The Stablefield Docks

Chapter Twelve, Summer 2037

Myles, Color, Marshall and Langley were sitting on the third level of an old building close to the edge of the city. Atlas, Mariah, and Jewel were having a discussion about prophecy and other boring stuff several yards behind them. The four seated Astronomers had been watching the stone boats, some the size of buses, others the size of the building they were on, floating about like fish in a drive-thru, coming and going from the docks. About thirty yards from them, there was a group of other fraisers that initially were showing them signs of trouble, but once they saw Atlas and just how armed the rest of the group was, they moved further away.

Just sitting on the building gave Myles many memories and facts about it. The structure was initially a two-story spa with fifteen-foot ceilings, making it nearly the height of a three-story building. The building was Japanese, Atlas had said, as was the whole city of Stablefield. Which meant the whole chunk of the Great Hook was some large piece of Japan. The countryside… that would explain why the roads weren’t separated with yellow stripes and instead had white dotted lines and the road signs were on the wrong side of the road.

The rooftop had large openings that were evidently covered up after the Rise. Nevertheless, the whole building offered a wonderful view of the docks. Myles had Color on his right, sitting quite close to him, and the hooded Langley, whose hands supported him from behind and pushed his shoulders forward, was on his left. Marshall sat cross-legged like Color, with one hand on each knee.

The docks were built with massive metal springboards that helped catch the boats as they floated and drifted close to the city. The weight would come and push against the metal which would give a little and then push back as the whole boat came to rest. There were minders on the edges of each of the boats and once the huge floating rocks came to rest, two men would board the boat and offer them something to drink and eat.

“I wonder what they eat,” Langley said. “What do you think those guys bring the minders every time they dock? Is it because they get tired?”

All four still had their eyes forward as Color answered: “Bread is pretty easy to come by. There are a lot of bakeries because ovens and stoves are easy to make.”

“As opposed to fish, I assume,” Marshall said.

“I’ve heard of fish. They live in the Below, don’t they? Like struellas?”

Langley looked past Myles and at Color at the word ‘struella’ as Myles answered, “Yup. But they’re usually only as big as my arm. And they’re skinny. Have you seen photos before?”

“Once in a picture book by a doctor. I heard the before the Rise, doctors could be a lot more than just people who cure people of sickness or heal broken bones or cuts. Is that right?”

“There are doctorate degrees,” Marshall said, “that you can get for just about anything. There are doctors called PhDs. So instead of the Dee Are before your name, you get a pee aych dee. And you can be an engineer and have a PhD.”

“What’s that?” Color said.

“An engineer is a guy who knows machines and stuff really well,” Marshall said. “They’re usually smart people.”

“Do fish smile?” Color asked.

“Ask Blink. He knows all about fishes. And incidentally, what the hell are you guys talking about when a boat docks? There are minders on each of the boats?”

“Fuck, sorry. Forgot the Guru… you know.” Langley figured he knew what they meant.

“Is as blind as drywall?” Marshall said.

Myles laughed; he couldn’t help himself. “That’s a new one.”

“What’s drywall?” Color asked.

Langley almost said ‘quorux’, but at the last moment, he said, “It’s when a woman doesn’t get a period anymore.”

That set Marshall and Myles off on a new spur of laughter, but Color only made a disgusted face combined with a smile.

“But seriously, it’s stuff that walls in the houses are made of. The inside walls, that is. It’s like super thick cardboard. You know what cardboard is, right?… No offense.” Langley said.

“I don’t know about cardboard, but I’ve seen the insides of houses, so… I understand what Marshall meant.”

They continued watching a couple more boats ease into the harbor.

“A lot of ‘em haven’t moved for a while,” Langley said, meaning the spots in the harbor that hadn’t moved..

“Probably staying a while. Visiting,” Marshall said.

One of the boats, tethered rather close to another, nudged its neighbor and a small swirl of rocks and dust flurried down in a stream and toward the Below. A lot of shouting could be heard from those two ships, most of it inaudible. The small cloud of dirt could be seen for a while longer as it floated toward the planet’s watery core.

Myles turned his gaze to the right again and Color knew what he was looking at. Langley as well. They fixed their gaze on the large speck in the distance.

The Stone Compass. Meant to dock in a day or less.

“We still have no idea how to save Coh, do we?” Marshall said.

“Can’t take him in the forest, that’s for sure,” Color said, still looking at the Compass. “The cavaliers usually train in areas like that and would wipe us out. It’s the city if anywhere. We have the advantage here and that’s probably why they aren’t in here anyway.”

“How many cavs were there, Marshall?”

Marshall shrugged. “A few dozen? And they have a prophet. It wasn’t a small caravan.”

“They got the numbers, that’s for sure. They’re being careful.” Myles began twiddling his thumbs in a circle. Forward and then backward. Then forward-backward. Then tried to make his hands circle themselves in two different directions. Color watched his hands with slight interest and then tried to do the same and found it was just as hard for her. She became frustrated and crashed her hands together in an array of fingers.

“Great.” Myles stood up. He wanted to see what Atlas, Mariah, and Jewel were up to and walked over to them. They were up the ladder on a taller building that was less-safe to be on, but had a better view of the whole city. Myles climbed the several makeshift rungs, two of which were only connected to one side of the ladder. Then he carefully swung his leg onto the building and made the rest of himself follow. He looked down at where Color, Langley, and Marshall sat before wiping his hands once and approaching Atlas and the other girls. They were standing with their backs to him: Atlas’s green jacket on the left, Jewel’s denim dragon-jacket in the middle, and Mariah’s swollen snowcoat on the right. Atlas’s head started to turn a second before Mariah’s as they sensed him behind them. Jewel’s looked for a second, smiled politely, and then looked back to the forest on the outskirts of the city.

“What’s so interesting?” Myles asked as he stood on Atlas’s left.

“When the cavs come, we need a plan,” Atlas said. “It’s dangerous to spy on them, so we were thinking it would be best to have two lookouts, size them up on their way into the city, and execute a plan as they’re inside the city.”

Half-baked, Myles thought. That’s what this was. “This is your best plan?”

“Half-baked… I like that terminology. I’d forgotten about it,” Atlas said and then said, “If our options were more cooperative, we’d likely pick something else. And we’re wide open to other suggestions.”

After staring with them for nearly a minute, Myles asked, “We can’t spy on them by sneaking into their camp at night?”

Atlas said. “They’d know we’re there before we could gather everything we needed and then they would tighten their restrictions as they navigated the city. But if they think that there are no interested parties at the moment, it gives us the element of surprise as they enter the city.”

Myles’s insides felt like a trampoline and his heart was a bowling ball right in the center, weighing it down as the trampoline’s tension tried to push it back. “So that’s the plan when they come out of the woods. What about now?”

“We should elect a lookout,” Atlas said.

The smooth grating of a drawn sword rang once, twice, the second overlapping the first. It came from down the ladder.

Jewel and Atlas ran toward it, Jewel holding her katana and Atlas putting his hand into his green coat. Mariah and Myles made a second of eye-contact before staying a few steps behind Atlas.

Below, Color had each of her knives in her hands, Marshall had both daisho out, and Langley was on his toes ready to fly. Against them were five other fraisers, all girls, one with a drawn machete, two with homemade wooden spears, and the other two with folded arms. Myles guessed the youngest to be a year older than himself.

“Back off,” Marshall said, taking a few slow steps backward. Color was giving ground as well to the aimed spears. Langley was a few inches behind them, toes barely touching the ground.

Color’s fingers were tingling.

Atlas removed his weapon from his jacket: a small black stick, about a foot long and nearly the thickness of a cigar.

Myles and Mariah gained one good look at it and could sense…

Something powerful,

From the stick.

“What’s that?” Myles asked, forgetting a few of his friends were in grave danger. Atlas swung himself down the ladder, green coat making an arc with his swing. The five armed girls watched him and hesitated, waiting to see what he would do.

“You three, up there! You stay there, ya hear?” One of the folded-armed girls said.

It hadn’t occurred to Myles that he could do anything anyway, but he could sense Jewel gritting her teeth and jumping onto the ladder anyway.

Mariah followed and the machete and spears started forward much faster.

“Don’t be stupid!” Marshall advised as he slashed his blades forward against the spears.

Atlas reached the spa’s roof, held the stick out in his right hand for all to see, and let it transform. The whole stick waned and moved like liquid into a new, much larger shape. Now it was a sword. Not a cutlass, not a fencing sword, not a longsword. It was a shorter broadsword. The whole group of girls took a large step back at the sight.

“What’s… Stevie?” Machete asked. “What is that?”

One of the folded-arms girls, now with her hands hovering tense at her sides, had her eyes wide open. She strategically said nothing to hide her ignorance, but her eyes stayed riveted on

Atlas continued to advance upon them, letting the sword transform into a spear with a curved blade. “You heard him; back off.”

The girls all regrouped shyly and ran away.

“Who were they?” Marshall asked.

“Fraiser gang of some kind. The real currency of the whole planet seems to be fraisers,” Atlas said.

“What is that?” Color, along with everyone else aside from Marshall, was looking at Atlas’s weapon.

“Have you heard of the Verity Temple of Veldur?” Atlas asked.

Jewel nodded. “Only heard of it.”

The rest of the fraisers shook their heads or said ‘no.’

“Quorux!” Atlas said as the weapon swirled back into that little black cigar and he tucked it into his jacket.

“What are you guys talking about?” Marshall asked. “I can sense things, but I can’t see.”

Langley said, “Atlas has this black weapon that turns into a spear and a sword, but transforms down to the size of a little stick or wand.”

Marshall wrinkled his brow. “Why the fuck can’t something just be normal for a day? We’re about to attack some caravan led by old-timey cavaliers to save a telekinetic kid with this weridass guy named Atlas who now has a transforming stick? Fuck me. Another question for Atlas: why didn’t you know more about this caravan to begin with? And try to heist it before you met us? How were you going to do this if you didn’t know about us?”

Atlas shrugged. “Frankly, I didn’t know how Coh would be arriving in Stablefield, just that he would be here at a certain time, heavily guarded, and later I learned that the Shepherd would be either stealing him away or he would be traded, probably by cavs.

“The original plan was to take Myles onto the Stone Compass once the Shepherd had him. Myles would claim Auric, the Amber Staff, and we would recover Coh after that.”

The wind dusted and nipped around them like a pack of ghostly chihuahuas, making every loose piece of fabric flap or flow in the wind.

“How did you know that?” Mariah asked the obvious after a silence.

“If you’re a prophet long enough, your prophesying will actually give you glimpses of information of the future,” Atlas said. “Usually the glimpses are vague and you still have to venture into the unknown and fill in the blanks. I had no idea one of the blanks in my plan would be filled with an entire group of fraisers. The Astronomers.”

“Like the trick of blocking your present thoughts out?”

“Exactly. That trick I actually learned from someone who wasn’t even a prophet; he was a Buddhist.”

“What other sights did you see of the future?” Myles was interested.

Atlas just lightly shook his head and Myles and Mariah could finally hear his thoughts, a controlled melody: I’d rather not say. At least not right now.

Myles thought to him, Why tell us anything at all?

Atlas said aloud: “Hushes win the fights, and Hangers always fly,

Minders throw their rocks, but Prophets never lie.”

Color’s face lit up. “We used to say something similar in my village! A little rhyme that summed up all of the fraisers, but it went like this:

“Hangers can fly and love the trees,

“Hushes bend and move like the breeze,

“Minders change the ground and rock,

“And prophets can hear us even when we don’t talk.”

Myles could sense a certain sadness from Color, but it was paired with happiness. The happiness was because she was in a new village in a sense. The poem was a little slice of her village that she remembered, but now it was also part of this present group now.

Atlas’s eyes seemed to always be halfway closed and Myles was wildly curious about all of these things Atlas was referencing, but stopped short with this ‘quorux’ word. Atlas seemed to too relaxed. There was something wrong; Myles knew because Pretty had pointed it out more than once to Myles himself. Damn, what Myles would give to see Pretty in person right now.

“This still doesn’t make complete sense to me, Atlas,” Myles said. “This is such a specific plan… why do you need the staff claimed? Why can’t you do that yourself? And why can’t you just sneak onto the Stone Compass, get Coh, and leave?”

Atlas paused.

Myles said, “Don’t you say that word again. I need some answers.”

“This is a favor for a good friend of mine. If it isn’t executed delicately, Coh will be taken into a different custody than the one he has grown up in all his life. There currently isn’t a way for me to bruteforce my way through the cavaliers to get Coh back right now, even with all of you.

“Coh is an important individual in many peoples’ lives to an extent that you may understand soon. It’s a very, very, very long story. If all goes according to plan, the people who are in charge of Coh won’t realize he has been kidnapped and will allow his real caretaker to continue being his guardian.”

Myles sighed. “I know that answer was supposed to clear up some of the situation and I can tell you’re telling the truth with all of that, but I just feel even more…” even more what? Confused? “It’s like I’m realizing just how little I know about the whole… worlds?”

“Curve. The curve is what houses all the 90 worlds you’re able to currently travel to. You saw all of them when you were in the Void.”

“And outside of the curve?”

“Nobody knows how to travel outside of the Blackbox Curve,” Atlas said.

That seemed to end the conversation. All of the fraisers were looking at Atlas for the next course of action and he said, “Who wants first watch? The cavs could break that treeline whenever and we need at least one pair of eyes up on that- Marshall, put your hand down,” Atlas was smiling now. “Up on that building I was just on.”

“I’ll do it,” Jewel said heading over to the ladder. Instead of climbing it properly, she grabbed just one pole and shimmied up the side of the ladder like a drainpipe, before disappearing on the adjacent building’s rooftop.

As Atlas headed for the wall nearby to block the wind for him, a door on the side of the building opened and a man drying his hands on a towel appeared. He had an apron on and a potbelly with a double-chin that matched like a two-piece suit.

“The devil is goin’ on up ‘ere?” He asked, though he clearly seemed intimidated by the numbers.

“We’re camping here for a bit.”

“You’ll be gone by later?”

“Maybe,” Atlas said. “Depends on the cavs.”

“You don’t git by ‘later’ and I’ll let the cavs know you’re here. Nobody got killed up here?”

“Nah.” Atlas adjusted his seating and laid his head against the wall. His long jacket pooled around his seat.

“Keep it that way.” Double-chin still had the towel on his forearm and a knife, formerly hidden by the towel, in the other hand when he closed the door.

Once the door shut, all of the fraisers looked at Atlas again, partially hoping he would have a task for them.

“Myles,” Atlas said, “I need to speak with you. The rest of you… stay close by and close to each other. I don’t know who else is around.”

Myles approached and sat down next to him. The two prophets watched the rest of the fraisers bumble about, unsure of what to do. Marshall headed up the ladder to be with Jewel and Langley bounded with him. Color and Mariah looked at each other and started chatting. They apparently decided to head to the far side of the roof and sit there to talk.

“There are a couple of things you need to know about the situation,” Atlas said. “No more ‘quorux’es.” He reached into his jacket again like he was retrieving a wallet to pay a bill. He removed the stick again and held it. Myles stared at it, feeling its mystic power even from here. He wondered what it would be like to hold.

“Do you know what this is, Myles?” Atlas asked.

“No,” Myles said. “Just that it’s more than a weapon.”

“It’s the Barterrod, one of the twelve Truth Staffs. The Shepherd has one of them as well. I originally thought I would only have you to help me retrieve Coh and this whole time I assumed I would have to battle the Shepherd. But the only way to beat someone like the Shepherd is to take what makes him so powerful: his own Truth Staff. He has Auric which requires a high enough Legacy Bond to wield and you are one of the few that has a high enough Legacy Bond.”

“How did you know I would be placed so close to you at just the right time?”

“I steered you to land at the right planet at the right time, but apparently I took a little too long and grabbed the wrong Astronomer in the process, hence the tight schedule. Ideally, you’d have been here with me for a month or so and trained you to be a… more adept prophet,” Atlas said.

“What about my friends?” Myles said.

“What about them?”

“They landed so close; how?”

“Your hands slipped as you neared the destination I steered you toward, so you landed in almost the same place.”

“Why didn’t you come and get me sooner? Mariah said you had a whole house a mirrors like some carnival ride, trying to catch me or something?”

“Remember your jump, the one back in 2000? Once a jump is initiated, you set the time for when you will land. You set the time for the year 2037 the instant you jumped, so there was no way for me to retrieve you earlier; I could only intercept you. It was tricky finding you in those jumps, too.”

Myles put his own head against the wall and thought about other questions. Then he said, “So you need me to help you take the Shepherd’s staff? That’s why you needed me this whole time? Why couldn’t you do it yourself? You said your legacy bond was really high too.”

“That’s true, but I already hold a Truth Staff. You can’t wield two at once,” Atlas said. “But now that we have such a formidable group of fraisers, we may not have to battle the Shepherd at all. My original plan was with Eve, a prophet on the Stone Compass, who has been my informant. You’d like her; she’s similar to you.

“Eve’s and my plan was to have her aid you and me in sneaking onto the Compass after the cavs had finished the transfer and once the Compass was well on it’s way, we would take the Shepherd by surprise. The Shepherd also has a goorang which could prove troublesome. I haven’t been able to contact Eve since meeting Mariah and Langley, but we each know the plan, though she doesn’t know about the developments.”

“How did you meet Eve?”

“I met her when I originally met the Shepherd with Rick Rideout, a monster expert. I’ve been on this planet for a while. The Shepherd tried to convince me to stay on the Compass and work for him in exchange for some valuable materials which I am still unsure as to how he obtained them. The… there are people… well, individuals, who keep track of those with a Staff. The Shepherd is one of the better breeders of voidbanes. Monsters that void-shepherds use to keep…” Atlas noticed Myles’s face was a montage of confusion.

“Let’s stick to the original plan; it sounds like we won’t need Eve after all?” Myles said.

Atlas sighed and tapped the stick on his knee. “There’s an issue.” He let the black stick slowly transform into a knife. A butterknife. Then a fork. Then a ladle. Then a pot. “I got a whole kitchen of kitchenware, right in my hand.”

“Make it into a cleaver,” Myles said.

Atlas looked into the distance. “What do those look like again?”

“Butcher knife thing?”

Atlas mouthed ‘aha’ and let it transform. The cleaver wasn’t as deft or quick as the others.

“How big can a weapon get?”

“I think I made a thin, thin spear once to about twelve feet.”

“Can you make it into a mug?”

Atlas gripped the stick like it was a hilt and both ends of the pitch-black stick crawled slowly together, turning into a full mug. “But,” Atlas said and tilted the whole thing sideways. The mug was filled in. Then Atlas tilted it and from the mug, the blackness ‘poured’ out and emptied as he tipped it fully upside down.

“Can I hold it?”

Atlas let it transform into a stick and handed it to him.

Myles put his fingers around it like it was hot to the touch and then put it in both hands. It was heavier than he imagined, like it was made of steel. It didn’t move or wane. Didn’t budge or flicker. “How do you transform it?”

“Only I can do that. Had to figure it out on my own. When I claimed it, the whole thing looked like Yoda’s cane from Star Wars.”

“Which one? Empire Strikes Back?”

“That’s the one. Where he talks like Grover from Sesame Street.”

“Langley can do a great Grover impression.” Myles said, handing the stick back. “Does it get heavier when it transforms?”

“Not to me, but I have been able to use its physics in odd ways. If I transform it into a large bat, the end is heavier than the rest of it to everything but me.”

“Okay, we got sidetracked,” Myles said. “You said there was another issue and we started talking about the stick.”

“The issue is: I already promised Eve I would help her.”

“So… don’t,” Myles hesitated as that last word tipped out of his mouth like spitting out a shooter marble. About a month ago, this would have seemed incredibly logical, but now? It seemed heartless. Horribly incorrect. Untruthful.

“I hear what you’re thinking, and I understand,” Atlas said. “It’s simply not right to do something like that, is it? I have to help her, Myles.”

Myles and Atlas put their heads against the wall together and thought. Myles understood the predicament now and he decided to just let his mind wander instead of thinking about the issue. He could see Color and Mariah chatting against the wall. After about a minute of Myles looking at them out the corner of his eye, he saw Color get up for a second, bend into a butter-smooth handstand and then drop her feet along either side of her body: A midair split.

Atlas’s gaze was straight ahead as he turned the collar of his jacket up against the traces of wind. The Sage couldn’t take his eyes off the spectacle of Color doing the splits so easily and professionally. It made him proud as he thought, that’s the girl who said she loves me. She’s not anyone’s friend like she’s my friend.

“What do we do?” Myles turned his head back at Atlas.

“We stick to the original plan. Eve will help us get Coh smuggled off the Compass, but I think the Shepherd is planning on selling Coh again for an even greater deal. Coh is nothing but an asset to some of these people. The night of the trade, we infiltrate the Compass.”

Myles shrugged in agreement and wondered if Eve was the Shepherd’s only prophet.

“Eve is his only prophet and if we encounter the Shepherd, he will protect Eve and Coh with lethal force.”

Myles wanted to ask him to stop listening in, but then realized Atlas probably heard that as well.

Atlas grinned, his eyes still shut and moist against the wind. “I don’t mean to listen. My mental ears have been open for a long time.”

We can’t bargain with the other fraisers in the caravan. We would set them free. Why not hijack or buy a different boat and attack the Compass?

Atlas spoke again. “He’s heavily equipped to deal with enemies. He has many, including the cavs. They stick it to him at every chance they get. That’s why when they do meet and do business, it’s quick and tense.”

Myles tried to formulate a different plan in his head regardless, but none of them stuck and led back to the caravan and the Compass’s flighty nature. Myles gave up by folding his arms to retain heat and muttering an appropriate:

“Jeepers, creepers, laughers and weepers.”