‘Leave a few lumps out on deck, lads. We might get us a sail tonight, then we can go after that other big’un,’ said Ambel.

There were groans from all of the crew — except for Peck, who was strangely silent.

‘You all right there, Peck?’ asked Ambel.

‘Buggered well shoulda gone with you,’ grumbled Peck.

‘Next time,’ said Ambel, giving the crewman an estimating look. ‘How’d you manage with the sea-cane?’

‘Barrel of cane and one of gourds,’ said Peck grudgingly.

‘Good,’ said Ambel, reaching out to give him a slap on the shoulder. ‘We’ll have some mash to sell at the Baitman when we get back, and later I’ll have you boil us up a batch of resin. Now get ‘em sealed and down below.’

‘He been all right?’ Ambel asked Pland, as Peck went to do as bid.

‘Bit noisy,’ replied Pland. ‘Shouting and muttering — but that’s nothing new.’

‘Mmm,’ Ambel nodded.

In the night, the boom of wings woke Boris from the light snooze he was enjoying while on watch. He observed the long neck and crocodilian head of a sail questing about below the mast, gobbling up the rhinoworm steaks deposited there. He then observed the curious sight of the sail dropping a half-chewed steak and staring intently out to the sea.

‘Who’s that?’ growled the sail.

Following its gaze, Boris saw that the molly carp had surfaced a short distance away and was now returning the sail’s stare. The sail clamped its mouth shut with a snap, and remained utterly motionless. It was almost as if the two creatures were engaged in a staring competition. Boris shook his head, dismissing the scene, and rested his head back against the rail. On the following morning, spread across the spars with meat digesting in its transparent gut, the sail — one of the largest Boris had ever seen — was ready for work.

It watched with interest as one by one the crew roused and came out on to the deck.

Peck came first up from the crew quarters, to empty a bucket of slops over the side, watch the commotion this caused in the sea below, and then urinate after it.

‘Mornin’, Peck,’ said Boris.

Peck merely grunted at him before heading to the water barrel for a drink, then moving on to his tasks about the deck. By the time Anne, Pland and some of the juniors came out, Peck had a brazier set up and was blowing on the charcoal in it. Every so often, he would stop to cough, or wipe at his watery eyes and mumble imprecations. Anne stood staring at him for a moment, arms akimbo and with obvious annoyance in her expression. When he finally noticed her she glared, took up the slop bucket he had left on the deck, and retreated below.

‘What?’ Peck asked Pland.

‘If you don’t know by now, you never will,’ said the crewman, coming over with a small jug and a hide bag. Peck shrugged and continued at his blowing while Pland poured oil into a pan and set it on the brazier. When Peck was satisfied with the glowing charcoal, and rocking back on his heels, Pland dropped square slices of boxy meat into the pan. The sudden sizzling and waft of savoury smoke across the deck was Ambel’s signal to come out of his cabin.

‘Ah, boxy,’ he said, then with a glance at Pland, ‘We got any of that Dome bacon left?’

Pland nodded and wandered off to investigate. Ambel watched him go, reflecting how it was strange that the stuff was still called ‘bacon’, it never having been within a light-year of a pig, or any other animal for that matter. He turned his attention now to the sail, who was audibly sniffing at the smoke from the pan and looking dubious.

‘How are you called?’ Ambel asked it, as was proper courtesy.

The sail turned its head towards him, and Ambel took an involuntary step backwards when he realized just how big the creature was. It exposed its teeth in what might have been a grin.

‘Windcheater,’ it replied, and all the crew on deck stood still with their mouths open. They’d never before encountered a sail without the name ‘Windcatcher’. True, they’d heard rumour of a sail that had actually grasped how a name could be an individual thing, but like so many other Hoopers, had dismissed the rumour as nonsense.

‘Only kidding,’ said the sail. ‘It’s Windcatcher really.’

They closed their mouths and got on with their work, quickly trying to forget this upset to the natural order of things.

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, sail,’ said Ambel, giving the creature a look. He had already noticed the bean-shaped device attached to the side of its head, and he knew precisely what it was.

The sail snickered and shook its wings.

Windcheater surveyed the ship with intense interest and recalled when, long ago, he had been here last. The Earther human woman had been aboard then, and he remembered how he had tried to bite her when she sneaked up on him to remove a sample of his skin. Memory of that brought back to him the memory of what had happened afterwards. The Captain, with some crew and the woman, had gone ashore, and after traumatic events he had only learnt about later, returned aboard carrying a certain box that was still here now.

Windcheater could even hear the whispering. The man he once threw from the top of the Big Flint was here now… in part.

The sail tested the movement of the spars and found that they were well greased in their sockets, and that there was little scope for slack movement between the three masts. Pulling on the reefing cables, he released the fore and aft sails and checked the movement there. Again, everything seemed fine. He lowered his head so as to inform the Captain, then abruptly pulled away from the smell of charring meat. He had never quite understood this human preference for incinerating perfectly good fresh meat prior to consuming it. It was like so many other things the humans did that he could not quite get a handle on. As he watched them eating their food, he thought back again to a time long ago.

Windcatcher had been the cleverest of all the sails and the most curious about these strange creatures that had descended from the sky, but the autoguns and intruder defences they had installed around the island they occupied had been enough to deter the most inquisitive, and thus the situation had remained for a very long time. Then had come internal strife, after the arrival of more of the same creatures, and the defences were gone and these creatures, these humans, came out into the world. Windcatcher’s curiosity became almost a painful thing when these humans built movable shells out of peartrunk and yanwood timber in which to float about on the seas.

At first he had flown at a safe distance, but sometimes close — especially in the night — and listened to the sounds they made to each other. He’d realized from the start that these sounds were a language much like that of the sails, and had quickly memorized it all. Learning what the words actually meant had taken somewhat longer, nearly one human century, and even then it had been difficult to grasp that they only had so few words to describe the wind. And as for names…

When Windcatcher had seen a ship drifting in the sea, without its sail of normal fabric, he had quickly grasped the opportunity this presented. Settling on the spars of the ship, he had gazed down upon the bemused crew and told them, ‘I am wind catcher.’ And so it had all begun. The other sails had soon joined him in this diversion — it was substantially more interesting than sitting on a rock discussing the weather. They, like the then original Windcatcher, had not grasped the concept that individuals could possess individual names and by the time they did, the tradition of them being called ‘Windcatcher’ had been established. The first sail to break with this tradition had been the original Windcatcher himself, when he had changed his name to ‘Windcheater’. But then he had always been one to break new ground.