The waters off of Brest were rough, choppy in the extreme. He Who Guided had warned of this. But They Who Rigged, Reefed and Hauled, had warned of the vengeful ships of the British—of those who they had been—come to punish if they ventured into the relatively sheltered waters of the channel. So he had drawn them here.

He Who Protected stood over him in his kind hulking way and asked, where to?

In answer he caressed the jolly boat, the baby ship with such a happy name.

He whistled their toilsome tune as They Who Rigged, Reefed and Hauled lowered the jolly boat to the unfriendly waters.

At last, the pretty tub of wood bounced on the ocean like a leaf in a rattling water bucket. He was so overcome with childish glee that he scampered over the gunwale face first, crawling down the side happy as a night flower at dusk.

Sway he did, in the jolly boat, as he whistled the climbing-down tune for He Who Protects, now, like he, well plumaged in gay cloth and wig-headed, hiding the terrible lash marks on his broad back, even as He Who Adored Him hid his unfortunate malformations beneath his own brightly colored and deeply ruffled attire.

He Who Guides wailed like a bird of morning in the sunset of the world, as They Who Rigged, Reefed and Hauled moaned of his leaving and tore at their faces. All aboard were inconsolable that He Who Adored Them was rowed off in the happy cockleshell by He Who Protects.

He was smitten in his feeling place and sang back to them their parting/never-parting song:

“One We,

Wee oh We

Fix Ye One en Three

Forget Me, Lost Oh Masters We Be!”

By the time they were out of hearing, the song had had its desired affect and Those He Adored were returned to their life of misery, waking like the wrapped dead of Riverland, wonderingly worried, looking for their masters this way and that.

He Who Protects looked back at him questioningly as he pulled big and mighty on the oars. He Who Adored Him answered his eyes, “Ratter We Clatter—all da way home!”

He Who Protects snorted like the prancing friendlies that would drag them rattling and clattering on their way, demonstrating that he quite understood.

She sat in his shadow on the grassy crest of a hill that was barrenly wooded below, looking out over a rolling scene of greened hilltops, rocky protrusions—and a wrecked piece of moon machinery that looked like a pretty woman’s head, except that her eyes were too narrow. She had grown content with her savage mate and looked on dreamily at the small knot of tiny figures, who toiled insect-like in the distance, seemingly trying to repair their fallen craft.

She looked up at him standing ugly and rude over her, and was overcome with a feeling of gladness for his companionship—and his chest exploded!

He fell flat out on his back away from her, a great gout of blood arching upward, an empty groan escaping his deformed lips.

“No!” she moaned as she crawled through his blood to cradle his head and say her first word to him—but he was gone.

Phenyl broke into a fit of sobbing moans as she rocked on her hip, his head cradled in her arms.

As his face was drenched with her tears and her nose began to run she saw the noon shadow before her, the shadow of some monstrosity looming above. At this point, sure that she would be killed, with no hope left for her baby, she looked up and saw that the monster was separating. What had seemed like a fiend in shadow, was in fact one squat burly man carrying a broken-backed man of petite build on his shoulders.

The burly man spoke a language she did not understand.

The other spoke a language, in strained tones, that she did not comprehend at all.

Then realization seemed to dawn on her and the delicate man at once. He held some type of large bolt projection device, with which he had killed Dreg, thinking—obviously, considering the horror he attributed to her weeping over her protector, provider, lover—that he was saving her from some beast.

Her eyes locked tearfully with his, and the will to live left him, replaced by an even stronger will to escape her pained accusatory gaze. He rolled flat on his back, away from the leg that had been supporting him, with a deep pained pair of two-syllable words, the first soft, the second harsh, placed the end of the weapon in his mouth and closed his eyes just before the top of his head exploded.

She stood on shaky legs, and before she let go of Dreg’s still hand, kissed it and laid it over the seeping hole in his chest.

She could not understand the few sentences the stocky long-haired man spoke. He was as different from the suicidal hunter as Dreg had been from the males of Habitat Syra. Once looking into his eyes though, she could tell that he meant her no harm, and that he seemed to have lost his way.

They both broke their gaze and turned to look at the lady vessel of Luna. She nodded to the vessel, nodded affirmative to him, and he did likewise. He was intelligent, curious and afraid. It was better than facing the lunar witches alone. She quenched the impulse to turn for one finally look at Dreg, and then began to pick her way on raw torn feet, across the rolling table of land, broken by rock and tree, and carpeted in waving grass.

The final chapter, epilogue and afterward, along with a prequel, will appear in the print release of Hemavore, from Forever Autumn Press, in October 2015.