A/N- "Narrative continued by..." is used in R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island when Jim Hawkins is away from stockade. Dr. Livesey assumes the narrative to fill in what Jim Hawkins does not see.

This chapter uses that, but incorrectly. This is the most confusing chapter of Riven Isles, and I hope you may bear with. I am still mulling over how to write this part effectively. 

Read on through, and I will post a summary/explanation at the end in case this chapter is too wack. It levels out from the moment that Hank wakes up. This chapter begins in a sort of dream state.

--Narrative continued by the Captain--

"Of all of the places and all of the times, why here?" I whisper, sensing a familiar pair of ears behind me. A slender black fox with a white eye and a missing left paw appears at my side, so smooth and silent that it is as if he materializes, rather than slips from the bush behind us. His tail curls around his paws and he stares ahead at the pair of humans beneath the sheets.

"Who cahn say," the fox answers, baring his teeth in a quiet and watchful snarl. "Leslie'll be ahlong suhn."

"Yes... I suppose."

In the bed, in the room, the man sits up. Unkempt, unraveled, unrespectable. "My God," he breathes, and my poor heart clenches at the confusion and pain in his expression. "Dorian."

"This is the night you rescued me, isn't it," I ask, but I, regretfully, already know the answer.

"Aye, it is," replies the black fox grimly.

A larger fox with a great bulk of fur flowing from his neck—appearing top-heavy and almost more like a dog—grunts and clambers onto the windowsill beside us. The bushes don't shake as his tail whips them. It passes through.

"Cap'n," he greets.

"Aye," I say, bowing my head.

"You're faint, Hank," he says, tilting his head so that his ears flop to one side. "How is your leg?"

I lift my translucent paw to peer at it, splaying out the digits. I put it down and glance back to my right side, lifting my tail from around it. I am missing a foot. "I don't feel it here. Astiza gives me strength."

The man and the woman wrestle in the bed, but she has all the power, and all he has is confusion and a hazed mind. She presses a bottle into his hand and tells him, "Everything is fine, my Henry. Relax, have a drink. We'll find Dorian in the morning."

"No, I don't want a drink, damn you! I—"

"You need to rest, Hank. You won't be any use at finding him if you're half-asleep, will you? Here." She wraps his fingers around the bottle and I feel his guilt now as strongly as I did all those years ago. "For your nerves."

"F-For my nerves," repeats the man, taking a hesitant but full swallow. He runs his hand across his lips and lies back, sinking into the pillows. The woman takes the bottle away and sets it on a table, rolling onto her side.

"We'll find Dorry," he whispers. The sorry excuse for a man falls asleep.

I close my eyes.

"How old was I, Hank?" Another voice, another fox. He's angry, and has every right to be.

"Dorian," I greet, wincing.

He pushes against my side and I stagger, falling onto the black fox. I weakly roll off my stump leg and sit up again, but I can't lift my head higher than my shoulders. I can't. The shame weighs on my neck like an anvil.

"I was three, in your years," Dorian spits, and I don't look at him. "I was a pup! And that bitch had me blindly tripping over myself in that dark, empty basement for how long, while you just sat there drinking and drinking, you terrible, terrible—"

"Stop it, Dorian," I growl. "I needed saving as much as you did. I'm sorry. I know failed you, but I've changed, haven't I? Can't you forgive me?"

Dorian shoves me again, and for a moment, I flicker, gasping. I'm in my cabin in the Orpheus, and Walter—that strange boy—is leaning over me. The moonlight from Riven's cave worms is filling the room like a mist. With a sigh, I am back, sitting on the ledge of the window in the ghostly form of a three-legged fox.

"Where did you go?" Dorian asks.

"You have to be gentle with me, Dorry," I wince, taking in a shaky breath. "I am vulnerable."

"Ah, look there," says the black fox, indicating with the point of his snout. "Here comes your rescue, now."

We all turn to look. A younger Increas and Leslie creep around the corner of the cottage.

The large and hairy orange fox buckles with laughter, dragging one powerful claw over his muzzle. "The beard! Increas, I'd forgotten the beard!"

The black fox curses the orange in his own language, a thick and unintelligible garble of unknown words, and butts his head hard at the orange fox's chest. "It isn't funny, Lesleh."

The men flicker, then the trees, then the bush, then our windowsill. I glance around, puzzled.

"What is happening?" I ask.

"Time is moving," answers Dorian. His jowls draw out, black lips thinning and whiskers twitching with anxiety. His wide eyes shift, teeth baring, and his ears flatten against his skull. "There's something wrong."

"What do you mean?"

I am alone again. Alone with my sorry old self, who sits against the wall of a boathouse in his undergarments, clucking his tongue against the dryness of his mouth. Younger Leslie and Increas had set him down there to keep him from harm—I remember that much. They would be inside the wood shack, preparing to steal the ship that was meant to be our escape. There are guns firing inside.

I see navy men coming; marching in time towards the boathouse. Younger Hank doesn't see them.

The black fox and the orange fox join me and we watch.

"The notorious Captain Henry Avery," crows the admiral at the front of the navy men. He teasingly hovers the point of his blade a hair's breadth from the drunk's throat.

"Simoooon," the drunk spreads his arms and grins. "How's the family?"

"You disgust me, Avery." He jerks his head. "Get up. You have an overdue appointment with the gallows."

"I-I don't think I booked with the gallows," slurs Captain Avery. "Wrong man, sorry. I think—I think Avery went that way." He points down the road.

"Cheeky, weren't you," chortles the orange fox.

"It's embarrassing," I answer. "Leslie, Increas, we have never Moonwalked in the past before. What is happening?"

"You'd have to ask Dorian."

"He'd be miles away, now."

I peer all around, watching the world ripple. "It's changing again."

The others are gone, but I know they remain nearby. It's the morning. Birds are chirping in the trees and a small boy with glasses too big for his face sits with a book a little way away. His father is outside my cell, prattling on to his prisoner in his self-righteous, snooty triumph.

I snicker, because young Hank is not listening, drooling against the wall, barely awake. Humiliating, perhaps, but amusing yet.

The day of my alleged hanging, I think. Admiral Woods had been so pleased with himself, after having dedicated so many years to chasing me.

I weakly hop to the cell doors to glance out. The king's men would be on their way soon. It was all a ruse. Everyone called it an escape, but it really was an arrangement—from which I received a pardon and a new name, and the king received a secret weapon that strangely raided ships from every nation but Praedor. At least, until I discovered I was being hunted down by the Witch's men and I abandoned everything to flee into hiding. I'd begged the king personally to make the records say I was hung on this day.

"I don't see him," hisses a silken voice that knocks the wind right of my pipes. I dive into the wall of the cell and tumble out the other side, into thick shrubbery, gasping. I lie there, trying to think of what to do. Should I reveal myself, or remain out of the way?

"It is the date he was supposed to hang; it's written in a blasted record. Did you get the time wrong, you useless animal?"

"He is here," answers a tired, sad croak that melts my heart. "Look in that cell."

The first voice, the meaner of them, laughs. "Pathetic. Hank! Come out!"

I don't want her to see me. She'll see my leg, and my faintness, and she will know that I am weak. I'm starting to tremble, helpless, angry. The only way that she could be controlling the Moonwalk is by controlling Mamata, the Speaker of Riven Isles. Like a priestess, Mamata is the sole communicator with the moon, Astiza.

"Well, listen, Hank," the Witch continues, "you're out of luck. If you come out of the waterfall, I will blast your ship to flotsam. Do you understand? You'll lose another forty-odd men. I know that you are coming. My man Mike has told me."

I grit my teeth, feeling the hair bristle all along my spine. I crawl forward very carefully, slinking through the shrubbery until I reach a grating that looks into the prison courtyard. I cautiously peek through. She sits, tall, and elegant, sleek fur a lustrous shade of red, in front of my cell, watching younger Henry Avery struggle to open his eyes to the morning sun.

Beside her, the grey-speckled Speaker hunches in defeat, weak and weary.

The red fox's nose lifts to the sky and she sighs. "Come out, coward. Come out and speak with me. Show me some spine."

The three-legged black fox appears in the courtyard and I start to quiver.

"Darling," he greets.

I feel the fluff—or, the thought of fluff, for though it felt warm and comforting, no physical touch is experienced—of the orange fox next to me. "We've got your back, Cap'n. He'll distract her until the Walk ends. It can't be long."

"Thank you."

The red fox swivels and eyes the scrawny black male like a meal, her lips curling up from her sharpened teeth. She slinks toward him. "Where is your captain, my sweet little deserter?" she purrs.

"I believe he gets hung today," the black fox slowly responds, focusing on keeping his accent in check as well as biding time. The red fox circles him, her tail curling under his chin.

She grins at his missing paw and caresses his cheek, tracing a claw along his scar. He flinches.

"We need help," shudders Mamata, the Speaker. She's lying down now, on her side. "Please, we need help. Our people are suffering."

"Shut it," barks the red fox, snapping her claws away from the black to pounce on the grey-speckled Speaker. She raises her head and looks around. "Where is your captain, Langley? Time is wasting."

"The fox form becomes you, Darling," says the black fox. He yawns and stretches out. I smile from my hiding place.

She looks wildly around, teeth bared. "HANK! Come over the falls, I dare you. You can join your precious ship at the bottom of the lagoon. Riven Isles belongs to me, and so do all its treasures and all its stupid damned animals."

"But you will never find the real treasure," the black fox tells her. "Not without us and our map and our key."

She whips round to snarl at him, just as the world begins to shimmer.

"Langley!" she howls. "I demand that you—"

She disappears, like the crest of a wave as it rolls, and so does the Speaker and the memory and the dream. 

My eyes open to the blue-lit cabin.

I stare at the ceiling and lift a hand to my face. Scratching my whiskers, I push myself to sit up and slouch. The stump of my leg stares back at me. Hesitantly, I reach out to feel the end of it, slipping my fingers under the tight cloth bandaging.

My gut turns over at the touch of the bumpy stub and I recoil quickly, falling back. My entire body convulses at the shock of landing against my pillows.

For a moment, I'm frozen stiff, and a most immasculine whine squeals from my lips, long and quiet and outside of my control.

Queasily, I stretch out until I am lying still and straight on my back. My mind is firing a mile a minute, but my body is little more than limp. Mike is out there on my ship, alive. Mike who gave away my position and turned me into that wretched Witch. Mike who led the party of wolves that took my leg.

I turn my head to see the boy, Walter Avery, sleeping in my chair at my side. His mother was a madwoman, and it remains to puzzle me—and to relieve me—that he is surprisingly normal. Naïve, gullible, a little racist, and very sheltered, but normal. I grab his wrist.

He startles and squints, pulling his wrist away.

"I—I fell asleep," he breathes. He anxiously runs his fingers through his hair.

"Help me up."

His brows knit and he frowns at me. "No. You're supposed to rest."

"I don't need rest," I growl through clenched teeth. "I need to count the dead. I need to kill the rogue. I need to see my boy."

"Maybe in the morning, sir."

"What was the first rule, Walter? I say jump, you say...?"

He shakes his head, squinting at me in confusion. "Go back to sleep. The sirens have stopped and Mike is caught. Things are okay right now. Everyone just needs you to be."

I exhale sharply through my teeth and press the heel of my hand to my brow. "No. Everything is falling apart."

A/N -
Characters and vocab you may have forgotten or not understood in this chapter:
Astiza: The Moon

Speaker: The Speaker is essentially a high priestess; the only being capable of communicating directly with Astiza and controlling the Moonwalk. She is a hostage of the Witch, who forces her to bring them to Hank (in the Moonwalk).

The Witch / Darling: Captain Hank's nemesis, and possibly the reason Walter's mother was killed

Mike: The traitor werewolf that mysteriously wasn't among the others--now the last of them living. This chapter exposes that his loyalties lie with the Witch. During the Moonwalk, he gave our heroes' position away to Darling.

Lisa Avery: Walter's mother. Has a screw loose.

Foxes: All of the foxes depict werewolf characters that you know, or foxes (Dorian and the Speaker.)

Chapter summary: 
The Moonwalk (a sort of "Twilight zone" communication experience) is a lucid-dreaming state that Astiza's followers...that is, werewolves and Riven foxes... enter at the full moon's highest position. 

Hank enters this when he falls unconscious, and finds himself--in blessed fox form, which will be explained in the narrative later--stuck watching a repressed moment of his past. Moonwalks are supposed to take place in the present. 

The reason why this Walk is in the past is because the Witch forces the Speaker to take her to the date and location of Hank's alleged hanging to assure herself of his death. When the time of the Moonwalk changes for one, it changes for all. It's like... "one server."

Also in this chapter, you see glimpses of Hank's past, including his cheeky rival relationship with Simon's father. There's a glimpse of Simon, too. This is "the secret" that the Captain has been keeping for Simon, as Simon prefers to keep his history private.

I will be rewriting all of this, and probably will cut out all of Lisa Avery's part. Maybe it isn't so good an idea to bring out that Lisa Avery has always been a nutcase in my head. P: That's part of why Hank keeps Walt at distance.

Sorry for the confusion. ><

THE MOST IMPORTANT TAKE-AWAY OF THIS CHAPTER: Mike exposed the location of the Captain's ship to the Witch. She knows they are coming and is ready to receive them.