The Guardians of Zoone Read online

  Tug was fiercely beating his wings, but they were still wheeling wildly around the maelstrom, as if circling a bathtub drain. The Empyrean Thunder went down first, and Ozzie heard the clouds release a satisfied boom—like some kind of cosmic burp, he thought. Then the vortex unexpectedly swirled shut.

  The sky was instantly empty and silent. Tug banked in a circle, above where the mouth had been only moments before. Ozzie and Captain Traxx were still sitting face-to-face on the skyger’s back.

  They’re gone, Ozzie thought, dazed. Fidget, Aunt Temperance . . .

  “Fool of a boy!” Captain Traxx snarled, seizing him by the neck of his shirt. “You robbed me of a captain’s death. It was my duty to go down with the Thunder! Why did you do that?!”

  Her freckles were burning so hot and bright that Ozzie had to close his eyes. He had no idea why he had saved her life. Aunt Temperance had always taught him to help others, but he was pretty sure she hadn’t been talking about cutthroat portal pirates.

  The entire sky suddenly shuddered—and the vortex opened back up, frothing and gurgling white foam.

  “Is that soap?” Ozzie asked as Captain Traxx released him.

  “No,” Tug said confidently, “that’s bubble bath.”

  The maelstrom rumbled and quaked, vomiting bubbles like a laundry machine gone crazy. There was a loud retching sound, and out popped the Empyrean Thunder. The swirling void closed again; this time, it seemed, for good.

  “That thing just threw up the ship,” Ozzie realized.

  “Take me to her, beast,” Captain Traxx commanded. “Now.”

  Tug lugged them to the deck, and Ozzie and the pirate queen clambered from his back. The ship was a disaster, listing slightly to one side, with mangled masts and scorched sails drooping precariously overhead. Smoke billowed from various hatches and control panels. Snapped and severed cables snaked across the deck. Pirates, many of them groaning and moaning, were strewn about like toys after a two-year-old’s tantrum.

  Ozzie dropped Aunt Temperance’s canvas bag to the deck and turned his attention to Tug. The skyger’s bushy tail was singed black and he was missing large snatches of fur. “Are you okay?” Ozzie asked, gently touching his coat.

  “I am a little hungry,” Tug confessed between panting breaths, “but other than—oh!”

  Aunt Temperance and Fidget suddenly plopped onto the deck in front of them.

  “And my father said being a trapeze artist would be a waste of my life,” Aunt Temperance announced, brushing her hands together.

  Ozzie gaped at her. “What just happened?”

  “When I fell off Tug, I snatched a rigging line to save myself,” she explained. “I was actually aboard the ship the whole time—above you. After we got sucked into the belly of that beast, I spotted Fidget floating around, so I called upon my old skills to swoop down and rescue her.” She paused to massage her shoulder. “I’m going to be sore tomorrow.”

  Ozzie shook his head in disbelief. People always said things like, “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.” But Ozzie hadn’t seen Aunt Temperance’s heroics, which meant his mind was swirling with an extra dose of doubt. Swinging on a rope across a pirate deck?

  “Curious,” Captain Traxx declared, breaking his train of thought. The pirate queen had collapsed onto a nearby crate and was staring at Aunt Temperance with an indecipherable expression.

  The surviving pirates began to slowly gather around. Meep scampered out from some hidey-hole and perched on the pirate queen’s shoulder, making her wince. It was only then that Ozzie noticed that her left arm was dangling limply at the side of her body.

  “I think your arm is broken,” Aunt Temperance told her.

  “It’s nothing.” Captain Traxx’s gaze flitted toward Fidget. “You, girl. You defeated the beast.”

  “I remembered something my grandfather told me,” Fidget explained. “He said those creatures are made up of bits of cosmic dust, fused together by magic. I thought, what better way to clean up dust than with a bit of soap? Well, I only had bubble bath. But, same difference.”

  “I told you bubble bath is good for escaping,” Tug purred proudly.

  “Evidently,” Captain Traxx grunted. She rose to her feet and, looking to her crew, bellowed, “Enough lingering, you knaves! Take the wounded to the surgeon and get the Thunder moving again. Where’s Mr. Burr?”

  “Can’t find ’im anywhere, Cap’n,” one of the crew said sullenly. “Storm musta snatched ’im.”

  Captain Traxx grimaced, but otherwise showed no emotion. Even with her arm dangling at her side, she continued to comport herself as a queen. “It seems I’m in need of a new first mate,” she mulled. She scanned the crew with her pomegranate eyes, then announced, “You.” She had raised her one good arm. It was pointing directly at Fidget. “Now the rest of you, get to work!”

  “Are you crazy?” Fidget growled as the crew scattered. “I’m no pirate.”

  “You could be,” Captain Traxx said with a glint in her eyes. “It’s a good life. A life of freedom. You’re young. Good in a fight. And a little insane. All qualities I admire.”

  “Go to Quogg,” Fidget retorted, her cheeks flushing as purple as her hair.

  “You really are that type of girl, aren’t you?” Captain Traxx snapped disdainfully. “Dreaming of pretty balls and handsome suitors. You’d rather be a princess.”

  “Actually,” Tug said, “she’s already a”—Fidget delivered a sturdy kick to his leg, but he registered it the same way a windshield does a bug—“princess.”

  “Really?” Captain Traxx said, with obvious interest. “From which world?”

  “I’m not a princess,” Fidget snarled. “He’s got it wrong.”

  “Who do you think you are?” Aunt Temperance demanded of Captain Traxx. “You can’t encourage children to become murderous marauders!”

  “I can do whatever I please,” the pirate queen retorted. “Miserable old maid! What did you want to be when you were her age?”

  “I wanted to join the circus,” Aunt Temperance replied, raising her chin defiantly. “And I did, if you must know.”

  “You quit that life, though, didn’t you?” Captain Traxx accused.

  Aunt Temperance cringed.

  “Yes. You have that look about you,” Captain Traxx said. “The look of someone who gave up. Why? Was it for a man?” She reached into her coat, pulled out the locket, and clicked it open to reveal the photo. “This man?”

  “No,” Aunt Temperance said immediately.

  Captain Traxx raised a reddish eyebrow. “A different man, then?”

  Aunt Temperance didn’t say anything.

  That means there was someone else, Ozzie thought. Who? What kind of complicated life had Aunt Temperance led, anyway? It was hard enough to imagine her with one boyfriend, let alone multiple ones.

  “You’ve thrown your life away for others,” Captain Traxx told Aunt Temperance angrily. “You’ve let them make the decisions for you. Life isn’t about being a passenger!”

  “Oh, it’s about being a pirate, is it?” Aunt Temperance retorted. “You’re very good at throwing around your opinion—but that’s all it is. Your opinion. That and a quarter is worth twenty-five cents to me.”

  Captain Traxx erupted into laughter. “Good! Some passion. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “If you’re just going to sit there and extoll the virtues of freedom, then I suggest you let us go,” Aunt Temperance said, brushing her silver lock of hair out of her face.

  Captain Traxx put her good hand on her hip and scrutinized them. “Yes,” she said after some consideration. “I owe you that much. You saved the entire ship. So, name your port and I will take you there.”

  “Zoone,” Ozzie said immediately. He had been quiet up to this point because the pirate queen had seemed so annoyed with him. Now Captain Traxx leveled a scowl at him that made him want to take three steps back. And possibly dive overboard.

  “Not Zoone,”
she decreed. “Anywhere but there. The nexus does not welcome pirates.”

  Ozzie’s ears prickled hot. “But that’s where we need to go. You can just take us back to our track and we’ll get there ourselves. The station’s in trouble. We need to save—”

  “Actually,” Aunt Temperance interrupted, “we need to go to Creon.”

  “What?!” Ozzie cried.

  “What?” Captain Traxx repeated.

  “Creon! Creon! Creon!” Meep squawked.

  “Yes, Creon,” Aunt Temperance said again. “You said Mercurio was there.”

  “No!” Ozzie blurted. “We need to go to Zoone. That’s where we were headed when all this started. We need to save them, remember?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Aunt Temperance said. “Zaria said if we saved Mercurio then we could save Zoone. And he was last seen on Creon. Correct?” She looked critically at Captain Traxx.

  “Well, well, well,” the pirate queen said, returning to her seat on the crate. “It seems I have the self-appointed defenders of the nexus standing before me. An unlikely bunch. But still . . .” She leaned back, contemplatively stroking Meep’s fur. Then, looking directly at Aunt Temperance, she said, “Yes, your sweetheart is on Creon. Or he was. As I told you before, it’s a dead world. He could not have survived. And if I take you there, neither will you.”

  “I think we’ve proven we can look after ourselves,” Fidget said.

  “You’re agreeing with this plan?!” Ozzie cried, grabbing her arm. “Don’t you want to go to Zoone?”

  “Actually, what I want is to save Zoone,” Fidget said. “You haven’t seen it, Oz, not the way it is now. There are curfews. Restricted areas. It’s like . . . it’s like we have a dictator.”

  Captain Traxx snorted. “Sounds like an improvement to me.”

  Ozzie shook his head. He didn’t want to believe Fidget. Things couldn’t be that bad. Besides, he had saved Zoone once; he could save it again. He looked desperately at Tug because if there was anyone he could count on, it was the giant blue cat. “Tug? You want to go home, right? To Zoone.”

  Tug’s first answer was a thoughtful twitch of his burnt tail; it nearly took Ozzie out at the knees. “Lady Zoone gave Fidget and me a mission, to deliver a message to Aunt T,” the skyger said eventually. “And that message said to save Mercurio. So, I think we need to do what Lady Zoone says. Just to tell you, she’s usually right.”

  Ozzie felt his gut swirl like the maelstrom they had just escaped. With each step of the journey, they were just getting farther away from Zoone. It was true what Tug said—Lady Zoone was usually right. As the steward of the station, she had the best interests of the nexus at heart, so if she said that the key to helping it was saving Mercurio, then that’s what they had to do.

  But how did Aunt Temperance really know that Mercurio was on Creon? Shouldn’t they go to Zoone first, just to be sure?

  “What if she’s not telling the truth?” he asked his aunt, jerking a thumb at Captain Traxx.

  “I am many things,” the pirate queen said, “but a liar is not one of them.”

  A gurgle came from below deck, followed by a sputter of smoke from a nearby exhaust pipe. The pirates were already making progress in their repairs. It would not be long before the Empyrean Thunder was able to set sail again. Captain Traxx rose steadily to her feet, her arm still hanging limply at her side.

  “It appears the decision has been made,” she said. “We set course for Creon.”

  9

  The Pirate Queen Grants a Gift

  Now, instead of being the pirates’ prisoners, they were their guests. Captain Traxx even gave them their own cabin, but just between him and himself, Ozzie had no desire to hang out with his aunt or his friends. He was so bitter about the travesty of justice he’d dubbed the “Creon Decision” that he decided to give everyone the silent treatment.

  Which was particularly difficult when it came to Tug.

  “Oh, there you are,” the skyger announced one evening, padding up to sit alongside Ozzie at the bow of the ship. “You always disappear after dinner.”

  Ozzie shrugged, but didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes fixed on the skies, hoping Tug would take the hint.

  He didn’t. “I’m glad the pirates are giving us something other than gruel to eat,” the skyger continued. “It’s not as delicious as the grub Miss Mongo makes at Zoone, but they probably don’t have the ingredients for her famous snirf and snarf. Right, Ozzie?”

  Ozzie sighed and finally cast a sidelong glance at the cat. He wished he could be like Tug. Give him a bowl of something to eat, a place to sleep, and he was content. Not Ozzie. His emotions were always so intense and heavy, like stones in his pockets.

  “Aunt T said she’s going to read from that Tempest book again,” Tug went on.

  Ozzie shook his head. “I think I’ll just stay here.”

  “Okay,” Tug said. “I’m going to go listen to some more. Though I think I’ll swing back by the galley first. Just in case they have dessert.”

  Maybe my mom’s right, Ozzie thought as the skyger whisked away. Maybe I am too sensitive.

  How had Aunt Temperance defined it? Having good instincts. Awareness. But what use was that when all it did was make him feel miserable? Still, it wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it. He couldn’t just switch on and off—though, sometimes, he wished he could.

  “Mine! Mine!”

  Meep was scuttling along the railing, straight toward him. Captain Traxx had returned their possessions, which included the key to Zoone, but the decision had sent her pet into a permanent tantrum. The monkey pounced into the shaggy rain forest that was Ozzie’s hair and began yanking at the cord around his neck.

  “Mine! Mine!”

  “No!” Ozzie growled, batting at the creature. “Scram!”

  “Scram! Scram!” Meep parroted.

  “That is enough, my pet.”

  Ozzie turned to see the elegant pirate queen striding across the deck. As she reached the railing, Meep launched himself off Ozzie’s head and onto her shoulder. Her injured arm was now in a sling, but she appeared no less formidable. Her mere presence sent a shiver scampering down the back of Ozzie’s neck—either that, or the monkey had given him fleas. He turned away from her, hiding his gaze in the sky, where a magnificent cluster of rainbow-colored clouds had appeared. A sound reached Ozzie’s ears, like the cooing of birds. Despite wanting to keep to himself, he cast a questioning glance at Captain Traxx.

  “The Singing Nebula of Starsea,” the pirate queen supplied, idly petting Meep. “One of the great wonders of interstitial space. And a sign that we are nearing the track to Creon.”

  Ozzie grimaced.

  “You seem as sullen as a Zelantean slug,” Captain Traxx observed. “Tell me, boy, what makes you so desperate to return to Zoone?”

  What do you care? Ozzie thought. But he decided that telling her might encourage her to leave him alone, so he said, “Because I love it there. I was happy there.”

  Captain Traxx laughed, in that hearty, slightly frightening way that revealed her white teeth and scarlet tongue. “Foolish boy,” she said. “If you can’t be happy in your heart then you won’t be happy anywhere in the ’verse—and that includes Zoone.”

  Lady Zoone had once said something similar to him, Ozzie recalled. But she was the steward of the nexus, one of the most important people in the multiverse. Aurelia Traxx was a pirate. Yes, she was tough as a bag of bolts and, yes, she spoke with the sort of confidence that could send thunder slinking home with its tail between its legs, but that didn’t make her right. At least not the sort of right that Ozzie was willing to accept.

  “You know where I won’t be happy?” Ozzie snapped, keeping his eyes fixed on the nebula. “Creon. That’s for sure. It’s a dead world. I’ve been to a dead world before, you know: Glibbersaug. It wasn’t good.”

  He could feel Captain Traxx’s gaze boring into him. “You? Glibbersaug? And you survived? There is more to you than meets
the eye. Still, Glibbersaug is not Creon. I assure you, boy: Creon is worse.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because,” the pirate queen replied, “Creon was once my home.”

  Ozzie turned and stared at her anew: her tall countenance, her brightly freckled face, and her pomegranate hair. If everyone from Creon was as intimidating as her, then they really were going to be in trouble.

  “Yes, I am Creonese,” the pirate continued. “At least, I was. My family, my entire people, were forced to leave that desolate world in order to survive.”

  “Really?” Ozzie asked in spite of himself. “What happened?”

  “For centuries, Creon prided itself on its industry. We built machines to improve our quality of life. To do our manual labor. To harvest resources and expand our cities.” She tapped her fingers against the railing, stewing. “That ring I gave back to your aunt. The amelthium stone. It comes from Creon.”

  “It does? How did she end up with it?”

  Captain Traxx grunted. “That’s a question for her. I doubt she knows what it was used for: a power source for those . . . those machines. The machines that decimated Creon.”

  Ozzie shrank away from her. “How did it happen?”

  “The Creonese—and their machines—just kept building, building, building . . . until it was too late. The machines took over, and by the time I was born, Creon was already descending into environmental collapse.”

  “You could have turned off the machines. Cleaned up the world.”

  Captain Traxx rapped her fist gently against the railing. “My father was an idealist, like you. My brother, too. Thought they could stop the machines and save Creon. And what did they get for their idealism?”

  Ozzie tugged uneasily at his key. Captain Traxx banged again on the railing, so hard that her knuckles split and began to bleed. Meep huddled in a sheepish ball on her shoulder.

  “They broke my family,” she growled.