lost sight of land. And we have no way to steer the ship.”
“But you said the bullet only dinged the propeller blade,” Dag pointed out.
Rodrigo pointed to the propeller. “Please observe. There is the ‘ding’ left by the bullet. The dent appears harmless, right?”
“Right,” said Dag warily. He knew from past experience with Rodrigo he was being led into a trap.
“Wrong!” Rodrigo said triumphantly. “The dent is not only in the metal. The dent is also in the magical constructs that strengthen the metal and keep the propeller turning. And that’s why we’re adrift.”
“A dent in the magic caused us to break down?” Stephano asked, baffled. He started to rub his aching shoulder, caught Miri’s eye, and pretended instead to scratch. “Damn bandages itch.”
He’d been lucky. The bullet had lodged in the muscle, and had not broken any bones. Miri had taken advantage of the fact that he’d been unconscious to dig out the bullet. Then she’d applied her famous poultice, a noxious yellow in color, bound the shoulder with bandages, trussed up his arm in a sling, dosed him with some sort of foul-tasting liquid, and told him to stay below and keep to his hammock.
Miri had learned her healing skills from her mother, who had learned them from her mother and so on back through generations of Trundler women. Miri was knowledgeable in herb lore and grew many of her own herbs in small containers that had their own special place either on the deck or below deck and must not be moved, no matter how many times people tripped over them.
She used some of the herbs fresh, particularly for cooking, and cut and dried others. Lavender and rosemary hung in fragrant bunches upside down below deck. She stored the rest in crockery containers in the large pantry Dag had built for her near the galley.
One jar was filled with catnip for Doctor Ellington. The cat was of two minds regarding catnip. He was extremely fond of it, but he was well aware that the herb robbed him of his dignity. Within seconds of sniffing a pinch, he would be rolling about the floor with his four large paws in the air, cavorting like a kitten. After the effect wore off, Doctor Ellington would glare at everyone in the vicinity, daring them to suggest he had made himself look foolish, and stalk off with his tail bristling.
Some people claimed the Trundlers used magic in the brews and concoctions and regarded them with suspicion. Rodrigo, in particular, was convinced Miri laced her concoctions with a pinch of magical sigil and he badgered her constantly to teach him the rituals.
Miri always refused, not so much because she was determined to keep her secrets, it was because to her what she did wasn’t magic. It was a part of being a Trundler. The little rhymes Miri whispered as she mixed the potions were rhymes she had heard her mother recite, as were the little songs she sang. Each concoction had its own rhyme, its own song. Perhaps they were magical, as Rodrigo claimed. Perhaps the rhyme caused the poultice to stop the wound from putrefying. Perhaps her song caused the beef tea to strengthen the blood. If that was magic, she didn’t know how it worked and she didn’t care.
Stephano had rested in his hammock only a few hours before he was once more up on deck.
“How can I get any sleep when the lot of you are clomping back and forth above my head,” he said fretfully. “I’ll just doze here in the sun.”
Dag and Rodrigo and Miri looked at each and rolled their eyes and grinned. The reason Stephano was up on deck had nothing to do with clomping. He was their captain. He was in charge. He was responsible. He could no more lie in his hammock and let the world go by than Doctor Ellington could ignore the lure of catnip.
“You owe me five copper rosuns,” Dag told Rodrigo. “I said he’d keep to his bed for four hours. You said six.”
“You should have given him a larger dose of that funny smelling stuff,” Rodrigo grumbled at Miri.
They had docked for the night at a site regularly used by Trundlers, who were called “Trundlers” because their little boats were said to “trundle” through the air. Several other Trundler houseboats, of similar make and design, were docked, tucking in for the night. Trundlers did not sail after dark, believing this was the time demons and other evil beings roamed the Breath.
Trundlers were rovers with their own close-knit society, made up of clans. Each clan was loosely governed by the eldest member of the clan, be that person male or female. Trundlers had their own laws, which sometimes did not accord with the laws laid down by governments. Trundler laws tended to be more easygoing, taking into account human nature and human foibles.
The Trundler’s tragic history had taught them to be wary of outsiders, known as “chumps.” Rodrigo, Dag, and Stephano had been admitted into Trundler society only because Miri, a Lore Master and much respected, had vouched for them. They had spent a pleasant time last night exchanging tales and stories, food and drink with the Trundlers, and had set sail when the morning sun turned the mists of the Breath pinkish orange.
All had gone well until catastrophe struck. Miri had been steering the boat when suddenly sparks of blue fire had danced over the brass helm, followed by a horrible grinding sound and a wild flapping of sails. Miri had thought at first they’d been struck by lightning, though no storm was in the Breath. She had used some colorful Trundler swear words and frantically tried to reestablish control, but the boat was unresponsive. Nothing like this had ever happened before on any boat she had ever sailed. She had no idea what had gone wrong.
“Think of this dent in the magic as a large boulder dropped into a small stream of water,” Rodrigo said, explaining. “The water tries to find a way around the boulder and a small amount of the water will manage to slip past. Thus we had a small amount of magic to keep us going all day yesterday.
“The dent acts like a dam. Some magic flows past, but more magic begins to back up behind it. The constructs in the propeller were not able to handle the buildup of the magical energy and began to fail. That set off a chain reaction throughout the boat. Like tipping over a line of dominoes, more and more constructs failed and then everything failed and now here we are, adrift in the Breath without any way to steer the ship.”
“So fix it,” said Dag. “You’re a crafter. You must be good for something besides causing men with guns to shoot at us.”
“I would love to fix it, I assure you,” said Rodrigo earnestly. “I don’t want to be marooned in the Breath any more than the rest of you. The problem is-the magical constructs are in such a tangle I can’t figure out where one begins and another leaves off. It’s the odd way the constructs are interwoven that allowed the chain reaction failure in the first place.”
He turned to Miri. “Who laid these constructs on the boat for you? I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Miri said uneasily. “The boat belonged to my parents…”
“Whoever laid the constructs is highly skilled in magic. Highly skilled,” Rodrigo emphasized. “I’m impressed. But the crafter was an amateur, untrained. No idea what he or she was doing. If you like, I can draw you a diagram.”
“Oh, God!” Stephano groaned. “If he’s reduced to drawing diagrams, we’re really in trouble.”
Miri glanced around for Gythe and couldn’t find her. She thought for a moment her sister had gone below, then she saw Gythe huddled underneath a table. She sat hunched there, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms around her legs.
Stephano followed Miri’s gaze. “Oh, no,” he said softly. “Not again.”
Gythe was pale, her face strained. She stared fearfully into the swirling mists.
“She’s always like this out of sight of land,” said Miri, regarding her sister with concern. “Leave her there. She feels safe.”
“Why does she do this?” Stephano asked, as he’d asked before when this happened.
Miri looked into the mists closing thickly around the houseboat and shook her head and frowned. “Now’s not the time to talk about it.”
Doctor Ellington jumped from Dag’s shoulder onto the table and then from the table to the deck. The cat rubbed his head underneath Gythe’s arm. She picked him up and buried her face in his striped fur.
Rodrigo had gone below for pen and ink. Returning, he spread the paper on the brass helm and began to draw. Miri left her sister in the care of the Doctor and joined the others to look curiously over Rodrigo’s shoulder.
“Let us say I am a crafter wanting to imbue this paper with magic. I lay down sigil A.” Rodrigo drew an A on the paper and drew a circle around it. “I next lay down sigil B.” He drew another sigil across from A and labeled it B. “In order to cause the magic to work, I draw a line from A to B. I now have a construct. Magic flows from A to B.
“But let us say that I drop water in the middle of the line. Like this. The ink smears, leaving a large blot on
