Chapter 7: Departure From Reality
…
"P-p-p… Princess Zelda?!" Link cried in alarm.
Upon recognizing the voice, Zelda pushed open the crate lid again and hissed at him. "Please, Captain Link," she pleaded. "No one is supposed to know that we are onboard."
"But—but why?!" Link asked, his voice lower but nonetheless panicked.
"Well, you have to understand, Captain," Zelda replied, shoving the lid so that it fell off the edge of the crate. "We could not exactly parade ourselves across Castle Town, board a vessel, and tell the captain to steer us into the Undying Storm. It would not be well looked-upon."
"And this was better?!" Link blurted.
Although only a little light filtered in from the staircase behind Link, he could still make out Princess Zelda's offended frown. "I happen to believe that this was quite ingenious, actually," she told him in an insulted tone.
"Skipperrrrr!" Line's voice called down into the hold. "We're ready to go whenever you arrrrrrre!"
Link scrambled to the base of the stairs and hollered back, "I'll be up in a moment!"
"Captain," Princess Zelda said. "We cannot allow ourselves to be seen until we leave."
"Okay, okay," Link replied, holding up his hands in surrender. "Just… just wait in those boxes until I come find you."
"Aye aye, sir!" Princess Zelda (and perhaps her companion a couple seconds later; she was further into the dark) saluted with her right hand. Then both of them ducked back into their crates, neglecting the lids they had thrown off. Link shook his head and hustled up the steps, now holding more troubles on his shoulders than he had expected.
He met Line as he came out of the hatch. "Set to sail, Skipper," Line told him as he used a rope to pull forward the wooden grate over the stairs after Link stepped onto the weather deck. He secured the grate rope and made to grab the rope to the cover hatch.
But Link grabbed him by his forearm and pulled him along as he walked towards the aftcastle. "Leave it, Line," he said.
"You got it, Skipper," Line replied in a confused and somewhat irked tone. "What's up?"
"You know our course, right?" Link confirmed, releasing Line's arm so the airman could walk beside him.
"Yeah."
"Take the helm."
Line gave him a worried look for a moment. Then he grinned. "Wow, I'm surprised, Link," he said. "You've really got charge of this whole thing, don't you?"
"I'm trying," Link told him. "On the wheel."
"Aye, sir!" Line replied with a salute that Link quickly returned. Then he jogged ahead while Link remained at the foot of the aft mast.
Flower was double-checking a control stay for the main gaff on the starboard bulwark. Link called to him, "Airman Flower!"
Flower immediately spun around, arms locked at his sides. "Skipper!" he replied.
Link jerked his head to the port side behind him. "On the moorings."
"Aye, sir!" Flower saluted. Link returned the salute, and Flower jogged across the deck to man the moorings.
Then Link spun towards the bow when he heard a door slam from that direction. For a moment, he thought that someone had gone down into the hold or closed the cover hatch over the stairs. However, it turned out to be Airmen Albert and Leonard exiting the crew cabins in the ship's forecastle. He glanced at the spot where the spare supplies had been left on the deck and found that they had disappeared. He walked quickly to them and called out, "Airmen!"
Both immediately stopped in their tracks, standing stiff as Flower had the previous moment. "Skipper!" they both replied in unison.
"Did you stow the additional supplies?" Link asked.
"Yes, sir," they answered.
Link nodded. "Okay. Uh… Albert, I want you on the moorings with Flower. Leonard, forward lookout."
Both saluted with, "Aye, sir!" and quickly carried out their orders.
Link took a moment and glanced across the deck out at Hyrule Castle. He still had time to inform someone that he was carrying Princess Zelda with the hope that someone would board and convince her that it was too dangerous for her to ride with them out to Forelight Island. And he realized that without her, there would be no cargo and no need for the Island Sonata to sail for such perilous winds. The thought only lasted for a moment, and it had sickened him to have even had it. It felt disrespectful to "tattle" on the princess, for that would simply be the action which was necessary to remove her both from his ship and potential harm. And how would she respond knowing that something she had carried out in secret had been thwarted by someone acting on a childish impulse of self-centered preservation? At the same time, for what must have been the fifth time that day, he felt the responsibilities of a skipper bring themselves to the surface again. What kind of officer would embarrass himself by going back on his duty of accepting commands from a higher authority for bare-faced cowardice? He was in a precarious place having been only recently promoted, and any mistake in his judgment would surely find him lower than a Captain's aid and perhaps even the airman who cleaned out the waste bilge. To be sure, he had seen Captain Alfonzo do it to a few skippers who had upset him amazingly, and those commanders had had years of service to the company before they had been thrown onto the nearest shore. Of course, there was also a question of how ousting the princess would reflect on the Skyriders. Link had respect for the company, having been raised by airmen and skippers most of his life. A disaster with the royal family would surely end the support the company received.
These thoughts took a minute or two to make their messages clear to Link before allowing him to return back to reality. He took in a deep breath of cool air, let it out, and walked across the deck, ensuring that his boots made a clear sound on the deck boards. "All hands, ready for sail!" he shouted in a mild imitation of Captain Alfonzo's command style. Fortunately, for the Island Sonata, the checklist for departure was much smaller than a full galleon. He had stepped in front of the aftcastle on the port side so Flower, Albert, and Line could hear his orders. "Clear all moorings! Standby engines! Increase ballast for one half-minute and hold! Let's go, men!"
"Clear moorings!" Flower shouted at the wharf. Dockers quickly ran out to the mooring spurs and untied the lines holding the Island Sonata to shore. They did not dare attempt to throw the lines back to the Island Sonata since one false step could quickly result in a very long fall. Instead, Flower and Albert hauled the moorings in as quickly as possible, wrapping them around a brass mount on the inside of the bulwark. The dockers then pulled the gangplank away, and, after he had finished securing the mooring, Albert rushed to the open door in the bulwark and closed it.
The ship began rising. Link knew that there was a breeze coming from the island, so he shouted with his hands cupped around his mouth, "Forward! Lower the jib!" Then he looked over to find Flower and Albert standing about a foot away from the bulwark, indicating that they were idle. "Standby the gaffs!" he hollered to them. They did not acknowledge the order this time, knowing that the flow of ship operations had to work quickly. They merely gave a salute and rushed towards their self-determined positions, Flower remaining at port so that he could adjust the port control stay of the main gaff and Albert crossing to the starboard control stay of the same gaff. Link noted this and wondered how Line had adjusted the gaffs on his own earlier.
But he shook himself of the note and called, "Forward! Report!" while he walked towards the bow. By now, the Island Sonata should have been above the town and needed to start forward movement so that the ship could maneuver.
Leonard jogged up to the railing at the rear of the forecastle and hollered, "All clear forward, Skipper!"
Link replied with a thumbs-up and hustled back towards the bridge. He called up to Line, "Half engines ahead!"
"Half engines ahead!" Line confirmed. "Aye, sir!"
Being on the weather deck with the engine room directly below him, Link could feel the heavy components of the Island Sonata's steam engine stir and clunk against one another through the deck boards and his boots. He knew that, as a tension spring set a belt into motion, coal from the stores at the front of the ship moved to the boiler somewhere behind the main mast. There, mechanical power generated by the boiler turned a shaft and stored that power in a large coil at the rear of the ship directly under the aftcastle. The coil would take this power, plus whatever bleed was produced when the ship shut down the boiler to dock, and channel it into the propeller which moved the ship. It seemed like a long process when he thought about it, especially since he was not entirely clear on some of the engine's operation, but the Island Sonata had started moving only half a minute after Line had confirmed the order.
He waited until he could see the sails above him begin significantly fluttering before hollering up to Line, "Fifty degrees port!"
"Aye, sir, fifty degrees port!"
The booms above Link shifted to port, and the bow tilted slightly in that direction as the ship turned. Link walked to the edge of the ship and leaned his elbows on the bulwark so that he could look down on Castle Town as the Island Sonata sailed above it. When the booms centered again, placing the airship on a course straight ahead, he looked up at Hyrule Castle off the port bow. Feeling particularly excited, he contemplated going back into the hold and bringing Princess Zelda to the deck so that she might see the castle as they sailed past. However, he nixed the idea when the concern of her appearing on the Island Sonata while it was leaving potentially causing the guards to panic and chase after them. It was not an underhanded idea, hardly Link's intention to make trouble for her; it was just stupid.
He turned back to the aftcastle. "Full ahead and stagger to starboard!" he ordered. He wanted the ship to slowly drift to starboard so that there was as much space as possible between them and the castle.
"Full ahead and stagger to starboard!" Line replied. "Aye, sir!"
Link glanced at the town over the bulwark for just another moment, and then he climbed the steps to the bridge. "How does she feel, Line?" he asked.
"Like a dream, Link," came the response. The young man's head was tilted back so that the breeze generated by the airship's movement blew through his thick, red locks. "I could do this all day. Hell, all week if I had to. Though I have to admit I'm kinda surprised you didn't take the helm."
Link nodded with a slight frown tingeing his features. "I probably would have," he admitted. "But, in this case, I felt a little more comfortable giving orders and supervising the ship's activity."
Line raised an eyebrow at his best friend. "Is that so? I'd've bet you couldn't spout orders like that for a few more days and maybe with a few more bodies. And look at you! You've really stepped into the skipper's boots. And to think you were tripping all over yourself this morning…"
"I wasn't tripping over myself," Link defended, turning to watch the booms ahead of him shift left and right at Line's command. "I just needed some time to accept my new responsibilities. Being responsible for a crew isn't a very light thing, Line."
"We're all responsible for the crew no matter who we are," Line retorted with a level tone. "Any single airman making a mistake could be disastrous to an entire crew. You know this."
"Yeah, but now I have a crew. And just them following my orders is scary in itself. If I screw up…" Link did not want to finish the thought, instead pretending to have lost himself in the blue beyond the Island Sonata's white sails.
Line read the discomfort in Link's expression and changed the subject. "So, any idea what the cargo is?" he asked. "Or why it's going to Forelight Island?"
"I can't quite fathom why yet," Link remarked. "But as for what… well, I have more of an idea than you'd know."
"Really?" Line asked with excitement edging his voice. "You know what the cargo is? Can you tell me?"
"I want to. But…" Link's face formed a half grin on the side not visible to Line. "You… you wouldn't believe me."
"What, can't you tell me?"
Link took in a deep breath. "I think you'll find out soon enough," he said with a nod to himself. "Yeah, I think this is one surprise you'll have to see to believe."
Line let out a wail like someone had dumped a cup of water down the back of his tunic. "C'mon, Link, you're getting me excited! We're going to one of the most dangerous places in Hyrule, and I can't even begin to guess what kind of cargo we could possibly be dropping off at Forelight Island! Are you doing this on purpose?"
"Not particularly. I think I'm still trying to figure it all out. It's like you said; there's no real logic to what's going on right now."
Line let out a groan. "I'm beginning to think the princess might be messing with us."
Link could not hide his bemused face as he turned to look at his friend. "Why's that?"
"Well, for all we know, the moment we stop by Turtle Island, we're going to get a letter saying, 'Okay, guys, the joke's over. You can come back now and kiss my royal hands that you didn't have to sail into the Undying Storm just to deliver two boxes of cuckoo feathers'. Nothing against the princess, mind you, but people can get some pretty crude ideas at times."
"I'd agree with you there if it wasn't for one thing."
"Yeah, what's that?"
"It isn't the princess who's sending us on this trip."
Line gave him a stumped look. "But you said—" he started.
Link nodded. "I know what I said, and it wasn't exactly what I'd meant. The cargo came from the castle, but it's not the princess sending us to Forelight Island. It's Governor Lore."
When Line turned to look at Link, it was with a look of surprise similar to the one given when Link first told him about the job request. "Governor Lore?" he asked. "Hotter-than-a-steam-engine Governor Lore? More-powerful-than-a-speeding-cannonball Governor Lore? Able-to-leap-the-tallest-order-in-a-single-word Governor Lore? That Governor Lore?!"
Link scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. "Where do you hear these things?" he chuckled.
"Link, this is a lot more serious than the princess giving us a job!" Line told him. "This is Governor Lore! The only difference between her and the freaking King of Hyrule is how she pays her bill! It'll be like—like… like winning a lottery! Except with rupees and not souvenirs that you try to hide from your shipmates!"
"Keep staggering," Link told him, having noted that the booms ahead of them had stopped moving.
Then he glanced at the castle tower as they sailed by. With a sigh, he realized that he should probably check on the passengers in the hold. "Line, you have the deck," he said. "Get us into the Northwest Line and on course for Turtle Island. I'll be below with the cargo for a moment."
As he stepped down from the bridge, Link could not help feeling a little ashamed for referring to Princess Zelda as "cargo" in his strange need to maintain the contents of the crate a secret. He would have to watch what he said.
