The Book of Josiah - Chapter 23a

The Five of Cups reversed, gold on black.
    He is in a car with her, and they are driving down the road. The top is down, the wind is in her hair - God, she looks beautiful today, eyes like black on gold. And they are laughing so hard, though he can’t say why. They laugh and laugh, as though this could never end. And then he looks at his hand, and sees a trickle of blood - why does it not hurt? He stops laughing, and so does she. They stare at the trickle of blood, confused, as it traces a red path down his arm. And then the car is out of control, and they go off the bridge. For a moment they are suspended in empty space but then they fall. And somewhere distant, a girl is crying.
    The Six of Wands reversed, silver on black.
    On an ocean, rocking back and forth with the gentle waves. It is night, and the moon is full, silver on black. It is so peaceful here, with the gentle rocking of the sea. But the sky grows darker, and one of the crew is not who he seems, he is an outsider, a traitor, but which one? Perhaps they should draw lots. But the lots are not fair and he draws the short straw - no! I am not the traitor! - but no one will listen to his cries, and they prepare to throw him from the boat before all is lost. “Pray to your God,” they say, “perhaps he will hear and save your life”. But he does not believe in God and so all hope is lost. For a moment he is suspended in empty space but then he falls forever.
    The Fool.
    How should this dream go? I shall toss a coin to decide, I cannot control a dream. Heads, we shall all go home and live beautiful lives, and the dream shall end happily ever after. Tails, we shall never go home, and the dream shall end in fear and pain. He tosses the coin, watches it spin, round and round. For a moment, it hangs there, forever revolving, but then it falls. He reaches out a bloodstained hand and catches it. Tails. Best of three, he thinks, and tosses the coin again and again - and every time it comes up tails.

    The World reversed. Failure.

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 15

    “Are you afraid?”
    “Yes, a little. Why do you ask?”
    “You’re shivering.”
    Pausing for a moment to consider this, Jos found it was true and wondered why - this place was probably the warmest on the ship. Still, he pulled his cloak tighter and gritted his teeth.
    They walked on long-bladed grass that crunched delightfully at every step. Jos could barely remember the last time he had walked on grass - the smell was magical.
    A sudden stampede of memory threatened to overwhelm him - everything came back so clearly. He could see the swings he had played on as a child - they were red, with black seats, high enough off the ground that he had felt really grown-up to sit on them and swing into the air. He had swung and dreamt of flying, of reaching to the heavens, of becoming a pilot of a ship to the stars. He played on the slide and the roundabout, on the see-saw and the climbing frame that was shaped like an elephant’s head. He played and he smelled the grass beneath his feet, fresh with frost or dew. Ghosts of children played across his eyes, walking the paths beside him, laughing and shrieking with equal glee, climbing the tall oak trees to his left, the beech trees to the right, sitting beneath a gnarled, old willow. For a moment he could see everything. Then he was back.
    “It’s okay to be frightened,” Jonah said, in what Jos could only assume was supposed to be a comforting tone of voice - Jonah did not comfort well.
    “Thank you but I don’t really need your permission. Some deranged terrorists are trying to destroy the ship and I’m trying to stop them. Every security guard on the ship is looking for us - and will probably shoot us on sight given that their boss seems to be behind it all. And here we are, strolling through a park…”
    “An arboretum,” Jonah corrected him, almost sheepishly, “it’s an arboretum.”
    “… strolling through an arboretum as if it were a Sunday afternoon and we hadn’t a care in the world. I think I have earned the right to be a little scared.”

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 13

    A wave of dizziness passed through him. It started somewhere in his bowels, before rippling through his spine and up into his head. His legs felt insubstantial, as if they existed in three places at once - a nauseous feeling swelled in the pit of his stomach. He swayed, and nearly fell. Grabbing hold of a barrel, he caught himself, closed his eyes, and waited for the sickening sensations to pass. They left him a few moments later, with no trace of their presence remaining.
    Jos opened his eyes and looked around him. He must have stood up too fast when he stepped out of the ventilation shaft. At least he hadn’t revealed their presence here by falling over, or getting sick.
    Jonah didn’t seemed to have noticed that anything had been amiss. He was peering over the silver barrels into the vast brightly lit room beyond. Jos moved up beside him and inhaled sharply. He had heard of such engines in theory, seen the plans, the blueprints, but nothing could have prepared him for the actual presence of the great machine that dominated the room.
    It was the size of a large house, a mass of heaving metal and plastic. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal.  It was huge, brutish and ugly but with a strangely compelling elegance, like some sort of prehistoric predator swimming the oceans of space, devouring all that entered its path. But most entrancing was the engine’s strange song. From the depths of its belly came a ghostly sound, like a howl or a whale song. At irregular intervals it broke free and filled the room with an eerie song. And beneath it all was the purring hum, a note so low and loud that it made teeth buzz and bones vibrate.
    Surrounding the beast were dozens of displays, each shooting multicoloured readouts into the air, relaying the demands of the engine. The technicians scurried around and obeyed the whim of the machine, whether by pushing the buttons, turning the dials or pulling the levers that were spread around the room in a seemingly random manner. But arcane white markings painted on the steel walls suggested that beneath the chaos was a deeper order - an order that the uninitiated could not perceive.