The Moon Trolley: Episode 1

“Ata! Wake up!”

Kojo Ata Addae sat up so fast that he bashed his head right into his sister’s. “Aggghh!” he yelped, his eyes watering with pain.

“Ow!” agreed his sister, Kokumo Ataa Mawu. “What’d you headbutt me for?”

“What’d you wake me up for?” growled Kojo in reply.

“Something’s wrong.”

“Everything’s wrong, Ataa. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re on a slave ship.”

Kokumo narrowed her eyes at Kojo. His twin sister was well-acquainted with his refined sense of sarcasm. In fact, she was largely to blame for it after spending fifteen years verbally sparring with Kojo. But right now, she wasn’t having it. “Ata, listen to me—I think there’s an emergency.”

“What’re you—” But then Kojo started hearing it too. The CRACK, CRACK, CRACK of nonstop thunder. The muffled shouts from above-deck. The panicked whispering of the other prisoners. “Do you think we’ve run into a storm?”

A hatch in the ceiling suddenly opened, filling the crowded cargo hold of the Wings of Prosperity with a torrent of heavy rain and the first light any of them had seen in hours. Everyone squinted as three grubby crewmembers half-climbed, half-fell into the cargo hold. Moments later, a terrified-looking sheepdog jumped in after the men. Or, more accurately, fell onto one of the crewmember’s heads.

“Yeh stupid mutt!” the scruffy sailor snarled, tossing the poor creature away. The brown and white dog landed on the floor with a yelp. Kojo cried out in dismay, but—much to his relief—the dog clambered up to his feet a second later. The animal wasted no time scurrying away from the cruel crewmember, weaving through the dense crowd of chained prisoners.

“Come back ‘ere yeh foolish hound!” the man said. He started stalking after his dog but one of the other crewmembers, a gross-looking person with rotting teeth and greasy hair, grabbed him by the arm.

“Chase the dog later!” the other man said. “We’ve got to find the guns right now!”

“What’s the use anyway, heh?” lamented the third sailor, a burly man who seemed close to crying. “Won’t none of us survive longer than a few minutes against a kraken!”

“A kraken?” Kokumo whispered to Kojo. “What’s a kraken?”

Kojo had no idea, but he didn’t like the sound of it one bit.

Just then, he felt something brush against his knee. He jumped as far as his heavy chains would let him, thinking of spiders or snakes. But it was just the dog—the miserable-looking pet had walked right up to Kojo. He put his front paws on Kojo’s chest, licked him across the face, and—with the aid of the world’s most expressive eyes and light-brown eyebrow patches—gave him a look of such clear meaning that it was like the dog had spoken out loud: “Can I hang with you for a minute?”

“Looks like you’ve made a friend,” Kokumo said wryly.

Despite the horrific circumstances in which he found himself, Kojo smiled. “Yeah—I think he likes me.”

“No, he just thinks you look like him,” his sister replied slyly.

“Hey! Get ‘way from me dog, slave!”

Kojo looked up to see the dog’s abusive owner coming toward him, viciously pushing any prisoner unlucky enough to be in his path. The dog whined and laid underneath Kojo’s legs. Kojo, for his part, had nowhere—and no ability—to hide. All he could do was grit his teeth and wait for the inevitable beating.

But the beating never arrived. In that very moment, several massive thunderclaps shook the entire ship with the force of a massive earthquake. Kojo’s would-be assailant lost his balance completely and rolled all the way across the floor, stopping only when he slammed into the wall. He had just risen unsteadily back to his feet when a tentacle as large as a tree trunk blasted through the ship’s hull, picked him up like a bag of bananas, and waved him all around the cargo hold.

“Get down!!” Kokumo yelled, pulling her brother down to the floor. The dog, positively howling with fright, buried his head underneath them. It was a good thing they ducked—not a moment later, the tentacle swept through the spot where Kojo’s head had been. But they weren’t safe yet. The tentacle next swung down toward them like a hammer trying to pound a nail. Kokumo, ever the fast thinker, used her feet to push both Kojo and the dog out of the way just as the giant, squishy appendage smashed a hole in the floor between them.

“Thanks,” gasped Kojo as the tentacle swung upward again and began taking down half of the load-bearing walls in the cargo hold. Then it hit him—the restraints around his ankles had suddenly become loose. He peered into the new hole in the floor and was shocked to see a pair of broken chains. “Ataa!” he said. “That thing cut me loose!”

“What!?!”

BANG! BANG! BANG! The two remaining sailors in the cargo hold had found a crate of rifles and begun blasting away at the tentacle. It recoiled and writhed about like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. Then, apparently deciding it had suffered enough, the thing slid out of the cargo hold as quickly as it had entered. It left behind a scene of utter carnage. Judging from the pained yells Kojo heard coming from abovedeck, it had not acted alone.

Kokumo wasted no time grabbing Kojo by the arm and pulling him to his feet. “Ata, you’ve got to get out of here!” she urged him. The dog hopped exuberantly as though in agreement.

“Out of—and go where?”

“There!” Kokumo pointed out the makeshift window the kraken had created. Kojo looked and, to his great surprise, saw not endless ocean and sky, but palm trees and sand. The Wings of Prosperity had beached on a tropical island. For a moment Kojo’s heart surged with hope. But that feeling withered and died quickly.

“No, I’m going to stay,” he said. He could have said more, but it wasn’t necessary. Kokumo knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Ata,” she said gently. “I’ll be fine. You’ve got a chance at freedom—take it.”

“Not gonna happen,” Kojo replied defiantly. He picked up his chains and began wrapping them around Kokumo’s. The dog cocked his head inquisitively.

Kokumo chuckled. “You’ve never been good at tying knots,” she said. She grabbed her brother by both shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Our parents would want at least one of us to have the chance they didn’t.”

Kojo stared at her for several seconds. Then he made up his mind. “Our parents had twins—and twins stick together.” He cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled at the sailors, “Hey! Come re-attach my—”

“NO!!” roared Kokumo as the gross sailor and the burly sailor began heading over to them. Her bellow was so thunderous that it struck Kojo dumb just the same as if she’d taped his mouth shut. Kojo stared at her; he had never heard his sister yell that way before. Then, before he even had a chance to think about recovering, a torrent of water flooded into the cargo hold—from where, Kojo didn’t know—and came rushing right at them.

The water hit Kojo with the force of a raging elephant (okay, a baby elephant) and carried both him and the dog to the hole in the Wings of Prosperity’s hull. He managed to grab hold of a plank of wood before the water flushed him out of the ship completely—the dog, however, wasn’t able to do the same due to his lack of hands. He slid out of the ship and onto the beach, howling all the way.

“Oi! That slave’s tryin’ta run away, he is!” the grubby-looking sailor yelled.

“Excellent!” shouted the other grimly, pulling out a pistol. “I’ve been wantin’ to shoot something!”

Kojo, still struggling to hang on against the rushing water, locked eyes with his sister. He saw her fierce determination, knew exactly what she was thinking. Don’t try it, he pled silently. Please, just let them get me…

“Hey, sailormen!” said Kokumo as the two men passed by her. “Did a warthog sit on your faces, or are they just naturally like that?”

The crewmembers stopped and immediately rounded on her, fists and pistols upraised.

“No!!!” Kojo screamed. He tried to lunge forward, intending to push against the raging current until he reached his sister. But he overestimated his strength. The last thing he saw before the water flushed him out of the Wings of Prosperity was Kokumo jamming her foot into one of the sailor’s shins with all the strength her chained leg could muster.

I hope you enjoyed the first episode of The Moon Trolley. I'll post new episodes of this science-fiction / fantasy story every week—I'd love to have you along for the ride!

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