Young Writers Society

Black waves lapped against the rocks as another dead ship drifted into port. Felix could just make out its gray hull through the lamp-lit gloom, and his heart fell. Its engine was silent, its bridge dark, leaving only the stir of the slow river that carried it. Shouts rang from the dock as workers hurried to bring the ship in, but Felix suspected they would find its hold as empty as the previous four.

He stepped off the cobbled street and picked his way down the uneven, natural rock that lined the water’s edge. The far side of the river here had no bank. Instead, the cavern wall rose sheer from the depths to the distant ceiling, and the yellow light of the town reflected faintly across it. He wondered how long those lights would burn, with no gas to refill them. Or how long the docks would remain staffed, as men died upstream and more sailed off to replace them.

Cries of dismay confirmed his suspicions. Corpses, someone shouted, a dozen of them. Hold ransacked, crates torn apart. Townsfolk gathered on the street with the murmur of worried gossip. Felix skirted the crowd and climbed along the rock edge into the shadows below the pier, where the dark wooden beams ran past him at eye-level. Above him, dockworkers scurried back and forth carrying ropes and broken containers.

One woman also nudged around the bystanders and took hesitant steps toward the ship. The dockworkers moved aside without notice. Her long red coat was deep and soft under the lamps, her brown hair braided back with white lace, and her surface-import leather boots suggested wealth. A merchant’s daughter—probably a Weiss or a Kraus. But when she stepped past Felix, a chill brushed his skin.

The woman drew to the edge of the pier, stopping a few meters short of the ship where three recovered bodies lay under tarps. She knelt, one hand reaching forward. Felix lifted onto his toes for a better view, but as soon as her fingers grazed the first tarp, an invisible wave passed through him.

A vice constricted around his chest and his gut churned with nausea. He leaned forward, the rocks under the pier slick with water and moss, gasping for air as the force tightened. Claws dug into his side, raked down his leg. An old pain, familiar, but suddenly sharp and renewed. Injuries that had healed months ago. Bile rose in the back of his throat as memories of blackness and screams bubbled to the surface. He braced himself for the next blow.

The force let go as abruptly as it had started. The pain melted back into dull memory and he clung to the present—the wet rocks, the thump of the dockworkers’ boots, the quiet lap of the river. With a wheezy gulp, he glanced up and saw that nothing on the dock had changed. The woman was looking in his direction, confused, but didn’t seem to see him peeking over the edge.

He touched a hand to his side, expecting to come away with blood, but there was nothing. He pulled back the leg of his trousers, and the scars there were old and untouched. What had she done to him?

When he looked up again, the woman was jogging back up the pier toward another, a second woman taller and more robust. The newcomer wore a guardian’s uniform and carried a pistol and a sword at her waist, typical hired protection for the upper crust. When they reached each other, the merchant’s daughter began to sign, expression earnest, hands moving in a flurry. She glanced again toward the shoreline where Felix huddled, and the chill crawled down his neck again.

He scrambled down from the rocks, heart pounding, stones slipping and skittering as he stumbled away from the pier and up to the cobblestone road. His hands shook and his skin tingled with the fresh memory of wounds. A glance back to the ship made his stomach heave. He hugged his jacket tight around himself and hurried away from the scene, plunging against the flow of foot traffic, trying to push the memories back down. He took the first intersection away from the river and followed the dim evening lamps into the heart of downtown Venderstadt.

Felix slowed as the hubbub of the dock faded from earshot, but the haunted emptiness of a struggling downtown offered no comfort. Every third or fourth lamp had gone dark, and only a handful of shops still opened their doors. He passed by windows sparse and empty, shops locked and shuttered. If supplies didn’t arrive soon, the shortages would start claiming lives.

His feet brought him automatically down his well-traveled route. One right, up a small hill, past the bakery, left and three doors down. Every afternoon as a schoolchild he’d come this way from the river. It was still so familiar—the same heart-shaped crack in the cobbles on Third, the same blanket of ivy on the corner of Motz and Strauss—and yet different from all those years ago—the shoe repair replaced by a tailor, the old chapel torn down from water damage. Little things that reminded him that this wasn’t really his home, not anymore.

He stopped at the little door to the honey shop that used to be his. Just one brick face among the rest, with his name still hanging over the window: Romberg Honey. In a town like Venderstadt, it was easier to leave the name. Strange to be welcomed back to small-town life after so much time in the city.

If that could be counted as time in the city. The tunnels were his real home, whether he stayed in Venderstadt or Steinberg or anywhere else in between. Or they had been.

Now, he was happy enough to sleep with the safety of four walls and a lock. He pushed through the shop door with the soft jingle of a bell, and nodded to Mrs. Hague across the register where she was stocking jars. Honey kept, but with times as they were, half the shelves stood bare. He didn’t regret selling the business.

Mrs. Hague set a jar down and picked up her glasses. “You all right, dear?”

Felix shivered, fighting the temptation to run a hand over his scars again. “There’s another ship at the dock. Empty like all the rest.”

“Damn it to the deepest ring of hell. We’ll be eating the bees’ moss at this rate.”

“If there’s anything I can do for you and Mr. Hague…”

“Oh, hon, you do plenty.” She stacked her jars onto a shelf and pulled open a new box. “It’s tough times for everybody.”

He agreed and then let her be, heading up the narrow stairs to the apartment overhead. His relationship with the Hagues had been a quiet one—their daily exchange of necessary updates, usually with a few extra curses from the missus, followed by Felix’s silent handiwork around the home and the apiary. They didn’t ask for much; he found enough to keep busy on his own. It was the only way to keep himself moving forward. There was something comforting about wrapping himself in his childhood home, even with his parents’ long gone and the deeds signed away years ago. At least with the Hagues around, he wasn’t so alone.

There was nothing to cook them for supper, only salted meat and hard cheese, so he tidied the meager kitchen and tried not to think about the empty holds of the ship outside. If nothing could make it down the river, all they had left were the tunnels. The town must have already sent someone by now. Probably weeks ago. Help should have come, if those messengers were still alive.

A knock sounded at the apartment door.

“Be right there,” Mr. Hague called from the other room. Felix thought he could hear the old man’s bones creaking all the way from there.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Hague.” Felix crossed the kitchen, pulled open the old wood door, and found himself face to face with a woman in a red coat with lace through her braid.

Felix recoiled. Pins and needles crawled up his arms.

The second woman, in the guardian’s uniform, towered behind her companion. “Felix Romberg?”

He took a step back, stomach roiling. “Yes?” Was this about what happened at the dock?

She extended a hand forward in greeting. “My name is Sofia Henzler. This is Lilly Weiss, my employer.” She hesitated. “We need a cavern guide.”

Felix stared at the offered hand, dumbstruck. “What?”

“We need a cavern guide.”

He eyed the pair of them, unsure how to react, his thoughts tripping over themselves. His guess had been right to place Lilly as a Weiss, and up close he recognized the petite figure and delicate features of her father. Next to her, Sofia was large and loud, her skin much darker, her figure thick and strong, but it was Lilly’s sharp green eyes that commanded all attention.

“How did you know to ask for me?” he asked at last.

Lilly signed something, and Sofia spoke for her. “Your name was on the registry.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It’s crossed off, but it’s still readable.”

He backed away another step, one hand still on the door. “Then why come to me? I’m not licensed anymore.”

“Because the other two never came back.”

Curses. So the only qualified guides in Venderstadt were dead or missing. That just left him. He swallowed. Damn the town office for leaving his name legible.

“Your chances are even worse with me,” he said, trying to edge further behind the door. “I haven’t been in the tunnels for almost a year. I help with the bees now.”

“Our options are you or nobody,” Sofia said. “You can name the terms of the contract.”

“It’s not about the money.” He started to close the door. “I can’t help you.”

Lilly pushed her way into the doorframe, blocking him. “Please,” she said, in the round, uneven way of the deaf. The chill around Felix strengthened as she drew close. “Everyone else is gone or dead. Who is left to help if not you?”

“I would if there was anything I could do.” He tried to stress the genuine apology in his expression. “The town is in trouble, you’re right, but I’m not a cavern guide anymore. You’d be safer to ask a boatman for passage.”

“We can’t travel by river,” Sofia said. “Nobody has come down the river and lived in over a month.”

“Depending on me could get you killed. You’re not talking to someone who’s spent every day memorizing maps and tasting the air currents. There’s a reason our licenses expire, and having been a guide is very different to being one now.”

“The routes haven’t changed.”

“Everything about them has. Movements of predators, migration of prey. Rock stability and water levels… Penumbra.” His tone darkened as he said that last.

“Outdated knowledge is better than no knowledge,” Sofia said. “You’re all we’ve got.”

Lilly stared up at him with a grim set to her green eyes. She began to sign, and Sofia translated. “What will you do when the lights burn out and the cellars are all empty? When even the moss meant for your bees has been eaten and there are no more ships left to send?”

He sighed, lowering his gaze. Her words hung on the damp air. Those same questions had plagued him for weeks, and he didn’t have an answer. But the thought of facing the tunnels again… darkness and claws and screams…

“What were you doing on the dock?” he asked finally.

The two exchanged a glance. “We were curious about the ship,” Sofia said, “like everyone else.”

“But you got much closer. I saw you”—he nodded toward Lilly—“kneeling at the end of the pier. What were you doing?”

They signed to each other for a moment in silence. Hesitant to answer, it seemed. Unprepared for the question. Finally, Sofia spoke.

“Miss Weiss is a sensitive. She was hoping for a clue.”

Felix’s unease strengthened. He’d met sensitives before. Their abilities were mild, innocuous—sensing a distant pain when they brushed him or noticing a shadow to his aura. Not reaching into his soul and dragging the past into the present, so quick and violent he couldn’t tell which was which.

He chose his words carefully. Lilly hadn’t seen him—clearly didn’t realize she’d had such an effect on him. She wouldn’t know he had reason to believe she was more than a sensitive. “Is that why you feel you can help Venderstadt?” he said slowly. “Your abilities?”

“Yes. She may pick up on ripples from those who were lost.”

“Why did you wait? Why not go before things got this bad?”

“Her brother left with an expedition two weeks ago. But… he took the river. We’ve both been worried, but the ship that just docked confirms something more needs to be done. Neither of us is prepared to keep sitting here in the dimming lights, waiting for the bad news. We’d like to leave at daybreak, if you’ll take us.”

He leaned against the door, fingers drawing circles over the worn wood. Hiding above the honey shop wouldn’t stop the supplies running out. He thought of the Hagues, struggling with their business, trying to maintain some level of cheer. Of his childhood home going dark and cold. If the next week’s ship turned up empty again, it would be a death sentence. These women were right that he could offer Venderstadt a last chance. He used to have such pride in his skills, such confidence in his reputation. Was facing the tunnels really worse than resigning himself and everyone else to the certainty of starvation? Of turning his back on the kindness of his landlords or the children in the school or the merchants along the riverside?

Lilly being reluctant with the truth of her abilities didn’t bother him. He’d taken eccentric and untrustworthy clients before. If he was honest with himself, whatever she was or whatever she tried, he’d been through worse and come back alive. He’d been through much worse.