Three: The Mother Storm

So it was that Captain Marsh took a chance and turned the Blue Oriole's prow into the outer tentacle of a Mother Storm.

The Blue Oriole's soothsayer was an old and tattooed Hoodanese.

He raced about the deck, marking men's foreheads with patterns of gray dust made of dried monkey dung.

Captain Marsh himself submitted to this indignity.

But it happened that the ship's retinue of wire-walkers and shroud-keepers -- led by Marcus Barkle -- had already gone aloft into the upper reaches of canvas.

The soothsayer called to them, but his words of warning were torn away by the already fitful wind.

He watched with sorrowful eyes as Barkle's charges scurried and leaped far from the ship's rail.

They appeared to his dim eyes as crickets or shadows. In point of fact they were children.

Boys and girls were the only creatures slight enough to maneuver in the shrouds without damaging the complicated fabric of masts, guy-wires and support struts.

They were the only ones nimble and fearless enough to swing without a thought from crow's nest to spar, with the infinite gulf of Dream swirling beneath their bare feet.

The Hoodanese soothsayer experienced time in complicated whorls. It was a peculiar and unpleasant talent.

His visions -- some profound, most trivial -- had nudged him into the shallows of madness. But he was sane enough to know that without his arcane mark, the children were in great peril.

An hour after they entered the Storm's outer reaches, the forward watchman began to beat on a black iron hoop.

"Somethin' in the fog!" the fellow cried. The warning passed from mouth to mouth along the clipper's deck. "Somethin' stirs in the mist!"

It was well known that hazardous creatures lived like parasites within the tempestuous margins of the Mother Storms.

Some scavenged the wreckage that typhoons left in their wake. Others took advantage of the chaos to seek living prey.

High in the shrouds, Marcus Barkle heard the jingle of the message tube. He pressed the brass bell to his ear and heard Captain Marsh's grim voice:

"Looks like gyrwights, Barkle. Pull down any of the little ones you can spare."

"It's no good, Captain!" Barkle said, shifting the bell to his mouth and yelling as loud as he could.

The wind had stolen his cap and his tuft of hair was whipping in his eyes.

From his vantage in the main crow's nest, he could see that one of the warp sheets had already torn loose. Three of his gang were wrestling with the lines, trying to pin it down.

"It's topsy-turvy up here, sir! I need every hand and then some!"

There was a pause and the Captain said, "Watch yourselves then."

The voice sounded hollow and distant through the length of leather pipe. The line went dead.

Barkle unlocked the box where he kept his special-made pistols. They looked like a child's toys, having been built by Lo'an gunsmiths for his diminutive hands.

Stabbing them into his wide belt, he scampered to the mainline that led between the Blue Oriole's three dorsal masts.

Peering up, he saw the great hemispheric orb of the Storm, rising over the horizon of Dream. Its cloud layers were streaming pennants of orange and blue, swirling fast counter-clockwise.

Barkle cursed. Counter-clockwise storms were the worst. Erratic, unpredictable.

As he watched, the eye of the Storm spun into view: a great, pale expanse of colorless vapor. It seemed to catch the Blue Oriole in its gaze.

He made a superstitious sign with one hand.

"Look sharp!" he cried, echoing the caution that had begun nearly a quarter-mile away in the forward watch. "There's something nasty in the fog!"

Next: Attack of the Gyrwights