The Pinny was straining upwards in this crazy sudden wind. Magic storm, it must be. But who would do it, and why? Only blood magic and a lot of death would raise wind and thunder like this. Druthers knew she would stay with the Phinny. She'd been a bound gremlin years since, and had no other choice. But she hoped against hope that the captain would still get off.
Cath braced her foot against the front hatch, the wild wind wrenched at her pantaloons and skirt. Her leather gloves creaked as she gripped the wheel with all her might.
Get off, Cap'n. It's all right. It was Druthers who said it, but in the moment she was giving voice to the Ophinicus itself. All off, Cap'n. I'll take her on her last flight. You can trust her with me. You can't fight this one.
To hell I can't, Pinny.
Cath might have said it. She might have just thought it. Cath, Druthers and the boat were all of one creature in that moment and the Captain breathed the same green life as the both of them.
The lines were breaking uneven, wrenching the balloon up fore and leeways. Cath hit the switches to release the sidelines, hoping to even her up but risking losing the silks entirely. She had to let the boat loft up to have any chance at all.
Cap'n Cath Turnheel had never met a foe she could not fight. And she never would.
They spiraled higher and higher, above the low scudding cloud-line they could bank and into the light of the dying sun. Druthers sucked in the cold winds trying to draw in every ounce she could of the life force of the air. She embraced the whole wooden body of the boat with her soul, holding it together as greater forces tried to tear it apart. The Phinny was thrown high, hard, out and over the sea. The air got thin and freezing cold. But the spine lines held. The balloon softened and began to sink. They skated into the eye of the storm.
Cath locked the wheel and pushed her head up into the gutter-percha mounted glass bubble that gave her a distorted but wide view out beneath the balloon with all the slant-sails cleared. With the just one or two more lines lost the boat would drop. Stars were starting to appear. Cath's breath fogged the glass but not before she got her bearings.
She steered the Phinny back towards land. Her hands were now too cold to feel the wheel they clutched. She knew the other half of the storm was more than she could hope to survive, but she'd rather die in the sky, or on the way down, than drown.
Druthers came down to the ground, taking on her native from, one the crew of the Phinny had never seen. A gremlin female, just a little smaller than a human woman, owl-like eyes, and elfish face, fine feathers instead of hair and a gossamer dress that did not move in the wind.
Looking back, Cath saw her, and just nodded. Everyone knew the Phinny was a gremlin-boat. They'd never needed to see her to know she was there.
They sailed hard into the storm bank, Druthers' hand on the captain's shoulder; each of them knowing for a certainty that there was nothing Cap'n Catherine Turnheel wouldn't fight, but this truly was a fight she could not win.
#
It was almost cruel that they got close enough for hope. Land was in sight. The Phinny was still steering after a fashion. Cath knew frostbite had her fingers and most of her nose. She'd never considered herself much or a beauty anyway… nor the marrying type. They'd lost the main aft line, and the boat was dangling so back-heavy Cath was sighting through the fore hatch and steering over her head.
It was their enemy, the storm, which was saving them now. The winds near the shore were pushing upwards and keeping the half-empty balloon aloft. Through eyes blurred with frozen tears Cath could just see the breakers of the coastline when they hit a void. Some small space where the winds were suddenly gone and the Phinny fell, and fell, and fell.
She hit down on a tiny rocky island and the boat's spine beam snapped, the pointed end of the hind part speared forward. It punched through Cath's back and heart and took her life with a jarring suddenness. The balloon cloth tore and caught upon the wet black stone that thrust out of the sea like a spear. The maimed carcass of the boat screamed, groaned, toppled, and fell upon a ragged bed of guano stained stones.
Cath's body slid free and fell half-in and half-out of the sea where the waves set to pulling on her skirts. Druthers form had insubstatiated in the crash, she floated over the remains of the boat, now rent into two pieces with flotsam swirling away into the ocean.
It was an empty, lonesome place to spend forever. Or at least as long as even a finger's width of her bound vessel survived. Most like I'll starve to death before then. A gremlin needed little sustenance, but little is more than none.
Druthers set to gathering up the central mechanisms of the ship. The gyroscope was the Phinny's steady center. Brass bound with steel and diamond bearings. The ship's log wrapped in oilskin she set beside it. The flywheel was crumpled and the screw both cracked and bent. She left them in the wreckage. The smoldering furnace was still mostly of one piece still hung beneath the balloon which was splayed across the rocks. Maybe someone could salvage that.
A gremlin was five times stronger than a human of the same size. Druthers' laboriously moved some the larger rocks to jam the body of the Phinny in place at least for a while. The spine beam would need replacing and the wheel and screw. But there was enough left that someone might salvage it, some small chance of flying again. Any wooden part of the old boat becoming part of a new one would give her a new berth.
She wasn't thinking about Cath. She wasn't ready to think about Cath yet.
But it was time.