Haladras Read Free Page A

long?’ he wonders,” replied the doctor. “How
long...well, seven hours, twenty three minutes, as I calculate it.”
    Skylar was stunned. His mother would be beside herself with
worry. Did she even know about his accident? He hoped not. As it was, she
didn’t like him working at the harbor. She considered it too dangerous .
Everything was too dangerous in her eyes. This little incident would only give
her more reason to dislike the harbor. Not that that mattered much now; Rasbus
would certainly ban him from the docks.
    It wasn’t my fault , he disputed with himself. The
winch stopped working. It was the only thing to do.
    “Now just hold still, my boy,” cautioned Dr. Beezin,
disrupting Skylar’s thoughts. “It’s time to extract the osteoclasts. Just hold
nice and still.”
    Less than Skylar liked the idea of foreign bodies inside his
head was the idea of extracting them from his head.
    “Uh, how exactly are you going to do that?”
    “In the same way that they got in, of course. With this.”
    The doctor held up what looked like a gun, but with the long
and disconcerting tip of a monstrous needle. Its highly polished steel contrasted
sharply with the doctor’s gnarled and bony hand, which gripped the device as
though it were a noble saber. What a horrifying implement! It looked as though
it should belong to a demented torture master, not a surgeon.
    Dr. Beezin let out another laugh. “Easy, my boy. It’ll be
painless. Trust me.”
    Skylar, however, didn’t feel easy. Bracing himself by
clutching the sides of the bed, he prayed the doctor would not puncture his
brain with the terrible needle-gun. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for
the pain. A high-frequency whirr sounded in his ear. Then he felt a sharp
pressure on the side of his head. He clenched his teeth tighter.
    You’d think he’d administer an anesthetic first, he
though anxiously, expecting at any moment the sharp pressure to turn into
unbearable pain. It never came. Before he knew it, the pressure vanished and
Dr. Beezin was saying, “That’ll do, my boy. You can release that death grip of
yours.”
    Skylar let go his grip, opened his eyes, and let his tense
body relax.
    “What did you do?” Skylar asked after he’d recovered from
the shock.
    “Sucked out your brains, of course.”
    Skylar didn’t laugh. Reaching up, he inspected the side of
his head, expecting to find something different. A bandage, a hole, a
bump—something. If felt as normal as could be.
    “Am I free to leave the infirmary, then?” asked Skylar.
    “Well—”
    “The question is,” boomed a familiar voice before Dr. Beezin
could respond, “Do you really want to leave the infirmity?”
    Skylar quickly turned his head toward the voice. There stood
the massive form of Rasbus filling the doorway, glaring harshly at him.
    *  
*   *
    Three and a half leagues separate Cloud Harbor from Kaladra,
the main city of Haladras and Skylar's home. It might have been three hundred
leagues for how long the trip seemed to take. Perhaps it was because of the
awkwardness Skylar felt sitting beside Rasbus in the same transport with no one
else around. The port master had remained mostly silent, sitting at the
controls of the transport like a mechanical pilot. Skylar didn’t know if he had
ever seen Rasbus when he wasn’t yelling at every poor soul who came into his
line of sight.
    Rasbus had insisted on taking him to his mother. And Skylar
had only resisted a little. In truth he did not feel up to flying. His whole
body felt bruised and weak with fatigue. His head swam when he stood up. He
would have killed himself for certain had he attempted to fly home on his
jetwing. Not that flying was an option. His jetwing had been severely damaged
in the fall. News which had nearly brought tears to his eyes. The chances of
replacing his jetwing were practically nonexistent.
    That jetwing represented his most cherished possession. What
would he do without it?
    Could this day possibly