by Kevin Hearne
Al nearly fell overboard in his haste to pull up his trousers. He was so embarrassed that he couldn’t manage a single word of reply.
“Don’t worry,” Feng said as Al scurried past him toward the ladder to the crow’s nest. “I don’t think anyone else saw, and I won’t say anything about your glute-flexing regimen.”
Al gave him a jerky nod, which was one part acknowledgment and one part thanks, and began the climb back up to the crow’s nest. How could he even begin to explain what he was doing? That was the very worst part of all this. Without perishing of mortification, he couldn’t possibly discuss with anyone the vital role his butt might play in their collective futures. He’d even tried inspecting Otto’s nethers once to see if they seemed important and had taken an indignant swipe to the cheek; the otter had avoided him since. He had to figure it out all by his lonesome.
That’s why he’d been spending so much time scribbling furiously in his journal. There had to be some secret message hidden in the elf butts—or the otter balls, or both—to make sense of what Pellanus was trying to communicate through the Sn’archivist. He’d filled pages with possible anagrams—which elves did enjoy, as opposed to acronyms—but nothing made sense so far. Why did gods have to be so cryptic and mysterious? One would think that clear communication would be included in the suite of skills that came with omniscience and omnipotence.
Perhaps if he could have hindsight in advance he’d see things more clearly. He had belatedly figured out that Clan Nabi was an anagram for cannibal. The warning had been there all along, hidden in plain sight. He didn’t want to be too late figuring out this other puzzle.
He’d no sooner reached the nest and calmed himself by looking at the wondrous Cliffs of Inanity than Qobayne shouted for him to come down again. They were pulling up anchor and heading for Mack Guyverr, and the boatswain required his expertise with knots and sails.
The deck was soon awhirl with activity as sailors leapt to perform the tasks Qobayne set them. Captain Luc was once again on Feng’s shoulder by the wheel, and Morgan had emerged from her bunk to help Vic with the sails on the mainmast; Tempest was on the foc’s’le, struggling with the spinnaker, so he went forward to help her.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s half incompetence and half not wanting to leave. These cliffs are so beautiful.”
“They are,” Al agreed, admiring the puffins and other seabirds whirling in a gyre above the rocks and diving into the ocean for fish. The small pads of flowers emerging from crevices in the moss-covered rocks shouted in myriad colors to bees that they were, in fact, ready to be pollinated. They were watered by seeps of freshwater and tiny runoff streams from the top, forming a lush vertical garden down to the point where the crash of surf and saltwater spray made their freshwater lives untenable.
“Do you know if anyone owns this land?” Al asked as he tied one tether of the spinnaker to the bowsprit.
“The area around the cliffs is a nature preserve. I think that’s what they should do to Mack Guphinne, to ensure that the ding gulls survive. I don’t think it should ever be private.”
“A nature preserve? Who determines what a nature preserve is?”
“They’re created by the king.”
“No kidding?” An idea was forming in Al’s mind, a way forward for him. He’d figured out after only a few days on the ocean that he never wanted to sell Morningwood rods to tourists again and he was never going back to Proudwood Lighthouse, but he didn’t want to be like the half-mad Sn’archivist either, writing down the monotonous words of a deity every day, with only an affirmation gecko to reassure him that he wasn’t wasting his life—although he wouldn’t turn down a gecko of his own, if one were offered. The pirate’s lot was not exactly for him; while he liked the sea fine, the life was rather violent and he did not enjoy being either predator or prey. “Can a nature preserve be formed on land already claimed or owned by someone else?”
Tempest smiled, always glad to talk law. “Of course. The king can do what he wants. He pays for it, of course—he doesn’t just steal it—but whoever owns it has to take the crown’s offer or nothing.”
“That is…amazing. How often does the king do this?”
“Not often. I don’t think King Gustave has done it yet. He’s been busy with other things.”
“How would one convince him to do it?” Al asked.
“From what I hear, by offering him a really nice boot. Or some expertly crafted gnomeric oatmeal. But if you mean logistically, you’d need a petition that outlines how such a preserve would be to the vast benefit of Pell. Natural assets must be there, of course, but it would probably help if you can make some economic arguments too. Keep the king’s oatmeal coffers filled while doing a good deed, that sort of thing.”
Al felt the swell of destiny. “Would you help me craft such a petition? I will compensate you for your time, of course.”
Tempest beamed at him. “I think you’ve already compensated me fairly with all your help on board. You’ve been doing your work and quite a bit of mine besides. I’m just not good at knots, not that I don’t try.”
They sat together at the next opportunity and crafted two petitions for nature preserves: one on Mack Guphinne for the ding gulls, and one at the particular place Al had in mind. The language was twisty and regal and strange, and Al felt a rush of warmth for the dryad. Without her knowledge and spirit of giving, what he hoped to do—well, it would not have been possible.
“You’re doing a lot of good in the world,” Al told her as she crossed the last T.
Tempest looked down, almost conflicted. “We’re doing a lot of good in the world. And it was your idea. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.”
“You misspelled foine,” a ghost said, popping up over Tempest’s shoulder, and Al wagged a hand through Davey Bones’s chest to shoo the vexing poltergeist away. With the paperwork complete, Al felt a new sort of certainty. Not the sort of certainty the Sn’archivist felt about elf butts, but something on the way there.
* * *
At dawn the next day, the whirlwind surrounding Mack Guyverr hove into view and Qobayne supervised the slathering of hard-won ding-gull berry juices on the ship’s prow. Al was roped into that duty—literally lowered with a rope around his chest and a mop and bucket in hand to the proper level for swabbing. He was nearly overcome by nausea on several occasions as he worked the foul juices into the wood, painting the crisp white prow a viscous, drippy, lumpy brown.
As they approached the vortex and Al scrubbed at his berry-stained arms with a sponge, Feng relayed orders from Luc. “If this doesn’t work, we need to be ready to get out of there! Sails down on my command and then man the oars!”
Al understood the danger. If Skullbeard had steered them wrong—pranked them, whatever—that whirlwind would take hold of their sails and wreck them. They’d need oars to get through or get themselves out, either way. And it was no polite whirlwhind that the witch-who’d-once-dated-the-Dread-Necromancer-Steve-but-was-now-a-marmoset-in-Songlen had conjured. It was a spiraling vortex of leaves, branches, assorted moth bits, and the business cards of insurance agents, the swirling cyclone towering a hundred feet or more into the air, completely obscuring what might be beyond. Anyone not knowing what it was or how to get through it would naturally sail around to avoid getting plastered by the sales slogans of humans who made their living off other people’s fear of accidents.
Al thought it probable that all insurance policies sold by the people on the cards would specifically exclude damage by magical vortex.
As they neared, the winds could be felt in advance. Al got splattered by a moth, the body bursting against his cheek like a small gray water balloon.
“Aw, yuck,” he said, wiping the goo away. Others suffered similar fates, though Al noticed that Morgan and Tempest only got hit by the business cards of agents who had placed their portraits on them, their dead
-eyed faces grinning like a rictus as fat letters exclaimed, You’ll be safe with Allsafe!
The hull visibly tilted to the right as they got close, and Feng ordered the oars to pull them forward. But once the bowsprit, liberally drenched in ding-gull berry juice, pierced the visible wall of the vortex, the winds calmed and rerouted themselves over the crow’s nest, providing a ship-sized window through which they could row in calm water. The island of Mack Guyverr could be seen through it, a small promontory jutting out of the ocean and completely occupied by buildings. There was no verdant jungle teeming with life. It was an industrial site with a shipping bay; several ships were in port, and others were on their way out or in. Feng steered them toward a complicated dock replete with several cranes. They kept on using the oars since the interior of the vortex was like the eye of a hurricane, with no winds to speed their sails.
“Al!” Captain Luc called. “Get up to the nest and tell me what yourrrr elf eyes see.”
“Aye, Cap’n!” He scurried up the mast spars to his favorite spot on the ship and looked ahead.
There was a troll on the dock, towering over the humans. The huge, lumbering creature was built out of chiseled muscle and cruelty, which seemed strange until he remembered that the manager at Dinny’s had mentioned that his sales rep was a troll named Brenna MacFleshgrinder. Al doubted a sales representative would be waiting for them at the docks, so the MMA must employ multiple trolls.
Stacked six high on the dock were cages full of chittering, crying otters. And there were also two elves in a larger cage, their flowing robes shredded, their lush locks tangled and greasy, their perfect skin marred by smudges of filth. Al did not recognize them, but that was little wonder; he’d not been in the Morningwood for many years. He relayed all this information to his captain but remained at his post, watching the scene below.
Pity for the captives and rage at the captors swelled in Al’s breast and then, added to the mix, a stab of revelation: There on the dock were the very otter balls and elf butts the Sn’archivist had foretold! How strange, Al thought, to be a living witness to the fulfillment of divine prophecy, if that’s what all this was—and to be aware of it, especially. To recognize that everyone had free will at this moment and yet, somehow, the decisions made and actions taken had been foretold, at least in part, by Pellanus.
But of course Al’s primary concern was how they would ever manage to defeat that troll on the dock, because destiny was well and good but nobody had said Al would get out alive.
“You can’t spell alive without Al,” he told himself, enjoying the wordplay.
And then, suddenly, it came to him. His brain made the kind of intuitive leap one normally makes in the shower or in a dreamlike fugue state after eating dodgy mushrooms. During those long hours in the crow’s nest scribbling anagrams in his notebook, he’d come up with one that didn’t make any sense until this moment: Otter balls could be rearranged to spell beats troll! And there was a troll! One they needed to beat, in fact! Standing on the dock in front of many, many otters, some of which must possess balls!
“Whoa,” Al breathed. “I cannot wait to see how this plays out.”
He climbed down to the deck and reported the numbers and types of potential adversaries in greater detail, being very careful not to say anything weird about his excitement for otter balls.
As The Pearly Clam neared the dock, one of the human stevedores—who might also be mercenary fighters—shouted over to them, “Have your paperwork ready as soon as you tie up!”
“Aye aye!” Feng replied.
Captain Luc called Vic over to him and quietly spoke to the centaur as Feng handed over a rolled-up scroll of paper. Morgan stood nearby, her sword strapped on, and Al saw Tempest drift in that direction too. He was ready to join them, when Qobayne ordered him to be ready with the gangplank as soon as they tied up.
“And get the broad, sturdy one for cargo, ye hear?”
“Aye, Boatswain.”
He’d need to pair up with someone for that, and Gorp volunteered.
The troll had a huge war hammer in its hand, and the stevedores were all armed with daggers and some with short swords as well. They bunched up on the dock, eyeing the crew with suspicion. Skullbeard had said he’d sailed The Pearly Clam in there before, but that had been ages ago, and the ship had been repainted.
The dock, a broad floating number that stretched out for a long way over open water to allow large boats to tie up, led to a quay stacked with barrels of EATUM. Beyond that was a massive stone-and-mortar edifice. Five chimneys belched out greasy smoke, and all the windows were up high, with what looked like sentries watching from shaded balconies. Huge letters made of black stone spelled out MMA on the side. Some smaller buildings with many windows squatted in front of it, and Al ventured that those must be dorms for the workers. On the other side of the island, perhaps, there were pubs and jolly parks and a waterslide, but more likely there was only a giant sluice that dumped blood and offal into the ocean.
As they drew closer, Al examined the faces of the men waiting on the dock, searching for some telltale sign that would mark them as pure evil, the kind of people who would commit environmental atrocities to provide a cheap side dish in a chain of diners, but he found none. No one had tattooed BAD DUDE on their forehead or wore a necklace made of otter feet. They were simply people who looked normal but were apparently willing to sacrifice the future for present profit. Perhaps they didn’t even consider themselves monsters. Monsters, in Al’s experience, rarely did.
The Pearly Clam fetched up to the dock, and lines were thrown to the stevedores. They tied up and Al lowered the gangplank with Gorp. A human began to ascend once it touched the dock but skipped back when he saw Vic clopping down and merrily shouting at them, waving a scroll. “Behold, my friends! We have a purchase order for EATUM!”
“Stay up there!” the guard shouted. He was a sunburned man, his face leathery and wrinkled, and perhaps an eighth of Vic’s size and weight. The centaur simply beamed at him and kept coming.
“Nonsense, I’ll bring it to you!”
The troll moved to block the bottom of the ramp, brandishing the hammer and nudging the human aside, and Vic called out a welcome. “Braaah! You are so swole and cut! How much do you lift?”
“Go back,” the troll growled.
“Whaaa? There’s no going back, bro. Plank is too narrow for me to turn around. Centaurs can’t go uphill in reverse. It is known. Just let me turn around down here at the bottom, okay?”
“No.” The troll raised his hammer. “Go back!”
Vic twiddled his fingers and made a high-pitched mewling noise, and molten cream-cheese frosting plastered over the troll’s eyes. He bellowed and clutched at his face, taking a step back, and then Vic swiftly followed that up by kicking him in the chest with his front hooves. The troll staggered and fell over, knocking a few otter cages off the dock and into the water.
“Charrrrge!” Captain Luc called, and Morgan was first down the plank, now that the way was clear, Otto chirping indignantly on her shoulder. Al and Tempest and a bunch of other sailors followed, and the captain swooped down, raking talons across enemy eyes. But Vic had never stopped. He barreled over some humans, kicked others, and turned around so that when the troll got to his feet, his chest met the full impact of a swole centaur’s hindquarters. Vic’s hooves clocked him in the sternum, and the troll flew bodily off the dock, plunging into the Chummy Sea with more otter cages.
“Vic, no, the otters!” Morgan cried, and she dove in after them with Otto.
“Hey, wait! The troll’s in there too!” Tempest reminded them.
Al knew that Morgan didn’t need to worry; trolls did not swim well. Or at all, really. They flailed a bit and sank, their dense bones and musculature dooming them to be picked over by crabs at the bottom of the ocean. Al called for assistance and jumped in after Morgan to help her sav
e the caged otters. Feng, Tempest, Gorp, and a few red-shirted crew members joined them, and soon they were hauling the cages onto the dock, with Otto screeching encouragement.
With their troll overboard and their smaller numbers overrun with short but feisty pirates in red shirts, the dock crew had no choice but to give up. The stevedores were marched up the gangplank and locked in the ship’s brig with Davey Bones, who had prepared a lengthy admonishment. Morgan began freeing the otters, and the chittering critters followed Milly Dread and her bucket of chum up the gangplank, ensuring that they would never become EATUM. Otto, of course, stayed firmly wrapped around Morgan’s neck. But Al wondered why the defeat of the troll hadn’t involved otter balls at all. It had been centaur hooves that brought them victory, and rather quickly too. Had he misinterpreted the divine message of Pellanus somehow? He looked at his butt in confusion. Even a god of mischief couldn’t confuse an elf butt and a centaur butt.
But the victory was fleeting, like the attention span of a two-year-old on a sugar high. A clanging bell at the MMA building suggested reinforcements were on the way. Their assault had been noticed.
“We must make it ashorrrre orrrr they’ll have us pinned,” Luc said. “Go! Rrrrun to the quay, me hearrrrrties! The fight has just begun!”
“Hey, you, with the cute butt,” a smooth voice said to Al. He turned and saw that one of the caged elves was a tall, lithe woman. She had a long, upturned nose and perfectly shaped pointed ears. “You’re an elf, right? I can see that big sack of glitter. You seem to be on the right side of the fight, so maybe you could let us out?”
If they’d been almost anything but elves, he would already be working on the lock. But Al had long ago ceased to like or trust his own kind.
“Why are you in a cage?” he asked first.
The other elf, a tall drink of mead with a spade beard, gave him an up-nod. “Because we’re part of PITA.” As if it was somehow explanatory, he held open his torn robe to show a shirt that said PITA and nothing else of any use. Not even a picture.