Chapter 134: Movement in Isolation

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Leynne immediately recruited Flower and Line once he and Link had returned to the Island Symphony. While they rushed to the boat deck, Link went back to his cabin.

He was not even thinking before he shoved open his cabin door. The resulting slam caused Irleen to jump out of her bed. Link blurted out, "Irleen, c'mon. We'll need you on the boat deck."

"Wha—wait a minute, wait!" Irleen shouted.

Link was moments from stepping back out of the doorway. He clasped one hand to the frame and asked, "What? What is it?"

"What's with all the excitement?" Irleen asked.

"We've got an idea," Link replied.

"You wanna share first?"

"We have technoworks. Good ones. C'mon, I need you to show me how to play the blues harp."

Irleen was silent for a moment, causing Link to become impatient as he wanted to rush to the deck above. "You can't have found good technoworks," Irleen told him with a bewildered tone. "Link, the ship was scuttled. The technoworks should be dead."

Link shook his head. "No, you're right, the technoworks on the Horizon's Eye are dead. We're gonna use the technoworks on the Conductor."

"You…" Irleen moved away from the beds and into the middle of the room. "Link, are you sure? It's-it's your own ship."

"The Island Symphony is my ship," Link corrected, emphasizing his point by indicating the deck with a finger. "The Conductor is just a launch. We can replace its ballast. C'mon, let's go."

"Whoa, Link, wait!" Irleen shouted as Link made to leave again.

"What?" Link asked, swinging the door to indicate his impatience.

Irleen flew over to him. Then she slipped past him and came to a stop just outside. "Okay, now you can slam it." Wham! "Yikes, Link!"

"Let's go," Link urged as he moved to the stairs.

But Link's rush turned out to be quite unwarranted. He and Irleen entered the boat deck to find that Leynne, Line, and Flower were still underneath the Conductor's deck. They waited and listened as the three thumped and hollered about, each one seemingly doing his own thing despite having the same goal shared between them. At one point, Link was sure Flower and Line had started kicking each other because the thumping got louder until Leynne shouted at both of them.

And, regardless of whatever antics they heard, Link was glad that Irleen was here with him. She did not say much, but she did not have to. Link could see it in the way she fluttered, how she seemed to trace various shapes in the air while she waited. She had not been this lively since the fight with the Smiling Gunner, maybe not even since they had first discovered that the Sorians had disappeared from Forelight Island. It made him feel much more positive about dismantling the Conductor's ballast. It also made him look forward to her reaction once they had found the Sorians' new home. He certainly hoped it would be better than when he had returned to the sky and accidentally turned himself into the most wanted man in Hyrule.

There was still some barely-audible bickering when Leynne finally emerged with a block under his arm. He dropped something heavy to the deck and beckoned Link and Irleen closer. "It's a little difficult, but we have one out," he told them as he placed the block on the bulwark next to him.

"One is all we need," Irleen told him. "And we should do this outside so we don't mess up the other technoworks in the boat."

"Line, Floweh," Leynne called down. "Ihleen says we only need the one block."

"Are you kidding!?" Line snapped from inside the hull. "I just got this first bolt out!"

"Well, put it back," Leynne replied.

"Fine! Drop your slacks and put your ass down here!"

"Don't be so vulgah," Leynne told him.

"Hey, Lieutenant?" Flower called. "I know I'm not an engineer or anything, but why's there a pair of women's panties down here?"

"I asked Sello the same question not long afteh we descended," Leynne said.

There was a moment of silence. Then Flower asked as he stepped back onto the Conductor's deck, "Did he tell you?"

"I believe his wohds weh, 'I dink da sky's… upside-down'," Leynne told him. "And then he belched and passed out."

"Anyone ever wonder if he's really telling us what we wanna hear?" Irleen asked as she watched Leynne descend. "You know? We just can't understand it because he speaks a different language?" Link stared at her, and she only noticed the strange look on his face when she turned around. "What?"

"Yeah, you're all right," Link told her. "You're having weird ideas again."

"Okay, yeah, sure," Irleen replied, sounding defensive. "I've been a bit down lately. But seriously, Link? A crew including a bashful assassin, a perverted boy, a perverted woman, a drunk of an engineer, a pair of living rocks, an amateur sailor who likes to punch people, and a prissy second-in-command with an accent no one likes? I'm the one with weird ideas?"

"I'll have you know that I think the wohld of the dialect of my fatheh," Leynne told her with an air of false indignation. Link snorted and turned his head with a hand over his mouth.

"I don't get it," Line, now draping his arms over the side of the Conductor's bulwark with a tool in one hand, spoke up. "Which one's the one that likes to punch people? I keep getting punched by everyone on this ship. Hell, I even got punched by the drunk."

"As fascinating as it is to remahk on the strange talents brought to this ship by its crew," Leynne said, "pehhaps we should make preparations to find the Sorians. Afteh all, the longeh we remain heh, the moh fuel we use up."

Link shook his head, partially to get the smile off his face. "Line, on the wheel," he said. "Irleen, is there anything else we'll need for this to work?"

"Probably some rope," she answered. "As soon as the technoworks becomes attracted to whatever technoworks my people are using, it's gonna wanna go in that direction."

"Mister Flower, we'll need some rope," Link said as he saw Flower's head appear over the side of the Conductor. Then he tapped Line's shoulder as Line walked by, causing him to stop. "Get ready to receive directions. And go ahead and tell Dholit to have Biluf and Layna bring in the mooring ropes."

"Aye aye, Link," Line answered before he left the boat deck.

Link, Leynne, Irleen, and Flower reconvened on the main deck a few minutes later. They chose a spot on the port side, and Flower and Link looped the rope around the technoworks block so that no matter which way the block pulled, the rope would still hold it. They then tied the rope to the shroud of the port main mast.

Irleen spent a bit more time reading the blues harp so that she knew exactly what the block would do once it found the nearest technoworks. Then she gave Link the sequence of notes he would need to play in order to start the technoworks in its search. The sequence was considerably longer than the one Link had had to play to make the compass, although it still did not meet the length of the pieces he had needed to play for the technoworks in the sky. He admitted to himself, though, that the piece he had to play (which he botched the first time through; the second time was successful) had a sort of haunted feeling to it. A lot of long, low notes dotted the sequence. When he finished, the block had risen from the deck and stretched out its rope. Unexpectedly, the block indicated west and upward from where it was knotted to the shroud.

Leynne traced the path of the rope. Then he said with his finger pointing at the boat deck, "Yes, you weh right, Ihleen. If we ah to assume that this block is indicating the closest technowohks, that would appeah to be the remaindehs of the Conductoh's ballast."

"My Captain." Link looked over his shoulder. Dholit, Layna, and Biluf were standing almost directly behind him. "We've removed the moorings."

"Okay, good," Link told them. "Just wait a moment; we're still figuring out our course."

"Yeah, Dholit," Irleen said. "Why don't you go hit on Cale or something?" Dholit raised an eyebrow at her.

"Irleen," Link said, his voice calm but stern. "What notes do we need to get it to point somewhere else?"

Irleen sighed. "Yeah, uh… the note on the far left, and then the note on the far right. Uh… I think you have to blow them."

Link nodded and played the notes. After the first one, the block shook in the air.

After the second note—

Dunk!

The block fell to the deck.

All breathing ceased as everyone gathered in that part of the ship stared at the block in shock. A few wondered if the block was then supposed to get up and show them the direction they wanted to find. Irleen sighed, being the only one who knew what had happened.

"S-sorry, Irleen," Link said. "Was I supposed to play those notes differently?"

"No, Link," Irleen replied with disappointment in her voice. "You did it right."

Another moment of silence was filled by the three Hylians exchanging confused looks. "Then…" Leynne spoke up, "what has happened?"

"The closest technoworks to us are up in the sky," Irleen replied. "This block couldn't even find those."

"But… that can't be right," Link said. "That-that compass we made the other d—"

"That compass only found technoworks used by our airships," Irleen interrupted. "Less to do, more power to do it. For all we know, that compass found an airship on the other side of the world. The Sorians aren't here, Link."

Link found himself speechless as he watched Irleen slowly flutter toward the stairs. Leynne, Flower, and Dholit also followed her with their eyes, each one every bit as confused and saddened as Link. Link looked down at the block again.

Then he said, "Leynne. Plot a course for the region north of the Fire Realm."

"What foh?" Leynne asked. Link jerked his head around to glare at him. Leynne held up a hand to calm him. "If I may. I thought we'd already concluded that the Sorians could not live in an area so nahrow, not when they requihed an island as big as Fohlight Island."

"Maybe," Link agreed. Then he turned completely to Leynne. "But something had to be there. We're dealing with the Sorians here. They put their whole land in the sky to get away from Cunimincus. How do we know they didn't do something similar?"

"Captain…" Flower started. Then he trailed off.

Link looked him up and down before asking, "You wanna tell me it's a waste?"

Flower shook his head. "No, I wasn't," he replied in a quiet voice. "My words were gonna be 'long shot'."

"Link," Leynne said, "so fah, all signs indicate that the Sorians ah not heh. Have we any reason to believe that they may have simply found anotheh place in the sky?"

Link put on a scowl, realizing that no one had really put that option on the table. He said, "No, we don't. So, when we're done looking around here, we'll check the sky. Get it done, Leynne."

Leynne traded helpless looks with Flower. "Undehstood."

…

~~We found the wreckage of the Horizon's Eye, but none of the technoworks survived being sunk. We just tried using a block out of the Conductor. As brilliant of an idea as it was, we've still got a problem. While the compass gave us an idea of where the Sorians might be, using the whole block as a compass got us nothing. At best, we know that it can't find any technoworks reasonably close to us. We've set course for the area north of the Fire Realm. I'm hoping that there at least was something there that we can follow.

~~And, if we don't find them down here, Leynne suggested that the Sorians might actually still be in the sky somewhere. I know I saw Koroul and his crew dive off the Smiling Gunner, but who's to say that they did not have a way to get back? I know for sure that the technoworks can change where people are; it sent me to a room with no doors on Bold Island! At this point it's all about hope. Hope and luck, probably.

~~Irleen's gone back to her silent depression. I'll ask the crew to keep an eye on her if she happens to leave my cabin, but I can't really see that happening anytime soon. I don't know if I've told her lately, but I wanna do everything I can to help her find the rest of the Sorians. She's spent so long away from them that she deserves to see them again. It isn't fair that she's stuck with us like this. If it takes me years to find them, then

…