In a world of steamships and Progress, no one who sails due south across the Wild Sea ever returns.
No one knows why.
Dale Mortensen intends to solve the mystery. With the help of an old sailor and a reformed playboy searching for his missing sweetheart, he locates a captain and crew ambitious—not to mention crazy—enough to undertake the journey across the Wild Sea.
The Infinity and her crew sail south, but the truth of what really lies on the other side of the horizon is more amazing—and terrifying—than anything they can imagine.
It’s the adventure of a lifetime—and it may just get Dale and his friends killed.
Find out how this Young Adult steampunk adventure unfolds chapter-by-chapter every Thursday! Click here to start from the beginning. Or if you want to read it at your own pace, buy the ebook for $6.99 from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Sony, or get it as a trade paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HORIZON
E. R. PASKEY
SEVENTEEN
AFTERWARD, DALE WAS NOT QUITE SURE WHAT drew him back to consciousness. An unfamiliar voice, perhaps. Or maybe it was the lack of sensations he knew he should have been feeling, given that the last thing he remembered was collapsing on a rain-lashed beach.
Of course, he thought groggily, taking in the pillow beneath his head and the blanket covering him, maybe I dreamed the whole thing. The Infinity, the storm, all of it.
He nodded woozily to himself. That was it. He was back in his usual room in the Bonny Swan. Soon enough, he would join Raphael for breakfast and they would determine where they would sail next.
Raphael. At the thought of his friend, an image of his face—pale and bloodstained above the wreckage he was barely clinging to— came to Dale. He inhaled with sudden understanding. It was real.
His eyes flew open and he bolted upright. Alarm faded to wary confusion as he took in his surroundings. This is most definitely not a beach. Where am I?
Dale found himself on one of many cots lining both sides of a large room with white-paneled walls. All but one of the cots was empty; to his relief, the one beside him held a still-unconscious Raphael. He looked his friend over carefully, but aside from the bandage on his head and the sling on his arm, Raphael appeared unharmed.
That eased a little of the burden weighing down Dale’s broad shoulders. Exhaling shakily, he looked around again. Gray light filtered in through a series of rectangular windows lining the wall to his right; he saw nothing beyond them but tree branches in the distance. The glass in the windows had a wavy, uneven look to it, unlike anything he had ever seen before. A white door stood at one end of the room.
Someone must have found us and brought us to a hospital. Dale swallowed uneasily; he had not set foot inside a hospital since the tsunami so many years before. He glanced down at himself to discover someone had removed his shirt. An ugly collection of bruises adorned his chest, arms, and hands, and there were places where someone had apparently dug out several nasty splinters, but he appeared to be in one piece.
Mostly, anyway, he thought, wincing as a throbbing in his left knee made itself known. He threw back the blanket and sheet to examine his legs—and grimaced. Someone had cut his trousers off above the knee, revealing more scrapes and bruises. His left knee was bruised and looked swollen. Wonder when that happened.
He was still trying to piece together all the events of the wreck when the door at the far end of the room opened to admit a tall, matronly-looking woman with gray hair pinned up in a bun. She took one look at him and her brown eyes narrowed in something that looked suspiciously like satisfaction.
“Good, I see you’re awake.” Moving to his side in a rustle of dark gray skirts, she pushed him back down on the cot and flipped the blanket over his lower body. “I’d prefer it if you stayed in bed a while longer. There’s no reason for you to injure your knee further before it’s had a proper chance to heal.”
“Um, thank you, ma’am,” Dale managed to croak. A dozen different questions crowded his tongue, begging to be asked, but he could not call on any of them. Instead, he tipped his head toward Raphael. “Is my friend all right?”
The woman pursed her lips. “He’s suffered a nasty blow to the head and his left leg is fractured. He woke up once a few hours ago.” Her lips twitched. “I had to give him a dose of sleeping medicine to keep him in bed.”
Dale’s mouth curved in a ghost of a smile. He could well believe that. “Where are we?” Somehow, they had stumbled across an inhabited island.
“The Hospital, of course. I am Mrs. Weatherby, the head matron.”
Taken aback, Dale blinked at her. “No, ma’am, I can see that. I meant, where is this place? Has anyone else from our crew survived?”
Mrs. Weatherby regarded him with pursed lips. “What is your name?”
“Dale Mortensen.” Dale jerked a thumb toward Raphael’s bed. “This is my friend, Raphael Franco Avarez.”
“I see. Obviously, sailors.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re part of the Infinity’s crew, out of Port Ruby, under Captain Ruben.”
Mrs. Weatherby nodded. “And your ship went down.”
Dale could only nod; a lump had formed in his throat.
“Ah, well, you’re not the first. I doubt you’ll be the last.” Turning, Mrs. Weatherby started for the door. “I’ll bring you some lunch; I’m sure you’re hungry.”
She still hasn’t answered the question. “Mrs. Weatherby!” called Dale, a little louder than he intended. He waited for her to glance over her shoulder. “Where are we?”
“Where do you think you are?” she retorted.
“I don’t know.” Dale shook his head in confusion. “We sailed into this silvery mist and ended up in the mother of all storms.” He looked at her pleadingly. “Is this the other side of the Wild Sea?”
“Oh, lord.” Mrs. Weatherby rolled her eyes and disappeared through the door before Dale could say anything else.
Dale collapsed back on his cot, his mind awhirl. What is going on here? Where are we?
~oOo~
UNTIL the door reopened, all Dale could do was sit there and stew. He wanted very badly to climb out of bed and go marching off for answers, but he refrained for two reasons. One, he did not particularly care to leave an unconscious Raphael to fend for himself in this place…wherever this place happened to be. Second, he did not want to further injure his knee. It ached badly enough now as it was.
He examined the room again, but his eyes kept straying to the door. When it finally opened, he tensed in anticipation. I’d better get some answers.
He was completely unprepared for what happened next.
Instead of Mrs. Weatherby and a lunch tray, a group of men trooped in carrying bodies. They proceeded to lay their semi-conscious burdens out on the cots and Dale felt a jolt of combined relief and worry when he recognized Minh and old Belly. Last, they brought in Manji, though he was hardly recognizable as the chipper, calculating man Dale had known.
Dale’s stomach turned; he was suddenly very glad he had not yet had anything to eat. Manji was missing both his right leg from the thigh down and his right arm from the elbow down. His limbs looked like something had chewed them off. He was half-conscious, moaning in pain.
Mrs. Weatherby burst through the door with a weathered-looking nurse in tow—a brown-skinned woman in her early forties. The nurse carried a lunch tray, which she set on Dale’s lap without a word before hastening over to assist the matron in tending to the newly-arrived wounded. Dale could not bring himself to touch a bite. Not with Manji bleeding out all over his cot, tossing and moaning, his truncated limbs jerking in painful spasms.
Closing his eyes, Dale began to pray. He had not spent much time praying over the course of his life, but if ever there was a time, he thought it was now.
It felt like an eternity before Mrs. Weatherby and the nurse forced something for the pain down Manji’s throat, bandaged him, and strapped him down to keep him from further hurting himself. They cleaned up the blood as best they could before turning their attention to the others. Minh was bruised, dehydrated, and exhausted, but otherwise seemed to be in fairly good shape. He nodded wearily across the room to Dale before closing his eyes.
Belly was well enough to bellyache and complain, though it appeared his mind was not yet firing on all cylinders. His mechanical leg prompted a furious bout of hushed whispers, which he either ignored or fell asleep before he overheard.
Mrs. Weatherby and the nurse filed out before Dale could say anything. His hands tightened into frustrated fists, but he deliberately made himself relax. They just saved Manji’s life, he reminded himself. Surely you can be patient a little while longer.
It was a half an hour before Manji’s moans tapered off, and another hour beyond that before Dale’s stomach stopped roiling long enough for him to even contemplate eating. Lifting the lid on his tray, he found a simple plate of what looked liked mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, with a side helping of some green-and-yellow vegetable he did not recognize. His stomach rumbled at the smell wafting off the plate and he shrugged. Might as well.
When he finished eating, he looked around the hospital ward again. The last time he had seen the inside of a hospital—makeshift or otherwise—had been those first few days after the tsunami. The quiet unsettled him.
“Minh?” asked Dale quietly. “Are you awake?”
The cook did not reply.
Dale looked from cot to cot. Other than Garr and Inzin, who had most definitely not survived the boiler explosion, everyone was accounted for except the Captain and Yutha. His heart clenched at the thought of either of them being dead, but especially Yutha. The lad had too much spirit to be gone, surely.
He was so lost in thought that he did not hear the door open again.
“Mr. Mortensen, I presume.”
Startled, Dale looked up to find a short, stout man in a tweed coat crossing the ward toward him. “Aye,” he said finally. “That’d be me.”
“I am Mr. Riley.” The man did not elaborate further, but looked over the top of his half-rim spectacles at Dale. “I understand you and these men—” he motioned to the other injured sailors, “—belong to the ship that has been washing up on the shore in pieces?”
“Yes, sir. I’m the engineer.”
“I see.”
Dale swallowed. “Please, sir, have you found my captain? And a boy named Yutha?”
Riley looked rather troubled. “We found the boy, yes.”
“Is he—”
“He’s fine. Broke his leg, but Mrs. Weatherby assures me he’ll be up and about in no time. As for your captain…” Riley swept a hand to encompass the rest of the ward. “If he’s not here, then I’m afraid he’s lost for good.”
The notion made Dale’s chest hurt. It isn’t right, he thought soberly, that Ruben should wait that long to make this journey and die before he discovers the truth. He snapped back to the present; Riley was speaking again.
“…where did your ship set sail?”
“Port Ruby.”
“Heard of it. Never been there, myself.” Riley jotted the name down on a little pad of paper he pulled from his striped waistcoat. “What was the purpose of your journey? Were you blown off-course?”
Dale debated holding back the true purpose of their journey, but concluded he might as well throw it out there. “We were attempting to cross the Wild Sea.”
Riley sighed. “Of course you were.” He continued to peer at Dale over the top of his spectacles; Dale had the sudden urge to push them up on his nose properly.
“Sir,” he asked hesitantly, “where are we? Is this the other side of the Wild Sea?”
Riley let out a short laugh. “I suppose you could call it that.”
“Really?” Dale’s breath caught in his throat. Questions tumbled out of him before he could stop them. “Why has no one ever come back? What was that silver mist?”
“I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than all that, my boy.” Riley frowned, as though waging an internal debate with himself over how much he ought to say.
Dale hardly noticed; his head was reeling from the idea that this was in fact the fabled other side of the horizon. He shifted on his cot to fix burning hazel eyes on the other man. “Explain it to me then, sir. I’ve spent my whole life wondering what was out here.”
“You’re about to get more than you bargained for,” warned Riley. “We call that silver mist the Rift.” His tweed-covered shoulders lifted in a small shrug. “That’s what it is, you know. A rift between our world and this watery hellhole.”
Find out how this Young Adult steampunk adventure unfolds chapter-by-chapter every Thursday! Or if you want to keep reading right now, buy the ebook for $6.99 from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Sony, or get it as a trade paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository.
Copyright © 2013 E. R. Paskey