CHAPTER NINE
Why did it feel like his bed was moving?
He remembered Devimon sending the seven of them in opposite directions, flying out on beds. He remembered having to sleep in the weirdest places, in a whale's stomach, caves and who knows what else. How did he not have a fear of sleeping? He should be traumatized. But sleeping was nice, he pulled the blanket closer around him, vaguely aware that this was not the blanket that was usually on his bed. The he remembered the sensation of sleeping on that little rowboat, going back in time, or however it happened, to help himself learn to ride a bike. God, no wonder Takeru wanted to be a writer, the stuff that happened to them was not imaginable by some mere mortal.
Taichi opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. Not his. Instead of the white popcorny substance he used to chip off when he slept on Hikari's top bunk, there were wooden panels. What? Taichi rolled over, but instead of landing on the other side of his bed, he fell and landed flat on the wooden floor.
As the swear word left his mouth, he suddenly felt more dizzy. Where was he? Tai sat up and held his head, why did his head hurt? He looked above him, roughly four feet above his shoulder was a hammock. Had he slept in a hammock? Why weren't there any windows in this room? Why did he feel like he was moving?
The questions fuelled Taichi to stand up and push open the door, made out of the same wooden planks that the ceiling and walls were made of.
If he hadn't been seeing it with his own eyes, Taichi never would have believed what lay outside the door. Ocean. Miles and miles of bright blue ocean. He was on a boat. A ship, to be exact. It's sheer size forced Taichi's jaw open, he couldn't remember coming onto this ship, and he was positive he would remember something so… well, cool!
The sun dimmed as if it had gone behind a cloud, but as Taichi looked up to see the bright blue sky, untarnished by a single cloud. He looked behind him, and there, standing tall and proud, was a giant mast, at least twenty feet tall. But it wasn't the mast that was blocking the sun, it was the sail it was supporting. A black sail.
"Captain!" someone called in the distance, and Taichi looked around, eager to meet this captain. Black sails usually mean pirates, was he was being held prisoner and not supposed to be out of the hammock room? But if he was being held prisoner, he would probably be chained up in some rat-infested cellar with skeletons and corpses. Unless they were friendly, humane pirates.
God, he was stupid. Friendly, humane pirates? That would be like angry, hostile Kindergarten teachers.
"Finally you're up!"
Taichi jumped at the voice, "Please don't make me walk the plank!"
He turned around to see who had spoken to him. He was young, younger than Taichi at least. His blond hair was tousled and his pale blue eyes rivalled the sky above them. He was unshaven, which somehow didn't seem to fit with Taichi's mental picture.
The sight of him combined with who he had figured the guy to be, caused Taichi to fall over backwards and land in a pile of coiled ropes.
"Wallace?"
It was true, although Taichi'd never personally met the boy who had the renegade digimon partner that had trapped Taichi and the five other older digidestined in some cold, creepy alter-dimension.
"It's William." The blond corrected, holding out his hand and helping Taichi up. "It's a little early to be drinking, don't you think?"
That's it! Taichi was in some drunken stupor somewhere and this was just a very vivid dream. He had just watched Pirates of the Caribbean on cable last weekend and this was some revival of his suppressed thoughts. Why the hell was he dreaming of Wallace?
"Alright, Wallace, let's-"
Wallace cleared his throat irritably. "William."
Taichi evaluated Wallace. He looked pissed. "Okay, William, hmm, Wallace. Will…ace. Yes, we're going to compromise here. Willace, Will…is. Willis!"
With a dramatically elongated sigh Willis agreed. "Fine. Now are you too plastered to talk or are you manageable?"
Taichi shrugged. It was his dream, hopefully he'd be able to navigate it without being forced to walk the plank or get beheaded.
Willis sighed. "We need your input, under the influence or not." He began leading Taichi down the length of the ship, the dozens of other men nodding courteously to them as they passed.
So Willis was the captain. A weird choice, Taichi told his subconscious, sure, he was a strong contender, facing all the problems that Taichi and his friends faced together, alone. But he wasn't really a leader.
"The ship from yesterday was a disappointment. The boys raided it last night and aside from a cook and two chambermaids there was no one. In exchange for information we let them go. You were right, it was a ship headed towards the Citadel and the surrounding town for the prince's ball. The girl escaped with her head servant on a small wooden escape boat, so we've been heading towards land. She'll know where the rest of the treasure is hidden, it should be about an hour until we reach land, Captain."
"Captain? Me?" Taichi grinned. This dream just got better.
Willis sighed. "Next time you're drinking, please save it for night time when I don't have to put up with you."
Taichi disregarded this. "Hah, Pirate Captain Taichi! So what does that make you? You're like… Smee!"
Willis assaulted Taichi was his eyes. "Smee?"
"Yes, you know, like Peter Pan! Smee was Captain Hook's right hand man!" Taichi doubled over laughing. "Which is funny because Captain Hook only had one hand, so a right hand man could come in handy! HAH! Handy… I crack myself up."
"I don't know what a Smee is or Peter Pants or Captain… Hook? So if you can get it together for a moment, we have to go through the stuff the crew did find in that ship before they set it sailing."
Taichi shrugged, "'Kay." He jumped up on the edge of the ship and with a hand tracing the railing, he began to walk along the edge of the ship like a child mocking a tight-rope walker on the curb. "So do we get in heated sword-fights with other pirates?" He mimed having a sword and jumping around defensively. "That would be so nuts!"
Willis sighed. "You're not taking this seriously. You know very well we lost some valuable members of the crew last week, we're avoiding confrontation for seven days in their memory."
"But that's so boring!" Taichi blurted out before an angry glare from Willis caused him to jump down from the edge and fold his arms. "But it's for a good cause."
Willis, his light hair contrasting his black pants and wine-coloured vest sped up his pace, leading Taichi down a set of steep steps and across the dimly lit dining room. "We got everything that could be of some value, no precious stones or anything but keep an open mind."
"Mind: open." Taichi said, almost mockingly. He walked across the dining room, ignoring the irritated looks from Willis as he tried out Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow behaviour.
"Stop walking with your hands like that," Willis snapped. "You look like a fool. Come on, it's just in here."
The doors Willis opened weren't like the cheap wood in the hammock room, but inlaid with gold and dark cherry-wood. Taichi was impressed with himself that he knew what cherry-wood was.
The room stretched out like the high school's gymnasium. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, swaying gently as the ship bobbed up and down with the waves. But it was full, wall to wall of everything- from furniture to paintings and clothes. There seemed to be an organized mess, it reminded Taichi of a more elegant and nicer Room of Requirement from the Harry Potter movies. He laughed at his dream's ability to take things from all the movie's he'd watched that week.
They walked past plush sofas and candelabras, Willis seemed to be evaluating each one. Everything looked, to Taichi, like it belonged in an overpriced thrift store. "There are quite a few nice paintings, we can sell them and I am sure they'll get quite a bit from merchants in the Art Districts. I think this ship is from the Textile District.."
Taichi tuned Willis out as he began rambling off about all the qualities that made him think this stuff was from the Textile District. For a pirate he sure wasn't very vicious.
"Arr!" Taichi growled as he passed a mirror. He laughed and then backtracked and examined himself in the reflective surface. His hair was the same, but he was unshaven and it stood out much more than it did on the fair-haired Willis. He was wearing similar loose pants with breezy shirt, with lighter colors. Blue and white. Weird, he never would have picked light blue pants for himself. Oh well, he thought to himself as he looked up to see a row of paintings. Fruit, a sunset and a basket of flowers. They reminded Taichi of the art classroom at school. He walked through the make-shift pathway that the array of furniture created. Huge dresses were lain over chairs and falling out of wardrobes. The path led to the far side of the room, Taichi stood on tip-toe and saw Willis sifting through piles of parchment from a desk. The brunet stepped over a stool and tripped, falling to the ground. He was sure spending a lot of time falling over today.
He rolled onto his side and looked in between a table and a bureau, standing up as he pushed the mass of dresses from obscuring his view. Oh, now his dream was channelling The Lion, Witch, and The Wardrobe. In between the two pieces of furniture he saw a set of painted eyes.
Intrigued, he slipped through the two pieces of furniture and his jaw dropped. Resting against the back wall was a huge painting, taller than Taichi's own six-foot height. It was a girl posed on a chair, a huge dark blue dress tied to her thin frame and the mass of skirts mistakable for a down-comforter that had been inlaid with gold thread and jewels. Her hair, falling in waves down her back and across her shoulder framed her perfect face and brown doe eyes.
A princess, undoubtedly. Taichi flashed back to his eleven-year-old self, seeing the huge white dress with pink bows and crown that Mimi had flaunted. She was always Princess Mimi, with or without the crown or tiara, like what she'd worn to her Welcome Home party, she had the disposition and charm and confidence. But here in the giant painting the girl looked different from the girl Taichi remembered. Her hair was longer, her face and eyes read some sort of loneliness, discomfort. But she was clearly someone who left radiated class, elegance and beauty. But the princess in the painting wasn't Mimi.
It was Sora.