Read Online Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen by David Perlmutter, Brent Nichols, Claude Lalumiere, Mark Shainblum, Chadwick Ginther, Michael Matheson, Mary Pletsch, Jennifer Rahn, Corey Redekop, Bevan Thomas - Free Book Online
Authors: David Perlmutter, Brent Nichols, Claude Lalumiere, Mark Shainblum, Chadwick Ginther, Michael Matheson, Mary Pletsch, Jennifer Rahn, Corey Redekop, Bevan Thomas
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kitchen cracking open the doors to get a peek at the hero herself. I stare at the hostess, willing her to take the Aviatrix to someone else’s tables, anyone else’s tables, but, no, the Avonlea Aviatrix gets seated in my section.
I hand the Avonlea Aviatrix a lunch menu and introduce myself as plain old Maggie, not Captain Maggie Doucette, the latest in a long line of captains of the Phantom Ship of Fire.
My vessel’s best known as a ghost of the Northumberland Strait, though we’ve lived on the North Shore for five generations. We don’t rely on sail and rudder alone to steer her; we can charm the winds and tides to take us where we would. The phantom ship responds to her captain’s thoughts, so we have no need for a crew.
I have sailed into the teeth of raging storms and I have lit up the Northumberland Strait with a corona of unearthly fire. I have sent criminals to watery graves and I have pulled unlucky sailors from the gullet of the ocean. This is my Island, and my family has protected its people for centuries.
During the Second World War, Papa singlehandedly destroyed eight Nazi U-boats. Lennie didn’t destroy any Soviet subs — it was a cold war, after all — but when he’s drunk he swears he chased off at least twice that number. When he’s sober he admits the number’s closer to six.
Me, I took the helm on my thirteenth birthday, in the year of our Lord two thousand and fourteen, and I’ve never found any enemy submarines in Canadian coastal waters. Most of what I’ve been left with is drug smugglers making beach drops in the middle of the night and the occasional leaky oil tanker that needs to take its environmental damage somewhere else.
I used to wonder what the hell was the point in a day and age when terrorists come from the sky and any idiot can drive a transfer truck full of dope over the Confederation Bridge. Still. I do what I do because my family’s always done it; and sometimes there’re rewards for the ability to shape the movements of the sea.
Take Gracie Gallant’s ten-year-old son, Calvin. Cal was swimming last month out past the breakwater when he got caught in a riptide. It was his lucky day that I had been off work, his damned lucky day that I’d gone for a swim myself and I don’t need my ship to charm the tides. Cal thought it was his good fortune that the current changed and shoved him back to shore, and I let him think it.
The Avonlea Aviatrix asks for a Diet Pepsi. I go get it for her, and when I return to her table she asks me if I know a good mechanic in the area. Her car’s brakes aren’t working well.
Part of me really wants to ask her why she doesn’t simply fly everywhere— why she even bothers with a car. Part of me wants to tell her that if she was fromhere, or even really lived here, she’d already know where to go. Part of me wants to inform her that my job doesn’t pay enough for me to get a car, even though I’ve saved the lives of a lot more Islanders than she has.
I bite my tongue and tell her where Uncle Lennie takes his car.
The Avonlea Aviatrix orders lobster with drawn butter, new PEI potatoes, and side Caesar salad. I take her order to the kitchen and remind myself that, if I’d gone to Ottawa to join the Confederation Guard or, hell, if I’d gone to school out of province, Cal Gallant would be six feet underground in Saint Anne’s Cemetery.
* * *
On my break I walk out back of the restaurant: not to the smokers’ table on the north side, where my co-workers gather for cigarettes, but around the corner on the east. I sit with my back against the restaurant and look out to the horizon. In between the trees I can catch a glimmer of the ocean.
“Maggie?”
I look up. Uncle Lennie squats down next to me. “That could’ve been you, you know.”
I run my fingers through red soil. “I know.”
“Me and your grandfather… we’ve wondered a long time. Why you didn’t say anything when they were taking nominations? Pretty girl
I hand the Avonlea Aviatrix a lunch menu and introduce myself as plain old Maggie, not Captain Maggie Doucette, the latest in a long line of captains of the Phantom Ship of Fire.
My vessel’s best known as a ghost of the Northumberland Strait, though we’ve lived on the North Shore for five generations. We don’t rely on sail and rudder alone to steer her; we can charm the winds and tides to take us where we would. The phantom ship responds to her captain’s thoughts, so we have no need for a crew.
I have sailed into the teeth of raging storms and I have lit up the Northumberland Strait with a corona of unearthly fire. I have sent criminals to watery graves and I have pulled unlucky sailors from the gullet of the ocean. This is my Island, and my family has protected its people for centuries.
During the Second World War, Papa singlehandedly destroyed eight Nazi U-boats. Lennie didn’t destroy any Soviet subs — it was a cold war, after all — but when he’s drunk he swears he chased off at least twice that number. When he’s sober he admits the number’s closer to six.
Me, I took the helm on my thirteenth birthday, in the year of our Lord two thousand and fourteen, and I’ve never found any enemy submarines in Canadian coastal waters. Most of what I’ve been left with is drug smugglers making beach drops in the middle of the night and the occasional leaky oil tanker that needs to take its environmental damage somewhere else.
I used to wonder what the hell was the point in a day and age when terrorists come from the sky and any idiot can drive a transfer truck full of dope over the Confederation Bridge. Still. I do what I do because my family’s always done it; and sometimes there’re rewards for the ability to shape the movements of the sea.
Take Gracie Gallant’s ten-year-old son, Calvin. Cal was swimming last month out past the breakwater when he got caught in a riptide. It was his lucky day that I had been off work, his damned lucky day that I’d gone for a swim myself and I don’t need my ship to charm the tides. Cal thought it was his good fortune that the current changed and shoved him back to shore, and I let him think it.
The Avonlea Aviatrix asks for a Diet Pepsi. I go get it for her, and when I return to her table she asks me if I know a good mechanic in the area. Her car’s brakes aren’t working well.
Part of me really wants to ask her why she doesn’t simply fly everywhere— why she even bothers with a car. Part of me wants to tell her that if she was fromhere, or even really lived here, she’d already know where to go. Part of me wants to inform her that my job doesn’t pay enough for me to get a car, even though I’ve saved the lives of a lot more Islanders than she has.
I bite my tongue and tell her where Uncle Lennie takes his car.
The Avonlea Aviatrix orders lobster with drawn butter, new PEI potatoes, and side Caesar salad. I take her order to the kitchen and remind myself that, if I’d gone to Ottawa to join the Confederation Guard or, hell, if I’d gone to school out of province, Cal Gallant would be six feet underground in Saint Anne’s Cemetery.
* * *
On my break I walk out back of the restaurant: not to the smokers’ table on the north side, where my co-workers gather for cigarettes, but around the corner on the east. I sit with my back against the restaurant and look out to the horizon. In between the trees I can catch a glimmer of the ocean.
“Maggie?”
I look up. Uncle Lennie squats down next to me. “That could’ve been you, you know.”
I run my fingers through red soil. “I know.”
“Me and your grandfather… we’ve wondered a long time. Why you didn’t say anything when they were taking nominations? Pretty girl
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