Bee's POV:-

[Present]

. . . to the sound of a running train, I wake up. For some reason, a single thought is running through my head: Wind, light, speed.

I look up at the sky with heavy eyes, and see nothing. A dark grey tarpaulin, what a petty excuse for a sky.

I turn my head quixotically, like a compass needle in a strong, omnipresent magnetic field. The schooner is standing still on the water, bobbing lightly, serenely. Goof is nowhere to be seen. Probably off to the woods gathering tulips.

I pop an edible pearl into my mouth, roll it under my tongue, flooding it with a satiating taste. I hope these don’t ruin my teeth like Mr. Cellomann’s candies did; another trip to the novice dentist would be the death of me.

I chuckle. This is the death of me, I think, and throw another one into my mouth.

My left ear twitches. It hears something. Something other than the running-train noise.

A deep, throaty chuckle, imitating my own.

Then I see a UFO on a tree top staring at me. No, not one. Two. Two slate faces I could use as blackboards to teach my juniors.

So I shrug, mutter 'On' to the schooner, which, much like last time, speeds, stalls, then speeds again. Inhaling the stench of the lake, I stand on the elevated platform besides the jib sail and look ahead.

Barely fifty feet ahead of me, I see the eddy. What Aar had called the 'vortex of death'.

Ironically, this time the sight of that circulating suckhole fills me up with utmost relief. I’m there. I’m finally there.

I chuckle again.

The unseen creature chuckles right back.

Frowning, I tip on my toes and scout in the distance . . . when I see a small black figure perched upon the rim of the schooner itself. It’s chuckling from its corroded beak.

I tremble, then straighten myself up. What can one raven do to me?

I shift my focus back to the eddy. We’re moving towards it. About forty feet more to cover.

In the treetops, more blank-slate faces are gathering. Huddling together, and even with no eyes, I can tell they’re watching me. They plainly give off the air of a group of spectators watching a freak show.

(You know freak shows, right? It’s actually better if you don’t. They’re banned now.)

Despite myself, I quiver again.

'Focus on the eddy, Bee,' I tell myself.

'Bee,' rasps another voice.

I look in its direction. Just another raven. No need to panic. Just a bird saying my name in a highly creepy manner.

But I know. I know who these ravens belong to. What they’ve done. What they want to do.

Still, thirty-five feet to go. Two ravens –

Okay, three now.

No, four.

So what?

The sound of the running train grows closer. The eddy is nearer. The UFOs are jumping up and down in anticipation.

‘Come on, Goof,’ I say to myself. ‘Be here.’

‘Here,' mocks a fifth raven, settling on top of the main mast.

‘Faster!’ I shout at the artless schooner, and even as I do, I get to witness the source of the train noise.

A huge black cloud, shapeshifting and biting, scuds across the sky with remarkable speed and ferocious intensity. It takes my disbelieving eyes a moment to realize the cloud is constituted by ravens, the way you and I are composed of cells.

‘Bee here,' croaks a raven, and I stand there like someone has placed me in liquid nitrogen. (Super cold gas. Super duper, freezing cold.)

No, you zany crow. Bee not here. Bee lost in a jungle in which all the animals belong to the genus Death.

The cloud of ravens comes at me – 'Faster!’ I yell, and fall backwards as the schooner picks pace – a moving arrow of black beings – the eddy, under its influence – the arrow, the cloud, the whatever, dives down, onto the schooner – I can see the gray eyes of the leading ravens, their beaks lined with predatory teeth –

A whoosh of air, and Goof crashes headfirst into the raven cloud. The flying arrow splits, and a bunch of ravens crash onto the deck besides me. One falls on my stomach, digs its unnaturally vicious face into my belly, and I have to pull it off. It takes a small chunk of my golden mermaid-faeces garment and flesh with it.

‘Faster,' I whisper weakly, caressing the deck. ‘Wind, light, speed.’

I watch as the abominable birds peck at Goof, bite at her, snap at her, until her wings and her antenna and her proboscis are all covered in their dark feather – they are going to rip her apart – and then the schooner pulls a three-sixty and wind is buffeting against me, making my hair flutter over the place, blocking half my vision – my world whirls like Es carried away by her dance move – the UFOs, the butterfly painted black, the dark tarpaulin sky – and the next thing I know, I’m engulfed by water – stuff is revolving and rotating around me – blood oozes from my stomach where the cursed raven nipped – painting the liquid blue as red – and I’m whirling, whirling, whirling . . .

This is a familiar feeling, so I smile. Water fills my lungs.

I think this book is going to be wrapped up in 60 or less chapters.