Sleep was mine, but it wasn’t to be a peaceful or a long one.
The ship lurched so violently that I was thrown out of bed and onto the hard floor. My knees and hands caught me, and they complained profusely about the treatment. I lifted my groggy, confused head and looked about. The cabin was still shrouded in night, but there was no silence. Feet pounded against the deck outside the door.
I wormed my way out of the covers and limped over to the door. My hands fumbled with the handle, as they shook from a dense cold that flowed in from under the door. I opened the entrance and beheld-
Nothing.
A heavy fog covered the deck. The shadowy forms of the sailors flitted through the mist. I could hear Torvus shouting from the wheel deck above me.
“Light the lamps and trim the sails. Fidel, check the damage! Don’t go farther on land than you have to!”
“Aye, aye, Captain!” Fidel answered from a spot in front of me.
I yelped when something crawled across my foot, and did a quick dance to fling it away. The creature wrapped tighter around my leg and snapped a few words at me. “Stop that!”
I stiffened and squinted at the small thing attached to my limb. “Ramaro?”
“Who else would it be?” he growled.
“Why are you trying to climb my leg?”
“I’m not trying to climb it, it’s just safer to be here than anywhere on the deck,” he pointed out as he twisted his head around to stare at the busy ship. “I’ve already been stepped on twice and my poor tail has a kink in it that’ll take a week to get out.”
The chill struck me again, and I wrapped my arms around myself. “What’s going on?”
“We hit something.”
“A rock?”
“No, an island.”
I frowned. “Why didn’t the captain steer us away from it? Didn’t he know it was there?”
“No, because this island happens to move on its own.”
My mouth dropped open. “A moving island? Seriously?”
“Just go over to the railing and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
I stiffened my jaw and slipped back into the cabin, carrying my little stowaway with me. The sheets still lay on the floor, so I snatched one from the pile and tossed it over my shoulders. It kept some of the cold out, but I still shivered a little as I made my way out onto the deck.
“Turn a hard right and move along the wall until you hit the stairs, then take ten steps up the port side and look at the bow,” Ramaro instructed me. “You shouldn’t be in anyone’s way there.”
I followed his commands and soon found myself at the railing. Some of the fog had lifted and I grasped the wood tightly before leaning over. The port side of the bow was indeed wedged on some rocks, and those rocks jutted out of a land mass that disappeared into the fog.
I squinted at the mess of stones and dirt. “How can you tell it’s this moving island?”
“Because I know every island in these seas.” The voice didn’t come from my small companion, but from behind me. I yelped and spun around to find myself face-to-face with the captain. He strode up to my side and cast his eyes to the rocky shadows. “This one shouldn’t be there.”
“It shouldn’t even be in this sea. . .” Ramaro grumbled.
I lifted an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”
“The Island of Mist almost always sticks to the Sea of Erebus,” the agama told me as he crawled up me far enough to attach himself to the railing. He climbed onto the wood and plopped himself down between us. “For it to come out this far and attack us is not good.”
One of his choice of words made a shiver run down my spine. “Attack?”
“The Island of Mist strands people on its shores so it can feed us to a monster.”
