by Kevin Hearne
“Well, you’re all wrong!” she shouted. “They’re ugly aaand quite possibly hungry!”
The groan of metal echoed from up front, and they turned to find one of the mermaids crawling its way onto the boat, her blue eyes rolling all around in her fat carp head as she slithered across the slick metal and her wet fingers grasped for Onni’s leg. At the last moment, Gerd swooped down, pecked the mermaid’s back, and flapped out of reach. The mermaid hissed but didn’t retreat into the water like a reasonable monster.
“Good eating, mermaids,” the boat pilot noted. “I’m programmed with many recipes for mermaid meat, if your hunt is successful.” Then he whistled a tune and went back to pretending to spin a steering wheel.
“Are there any weapons?” Kirsi asked him.
“Not unless you brought ’em,” he chirped in a folksy voice. “Not the usual season for mermaids or murderguppies, so the harpoon system is out for maintenance.”
“I may have a solution,” Faucon called, rising from his gurney to blink at the hideous monsters trying to crawl onboard while gnashing their teeth with fishy smacking noises. He fetched an acorn out of his waistcoat pocket, holding it up. “The dryads we helped in Tommywood gave me this boon and intimated that it might render us some aid.”
“Yes, of course!” Kirsi sang. “The magic acorn will save us!”
“Witness,” Faucon said, closing his fist around the acorn. “O daughters of Willowmuck, I call on your sacred acorn for luck.”
A breathy giggle issued forth from Faucon’s fist, and when he opened his hand, a gaseous green cloud formed in the air above his palm, the acorn crumbling into dust. The cloud swirled and coalesced into the svelte shape of a dryad.
“Hey there, hero,” the gassy dryad cooed. “Thanks again for helping us. You’re so strong and capable. Whatever you’re up against, I know you can handle it. Go get ’em, you halfling hunk.” She giggled once more and then dissipated in a puff of green glitter, leaving Faucon to make a small sound of outrage.
“That was, shall we say, anticlimactic,” he intoned.
Agape snorted, ears flapping. “Thaaat’s it? Well, I guess we’re all going to die, then.”
But Kirsi, she noticed, had plucked a hair from her beard and was whispering to it, and Onni was hefting a particularly heavy wrench from his tool bag and crawling under the boat seats. Båggi still stood there like a fool, ignoring his weapon.
“Båggi!” Agape called.
He looked up at her like he’d forgotten his own name. “Um?”
“Look at your cudgel!”
When the dwarf looked down, he gasped. His Telling Cudgel had gone all spiky, with bits sticking out here and there like rusty fishhooks.
“But I’m not angry,” he said, surprised as he held it up and inspected it.
“Do you think there’s a chance you might become angry aaafter one of those troutmuffins eats a gnome?”
As if to make her point, a high-pitched scream drew all eyes to Kirsi. One of the mermaids had wrapped slimy fingers around her leg and was tugging her toward the water, and the gnome was too stunned and smöl to do anything about it.
When Kirsi shrieked for the second time, dropping her knot of hair and clutching for Onni’s hand, Båggi finally began to turn the Telling Puce that signaled his anger.
“Let. Go. Of. My. Smöl. Friend!” he shouted, his voice going two full octaves lower and his beard achieving full bush.
Agape was quite impressed, but the mermaid was not. It just opened its mouth wider, its long tongue flapping out to wrap around Kirsi’s arm. And then Agape felt something cold and moist encircle her own ankle. The mermaids were coming over all sides of the boat now, their splashes partially hidden by the boatman’s whistling and the sound of Gerd’s mad metal bird squawking Hurp Blep’s sonnets from the sky.
“Heeelp!” Agape cried, and the thing jerked her leg, hard, making her fall to catch herself painfully on her hands.
The mermaid gurgled and a wet noise issued from its fish lips. “Ss-salllllt,” it said. “Give back sssalllt.”
A cold shiver thrilled down Agape’s spine. “Whaaat did you say?”
“Give sssalllt. You ssstollle.”
The whole boat shuddered and splashed as mermaids flopped onto the deck.
“Let’s not rock the boat, now,” the boatman said. “A butt in each seat is nicely neat!”
“I hate gnomeric plaaatitudes!” Agape shouted, trying to reach her pack, on the seat where she’d been whittling. A hot line of pain raked over her leg. When she looked down, she saw rows of teeth serrating her skin, cutting through the wool.
A mad roar called her back to the rest of the party, and she turned just in time to see Båggi raise his Telling Cudgel and slam it into a mermaid before kicking its wrecked body into the water, neatly saving Kirsi’s life.
“Who else,” he shouted, “wants a little cudgeling?”
Kirsi, now free, scrambled to the center of the boat, regained her nasty knotted hairball, and swallowed it. The mermaid nearest her began to vomit pudding, lurching and horking as its body was forced backward by the spewage. Båggi continued bashing every beast he could find, the once-peaceful cudgel squashing and splattering until the boat deck resembled a sushi chef’s garbage can. Onni managed to smash one in the gills with his wrench, and Faucon threw a star between the eyes of a mermaid from atop his gurney, slicing its face in half. Still more were coming.
Wincing through the pain of teeth in her leg, Agape stretched her fingers and snagged the strap of her pack. Dragging it to her, she asked the sort-of-talking mermaid, “Whose saaalt?”
The monster disengaged its choppers and sprayed fish goop mixed with her blood as it replied, “Bom. Bassss! Tic.”
“Tommy Bombaaastic sent you? I should’ve guessed. Fine.” She dug through her pack, pulled out a crystal saltshaker in the shape of a bear, and thrust it at the mermaid. “Here. This is Bombaaastic’s saltshaker. Take it aaand go.”
The mermaid’s damp fingers snatched it away and it gargled fiercely before plopping back into the river, prize in hand. The other mermaids plopped and sank beneath brown waters, the attack over as abruptly as it had begun. For a few breaths, nobody said anything; they just stared at the surface of the river, waiting for a renewed nibling, up to their ankles in merpudding. When no further onslaught came, Onni sighed in relief and collapsed on a bench seat.
“Well, that was a fine infusion of nightmare fuel!” Båggi declared. “Is everyone all right?”
Agape didn’t want to look at her abraded leg. “I’m hurt.”
“It is only justice,” Faucon said, leading the others to gasp at his callousness, and Agape turned to find his eyes fixed on her. “I told you that stealing from a demigod was unwise.”
“Yeah, you did,” Agape admitted, her face hot.
“What are you talking about?” Kirsi asked, her head turning between the two of them, not really caring who answered. Faucon spoke first.
“When we were guests of Mr. Bombastic, our Vartija over there broke all laws of hospitality and stole his saltshaker. He sent the mermaids to get it back. I heard them say so.”
“I’m not a Vartija aaanymore,” Agape said, which was hardly the point, but for some reason being called one now stung far more than being called a thief. She was a thief, after all, and clearly there was no more hiding it. Everyone was staring at her, even the mechanical pilot.
She dragged herself back up to the seat and stretched out her bloody leg with a sigh. “Båggi, if you caaan do something for my leg before it’s infected with fish flu, I’d be grateful. Aaand I might as well come clean with you all. Don’t worry—you’ll be rid of me aaat Caskcooper.” She upended her pack on the seat, revealing some chunks of found wood, a half-finished carving, and four and twenty containers of many sizes, shapes, and colors.
“I
steal saltshakers wherever I go,” she explained. “Aaand before you ask me why, the aaanswer is: I don’t know. This isn’t even all of them. I have caaaches buried in Burdell, Corraden, and Teabring. But I always leave one of my little carvings in exchange. So it feels more fair.” She looked for forgiveness in the faces of her companions but saw only blank expressions. The corners of her eyes began to fill with hot tears. “I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I thought nobody would ever know. I’m sorry I put you in danger. I’m glaaad I’m the only one who got hurt. Aaas Faucon said, it’s justice.”
Båggi sighed. “Let’s clean your wound and get it bandaged,” he said, laying down his cudgel and fetching his picnic basket. “And let me tell you about the time I disturbed a nest of wasps and, in my panic and pain, led them right back to my family. We were all stung as a result, and they were mad at me for a long time after that—the wasps and the Biinses. I knew very well that getting stung multiple times by wasps was sure to ruin one’s good mood, so I couldn’t really be angry with their reaction, but I harbored some mild resentment in my heart for a long while, and do you know why?”
Agape palmed away tears from her eyes and sniffled as Båggi applied some Hurty Howie’s How About We Avoid Infection Confection to her wound. “Why?”
“They were so outraged over what I had done and so concerned with their own hurt that they never asked me if I needed any help. I was left to deal with my wounds by myself. I swore then that if anything similar ever happened to me, I would not be so insensitive. So I ask you, Agape, as a friend: Do you need any help with this problem? Not the one on your leg, but the one in your heart? Because if there is anything I can do, even if it’s only to listen with a patient ear, then I will do it.”
Agape felt her eyes dump down her cheeks. “Why are you being nice to me?” she whispered.
Båggi lifted a single bushy eyebrow. “You are my friend.”
She wanted to believe that but couldn’t. She wasn’t even sure how to start.
“I…well.” Her ears drooped. “Maybe we can work on my problems later. For now I think I’d like to rest.”
“Of course! Would you like a small dram of honey-mead seed?”
“Thaaat would be perfect. Thank you.” It would most likely knock her out, and if she was asleep she wouldn’t have to talk with anyone about what she’d done. And it would give them a chance to leave her behind, for who would want to travel with a serial saltshaker stealer?
As the honey-mead seed warmed and numbed her at the same time and her eyelids grew heavy, Agape looked away from the circle of furrowed brows and wondered what she would do on her own.
So this, she thought, was saaaaaadness.
“Balls! Balls! Balls! Balls! Put ’em in a bag and you can stand tall! Stinky cheese, hard cheese, as long as it’s round—in my bonny ball bags it can be found!”
—POPULAR ADVERTISEMENT FOR PATRICE PLOOPENMUCH’S HUTCH OF CHEERY CHEESE BALL BAGS
Offi did everything he could to hide the shaking in his hands, which wasn’t hard to do, as everyone else was too busy feeling the aftershocks of violence and revelation themselves. Surely Kirsi would know the truth now—that he was the weaker, lesser brother and not the brave, brawny Onni. She turned to him after Agape fell asleep, about to say something, then her mouth snapped shut and she turned away again. Offi looked down. A splotch of mermaid blood had marred his fine cardigan. No wonder she couldn’t speak.
He was hideous.
He looked away and dug through his pack for a fresh cardigan with embroidered windmills. The blood-dolloped cardigan went in his unmentionables box, a thing he’d designed privately to turn unmentionable things mentionable again, often through washing, brushing, and occasional bleaching. Then he looked down.
Oh, no. His beard had a splotch too.
He pulled out a clean handkerchief and a bottle of beard oil, took care of that shame, and then, seeing that everyone else was appropriately busy, pulled out Faucon’s contraption and set to fiddling with the toes.
When Kirsi sat down next to him some time later, he looked up from his work and gave her a tight grin, which she returned.
“Did you want to say something?” he asked. “I mean, earlier, you looked like you were going to say something, and then we both got busy with something else, so I wondered if that something was still something, you know, even if the gnomeisms suggest not saying such things…?”
Kirsi nodded, her eyes big and sort of wobbly-looking, like an especially pretty custard. “What you did back there, Onni…” She trailed off and sighed, and he knew he was about to undergo a terrible buttocks-chewing.
“Oh, Onni. It was just so heroic.”
Offi gulped and looked to either side to see if perhaps his brother had shown up unannounced. But no. He was the only other gnome on board.
“Heroic?” he squeaked.
“The way you grabbed your biggest wrench and crawled to the side of the boat to protect our open flank from those beasts.” She sighed again and batted her eyelashes in a way that made him feel warm as a perfectly baked brûlée. “And then you stabbed one in the eye. It was absolutely smooshy.”
“Well, yes,” he admitted, wishing he could pop off his glasses for a good polish. “Vitreous gel can get pretty messy.”
Kirsi looked down and blushed. “That’s not what I meant, Onni.”
“Oh.” Offi gulped. “Oh.”
A girl had never before admitted to finding him at all smooshy.
“I mean, well, gosh, I…yeah, I definitely feel pretty smooshy.”
They grinned at each other like loons, their noses getting incrementally closer, and then…
“Welcome to the non-halfling dock of Caskcooper. Watch the ramp or your rump will get damp!” The boatman turned to grin at them, and Offi realized they were parked at a long, crooked dock alongside all sorts of crabbit craft clearly not made by gnomeric hands.
Offi and Kirsi had already leapt apart, but Offi could see that Kirsi had stowed her smooshy self away and returned to her professional, leadery self. He understood that people had many selves and exchanged them like cardigans as the situation demanded, but Offi wished her smooshy side had said goodbye, or possibly given him a rain check.
“This is as far as you go?” Kirsi asked the automaton. “Because we’d like to go straight to the Toot Towers, if you please.”
The boatman’s head spun in circles. “ ’Fraid not, miss. My programming is limited. But please take these coupons for six percent off your ticket at Gnadine’s Gnarly Gnome Gnoshery.”
“That…doesn’t sound tasty?”
A piece of paper curled out of the boatman’s polished cardigan pocket and fell into Kirsi’s hand. Offi looked down and read the Alphagnomeric script: GNADINE’S (GNOT ACTUALLY) GNARLY GNOME GNOSHERY: ITS WHERE HALFLINGS DEFINITELY DON’T GO FOR DINNER. TODAY’S PASSWORD IS: PASS THE HOT NUT PUDDING.
“Well, that’s cryptic,” Kirsi said, pocketing the paper.
“I hope it’s pistachio,” Offi offered, trying to sound heroic.
The ramp had extended onto the dock, and Offi didn’t like the look of it one bit—the dock, not the ramp. The ramp was gnome-built, a thing of strength, beauty, and perfectly straight lines, while the deck was clearly an ancient halfling construction, replete with crooked boards, gaping holes, and exposed nails red with disease-carrying rust. OUTLANDER DOCKS, a sign read.
“I doubt my gurney can navigate this embarrassingly errant embarkment,” Faucon said. He was sitting up straight, and Kirsi and Offi hurried to his side as he swung his bandaged feet over the edge of the gurney. “It is clearly in violation of multitudinous building codes. Which is just as well. I would prefer to float forever, fight a phalanx of ferocious fishwives, if only I did not have to hobble into my former home like this, a shade of a halfling, emasculated and dependent upon gnomeric contraptions. Just le
ave me here to rot. Gerd will bring me donuts and boxed wine and I will plague the local stevedores with the dullest passages of stale political treatises.”
Gerd hooted her disapproval.
“Wait!” Offi hurriedly brought the finished, wrapped contraption out publicly for the first time. Gearhands had done the bulk of the work in the City of Underthings, but he’d added a few improvements on the train and some final touches on the barge. Kneeling at Faucon’s side, he touched the gauze briefly. “May I?”
Faucon looked away, his eyes screwed tightly shut. “You may, but I cannot promise an absence of tears. A halfling’s toes are his greatest handsomeness, the font of his virility, the seat of his masculine power—”
“Excuse me?” Agape broke in, arms crossed. She had woken from her nap and was standing behind him on the barge, waiting to descend the ramp. “Do halfling women not haaave feet?”
“Yes, of course they do, but their toes, you see, are the blossoms of femininity, and—”
Agape bleated an angry laugh. “Do you even hear yourself? They’re toes. Women and men both haaave them, so how caaan they represent both masculinity and femininity? They’re toes. You fools walk around on them. And I personally think they’re pretty stupid, but thaaat’s just one opinion.”
Faucon drew back his shoulders and opened his mouth to argue, and Offi swiftly began unwrapping his feet while the halfling wasn’t looking.
“How dare you comment on a society beyond your meager ken? For eons, we halflings have focused on the merits of foot care, breeding for attractive qualities, and—”
“Sounds like a case of toxic dactylinity.” Agape rolled her eyes. “Aaand who tells you feet need to be haaandsome or beautiful? Let me guess. People trying to sell you foot baaaths and powders and those oily unguents. You’ve been so upset about losing your precious toes, but I’m pretty sure you’re the same dude you’ve been the whole time. You still caaare about law, right? You seemed to caaare about me breaking it.”