one would enter a lion’s cage (which was not a bad analogy).
Galina and Gregor were lying on a large mat in the middle of the hold. It could have been the exact spot where Scootaloo and Rain had danced the night before. Above them were two new hammocks, each one with a skinny brown tail dangling down the side.
“Who there?” Gina mumbled as Scootaloo approached.
“It’s just me,” Scootaloo replied.
“Scootaloo?”
A bandaged head popped up from the hammock on the right; only the beak and one bloodshot eye were exposed.
“Go back to sleep, Grace,” Galina said softly.
“Was awful,” Gina said. “Captain Weatherly... Very bad pony.”
Morning Rain looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice.
“What happened?” He asked.
“Captain Weatherly’s side business,” Gregor said. “The Jackdaw was full of fuel. We didn’t know until an hour after we boarded. She picked it up from some small port in Baltimare. One of the tanks started leaking a week ago.”
“Couldn’t breathe,” Gina interrupted.
“Captain Weatherly locked us in the hold,” Gregor continued. “It’s illegal to have passengers onboard along with that much fuel, and if we radioed for help she would get into a lot of trouble. We didn’t find a way out until last night, and by then it was too late. There was a fire, and things just got out of control.”
Scootaloo followed his gaze across the floor. Her gasp came out as a whimper.
Cabbage lie on a white cloth, stretched out like a giant green pheasant. His eyes were closed; his expression would have been serene, were it not for his gaping mouth and outstretched tongue. His feathers were dull, many of them bent and stripped.
Grace stared too, fresh tears welling up in her one good eye.
“I never thought he would go like this,” Gregor mumbled glumly.
Scootaloo clambered into her hammock and pulled the blanket over herself. She could hear Grace sobbing softly. After a while she allowed herself to cry too.
#
The funeral was held at sundown under a cloudless sky. Captain Gilbert allowed Grace to sew the bag shut herself. Everyone who had a cloak wore it with the hood up. Scootaloo was surprised to see the Swift’s entire crew in dark cloaks identical to the one Gari wore. Rainbow Dash had only her Wolderbolts flight suit, and was required to take her hood off.
Scootaloo and Morning Rain each contributed a single pinion, as did the twins and their parents. Their offering was tied with a red ribbon and tucked beneath Cabbage’s right wing before he was sewn in.
A big steel bearing was tied around Cabbage’s ankles. Gregor lowered the body over the starboard side, accompanied by a single rusty harmonica. Cabbage disappeared into the inky blackness. For a while there rose a trail of bubbles, and then he was gone.
The twins could not stomach fried fish that night, and ate their porridge half-heartedly only after much coaxing from their parents and Gari. Scootaloo felt rather embarrassed about her own ravenous appetite.
Since they slept away much of the day the children were put on anchor watch together. They scrubbed the pots and dishes under a starry sky, and then sat in a row at the stern. Grace had no wings to wear; they had been damaged in the explosion, and the broken frame had cut her right side quite badly. Scootaloo was relieved when Gina finally asked about the last leg of her journey across Equestria.
“You went to Saltlick?” She said. “That amazing! Did you see their salt sculpture museum?”
“We were there for one night,” Rain began to say, but he was interrupted by a dull bang from below.
The children huddled together as far from the water as they could get. The noise came again; it sounded like it was coming from the water beneath the hull.
Glug. Glug. Glug.
Boom.
“C… Cabbage…” Grace whimpered.
Boom!
Grace buried her face in her sister’s cloak. Scootaloo dared not move.
How can anypony sleep through this?
“M… maybe it’s a whale,” Rain suggested even as he hid his face beneath his hooves.
It went on for five long minutes. Scootaloo could imagine Cabbage blown up a hundred times his usual size pecking at the ship’s underside, trying to come back from the dead. But it never came to be. The noise receded into the depths, and was never heard again.
The children stayed on deck for an extra hour before Rain finally stood up. They went below deck in a single file line. Rain went to Fog Pilot’s hammock, while Scootaloo woke Rainbow Dash. She tried to say something, but only managed a soft squeak.
“Hey kid,” Rainbow Dash said with a yawn. “What’s the matter?”
“Did you hear anything?” Scootaloo asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think Huck snores.”
Scootaloo glared at her sister.
“What did you hear?” Rainbow Dash asked seriously.
“It sounded liked something banging on the bottom of the ship,” Scootaloo said. “It was really loud. Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?”
“I’m a light sleeper,” Dash said, a sneer tainting her voice. “Nothing gets past me.”
“Right,” Scootaloo said, and returned to her hammock without another word.
Beside her Gina was struggling to fold her wings comfortable. In the end she let them dangle down the sides.
That night Scootaloo couldn’t help looking around the room periodically. She never failed to find another pair of frightened eyes.
#
Gari would not say what she did to the Jackdaw, only assuring the children that Captain Weatherly and her crew had been dealt with appropriately.
“Of course I didn’t leave them to drown!” She said after much prodding. “Is that something I would do?”
“Auh,” Gina said. “Sect ata.”
“You’re supposed to be practicing Standard,” Gari chided.
“My Standard is better than Scootaloo’s Grishish,” Gina said. “She practice Grishish.”
“She doesn’t know any,” Gari said.
“It’s easy,” Grace said.
“Easier than Equestrian Standard,” Gari admitted. “And that’s why you should be practicing Standard.”
Grace’s face was a mess when Gari first removed her bandages, but a pot of warm water later she was looking like her old self. She was missing a few patches of feathers, but her wounds looked to be only skin deep.
The constant supply of work coupled with day after day of sunny weather lifted the children’s spirits considerably. Huck and Gordon spent half a day sewing makeshift work suits for the young griffins from sailcloth and old flags. The end result was rather nice-looking, and Gari took some time to jot down the pattern. Scootaloo was sure that if she ever returned to Canterlot she would see children wearing something similar.
On the third day they raced each other up the main mast. Unbeknownst to the Captain, Fog Pilot had tied a ribbon at the apex and promised a small, jewel-encrusted pocket knife to the one who brought it to him. Gina won by a long shot, and made a point of slicing every dessert date she ate that night into small cubes.
“Tired of fish yet?” Compass Rose asked, japing Scootaloo in the side and almost making her drop her jam-covered hardtack.
“It’s not so bad,” Scootaloo said. “I mean, fishing’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Except that ugly thing we caught yesterday. What was it anyways?”
“I don’t know,” Compass Rose said with a shrug. “If it has more than twenty eyes I usually just cut the line and take the rest of the day off. I can’t believe you tried to gut it!”
“That was me,” Grace said.
“It’s okay,” Compass Rose said. “It’s a beginner’s mistake. Heck, Huck still does it sometimes. As a rule, if it doesn’t look like a fish you should let it go. Once you let out five hundred yards of line there’s no telling what kind of nastiness you’ll dredge up.”
“How long have you been doing this?” Scootaloo asked.
“Ten years,” Compass Rose replied proudly. “I came onboard when I was fourteen. Gari leant me to Gil for one season.”
“I don’t lend my children out to anybody,” Gari interrupted. “You two wanted to go!”
“I’m not saying it’s bad,” Compass rose said. “But you had to do some arm-bending to get a captain to take two boys who’d never been to sea.”
“It wasn’t that much arm-bending,” Captain Gilbert said. “I was looking for boys to process the fish, and the Children of the Night had lots of those kicking around.”
“Anyways,” Compass Rose continued. “That wasn’t fishing like you’re doing. We had long lines and dories. The weather’s not so nice either. There’s a reason ponies didn’t come up with decent tall ships until six hundred years ago. We’re not meant for it. My brother and me, we’re half sylvanocian. We weren’t used to all this open space, you know. And the earth pony in me didn’t like this shifting ground much. We handled meat a bit better than other ponies; that’s all we had going for us, really. We were eating fish three meals a day. Fried fish, boiled fish, stewed fish heads, roe…”
He stuck his tongue out in disgust.
“You won’t ever let that go, will you?” Gilbert chuckled. “Well, you were paid handsomely, weren’t you? Five hundred pounds each for your lousy work. You urchins couldn’t make that much in ten years if you stayed on land! And I didn’t hear a peep from either of you about the fish when we were out there!”
“Gari told us not to complain,” Compass Rose said.
“You see?” Gilbert said to Gari. “You tell your boys not to talk, and then you turn around and blame me for not listening to them.”
“I thought you’d know more about ponies,” Gari said, looking a little miffed. “Both your sisters are ponies!”
“Hold everything!” Rainbow Dash cried. “How does that even work? I mean, do griffins and ponies…”
“No,” Gari said, putting a hoof to her face. “No. Never. But griffins do adopt foals, and ponies do adopt griffin cubs. That’s all it is.”
Rainbow Dash folded her ears and resumed nibbling on her hardtack.
“Anyways, that’s as simple as I can make it,” Compass Rose continued. “Like Gil said, it’s good money if you don’t drown.”
Captain Gilbert took the last date from the plate and looked around the room.
“Scootaloo,” he said. “You take the first watch with Rainbow Dash.”
Scootaloo almost choked on her dessert.
“Really?”
“Yes, really,” the Captain said.
“Come on squirt,” Rainbow Dash said, getting up from the table. “Grab those pots and let’s go.”
Scootaloo stacked the pots and bowls on her back and raced up the steep steps. She never saw the concern on Gari’s face.
#
“You lived at an orphanage for how long?”
“About a year,” Scootaloo said, her voice distorted by the giant pot she was scrubbing.
“That sounds pretty rough,” Rainbow Dash said before dumping overboard the slob bucket.
“It wasn’t bad,” Scootaloo said defensively. “That was the happiest year of my life! I had lots of friends, I had a good job, and the food was amazing. I wouldn’t have known what a scooter was if I hadn’t been a courier. It’s not like I was locked away or anything. Have you seen the Canterlot Orphanage? It barely has a fence.”
“But wasn’t it just a little weird?” Rainbow Dash pressed on. “Don’t get me wrong, I think Gari’s nice and all, but living with so many other kids? Sharing everything? Didn’t you feel like you were just another face in a crowd? Didn’t you feel… less special?”
“Why would I?” Scootaloo said. She rinsed out the last of the bowls and sat down against the forecastle. “And we didn’t share everything; clothes belonged to us for as long as they fit, and some things like cloaks were ours to keep. I don’t see how that’s different from Apple Bloom getting Applejack’s old rain boots. And if there’s something one of us really needed, we would get it. I got my helmet and goggles when I was working as a courier, and they’re mine to keep. It’s not like what Gari went through; we had some really nice things, but we were never wasteful.
“Dash, the Canterlot Orphanage is nothing like those old stories! We… we were a family. A really big family. I had brothers and sisters there. We were treated well. We went to regular schools, we went traveling sometimes, and the best part: nopony looked down on us. It’s a lot better than what I would have done if dad left me alone for a year.”
“He wouldn’t do that, would he?”
“Who? My dad?” Scootaloo said. “I don’t know. He’s left me alone for a month or two before then…”
“He what?” Rainbow Dash’s jaw dropped. Scootaloo bristled at the look of pity in her eyes.
“Listen, Dash,” she said, standing up and flaring her wings under her suit. “I know what you’re thinking. You think my dad’s a bad pony for what he did. You think there’s something wrong with me because I lived at an orphanage. You’re wrong. If I hadn’t been there, if my dad hadn’t gone away for a year, there would be nothing right about me today. I would still be stealing apples in Canterlot and climbing into chimneys for twenty bits. I would never have gone to school, I would never have moved to Ponyville, and I would never have met Sweetie Belle or Apple Bloom. I would never have met you either.
“The orphanage was a safe place for me; I had a family there. For once I wasn’t a burden to anypony. I felt like I was worth something; that I belonged in Equestria. I was good for something beyond picking through garbage and stealing.
“Do you see why I followed Rain when he came to me? I don’t just call him my brother; he is my brother. Shining Dawn; Swift Fog; Arcing Craft; Windy Shores; they were my brothers and sisters, and they weren’t the only ones. If they’re in danger, how can I stay away?”
Scootaloo stood with legs stiff, breathing heavily.
“Kid…” Rainbow Dash began. “I didn’t mean…”
“Let’s not talk about this anymore, okay?” Scootaloo said. “I don’t need you to tell me how to feel.”
She walked to the port side and lie down beneath the gunwale. The violent drumming of her heart was enough to keep her from falling asleep.
After a few minutes Scootaloo heard footsteps approaching from behind. Rainbow Dash stopped in her right and draped one wing over her back.
It felt good, despite all that had happened. Scootaloo sighed heavily and closed her eyes.
She could see the outlines of everything in the cabin below.