Chapter 42: Warm Offerings

…

~~We found the ship.

That was all Link needed to write. This journey would forever be seared into his mind. The horror of reliving the Island Sonata being shot out from under his feet lost the right to be his worse waking memory, knowing that the attack and crash of the Horizon's Eye by far took more lives than his first ship. And worse, it had taken the lives of people he was suppose to be responsible for.

He closed his journal and stashed it in his pack. Then he pulled himself up the rope onto the weather deck. No matter how many times he saw that same deck, he still felt shock from seeing it torn and stained. It must have been guilt, he decided. Which of the blood belonged to the Sorian crew? Which of it belonged to his crew? Leynne wandered about the weather deck, examining the deck planks as if looking for a clue to a mystery. Valley was on the aftcastle, examining the helm. Irleen fluttered about the deck, noticeably avoiding the large bloodstain on the starboard side.

Link decided to return to the captain's cabin. Inside, he immediately stepped to the table to look at the maps. He recognized one as a chart of the area around the Undying Storm, the one which he and Line had used to determine the Island Sonata's course. Another was a simpler chart of the Sky Lines, probably another chart Line had pulled from the Island Sonata. This one had writing on it.

—"You suck."

Link recognized Line's messy handwriting and smiled to himself. He could not remember when he had written that; it must have been…

—"Ha ha! You can't read this!"

—"Here lies the Undying Storm, home of the murdering bastards!"

—"This island has a waterfall. Maybe I'll chuck you over the edge of it someday."

—"I can see myself in your skull. Do you know how wrong that is?"

—"If you follow this Sky Line, you'll reach heaven. But, before that, you'll reach starvation!"

—"I wonder what kind of noise you'd make if you hit the surface."

Link's head recoiled as he read the nasty notes that Line had left. At first, the notes looked like Line was railing one of Captain Koroul's crew, using Hylian to cover up what he really wanted to say. But, the last time Link had seen Line, Line was quite enthusiastic about sailing with the Sorian crew. And some of these notes seemed pretty harsh for Line. Sure, Line could pull out a number of hurtful insults when he was angry; Link remembered when his mouth started at least three fistfights in the same day. But Line would never sound so vile in the open like this, no matter how mad he was. Link could only conclude that these might have been written after the Horizon's Eye was attacked.

When someone else was on board, someone Line did not like.

That could only mean that Line had been with the ship after it had been attacked. Link stepped around the table and pulled open the only drawer that had not fallen out. He found an assortment of pencils and old shavings but not what he needed. He walked over to the desk and started checking through the drawers. Nothing, nothing, nothing, a nice letter opener, nothing, and a collection of broken wine glasses. Next, he strode to the bed and checked underneath.

Leynne stopped in the doorway and watched Link pull out a storage drawer almost as large as the bed. "Link?" he asked. "What ah you doing?"

"Looking," Link said as he rifled through the contents, which seemed to be just a few small novels mixed in with fabric samples.

"This I can tell," Leynne said. "Looking foh what?"

Link slammed the drawer back under the bed. "The log book."

"What?"

Link walked over to the wardrobe and pulled the doors open. "The captain's log. Every ship has one: sailing ship, airship, Hylian, Sorian…" He paused as he stretched up to feel around the shelf at the top of the wardrobe. "A record book. A journal. Something. I've never known a captain to not have one."

Leynne shook his head. "Why do you need to find the log book?"

Link, finished with the wardrobe, stepped into the middle of the room and looked around. "Because it's missing."

Leynne tilted his head, trying to think. "So… you'h looking foh something… that's missing."

Link pointed a finger at him, a triumphant smile on his face. "Exactly."

Leynne put on a difficult look, scratching his wet hair. "Okay… okay, I think I've a solution…"

"No, it's really simple," Link told him, bending over to check under the table. Then he smacked the table top before wandering towards the wine rack. "Look at this."

Leynne leaned out to signal Valley into the cabin. Then he stepped over to the table. "It's a map," he observed, trying not to sound sarcastic.

"From the Island Sonata," Link said, checking inside the small toilet closet. "Line must have grabbed it before the Horizon's Eye left."

Leynne angled his head so he could read some of the scribbles on the chart. "Whoeveh wrote these seemed to have had a problem with the crew. Oh the captain."

Link turned back to the rest of the room and looked around. "Notice anything about them?"

Leynne glanced down at the table as Valley stepped into the doorway, Irleen hovering over her head. "I… don't see anything unusual…"

"It's Hylian."

Leynne followed Link with his eyes as Link moved to look around the floor under the rear windows. "You… did say that this map came from youh ship."

"Line doesn't scribble all over maps like that."

Leynne exchanged a shrug with Valley. "Maybe he had a change of heaht?"

Link stood up and shook his head. "I don't think so."

Leynne opened his mouth to say something, but then he froze to think about it. One hand making a circle in the air, he said, "What is this mad fohm of logic leading to, Link? Cleahly, youh ranting has some kind of puhpose, unless you've lost youh mind."

Link, halfway across the room, froze. He looked back and forth between Leynne and Valley. Then he asked Valley, "Am I ranting?"

Valley gave her head a slow nod while Irleen matched her movements by bouncing up and down. "You isn't going loopy on us, is you?" Valley asked.

Link quickly shook his head. "No, I jus—… Okay, here's what I'm thinking. Line was on the ship when it was attacked. You know, obviously. But!" He stepped over to the table and jammed a finger on top of the depiction of the Undying Storm. "(Ow.) The Horizon's Eye was in the storm when it was attacked. So why didn't it fall after the Island Sonata?"

Leynne shrugged. "It…might've followed the Sky Line heh."

Link held up a finger. "Yes, but not unmanned. An airship can't go anywhere without a crew; it would just fall out of the Sky Line and probably fly circles until its engine ran out." After he finished winding his hand in circles, he paused to think. Then he rushed past Valley out the door. "The ship must have been manned. And then it was scuttled."

"Scuttled?" Valley asked.

"How do you know that?" Leynne asked, following him out.

Link stopped, turned, and indicated the coils of rope with a hand. "Those spare lines shouldn't be there; they're a walking hazard."

"I's gonna say," Valley said, stopping beside Leynne. "I almost fell over dem earlier."

"They're the stays for the foremast and the main mast," Link told them. He pointed out the rope which they used to board. "That's a line from the mizzenmast."

"Meaning that this ship only had one mast when it crashed," Leynne said. "Right?"

"It's gotta be," Link said. "Meaning that someone used this ship to sail before it hit the ground."

Leynne squeezed an eye shut as he thought. "What does this have to do with a missing log book?"

"A log book doesn't go missing unless the ship is sunk on purpose," Link explained. "Otherwise it'd be in the captain's cabin. Someone has it. Someone alive."

"Okay," Valley said. "Who has it?"

Link scrunched his face for a moment. "I don't know. But we need to look around some more."

"Wait, Link," Leynne said. "How do you know the ship was scuttled?"

Link shrugged at him. "It's down here, isn't it?"

"But it couldn't have possibly crashed?"

"Oh, no, it could have. I just don't believe it did."

Leynne held up a hand. "Okay, just calm down foh a moment. It's getting late, and it'll be getting coldeh when night finishes falling. The ship is the only souhce of shelteh we have foh the moment, so let's make the best of it."

Link glanced up at the sky. He was right; the sky looked to be in its last moments of twilight. Night would make it hard to search around the ship for any more clues as to what happened above. So Link nodded and said, "Okay, let's go get the packs."

…

Link and Valley used the broken stay to haul up their packs while Leynne scouted the airship for a clear place to sleep. Crew quarters were out of the question since the bow of the ship, where they were located, was smashed, although when Link and Valley found Leynne again, he revealed to have scrounged some extra blankets from what little of the crew accommodations were left. The deck immediately beneath the weather deck was out of the question, as food storage, tools, and replacement parts were scattered all over the area close to the stairs, blocking off most of the deck. But they found a better spot on the deck below that, which must have been cargo storage due to all the battered barrels and destroyed crates lining the walls. While Link and Valley set up their beds (which consisted of the meager bedrolls at the bottoms of their packs in addition to the extra blankets), Leynne used his dagger to investigate the barrels' contents. They found a few barrels of grog among the leaking or spoiled contents, and Link told them that just a little bit should not do any harm. Unfortunately, that little bit left Valley unconscious almost immediately. After finishing a late dinner on more rations, Leynne and Link decided to turn in. Irleen decided to stay up a little longer, claiming a need to clear her head a bit.

Eouuuuuuuuuuuuh. U-eouuuuuuuuuuuuh. Some kind of wind began blowing against the outside of the ship, causing Link grief in his venture to get some sleep.

Eouuuuuuuuuuuuh. U-eouuuuuuuuuuuuh.

Kyauuuuuuuu-tih. Link opened his eyes, suddenly aware of the hushed voice in that last gust. Even more eerie, though, was that the wind seemed to just die after it. Link could not see anything moving around him, faintly illuminated by his view of the ship's life flow.

Or he thought, anyway. But he could see movement in one corner of his eye, something near the stairs which was not consistent with the ship's structure. It disappeared the moment he looked at it, though. After checking that Leynne and Valley were still asleep, he shoved his blankets aside. He was careful about his steps as he crossed the deck and descended further into the ship.

The deck below offered a bit of light through a crack in the hull, which was just a little better than what he could see with the ship's life flow. Here, the ship seemed a little dead, probably the result of the number of damaged planks nearby. Only one or two in the deck itself shone bright; the rest looked very weak. This deck did not hold much, maybe a few spare supplies which probably had not fit onto one of the upper decks. Like the decks above, Link looked toward the bow from behind the stairs to find that the front of the deck had been smashed to splinters from the ship's final impact. Small bits of twilight peeked inside. His eyes passed around the deck as he started toward the stern, although he was more convinced that he had just been seeing things. The deck creaked horribly under his feet, making him wonder if it might wake Leynne up or attract Irleen's attention.

Then the deck collapsed from underneath him.

"YAAAAAAAAAAH! Gohf! Ugh!" Link fell through to the next deck. From there, he rolled along an incline before something soft stopped him. He had landed on his stomach, his face pressed into a harsh cold. He lifted his head and pushed away from the ground, waiting for his eyes to stop spinning before he looked around.

When his head cleared, he realized that he had fallen through a hole in the bottom of the ship. His landing had brought him to another plateau covered in snow.

A plateau bearing gravestones.

A shiver scampered up Link's spine, and he was hollering in the next moment, "LEYNNE! VALLEY! IRLEEN! GUYS, WAKE UP!" He scrambled backwards, pushing with his feet until he was sitting under cover of the ship's hull again. Banging sounded from above, signaling that someone had awoken from his cry.

Link sat on boards which used to comprise the hull, huddled against the cold as he looked at the gravesite. His heart and his breathing calmed, allowing him to look on the site with composed thoughts. The gravestones were little more than slabs of unshaped rock thrust in the ground. The darkness around him made it difficult to see, but Link noticed that the snow dipped in front of each gravestone. The graves were arranged in rows of three, six, and four. Thirteen in total.

The Horizon's Eye was too large to be manned by a crew of thirteen.

Link saw spots of light move along the ground in front of him and turned around. At the same time a light descended into the same space he had fallen, he said, "I'm over here."

"Link," Leynne said first, a lantern's light obscuring his face. "Ah you all right?"

Link stood and stepped forward to avoid hitting his head against the hull above him. "I'm fine," he replied with a nod. Then he swept a hand out to the gravesite. "I found part of the crew."

"Really?" Irleen asked as she fluttered into view. She dodged past Leynne as he stooped to navigate the narrow opening, a drowsy Valley holding his jacket as she followed. She stopped just outside the hole in the hull. "Oh, my…" she trailed off in a soft voice.

"Goddesses above," Leynne agreed as he stepped out of the ship.

Link moved out of Valley's way so she could see as well. Upon seeing the site, Valley's eyes widened. "Is… is dey…"

"Buried," Leynne said. "And it doesn't appeah they've been heh too long; theh's a fresh layeh of snow on top of them."

"But how?" Irleen asked, fluttering to one of the closer graves. "Who buried them?"

"You thinks someone survived?" Valley asked.

"We survived," Link said.

"Any indication who they ah?" Leynne asked.

"I don't—" Link started.

"Hey!" Irleen snapped. She started spinning in front of one grave. "Link, look at this!"

Link stepped to the grave and looked at it. Irleen was hovering over a spot the snow had not yet covered, her light revealing dark earth. And in the middle of that earth was a metallic glint. Link, careful not to step in the grave itself, moved to one side and dug his hand around the metal. His fingers found very little, but he pulled out something the size of a rivet. He found it, once he could angle it in Irleen's light, to be a small plate with a chip in one side. Although plain, Link could see that it bore Sorian script.

"Irleen?" he asked, showing the plate to her.

Irleen hovered closer. "Flip it over; you're holding it backwards." Link turned the plate in his fingers. "'Airman Wokeen, Horizon's Eye'. It's an identity tag."

"An identity tag?" Leynne asked.

"Sorians in the air fleet wear them for identification. In case their bodies are found and can't be otherwise recognized."

"Whoeveh buried them must have left them in the open so they could be identified," Leynne said.

"But the Skyriders never used anything like that," Link said. He glanced around. Then he dropped the tag back where he had found it. "Help me start looking."

Link moved to the grave behind him while Leynne took the other grave and Valley started on the next row. After presenting three more Sorian tags, Leynne and Link moved to the next row as well. Link started at the far right.

And Irleen's light revealed something blue buried in the snow. "I've got something!" he said, using his hands to scoop a handful of snow out of his way. He pulled on the blue cloth, unfolding a tunic soaked and caked in snow. Link stood with the tunic held in his arms, his heart sinking. One of his airmen was buried here.

"Link?" Valley asked.

"Link," Leynne asked, "who is it?"

The upper part of the tunic was stained with blood. Link also found a hole around another bloodspot at about the stomach. The tunic was large, too large to have been Line. He turned it inside out and found the owner's tag sewn into the back of the elastic waistband. "Albert…" he muttered. Then, louder, he told them, "It's Airman Albert. He was one of the airmen Captain Alfonzo had assigned to me from the Grand Sails."

"Oh, noes, Link," Valley said. "Your own crew."

Link examined the front of the tunic again, dropping to his knees. He could see that the hole had been a round from a pistol. The rest of the blood… Link did not want to imagine what had caused the blood around the neckline. He did not know Albert very well, and the same went for Flower and Leonard. He wished he had, though. Somehow, it did not seem fair.

"Link?" Valley's voice snapped Link back to reality. They were standing in the last row of graves, Valley not far from him. "We checked all the graves. It looks like the rest is all Sorians."

Link nodded and placed the bloody tunic back on the ground. His voice came out shaky as he said, "We should… c-copy their names down. Someone will want to know what happened to them."

"Okay," Valley nodded. She stepped around the grave and leaned over to look into Link's eyes. "Is you gonna be okay?" Link nodded. But she put a hand up and wiped a tear away from his cheek. "You's crying."

Link nodded again and wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. "I'll be okay," he said. "I just… never lost a man before. Back on the Grand Sails, the other airmen could start five bar fights in a single day, and we only had to drag the unconscious ones back. I've never seen an airman die before."

"Theh is some good news," Leynne pointed out. "While we've found thihteen graves, it appeahs that youh friend Line is alive somewheh else. Along with othehs."

"Yeah, I guess," Link said as he turned around.

Leynne glanced out beyond the graves. Then he reached over a grave and tugged on Valley' coat. "Hey," he whispered. "We have visitohs."

"What?" Valley asked, glancing in the same direction. "Uh oh. Link?"

Irleen spotted the lights and ducked into Link's hat. Link spun, at first surprised to see that other people appeared to be up here with them. But he picked up on his companions' worry and waved his arm. "Hurry. Back to the ship."

They could not do much to silence their hustle. Leynne blew out his lantern before ducking into the ship with the other two. Even then, as Link peered through the splinters of the hull boards, he could see even in the dim light that their footprints mucked what had once been a pristine sheet of snow. Furthermore, he had left Albert's bloody tunic on the ground, and all of the Sorian crew's tags had been unburied.

The first things to come into view, Link mistook for fairies. But they were only candle-bearing glass bulbs on the end of misshapen tree branches, each one just barely taller than their carriers.

Their carriers being twice Link's size. Link found himself awed by the lumbering creatures walking into the gravesite, their bodies nothing but massive plates of muscle underneath thick fur representing many different shades of white. Even in the lantern light, their faces looked black. Their prominent brows cast their eyes into shadow, making it hard to tell what they were looking at. Their lantern jaws reminded Link of the many airmen who had liked to bully him. Link glanced at Leynne, just barely visible due to being further inside the ship. Leynne caught Link's glance and, with the lantern light outside illuminating his face through a hole in the hull, mouthed to Link, "Yook."

The few things Link had heard about the Yook had left him unprepared for their next action. They split off from each other and started positioning themselves in front of each grave, except for Albert's. Each Yook jammed their lantern stick into the ground near the stone of the grave before them and placed one knee on the ground. After bowing their heads, they simply remained where they knelt.

Scratching sounded to Link's right, and he turned just as Leynne relit his lantern. After shutting the door, he signaled Link and Valley to follow him further into the ship. Even though they had not been noticed, Leynne still asked in a whisper, "What do you think?"

"I think I'm a little confused," Link admitted with a helpless look.

"What is dey doing?" Valley asked. "Dey's mourning?"

"Strangely enough, I think so," Leynne said, nodding.

"How come?" Irleen asked, her light slipping through Link's hair. "That's not their dead."

"Da Anouki does something similar," Valley offered. "Dey finds dead people near dem? Dey buries da bodies and visits da graves until others comes."

"Well, they're one short," Link said, bitterness tainting his voice.

"Noes, it isn't like dat, Link," Valley quickly said. "Da Anouki leaves at least one grave alone. Dey expects da friends or family of da dead to mourn at da empty grave. It's so dey knows dat someone is dere for da dead."

"But you'h assuming that the Yook follow a similah tradition," Leynne said. "Is theh any reason to believe that the Yook do this as well?"

"I has seen dis before, Leynne," Valley replied, taking an insulted tone. "I knows da Anouki. Dey does it da same way."

Link sighed. "There's… really only one way to find out."

He removed his hat and gave it to Valley. Irleen, confused as she fluttered off his head, circled in the air for a moment. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"What I should be." Then he turned and stepped back out of the ship. First, he waited to see if any of the Yook would invite him. None of them moved, all of their backs turned to him as if he was not important. When he thought about it, though, maybe he was unimportant. Why else would there be such an elaborate ritual for the nameless deceased?

Link was certain to keep his eyes on the closest Yook as he walked back to Albert's grave. He wanted to keep at least out of arm's reach, as it appeared that all a Yook had to do was swing a fist to kill him. Or at least send him into the next mountain with a reasonable thud. But, as he came closer to Albert's grave while still not having caught the Yook's attention, he realized that he would have to walk into strike range because the graves were so close together that the Yook were shoulder to shoulder with each other. He lowered his head as he came closer. Then he dropped a knee into the snow like the Yook. After a timid glance at the Yook next to him, he bowed his head to look like a mourner.

It felt awkward to him. The lanterns around the gravesite tricked his eyes, making him feel isolated in the snow with Albert's improvised headstone. Link had never attended a funeral before, or at least any he could remember. He had never seen anyone die on the Grand Sails, although stories about dead comrades passed around airmen in a tavern as often as arm-wrestling money. Most other airmen seemed to die on airships that Link had not been on; even one of his own crew died on someone else's ship. Link always felt at least a twinge of sorrow for the spoken-for dead, sometimes even hurt if it was someone he had actually known. He definitely felt that hurt for Albert's passing. However, it seemed trivial to him since he had only known Albert for two days. Two days in such a short command that, in the end, it had cost him his crew and his ship. The same situation existed for Flower and Leonard. He thought he would have known them from the Grand Sails, but Link just could not place their faces or their names on the crew before he had taken command of the Island Sonata. Was that… leaving Link heartless? He had barely noticed the tear falling down his cheek moments before; it might have gone completely unnoticed if Valley had not said anything. Is that all he had for the blood-stained tunic on the ground in front of him?

"I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I—" Link choked on his words when a large hand gave him a gentle pat on his left shoulder. It seemed to snap him back to reality, and he realized that he had planted his hands (almost numb with cold by now) in the snow to keep from falling on top of Albert's tunic. He sniffed, shaking the tear hanging from the end of his nose. He slowly settled back on his legs. He felt a little confused as he tried to remember when he had fallen to his hands and knees. His mind feeling dazed, he stared at the headstone as if he had no indication of its purpose.

Then the hand gave him a comforting rub, reminding him of who was near. Trying not to look alarmed, he slowly turned his head up to see the Yook next to him. The Yook's face was soft, understanding even with a pair of red eyes glowing in the lantern light. It showed Link a mouthful of thick, yellow teeth as it told him in a deep voice, "Okay be sad. Be sad, be happy."

Link could not wrap his mind around what the Yook was telling him. Still, he felt a little comfort that someone was talking to him. After using a sleeve to wipe his face, he told the Yook, "You know, somehow, it feels worse that I didn't even know him that well."

"You know," the Yook replied. "He happy."

Link nodded, thinking he caught the Yook's meaning that time. "His name was Albert. He… he was part of my crew. I was his captain."

"Kohg believe Albert happy Captain find."

"Kohg?"

The Yook tapped a finger from his other hand on his chest. "Kohg."

"Oh."

"Captain cold. Kohg take Captain to shelter."

"Uh…" Link droned as he glanced back at the ship. Kohg glanced back, too, as Leynne, Irleen, and Valley stepped out of the ship.

"Captain friends come. Captain need warm."

"Could you… wait for us a moment?" Link asked. Kohg tilted his head in confusion. "We… we want to get the names of the people here. So we can take them back to the sky with us."

"Family?"

Link nodded. "Yes, to their families."

Kohg nodded, removing his hand. "Yook wait Captain."

"Thank you." With that, Link stood and walked back to the ship.

"That was… unexpected," Leynne commented, raising an eyebrow.

"I think they're going to take us to shelter," Link told them. "We'll go get our bags, and then we need to get the names off these tags."

"And… dey's gonna wait for us?" Valley asked.

Link glanced over his shoulder to find that Kohg had moved to a slope at the far edge of the gravesite and stood there, watching them. "Yeah. Go on." After ushering them into the ship, he called out to Kohg, "We'll be right back! We need to get our supplies!"

"Yook wait!" Kohg called back.

Link let his eyes wander among the graves for a moment before stepping back into the ship.