Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Chapter 21 concluded
Johnny tightened his grip on the railing, and he saw Aidan do the same. Welly and Larissa hustled over to join them, and Bones gave an unholy squawk and shot back towards the rear of the ship. Johnny’s brain was still trying to figure what to be most afraid of when there was a jarring thud as they hit the beach. The Sylph didn’t stop when it hit the sand though—there was a grinding scratching that vibrated the hull and the great wooden airship just drove itself right out of the water. Johnny waited for the wailing of metal that would indicate that the ship’s rudder was scraping along the sand, but he never heard it; Roger must have done something to hoist it up out of danger.
Their momentum could only carry them so far, of course, and there was only about five feet of torn up beach behind them when The Sylph gave a final shudder and came to a sudden stop. Roger appeared almost immediately afterward. “How long do we have?” she demanded of Aidan.
Aidan shook his head as if to clear it. “Hard to say,” he admitted. “I couldn’t get a definite fix on it while you were bouncing us around like juggler’s pins. But I’m guessing no more than two or three minutes, if that.
Roger spat. “Goats’ bollocks!” she cursed. “Bones! Get yer ass up that thar tree!” She pointed to the obligatory palm tree in the center of the barren island. Bones magically appeared from somewhere and lept off the forward edge of the flying bridge, gliding all the way to the trunk of the palm, where he scampered around it in an upward spiral until he reached its leaves. Once there, he shaded his eyes with one hand and looked out over the water behind them. Johnny could hear his beak clicking furiously.
“Welly!” Roger barked. “Yer the opener, ain’t ye? Get ta openin’! Right in front of the boat, mind, so I don’t have too far to chuck crates. I hope it don’t come to that, but I ain’t yet sussed out how we’re gonna get my girl unbeached.” She turned back to Aidan. “Priest! Sorry to have to ask this, but I need ye down on the beach. Ye’ll have to hold it off singular while we get supplies through. Elsewise we’ll end up just as cadaverous on the other side as if we stay here to be monster chum.” Aidan nodded and scrambled aft where the rope ladder was. Roger turned to Johnny and Larissa. “Swabby and missy! We need to start shuffling around crates. Prioritize food and warm clothes, and get ’em all up in the bow and clear of any lines or beams. Hop to, like yer life depended on it, ’cause by damn it just might.” She turned and strode off to the crates, whipping out her knife to cut lines. She never bothered to look back and see if any of her orders were being followed; she knew they were.
As he started pulling crates towards the bow, he could see Welly down on the sand below. He was tilted at an impossible angle, like a mime walking against the wind, but motionless. Johnny couldn’t see why he didn’t just fall over. His hands were in front of him, back to back, fingers stiff, as if he were trying to force open invisible elevator doors. From the rear of the vessel, Aidan’s liquid chanting began to drift towards them; he must really be belting it out if they could hear him with the bulk of the ship between them. Johnny glanced back and discovered that Aidan wasn’t directly behind them, though: he was facing the lagoon, with his back to the rear corner of the deckhouse. The ship had hit the beach at a bit of an angle, Johnny saw now, and it looked like the sea monster was cutting across the corner their path made when they’d changed course while trying to outrun it. Assuming Aidan knew where it was and was facing in that general direction, that is, which Johnny felt confident was true. Roger caught him woolgathering and flicked his ear.
Johnny went back to lugging crates. Larissa wasn’t a lot of use in pushing the large boxes around, but she had a knack for knowing exactly where each box had ended up and could reel off the contents of anything Roger pointed at, which Roger somehow knew and was taking full advantage of. Once Roger had everything identified, she sent Larissa back to the deckhouse for “paraffin caulk” (which Larissa promptly objected was neither paraffin nor caulk, but she knew where it was, so she did her objecting while walking away). It seemed like it must have been more than three minutes at this point; Johnny paused again to check on his shipmates.
Welly actually did have his fingers in the crack of a door, it seemed: a glowing blue line had appeared in the air in front of him, and he was trying to widen the crack, his muscles straining with the effort. Aidan’s chants were booming out over the water and rolling around the island. As Johnny watched, it actually got darker, for the first time since he’d stepped through the strange round door into the swampworld. Startled, he looked up. The clouds overhead were getting thick and menacing. It was impossible to guess if they were blocking out some of the light, or absorbing it, or not reflecting as much ... without knowing where the light source was, there was no way to know. But it was definitely darker—not much darker, but the difference was noticeable. A wind was starting to swirl around too: just a slight breeze so far, but it was gaining momentum. Aidan was standing with his staff upraised in one hand, his other flung out to the side, his back ramrod straight, and his voice continued to peal those liquid syllables. “Shallédanu,” Johnny heard, and “tisharallein” and “loralleilaray” and “whellenaisharenn.” And not only were the clouds and the wind responding, but the usually calm lagoon was growing choppy, and waves began to form off the coast of the island. Then Bones gave out a high-pitched shriek and Johnny’s eyes were drawn out to the water, where he got his first glimpse of the creature that had chased them here.
Johnny’s first fleeting impression was that it looked like a huge puddle of dirty milk. But the dark streaks were too regular; they almost seemed to make a pattern. As it oozed toward them, the image suddenly clicked for Johnny: it was something like cerebral grooves, only barely peeking above the surface. In fact, now that he had seen it this way, the whole thing looked more like an alabaster brain coral that had somehow melted into a gelatinous ooze, like that old monster movie The Blob, and it was now slowly coming to eat them. And, indeed, when the first long, white limb shot out, Johnny could see that it was less tentacle and more pseudopod.
That limb went straight for Aidan, and Johnny felt his breath stop in his throat. But Aidan merely flicked his staff out to meet it, and, where they touched, blue sparks shot out. The feeler diverted course and floated toward the ship. Another pseudopod came at Aidan, but he deflected that one as well, and it too moved towards The Sylph. Once they reached it, they attached to either side.
“Bloody hell!” Roger grated. “Bloody priest is going to let that thrice-damned goatsucker pull my bloody boat right off the bloody beach!”
But when the monster finally managed to move the ship, they actually pushed forward a notch. Roger’s mouth fell open. Johnny blinked. “I don’t get it,” he said finally. “What’s ... ?”
Roger’s voice started out as a whisper, the words coming slowly, but they rapidly increased in both volume and speed. “Our ... mad ... priest ... is getting ... the bloody monster ... to DELIVER THE SHIP FOR US!” She whooped and pounded Johnny on the back, knocking the wind out of him. “Forget the crates, Johnny me boyo, just get everything that might go overboard tied back down. If Aidan can pull this off it’s like to be a bumpy ride.” She strode over to the forward rail and leaned down to call to their opener. “Welly, my lad, ye’d best open yer openin’ a mite faster, else ye’re liable to get a ship up yer backside.” She cackled with glee and headed back to the wheelhouse. Bones was back on the ship now, and Larissa had reappeared with a wooden box about the size of a large cigar box. She looked around for Roger, and gave Johnny a raised eyebrow when she couldn’t locate the captain. Johnny shrugged, and he could feel the stupid grin returning to his face. Bones settled the issue by snatching the box out of Larissa’s hands and scrambling off with it.
Then it was just tying knots and pulling ropes taut while Welly Banks ripped an ever-widening hole in the air and Aidan de Tourneville mentally wrestled a giant sea monster into submission.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Chapter 21 continued
After that, they couldn’t do much other than hang on. Welly disappeared back into the deckhouse. Johnny rejoined Aidan; they held fast to the rails and tried to keep a lookout for further monstrous tentacles. Roger didn’t reappear, but her voice continued to issue colorful pirate curses through the speaker. Bones appeared to be scrambling around, running errands for Roger. Only Larissa seemed calm: she stood, near the railing but not holding it, swaying easily with the motion of the ship, absently stroking the snake around her wrist and just ... observing, Johnny supposed.
Johnny’s mind was working desperately. “Maybe the flare gun again ... ?” he asked Aidan.
Aidan shook his head. “Trust, me: that thing is much too big to care about a little flare in its guts. Even if you could hit its guts.”
Well, Johnny thought, you wanted some excitement. He bit back a laugh, which he felt sure would contain more than a note of hysteria. “Can’t you do something?” he asked Aidan.
“Not at this speed,” Aidan returned, maintaining his grim hold on the rail. “As long as we’re moving this fast, I can’t stay stable enough to do anything significant. Of course, if we were to slow down, then I might not have time to do anything significant. So I fear we’re parched either way.” Johnny’s brain translated “parched” as “screwed.”
“Just a tick,” buzzed Roger’s voice from the speaker. “I think we’re gaining a bit of headway. Aidan, can you still feel the bugger back there?”
Aidan rolled his eyes, but didn’t bother to complain. “Johnny, come help me.” He turned around to face out over the water again as Johnny stumbled the few steps to join him and regrabbed the top rail. “This is an uncomfortable thing to ask,” he said apologetically, “but I need you to put your arms around me, grab the railing on either side, and press me up against it. Tight, so I can let go and still not jostle about too much. Can you do that?”
Johnny shrugged. “Sure,” he said. He didn’t think it was that uncomfortable, actually. Although once he tried it, he could see Aidan’s hesitation: like riding behind someone on a motorcycle, it was practically impossible to do without inadvertently grinding your crotch into the other person’s butt. But, compared to getting eaten by a sea monster, that didn’t seem all that worrisome.
Once Johnny was in position, Aidan let go and leaned out, and Johnny knew that his grip was all that was keeping the water priest on the ship. With one ear pressed against Aidan’s back, he could hear the man’s breathing and his heartbeat, and he could see Larissa staring at them in that dispassionate way she had. As Aidan started to chant once again, Johnny felt a buzzing vibration settle into his bones, and the sounds from Aidan’s lungs began to sound more like waves crashing on the beach. Aidan seemed like he was glowing, in the same way that the door into the swampworld had seemed to glow—there was no visible light, just a perception in Johnny’s other sense that seemed to connote glowing, somehow. It was warm, and oddly comforting. Rocketing along an ocean-like lagoon in a giant wooden flat-bottomed boat, in danger of being eaten by an unknown monster while they ferried a blue-skinned boy-man who spoke in corny comedy routines and sighs to an unknown location so they could retrieve a mystery object, Johnny still couldn’t help but feel like everything was, suddenly and unexpectedly, okay. He closed his eyes and breathed more slowly. “Shallédanu lei shonta,” he said softly, almost unaware he was doing so.
Then all that was drowned out by a freezing blast of cold that nearly froze his otherworldy sense solid. He gasped, and he actually saw steam coming out of his mouth. Larissa opened her mouth, no doubt to tell him that it was condensed water vapor and not actually steam, but he didn’t wait. “Go tell Roger we’re almost there!” he shouted at her over the rushing of the wind. “Tell her to turn just a bit to the right ...” Johnny stopped as he realized he couldn’t point without losing his grip on Aidan. “Like two marks past one o’clock,” he said finally, hoping Larissa would know what he meant.
Apparently she did. She strode over to the speaker, thumbed the brass button, and said “42 degrees to starboard.”
“Aye, aye,” came Roger’s reply.
The boat turned ever so slightly, and now Johnny felt like his heart had been replaced by a large chunk of ice. It hurt to breathe, and he began to shiver. Aidan stopped chanting and turned around, which was good because Johnny’s grip was slipping. He slumped into the priest’s arms, and he heard Aidan whispering to him, but it was hard to make out over the howling winds blowing through his core. He looked up at Aidan’s face, and he realized the man wasn’t whispering—he was shouting. Johnny couldn’t hear anything, but he could almost read his lips ... Off? he thought disjointedly. Is he saying “off”? Oh, yeah ... turn it off. That’s probably a good idea, now that you mention it. Only ... how do I turn it off?
Aidan was shaking him now, but it was very distant. Then he felt the older man grab his head between both hands, index fingers pressed into his temples, and a strange sensation, like warm water trickling over him, started at the top of his head and slowly seeped over his entire body. The arctic winds began to quiet, and he didn’t feel so cold any more. Gradually his shivering stopped and he unclenched teeth he just now realized he’d clamped shut to stop them chattering. Aidan was staring into his eyes, chanting quietly. He stopped as Johnny exhaled and blinked up at him. “Better now?” he asked, smiling.
“Yes,” Johnny tried to say, but found that his mouth was completely dried out, like he’d been holding it open in a blizzard. “Um hmm,” he managed finally, rubbing his tongue back and forth to try to work some spit back into his mouth.
When he got back to his feet, he found that Welly had returned to the deck and was eyeing him speculatively. “You look like a talent scout for a cemetery,” he said, but his gaze was weighing Johnny.
“Henny Youngman,” Larissa said under her breath, as if she knew no one really cared but couldn’t stop herself from saying it anyway.
“Thanks,” Johnny said to Aidan.
“You have to learn to control it,” Aidan said, still holding him by the shoulders and looking into his face. “It’s not like seeing or hearing. It’s more like touch: you can choose how much pressure to apply. When you get this close to something this big, you need to just barely brush it with your fingertips ... you follow me?”
Johnny nodded. “Dial it down a notch,” he said, still a bit shaky. “Check.”
Aidan grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, exactly. Otherwise it’s going to overwhelm you, like it did just now. Are you okay now?”
Johnny massaged his chest to try to get some bloodflow back into it. “I think so. What did you do?”
Aidan smiled. “All I did, son, was to quiet your mind. That made it easier for you to ‘dial it down,’ as you say. Or turn it off altogether ... is that what you did?” Aidan moved his head, as if trying to get a better angle to see into Johnny’s mind through his eyes.
Johnny nodded. “Yeah, I guess I did. Not consciously, but ...” Johnny stopped, then shook his head, losing whatever tenuous grasp he had on how to complete that thought.
Aidan squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t worry. We won’t need it again for a while, I’m thinking. Seems like we’re pretty close at this point ...”
“Land ho,” Welly said, deadpan. All eyes turned to him. “That’s the proper expression, right?” He pointed directly ahead. Another cartoon desert island had sprung up out of the distant mists. They were headed directly for it.
“Shit,” Johnny said. Aidan’s comment was not in English, but it sounded very similar in character.
Larissa thumbed the speaker. “Island, twelve o’clock. Sandy beach, no visible rocks.”
Roger’s voice sounded grim. “Well, better hang on to something, then, missy. ‘Cause we canna stop now.”
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Chapter 21 begun
To the Edge
Johnny ran to the bow and looked, but could see nothing. “Where?” he called up to Roger.
Roger was sliding down the ladder (which was boatspeak for “short set of narrow, very steep stairs”) in that casual way she had: boots hooked around the outside edges, gloved hands gently resting on the inside edges, let gravity do the rest. She could go from flying bridge to deck in about a second and a half. “Submerged,” she said shortly, striding purposefully toward the wheel. “But we’ll be changing course withal.”
Johnny naturally turned to Larissa. ”‘Withal’?”
“Nevertheless,” she replied.
“Ah.” He paused. “Where’s Aidan?”
Aidan was right behind him, as it turned out. “Yes, I heard. Let me see if I can get a fix on it, at least.” He leaned out over the railing, and began chanting his liquid chants while stretching his arms out as if to embrace something.
For a long time, nothing changed. Then Aidan’s eyebrows turned downwards and somehow he managed to mutter under his breath without stopping the fluid chant. “Shallédanu lei shonta ...” His tone was one of disbelief.
“What?” Johnny asked. When he got no answer, he turned a worried eye to Larissa. “That didn’t sound good ...”
Suddenly Aidan straightened and called out “Hard to port!” Bones screeched and flew-glided back to the stern. Seconds later, The Slyph turned sharply ... at least, as sharply as her bulk would allow, which was still enough to make Johnny grasp frantically at the railing to keep his balance.
Welly appeared in one of the doorways to the deckhouse, blinking sleep out of his eyes. “What in the name of Witt and Berg ... ?” he mumbled.
The boat was now listing hard enough to make the deck feel more like a steep hill, so Johnny didn’t have time to look at Larissa. She started to answer anyway: “Bob Witt and Cy ...” At that moment Roger did something which caused the back of the boat to hunch down in the water; The Sylph straightened, but now the deck was slanted aft to fore instead of port to starboard. The flat-bottomed boat surged forward, like a draft ship cresting a wave, and then the world shuddered as they tipped in the other direction and hit the water with a jarring thud. They were all immediately soaked as water crashed over the rails. So Johnny never got to hear about Bob Witt and Cy, presumably Berg. It was a safe bet they were old comedians, and Johnny figured he had more important things to worry about.
Larissa was briefly sliding towards the front of the ship, and Johnny felt a moment of panic for her before he realized he should save all his panic for himself. The railings were parallel to the deck, with about 2 feet between the bars, so there was plenty of room for someone on their back to slide under the bottom rung. Larissa was already in that position, and Johnny felt his ass hit the deck and knew he was almost there as well. He flailed out with one hand and felt his fingers brush Aidan’s boot, which the water priest had apparently flung out for Johnny to grab. Out of the corner of one eye he could see Welly clutching desperately at the doorframe. But most of his field of vision was full of Larissa’s small body, spinning and sliding slowly towards the rail.
She didn’t seem concerned. She flung out one hand behind her head and it seemed like a blue whip shot out and grabbed one of the crossbars of the railing. A disoriented thought flashed across Johnny’s consciousness (was that the snake??) and then time seemed to slow down. He knew he’d missed his opportunity to grab Aidan’s foot, but he felt his hand grasping at the air anyhow. Ahead of him, Larissa’s arm pulled taut, and her legs swung down towards the nose of the ship, which was just now starting to come back up ... too late to stop the inevitable slide. Suddenly a crate spun sideways across Larissa’s path. She kicked it hard with her black and white sneakers, using its bulk to push herself back towards Johnny. The crate changed course too and fetched up hard against the forward rail; it cracked with a sharp splintery noise, but didn’t come apart. Johnny suddenly realized he was aimed right for it and managed to get his boots pointed in the right direction before he struck it.
By this point the ship was righted, if still a bit wobbly. Johnny got to his hands and knees, huffing “lucky” under his breath, over and over. Larissa sat up calmly; the little blue water snake uncoiled its head from the railing and resettled itself on her wrist. Aidan, slumped against the railing a yard or so up the deck with one arm still hooked around a crossbar, stared at the snake with fascination, or perhaps disbelief. Welly let out a long breath and said in a small, quavery voice: “If at first you don’t succeed ... so much for skydiving.” Larissa looked at him, but refrained from supplying the attribution.
A tinny voice came out of the closest brass speaker. “Sorry, mates,” Roger called. “I was just ..” Her voice was cut off by a deafening crack, like the bullwhip of a giant. A pale tentacle, white like the underbelly of a corpse, was waving in the air behind them, tall enough to be seen clearly over deckhouse and flying bridge. Johnny felt his mouth gape open. “Trying to avoid that,” Roger finished in a tight voice, and The Slyph shot forward as if someone had shoved a rocket into its rear.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Chapter 20
Travel with Welly Banks
Welly’s clothes were dripping, but not sodden. Which made no sense, as he had only recently emerged from the water. But perhaps that was a small thing among greater impossibilities, Johnny reflected. The blue-skinned youth (if youth he was) put on a professorial air as he continued his speech to Roger.
“Let’s get the contractual stuff out of the way first, shall we?” Welly started the drywashing thing again. “I am an opener, not a pathfinder. I open where I’m told, and am not responsible if the way opens into the heart of a supernova or the jaws of a tyrannosaurus rex.” Roger nodded impatiently; Johnny turned to Aidan to ask him if this was likely to occur, but the water priest shushed him. Welly continued. “I will accompany you wherever you wish to go within the confines of Breen Lagoon, as long as your journey takes no longer than 7,919 minutes.” (Johnny looked at Larissa; “one minute short of five and a half days,” she supplied under her breath.) “But I cannot accompany you wheresoever you travel beyond the borders of the Lagoon. You agree that you will not attempt to compel me to do so?”
Roger spat in her hand and thrust it out to Welly. “Square deal,” she said.
Welly glanced at her hand with some trepidation. “Er, yes,” he said, clutching his hands to his chest. “I’m happy to take your word. No need to exchange, um ... bodily fluids.” He sniffed again.
Roger clapped him hard on the shoulder. “Excellent, me boyo!” She turned back to her crew. “Aidan! Can I get me clothes back now?”
Inside of an hour, The Sylph was back on the open ocean—or open lagoon, as the case might be—and moving along at a decent clip. Johnny had given Roger a general direction and was feeling ahead of them every now and again to make sure they stayed on track. Currently Johnny and Larissa were leaning on the railing, watching the gentle waves flash by. The little blue snake around Larissa’s wrist uncoiled itself, scampered up her arm, circled her neck once, slithered down the other arm, and recoiled itself around her other wrist. Johnny heard someone pacing behind them and turned around; it was Welly.
“I’m Johnny,” Johnny said, putting out his hand. Welly kept his hands clasped together and sniffed again. Johnny was beginning to get the impression that sniffing and sighing were Welly’s two major modes of communication. Johnny lowered his hand.
“So ... you’re Welly, right?” Welly just stared back. “You’re the ... opener? What exactly does that entail?”
Welly sniffed. “I open, of course.”
Johnny felt the lunatic grin returning to his face. “Of course. And how does one go about ‘opening’?”
Welly sighed. “One merely reaches out and ...” He shrugged. “Opens.” His webbed hands gave a little flourish, as if to say: just so.
“So I could learn to do it, then?” Johnny asked.
Another sniff. “You don’t learn to open. You either can, or you cannot. Given where you’re from, I would suppose that you cannot.”
Johnny’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You know where we’re from?”
Welly glanced over at Larissa briefly, almost furtively. “I know where you’re from,” he said. It was obvious he was excluding Larissa from his declaration.
Johnny decided to let that slide. “How do you know?”
A sniff. “I’ve been there, of course.”
Johnny was puzzled. After a week or so with Roger and a few years with Larissa, this conversation should have been old hat, but still he was feeling a bit lost. Did Welly mean he’d been to DC? “You’ve been where?” he asked.
“Some call it the Terrable Way,” Welly said.
“The Terrible Way?” Johnny frowned.
Welly sighed. “You said ‘Terrible Way,’ didn’t you?”
Johnny was confused. “Isn’t that what you said?”
“No, not Terrible Way, Terrable Way.”
Johnny looked towards Larissa for help. “Those both sound the same to me ...” He shrugged.
Larissa gave the tiniest shake of her head, but said nothing.
Another sigh. “Not ‘terrible,’ with an I,” he said. “’Terrable,’ with an A. Isn’t your world called ‘Terra’?”
Johnny blinked. “Well, I guess ...”
“There you go.”
“So it’s just a coincidence that it sounds like ‘terrible’?” Johnny asked.
Welly’s sardonic half-smile flickered on the left side of his face. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”
Larissa finally spoke up. “That pun would only work in English,” she pointed out.
“Hey, yeah,” Johnny said, feeling a light bulb go on over his head. “How come you speak English?”
Back to sniffing. “Are we speaking English now?”
Johnny looked baffled for a second, but Larrissa replied instantly: “Yes.”
Another sniff. “Yes, I suppose we are, right this second. I learned it when I visited the Terrable Way. How else could I have studied your great comics?”
“Comic books?” Johnny was confused.
Welly gave him a haughty look. “No, comics. Performers.”
This was getting weirder and weirder. “You came to our world? to watch comedians?” Johnny asked.
“Yes, and I studied the great masters. Henny Youngman, and Jack Benny, and Jackie Mason, and Bob Hope. Also, some of the younger crowd: Bill Cosby, and Bob Newhart, and Rodney Dangerfield.”
Larissa intervened. “Rodney Dangerfield has been popular for over 35 years, and performing, off and on, for 61.”
Welly shook his head sadly. “Has it been so long? I lose track of the time ...”
Johnny said, “You don’t look that old.”
“The secret to staying young is to eat slowly and lie about your age.”
Larissa frowned. “Lucille Ball,” she said. “But she also advised that one live honestly.”
Welly seemed to grow wistful. “Lucille Ball, yeah, she was one of the greats too.” Another sigh. “That honest living thing was never for me though.” Then he turned and shuffled off.
The days went back to melting together as they lapsed back into everyone sleeping and eating whenever they felt like it. The open expanse of water never changed significantly—there was always mist off in the distance, although they never seemd to get closer to it, and an occasional island would appear, very far away, but mostly it was just open, calm water. Apparently the light never changed in the Lagoon any more than it did in the swamp, so it became impossible to keep track of how much time had passed. Or, at least, it was impossible for Johnny. He had a feeling that Welly knew exactly how much time was passing, down to the minute. And when his internal counter reached 7,919, Johnny knew somehow that he would just jump overboard and swim back to the hideous mermaid creatures.
“Why do you suppose it’s 7,919?” he asked Larissa at one point.
Larissa shrugged. “Perhaps because that’s the one thousandth prime number.”
Johnny grinned. “Sure,” he said. “I’m sure that’s exactly why.” Then he laughed raucously, startling a passing Bones.
At another point, he asked Welly why he worked for the mermaid creatures. “The scalae?” Welly sniffed. “Well, I suppose you have to work for someone, eh? My employment options are somewhat limited around here.” His pale ghost of a smile came back. “You know the secret to success, don’t you? Get up early, work late ... and strike oil.” He looked at Johnny expectantly.
Johnny cast about for a suitable reply and came up with: “Um, Benjamin Franklin?”
Welly sighed.
“Joey Adams,” Larissa supplied.
Johnny blinked. “I don’t know ...”
Larissa spoke up immediately. “Joey Adams, born Joseph Abramowitz, January 6, 1911. Humor columnist for the New York Post, author of The Borscht Belt, ...”
Johnny knew better than to let her really get rolling. “Right, sorry. A bit before my time, I think. But, you were saying? about the scalas? or, scalae, or whatever?”
Welly shrugged. “What’s to say? They need an opener, and I open. It’s not much of a gig, but it’s what I do. Keeps me in fishes while I hammer out the act.”
“Fishes?” Johnny asked. “Is that what they pay you?”
Welly arched an eyebrow and waved out at the unbroken expanse of water. “Common currency around these parts, as you might guess. What do you think we eat around here?”
Talking to Welly made Johnny feel a bit dim. “Uh, sure, that makes sense. But couldn’t you just catch your own fish?”
Welly sighed. “I know I must cut a dashing figure in this outfit”—he gestured at his yellow-trimmed jacket, which was still dripping on the deck, although it must have been days since he’d come on board by this point—“but the fact of the matter is, I have a lethargic nature. That is, I’m somewhat leisurely in my approach to piscine acquisition.” Johnny blinked at him, and Welly sighed again. “I’m like this horse I bet on one time: it was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of his trip.”
Johnny turned back to Larissa for help. “Henny Youngman,” she put in.
Pretty much all the conversations with Welly went like that. Which is why Johnny almost felt relieved when, after what he guessed was three or four days of travel, Roger called out from the flying bridge: “Oy! sea monster ahead!”
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Chapter 19 (concluded)
Johnny looked desperately back at the fins. There had to be something he could do ... something with his new abilities, perhaps? But, so far, every use of them had involved being in contact with something, or sensing something far away. He didn’t see how any of that could apply in this situation.
Suddenly he had a brainstorm. He dashed back into the stacks and located Roger’s crossbow. Then he sprinted up the ladder to the flying deck, barely using his hands at all. He fumbled for the cabinet where Roger kept the flammable items and pulled out one of the bottle-looking flares. Slamming the crossbow down on the deck, he put both feet on the brace and yanked hard on the cable. It only clicked once, but this was a short distance shot, so that should be enough. He loaded the bottle and shot almost immediately—Roger had taught him not to overthink his aim and just trust his instincts. The shot was true, and the flare entered the water just behind the lobster woman ... just in front of the shark and marlin. Almost immediately the green and red lights blossomed, under the water. The marlin-headed scala immediately surfaced and began flailing about; Johnny thought she might be temporarily blinded. The shark’s fin, however, cut cleanly through the underwater fireworks and continued straight on to the racing swimmers.
The head of the demonic mermaids’ leader burst out of the water just aft of the lobster scala’s tail. Her teeth snapped together thrice; the sound reminded Johnny of hearing bear traps snap shut on televison. The lobster woman screeched an alien gabble and increased her speed. The shark scala breached and dove; the brown fin sunk cleanly into the depths. The “inspirational” message to her companion had cost her some momentum though; Johnny could see she’d have to work hard to catch back up. He took the opportunity to slide down the ladder to the deck railing again.
His mind raced. He could take over the wheel from Bones, perhaps steer the ship into the lobster woman. But he couldn’t really see from back there, and the great craft was hardly a precision instrument. He’d be just as likely to hit Roger. “Can you make it rain, or snow, or something?” he asked Aidan desperately.
Aidan kept his eyes on the race. “I could do better than that: I can make the water around our lobster friend cling to her so she can’t escape it. The problem is, by the time I can do that, she’s well into a whole different patch of water. I could do it ahead of them, but then how do I keep it from affecting the good captain as well? No, Johnny, I’ve made her slick, and I stopped the octopus lady throwing her stones, and I held the lampfish one up long enough to take her out of it. But unless their leader gives me an opening to interfere with her as well, I’m likely to be of little further use in this contest.”
Johnny looked toward the far shore—it was actually the nearer shore by this time, as the race was well past its halfway point. Roger was still flying through the water at a speed that beggared belief, but the lobster creature was gaining. Slowly, almost impercetibly, but gaining. It seemed likely that it would catch her before they reached the race’s end.
Then the shark scala rose out of the water like something in a horror movie, directly in Roger’s path. Teeth flashed and arms with long hands and twisted fingers reached for her. Without slowing whatsoever, Roger turned her crawl into a sidestroke. One hand flicked out, almost like a caress, and touched the shark woman’s cheek; thick black blood began to spurt instantly. The shark’s head lunged at her nonetheless, but Roger was already halfway past it. She kicked at the scala hard, again using it to propel herself forward. With an unholy screech, the shark crashed into the lobster.
After that, the race became pleasantly boring.
At the finish line, Roger stood in ankle-deep water, bent over with her hands on her knees, dripping and panting. The scalae were a few feet offshore, in deeper water, their terrifying marine eyes promising a slow grisly death if the opportunity ever presented itself. Johnny sincerely hoped the opportunity did not.
Finally Roger regained her breath and stood up. She was still naked, still unconcerned. “A fair contest!” she called to the mermaids.
There was much grunting and squalling, but the shark waved her hand and they fell silent. “You cut me,” she said in an inflectionless tone.
“Aye,” Roger agreed amiably. “No rule against that. No rules against anything, for that matter. And I just nicked ye a bit. Ye’ll survive, I wager.” She stared a challenge back at the leader. “A fair contest,” she repeated. It wasn’t a question, but still she seemed to be expecting an answer.
The silence stretched. The shark woman ground her hideous teeth. Finally, she spoke. “A fair contest.”
Roger and Aidan let out identical exhalations of relief. “Was there some doubt about that?” Johnny asked under his breath.
Aidan answered likewise, in a half-whisper. “No doubt about the reality,” he breathed. “But the perception of a losing party is always an open question.” Johnny nodded.
Roger shaded her eyes with one hand. “Our opener then?”
The scalae pushed someone forward. It was the blue-skinned boy (or boy-like creature) who had brought the starter shell. He reluctantly trudged through the water to the shore.
His skin was a medium shade of aquamarine. The dark, slicked back hair was almost a helmet; it was short, cut high above the odd earfins, with just the hint of a widow’s peak in the front over a high forehead. The eyes were a pale, watery blue, the nose looked lumpy and squashed, the mouth was small, and the chin weak. The black fins where ears should be opened and closed as if they might be gills instead of hearing apparatus. Both hands and feet (which were bare) were webbed. He had on a simple jacket and pants, black, trimmed with narrow yellow stripes. The jacket hung open in the front, exposing a tight, thin shirt which appeared to be just a shade bluer than his skin. The wireframe glasses and a habit of drywashing his hands gave him a prissy air, as if he were an accountant or librarian, and, when he spoke, his voice was vaguely reminiscent of old Droopy Dog cartoons. And yet he reminded Johnny of a nerdy teenager more than a dusty old man, for some reason he could not put a finger on.
He splashed up to Roger and sighed loudly. “Captain?” he asked.
“Aye,” she replied, her eyes sparkling. “Opener?”
He sniffed. “Welly Banks, ma’am. At your service.”
>>next>>
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Chapter 19 (continued)
The starting and ending points had been chosen, and they were simply opposite sides of the lagoon within the lagoon. If the inner lagoon had been a clock with 12 at the point where it flowed into the bigger body of water, the race would have been from roughly 4 o’clock to 10. The shore here apparently dropped off precipitously just after entering the water, so there were only a few feet of sandy shelf for Roger to stand on. The lobster-headed scala, of course, could not stand; she lay on her side in the thigh-high water, her irridescent blue-green shell curled up under her belly. Johnny could see what seemed like a billion little legs on the underside of the tail, wriggling tirelessly and making tiny whirlpools.
Roger raised her head, still completely unabashed by her nudity, and looked each of them in the eye. “Remember, lads and lassie, ye may do anything in yer ken to aid me. Anything. Ketch?” Johnny and Aidan nodded. Larissa just stared back with her overlarge, liquid eyes. Aidan whispered something under his breath and Bones flew off to the stern.
The shark scala was a few feet away, in deeper water, on the opposite side of the racing lane from The Sylph. She said nothing, but the look she gave the lobster woman promised dire consequences if she did not perform. The other scalas (or scalae) bobbed up and down behind her, making various tortured noises that Johnny supposed must be meant to be encouraging.
Roger called over to the shark woman. “Ho there! You have a starter?”
The shark mouth opened, the teeth still fearsome even after continued exposure to them, and a weird gutteral cry came from its throat. After perhaps half a minute, with the echoes of the call just starting to fade away, a blue face surfaced beside her. This head was almost entirely human-looking except for its odd hue and the fact that it seemed to have black fin-like appendages where its ears should be. The hair was black and slicked back, and an incongruous pair of wire-rimmed glasses sat upon a bulbous nose, their frames curled around the earfins. This new creature raised an arm, showing that he was wearing a black shirt with yellow-striped cuffs, and extended a blue hand with webbed fingers to the shark woman. In it was what appeared to be large snail shell.
She took the shell and threw it at Aidan, hard. The blue-skinned boy—for some reason, he reminded Johnny of a pimpled teenager—started to turn away, but the leader of the hellish mermaids put a leathery hand on his shoulder and held him there.
Johnny glanced over at Aidan, who was examing the shell. He held it out over the water, palm upturned, and closed his eyes. His lips moved, but Johnny could not make out any chanting. After a few seconds he opened his eyes and nodded at Roger. She nodded back and rolled her shoulders while working her neck back and forth. Johnny could hear the kinks popping out as she tossed her head. Then she bent one knee and threw the other leg as far back as she could, reaching her hands out as though she meant to dive. When she was utterly still, Aidan tossed the snail shell onto the shelf between Roger and her opponent.
The water was crystal clear, so Johnny could see the shell settle onto the sand. He could see the lobter woman stretch her arms out like Roger’s and tense her tail. He could see that the toes on Roger’s forward foot were curled firmly into the sand. Roger and the lobster creature were both staring intently at the shell. As they all watched, it began to jiggle. Suddenly, the horns of the snail inside the shell popped out.
Then a lot of things happened at once.
Roger’s leg straightened like an uncoiling spring and she shot up into the air, but more forward than up. The lobster woman flung her tail out straight behind her. The engine of the The Sylph sprang to life, and it also started to move. Roger hit the water in a smooth dive, but the lobster woman was suddenly on her back. It tried to grab her and pull her back, or perhaps it meant to pull her down and drown her, but Roger was slick. Neither the hard-shelled arms nor the dozens of tiny feet could hold on to her, and Roger shot out of the scala’s grasp and added insult to injury by pushing off its head with her trailing foot. Now Roger was a pace ahead and gaining, as the lobster woman twisted her body around to pursue.
Meanwhile, The Sylph was keeping pace with Roger. Still trying to recover from the violent start, Johnny looked around wildly. “What can we do?” he asked Aidan over the roar of the fan. And then, without waiting for an answer, “and who’s driving the damn boat?!”
The corners of Aidan’s mouth turned up slightly, but Johnny couldn’t really call it a smile. “Bones,” he answered. “And I’m trying to find something to do. Unfortunately, my abilities are limited at this speed. She can move even faster than I expected ...”
Johnny was still trying to process the first answer. “Bones is driving?? He can’t drive!”
Aidan waved distractedly. “As long as we’re just going in a straight line he should be fine.” Still staring down into The Sylph’s wake, he slammed a fist down on the railing. “Damn! I can’t reach anything bigger than a pinkeen in this water. The scalae have scared everything off.”
Johnny blinked. “What’s a ... ?”
“Minnow,” Larissa supplied softly from his other side.
A loud screech-squawk came out of the brass speaker in the bow at the same time as a huge splash sent ripples against the side of the airboat. “What the hell was ...” Johnny began, but in the next instant his question was answered when a second boulder the size of his head hit the water, this one much closer to Roger. He looked back to where they’d left the scalae by the shore, but the only one visible was the octopus one, whose tentacles were wrapped around more rocks. She was perfecting her aim now, and the third projectile looked sure to cave in Roger’s head. Johnny heard Larissa hiss between her teeth, like a teakettle coming to boil, and just at that moment the moray woman surfaced from underneath Roger, her teeth flashing in the sourceless light. Roger rolled smoothly onto her back, and the rock took the moray creature in the shoulder instead. Roger kept rolling until she was back on her stomach without missing a stroke. Still, the diversion had cost her: the lobster woman had halved the distance between them.
There was an unholy screeching noise from the direction of the shoreline, and Johnny glanced back to see the octopus scala covered in pinching crabs. Aidan grunted in satisfaction.
But the shark fin and the marlin fin now crested the waterline, not far behind the lobster and gaining steadily. “Good thing she didn’t challenge one of them,” Johnny mumbled.
“Choosing their slowest swimmer does have some downsides,” was Aidan’s sardonic reply.
“Wait, where’s the other one?” Johnny had suddenly remembered the angler fish mermaid.
Aidan’s voice was strained. “She went too deep. I’ve got her.” His knuckles tightened on the railing. “Although I won’t be able to hold her long. But, at this speed, I think she’s out of it now in any event.”
>>next>>
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Chapter 19 (begun)
The Race
The mermaid-things retired to the far side of the inner lagoon, where the arms of the island stretched out to skinny sandbars, barely a pace across, and almost touched each other. Looking at it now, Johnny wasn’t sure how The Slyph had fit through the gap. On the deck, the humans (and Bones) gathered for their own huddle. Roger started to strip off all her clothes. Johnny looked at her with some surprise, but Larissa pointed out that clothes would just be extra drag, and Roger nodded curtly. Aidan was giving Bones a complicated list of ingredients to gather, and fiddling in his own pouches for the rest.
“What are those things?” Johnny asked, to fill time and keep his mind (and his eyes) off Roger’s body.
“Scalas,” Roger replied, pulling off a boot.
“I believe the proper plural is ‘scalae,’” Aidan said. He pronounced it “skah-lie.”
“The proper plural is ‘bitches who are going to get their fishy little asses beat,’” Roger answered with a snort. “Now, are ye ready to help me out here?”
Aidan nodded. “As soon as Bones returns with the remainder of the components I need for the rite, I can brew it in a very short amount of time.”
“Good.” Roger was now pulling pants off and Johnny was studiously looking elsewhere. He noted that Aidan seemed to view Roger’s body the same way Larissa did: he looked, but he didn’t respond. Perhaps, as a priest, he was celibate. Larissa glanced at him, but said nothing.
Less than a minute later, Roger was naked again, fiddling with her ponytail. Her smallish breasts were thrust forward. Not that Johnny was looking, of course. Bones was back, laying out all sorts of bits and bobs in neat little piles for Aidan to sort through. To a wooden pitcher, Aidan added three different kinds of powder, some silver things that looked like ball bearings, a dollop of the gunk they used to grease the fan, a piece of the pemmican that he cut into some intricate shape, and the guts out of one of Roger’s flares and the smallest of the ship’s barometers. The Water Guide’s hands were a blur, so there might have been other scraps as well, and those liquid words chimed out, softly and smoothly. At the end, Aidan raised his hands into the air, the chanting crescendoed, and Aidan clapped, but it was a thunderclap, and, indeed, when his hands drew apart, a little black cloud formed between them, and it actually began to rain into the pitcher; one brief, jagged fork of lightning arced down into the mixture, and the sound that accompanied it wasn’t thunder, but the electronic sizzle of a large bug zapper, or the flat crack you get when you attach the jumper cables to the last battery terminal. Gradually the little cartoon thundercloud dissipated and its rain tapered off. Aidan raised the pitcher and one eyebrow at Roger. She threw her arms wide and planted her bare feet firmly on the deck, tossing her head back with closed eyes.
Roger upended the pitcher over her, covering her entire body with the glassy liquid that oozed out. None of it hit the deck; it seemed to inch over her body as if sentient. It was entirely transparent, but you could still see it somehow, sparkling in the half-light. When it had covered her entire form in a thin sheen of aqueous film, Roger took a deep, gasping breath and lifted her head. As she opened her eyes, the stuff, whatever it was, became invisible. One second you knew it was there, even though you couldn’t actually see it, and the next it was as if it had never been.
Aidan turned her around and inspected her from every angle (again, seeming to be oblivious to her attractions). “Roger, my dear captain, you are officially, completely, and by the grace of Shallédanu, slick.”
Johnny looked back and forth from captain to Guide. “Meaning ... ?”
Roger smiled her devilish smile. “Meaning I shall slide through the water like shit through a seagull.”
“Ah.” Johnny paused a moment, hesitant to breach the subject, but knowing he must. “And, if you, you know ... don’t win ... will they really eat you?”
Roger strode over and slapped Johnny on the back; Johnny was well used to this by now, and it hardly hurt at all any more. “Aye, faster’n ye can say ‘Jack Ketch,’ that they will.”
“Ah. And, what if, you know ... we don’t particularly want you to be eaten?”
Roger chuckled. “Well, I’ll take that as neighborly concern on yer part, Johnny me boyo, and I’ll thankee kindly. It’s a risk I knew I’d have to take, and I’ll take it gladly to get us where we’re goin’. But don’t count yer good captain out quite yet, if ye follow my tack.” Roger winked.
Johnny rolled his eyes. “What do we need an ‘opener’ for anyway?” he asked.
Aidan stepped up. “To open the way for us. We thought we’d have to ask for both a pathfinder and an opener. But apparently you can be our guide, so we were able to negotiate a much less dangerous bargain. Trust me, son, compared to the compact Captain Roger and I thought we would have to make, this is quite reasonable. There’s always a chance that Roger could lose, yes, and we would have to face very grim consequences indeed if that were to come to pass, but the deal that was struck means that I can do anything in my power to help her win now. Actually, any of us can, although I suspect the majority of the burden will fall on me.”
“Yes, but why can’t ... look, maybe I could be the opener too. I ... well, I opened something to get here. Twice, even. Sort of.”
Roger and Aidan exchanged unreadable glances. “This I did not know,” the Guide said. “It is good information to have ...”
“Although ye might have mentioned it sooner,” Roger mumbled under her breath.
Aidan ignored her and continued. “Good information to have, but I don’t think it helps us in this particular instance. Not just any opener will do for this task, Johnny. Anyone can get into a place between places. But getting back out again is more difficult, and almost always requires intervention from the natives.”
“Mister fancy-pants here means to say that we need the tubs o’ fishguts out there.” Roger waved a hand at the monstrous mermaids in the distance. “All ways here are their ways.”
Johnny stared at her. “Did you just quote Alice in Wonderland?”
Larissa stepped in. “Through the Looking Glass. The Red Queen to Alice: ‘I don’t know what you mean by your way: all the ways about here belong to me.’” Johnny reflected that this was possibly the most normal thing Larissa had said since they entered the sewers.
Roger stared at the little girl, confused. “Well, I don’t know queens from quarterdecks, but, aye, it’s exactly like the little missy says. All the ways are scalas’ ways, and nobody opens ’em but them as know their secrets. And, by the bye, I’d not let on to Miss Ugly out there that ye have the power. Else ye may find yerself being an opener in their employ yerself, if ye catch my spur.”
Roger strode over to the deck railing, put two fingers between her lips, and gave a piercing whistle. Bones was hopping up and down on the crossbar beside her, flapping his wings and screech-squawking. Aidan whispered as he passed Johnny: “all the ways are scalae’s ways” and then rushed to join her at the rail. Johnny shook his head at Larissa. “They’re all crazy,” he said.
Larissa answered simply: “Everything here is crazy.”
Johnny considered that for a moment. “Yep, you’re right. Can’t argue with that. Let’s go be crazy too, I suppose.”
Larissa followed, but slowly.
>>next>>
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Chapter 18 concluded
Around the backside of the “desert island” (which turned out to be bigger than it looked from afar), there was an enclosed area of water. “It’s a lagoon within the Lagoon,” Johnny breathed. Aidan gave him a sideways grin.
Roger pulled The Sylph into the inner lagoon and let it float aimlessly. She rejoined them in the bow and shaded her eyes with her hand, looking towards the shoreline of the island proper. “I think we’ll be able to pick up some water here, after.”
Johnny looked back at the island, surprised. To him it still looked like a roughly circular pile of sand with a single tree growing in the middle of it, no bigger in circumference than he could walk in ten minutes or so. Where could there possibly be water? He opened his mouth to ask, but then realized that was a tangent that wasn’t likely to get him anywhere, not to mention that there were more interesting avenues to pursue.
“So ...” he ventured. “Who exactly are we going to talk to?”
Roger just smiled enigmatically and cast her eyes toward Aidan. Johnny turned to the Water Guide to repeat his question, but the young man had already turned his back on them and was holding his staff over his head in both hands, looking out over the water. The mumbling was low this time, but still retained all its fluid qualities. Suddenly he began to twirl the staff, parallel to the deck, hands nothing but a blur as they manipulated the hunk of wood so fast it almost resembled the rotor of a helicopter, the stroboscopic effect making it appear to spin in reverse. Then, in a split-second move, the staff stopped, pointing straight out to the ocean-like lagoon, and Aidan brought it down sharply until it struck the railing. A rippling wave of force seemed to shoot out of the end of it, and Johnny could see the wake it left in the water, and a shimmer in the air as it shot off into the distance. Aidan turned and put the butt of the staff back on the deck, leaning heavily on it. “That should get their attention,” he said.
Johnny reached out to help steady him. “You okay? You’re dong a lot of that ... whatever it is you do.”
Aidan gave him a quick smile to show he was fine. “Not to worry, son. That last one wasn’t as strenuous as it looked. Just a quick hail to grab the attention of the locals.”
Indeed, the water below them suddenly seemed to be teeming with life. A few of the flying fish that Johnny had last seen during the overground trip into the selvage shot up and did some fancy figure eights before dropping back into the water. Here and there a large, red crab claw popped up and waved at them. Several fins broke the surface and shot back and forth; some appeared to be fish, others dolphins or porpoises. Even the little blue water snake around Larissa’s wrist had raised its head and was tasting the air with a flickering tongue.
Suddenly a bigger, darker fin rose up, way out in the open water, but speeding towards them so quickly it almost seemed mechanical. By the time it reached the edge of the inner lagoon, all the local aquatic life had decided it had business elsewhere. The little blue snake ducked its head into its coils and went back to doing its impression of a bracelet. The fin shot straight at the ship; when it was within two feet of the hull, the head of the creature emerged from the water with a mighty splash.
Johnny wanted to call it a mermaid. Certainly that was the first thing to spring to mind. But, if it was a mermaid, it was some monstrous version. The main part of the body wasn’t that of a fish: it was a shark’s body, gray with just a hint of blue, and white on the underbelly. The large dorsal fin that had announced the coming of the creature looked perfectly at home on the thing’s back. It had arms, though they were also covered in sharkskin, and they ended in long hands with obscenely long fingers that looked more like gnarled twigs. The thing had human breasts, so Johnny supposed it must be a “she,” but those too were covered with the leathery skin—even the nipples were covered over in gray, although surrounded by white rings where areolae should be. The rough skin covered the neck and lower jaw as well, then began tapering off, and most of the head and face appeared to be layered in human epidermis. The shape of the face was mostly human, although also somehow triangular and sharklike. The eyes were beady black dots, exactly like a shark’s, and the hair was long and black and stringy, interwoven with seaweed and small seashells, but not in an attractive way—more like the creature just let any sort of garbage collect in it. Johnny’s mind was reeling with trying to take it all in, and then the thing opened its mouth. There were rows of ragged teeth: not the perfect arrowhead shapes that you might expect to find in a shark’s maw, but jagged little blades of ivory, pitted with age and set at crazy angles so that it seemed impossible the thing wouldn’t tear out its own gums when it closed its mouth. The nightmarish vision hissed at them, a warning or perhaps a challenge, but Johnny was already backpedaling. The teeth had been more disturbing than any sound it could make.
And now others were rising up, but they were not shark-mermaids; they were composed of other creatures. One had the dark mottled brown hide of a moray eel, and brown fisheyes with blue rings around them; one had white-blotched black tentacles and the horizontal pupils of an octopus; one had the forehead protrusion, spikes, and luminous eyes of an angler fish; here was the blue-green shell and eyestalks of a lobster; there was the silver-blue scales and slightly ovoid pupils of a marlin, set into large, reflective cyan sclera. And, on each one, the long, lank hair, always some dark and dingy shade; on each, the frightening fingers and teeth; and each carried a hint of its progenitor in its facial shape, from the bullet-like head of the moray to the heavy lower jaw of the angler, and the bulbous and vaguely squishy head of the octopus.
When the lead creature spoke, its voice was like rusty hinges and oozing sea muck. Johnny could hear the howling ocean wind and the clacking together of bits of gravel and shells and old shark’s teeth rendered perfectly smooth by the sea.
“Why have you summoned us?” it said.
Aidan looked down at them gravely. “Shallédanu lei shonta,” he said.
The lobster woman shook her body to make a sound like lobster claws snapping; the octopus woman thrashed the water with her tentacles. The shark woman said: “Your benedictions hold no sway over us, priest! Spare us the niceties and get to the point.”
Roger stepped forward. “We need an opener.”
The moray woman just gnashed her teeth loudly, but the others made a tittering, screeching sound that Johnny eventually comprehended as laughter. Roger waited calmly for them to finish. “And why would we give you such a thing, landbound one?”
“Ye’ll give it me when I earn it, and I’ll thank you not to call me ‘landbound.’ I was born to the waves, same as you, and I live for them, same as you. Not my fault the gods give me these things”—here Roger slapped a leg—“instead of proper fins like you ladies have.” Apparently Roger saw the creatures as female, although that was still too much of a leap for Johnny’s brain to make.
“Born to the waves, you say?” shark-woman asked.
“Aye, same as you. Straight from me mother’s womb into the water, and had to swim for me first breath.”
Shark-woman’s beady black eyes flashed. “We have no need to breathe the air as you do.” It was obviously a point of pride.
“Six o’ one. Ye had to swim to get somewhere when ye popped out ... or were ye hatched?” Roger raised an eyebrow.
Shark-woman hissed again, but the others repeated their eerie laughter. It was clear Roger was scoring points, somehow.
There was a pause while the creatures considered. They looked at each other, but did not speak aloud. Johnny wondered if they could communicate telepathically. Finally shark-woman spoke again. “You say you can swim, then?”
Roger snorted. “Best swimmer with two legs. At least as far as you’ll ever see.”
Shark-woman smiled, and Johnny shuddered. “Then challenge us to a race. Beat us, and we’ll give you your opener. Lose, and we’ll pick our teeth with your bones.” That screeching, grating excuse for laughter rang out again.
Roger appeared to examine her fingernails. “Oh, sure, challenge you to a race. What, all of ye then?”
Shark-woman shook her head. “No! Choose any one of us.”
Roger nodded. “Still and all, I did say I was the best swimmer with two legs. I’d say none of you gals has any legs to speak of at all.”
At this, all the monstrous mermaids dove and flashed their tails at the watchers to show that Roger was indeed correct: threshing shark tail, wavy eel tail, stubby angler tail, powerful marlin tail, curling lobster tail. Only octopus-woman had anything approaching legs, but she bunched her tentacles together as if she too had a tail. After much splashing, they righted themselves and were staring up at the humans on the deck again.
Roger spread her hands. “See my ketch? You all have me at an unfair advantage. Wouldn’t matter which of you I chose. It still wouldn’t be a fair fight.”
Marlin-woman pointed at Aidan. “The guide,” she said softly. Her voice was just as grating as shark-woman’s. Now the others picked it up, and repeated it as if chanting: “the guide, the guide.” The sound of their voices left a feeling on Johnny’s skin as if he’d touched a snail.
Roger looked at Aidan, as if considering this suggestion. “Why, yes, I suppose me bucko here could put a charm on me that might even the odds. I don’t know ...” She rubbed at her chin, speculating.
Shark-woman threshed the water with her tail. “Hasten, landbound! Do you mean to challenge or not?”
Roger put up a hand. “Hold yer line there missy! I’m considerin’. Ye did just say ye was going to eat me if I lost, did ye not? I reckon that means I ought to be right careful what I say long about now, don’t it?”
Johnny took a look at his companions. Aidan was staring at a spot on the deck just in front of his feet. Larissa was gazing at Roger, her face unreadable. Bones was bouncing up and down on top of the crates behind them, hyperactive as always, but in a small, contained space so as not to disturb anything. And Roger was back to scratching at her chin, practically pulling on an invisible beard. This was not a characteristic habit for her, so far as Johny knew. And there was something in her eyes ...
“Very well,” she said finally, taking another step forward and putting a gloved hand on the deck railing. “I’ll challenge one of you, but only if ye’ll grant me one boon.”
Shark-woman hissed yet again. “No more conditions! We’ve given you all that you asked for.”
Roger leaned down and fixed the creature with a steely gaze. “I think ye’re mistaken, missy. I’ve not asked for aught. Ye offered all that’s been said so far. I’ve got but a single request and ye’ve yet to hear it.”
The mermaid creatures grew suddenly stiller, to the point where Johnny couldn’t imagine how they kept their upper bodies above the surface of the lagoon. Their different eyes all flashed, although they studiously avoided looking at each other this time. Finally shark-woman spoke. “You speak the truth. You have not yet made a request of us, and we are bound to hear it. If we agree, we will accept the challenge. If we do not, we will leave here and you must continue your journey on your own.”
Roger smiled again. “Oh, I think ye’ll agree to this request all right. It’s right up your alley. I call for a race with no rules. Pick the start, pick the end, and first one across the finish line claims the prize. Whatever happens in between is fair play. Do we have an accord?” Roger plucked off her right glove, reached over the railing and offered her hand to shark-woman. The creature thrashed over and reached out those long fingers. Quick as a flash, they scratched Roger across the palm, and several drops of blood fell into the water. Roger did not seem at all surprised by this, and used the small knife which had somehow sprung into her hand to slice into shark-woman’s hand before she could retrieve it. Some black, tar-like goo remained on the blade when Roger straightened up; she had to wipe it forcibly onto the deck railing.
“Very well then,” Roger said calmly, making the knife disappear again. “I’ll take the lobster wench. Pick yer endpoints and I’ll have Aidan slick me up. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a contest.”
>>next>>
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Chapter 18 (begun)
The Bargain
“So,” Johnny ventured, “where are we now?”
Roger had left the wheel and come up behind him again. “Breen Lagoon. Didn’t we cover this already?”
Johnny gestured out at the expanse of open water. “This is a lagoon? This is a whole ocean!” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I thought that was the lagoon back there.”
Roger snorted. “That’s just the selvage.”
Johnny looked blank. “The what?”
Aidan broke in. “The margin. The verge.”
Larissa chimed in. “The edge, they mean.”
Johnny looked back out across the water. “But ... I thought a lagoon was a ... you know ...”
Larissa supplied, “A stretch of salt water separated from the sea by a low sandbank or coral reef.”
Johnny pointed at Larissa. “Yeah, that. What she said.”
Roger grinned. “Not this one.”
Johnny nodded. “No, of course. Not this one. This one is a ... is a ...”
“Place between places,” Aidan chipped in.
Johnny sighed. “So ... where are we going, actually?”
Roger slapped him on the back, hard. “We have no idea!”
Johnny rubbed his shoulder and stared back at her. “Doesn’t that make it difficult to know where to go?”
“Aye, that it does.”
“What about your dad telling you should always know where you’re going, or whatever that was?”
“Wellll ... mayhap I should rephrase. We do know where we’ll be fetchin’ up, ye know. It’s just that we don’t have any idea at this precise moment how to get there.”
Johnny threw up his hands. “And how do we figure out how to get ... wherever we’re going?”
Roger put her hands on her hips. “We have Aidan for that.”
“Aidan again?” Johnny looked over at the Water Guide. “Seems like we expect a lot out of him ...”
Roger snorted again. Loudly. “Well, why under Shallédanu’s skirts did ye think we picked him up in the first damn place?” A ghost of a smile flickered on Aidan’s face.
Johnny looked back and forth between the two of them. “I thought it was something about monsters ...”
Aidan put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. “I did my part with the muck monster, Johnny, you may recall. And, even though it seems like I didn’t do much for the remainder of the trip upstream, I actually did lay a protective charm on The Sylph here. And now that we’ve passed into the lagoon, I have other duties to attend to.” He looked back at Roger. “Although, you know, Captain ... this won’t be all my doing. I can but arrange the meeting. Negotiation will be your department.”
Roger’s eyes sparkled. “Bring it on, me hearty. My line is taut.” She turned back to Johnny. “I was mostly pulling your leg about the monsters, back at the beginning. I didn’t really think we’d need Aidan for that, especially before we e’en set sail! Which just goes to show ye even a pirate captain with years behind the wheel can stand to learn a thing er two.” She winked at Johnny. “No, the real reason I thought we’d need a Water Guide on this trip is that we had to float all the way up a river through a swamp and then get into a lagoon so that we could figure out how to get to the ice fields. Ye see the trim here?”
Johnny looked up at her. “Wait, did you say ‘ice’?”
Roger cocked her head to one side. “Aye, I did,” she said slowly.
Johnny closed his eyes and reached out with his new sense. It was still there, so cold ... if the door in the sewer pipes had seemed like a light, this seemed like an icy draft. He was still making mental analogies for things that he had no words for, but this was a decent enough description. And, just like it can be difficult to find the source of a draft in a room sometimes, this was tricky to locate as well. He concentrated harder; he could hear Roger talking to him, but he shut her out. It was easy, since his hearing was dialed down again. He cast his mind out, in all directions; throwing his arms wide, he spun around in a circle until he knew he had a fix on it, then brought his arms together and opened his eyes. Larissa was standing with a hand on Roger’s arm. Roger had her mouth open. Aidain was studying him with a considering expression.
“There,” he said simply.
Roger closed her mouth. “Are ye sure, Johnny?”
He nodded. She looked over at Aidan, who was still giving Johnny that calculating look. He glanced up at her. “Oh, yes, I’d say that would make the negotiations much more palatable. We’ll still need them to open the way, of course, but if we require only action, with no information, they will demand less in return.”
Roger grabbed Johnny’s shoulders and looked him full in the face, her grin bubbling up and her eyes alight. “See, Johnny, I knew ye were here to help us out, and now ...” Suddenly she leaned in and kissed him, full on the mouth. Johnny felt her tongue lightly brush his lips. Before he could properly react, it was over, and he was beet red. Roger gave a short, triumphant scream. “Yes! Those bloody whores’ll never know what hit ’em!” She gave Johnny a quick, bone-crushing hug and dashed off back to the wheel, still whooping with joy.
Johnny looked up, still trying to process what had just happened. Aidan was now smiling at him with kind eyes. Larissa was studying him, her head tilted ever so slightly to one side. He opened his mouth to speak, but his brain was reeling.
“Wait ... did she say ‘whores’?”
>>next>>
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Chapter 17
Breen Lagoon
The water wasn’t brown any more. Johnny thought that was weird, and then he thought how weird it was to think that all water that wasn’t brown was weird. He’d been here too long. At least he thought he had ... of course, really, he had no clue how long he’d been here at all. He should ask Larissa.
Larissa was looking out over the water as well. The straggly mist kept you from making out too many details far away, but you could see the water directly below the boat well enough, and it was blue. A deep, clear blue, cool and inviting. Johnny felt like he could see straight to the bottom, although he couldn’t actually make out any bottom. Which only made him feel like the water must be very, very deep. There was no sign of fish or any other aquatic life; all the floating plants were long gone and the “shore” they had crossed to get here was lost in the mist. Larissa’s eyes seemed fixed on a rocky crag half hidden by the haze, ahead and to their left. From the look in her eye, Johnny guessed she wasn’t really ready to talk about the passage of time (or lack thereof) in this strange place he had brought her. It was a calculating, cataloguing look that seemed to be enumerating impossibilities and filing them away for later consideration.
Roger was back at the wheel. She was guiding the ship slowly, partially because of the mist, Johnny supposed, but probably also because of the waves. There had been no waves in the swamp, of course. And Johnny wondered if an airboat, regardless of its impressive size and unusual qualities, was really the best craft for this particular journey. He supposed it would have been impossible to get to this point in a ship with a large draft, but, if those waves got much bigger ...
Aidan was sitting in the bow of the ship, staff across his knees, head bowed. He seemed exhausted by what he’d done to get them here. Johnny squatted down beside him. “That was very impressive,” Johnny said.
Aidan raised his head a bit and smiled a weak smile at Johnny. “Thank you,” he replied. “But I’m just a vessel. Shallédanu lei shonta.”
Johnny nodded. “So ... where are we now?”
Roger’s voice came out of nowhere, startling him. “Breen Lagoon. The place between places.”
Johnny looked up; Roger had come up behind him and stood over him, looking out over the misty water. He noticed that the ship was now drifting on the waves, since no one was manning the wheel. “The place between places?” he asked.
“A place between places,” Aidan corrected.
“Well, it’s the only one me da’ ever told me about,” Roger said.
Aidan tried on his weak grin again. “Your da’ was a well-traveled man, Captain, but there are a few places left that he’s never seen.”
Roger snorted. “If ye say so. Well, whether it’s the only one there is or not, it’s the only one we could get to, I’m pretty sure o’ that.” She waited for Aidan to correct her, and seemed satisfied when he made no attempt to do so. “So here we are. About to ram right into that there hunk o’ rock, unless our Guide here can get these waves under control.” She looked at Aidan with some challenge in her eyes, but she offered her gloved hand to help him up.
Aidan accepted her offer and let her pull him forcibly to his feet. He put out his staff to lean against; he still looked unsteady and weak. Johnny rose as well; Larissa had sidled down the railing to join them at the front of the boat, where they could all see that The Slyph was indeed drifting straight for the jagged spur of rock that thrust above the still fairly gentle waves. The rock was too small to be considered an island; it was probably no bigger around than a small house, although it towered perhaps fifty feet above the surface of the water. Now that they could see it more clearly, they could tell that nothing grew on it, although it had a collection of seabirds perched in its various clefts. Most prominent were huge, shaggy brown pelicans, which looked more like caricatures of pelicans than actual birds. They were each as heavy as a person, easily, and their throat sacs hung as low as the bottoms of their broad chests. There were black and white birds that Johnny thought looked like gigantic seagulls, but Larissa murmured “no, more like an albatross.” And, in the very highest reaches, some of the soft gray birds with the feathered batwings, which were so far the only evidence Johnny had seen that there was any living species shared between swamp and lagoon.
Aidan took all this in, then looked right and left to see if there were any other upcoming crises he needed to be aware of. Nothing but mist as far as the eye could see. Turning back to the rock, he raised his staff once again, and began chanting in his strange liquid language. His voice cracked a bit; suddenly Bones was there, uncharacteristically quiet, and upended a pitcher of water over Aidan’s head. Instead of spluttering angrily, though, Aidan seemed to gain strength from being drenched, and his voice grew a bit stronger. Suddenly the ship seemed to settle down into the water somehow, as if it had suddenly gained weight, or grown a significant portion of hull below the waterline. It slowed its pace, and the waves now seemed to be breaking against the sides of the craft instead of carrying it along. Roger turned around and hauled ass back to the stern, where Johnny heard the great fan start up. Instead of moving the ship forward, she turned it, hard, and it spun slowly, until it was broadside to the rocky outcropping. Gently it bumped up against the rough stone, which Johnny could now see was pitted and twisted so much it looked like coral. Several of the birds fluttered in an ungainly fashion as the ship touched their perch, and two or three of the closer pelicans positively glared at them.
Roger reappeared, her hands on her hips and her pervasive smile returned. “Just had to make sure we didn’t snap the sylph off The Sylph,” she said. Johnny understood: if she hadn’t turned the ship, the figurehead might have gone into a hole or crevisse in the rocks and gotten severely damaged.
Bones was handing another pitcher to Aidan, who took a long draught before returning it. “Thankee, Bones, you were very helpful there,” Aidan said. Bones bobbed his head and clicked his beak, then scampered away.
Roger stepped up to the Water Guide. “Good job, Aidan,” she said in a low voice. “I thought ye weren’t up to the task for a mite.”
He didn’t return her smile. “This isn’t an ordinary job,” he said.
She let her face grow serious for a moment. “I know that, matey. I appreciate ye takin’ it on. ‘Specially not knowin’ where we’ll be fetchin’ up.”
“Oh, I think we both know where we’ll end up.” Aidan looked directly into her eyes.
Roger’s smile broke back out. “Well, we’ll just see about that, won’t we?” Weirdly, she clapped Aidan on the butt. Aidan just shook his head at this and said nothing.
“Let me skin this tub around this here rockpile and we’ll see if we can see a bit better,” Roger said as she headed back to the wheelhouse. Ever so slowly the ship pulled away from its position, scraping its side against the rough promontory. After she got it disengaged, Roger gunned the throttle and swung the ship around the outcrop. The birds watched them impassively, their heads turning in a weird synchrony. The ship paralleled the rocks for a few moments, then suddenly swung out of the mist.
It was like they had gone from swamp to sea. The air was hot, but not the sticky, oppressive heat they had left behind. This was equatorial, open-ocean heat, with a sea breeze carrying the tang of salt. The blue, blue water stretched all around them, as far as anyone could see. There was still no sun, but the quality of the light had changed from fading daylight to just a few hours off high noon. Still, pockets of mist were everywhere, and off in the middle distance was a small patch of sand with a single palm tree—a cartoon version of a desert island. Johnny breathed in the sea air and stared around in wonder. Larissa looked with her wide eyes but said nothing.
>>next>>
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Chapter 16
Upriver
Things soon settled back into the bizarre rhythm that passed for normal on the ship, while the strange pirate flag flapped continuously overhead. Everyone ate whenever they were hungry, all at different times. Everyone likewise slept whenever they were tired, again at different times. There was but one bed on the ship anyway (and that was the hammock in Roger’s cabin), so if you got tired when someone else was already sleeping, you just made a makeshift pallet of whatever you could find. As always, it was impossible to tell how much time passed. It might have been days, if there had been such a thing as days in that place.
The time began to be liquid, each moment melting into the next and running backwards into the previous. Johnny began having trouble remembering what order things had happened in, much less how long ago it was. There was much time spent at the wheel, some time spent standing in comfortable silence at the railing with Larissa, some time spent chatting amiably with Roger (who was still trying to teach him how to fence, and still mostly failing), some time spent watching Aidan perform some sort of ceremony in the bow of the ship, which wasn’t quite prayer and wasn’t quite invocation and wasn’t quite ritual. Random scenes jumbled together in Johnny’s mind.
“Are there cannons?” he asked Roger.
“Cannons?” Her tone was puzzled.
“You know ... big guns.”
“Piffletwat. What do we be needin’ guns for?”
“I dunno. I just thought pirate ships had guns.” Johnny shrugged.
“Ye know, I never actually said The Slyph was a pirate ship.” Roger’s eyes twinkled.
“Oh. Well, I just ... oh, c’mon! What is that thing if it’s not a pirate flag?”
Roger glanced up at the fleur-de-lis-pierced skull. “Aye, ye got me there, boyo. Buccaneers we be, I can’t deny it. But there’s other ways to get what ye want besides shootin’ a fella.”
He stared more closely at the trees. There were flashes of bright colors accompanying the monkey shrieks, and for the first time he caught a glimpse of Bones’ wild brethren. They were mostly larger than Bones, some with even longer tails, all with the same parrot beaks and combination wing-hands. Where Bones was red and blue, these were red and blue and green and yellow and white, and even a few touches of pink and orange and purple here and there. They burst forth from the heavy undergrowth near the edge of the river for the first time and swooped and dove around, screeching loudly.
Bones scampered up Johnny’s back and screeched right back at them. “Worms, curs, and scoundrelous scallywags!” he added, for good measure.
Johnny was taken aback, and laughed in spite of himself. Larissa said nothing, of course. “Friends of yours?” he asked Bones.
“Lazy lagabouts!” Bones squawked. “Bring the bosun ‘is starting rope!” Apparently he felt this was sufficient comment on the topic; he took wing and disappeared around the corner of the deckhouse.
Johnny smiled at Larissa, who was still staring out at the banks of the river gliding by. He noticed that the little blue snake was still wound around her wrist.
“So, what does that mean?”
“What, ‘Shallédanu lei shonta’?” Aidan asked.
“Yeah, that. You say it all the time, and I’ve even heard Roger say it a time or two.”
“It’s a brief orison. A benediction, a request for the goddess to lay her blessing on you. Means, may the Lady of the Waters see my hood.”
“See your hood?”
Aidan smiled his small smile. “May she recognize that I come with bowed head, is perhaps a better translation.”
Johnny nodded.
Roger poked him with the wooden sword. Again. “Ye’re woolgathering again, my little he-wench.”
Johnny’s mouth fell open, then he snorted. “Oh, I’m your ‘he-wench’ now, am I? Is that pirate talk for ‘boy toy’?”
Roger flashed her teeth at him. “Oh, ye’d like that, wouldn’t ye? Now pick up that waster and show me ye can block with it, or I’ll have you over my knee and show ye what he-wenches are good for.” And then she lunged at him.
Johnny opened his eyes. Something was wrong, but at first he couldn’t put his finger on it. Then he realized: the ship wasn’t moving. That was certainly unusual. He rolled out of the hammock and came out onto the flying bridge. He was about to thumb the brass speaker to ask Roger (or Aidan, if he was on the wheel) why they’d stopped, but then he saw Roger and Larissa down on the deck. Roger glanced up and waved to him. ”‘Hoy there, sleepybones. Come watch the show.”
He followed their gaze and saw Aidan in the bow of the ship, holding his staff over his head with both hands. He was chanting in that liquid language with its ancient tones, and the floating plants were swirling in little circles around the ship, some clockwise, and some counter-clockwise, alternating. As he watched, fish started to rise up out of the water. They were mottled, darker brown on tan, narrow, but heavy and long. Their open mouths were full of jagged teeth, and Johnny knew these were the barracuda. There were a dozen at least, all around them, standing on their tails and dancing slowly to and fro. Suddenly smaller fish, flourescent green, shot up between every pair of barracuda, pectoral fins thrust out like wings, and began gliding in complex figure eights around the predators. They were obviously flying fish, but flying fish shouldn’t be able to stay aloft like that, much less turn and swoop in those intricate patterns. This amazing tableau continued for a few breathtaking moments, then the ship shuddered and actually rose up from the surface of the water. Johnny could hear the water being thrashed about underneath the ship, then the whole strange menagerie began to move forward.
Johnny had learned to recognize the local flora well enough to know that the ship was now moving over solid ground, or at least as solid as the ground ever got in this swampy place. The barracuda continued to dance along, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were leaving their watery home behind. The flying fish continued to weave in and out among them. After a few mintues, they reached the edge of what seemed like a large, open body of water. The terrestrial plants gave way to the more familiar floating vegetation again, but it seemed less thick here than in the river. Johnny could actually see the surface of the water in various places. Suddenly the ship was thrown forward and hit the water with a huge splash. Looking behind them now, Johnny could see that the ship had been borne on the backs of twenty or so serathodonts. They were like a cross between an alligator and a dinosaur, with little evil eys set back in their crocodilian heads, dark blue and glistening, and walking on their hind legs. They turned and began strolling casually back they way they had come. The flying fish left off their figure eights and soared back towards the river. The barracuda, apparently freed from their spell, now fell back to earth, snapping at the flying fish and the serathodonts and each other, then twisted their way back to the river, moving like sidewinders. Soon the whole piscine parade was lost in the distance, and Johnny turned back around to find Aidan leaning wearily on his staff while Roger pounded him on the back in apparent congratulations.
Johnny descended the ladder to the deck and made his way through the maze of crates to the bow. “Ye did it!” Roger was saying over and over. “Aidan, me bucko, ye really did it!”
“What the fuck was that?” Johnny managed.
Roger turned and grabbed Johnny by the shoulders. “We’ve crossed the riverhead,” she said, a fierce light burning in her eyes. “We’ve reached Breen Lagoon! We’re almost there now, by the goddess. We’re almost there.”
Johnny looked around. Wherever “there” was, it was certainly somewhere different. Not only were the floating plants not abundant enough to completely cover the water, but he could make out the occasional outcropping of rock, and there was a thin mist hovering over the surface. The sounds of screeching parrot-monkeys and hunting burrikits were gone, replaced by an occasional whistle of unknown origin, and faint yipping from far ahead of them. The smell was less muddy earth and fecund vegetation and more clean water, with the faintest hint of salt. When he consulted his new sense, the door behind them was just a pinprick of heat on his back, and the thing ahead was an icy spike in his core that sang to him, calling him forwards.
He felt as if they were in a place now between two worlds: the swamp world, with its muck monsters and burrikits and serathodonts and barracuda was behind them. A fresh new place lay before them, its dangers as yet unknown.
>>next>>
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