Two and Twenty Dark Tales by Georgia McBride Page A

the way down into the tangle of drifting and tilting docks as the sun shrugged behind a mountain, and the stars crawled into the indigo sky. “Have a care,” she warned, leaping from one wobbling wooden island to another.
    “Where are we going?” Marnum asked, trying not to wave his arms to maintain his balance. “Ughh—”
    She grabbed his wrist, slipped her hand down to take his, and pulled him across onto the next dock. She dropped his hand and shook her head. “We’re there. Now, choose which river rats we ride with.”
    He blinked. Three broad-bellied ships swayed at the edge of the dock, square sails hoisted to reveal their ship’s emblems. One tree, one eagle, and one springing hart. Marnum moved toward the one with the tree’s insignia—until he heard a voice say, “This crew is a nightmare ! I dream of a better ship, a better crew…”
    Nightmare. Dream.
    He swung around to find the voice. On the ship decorated with the eagle stood a man with a mop, swabbing as he grumbled. At the same ship’s bow stood a man only a few years Marnum’s senior, a telescope in his hands. He addressed the complainer, saying, “Step to me, Tyrell. See things differently.” He—the captain, according to his clothing—exchanged the telescope for the mop and took over for the other man. “Aim high… there,” the captain said, watching his crewman. “That one not far from the moon—she’s a beauty. Brightest star in the heavens.”
    See things differently…
    “That one,” Marnum said, remembering the old man’s words.
    After a brief discussion regarding the price of passage and the captain’s ignored insistence that Marnum and Cyrelle did not want to accompany them on their mission, they were given the right to board.
    “And what is this most dangerous mission of yours?” Marnum asked as the boat left the dock.
    “We go to destroy the Drowsing Tree. To cut it down and burn out its roots.”
    “You mean the Dreamland Tree? You can’t destroy it…”
    The captain cocked his head, his eyes narrowing to glimmering slits. “That damnable tree endangers our entire world. It must be rooted out.”
    “It can be shaken …”
    Although Marnum couldn’t fathom how the captain’s eyes could narrow more, they did, and his gaze fell on the scar on Marnum’s cheek, and Cyrelle in her wolf’s helm. “Take them!” he shouted, and the crew pounced on them, wrapping them with ropes tied in a half dozen different knots and hitches. To her credit, Cyrelle required four men to drag her down. Marnum rolled his eyes. He had fallen beneath one, but he was large. And quite hairy. That had to count for something.
    Watching the land pass by and the men scramble about their duties as they passed into deeper and wider waters, Marnum wondered how he could shake the tree with only four lines of an eight-line song.
    “It will never work,” Marnum muttered.
    “Of course not. One dare not destroy the Dreamland Tree.” Cyrelle snorted through her helm. “I might yet believe the tree—all of it—is real…”
    “Why wouldn’t you?”
    The Wolf’s head faced him, and although he couldn’t see her eyebrows, he got the distinct impression one of them was raised. “Is that not the doubter calling the cynic skeptical,” she mused. “It sounds a bit crazy,” she said, “and you know it.”
    “You can be quite critical, I think,” he pouted. “And for all that, here I am, trying to figure out how to serenade a tree. I don’t have all the words. I’m missing lines. No one has given me any new ones.”
    She blinked at him. “You may be a prince quite removed, but that is most certainly something a prince would say. No one has given me any new ones. What if you are only given the beginning and the rest is built from you ? What if the missing lines are verses you know somehow—words carved into your soul?”
    “Your uncle said it’s like an ancient love song. I do not have any words of love carved into my