Chapter Eight

I figured the inside of the Wolves’ airship would be weird.

I didn’t expect it would be a studio.

The long, tubular hall was lit by glowing streams of rainbow that slithered against the walls and ceiling, fading in and out like eels swimming along a river’s surface. The walls themselves were, unsurprisingly, the same clay as the ship’s exterior, although here I saw several artistic imprints of Wolves and Creatures. Much of the hall’s space was filled by three rows of nine sofa chairs whose material looked to be made of frozen clouds. In the aisle between two of the rows stood a handful of tall machines, all of which were emitting the same wordless but inviting music in synchrony. Although each machine was shaped and colored slightly differently, they all had a platform jutting out from them on which a joystick and pad of buttons sat.

“The pilot will announce when we can get out of our seats,” Cain said from behind me. “Meanwhile, sit wherever you like.”

I shuffled forward and took the nearest seat, which was the one closest to the front of the airship. The chair felt like it looked, and my goodness was it comfortable. I guessed that the material was some kind of processed wool, but I couldn’t figure out which Creature it would’ve been from. As I reclined and stretched my legs out across the chair, I could feel its material gently but proactively squirm beneath my weight to fit my mold.

I glanced at the armrests and sighed. The handcuffs prevented my arms from stretching that far apart, and I resigned to dropping my hands into my lap.

I watched as Cain and Lenora took seats to my left and right, respectively. I was instinctively relieved that there was aisle space between us. The fantastical notion of catapulting through the air was scary enough without feeling like I had no personal space.

“Please put your seatbelts on,” I heard Cain say.

It was annoyingly difficult to do so with my hands tied, but I obliged the Wolf. As soon as I heard the seatbelt click into place, the right arm of my chair lit up in tranquil shades of green.

“Welcome aboard,” a feminine but mechanical voice said from the arm. “Would you like a snack?”

I raised an eyebrow and laughed. I couldn’t help it. Assuming this wasn’t some covert plot by Bogg and his people to poison me, this was a step up from where I’d been this morning.

And I was ravenous.

“Sure,” I said. I felt awkward speaking into a chair’s arm, but my dignity already had taken several beatings this week. “What’s on the menu?”

“We have: fruit, oatmeal, and meat.”

“Uh…what kind of meat?”

“Polar bear, raven, and mammoth.”

I was hungry, but not so much that I was ready to embrace a Wolf diet. “I’ll just take some fruit. An apple, if you have.”

“One apple,” the voice repeated back to me monotonously. “Enjoy, and have a safe flight.”

The light of the chair’s arm faded, and its cover quickly swung open. With a whoosh, an open tube rose out of the gaping hole, propped up by a small metal platform. The most pristine red apple I’d ever seen sat at its bottom. I reached my hand into the tube, eagerly grabbed the fruit, and took a bite.

I heard a rough, subtle noise from my left, the sound of contemplation. When I turned to Cain, his head was buried in an open book. Maybe the apple’s sugar was hitting my empty stomach too hard, because the image of this mountainous Wolf in his alien suit of armor sitting with a book made me grin.

A few extra pounds of hair and some subtle facial features aside, he almost looked Human.

I shook away the thought as quickly as it had arrived.

“Everyone strapped in?” a high-pitched, joyful voice came from nowhere and everywhere.

“We’re ready,” Cain said into his wrist.

“Great! My name’s Puck, I’ll be your pilot tonight. Flight’s gonna be around ninety-seven minutes. I’ll make an announcement when you can get up and walk around.”

I didn’t know Wolves could be perky.

The world began to shake and grumble, and I clasped my hands together nervously, holding the apple between them. I looked out the window with wide eyes as the Wildlands shifted backward at an accelerating rate.

“Hey,” I said to Lenora, apple bits still in my mouth. “You’ve never flown before, have you?”

“No,” she answered curtly, and turned back away from me.

The bellows of the plane became louder and more high-pitched as it accelerated. I closed my eyes and tried to distract myself with thoughts of my home. Where my little sister was probably begging Dad to let her have pudding after dinner. Where Mom was probably telling stories about the characters she met in the market earlier that day.

Unless…

Would they be consumed by what was happening to me? Had my situation cast a shadow upon the household?

Guilt elbowed away my fear and anxiety about rocketing into the sky. Images of my crying parents crystallized in my mind. I tried to send them away, but they were uncompromising.

Only a few more days of this. My friends will prove that it wasn’t me. When I’m back, I’ll tell you everything.

That I protected our secret.

The plane bounced, and I released a little yelp. The constant groaning of the plane drowned it out, thank goodness, so my chaperones couldn’t have heard me. I looked again at Lenora, who seemed completely calm.

What a sociopath.

I felt a slight pressure as the plane presumably rose off the ground, but I dared not look out the window. Still, the shaking continued. How was that even possible? In the air, there was nothing to bump up against.

I leaned my head back against the cloud-chair and closed my eyes, waiting for the terrifying chaos to end.

Some minutes and an eternity later, the turbulence ended, though the plane’s steady drone was unrelenting. I opened my eyes and saw that Cain was still casually reading his book, as if we weren’t in a giant tube floating among the clouds. Lenora, meanwhile, seemed utterly complacent to sit and stare at the wall.

After a neighborly beep from inside the hall, Puck announced, “Alright folks, we’re at steady altitude. Should be smooth sailing from here on out. Feel free to stretch your legs. The games are free, and there’s plenty of food. You can ping me by pressing the button underneath your chair’s left arm. Or, you can direct your questions at Cain. See you soon!”

What a strange Wolf.

“Hey, Cain,” I called.

He picked his head up from his book and looked at me with those silver-speckled brown eyes.

“Where do I throw this apple out?”

He took his seatbelt off, walked towards me, opened the cover of the right-hand arm of my chair, grabbed the fruit from my hand, dropped it into the abyss, and closed the cover. He returned to his seat without a word or any further eye contact.

I wasn’t in the mood to learn how to play with their electronic gaming machines. Although I wasn’t as anxious about flying as I was when we’d taken off, I was still on edge. I sat quietly for as long as I could with my eyes closed again.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Ah, screw it,” I muttered, and looked past Cain and out the window.

It was terrifying. It was beautiful.

The stars were bright and more numerous than I’d ever seen, as if they came out to show off tonight. My eyes widened as I looked below the dense sea of stars at an endless blanket of gray cloud, continuous but bumpy, like an well-worn carpet.

No matter what happened to me in the next few days, all of these stars and clouds would continue with their docile existence, giants sleeping in homes beyond the reach of Humans.

My problems suddenly felt very small.

Out of the corner of my eye, Cain flipped a page of his book. I turned to him and tried to read the words on the page, but he was too far away.

Roderick’s words whispered to me. Tread carefully, now. Prudence is your friend.

I’d spent the last few days utterly alone. A little conversation would’ve been a fun change of pace. Besides, it couldn’t hurt my chances at survival if I learned a little about the people who’d decide whether I’d live or die.

“Hey, what are you reading?”

Cain turned his head to me with a flat expression. “Carnot.”

“Never heard of him.”

The Wolf just stared at me.

“Well,” I said awkwardly, “what’s the name of the book?”

“Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire.”

“That’s what you read for fun?”

His wide nostrils flared, and he seemed to examine me for a second. Then he shook his head and said, “Apologies for my terseness. I’ve been relearning some science.”

“What does ‘motive power of fire’ have to do with the laws of motion?”

Cain frowned, his black eyebrows practically breakdancing on his face. “What do you mean?”

“Science is just the laws of motion. Nothing about power, or fire, or whatever.”

“I don’t know what those are,” Cain replied calmly. “Do you think the Great Builder built your Polygon using ‘laws of motion’? No. He used the laws of how things are constituted, and how they can be transformed.”

I frowned. “We’ve been using the laws of motion since we’ve been writing down our own history. They’re in the book.”

“What book? Not this one.”

“Right, The Principles of Earth and Blood. The book that governs us, keeps everything together.”

“Your people are run by a book?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Who wrote it?”

I shook my head. “No one knows.”

“I see.”

I heard the skepticism in his voice. “It’s worked for thousands of years. And the laws of motion are certain. They never fail us.”

“Maybe not,” Cain replied. “I don’t know anything about your laws. Do they tell you how to build an airship, or how to transform one element into another?”

“What? Uh, no, of course not.”

“Then your laws, even if they are as true as you say, are missing much of what the Great Builder wants us to discover.”

I bit my tongue and chose tact over aggressive sarcasm. “How do you know what the Great Builder wants for us?”

“Do you really care about this?”

I shrugged. “I got nothing else to do.”

Cain nodded hesitantly. “Anyone who built the playgrounds in which we now live surely wants us to flourish, and to build upon that which He provided,” Cain said, and for the first time, he sounded impassioned.

“Kara…” I immediately regretted bringing her name into the conversation, although Cain didn’t seem to mind. “I think she implied that the Great Builder isn’t really around anymore.”

“He is not the force that He once was,” Cain admitted. “He lost much of His power when He went to war with His lover, Apocalypse.”

I took a breath, resisting any temptation to mock him.

Life was so simple before I was falsely accused, chained, and shipped away.

“Don’t leave me with such a cliffhanger. Why’d they go to war?”

Cain closed his book, and I noticed that he didn’t have a bookmark. “In the beginning, Apocalypse was not only the Great Builder’s lover, but His partner. She helped Him Create all of the toys and playgrounds of the world: the oceanic paradise of the Sharks, the interconnected stones of the Humans, the white sands of the Rats, and the skyward machines of my own people. Once the foundations were ready, the Great Builder—with Apocalypse’s help—Created all of us, each race designed to live in its respective territory. But Apocalypse grew jealous of the attention that Her lover paid to His children.

“She plotted to exterminate all of us—all of our ancestors. On the Night of the Womb, She birthed the Destructors. While the Great Builder designed us to make a more beautiful world on the foundations that He had provided for us, the Destructors were designed for a single, terrible purpose: to exterminate all of His children.”

“I guess there aren’t any Destructors around anymore, yeah? Your guy killed them all?”

“Wyatt, if you’d refer to Him as anything more dignified than ‘this guy,’ I would appreciate it.”

I blinked, surprised at the Wolf’s politeness. “Yeah, sure. Sorry.”

He nodded. “The Great Builder defeated Apocalypse and Her army, but at the cost of His own powers. Now, He remains in the whispers—”

“Of the wind,” I finished. He looked at me with surprise. “Yeah. I’ve heard.”

“And in other ways,” Cain said, and pointed at his silver-specked eye. “The Great Builder cried the day He ended His lover. Some of us are Blessed with the ability to harness his Tears.”

“You mean Godlets. Yeah, we call those people ‘Sparks’.”

Cain cocked his head. “Tears of the Builder,” he repeated. “They are the holiest remnant of our Father. Those of us fortunate enough to be able to wield them are the Blessed. The Mind of the Builder and his Priests have wielded the same Tears, passed down since the Great Builder erected the playgrounds themselves.”

I took a second to digest the Wolf’s story. Then I said, “But still. How do you know this guy built our societies?”

He nodded. “There is no other explanation. If Polygon disappeared all at once, do you think you and your people could rebuild it?”

“Yeah, of course,” I said immediately. “Maintenance and repair are done by Industry all the time.” But then I thought about Polygon’s heart, the Hub. I’d never been there, but I’d heard that no one could explain exactly how it worked. And I knew that all fifteen Cities had been around since before we began recording our own history, and that we hadn’t built a new one since. “Um…I don’t know, actually.”

“Indeed,” Cain said. “As I said, the Great Builder Created not only us, but our homes. He arranged them in precisely such a way that we could live in them without ever understanding their inner workings. In return, we are obliged only to improve upon His playgrounds.”

I shook my head. “Just because we might’ve forgotten some know-how, that doesn’t mean your god’s the one who deserves credit.”

Cain’s lips curved upwards very slightly, and I realized I’d already gotten used to the fact that I was speaking with someone whose fangs were long and sharp enough to open my neck. “One may always find reason to deny the obvious.”

My stomach did a backflip as the airship suddenly rocked in every direction but up. I instinctively turned straight ahead and stared at the clay door in front of us. After a few seconds, the bumping stopped, and my heart crawled back down from my throat and into my chest.

The same beep from earlier sounded off, and Puck announced, “Sorry about that! We should be—”

I would’ve flown out of my seat had I not been strapped in. I looked out the window with horror as I saw the clouds coming closer towards us.

We were falling.

The constant roar of the plane was supplanted by angry howls of wind. I grabbed the chair’s left arm with both hands and stared out the window as we fell plummeted through the clouds.

“Wind’s coming from every direction!” Puck yelled, his childlike tenor overtaken by a very mortal fear.

“Don’t worry!” I heard Cain yell in my direction. “We’ll be fine!”

I nearly vomited my apple as the world rotated so much that I almost lost my sense of orientation.

The music that had been playing from the arcade games stopped, as did the rainbow serpents that had been gliding across the walls. A very loud and adamant alarm went off, blaring its horn every second or so. A dark red light pulsed across the entire hallway in concert with the horn.

“Can’t beat this!” Puck cried.

I felt myself float above my seat, tied down only by my seatbelt. My vision went in and out, and I could no longer tell whether or not I was breathing.

“…adamite gel!”

Is this a dream?

Something cold and slimy tickled my ankles and wrists.

My consciousness continued to play hard-to-get with reality. Time became a series of still frames separated by periods of black.

In what felt like a flash, my entire body was coated with slime. I glanced at my hands with confused horror at the seemingly alive purple goo.

I felt it crawl unabated up my shirt and around my neck.

Will the Wolves suffocate me? Is this their plan?

After another round of blacking out, I felt the Wolf-goo on every square inch of my body, from toes to forehead.

The alarm continued to yell, in combat with the predatory howls of the wind.

The gel had somehow expanded across the room, a giant, breathing sponge that left little room to breathe. I could wiggle a little, but no more than that. And even if I wanted to turn my head to see how the others were doing, the sponge was in between us now.

Cutting through all of the attacks on my eardrums, I heard a screech from my right, after which came so much tumult that I lost all sense of direction. Parts of me pressed against the all-enveloping sponge, which, in my delirium, felt rather soothing.

“We lost a wing! We lost a wing! Night of Apocalypse, we’re going to crash!”

My eyelids were so heavy. My thoughts were incoherent. The screams of merciless nature drowned out my pathetic moans. I saw a dreamland of furry, fanged Wolves in strange armor and dancing lights and sweet apples and a purple sponge that was my new cell.

And then all sounds ceased.

And then my vision cut to black.

And then I fell asleep.

It was so peaceful.