Ship of Souls

they still manage to weave a cage out of wiry tree roots pulled from the earth. I have barely enough room to take a couple of steps in either direction. In despair, I fall back against the wall and then leap forward to brush the ants and worms off my head and shoulders. How long will I have to stay in this hellish hole? Will the nether beings let me waste away, or will they keep me alive in order to protect the precious being I carry within?
    Finally Nuru speaks to me. D, get close to the ground .
    I’m so relieved to hear her voice that I almost forget not to speak out loud. Why?
    I need you to send a message, but you must be discreet .
    How can I be discreet when all the nether beings want to be close to me? I slide down the wall and pull my knees up to my chest. OK, I’m ready .
    Use your finger to tap on the ground as loudly as you can. Three beats, followed by a pause, three times. Understand?
    The floor is made of dirt. How can I beat the dirt with one finger and hope to make a sound? Who could ever hear such a message? Then I remember Nuru’s signal to the dead. It was the vibration that mattered, not the sound. I brush the loose dirt away from the ground near my hand and pick a spot where the earth is packed tight and hard. Using the middle finger of my left hand, I tap out Nuru’s message and hope it reaches the right ears.
    At first, nothing happens. Then one of the soldiers peers into a tunnel. “Captain,” he says, “I think we better send out a scouting party. There’s trouble coming, I’m sure of it.”
    “Take a few men and check it out,” says the captain from his lawn chair. He swings his feet up onto the table, unwilling to leave me now that he’s able to feel whole once more.
    Not wanting to miss out on the action, almost all of the ghost soldiers arm themselves and disappear down the dark tunnel. Only the captain and the teenage boy stay behind. I stand in my root cage trying not to reveal the anxiety I feel inside. I want to be ready to act, but don’t know just what is it I should be ready to do.
    The boy, who was seated on the floor, suddenly gets to his feet. I try to read the expression on his face, but it’s hard—he’s too far away from me to have his flesh fully restored. But something tells me he knows what’s about to happen. He moves over to the wall and picks up one of the rifles.
    “What are you doing, boy?”
    “Just cleaning my musket, sir.”
    The captain mumbles his approval and returns to his book. The boy looks at me as he removes the bayonet from the end of his long gun. He moves closer to my cage, and the flesh blooms on his bones. Now I’m sure of the sympathy in his eyes. “They’re coming,” he whispers before holding the bayonet blade close to his leg.
    Just when I think he’s about to pass the blade to me, I see a white spot quivering against the wall beside me. It takes a moment to register, but then I realize someone’s pointing a light at me! I scan the cavern, searching for its source, and nearly faint when I see Nyla and Keem crouching by the mouth of one of the tunnels that ring the cavern.
    Then everything happens at once. Frantic hollering comes from the tunnel that the scouting party went down, and within seconds mice, rats, and other small furry beasts begin scurrying into the cavern.
    “What in damnation?” cries the captain, jumping up and kicking at the frantic creatures that are now spilling into the room. They crawl up the walls, the chairs—even my legs! Then several of the ghost soldiers tumble into the room carried on a virtual wave of feet and fur.
    In the chaos, the boy slips his bayonet blade into my cage. I start sawing at the roots from the inside, and he pulls out a hunting knife to hack at them from the outside. Before long we’ve managed to cut a large enough hole for me to slip through. Now I just have to wade through the sea of vermin in order to reach Nyla and Keem.

13.
    I might have slipped away unnoticed if I hadn’t been carrying Nuru inside of me. But as soon as I take a step away from the ghost soldiers, the flesh on their bones starts to wither away. At first they’re all too busy battling rodents to notice. The captain is stabbing at the poor critters with the bayonet end of his rifle. His back is turned to me, so at first he doesn’t notice that I’ve broken free of the root cage and am heading toward one of the far tunnels. But when the skin on his hands starts to rot, the captain spins around and