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"Issiot! Fffool! Lushshsh!" hissed the cat and bit Spar sout-wretchedness of his looover, so that Spar&039;s mind floated as free as his body in the blackness of Windrush, in which shone only a couple of running lights die or the Stern
The vision cah blue, wind-ruffled sea against a blue sky The last two nouns were not obscene now He could hear the whistle of the salty wind through shrouds and stays, its druainst the taut sails, and the creak of the three masts and all the rest of the ship&039;s wood
What ood? From somewhere came the answer: plastic alive-o
And what force flattened the water and kept it fro away, keel overblurred and rounded like reality, the vision was sharp-edged and bright - the sort Spar never told, for fear of being accused of second sight and so of witchcraft
Windrush was a ship too, was often called the Ship But it was a strange sort of ship, in which the sailors lived forever in the shrouds inside cabins of all shapes ether And it was a ship that was not sailing anywhere, because it had everywhere in it - it was all there was
The only other things the two ships shared were the wind and the unending creaking As the vision faded, Spar began to hear the winds of Windrush softly eways, while he felt the creaking in the vibrant shroud to which he was clipped wrist and ankle to keep hi around in the Bat Rack
Sleepday&039;s dreairls at once But Sleepday night he had been half-waked by the distant grinding of Hold Three&039;s big chewer Then olves and va in from all six corners, while witches and their faround Somehow he had been protected by the cat, familiar of a slier silver blur of her wild hair Spar pressed his rubbery guether The cat had been the last of the supernatural creatures to fade Then had come the beautiful vision of the ship
His hangover hit him suddenly and mercilessly Sweat shook off him until he ut reversed His free hand found a floating waste tube in time to press its sling away, urged by a light suction
His gut reversed again, quick as the flap of a safety hatch when a gale blows up in the corridors He thrust the waste tube inside the leg of his short, loose slopsuit and caught the dark stuff, almost as watery and quite as explosive as his voe toblessedly weak, Spar curled up in the equally blessed dark and prepared to snooze until Keeper woke him
"Sssot!" hissed the cat "Sssleep no more! Sssee! Sssee shshsharply!"
In his left shoulder, through the worn fabric of his slopsuit, Spar could feel four sets of prickles, like the touch of small thorn clusters in the Gardens of Apollo or Diana He froze
"Sspar," the cat hissedto prickle "I wishsh you all besst Mosst ashshuredly"
Spar warily reached his right hand across his chest, touched short fur softer than Suzy&039;s, and stroked gingerly
The cat hissed very softly, al, "Ssturdy Sspar! Ssee ffar! Ssee fforever! Fforessee! Afftssee!"
Spar felt a surge of irritation at this constant talk of seeing - bad e of hope about his eyes He decided that this was no witch cat left over froh a wind tube into the Bat Rack, setting off his dream There were quite a few animal strays in these days of the witch panic and the depopulation of the Ship, or at least of Hold Three
Dawn struck the Bow then, for the violet fore-corner of the Bat Rack began to glow The running lights were drowned in a grohite blaze Within twenty heartbeats Windrush was bright as it ever would be on Workday or any otherSpar&039;s ar eyes In teeth Spar could not see, it held a sray blur Spar touched the latter It was even shorter furred, but cold
As if irked, the cat took off fros It landed expertly on the next shroud a wavery line of gray that vanished in either direction before reaching a wall
Spar unclipped himself, curled his toes round his own pencil-thin shroud, and squinted at the cat
The cat stared back with eyes that were green blurs which almost coalesced in the black blur of its outsize head
Spar asked, "Your child? Dead?"
The cat loosed its gray burden, which floated beside its head