The steam from last night's oden had barely faded when the Oro Jackson slipped into a strange stretch of sea.
The wind lay flat. The water looked harmless. Yet the sky felt low enough to press on the masts, its cloudbank so heavy it might have been poured cream.
"Uh, Captain, is this thing broken?"
Kozuki Oden crouched by the Log Pose and poked the glass with all the subtlety of a pickaxe.
The needle, which ought to have pointed toward the next island, stood stubbornly, perfectly upright, pointing straight into the heavens.
"Broken? Hahaha, Oden, that is exactly how it should look." Roger strode over, slapped Oden between the shoulder blades, and jabbed a finger at the ceiling of cloud. "It is telling us our next stop is up there."
"Up there?" Oden's mouth opened wide enough to swallow a rice ball. He stared upward, face full of disbelief.
Roger half closed his eyes, tasting the thickening damp in the air. His expression sharpened. "All hands, ready the ship. Strike the sails. Lash everything down."
The crew moved at once, some hauling lines, some tying cargo tight, hands sure and quick.
The apprentices, Shanks and Buggy, checked each other's safety ropes with pale faces and shaky fingers.
"Hey, Buggy, are we really about to shoot into the sky? Are we going to die," Shanks' voice trembled.
"Shut it. I am not dying in a dump like this," Buggy blustered, though his face was chalk and his knees rattled. "If anyone dies first, it is you, redhead." He kept talking as he tied one rope after another around his own waist.
Before long, the sea began to misbehave. Centered on the Oro Jackson, the placid surface slowly spun, drawing itself into a vast whirlpool. At its heart the water sank, as if a giant unseen palm pressed down.
Then a force older than words surged upward from the abyss.
"Here it comes," Roger roared, bracing on the helm.
A thunderous report split the air. A water column hundreds of meters wide punched out of the whirlpool, dragging a cyclone of wind with it and lancing for the clouds.
The Oro Jackson, a leaf caught in a waterfall, was snatched by that updraft called the Knock Up Stream and hurled skyward.
The hull pitched and bucked hard enough to feel like splinters were imminent.
Thank the Treasure Tree Adam for earning its keep.
"Waaah."
"We are going to die. We are going to die."
Shanks and Buggy shrieked until the wind tore their voices thin. Their faces smeared with tears and snot, they clung to the rail in utter ruin.
The others did not look much better. Green about the gills, knuckles white on wood and rope, they felt their insides swap places.
"Nozdon. Sam Bell. Quit wobbling." A deckhand latched to the planking yelled at the two human mountains near midships. "If you go over, we all go over."
The giants did not budge. Not even a gale could shift them. Nozdon's sheer mass inspired faith, for once every pound was earning its berth. His usually gentle face, however, had gone the color of kelp. He tried to swallow the ocean crawling up his throat.
"Relax. A breeze like this, I can, urk."
A parabolic arc traced across the deck. Even Nozdon had limits.
Around him, faces fell further than the ship had climbed.
The timbers shrieked under stress. Joints groaned like teeth.
Then a figure walked the bucking deck as if it were steady earth, sprang up the figurehead in three easy steps, and planted himself on the dragon's skull.
"Vortex. Azure Dragon Spiral."
Kael Grylls swung his glaive down. A pulse rippled from the blade, invisible yet iron-still.
The impossible happened.
That savage, ship-rending column of water began to obey, as if cupped by divine hands. Flow coiled into a spine, spray stitched into scales, the roaring maw of the whirl shaped itself into a dragon's head.
What had been chaos ordered itself. Water and wind circled the hull in a tight helical sheath, a living serpent of sea cradling the Oro Jackson.
The dragon's back made a track, smooth and sure. Its scaled sheath walled off the screaming gale.
The brutal shaking cut off at once. Speed remained, now clean and steady, a vertical run up the throat of the sky.
Silence fell over the deck.
Shanks and Buggy stopped screaming. They stared at the liquid dragon wrapped around them, mouths even wider than Oden's had been.
"You have got to be kidding me," Buggy croaked, too stunned to wipe his face.
"Sa, saikou," stars burned in Shanks' eyes. Awe should not have felt so simple.
Even Oden went quiet. He stared at the man standing on the dragon's brow, a godling who had yoked a natural disaster with a flick of his wrist, and his heart heaved like storm surf.
To command the sea itself. Could a human truly do that?
Scopper Gaban and Rayleigh traded a look. The approval in both gazes was plain.
"Gurararara, no, kuhahahaha," Roger boomed, uncontainable. "Beautifully done, Kael. That is much more stylish than flying up blind."
Coiling, the water dragon bore the Oro Jackson with stately ferocity. They speared into the black ceiling.
The cloudbank, thick as forever, cracked open under the dragon's crown. Blinding sunlight poured through, banishing the Knock Up Stream's chill and damp.
Everyone squinted. As eyes opened anew, the deck went quiet for a second time.
An endless white ocean, made of cloud, stretched to every horizon. Floating above it, green and serene, lay an island. Trees there grew in round balloons. The buildings wore an austere, sacred face, nothing like the Blue Sea below.
"Hey, Shanks, pinch me," Buggy whispered. His eyes were round enough to fall out.
Shanks' hand moved on instinct and smacked the back of Buggy's head.
"Yow." Buggy clutched his skull and glared. "I said pinch."
"You told me to," Shanks barked back, then forgot him, voice falling to a wonder-dazed murmur. "So, Sky Islands are real."
Under Kael's guidance, the Oro Jackson settled onto the cloud sea. The reinforced keel pressed into the fleece and held. It felt like sliding into a harbor. Rings of rippling cloud rolled out from the hull as the ship came to a gentle stop.
The dragon finished its task, rumbled once, and unraveled. Mist drifted from its vanishing spine and sank back into the bright, breathless air.
Kael drew back the glaive and hopped down from the figurehead, landing light and letting out a slow breath.
Thud.
Nozdon's legs finally quit. He sat down hard.
He looked from the pillowy cloud underfoot to the island in the distance, and his wide, kind face sagged with grateful relief.
"Saved. Urp."
His stomach rolled again. He twisted aside and provided the cloud sea a fresh offering over the rail.
"Good job, Nozdon," a crewmate laughed, thumping his back. "At least you missed the deck."
Laughter popped like corks. The stranglehold of tension blew away.
Oden leaned so far over the rail he was almost hanging off it. He stared at the cotton softness below, then at the island afloat in the sky, eyes blazing with shock and joy.
"Hahahaha. My journal, where is my journal." He spun in a panic, rummaging inside his robes. "If I do not write this down, that is a crime against the heavens. A sea in the sky, an island on the sea. Wahahaha."
"Rayleigh, Gaban," Shanks and Buggy had run up, pupils full of stars. "Are we going to explore that island right now?"
"Of course," Roger's voice rolled across the deck again. He vaulted the rail and threw out an arm like a banner.
"All hands, make sail. Our heading is Sky Island."
A roar answered him.
The Oro Jackson shook off the last of its hush. On the white ocean above the world, it thundered with joy once more.
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