They were four smooth days out of port when the first dark clouds started to crest on the horizon. The sky, until then, had been the blue of young forget-me-nots, with occasional thin cirrus clouds like fish bones, and the crew stared at the distant black shapes from the side of the ship, the officers and able seamen on duty at the bow, and beneath them, heads bedecked with raggedy hats poking out through cannon ports.

Captain yelled, "Johannes, you slowcoach!" up towards the mainmast stays, and rattled the cabling that ran up towards the crow's nest. From above, after a moment, a laconic reply, "thought anyone's eyes could see them, didn't figure you needed an ahoy," and jeers and catcalls from below, "hard to see the clouds through your dreams, Johannes?"

"Port, north northwest," called the Captain, and "Port, north northwest," the First Mate echoed, and Gunnar the helmsman tugged at the huge spoked wheel all green and shiny brass fittings. The boat heeled slightly as it came around, the sails luffing and snapping.

"Hoist topsails and rakers," the Captain said, "Topsails and rakers," the First Mate bellowed, and the ratlines jumped under the hands and feet of climbing sailors.

From above, a call, "Lightning up there, I see lightning," and the few people still watching cupped their hands around their eyes, straining. A distant flicker inside one black stormhead, and another cheer from the crew, and "double pay for Johannes of the sharp eyes," said the First Mate as they scuttered onwards.

The harpooner stuck his head up from below, looked, then ducked back down. He spoke to himself in his strange language, half-laughing, and clambered up the stairs, thumping the treads and the walls with a messy bundle of harpoons. Where they dragged across wood, they left long scorch marks. He took care in placing them low and secure in the brass racks designed for them beside his station in the bow. His movements were cautious and practiced and entirely at odds with his usual flamboyant gesticulations, but when he'd finished securing them and testing the cables and the payout spindles, he sat and resumed his usual maniacal smile. His dark body was covered in tattoos, and had the scars of past burns on cheek, shoulder and forearm, the marks of the profession. Beside him, one of the harpoons began to writhe and he cuffed it with the steel glove he wore on his right hand, settling it.

They were sailing a direct course towards the dark storm line, and hit outliers as they moved, punching through the soft clouds and watching the world turn limpid, fuzzy, and grey. Inside the clouds, the wetness reached down into the lungs. The Second Mate, Tadashi, always said it reminded him of cooking rice. Cotton, the cook, who was from somewhere called Pennsylvania, said it was more like mushrooms. As they progressed towards the squall line, so did it move towards them, the clouds about and along their route expanding in roiling gouts and filling with a twitching darkness in their cores, a thick writhing thing internally lit by flashes of lightning, sometimes arcing to adjacent clouds. They began to hit more chop, and sailors not needed aloft came down, people from the off-shift who had come above to see the clouds moving back below deck. Any last few small items overlooked in the morning inspection were suddenly discovered with fanfare and stowed hastily by red-faced deckhands. A last couple of laughing gulls dropped from the mainsail rigging ropes, where they'd nested for a week, delightedly trying to score hits on the people below and leaving long black smears streaking down the white of the sails, and headed south southeast, dropping out of sight beneath other clouds that had come up below.

Contrary gusts made the ship begin to heel, but its weight carried it through, towards its prey, and with a suddenness that took the breath from but the most experienced, they were in the valleys of the storm clouds. To either side they rose like blackened cliffs, then above and below the ship, and then grabbed it briefly, blotting out everything else. Lightning flickered and flashed. The ratlines glowed and hissed with multicolored fire. Nails and fairleads crackled, surrounded by the white nimbus of electricity. The Captain's corona glowed enough for even the blindest crewman to see.

Johannes stuck his head over the side of the crow's nest and said, "Good hunting!" He had his welding goggles on, tied about his head with a fluorescent green shoestring, and he wore an ancient, rusted morion with its peaked tip sanded smooth. He claimed, to anyone who would listen, that he'd won it playing faro with a second mate in the Spanish Armada, but everyone else said he'd picked it up from a certain naiad that had taken pity on him at a port in the Faroe Islands.

The harpooner tied a painter to his belt, then to the steel ring attached to the deck, and threaded the milky cable through one of the harpoons. It was a trick everyone wanted to watch, finding a hole through the twisted horsehair and threading the cable between the rubies and sapphires of the harpoon's body. They didn't like it much, twisting and stretching to avoid the process, but his huge fingers moved deftly and he stood, the harpoon in one hand (wiggling in annoyance) and watched the clouds ahead.

The flash came from behind them, though, as their prey arced upwards from the cloud surface and then fell back, and by the time he'd turned to throw, the creature was gone, nearly as quick as thought.

"Damn it all!" said the Captain, slapping her cap against her thigh, and the First Mate bellowed "Damn it all!!" and the mage darted from her cabin, black robes flowing, and voice starting to rise in a chilling croon.

"No, wait," said the Captain. "I was speaking metaphorically." The mage nodded, made gestures of cancellation, and returned to the safety of her room.

"Come about and drop anchor," the Captain said, and "Come about, drop anchor, jigger boys and sloppers to stations!" yelled the First Mate. People scurried as the ship wallowed in gusts, its keel thudding dully off a particularly black cloud, which juddered off into the distance. The anchors drifted outwards, all silvery and diaphanous, grabbing clouds, and as they caught, the ship jerked to a halt. The jigger boys, in their traditional black uniforms, clambered up from their rooms by the galley, clattering with hammers and the small curved chisels they used, while their slopper assistants with shovels and buckets, stood respectfully behind. They cast the pralling lines over the side of the ship and began to climb down.

"Mind you get plenty of the canary tawny yellow, and the Dutchess of Stanleywick will pay a pretty penny for all we can bring back," yelled the First Mate down at them as they climbed, "and none of that goddamn imperial purple you seem to be so fond of, we're full up!" But they just laughed and chattered in their language, like finches in the spring, as they descended. The people still on shipboard could hear high, hysterical cackling as the jiggers went to work, and the deep vibrant reds shining up from below made the clouds around them look like feathery frozen blood.

Even with all the anchors out, the sheet anchor included, the ship jerked and twisted in the gusts. The crew hauled the filled buckets up from below, pouring the contents into barrels, the First and Second Mates hovering anxiously behind. "More goddamn imperial purple," the First Mate said, in disbelief, and ran to the side of the ship, threw a belay pin downwards, yelled, "NO MORE GODDAMN PURPLE!" A wave of sharp laughs and cackles rose up to him. "I'll pour it back down on your heads!" The next bucket contained a cube of pure glowing yellow, like transparent butter, its edges a little rough. The seaman who'd hoisted it up held it high, and everyone paused for a moment to stare in admiration.

"Don't just stand there flapping your jaw like a poleaxed mammoth," the Captain said. "Get that in the cold freezer immediately!" As the man hurried off with the cube, the Captain smiled. "That'll pay for the whole voyage by itself, an we get it home in one piece."

The First Mate yelled over the edge, "Double grog for all, and that's a good job, me lads!" Cheers from above and below.

Soon enough, the glowing arc began to decay, and the buckets came up half-full, with colors muddy and chunks smaller, faded and lumpy and going to softness. Tired jigger boys crawled over the thwarts, all stained and covered with dust beginning to melt, and stood by the rail with their eyes closed. The Second Mate encouraged them back down to their halls, trying to keep them from dripping all over the deck without wanting to offend them, and they, too tired to notice, went along with him. Steam and the smell of salt soap rose from the crazy-colored fore stairwell, and the thought of the hot baths waiting for them brought them below decks faster than any words of the Second Mate could. The sailors who hoisted the cargo up and over the edge began to play, grabbing the melting pale pastel chunks from the buckets, mashing them together like snowballs, and throwing them at each other, knocking off caps and leaving glowing stains on each other. The Second Mate yelled at them, and they closed the operation down, hoisting the climbing lines back up as the last of the jiggers and sloppers climbed tiredly back up.

The deck crew pulled the anchors back in, as the First Mate broke out the grog barrel, standing beside it and allowing each sailor two steel cups of the casked rum. Early on, someone had sneaked a small fragment of intense indigo into the barrel, so each cupful shed a bluish light upwards. It added a fruity taste, like berries, to the rum.

They sailed back out and into the blackness of night, stars above and below them. Far off the port bow, they could see the shine of their lesser bretheren; the whalers and schooners on the sea leagues below shone upwards with a cheerful yellow light, in stark contrast with the cold white of the stars around them. They were far more west than they'd intended, drawn along by the clouds as they collected their prey's spoor, but there were other clouds in the distance and the Captain thought to give them another look come morning. "At dawn, we decide whether to keep hunting or head back," she said to the First Mate, who stood at the base of the mainmast and yelled up, "your eyes be open come morning, Johannes, or I'll feed you to the merwolves!"

There came a loud 'braaaaap!' from overhead and the First Mate glared upwards as the crew exchanged with the off-shift.

Dawn, when it came, was red and foggy. The sun rose in a glowing lump behind and beneath the ship. Its rays lit the hull and cast shadows upwards against the sails.

From above, Johannes yelled down, "storm clouds aplenty for the Captain's hunting!" and then, "ship ahoy, due south! She be harvesting!" The Captain lurched out of her cabin, running her hand through her bright red hair, trying to force it back down. In her other hand she carried a long brass telescope, which she set up and stared through.

"Heavy-anchored and very busy," she said, to the First Mate, as he came on board. "No threat to us."

Johannes yelled down from above, "I could've told you that, and she be heavy-loaded to boot! Near up to her warm-front Plimsoll line!"

"You keep your eyes open for other likely storms; let the Captain be watching the other ship," the First Mate said. He could only just see the other ship, at anchor by the apogee of the rainbow, and he watched more towards where they were heading, westwards to the other clouds.

The Captain sniffed the air, then pointed. "Head over that way," she said.

"Port ten degrees," the First Mate called, and the ship groaned and creaked. Sailors above reefed the sails for the new direction.

The harpooner came aboveboards, still chewing on a rough mass of bread slathered with gravy. He had a single harpoon with him, and settled in at his station. They waited, watching the smaller clouds draw close. There was a flicker from below, suddenly, a flashing above them on the bases of the clouds, and as Johannes began to yell, "Starboard, Starboard!" the harpooner was already at the thwart, casting quicker than the eye could follow.

The harpoon arced downwards, trailing the milky line behind it, and hit their prey square in the chest, splintering and throwing flashes of bright color that sprayed and fell like water drops when a cast stone hits a deep green millpond. The harpoon wrapped itself around the shooting form, and sailors ran to grab the milky line, wrap it about the taker stanchions, and then fell back just before the line snapped tight. A man could lose an arm when the line caught, if he were still near it.

The cord went straight as a ray of light, then, with a high keening sound, and the ship jerked about. Yells from the masts, as they shook and the ship rolled. The First Mate leapt forward to grab one of the stanchion levers, as did the harpooner, and together they began to reel their catch in.

"Beautiful throw," the Captain said, loud enough for the harpooner to hear. He grinned insanely, chattering in his heathen tongue as he strained at the stanchion. More people came up from below, watching and talking, delighted in the ship's success. The First Mate peered over the edge, as he walked the tight circle of the stanchion ratchet, and said "We caught a beauty, a first-class beauty."

"Worth the ransom of a prince, desu ne?" the Second Mate murmured.

"Worth three guineas to the hand that threw the harpoon," the Captain replied, running her hand along the shoulder of the harpooner, as he passed.

"And three pounds sterling to every man on board, if I don't miss my guess," one of the sailors said to his mates, as they watched. He tugged at his moustache, tugged at the tarred queue that fell over one shoulder and hung down his chest. His fellows at the rail nodded.

Their prey was very even-tempered, and when it realized that it was caught and there was no escape, it even turned and moved back towards the ship, so they didn't have to drag it in. It climbed on board and smiled, greeted the Captain politely (and she greeted it very politely indeed, the safest thing to do under the circumstances.)

As the harpooner helped it disentangle itself from the twisting threads, it sniffed the air carefully, a bit warily, and then when it could move freely again, it went about shaking the hands of all the crew and greeting them by name. None could tell how they knew what they knew, and it was disconcerting at best to have this great gray creature calling you by name. Then it dug in the pack it wore on its back, dropping big glowing sloppy pools of violet and scarlet all over the deck (to the disgust of the deckhands) and emerged with glasses, white gloves, and a shimmering black silky tophat that it placed securely on its head. After this, it insisted on going around and greeting everyone again, only this time with an accent.

There was a flash of silvery light off far to the west, that distracted them from their capture. Everyone turned to watch a bright, shining speck fall towards the sea below them, then went back to looking at the pooka that stood on the deck, wearing a tophat.

"Did you see that?" yelled Johannes from above them. "That was a CRAFT!"

"Oh, Lord," the Second Mate muttered. "Our chotto hen watchman sees another, what is the word he uses?"

"UFO, sir" one of the deckhands replied, and people around him laughed.

"It was metal! It had windows, and inside it there were beings! It had wings, like a bird, but huge, vast, hundreds of people inside it!" Johannes was pointing with one hand and smacking the other, open-palmed, against the mast, for emphasis.

"Pretty stupid aliens," someone yelled over peoples' laughter, "to smash it right into the sea!"

"It was a shooting star!" someone else cried. "Johannes, you're crazy!"

"I'm telling you, it was a craft from the heavens!" Johannes yelled back. "They're out there and you'll be sorry you didn't believe me some day soon!"

Anything further he might have said was drowned out by laughter and raucous cries from the deck of the ship.

The Captain escorted the pooka down to the rooms reserved for it, explaining as she went that their watchman was convinced that aliens from another planet were flying through the skies in metal ships with wings. "He really is a terrific watchman, aside from that," she said, apologetically.

The pooka smiled and nodded its head. "There are more things in the heavens and on earth than most of us dream of," it said in a low rumbling voice, like distant thunder.

The Captain looked up at him, frowning slightly. "What do you mean? Do you believe him?"

The pooka smiled. "I believe it was a metal craft with wings, for that I saw. The beings in it were as human as you, and very frightened," it said. "The craft's wings do it little good in the seas we sail, just as our sails would do us no good in the skies it inhabits. They crossed the line."

"So then what?" the Captain asked.

The pooka extended one furry paw, with its thumb pointing downwards.

"They plunged into the sea? Just like that, with no warning? How horrible!"

"Such things happen every day, Captain, people killed and pookas captured, and it is only horrible when you see it, don't you agree?"

The Captain pursed her lips and changed the subject. "Are you hungry?"

"Ravenous," the pooka replied.

They set it up at the Captain's table, where it ate (by its choosing) a pecan pie, a piece of peppersteak with peas and potatoes, some plum pudding, and finally, a portion of pumpkin pie. It pronounced them all delicious, which made Cotton the cook blush with pride. Later, it confided to the Captain that the pumpkin pie needed to be pumpkinier, but said that it didn't want the cook to be embarrassed.

It was hard to relax with the pooka on board. People talked in whispers and stood in groups watching the Captain's quarters, where it was staying. Johannes kept peering through the trapdoor to watch the deck below. The First Mate called for them to come about and head towards their home port and walked around with a short length of cord in his hand, which moved wickedly fast towards idle deckhands. For once there was no shortage of people to scrub and sand and polish where the deck was stained from the harvesting and the pooka.

But no sign of it or the Captain was to be seen, so the afternoon and evening turned into hard and unrewarded work, and supper was quiet and tired. A few people stood on the deck, watching the clouds flood past and the first stars begin to twinkle; as high as they flew, the constellations were lost in the nearly oppressive riot of light, and the youth of the crew could hear the stars' songs.

From the crow's nest, a sudden cry in the gathering twilight, "Raker, dead astern, raker! Raker, Captain, dead astern and gaining fast!"

A chill ran through everyone; people ran to the sterncastle to look back. The First Mate pushed through the crowd to see. The Captain's door slammed open and she emerged, running aft, with the pooka walking more slowly behind her.

From the clouds right behind them, the raker's prow was emerging, and her sails stretched high and tight. She seemed to glow a greenish yellow in the fading light, as if lit from within.

"Wow," said the First Mate. "LOOK at her. She's got every yard of cloth she can fly, and probably the tablecloth from the Captain's table lashed up there as well."

The Second Mate pushed through, looked. "She flies no colors," he said, provoking a grim laugh from those that heard.

The Captain stared for a long moment. "We're outgunned, certainly." The long sleek body of the pale schooner behind them was revealed briefly as it corrected course, showing a cliff-face of openings, cannon sticking out. Then it was back on their course and only its bow showed, and those wide greenish sails.

"If we come around now," the First Mate said, "we can get her with a broadside. Load up with shrapnel and cut her sails and lines, then run."

"She'd be upon us before we could get back underway," Tadashi, the Second Mate, said quietly. Then he turned and began shouting orders to clear the decks, get the gunpowder up from the hold, move the cannon to their posts.

"Get me every map you have," said the Captain, suddenly, "and get every scrap of fabric we can carry, up and tight."

"We can't outrun her, Captain!"

"But if we work hard, she can't outrun us either," said the Captain, and ran down to the main deck, shouting at people to break out the spare sails and lash them in wherever they could. "Get them tight and trimmed; any one of you rats lets a sail luff, you'll wish the pirates got you!"

People began climbing upwards, hoisting sails. The rigging crawled with sailors, unfurling fabric and lashing to long-unused pulleys. The Captain herself was on the crossbeam of the mizzenmast, adjusting tensions, and as they worked, the ship strained forwards, faster and faster, until finally the ship behind them was approaching imperceptibly closer, if at all.

"I had no idea this ship could run this much sail," the First Mate said, as the Captain climbed back down to deck, sweating and shaky.

"The Peregrinus," she said, running her fingers along scrollwork on the railing like she might touch a sleeping lover's face, "was built for fast hauling, not fighting, and when she's trimmed, she yields to nobody."

"I'd trade two knots forward for a brace of cannon aft," the First Mate growled, looking back.

"That's why I'm Captain, and you're First Mate, Mbune my friend," the red-haired woman said. "Let me see those charts."

They laid the maps out and she began to measure to ports, called to the navigator and to the old pegleg John, who had sailed these waters on a codfishing boat as a child. They talked quietly as the rest of the sailors armed with their short, curved ship's sabers, and loaded their flintlocks carefully, jamming pistols down through their belts and into pockets. The Captain drew lines on the charts and the pooka walked over to stare over her shoulder. It reached out with its paw and traced along one line in particular, and then looked up at the Captain with its bright brown eyes. "I dearly hope your plan succeeds, Captain," it rumbled.

"Me too," she murmured.

She climbed up the short ladder to the helmsman's position and walked to stand beside him. The wind blew his blond hair across his face as they ran before it, and she talked quietly to him. "Slightly to port, and keep the sails tight if you can," she called out to the sailors above.

Slowly, slowly the other ship crept closer to them. Wheels squealed from below as people on the lower decks winched cannons into position across uneven planks. As the distance between the ships closed, the silence grew, people talking in hushed tones and hearing the same quiet tones occasionally from their pursuit. The pennants snapping on the highest masts were louder in their ears than the sounds of their desperate preparations.

The Captain whispered, "come to port gently, gently, just enough so the moonrakers begin to ripple."

Behind them, the greenish ship hoisted its colors of black with the white skull; in the moonlight the eyes were pits of dark.

Their ship turned minutely and riffles ran across the upper sails. Their pursuer closed and now everyone could see the figures on the ship behind, standing and peering ahead, holding muskets and grappling hooks.

"Run steady," the Captain's voice said, and dropped, "but not perfect."

The stars ahead gleamed a pure unmoving white. From the crow's nest, Johannes suddenly called, "Captain, we..." and cut off at the Captain's shout, "Johannes, shut up." Then silence again.

They ran identically, for a while, keeping their pace even, and the Captain reached over and began to twitch the wheel, sending slight shivers through the boat, looking forward and then back towards their pursuer, momentarily slowing their ship and allowing the other to close. Her breathing was loud in the ears of those who stood nearby. The ship rocked back a little, people adjusting their stances, and the aft sails began to rattle and fold. They were in the lee of their pursuer and they slowed perceptibly.

"On my command, full to port," she said very quietly indeed, as she turned the ship to starboard and yelled "All guns, prepare to fire on my command!" and the raider swept up on their starboard flank, also turning and coming broadside to them.

Then: "Hard aport and pull as if your life depends on it," she said to Gunnar, and they wrenched together at the wheel, the rudder swung with a hideous squeal as the Peregrinus wallowed and heeled around.

Their stern swept past the raider as its first broadside roared, flames leaping from the 28 guns and smoke stretching out from their muzzles past the Peregrinus. The planks groaned and chirped as their ship continued its turn, as the sterncastle exploded into flinders and blasted boards from one hit, maybe two. Other shots screamed past them and fell off into the night sky below, as they kept turning, beginning to present their port side to the raiders. The other ship was just beginning its turn to track theirs, as they swept full into the headwind and came to a near-stop.

The raider's sails lost their greenish sheen, turned to linen white, and then, in silence, the pirate ship dropped like a shot hawk, disappearing below, as the shooting star had that morning. The gasps from the sailors turned to shrieks as the Peregrinus also dropped, a horrible lurch.

"Hold the course, hold on," the Captain screamed, and people lurched and slid, trying to grab onto lanyards and chains that suddenly rose from the decks.

The winds caught the ship for a moment, then dropped it again, and caught again, steady and solid, and the Peregrinus bobbled, righted itself, and began a ragged, uncoordinated tack.

The sailors who had recovered from the drop ran to the sides of the ship and watched their erstwhile pursuer drop below them, until it was out of sight.

"That, Captain, was cutting it very close," said the pooka. The ship sailed on through the deepening night.

"What happened? Where... What happened to them?" the First Mate gasped, still holding on to the railing on which he'd been standing.

"We sailed to the boundary between the Land of Ever and the Land of Never. They sailed over that boundary," the Captain said. "Keep this moment in your mind. Never forget our boundaries."

Then, mostly to herself, she said, "that was nice."

As cheers and yells began to rise from the sailors on the main deck, she called out loudly, "Let's head for port, ladies and gentlemen, and for bed!"