Barnaby Twist's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Barnaby Twist walked into the tavern on his hands, boots strapped to his fists, and started asking sailors to join his crew. His legs waved from his shoulders where arms should be. Men laughed. He had heard the laughter before. He didn't stop. A captain who walks on his hands still needs a crew, and Barnaby meant to have one. He wanted men who would sail without staring, without jokes. Tonight he had found three who might say yes. Then the door slammed open. A press-gang shoved in, clubs out, ropes ready. They grabbed sailors by the collar and dragged them toward the docks. The three men Barnaby had marked went down under fists. The tavern emptied into a brawl. Barnaby's whole crew, gone in a breath, hauled off to some warship's belly. Barnaby thought fast. He couldn't out-punch six armed men. But he knew this bay's fear. He kicked the door open with his boot-hands and swung out into the dark. At the edge of the water lay a ship on its side, its hull crawling with spiders. A boy stood beside it, calm among the crawling legs. Near the ship rose a wooden post topped with a painted skull. Barnaby knew what the skull meant. Every sailor did. It marked the ground the giant claimed. "Boy," Barnaby said, "help me tip that post toward the docks. Face the skull at the press-gang." The boy grinned and grabbed the post. Together they wrenched it from the mud and dragged it across the sand. Barnaby braced it upright with his shoulders, boots planted, the skull pointed at the gang below. Then the ground shook. Far out on the water, something huge rose. It was round and gray and cracked like a fallen moon, fifty feet high, with thin arms and legs. Its eyes burned orange. Lunaris Shadowphase had come to see who disturbed the marker. The press-gang looked up. They saw the skull post standing tall and the giant behind it, and they broke. They dropped their ropes. They dropped the sailors. They ran for their boats and rowed hard into the dark. The freed sailors scrambled up the beach. Barnaby had won them their freedom. But their eyes were not on him. They stared past his shoulders at Lunaris, who now stared back, orange eyes narrowing on the post and the small man who had moved it. "You," said Lunaris, in a voice like grinding rock. "You touched what is mine." The sailors fled the same way the gang had. Every man Barnaby hoped to recruit ran into the night. Barnaby stood alone on the sand, boots sinking, legs waving overhead, facing a giant who now knew his face.