Rose groaned.
Five minutes later, they stood on the bow of ship, blinking in the light of a single lantern and adjusting to the incessant sway and rock of the waves. Heddlebun was already aboard and waiting for them in the wheelhouse, nervously wringing her knuckly hands. Hagrid and Rose began bustling about the deck, tugging ropes taut and retying knots, closing and battening portholes, checking hatches, calling to each other in indecipherable boat jargon. They enlisted Ralph’s help, since he was big enough to lug the coils of rope and swing the enormous booms.
From James’ vantage point, the ship looked nearly as long as the Quidditch pitch, but very narrow, divided along its length by a covered paddlewheel and the wheelhouse. Two masts jutted up, one each from the bow and stern, festooned with rigging and limp canvas sails.
“So what’s the name of this tub?” Zane asked James, holding onto the railing for support.
“The Gertrude, apparently,” James answered.
Zane nodded. “That’s an atrocious name.”
“Finally, something you and Filch agree on.”
Zane lowered his voice, “So, what’s the news from Petra?”
James glanced aside at his friend. Zane’s American directness always took a few minutes to adjust to. He considered how to answer for several seconds as the boat rocked beneath them, Rose, Ralph, and Hagrid still calling to each other over the stern.
Finally, he said, “We kissed.”
Zane nodded slowly, meaningfully. “That’s sure not going to make things any easier, is it?”
James sighed and leaned against the bulkhead.
“And Merlin?” Zane prodded. “Any word from him since the World Between the Worlds?”
James shrugged. “Nothing. I don’t think he saw us at all. He was too busy with Petra.”
“She ended up with the crimson thread from the loom,” Zane recalled. “But Merlin got her brooch. Do you think she’ll leave this reality without it?”
James hadn’t considered the question. The whole point of going to the World Between the Worlds was to capture back the symbolic thread, without which Petra couldn’t hope to assume her new role in it’s native dimension. But he remembered now how quietly bereft she had been about losing her father’s brooch. He shook his head uncertainly.
“I don’t suppose it matters. She’ll be leaving this world forever.”
“All the more reason to take the most meaningful memento of all with her,” Zane said with uncharacteristic gravity. “Maybe Merlin knew what he was doing when he captured it. Maybe he sees it as a way to lure Petra to him.”
James wanted to agree, but couldn’t. “You haven’t seen her lately. She’s committed. She’ll fight anyone who gets in her way, including any of us. And she has the worst sort of help imaginable.
Both Judith and the shred of Voldemort in her blood seem to want her to go through with it.”
Zane cinched up the corner of his mouth and cocked his head in the thoughtful expression that James knew so well. “But why would they want to help her? Judith especially? Petra is her toe-hold in our world.
The only reason Judith can even exist here is because of the bargain that happened when Petra killed Izzy’s mother. If Petra vanishes away to some other dimension, Judith has no host here. She vanishes away, too.
Right?”
James shrugged. “That’s the theory, I guess. So I don’t know why Judith would want her to go through with the plan. All I know is that she knows I don’t want Petra to leave, and she warned me to stay away from her.”
“Sounds like a no-win situation, doesn’t it?” Zane offered, studying James’ face by lantern light. “Either you lose Petra and Judith wins, or you win Petra and the whole world pays for it.”
James had nothing to say to that. He bowed his head and pushed a hand up into his hair, tugging at it.
Beneath them, the boat suddenly seemed to surge forward, throwing both boys off balance.
“We’ve got time to make up,” Hagrid boomed from the wheelhouse. “Ever’body inside or below decks! This is like to be a wee bit bumpy!”
Stumbling against the increasing momentum of the ship, James and Zane hurried to the wheelhouse, ducking in through the narrow metal door on its side. There, they found Ralph, Rose, and Heddlebun gripping a brass railing along a rust-stained rear wall. Before them, a console bristled with instruments, dials, and levers, dominated by an enormous ship’s wheel. Hagrid stood before this, gripping the wheel’s protruding handles and turning it this way and that with tense concentration.
“It’s a wee bit tight just through here,” he muttered to himself.
“Just out of curiosity, Hagrid,” Zane asked brightly, moving alongside Rose and gripping the brass railing with one hand. “How many times have you done this?”
Hagrid offered a quick sidelong glance. “How many times? Oh.
Wellnow. Technic’ly…” He released one hand from the wheel, splayed his fingers, and counted silently under his breath before admitting, “Erm. Zero.”
Outside the expansive fore window of the wheelhouse, the bow of the ship tilted and swayed, angling ponderously toward one of the giant tunnel throats that surrounded the subterranean lake. Engraved across a stone at its top was the word LONDON. On either side, iron braziers held goblinfire torches. Their yellow light played over the black waves and glimmered in the spray that pulsed on either side of the Gertrude’s prow.
“I sorta figured that,” Zane shrugged, firming his grip on the railing.
The ship began to accelerate as it neared the designated tunnel.
James realized that the lake water was funneling into the tunnel’s maw, drawing the ship steadily forward as it approached. Hagrid threaded the wooden wheel back and forth, muttering urgently under his breath.
“Hold on, now,” he announced, reaching forward and tugging a large lever down with a thunk. “I’m told this is where it gets a bit hairy.”
A resounding clank and a thud shook the entire ship. James gasped as the bow mast suddenly hinged ponderously backward like a falling tree, dragging its rigging with it in a series of twangs and whip-like whooshes. With a vibrating shudder, it folded over onto the wheelhouse, thumping into place, and James realized this was a necessary maneuver if they were to fit into the tunnel mouth without shearing the masts right off.