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But I felt this pressing urge to test my freedom, and so I walked away completely.
I held myself stiffly as I crossed the deck, waiting for someone to stop me, but none of them did.
I walked by male after male, and though they all stared at me, some of them risibly aghast and appalled, their eyes flicking between me and the male they kept chained—despite the fact that he seemed to have their balls in a vice—they let me cross from one end of the boat all the way to the bow.
Once there, I gaped out at the ice and water with stunned awe.
I hadn’t given much thought to what was pulling the boat until this moment, but now I was utterly consumed by the very idea of it.
A giant—absolutelyhuge—beast was towing the boat.
Something that looked like a cross between a dragon, a pufferfish, and the Loch Ness monster was hauling the boat by heavy leather straps and chains that were looped around winged fins jutting out from a wormlike body.
The monster was carving its way directly through the ice in a powerful display, destroying the flat ice and churning it into sharp-edged icebergs.
How I had not seen it in the woods would forever baffle me but I could not unsee it now.
It was ugly and terrifying and easily a hundred times my size, and there weremoreof them.
I squinted, unease sliding through me as I seemed to catch sight of more of them beyond the boat, unchained and free to move about but seemingly chasing after the boat as if determined to free the one held captive.
I tore my eyes away from the captivating sight and took in the purple hue bleeding up from the skyline.
The moons were fading away in the new morning light. I stood at the ship’s bow in stupefied wonder as several suns burst over the horizon in a kaleidoscope of color, illuminating our current route.
We were headed straight for the edge of the world, the edge of analien planet.
Chapter4
JUNE
As I tookin the breathtaking sight of the cliff edge, my stomach sank.
It was beautiful, the ice frozen in great big waves as if the cliff’s edge had once been a magnificent waterfall but was now frozen over. But beyond the edge was a world that I could no longer ignore.
Thrust into the side of the edge were two huge frozen monoliths with a written language that was not recognizable.
They jutted up into the sky as if they were a gate to something great beyond the fall. Only there was nothing.
A great big yawning nothing.
Only more ice…miles and miles of ice at the bottom of that fall.
I hadn’t realized until that moment that I was waiting to see somethingmore,something else besides the ice and the snow and even the mountains.
Wherever these boats were headed, it was not back home. Nothing was going to take me back home, and I couldn’t go in search of it on foot.
But before that depressing thought could once again cripple me, a sense of urgency began to settle in as the boat seemed not to slow down or change course but actually lean in its direction and then speed up.
We were headed right for that cliff’s edge, and we were not stopping.
“H-hey,” I croaked, my voice unused and strange to me after not having used it to speak actual words in hours. “You need to stop!”
Several males eyed me suspiciously as I spoke, but no one did anything. No one turned the boat in another direction.
I backed away, my chest aching the closer and closer we came to the edge, but I seemed to be the only one reacting as if anything was amiss.
Even the monsters hauling the boats continued undeterred, even if they too would fall right off the edge and plunge miles to their death.
