River Through My Soul, Fire On My Sleeve

…

The Grand Sails' main use to the company was as a cargo vessel, so the crew never had to deal with passengers. On one run from Jar Island in the southeast to Castle Island, the captain of the passenger barque Caress of The Tailwind met with Captain Alfonzo to ask for a favor. A group of musicians had booked passage to Castle Island for a festival to be taking place in the next couple of days, but some of their members had forgotten their tickets. The group did not want to be separated; the journey itself would be almost a whole day, and there would be no other Skyrider vessels to Jar Island for the next three days. It would have meant that the rest of the group would miss half of the festival, and both captains had a soft spot for their predicament. So Captain Alfonzo ordered the cargo they were hauling to the nearby Spring Island shifted around so that the members of the group would have some measure of privacy as they were transported in the hold.

Within minutes of the ship's departure, the musicians found themselves bored. It was a given since Alfonzo asked that they restrict themselves to the hold unless they needed to use the head; he did not like anyone who was not an airman wandering around the ship. And it was justified; people falling overboard was a serious danger because no one would hear the scream in the middle of a Sky Line. The accommodations had not done much to help. In addition to four folding cots, two sets of tables and chairs improvised from old pallets, and seventeen crates organized into closed spaces to give the three men and one woman some privacy from each other, they had to suffer the choking down of packaged rations and grog that the crew had to live on.

The one thing which pleased them was the fact that the Grand Sails was also carrying their instruments since it was easier to load them onto the cargo vessel. They unpacked a harp, a cello, a violin, and a small bongo set. At first, the crew could only hear them idly tuning their instruments with the occasional note heard in either the berth bay or the sick bay. Then off-duty airmen started hearing music and sent someone to see what was going on.

Link had been gone for over five minutes before someone else tracked him down.

The crew never neglected work or sleep, especially when the latter was difficult to get on an airship in the first place. Or, at least, they had not neglected it until the musicians came aboard. So instead of getting more sleep than normal people required, they gave up their usual hours to sitting in and listening to the musicians play the songs that they could without the rest of their group. There were no vocal pieces, but just the calming beauty of their instruments mesmerized the crew into staying longer than they really should have. Link had been called to duty not long after the airmen began grouping in the hold. By the time he had finished his duties and realized that he had a hard time getting sleep, he returned to the hold.

It was late in the evening, so someone had set up lanterns in the hold. Small crates had been shoved against the hold on either side of the hull. The musicians sat in the middle with their personal "cabins" directly behind them. Airmen sat in a large crowd in between these crates, some of the shorter crewmembers seated on top of the crates for a better view. Line was seated toward the back on top of one of the crates, and Link walked over to join him.

"What's going on?" Link whispered.

"I don't know, but I like it," Line whispered back. "They've played this song three times, and I still can't get over it. It's just so… nice."

Link glanced around and realized that some of the airmen had fallen asleep on the deck. It did not surprise him; in fact, he hoped to be joining them after a few minutes. The piece they played was a soothing collection of cello and violin notes with the pluck of the harp giving the music a kind of "voice" and the bongos providing a soft beat just under the surface. Link could see the appeal; while the harp seemed to vary like an actual voice, the cello and violin seemed to alternate which was more prominent while maintaining the overall melody. If one was not paying attention and trying to determine where the two instruments changed, the sound was enough to put a man running on four cups of coffee to sleep.

Link heard someone strike a match and glanced around Line's shoulder. He found that Line had lit a candle. Curious, he watched Line then impale it on a candlestick and hold it above his head. Link found this a little disturbing because the whole ship, being made of wood, was quite susceptible to fire.

So Link slapped his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

Line glanced over his shoulder before lowering the candlestick. "I don't know," he admitted. "It just seemed appropriate."

"Up until you set fire to the deckhead," Link said, pointing up.

Line looked up, and then he gave Link a nervous grin. "Oh, right." He set the candlestick on his lap and resumed watching the group.

Link could feel sleep creeping up on him a few minutes later after the group switched to a melody with a stronger sense of relaxation. He rested his back against the bulkhead behind him and was about to let sleep overtake his senses.

Then he smelled something odd. And he realized with a start that, while Line was now aware of the dangers of setting fire to the ship, he actually had not seen Line blow the candle out. Fear alerted the rest of his senses, and he saw that Line's sleeve had caught fire.

Link suddenly jumped to his feet and grabbed the fire blanket off the bulkhead outside the stairs. His running caught Line's attention just in time for Line to take the thick blanket to the face when Link swung it.

Line's shout of surprise alerted other crew to the fire. In a flash, two other airmen had dragged Line to the middle of the deck while a third grabbed the fire blanket from Link and proceeded to bash it over Line while Line remained flat on the deck and hollering in pain with each strike.

No one would fess up to Line's indiscretion days later when the captain noticed the black mark on the floor where Line had been pounded, likely because no one could precisely remember who had caught fire. Since the fire had not been bad enough for Line to go to the sick bay, the ship's doctor did not have any answers for him, either. He found out about what the crew had been doing off-duty that day and ordered them restricted to their berths while off-duty for the next week for not telling him why there was a burn mark on the deck of the hold.