Chapter Twenty-one

I was almost sure Krissy’s new clothes were some sort of theater costume, rather than everyday street-clothes, but she was wearing them proudly. The outfit kind of suited her, although they were a little big for her. Brown leather or maybe suede trousers, a pair of worn boots, a grey shirt, and a dark, almost black, hooded … something — not really a cape, but it wasn’t a poncho either. Something in between. The edges of the cape-poncho hybrid were frayed and torn in a few places, giving it a ragged look, and it covered nearly every inch of her. She seemed to like it, and I was sure it was warmer and more comfortable than the blue dress she’d been wearing before.

Akela lay on the ground, occasionally sniffing Krissy’s new clothes, but otherwise not moving, digesting his hearty lunch of unigoat meat and guts.

I hadn’t told — or drawn — anything to Krissy, and she was probably unsure what I was doing or where I was going with it. She put some wood on the fire, then she settled down to watch the spectacle.

I held two pieces of wood — broken planks from the shipwreck — with two Mana-Gloved tenties and I was poking at them, my immaterial appendages going through them as if they were made of air. I should have been ready to begin my experiment, but I was feeling nervous — something akin to stage-fright, since Krissy was watching. I really didn’t want to embarrass myself. I had to remind myself that I was an invisible spirit and I had nothing to worry about even if I messed up a little.

The idea was simple: glue. I didn’t know the scientific principles behind adhesion, but I knew you could make glue using, flour, water or milk, corn starch and a bunch of other readily available ingredients. And the kind of ingredients at my disposal were even better. The issue of libido aside, Krissy’s wet clothes sticking to her skin as if glued had not only been a beautiful sight, but it had provided me with the kind of inspiration I needed. Whoever said muses didn’t exist couldn’t have been more mistaken.

I took a little Mana. A single MP. I could use Mana on its own it to knock the planks around, I could even use it to break them. Instead, I had the MP coat the edges of the planks. Mana did as instructed, but the moment I cut the supply from the pool, it began to dissipate into the air, vanishing, probably reverting to Essence in a matter of five or six seconds. Mana didn’t last long out in the material world without constant replenishment.

Next I pressed the two planks together by their edges with some Mana between them. I willed the magical substance to permeate both pieces and hold them together. Mana did exactly what I needed it to do — tightly gluing the planks together — for about five seconds. Then it was gone, and the two planks were back to being separate entities again. Now, as for a bonding agent to make the Mana stay in this world for a more reasonable period of time, I had plenty of Essence in the pool, and a bit of Spirit Stuff I had isolated during our early morning hunt.

It took me almost the whole day to figure it out: with about ninety-eight percent Mana, two percent Essence and just a sprinkle of Spirit Stuff kneaded into an invisible dough, I had a spiritual PVA glue that not only worked, but stayed and kept working without a constant supply of Mana.

I held up the two unified planks to Krissy. She took them and tried to pull them apart, break them, even banging them against a rock, but it didn’t budge. Krissy set the piece down in front of Akela, then patted his head, nodding in approval. I couldn’t help but feel that the lazy mutt was somehow stealing the credit for this achievement. Ah, being invisible had its drawbacks.

***

Krissy presented the successful experiment to Kenta and Tommy in the evening, all of them sitting around the firepit, eating their dinner. I was getting increasingly jealous of them being able to eat actual food, and that included Akela, too, even if his dinner was raw meat.

The two sailors stared at the joined pieces of wood with wonder, then they presented their own success: thin vines twisted into a three meter long rope. It was strong, and they had done such a good job that it almost looked like actual, factory made rope, save for the colour. I was impressed, and so was Krissy.

And I was impressed that Kirssy had had the foresight not to chase away or kill the sailors. Now that we had mostly everything we needed to build a raft, or a ship, we would be relying on the men’s expertise to make it happen, not to mention the actual sailoring required to navigate the seas. Oh, my clever, beautiful Krissy.

‘Akela,’ I said to the wolf. He lifted his head and looked around. ‘We’re definitely keeping her.’

Not-prey good belly-rub.

***

The next morning I demonstrated to Kenta and Tommy how my spirit-glue worked. From their point of view it was two pieces of wood floating together to touch each other and then staying like that. But they were sufficiently awed, and they began to actually design our ship, drawing with sticks on the ground.

The design process was long — three days of drawing and re-drawing again and again, the sailors sometimes agreeing, sometimes arguing to the point where our island queen had to step in to calm them down. Kenta and Tommi were sailors, not shipbuilders, but I imagined they had spent a significant time of their lives on ships, so I trusted them to have a decent knowledge of what was what and how it was made.

Krissy was talking more and more with the sailors, and I started picking up words here and there: wood, plank, beam, rope, tar … mostly ship-building words. But it was a start. I also noticed that Krissy had dialed down her evil queen persona, talking to the men with less venom and resentment than before.

As the days passed, a certain order, a division of labour came into existence in the Kingdom of Misery Island, and we all just sort of fell into a rhythm, doing the work that needed to be done.

Akela and I hunted when we ran out of food, We even found some roots the humans judged edible, expanding our island cuisine. Queen Krissy took over cooking from me, having learned the simple cleaning, cutting and brining of meat and roots. She was also the one fetching fresh water from the stream, and the sailors showed her how to collect vines and turn them into ropes, so she took that over as well.

Kenta and Tommy finally settled on the ship’s design, and it fell to them and to me to chop down trees and to process them into usable shapes and sizes.

Mana was an incredible substance, the only one of the the Holy-Trinity that could interact with the material world by itself. I was probably the first chef-turned-carpenter in both worlds who used Mana for knives, spatulas, axes, saws, planers and files.

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***

Much to Akeka's annoyance, I spent more and more time with the sailors, trying to manufacture the pieces needed for our ship. Kenta and Tommy quickly got used to seeing me cutting wooden bits and pieces, floating planks vanishing and re-appearing and such.

As much as I enjoyed doing it, woodworking turned out to be a slow-going and Mana-intensive activity. I could chop down smaller trees easily enough: all it took was willing a couple of MPs to coat a tentie in a blade-like fashion, and voila, trees were falling. Transporting a tree to the beach was relatively easy, too: I just had to cut it into two or three smaller logs, and I could fit a few of them into Jack’s Room. One of the biggest problems at this point in the operation was Akela’s complaints about walking back and forth between beach and forest instead of doing fun things like hunting or lazing around.

Cutting logs into planks and beams took a lot of Mana, and it took me a while before I could make them straight and smooth, not to mention getting the angles right the way Kenta wanted them.

Gluing the pieces together was slow work. After every half a meter of glued material, I had to refill my Mana-pool. I considered using less spirit-PVA, but quickly dismissed the idea: our lives would soon depend on the ship not falling apart, so it would have been ill-advised to skimp on the amount of spirit-glue.

Akela also needed frequent breaks, slowing the process down even more. He did not like the beach at all, plus he was bored most of the times and wanted to go play. I was beginning to worry about our upcoming voyage on the sea, wondering how my buddy would handle being on a small ship with very little room to run around. But the work went on, and we were making progress.

***

Thirty days after beginning the construction, our ship was taking shape: an ugly, rectangular shape resting on a sturdy frame a meter above ground, resembling a small World War Two landing craft with a mast. It was far from finished, but at least it was more or less the way Kenta and Tommi had designed it to be, and I was satisfied with the progress.

Krissy occasionally walked down to the beach to check on our progress. She didn’t have any complaints: if anything she was as impressed as I was.

A side-effect of having spent so much time with the sailors was that I was learning their language. Naturally, I mastered the swearwords quickly, as those were flying about all the time. The rest was going slower, but I found myself understanding their discussions more and more.

Fifty days after beginning the construction, we were nearly there, and the question whether a spirit could get tired or not had been answered. Having to use my entire Mana-pool and keep re-filling it again and again … it wore me down. Even Akela was moody these days. But I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Krissy’s ropes and the salvaged canvas sheets from the old sail were the last pieces of this ship-shaped puzzle. The three humans worked hard to craft the patchwork sails, but it was done in a matter of a few days, and on day seventy-three our ship was ready.

By this time Akela and I had hunted a lot, and I made it to Level 24.

My spherical body grew to a diameter of about 24 centimeters, and my seven tenties stretched to an impressive 2 meters. My primary Essence pool’s maximum capacity stood at 62, the secondary Essence pool at 30. My Mana pool’s max was at 35, and I managed to expand Jack’s Room to have 50 spaces. That was quite a lot, and I had no doubt I could stuff enough provisions for the three humans to last at least two months. I was really seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

***

We all stood on the beach, admiring the result of our labour. No-one said anything; we were all tired, my humans were all mucky, but they were smiling.

Krissy decided on the name: The Island Queen. I had no problem with the name, Kenta and Tommi didn’t argue much either. I was just happy it was finished, and happy that I got to the point where I understood the conversation. Krissy walked around the ship, smiling, touching the the dry coat of tar on the base of the ship. Kenta and Tommi were smiling, too, walking around the ship as well, checking everything again and again, making sure they had not missed anything. I smiled, too, inside my soul. I was proud of them. I was proud of my humans. And Akela of course. If any of us had not been here, this wouldn’t have been possible. I extended my senses to touch on the tiny, eternally preserved body of Jack in his room; I was sure that as an ant, he would understand and approve of the teamwork we had displayed over the the past two, almost three months. I sensed Gladys’ body as well — as fluffy and feathery in death as she had been in life. I was sure she’d have been proud of us, too.

Kenta and Tommi helped Krissy climb up on the ladder, and the island queen boarded the Island Queen. The two sailors followed her, showing and explaining what was what and how seafaring worked in general. It seemed my time — our time — on Misery Island was coming to an end soon. But there were still things to do: we still needed to cut a few more trees to make a number or round logs so we could roll the ship to the water. Then we had to take it for a test-drive, or whatever the phrase was when it came to ships. We also needed to procure and store provisions, and I somehow had to prepare Akela for a journey on sea that could last a day, a week, a month, or more.

***

‘You’re such a puppy, Akela,’ I said to the mutt, flailing my tenties around in my irritation, wishing he could see them. ‘It will be fine. There’ll be plenty of food, plenty of drinking water, and Krissy will give you belly-rubs twenty times a day. The only issue is space.’

Akela had not enjoyed the test run of The Island Queen. In his simple, wolf-y way, he had expressed his wish not to set paw on the big wooden thing ever again. I was running out of arguments to convince him otherwise.

Bad. Big thing bad. Water. Bad.

‘Look, buddy, I can’t leave you behind. You’d die,’ I said.

Water bad. Dying good. He argued with me, and I shook my imaginary head.

‘You’ve got nothing here,’ I argued. ‘The other wolves won’t even talk to you.’

Others bad.

I was dismayed. Akela was my companion. My friend. We were buddies forever, and I wasn’t going to rip his soul out just so I could hop onto Krissy or one of the sailors and leave the island.

But ... I really wanted to leave the island. I’d been here for over two years, two and a half even. I remembered the exact moment when I’d quietly accepted that Misery Island was to be my lot for the rest of my existence. I had accepted that at the time. But I remembered the moment I’d first seen Krissy’s frightened face. I hadn’t realised it at the time, but there was something I had felt in my soul, hiding under dismay and annoyance: hope.

I wanted to leave and see what this world was like. I really wanted to go with Krissy, Kenta and Tommi, enjoy the company of the kind of creatures I had once been. Even if I was spirit now. Even if they couldn’t see me. And I wanted Akela to be there with me, too.

But if Akela refused, if I couldn’t get him to tag along, then I knew I would stay. So I had to try harder.

‘Alright you useless mutt,’ I said. ‘What is it you want? What can I do to make you get on the big bad thing and come along? Hm?’

Mate. Pups. He replied immediately.

Oh. Alright, so he … wanted to get laid and have kids. I supposed he was at that age, whatever that age was for wolves. Reasonable. And totally impossible if he stayed here: none of the packs here wanted to have anything to do with him. It had been like that even before I had got here.

‘Alright,’ I said to him, then paused for a second. ‘So … you will get on the big bad thing, endure the big wobbly field of water, and I promise you I will find you a nice wolf-girl once we are on dry land again. Sound good?’

Fine.