Free Sky Song: Overture by Meg Merriet

now… sweetheart?” He winked at me.
    I nodded and feigned a little laugh. Then I sucker punched him in the gut. Baker pushed me and staggered back.
    “Knock it off!” ordered Captain Dirk. “Get us down from here!”
    Baker spit in the dirt like the hit was nothing and went back to climbing trees. I was able to knot my parachute cords as high as the rest of them and we soon had a stable trampoline.
    Dirk helped Molly slip the belts. She screamed as she fell and bounced on the tarp below, layers of pink satin fluttering. I helped her down.
    “Oh, Clikk, thank the stars!” she exclaimed, leaping into my arms. “The pirate man said to trust him and so I gave him my dress and went with the other pirate in his ship!”
    “Oh, good,” I said. “But next time a pirate tells you to trust him, you mustn’t. Understood?”
    Molly frowned and nodded.
    “Good girl,” I said. “Help is on the way.”
    Next came Dirk. He cut himself free and came down thrashing his legs. The parachute canvas broke his fall and we helped him to his feet as well.
    “Good work, boys,” he said. “Where is Maive?”
    “Off to find your contact,” Baker said. “Gave us this flare and told us to gather survivors.”
    “Right,” said Dirk. “Let’s find the rest. We’ll need everyone we can get. We just murdered a bloody emperor.”
    “Captain,” said Baker, motioning towards me all of a sudden. “Clikk… um.”
    Dirk nodded. “Hello there, Clikk.”
    “Captain!” I saluted.
    “How long have you known?” asked Baker, folding his arms.
    Dirk shook his head. “Pretty much from the day she asked to join my crew.”
    “You told us it was bad luck having a woman on the ship.”
    “I also told you your cock would fall off if you pissed over the rail.” Dirk grinned and Molly spewed giggles. “Superstitions are made up with practical reasons behind them, brother. A woman on a ship is only bad luck if the men know she’s there, for it’s the men who are the unlucky bit of the equation. I can explain it all, but let us not tarry here any longer.”
    We hiked through the forest, in search of our brothers. Captain Dirk fed Baker some morality tale about two neighbors who quarreled over a tree planted on the border of their two lands. When the tree yielded naught but shade, the men had been friends, and had gone there to climb and read. But one day, while climbing, one of these men—he was called Jon—discovered the tree grew an occasional apple. His neighbor Adam saw him eating it and asked where he got it. Jon told him the truth about the tree between their lands that grew delicious fruit. They decided to divvy up the apples, but often there was an uneven yield, or some of the apples were bigger and healthier than others.
    At this point in the story, we had discovered four more survivors, including the mandolin player William and one of our pilots No Nose Ned. He’d lost the tin patch that covered his missing nose, forcing us to witness the unsightly effects of syphilis.
    Each time we found some more of our men, they asked who I was, went through the same amazement as everyone else and then asked Dirk how he could allow such a thing on the Wastrel. Dirk would summarize the beginning of his bizarre parable and continue in his explanation.
    He went on to say the two neighbors decided they should divide the months. Jon would take fruit one month, and Adam would be able to harvest the next. This worked well, until the season for apples ended, and Adam had to go longer without them than Jon. When the apple season returned, it was yet again Jon’s turn to harvest. So the unlucky Adam was angry and consumed with hate for his neighbor. One day, he waited beneath the tree with a knife in his hand. When Jon arrived to take his first harvest of the season, Adam stabbed him in the throat, killing him forever.
    “As opposed to killing him temporarily,” giggled Molly.
    “What is the point of this story?” asked the twelfth man we had