†his ends this tale. No further episodes are planned.

Stone – Final Chapter

Chapter 71 – The voyage home

On the day the ship was ready to sail Stone assembled the crew on deck to make an announcement. “We are making a few changes in the command of the ship. We appoint Kullan as the new third mate. First and second mates remain as before, but the third mate Jason is named captain due to his remarkable accomplishments in the late war.” A cheer went up from the crew: they clearly were in favor of the change. “Finally,” Stone continued, former captain Keenstone is now admiral of this fleet of one. Two when we meet up with Moon Goddess after we cross the ocean.” Another cheer, but this one seemed less to Rayla, who stood in the rear to see her son promoted to captain.

“All right you lot,” Jason shouted. “You all know where to go. Get there and let’s get this tub out where it belongs.

The first four weeks were peaceful, and the crew and passengers fell into a routine. Pinky and Rayla continued to suffer morning sickness, which had started when they were on shore. Emily tended to look after them. Sissy was now considered a real beauty by the crew, but she spent most of her time in the cabin, writing a book about the voyage so far. She had been accosted by sailors several times when she was out of the cabin, but she remembered her old life and refused to be taken. Five sailors went under the lash for attempting to bed her, and Jason made sure they were real lashes, not the light ones that had been used in the past. Soon all the sailors knew that she was Jason’s sister just as much as Emily, who hadn’t met the same abuse due to her younger age. Sissy became a mascot of the crew, and anyone expressing impure thoughts was soon blacklisted by the others in the crew. She was able to smile and be friendly with everyone without fear of her good-natured flirting going any further.

It was Sissy who pointed out the odd looking sunset to Jason. “Look, that looks just like the sunrise we saw before the hurricane.” The young captain looked at the red sky and realized that it was a hurricane, but approaching from the west, not the east. He immediately ran to the forecastle and had the bosun whistle “storm watch.”

The ship was carrying full sails and was clipping along at a good pace that Jason felt would get them to Lakeport in nine or ten months. He watched the waves carefully through the night. He had hoped they would be able to stay ahead of hurricane season, but it was not to be. A dark dawn tried to break through the approaching storm, but merely lightened the skies to a dark and scary grey. Jason had already brought in the mainsails and called out the new hurricane sails. He would soon see if his idea worked. He steered away from the storm, heading east but the waves were now cresting the ship and the men moved from one position to another only while holding onto guide ropes.

Jason decided it would soon be dangerous to go aloft, so he sent crews up to trim the topsails, gallants and skysails. When the men were down, he noticed that the ship was more stable without sails on the upper masts, and the ship still steered well with the wind in the hurricane sails. His invention was not perfect, however. When a wave crested over the ship the low sails gathered up the water and momentarily were unable to be controlled. Jason saw that if the hurricane sails were about three feet higher this problem would not occur. He also noticed that the effect was minimized by running with the waves, so big waves were split around the stern of the ship, pushing if forward without filling the sails.

He continued to stay to the side of the storm. Without the hurricane sails the ship probably would have been demasted by now and sucked into the middle of the storm. But with the new control he had they stayed at the edge of the storm and ran alongside it for three days before it passed them entirely.

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Jason was nearly awake as he stroked the soft curves of the person sleeping next to him. It was only when his hand felt the hair of her tail that he realized he was spooning Pinky, who was just starting to show a baby bump. Fully awake, Jason sat up.

“Good sleep, love?” his partner asked.

“Yes. The ship, it seems to be riding well. The storm …?”

“Over. You came to bed about 18 hours ago when it was abating. You were up for 72 hours straight.”

Actually, he had come into the cabin for four hours midway through the storm, leaving the admiral in charge. But Pinky had been asleep when he came to bed, and still asleep when he went back out. She didn’t know he had been there.

He got up and pulled on his bell bottoms, leaned over and kissed Pinky on the lips, and then bent again to kiss the bump. Then he was gone.

The seas were calm, and the hurricane sails were down, and the ship was clipping along at a fast pace with all the other sails up. He hurried to the captain’s cabin where the admiral was puzzled over a chart.

“Jason, thank goodness you are up,” Keenstone said. “We need your navigational skills. I can’t make sense of the readings I took at noon yesterday. It was at the end of the storm, so perhaps I messed up the readings.

“It is nearly noon,” Jason said. “Let me take a reading with the sextant and we will plot our position.

After making his siting Jason sat down and did the math. He went to place a pin on the chart and saw it was near to another pin. “That is what my plot was from yesterday,” Keenstone said. “But it can’t be right. That is where we should be in a month, not three days.”

Jason stared at the map and finally came to a conclusion. “It is where we would have sailed in a month, but we had a hurricane pushing us along. I think the storm just took a month off our trip.”

Over the next few days it became clear that they had made great progress in the storm, with little damage to the ship. The carpenters made the few minor repairs in a day and then Jason had them raised the hurricane spars three feet up on the masts. His idea had worked, and only needed fine tuning.

The ship plodded along for another two weeks until there was a call from the crow’s nest. There was a red sky again: in the north this time. The crew, barely recovered from the last hurricane, was called to storm watch again.

For four days this time the storm blew. The improved hurricane sails worked better, and Jason managed to keep the ship at the edge of the storm again. When the storm ended the plots showed another month or five weeks had been saved by the push of the winds.

A third hurricane nearly a month later only lasted two days. It was curving to the west and Jason veered away to the east and Lakeport. It saved another few weeks and when the seas calmed, they were only a week away from the port.

“We could have ridden that one right to Westport,” Jason told Stone.

“Better we dock in Lakeport,” Stone said. “We can sell a bit of the cargo there. And Doug is getting antsy on board again. He would not appreciate it if you bypassed a chance for him to get his hooves on the ground again. I will ride him to Westport with one of the cargo trains. I wonder if we will beat you in the ship.”

“You won’t if I can pick up another hurricane,” the young captain said, knowing there was no chance of another storm so soon after the last one.

In Lakeport some cargo was unloaded, but only after Doug was unloaded and ran full speed through the town the moment his hooves touched the dock. He came back an hour later, sweaty from his run. Meanwhile the cargo had been unloaded, and a midwife was found to tend to the very pregnant women on board. There was a huge crowd around the ship, rumored to have been lost at sea, and Stone had to make speeches and meet with the mayor.

Eventually the big man got on the big horse, still anxious to run, and they headed out to catch a wagon train that had left that morning. Jason pulled his ship out when the tide turned and started sailing to Westport on the coastal route.

Two days later he was walking near the owner’s cabin when he heard the cry of a baby. He dashed to the rooms only to find out that it was his new sister, and not his son. That came the next day. He held the young lad up and found it perfect in every way. No sign of a tail.

Two days later they docked. Stone had arrived two days earlier and found the town much changed in the two years he had been away. The little jeweller had tended his money well, and it had grown by nearly half. The man had started lending it out at interest to people with business ideas, or to build homes. In effect he had started a bank, Stone realized, and only about 20 percent of the gold remained in the storeroom. The availability of easy credit had led to the boom in the town. There was money to start new businesses and both Kithrens and whites had taken advantage. There was also a building boom in houses, both in the Kitchren style and the conventional.

Stone picked up a small bag of gold from the new bank and opened an account for each of the men on the crew of the Sun Goddess, depositing 50 gold into each account. He then headed down to the wharf when he heard that the ship was coming in. The men were lined up at the gangway, eager to get back on shore after two years away from town. Rayla was at the front, holding her new daughter.

Before allowing the men to disembark, Stone came on board after asking his son’s permission. He got a first look at his new daughter and gave the little bundle a kiss. Then he turned to address the anxious men: “I promised you all a healthy bonus when we completed this journey. However, much has changed in the town. Most of your bonus now resides in something called a bank. It is safe in there, and it is your money. You can head out and redeem it immediately if you want. But I suggest you leave it there until you have decided how you wish to spend it. There is enough there to provide a down payment on a farm or a small business if you wish. I know Jason is hoping for many of you to come back for the next trip across the ocean, but if you opt otherwise, you now have capital. I will give you one gold each for spending money. Please avoid the gamblers and thieves. You also have 50 more gold in the bank.”

With that men started to leave, with Stone paying each man a gold as he left the ship. Few of the men had wives or girlfriends so headed for the bars. Last to leave was Jason, who introduced Stone to his grandson. Pinky accompanied her man and took the five gold that Stone put into the boy’s hand. Rayla was already standing on the pier, with Sissy and Emily standing behind, making faces at the baby, who unfortunately was sleeping in her mother’s arms.

As the little family walked down the street towards their house a carriage pulled alongside. “Need a ride, gov’nor?” an older Kithren driver asked. It was one of the new businesses in town, a taxicab. Stone helped his family in and gave the driver four coppers to make the short run to the house.

“When will you sail again?” Stone asked, knowing his son would want to head out to sea again.

“It will depend on how many sign up for the trip,” Jason said. “If I can get more than half a crew with experience, either from this trip or from the coastal ships or whalers I suspect we could leave in a month. There isn’t much to be done to the ship in the drydock. Now that I know the secret of the hurricanes, I hope we can make a round trip in under a year. These spices will bring a good dollar and will make a good trade. We can supply hardwoods to the other side, as well as whale oil.”

“I spoke to our depot agent down here yesterday,” Stone said. “He is eager to get a new wagon or two to take spices north. They will complement the whale oil that has been the bulk of the trade so far. Apparently Three Rivers and Greenwood have grown a bit, and Greenstone is now bigger than Westport.”

They were at the house and Cass ran out eagerly. She was now married to Keeper, the man who had abandoned ship with Captain Snow, and they had four children: orphaned preschool strays they had adopted over the past two years. There was thus some rearranging of the houses, with Stone deciding that his family would move into the old school next door. Cass would only agree if the family promised to eat meals at the house.

Jason did sail a month later. Rayla was not too upset at his departure, knowing he would return. Plus she had another little voice to deal with. Pinky sailed with him, not willing to wait a year to see him again. Their little boy joined them, and they sailed in the owner’s cabin. The sailors approved. Over the trip out a rumor spread that touching Pinky’s tail was good luck for the sailors and she didn’t mind, so long as nothing else was touched. By the time they sighted land, every man had stroked her tail at least once.

Sissy, now one of the most beautiful white women in town was courted heavily, but spurned all offers, particularly those from men who had teased her before her transformation. She spent most of her time in working her diary of the voyage into a book. She sent excerpts out to the newspapers (there were now four in the larger towns) on the proviso that each paper send 100 copies free of charge to the local schools.

After her book was published (it went through five printings) Sissy took an idea Rayla told her about and started a library in Westport, followed by similar institutions in other towns as soon as she could convince the town councils to fund them.

Emily was still young, and her father tended to intimidate suitors. But she did date, and eventually became engaged to a young man who had a farm north of town.

Doug was thrilled to find that his lifespan would be that of a human, not a horse, and thus was breeding with mares for many years, watching his children grow old and die as he remained young. The same trait occurred for Arthur and the bird became a common sight in Westport, usually keeping an eye on Rayla’s new children (eventually five).

Stone remained an important businessman, and after a few years he was appointed the Westport representative to the Duchy council travelling up to Greenstone for several months of each year.