– RIM OF THE SKY –
Despite all that had happened, the inner gate of Burmecia stood proudly and beautifully in the constant deluge from the sky. Today it was more of a merciful trickle. The long-eared guard in its Southern turret was brought out of intent concentration upon his game of Solitaire by a now familiar noise.
The beating of airscrews and the muffled pounding of steam engines entered his sensitive, finely tuned white ears, accompanying a great dark form that brought itself forth from the fog of rain.
With a grin, he turned and shouted downward; "An airship approaches!"
El Adrel gingerly set her bulk down on the blocks in the stone yard where Prima Vista had briefly been the week before, with a much larger load than that ship had borne. Her screws had not stopped turning before Steiner alighted upon the drenched stones down a rope ladder with his awful burden. Into town he raced, his tin boots clacking on the stone path.
Every soul he encountered, he hurriedly introduced himself and demanded to know the identity and whereabouts of Jack. Each response was sincere but more or less the same, a shrug, raised arms, shaken heads, and each time, Steiner's demands grew louder, more hurried, and more heated.
Eventually, unable to stop himself, he found himself shouting in the midst of a gathered crowd of Burmecians, to the point where some of the men were deliberately standing between he and their wives.
"The order of Pluto demands to know the identity and whereabouts of a young transgressor, he must answer for grave crimes against Alexandria!"
After all that had happened, no one of the white rats wished to step forward and confront the Alexandrian lest old familiar hateful passions be instantly re-ignited, but the tension grew to a boil until a diminutive brown figure clad in red rushed forth.
"Lord Puck!" The crowd was stilled and awash in murmur.
"Leave these people alone, they've all been through enough!"
"And who are you?" Steiner demanded.
The collective silence of the crowd was louder than the rain hitting Steiner's tin helmet. How could he not know?
"I'm Puck!" He jumped in reply. "Who are you?"
"I am Captain Adelbert Steiner, first of the Knights of Pluto of Alexandria Castle, protector of Queen Garnet Raza Alexandros the Seventeenth!"
"That's cool! But what is it you want? There are a few Jacks here."
"The Jack I search for is a young war orphan with heavy injuries, bandages and a cloak."
Puck pondered, one brown forepaw under his chin. He did remember Jack. "Yes, I believe I know the Jack you mean. He was a bit younger than me, he was the son of Dan and Learie and had a little brother, I used to play with him at the fountain all the time before your kingdom attacked us! What do you want him for?" Puck felt very suddenly there was something of great importance just beyond the grasp of his mind.
"He has committed a serious crime against Alexandria that he will answer for."
"Crime?"
"He has destroyed the fair swordswoman Beatrix!"
Puck raised an eyebrow. Destroyed… The thought did not leave as words. He looked at the wet stone under Steiner's boots, lost in thought. Suddenly his eyes went wide and that important thing came into his grasp.
He had seen Jack and his family in Cleyra.
In a moment of horror and clarity, a million possibilities flooded Puck's vision, and in that moment he somehow knew Steiner intended something worse than punishment for his missing friend, whom he had already thought lost to him.
A protective instinct welled inside him which he had only felt once before, and had almost forgotten.
"It sounds like he's been punished enough!" Puck declared, instantly echoed by murmurs of agreement from the crowd.
Puck bolted away from the crowd without a further word to Steiner. The knight attempted to give chase, but the rats around him barred his way. He demanded an explanation and was on the verge of drawing his sword.
"After all that has just happened, an Alexandrian would again raise his sword against our people?" One of the Burmecian soldiers cried, "How could a knight of your supposed prestige not know that Puck is our King?"
Puck scampered through his home as fast as his short legs would allow. Everywhere he went he was greeted with adoration and concern, and each time he asked for Jack, the son Dan and Learie. Everyone he asked answered either with no knowledge of him, or a sudden pang of painful memory and the same response. His whole family had died with Cleyra's tree. He thought of how to ask the question in greater detail but could not. He gave the same response in every case; that there was a Knight from Alexandria looking for him, and to not tell him anything under orders from their King.
Each time, he ran faster and faster, until he ran headlong into Kal.
Kal thought for only a moment and noted he had heard from the guard at the outer gate something of a lone young one in a hooded cloak and a very badly injured forepaw leaving Burmecia.
By the time Puck reached the outer gate, his feet were bloodied.
Gray, the guard manning the gate was horrified and jumped down from his turret at the sight of Puck trailing bloody footprints and out of breath. Puck silenced him and demanded to know about what Kal had told him. After several tries, Gray echoed the story in greater detail.
"Didn't you stop him?" Puck panted. "At least to ask him where his parents were, or where he was going?"
"He said his parents were dead, so I let him pass…"
"Pass to where?" Puck jumped up and down on the spot.
"To Cleyra, my lord. He said he had business there!"
Cleyra was a burnt stump, what kind of business could that possibly have been. Puck's head spun.
"Thank you Gray, please keep up the good work!" He saluted, and ran beyond the gate before Gray could object, into the Wide, Wide world.
Freya stayed wrapped around her lover as they wrestled with each other. Nothing would draw them apart today. They had woken up happy and intended to express it. The little stone house had not had laughter in it for five years, and neither had Freya's soul.
They rolled over and over each other as one joined form. No matter how tightly they drew together it was never close enough. Her vision and touch was filled only with him, and his with her in the kind, dim light.
Their play and motion ebbed and flowed.
During a tired ebb, she pulled back to ask the question that had been slowly burning on her tongue since she had awoken.
"Fratley, how?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"How did you regain your memory?"
He smiled with such intensity that he squinted. He had been too focused on her to remember to tell her and in fact to even remember how himself. All he knew now, or ever cared to know, was her and the bed they shared.
She understood all this from his expression.
"Give me a moment to remember."
Freya's eyes widened for a moment at this response, and then shut as she erupted in laughter.
He only realized what he had said after his ears rang with her joy. Fratley lovingly grasped her face in his forepaws and drank in that laughter, and soon became caught in its current, and his then magnified hers.
He had first fallen in love with her over her laughter.
"There's my Freya." He nuzzled her. She sucked his nose into her mouth.
They lay in silence for a time, and then his eyes brightened.
"Jack, the son of Dan and Learie." Fratley finally answered her. "I regained my memory with his help."
At this remark, the Joy left Freya's face. Surely he was mistaken; the entire family had burned on Cleyra.
"Oh….they have a son now!" Fratley backstepped through his newly recaptured library of memory. The last time he had seen Dan and Learie, they were happy newlyweds without any offspring. "That's..."
The words died in his mouth. He had seen the family together at Cleyra with two children.
Cleyra's tree suddenly burned and vanished in his mind, as it had all around him.
And then came the image of only half of Jack, the one he had seen only the day before. The fallen cloak, the destroyed and burnt little body, the half-face, and the half-life that the soul living in that broken body had told him of.
Fratley choked.
Freya instantly knew there was something more to his misery.
"What, Fratley?"
He opened his mouth, and closed it again.
"Tell me!"
He was stone-faced. It was the same expression she had seen in him when he was preparing to leave Burmecia long ago and it terrified her.
"You must." She pleaded.
He began to silently weep, something she had never seen him do before yesterday.
"If I told you, it would hurt you. I do not wish to hurt you again. Our joy never seems meant to last."
Freya's emotions got the better of her, as they had been since her return.
"Fratley, I became even closer with Dan and Learie after you left. I loved their children. I must know if any of that family survived Cleyra."
Fratley bit his lip, more for knowing how what he had to say would affect her than the thing itself.
"He almost didn't. He's hurt."
"By the gods!" Freya gasped. "We must go find him, at once! Destiny has finally been kind, thank the gods little Jack remains on the surface of this world with us, I must ensure this debt repaid ten fold, for with this gift to you he has restored my life to me!"
Fratley took her forepaw very tightly in his.
"Freya, he is very badly hurt. His survival is beyond my understanding. You must prepare yourself before you ever saw him."
This silenced her.
"How did he do it?" She asked.
"Survive? I do not know."
She shook her head. "I do not understand, how ever did a little one so injured ever restore to you all that you had lost?"
Fratley gazed at her but in doing so, stared right through her, lost in thought. "I – I do not know that either – but it was not he who actually helped me."
He paused briefly.
"Jack bestowed upon me a gift most beautiful and resplendent, it was as a teardrop, the color of warm oceans I had long since passed on my journeys. It gave me back – "
His gaze through her furthened, as if looking across an impossible distance as his mind slowly worked. He furrowed his brow.
"No – no not it." He continued. "Not it at all. It merely opened a door to somewhere…" His voice trailed off.
"Somewhere?" Freya asked.
"Something." He responded wistfully, in a tone that was another first for him. "Something, somewhere so far away. Further away than anything or anywhere. Further than I am sure you, or I, or any has ever travelled. I knew what it was then as I gazed upon it, but now no longer."
Part of her ached to tell him how far she had travelled, but that was unimportant at this moment and something deep within her told her without a shadow of a doubt he was still correct.
"Fratley…" Freya whispered after a long pause. Only now did she begin to comprehend the gravity of what he was trying to tell her.
"What did it look like?" She asked with an insatiable curiosity, and his reply was immediate.
"It looked like our love for each other. It was the same color."
Freya bit her lip.
"Where did it dwell?" She asked, her voice quavering.
Fratley was silent for a time, and she hung on his silence.
Without any motion of his eyes, his gaze shifted from through her to at her.
"Where all things originate."
She opened her mouth, and no sound came. She felt as if she had delicately probed into Old secrets. What he spoke of lay far beyond the First Crystal, which was but a teardrop shed from this Source.
"It was from there that my memory returned to me."
She traced the outline of his face with her fingers, and pressed her forehead to his.
"And with it my whole world." Freya finished.
"…Do you think we might too dwell there some day, you and I…"
Freya gulped and clung tighter to him. "I hope so, Fratley, forever and always…"
"I want to. I would twist deep with you to the center of that warm and lovely place."
"Anywhere I am becomes there so long as we are never parted."
"I love thee, Freya…"
She tucked her head beside his and hugged herself to him. "And I thee, my sweetest treasure."
They rolled over each other again and she drove him into the bedding. Seeing he was again headed into a deep doze, she put her lips to his ear and whispered.
"I must see Jack."
He nodded to her. They both made to raise themselves from the bed but they were prevented from separating by a firm tug. Their bodies betrayed them, their tails had corkscrewed tightly around each other and one would not untwist from the other. They remained this way despite their tries to loosen them.
"I meant it when I said I'm never letting go of you again." He whispered as he gently ran his fingers between their tails, which involuntarily tightened in reaction any attempt to loosen them.
"The old you didn't say that." She replied quietly.
"The old me did the opposite." He stopped trying to undo his tail from hers.
He had indeed changed. If there were any doubt in her mind remaining, it was now washed out. He had grown. She no longer looked back at him, or a ghost of him.
Since he left her she had been looking at him in perpetual past tense even after she had regained him in two ways. Now no longer; she had wanted back the Fratley of the past but here was something far better, a Fratley in future tense.
One who picked her above all else.
Four lovers talked in the break in the rain, Wei and Kal on one side of the garden fence of their home, Freya and Fratley on the other, leaning on the old boards.
"Sir Iron tail, I am immensely gratified you have finally been fully returned to us." Kal beamed.
"So you see now, why we must find Jack." Freya finished with conviction.
"Of course." Wei nodded. "We just can't believe he's still alive. And do you know, there is a knight from Alexandria here who said he was looking for him, too! Everyone I've met has been talking about it."
"I don't like the idea of Alexandrian knights here, most of us still don't trust them." Kal added.
Freya and Fratley looked at each other, and then at Wei.
"A knight of Alexandria?" Freya asked, excitedly.
"Yes, he arrived on the airship, the one that's here now! He's been the talk of the town, and quite intent on his goal. They say he's big and has a big scowl, I guess he's so intent on finding Jack that he's made himself a bit of a nuisance."
Freya's eyes almost closed from the force of her grin. "Steiner!"
"Why would he be looking for Jack?" Fratley asked.
She whirled to Fratley. "Fratley, I wish to introduce you to the most honorable Knight I've ever known!"
Fratley smirked and slightly tilted his head.
She abruptly put her hands to her mouth. "Second most – "
He intensified his mock glare and she was sent laughing. "Hush, you know what I meant!"
"You think you know this man?" Kal asked.
"Yes and I wish for you to know him too." Freya responded.
Kal crossed his arms. "I have children now, Freya. I don't want anyone or anything near them who I don't explicitly trust. People like him almost took me away from my wife and almost caused five little ones to grow up fatherless."
"Steiner was the only Alexandrian bearing arms who was on our side when everything went so badly. I will explain everything to you after we have found Jack, I promise."
"Anyone Freya chooses as a friend must also be a friend of ours." Wei took Kal's forepaw.
"Can you tell us where we might find him?" Fratley asked.
"The last place we saw him was in the main thoroughfare near the airship, but everyone you meet out there will know better."
Freya and Fratley thanked the married couple profusely and Freya bounded away eagerly. Fratley followed her, but was again lost in thought. Something about all this suddenly seemed odd to him.
It did not take long to find her old tin-clad friend. After a frustrated shopkeeper had told she and Fratley what alleyway he had gone down, Freya found Adelbert Steiner interrogating a teenage Burmecian perched upon the roof of a smithies.
"Steiner!" She smiled. He turned to her.
"Lady Freya."
She instantly detected all was not well. His usual scowl was not there, he was as white as a sheet and had an expression she had never seen him wear, and his voice in greeting fell flat upon the stones of the street like lead.
Something had outwardly changed in him.
Fratley landed at her side.
"Sir Adelbert Steiner?" He asked
"To whom do I speak?"
"I am Sir Fratley, I bid you fair weather and safe travels, fellow Knight!"
The sound of the rain against Steiner's helmet seemed to grow in volume at this remark.
"I thank you, my honorable comrade." Steiner replied. He looked to Freya. "So this is your missing loved one."
Freya nodded, taking Fratley's forepaw.
Steiner suddenly looked deeply miserable and seemed to shrink several inches in height.
"I am grateful that you have finally found each other." He said very quietly. Freya had never heard him say anything quietly before. She was about to ask what troubled him, but Fratley spoke up first.
"I understand you are searching for the surviving son of Dan and Learie?"
"Yes, I am. Do you know where he is?"
"I do not, but we search for him as well!" Fratley replied.
"To repay a debt!" Freya added, tightening her grasp.
"I seek retribution." Steiner replied flatly, looking directly at Freya.
She stopped instantly. So did Fratley.
"What?" She was eventually able to ask.
"He is but a child!" Fratley's voice bore indignation.
The two rats looked at each other.
"Jack has destroyed my fair General Beatrix, swordswoman of Alexandria. I witnessed it with my own eyes. I must see that he answer for his crime against my Kingdom." He said to Fratley, and then turned to Freya. "And against me."
Fratley's voice calmed slightly in an attempt at diplomacy. "Sir, are you sure we are in fact searching for the same Jack?"
"If the Jack you search for is a child of Burmecia, and bears injuries of a most severe nature…" Steiner responded.
Fratley's eyes widened and his frame was jolted by the sudden arrival in his memory of where Jack had gone, and there was a long period of silence. He and Freya looked at each other in silent horror and he felt her shivering through her forepaw. A million words passed between them silently.
"You must forgive me, captain Steiner!" Fratley began, feigning his original tone. "I am sure by this point my dearest Lady Freya will have informed you of the damage to my memory incurred some time during my travels through the world!"
Steiner nodded. "She has, and you both have my greatest sympathies."
"You must understand sir, understand my mind is still in quite a broken state and I fear would not be of much help to you!"
Freya had never heard him lie before, nor would she have believed he could have done it so adeptly. Before she lost him, he had been absolutely incapable of lying to anybody even when it was needed. Another surprising attribute of this new Fratley.
"You need ask no forgiveness of me, Sir Iron Tail Fratley." Steiner saluted him. "I must continue my search." He again turned to Freya.
"My Lady, I bid you farewell, it is agreeable to see you again, I only wish it had been under better circumstances." He scrutinized her. "There is something different about you."
He let the rain fill the void of silence as he thought.
"You look happier. For that I am so grateful."
"I found what was lost to me."
"And I lost what I had found."
Steiner sighed, turned away, and walked with metallic footsteps into the gray of the rain, a heavy satchel carried behind him.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Fratley turned to her.
"Fratley, what's going on?"
"I don't know and I don't like it, we must find Jack before Steiner does. His claim cannot be true. I know exactly where he went."
"You do?"
"Yes, to Cleyra."
"But Cleyra is…"
"Destroyed, I know. I don't understand either."
"But why didn't Jack come to see me?"
Fratley shook his head. "I don't know, but we must hurry." Fratley did not let go of her hand and quickly began leading her.
"To Cleyra?" She asked, breaking into a run to keep beside him.
"Yes, but first we must go home to prepare for our journey."
"It would be our pleasure." Wei smiled.
"…For that we are most grateful." Fratley shifted his weight from one foot to the other, detesting stillness and fiercely wanting to continue moving.
"I will keep ice stocked in the icebox so your produce will not spoil, and I will keep the dust down. Upon your return it will be as if you never left."
"Thank you, and please thank your husband for us." Freya took her forepaw.
"But where are you going in such a hurry?" Wei asked.
"Cleyra." Freya's voice was hushed. Fratley shot her a glance.
Wei was visibly shocked, but before she could respond, Fratley added; "And Wei, you must not tell a living soul, this is a matter of grave importance."
They hurriedly packed. Supplies, clothes, casks of water, scant nonperishables that they knew neither would enjoy eating. Cleyra was by no means a short distance.
Freya was overwhelmed with the desire to not leave this little nest they had just begun making for themselves and felt the cold chill of her previous travels again blowing through her, but she remained silent.
While mentally tabulating their supplies to make sure nothing was forgotten, Fratley would bring his fist down on the table while staring blankly forwards and let out frustrated exclamation.
"I should have followed him the moment he left!"
"I needed you." Freya said quietly, putting her forepaw over his.
"Yes – you did…you do." He softened his voice. "And I need you, and right now Jack needs us."
"Yes, he does. Just please don't leave me again."
Fratley stopped completely.
He turned and went to her and cradled her face in his paws.
"You have my word that I will never again make that mistake."
"William, what did I tell you about jumping between rooftops."
Wei tended to her child's leg as silent tears rolled down his face. When she shifted it to better apply the wrapping, he winced and bit his lip. At least his cries had subsided, but she could tell he was restraining them.
"It's alright to cry, dear."
"Dad would think I'm weak."
Wei put her face near his.
"Your father loves you very much, no matter what you do."
She set the bandage.
"But you are not a bird, no matter how much you wish to be one. You are also my oldest by five minutes, so you must set an example for the others or else I will have a whole family without legs."
The sound of clanging tin became audible over the rain, and drew near.
A knight in moderate armor bearing a large satchel abruptly rounded the corner and stopped at the sight of the mother and her child.
"I am – "
"You're the knight from Alexandria!"
"Yes, and I must find the war orphan Jack!"
"Freya and Fratley went to search for him in Cleyr…" Her eyes widened, she gasped and her paws flew against her mouth.
"Cleyra!" Steiner stood up straighter. "You have the gratitude of the Kingdom of Alexandria!" He then tore off down the street at a speed she thought it would be impossible for anyone of his size wearing such armor to reach.
Wei's heart sank into the puddles of water around she and her son. In her absent-mindedness she had broken her promise and somehow knew then she had made a terrible mistake.
Steiner knew not pain or fatigue; he now knew only his direction.
El Adrel towered before him over the rooftops and statues of Burmecia in the rainy haze, and so did the echoes of working men. It appeared less as an airship and more as a spired building that had stood there for centuries.
"Someone here to see you, captain."
"I'm busy, mister Bannister."
"I'm sorry but I couldn't stop him!"
"Oh Frabjous Day…" Bancroft Ellenroad threw his paperwork down onto the chart table as the sound of loud tin stomping filled the bridge and rattled the windows.
"Captain, I demand to speak with you!" Steiner practically jumped up and down on the spot.
Bancroft scrutinized him. "And who might you be, the bastard who came aboard from Alexandria without paying his fare?"
Steiner's jaw slammed shut tightly.
"Yes, everything does in fact get back to me eventually. I know what I look like but I run this airship wound tighter than the clocks in the office of the Regency. I don't care who you are or what flags you wave, this is an airship of the Civil Service and you pay to travel aboard her like everyone else does, this isn't a State's cruise where guests are given favor due to stature my good man! Nothing so egregious!" Bancroft mashed his pointer finger into the table with emphasis, ripping the navigational chart. "And Bannister, fetch a new chart!"
"I am Captain Adelbert Steiner, first of the Knights of Pluto of Alexandria Castle, protector of Queen Garnet Raza Alexandros the Seventeenth!"
Bancroft howled with laughter.
"A captain with no ship? Ahaaahahahaugh!" Spittle rocketed in all directions, as did a shining golden tooth filling.
The first mate who had been setting the new chart quickly dove after it with a thud, Bancroft continued through his raucous expulsions of mirth.
He grabbed Steiner's hand and shook it violently. "Aha – and I am captain Sprinkleberry Vomit Wagon the Third of Fifth, and I sail upon the clouds on my enchanted market basket! Of w – what service may I be to the castle with an oversized knife through it?" He again roared with laughter.
It was the most unabashed show of disrespect he had been the target of in his life.
Aghast, Steiner could not gather himself quickly enough to respond before Bancroft rammed his gigantic hand into the side of his cheek and bellowed: "BANNISTER – oh you've already…"
The first mate held up Bancroft's gold filling.
Bancroft snatched it away from him.
Turning grim, Bancroft contemplated the filling in his hand and addressed Steiner without looking at him. "What do you want?"
"I demand that you fly this airship directly and immediately to the site of Cleyra. It is a matter of great importance."
At this, Bancroft lifted his head. He peered at Steiner with a look of disgust, apathy and disbelief. Without reply, he slowly lifted his left hand, and Steiner followed it until it was fully extended toward the large windows at the front of the bridge.
The bridge sat atop the superstructure of the vessel which mostly occupied her rear third, and presided over the immense foredeck sprawling forward. Mostly flat varnished wood decking populated with ventilators, it was crowded with refugees and supplies being offloaded, going down long gangways.
A large rectangular door had opened in the foredeck and from it protruded the long arm of a previously hidden crane from deep within the ship, bringing up immense quantities heavy goods on slings and platforms from her cargo holds.
"Cease these affairs and ready the ship." Steiner barked.
"I won't."
The knight boiled with rage, more from being previously mocked than Bancroft's refusal to cooperate. He instinctively put his hand on the pommel of his sword.
"I'm not going to fight you my good man." Bancroft scoffed.
"Then prepare to have your airship temporarily commandeered by order of a captain of the Alexandrian Kingdom."
Bancroft laughed a bitter, dry laugh.
"Is there really need for such archaic and lengthy statements?"
Steiner found himself nonplussed and was silent. Bancroft continued in a very different tone, much more quietly.
"You are standing on a flying ship, these are modern times."
"I still intend to commandeer your ship, by force if necessary. You know as well as I do that knighthood still carries weight in these lands."
"Yes and you do realize that in the Kingdom that this ship currently sits within, you are one of the most hated class of service under the most hated flag, and doing so as far as I am concerned, and as far as these people are concerned, would cause an international incident?" Bancroft again furiously gestured to the scene beyond the windows. "This continent was just covered in war, a war caused by people like you who blindly followed orders for that mad idiot Queen of yours, and the supplies and people I bring here are because of what your Kingdom did to this one. Need I remind you sir that your sworn duty is to protect Alexandria and its royal family?"
Steiner sank and felt reduced in height. What he was hearing was sense however much he disliked it.
"And I don't hold with being ordered about on my own ship." Bancroft drove home the point.
There was a long and heavy silence. The other crewmen nervously fumbled at their tasks, trying to be invisible.
"I relent." Declared Steiner.
"There's a good fellow." Bancroft replied. "Better the war be in words between you and I than down there, in more bloodshed and sorrow for innocents."
He gestured a final time out the same windows before bringing his gigantic anvil of a hand down on the table with a slam, ripping the new navigational chart.
He looked at it with disdain.
"In the interest of diplomatic relations…" Bancroft began, sliding open a drawer in the table and fumbling within it. He withdrew a ginbottle of sapphire blue glass, bit its cork and withdrew it with his teeth, and took several long swigs.
"…In the interest of diplomatic relations in these trying times, and as a sign of respect for a Captain of Alexandria, I shall grant your request and divert this ship to Cleyra under your direction after I have finished offloading on my original schedule.
"How long will that take?" Steiner asked.
"I will assume you are taking an action of your own volition as I know your Queen was safe in the castle when I departed Alexandria yesterday. It will take me a day to finish offloading and tabulate the new weight of the ship."
Steiner looked dismayed.
"Captain…what was it?"
"Adelbert Steiner."
"Captain Adelbert Steiner, you evidently do not yet know how steam engines work, which is to be excused as they are relatively new on the stage of this idiotic theatre that is the world. Even if I was as eager to leave as you were, if I had the stokers build the largest fires possible at this moment, it would take four hours to build pressure enough in the boilers to turn the engines, and they would crack the Morrison tubes trying to do so. So you see, we are well and truly stuck here even should I decide to strand all these poor people and their goods."