I still had nothing better than that raft, but our objective wasn’t far so off we went. The Radio accompanied us with that lousy song and ignored all questions.

Some observations:

1. Her name was Schmendrick. Fire Owen had given her that name, she said. I wondered why; Schmendrick was my favorite character from my favorite book; he was a hapless magician who became the greatest in the world. But it wasn’t easy for her to pronounce: Shmen Rick. I knew who she meant.

1. Schmendrick was a lady. She was going to have babies in twenty days, or as she said it: “viente dias,” and asked if I had a nest she could use to care for them. I told her of course I did, who wouldn’t have a nest? Such a silly question.

But I hadn’t broken into the Observatory yet. No nest. Better get on that.

Her fur blazed white in the sunset. Quite a handsome creature, even dirtied up. She kept lookout while I kicked and paddled.

She looked down at the Radio through the water as it followed us in its intermittent fashion. “What word,” she said.

“Radio. It helps us.” Sort of.

“Radio. Radio. Dead Fire Owen no Radio.” She sniffed the air, then my face as I huffed and puffed. “Dead Owen no guts moon.”

Guts moon. Something that is inside a person that blazes like the moon. “I have that now.”

Her head reared back like she was a cobra. “Owen burned gone. Regresó?”

“No, I’m so sorry. I’m someone who…I’m not, but I look like him and have part of him in here.” I tapped my forehead.”

She flopped to the narrow deck. After a while she lifted her snout to the darkening sky and howled. It wasn’t a single clear note like when a wolf cuts loose. It was a lot of yapping and and wailing, like a coyote.

Unbearable. I scooped Schmendrick into my arms and cuddled her against my chest. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d wanted to. She was a bony, sinewy little thing, weighing maybe as much as a big housecat.

I stroked her and rocked her. She stopped howling but still whined and muttered sad noises, umf umf. I didn’t tell her it would be okay, because that’s always a lie. But I did shush her, gently, and hum a song my mom had made up when I was little.

She started humming the same song, though I had never sung it to her. Not this me. A different me.

Finally she looked up at me, ears rising around her pointed face. “New Owen.”

“That’s right. We can think about the Owen who was your friend. We can talk about him. I’ll try to be like him.”

“Smell worse.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that.”

Drifting over the water: howls. Just like hers had been, but a lot more of them. We’d arrived.

And it really was a cage boat fight.

Okay, readers, Human ones especially. You've been so patient with my account and I genuinely appreciate it. This next part, though? I wouldn't blame you for getting squicked out by the weirdness. Let's dip our toes in:

First of all, dense smoke. It was a clear evening but there was something causing a huge mess of gray, impenetrable fog, a nasty tower of it that reached high into the air. The wind was blowing it our way. The cloud held dim moving shadows that were hard to read in the setting sun: blobs? Bony limbs?

A huge wreck of some kind, shaped vaguely like a rocket ship made in the fifties. It was a pointy black cylinder, elaborately decorated with silver swirls and arabesques, shining metal stars and suns. Curved fins from the top and sides, the ones I could see. It was something I’d seen recently, something familiar. Not this thing, but something like it…

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Ah. The cage in the cave. It had been built with this same florid style. What had Mandy called the people who had made it? The Iron Conclave. That sounded right.

The Rocket Ship, if that’s what it was, was half-sunk in the shallow sea. It looked new; shiny and well kept, except for the hole blown in its side, something from within the thing had blasted outward. The black, silver-trimmed panels of the hull were torn open to form a ragged metal flower. The smoke flooded from that hole. The occasional flicker of indigo light would light everything up in there.

And yes, through that torn metal I could see what could only be cages. Familiar ones.

The whole thing looked dangerous. Dangerous and really fancy, artistic. It looked expensive, and whoever it belonged to? They’d be here to get it.

Atop the crash was a gang of people like Schmendrick. White ones and orange tabby-cat ones, all roughly the same size. They hopped and howled and barked. I couldn’t hear some of what they were saying; I could feel the harmonics of their alien cursing but it wasn’t a frequency I could pick up.

The Schmendrick creatures were plenty riled at something in the cloud of smoke. The blobby shadows. One of them would venture near the pack, just at the border of the fog, and they’d bark and scream at it. The thing would go away before I could get a look at it.

I paddled my raft to the wreck. “Hey!” I shouted. “What are you guys doing?” Just like a damn kid seeing friends working on a tree fort. Can I play with you guys? Some rescue mission.

Those pointy noses swung my way. Ears went up, long tails waved. Yelling barks ensued. Schmendrick barked back. I thought for a moment the whole gang of them would jump into the water and climb aboard; they were bouncing excitedly in place and whining, wiggling.

Something dark and small arced from the cloud, an egg-sized thing. It struck the hull of the ship and went BANG! A flat puff of ominous yellow smoke drifted away, mingling with the fog. None of the Schmendricks were anywhere near it, whatever it was.

“Time out, we don’t use mustard gas!” I shouted. I reached the side of the wreck and found plenty of handholds in the ornate metal trim of it. My raft bobbed as Schmendrick swarmed up the side with me.

When she rejoined her pack, all of them glared up into the cloud, bared their white fangs and spat a single word in unison, one that raised my hackles and filled the air with heat. A burst of the not-purple light flared hugely inside the cloud.

“Whoa, cease fire guys!” I stood in front of the pack, between them and whatever they’d just blasted. Slowly, their teeth were sheathed again, they looked at me, the scary expressions fading. Some of them started crying, like Schmendrick had. Then they charged.

I couldn’t stop laughing. They were just so glad to see me! I got a welcome from them like they were my dogs and I was returning from a long tour of duty. Whining, barking, crying. I knelt on the hull and they frantically nuzzled my face and tried to climb on my head. They pushed me down and buried me with their bodies, yipping joyfully. They had a distinct smell; a little like Cool Ranch Doritos.

“I’m glad to meet you,” I said. “I welcome you to…those logs.” And gestured grandly.

“Llévanos de este lugar, Owen,” shouted one of them. Schmendrick said something to them in their yappy language and they snapped to attention, sort of; their ears fanned out, necks straight up.

As a single mass they ran down the side of the downed ship and either leaped for the raft or into the water nearby. It was obvious some of them simply couldn’t swim, and were aided by their comrades.

They started to calm down once they were all aboard. I counted twenty of them. They were curling into legless loaf shapes all up and down the logs, their heads darting about like periscopes with ears. No room was left on the raft for Owen, but that was just fine. I was the motor.

“What happened?” I called down to Schmendrick. “What’s this thing that’s burning?”

“Cage air boat,” she snarled. “Hunters hurt it. Got out.” She turned to her family and screamed in Inglés: “The HUNT!”

They all turned to her and screamed it right back: “The HUNT!” in perfect unison, except for one who said “la CAZA!”

“So who else is here?” I pointed at the cloud. “Who are those guys?”

“Gardener,” sneered Schmendrick, her thin black lips curling.

I scanned for bonus info. Each of the Hunt here had a soul, a fluffy, huggable soul with dangerous spikes and thorns.

The cloud was full of souls as well. Tranquil ones, for the most part. Placid, meditative. Perfect spheres, not a lot of thrashing or intricacy. Wait: one was a crackling mass of sparks and spiteful lightning. I knew that was the guy I’d end up talking to, and he’d probably been the one throwing the damn bombs.

I lost count of the souls in the cloud at around twenty-five. They moved about, mixing and swirling with one another. They were airborne, all up there in a tall mass. None of them were anywhere near touching the craft or the water. Flyers.

I stood atop the wreck; it was warm against my bare feet, like that lock had been in the cave. Magic. Or a fuel leak, perhaps. Finishing this quickly would be ideal. I stood on the edge of the fog and waved my arms. “Hey! I’m an emissary from the Observatory, and I’m here to help if you’ll let me.”

The soul I’d noted earlier, the nasty sparky one, slowly descended. It came closer to my dramatic perch on the smoking wreck and emerged from the fog.