With a Sure and Hopeful Smile

[Revel]

She missed the cottage. It had been a nice place, cozy and yet cool. The bed had been the single greatest thing Revel had ever found. She had been certain that, with a little dedication and practice, she could use that sewing kit to piece together something to wear that fit. Her tunic was getting far too tight these days.

But most of all what she missed about the cottage was that it wasn't here.

Revel hated the ship. She hated the way it pitched on the sea, she hated the smells from the bilges, she hated the leering, grabby crew, she hated the constricted passageways, and she hated the fact that her first experience of it all had been with a hangover. The stoat had been convinced she was dying of some illness, until a crewbeast explained things to her:

"A 'angover, see, is when ye drink so much grog that ye feel like ye've been 'ung over th'railin' an' beaten 'round yer head wit' yer own footpaws."

The stoat hung over the railing now, having just given back to the sea everything she had consumed the night prior.

That tavern... that was where it had all gone wrong. No. Earlier than that. The hedgehog. That weird dream that had never really ended - unless she was still asleep in the cottage.

Revel doubted this idea. The smells, sights and sounds were too real for a fevered dream. Besides, no blackberry bush had tried to disembowel her, and all the rats she had seen so far had normal-sized heads.

So the hedgehog had been real. Revel wondered at this. She remembered being too tired to kill it, too full to move. The scene had seemed so hazy at the time, all of it. She'd still been half asleep when she'd wandered out to the stream to get a drink - she remembered being bemused at the lack of bodies in the kitchen. And then the sickly hedgehog had appeared and said something, something that Revel couldn't quite catch, but which made perfect sense at the time.

There was a gap in her memory there. Straining against her current headache, Revel pieced together various thoughts about male stoats, lack of hunting weapons around the cottage, and... That was all, really.

Revel sighed as she teetered away from the railing. She couldn't remember why she'd left. It had seemed important, though. And now she was on a ship - she hadn't really even known such things existed until today - and the land was long gone, along with the cottage and Bruscus and everything she'd ever known. And she still felt wretched.

She wiped her mouth with her headscarf, then tied it about behind her ears again with the soiled spot outward. The hedgehog had been right - it was useful to have.

Wait, how come she could remember that?

"Feh. Get yer tail movin', wench!"

Revel found herself being shoved from behind, very nearly into an open hatchway. The miscreant to blame was another stoat. A male stoat, muscular and yet svelte, his nose scarred and his ears notched. Half his whiskers were missing, now a glistening pink patch of flesh on his muzzle. He wore naught but a patchwork kilt made of woodlander skins and a criss-crossing array of belts over his chest. His fur tufted out between them, bright white in the front, deep ginger in the back. He held in his paws a large blacksmith's hammer, currently being waved under Revel's nose.

"Well?" he said, and snarled. "Move!"

Revel took a step back, gasping in fright as he made to swing it at her head. The male stopped and grinned maliciously at her reaction. But Revel didn't notice. What she noticed, when she took in that breath... was his smell.

He smelled fabulous. Oh, it was full and musky, like deposits of old, wet tree sap pooling under a fallen log! It was like salted moss, and sun-dried limestone that had recently been wetted with blood. But there were other fragrances, foreign and fantastical; something of fish and lemon, something of rust and pitch, and fear - oh! Such wondrous, satisfying fear. It was the fear of the voles and the hedgehogs, and it ran deep through his fur. He was covered in it, whiskertip to black tuft, and she wanted it on herself, to rub her cheeks into him until the smell filled her and satiated the hunger welling up from her belly.

She closed her eyes and breathed again, gulping his scent in fast, one breath, two breaths, three breaths -

A brief whistling noise was cut short by a dull clang of steel on wood. Revel's eyes snapped open. A large fox held his sword up, blocking the male stoat's hammer just inches from the side of Revel's face.

"Nivard," the fox said, "if I ever see you strike out at a maiden again on this journey, you will spend it in the brig with twenty lashes each shift. Do I make myself clear?"

"She wos sniffin' all 'igh an' mighty at me!"

"Do I make myself clear, Nivard?"

The stoat fumed, but lowered his weapon.

"Aye, Cap'n."

Matukhana nodded and sheathed his scimitar. His lips twitched into a half-smile.

"How's the face?"

Nivard clenched his teeth and spun about, stomping away and shouting obscenities at passing crewbeasts. The fox snorted at this and turned to Revel.

"You're part of the new crew, eh? I'm Captain Matukhana. You would do well to stay away from that one, miss... Miss, ahh?"

Revel looked at the Captain. She waited for him to finish. The fox harrumphed.

"What is your name, crewbeast?"

"No, it's Revel."

"Miss Revel, do not provoke my officers and do not keep me waiting. Have you any tasks to attend to?"

"Ummm..."

Matukhana scowled, glancing down at Revel's slightly rotund figure. "Either you do or you don't. Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Oh, be off with you before I have you put to the lash as well. Find something useful to do, or stay out of my crew's way!"

Matukhana, at that moment, spotted some ferrets having a round of fisticuffs across the deck and stomped off. Revel contorted up her face and waggled her tongue at the fox's back.

"Nagger-nugger-fwuabwuah!" she hissed. What a prude!

She sighed. Nivard's scent had faded, leaving her once again lost, confused, and more than a bit ill. She could keep her balance, but every passing wave caused her stomach to roil. There was just no pleasing it. Even when she slept, she could feel it - soft little flutters that jostled her insides in the quiet moments of the night. If she held her breath in these moments and listened to the vibrations of her blood, it sounded almost like the echoes of a fly thrumming its wings.

She needed to stop snacking on crickets.

"Hoi, you - you busy?"

A rat was addressing her. He lowered his pointing paw to the barrel in front of him.

"Need help wit' this. Grab it 'round the other side. Takin' it t'the galley."

The barrel was full of autumn harvest, mostly apples, pears and turnips. Revel wrinkled her nose at them, but a passing glare from Matukhana as he surveyed the deck urged her to grab the barrel as best she could. The rat took the lead, heading down the open hatchway.

The darkness inside the ship's corridors took hold almost instantly over Revel's mind. These were no tunnels in a hillside, no hare's warren or mole's run. They were square and damp and lifeless, yet creaking with unnatural noises. Revel was reminded of the forest's groans during the storm, but that, she knew, had been the wind. What caused these noises now?

Without the gentle swaying of the horizon to assuage her mind, the ship's movements made her feel all the more ill. No sooner had they brought the barrel to the galley than Revel had snatched up an empty pot and threw up yet again. It was only after licking her lips clean that she noticed the room she was in was something of a kitchen, full of aromatic delights.

The rat left, leaving Revel to explore on her own. She slid her pot of sick into a corner and began poking her nose into the ones on the stoves. Porridge in one, boiling seagulls in another - ah, and in the oven itself was a large fish, of a kind Revel had never seen before.

"Gerrout of there!" a voice snapped. Revel peered up into the face of a fat, flour-faced ferret. Then she glanced down again, marvelling at his pegleg.

"That's the Captain's dinner! Yours," he said, ignoring her stares, "is in that pot over there."

She followed the direction of his paw. It seemed to point at the two pots on the stove at first, but the aim was off. Revel hesitantly pointed at the boiling seagulls, and the ferret shook his head and jabbed his paw again. Revel slid behind him and peered over his shoulder.

"Oh," she said. It was the pot she'd thrown into the corner.

"Get out!" the ferret barked.

A few ladle-whaps to the back of her head was, she felt, a little more inspiration than necessary for her to obey the cook's order. She just couldn't win in this place - why was everybeast being so... so annoyed with her? What had she done wrong?

What had she done, period? She couldn't remember.

In the corridor outside the mess hall, Revel stopped. That smell... it was the fear. How had she not noticed it before? It lay thick in the air, an invisible smoke. She followed her nose.

It was down another set of steep stairs that she found the oardeck. The stoat Nivard was closing a door, taking a small lantern off a hook. He turned and paused, then grunted and brushed past her roughly - Revel shuddered in delight as their shoulders met. She sniffed after him, but the subtleties were gone, overpowered by the stench of fear.

She pushed open the door, and a wave of it blasted over her. It took all her self-control not to retch again at the sickly sweetness of it.

And there, rows upon rows of them, were woodlanders. Some thin and gaunt, others healthier, but sad and confused. All of them were chained, and all of them had long sticks in front of them, which they pushed and pulled in random unison. Revel thought she recognised the hedgehog, but it had its eyes closed, sobbing quietly and unaware of her. The stoat stared, amazed at the sheer variety. There were otters and a few hares, mice and moles, a squirrel glaring at her with teeth bared, even a watervole! And they all reeked.

Revel shut the door and cried. Her tears didn't stop, but it didn't take long for her sobs to turn into fits of laughter. She felt like the luckiest stoat in the world.

The day began to pass by in a blur after that. Revel, stomach emptied of food, no longer retched every ten minutes, and began to fight back the feeling of confinement and unease when inside the ship. She explored, took note of the crew (and Nivard's quarters), and helped with most tasks she was asked of - some of them she fumbled and was sent away from. She found out the cook's name was Kirby and that his son was a soldier in Proklyan's army. This had absolutely no meaning to her, however. She found that some stoat by the name of Venril was a Captain, but he was holed up in his quarters and wouldn't come out. Rath, a ferret, was guarding the brig, where a pine marten (a pine what?) was being held.

There was no mention, however hard she tried, of how she came to be on the ship. Some other beasts were to be found muttering about too much grog at the tavern, but they were as confounded as she was. Once - just once she'd thought she'd found somebeast who might have had an idea, a big fuzzy creature with orange fur and a long, wondrous tail, but the stench of his coat had driven her away, once again nauseous and muddle-minded. She woke to the curious face of a young weasel, who then laughed at her for having fainted for a few seconds; nobeast else had cared to notice the episode.

Lunchtime passed by without much fuss on part of the crew. Revel found her porridge tasteless, but only senior crewbeasts were allowed portions of seagull. Her stomach growled in fury at this, and she found her thoughts straying back to the slave deck.

Several times, it was more than just her thoughts. Almost as if in a trance, Revel paused to find her paw on the latch, the stench of fear swirling about her like so much upset dust. She would stare at the wooden door wistfully, then shake herself awake and march away, already having been told off once for daring to head down there when she had no business in the lower decks.

By the time dinner came around, the stoat found herself panicking. Every attempt to access the kitchen was met with Kirby's impressive set of cutlery, and the roiling of her stomach was no longer caused by the pitching of the ship. She felt as if she would collapse inward upon herself, if only just to fill the void. The portions were larger this time, with bits of fish and leftover gull being given out along with a bun and mug of watered-down grog that tasted worse than licking her own pawpads.

It was not enough.

The crew changed after sunset, the ship's bell signalling bed for some, and work for others, whom Revel had not seen that day. She was guided to a dingy room full of hammocks and snoring vermin, and given a spot near the bottom. She worried at first about her hammock, unused to sleeping off the ground, but she soon found its swinging to counter the ship's movement.

She did not sleep well. Restless, the stoat tossed and turned. The vixen directly above her was drooling, and the rocking movements made it difficult to know where the next drop would fall. Revel's whiskers twitched with each horrifying plip. Her belly fluttered.

It was during the night of her her second day on the ship that she could take it no more.

When the rest of her shift had put in for the night, Revel slipped out of her hammock. One of her bunkmates had a cutlass; she took it, smiled to herself at the familiarity of the sword in her paws, and slipped out into the corridor.