Under the Empyrean Sky by Chuck Wendig

pulled up over her head like a hood, says she doesn’t know how that happened. Says they use oar-poles to push the boat along.
    Second problem: the hover-rails on the bottom are on the fritz. They’re each like a lightbulb in a wobbly socket; they
buzz
and
sizzle
, flickering and sputtering. The boat can barely stay aloft. It keeps dipping sickeningly toward the ground, into the corn.
    With the wind howling and the pollen raining down upon them, the boat only goes where the wind shoves it. The boat knocks around as if it’s being struck by invisible hands, and everyone’s sick and miserable and wants to go home. But Cael won’t call it off.
Can’t
call it off. The garden’s out there. If they don’t find it, someone else will. That’s what he tells himself. Someone else will steal the vegetables, or the pollen from the piss-blizzard will ruin them. He invents a hundred other reasons why they need to get to the garden
tonight
, in the middle of the worst pollen drift Boxelder’s seen in years.
    But inside is that nagging voice, the one that tells him Gwennie never would have let this foolishness happen—she took risks sometimes, but she was always the brains of the operation, always the one with the
plan
, the one who never let Cael get away with his nonsense. Her job as first matewas to balance out Cael. And now that balance is gone, leaving him all kinds of off-kilter.
And don’t forget that you’re not gonna get to kiss her anymore, either.
    We don’t need her
, Cael thinks.
She held you back. That’s why your crew was always second to Boyland’s. Let her be first mate on his boat. Let her drag
him
down
.
    Cael has the others fetch the oar-poles from the side of the boat, holding the poles and thrusting them down against the earth, the four of them walking the boat along and trying like hell to stop the wind from knocking them over into the corn.
    “I miss
Betsy
!” Lane yells over the buffeting mistrals and seething, hissing pollen.
    “We’re lost,” Rigo yells.
    “We’re not!” Cael says. It’s a lie. Everything looks the same. Blowing pollen. Corn beneath them. Corn sky and horizon swallowed in dust. No roads. No farms. Even the boat’s spotlight doesn’t help. He’s pretty sure they’re going south? Now he’s not so sure.
    Suddenly Wanda hurries up behind him and tugs on his sleeve, talking right into his ear. “I’m so sorry again about the sails, sorry, sorry, so sorry—”
    He waves her away.
    “Wait, though, I thought you should know something.”
    He squints, wishing he had his goggles. “What?”
    “We’re going south.”
    “I know that,” he lies.
    “Your house is north of mine.” She says it as if she finds that odd. Because it is.
    “Ah.”
Shit
. “Yeah. Wanda, we’re not looking for the goat.”
    “What… what
are
we doing?”
    He points and scowls. “I need you working that oar, Wanda. Go. Go!”
    Chastened, she heads back.
    But still the boat crawls. Every time the pollen blows, they lose sight of one another and then it’s easy to get out of rhythm. The boat lists—the corn grabbing at the bottom, tugging at the oar-poles.
    Cael tries to coordinate them, yelling, “Lift!
Push
. Lift!
Push
.” With
lift
, the oar-poles rise, and with
push
they all bring the poles against the dry earth—moving the boat five feet, maybe ten, with each stroke. It’s not great. But it’s
something
.
    Lane’s manning the console, and even here in the pollen drift his face can be seen cast in an eerie green glow. His eyes go wide. “We’re coming up on the beacon.”
    “Beacon?” Wanda asks. “What beacon?”
    (
The beacon we left for the garden
, he thinks but does not say.)
    Cael can’t see anything. The wind kicks up a washout ofpollen so bright and complete he can’t see his own hand in front of his face. But then the gale dies down and he
does
see: gauzy lights off to starboard—the lights of Boxelder.
    That means it won’t be far now. At least, he hopes. With