Travels With a Fairytale Monster

by Elizabeth Gannon

  “You just wanted us to pay you to get in contact with her!” Ryle cried. “And now you’re saying she’s an idiot!”

  Uriah shrugged in disinterest. “I have to make a living somehow.”

  “Well, what about Ransom?” Taylor continued. “You said that she’s Adithian and knows all about mystic stuff. Does she know anyone in Adithia who…”

  He straightened in his chair, suddenly serious. “Don’t involve her or the Adithians in whatever this is, Taylor.” He warned. “That won’t make me happy.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She took another drink. “Honestly, I didn’t really want her help anyway, I’m just at the bottom of the barrel here.”

  The pirate watched her silently for a long moment. “I really don’t understand you.” He admitted.

  “Why?” Her brow furrowed in confusion. “I’m not that complicated.”

  “You really don’t need black magic to convince our ogre friend to want you.” He finished off his bottle. “It’s written all over his burnt and scabby face.”

  “This… this has nothing to do with that.”

  Uriah nodded, looking unconvinced. “Well, you’d better hope that it does, because if this is another man you’re planning to bewitch, you’d better say your goodbyes to that poor pathetic bastard now, before he gets crushed into a mushy goo by a jealous ogre.”

  Ryle chuckled in amusement.

  Uriah looked at him in disgust, as if just noticing he was there, then motioned at him with his thumb. “Scram. Let the adults talk, swab.”

  Ryle frowned, getting ready to object to that.

  Taylor waved him off. “It’s fine. Just go check on Dom or something.”

  “What the fuck do I care what he’s up to?” Ryle asked the room at large.

  “Because if it’s something bad, you’ll get the pleasure of hearing me talk about possible ways I could make him feel better.” She warned.

  Ryle hurried away.

  Taylor waited expectantly for Uriah to tell her what he needed to privately tell her.

  He noticed she was staring at him. “What?”

  “What what?” She asked, getting annoyed. “What did you want to tell me that Ryle couldn’t hear? And if it’s something gross…”

  “I don’t want to talk to you!” He cried in denial, sounding horrified. “Lady, you called me over here.” He pointed after Ryle. “I only told him to get lost because he was buggin’ me.”

  “So you’re not going to help me with my problem at all then?”

  “Lady, you got problems I couldn’t hope to fix. I ain’t a dark wizard, a relationship counselor, or a psychiatrist.” He took another drink. “Not for nothing, but you’ve got a lot of fucking problems.” He snorted. “I’m a pirate; my problem-solving typically involves tossing the problem overboard and hoping it can’t swim.”

  She stared at him in disgust.

  He rolled his eyes. “Shouldn’t you have little girlfriends and shit for this? Or is talking to criminals about your love life now ‘the thing to do’ in this pisshole kingdom?”

  She frowned, not used to hearing the man sound quite so profane.

  “Forgive me.” He apologized, recognizing her confusion and sitting straighter in his chair. He cleared his throat, looking slightly embarrassed. “Though a bon vivant of the Grizzwoodian criminal class, I am also a perfidious and unrepentant scoundrel at heart, who can occasionally over-imbibe during festivities.” He nodded at the bottle in his hand. “Pay my breach of societal etiquette no mind.” He motioned at her with one hand. “Tell me your problems, dear, and I will offer you the benefit of my hard-earned wisdom.”

  “Great.” She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, I think you’re the last person I would ever take advice from.”

  “And yet here I am.” He nodded, taking another drink. “Funny how that works.”

  “Okay…” She swallowed her pride. “Say, there’s this guy…”

  “Censoring names from this hypothetical situation is an excellent way to preserve this mystery man’s reputation and anonymity.” He nodded in sarcastic approval. “I have no idea of whom we speak.”

  She ignored that. “And this guy… he sort of seems to like this girl…”

  “…who is not of his species.” Uriah finished. “Which just makes it all so romantic and forbiddenly naughty, doesn’t it, Dove?” He turned in his chair, looking for his partner. A frown crossed his semi-drunken face, then he glanced up at one of the rooms overhead. “Ah.” He nodded, apparently remembering that she had gone to bed. “Well… you’d agree if you were here.”

  “The point is that the girl… who could be anyone….”

  “Obviously.” He nodded, humoring her. “Your nameless hypothetical remains an armor which not even the most logical or deductive mind can pierce.”

  “…but she’s not certain if what he’s feeling is really what he’s feeling, or merely what she wants him to feel.” She continued.

  He thought about that for a moment, then raised a finger, as if about to ask a small question. “Forgive if my words lack the typical blandishments and flatteries one generally associates with guidance from the sagacious,” he leaned forward in his chair, “but why would she give a shit?”

  She frowned in confusion. “Excuse me?”

  He took another swig of his booze. “Lady, I’m from the Grizzwood. And in the fucking Grizzwood, if you like someone, there’s none of this emotional bullshit.” He rolled his eyes in dismissal, his voice becoming slurred and his movements exaggerated from drink. “It’s like: ‘Hey. You’re hot. Wanna fuck?’” He turned his head and took on a high pitch tone, imitating a woman’s voice. “’Okay! Why not?’” He turned his head again. “’So, you don’t give a shit about what I might or might not be feeling about you, right? You just want to screw?’” He turned his head the other way again. “’Duh! Why would I care what someone else is thinking, when I can’t possibly know for sure either way? I just know I want you. And afterwards, we can fight to the death or something.’” He finished up his playlet and raised his bottle to her in cheers. “Answer the question?”

  She stared at him in silence. “What a horribly lonely place that must be.”

  He looked down at his bottle for a long moment, his mind a million miles away. “Why do you think I left?” He asked rhetorically, his voice dead. “It’s not…”

  “Uriah!” Ransom screamed from her room interrupting him, her voice echoing through the space, filled with horror and rage, like death itself. A moment later, something crashed to the floor and the woman screamed again. “URIAH!!!”

  “Fuck!” Uriah bounced to his feet, all traces of his drunkenness now gone.

  Taylor rose from her chair, preparing for some sort of attack. “What’s going on? What was that!?!”

  “She wakes up and forgets she’s blind.” He vaulted off one of the tables, launching himself up to grab a post of the second floor railing and hauled himself up. He leaped over the bannister, showing far more athleticism than she would have anticipated, and raced down the open balcony.

  The girl in question staggered out into the hallway, looking unsteady and panicked. One of the crew, who was standing at the top of the stairs, reached out to take her hand and steady her.

  Ransom pulled away from the man, uttering a soft cry of surprise and fear at being touched by some unseen person.

  “Don’t touch her.” Uriah snarled, charging down the hall and delivering a vicious heel kick to the man’s stomach, sending him backwards down the stairs.

  Taylor jolted at the ferocity of the blow.

  Uriah ignored the man’s tumble down the stairs, stopping just short of his companion and lifting up his foot to yank free a dagger hidden inside his tall boot.

  Taylor started forward, preparing to try to stop that drunken bastard from stabbing the woman, but to her surprise, instead of assaulting Ransom, he slapped the handle of the weapon into her hand. “Steady, Rance. Steady.” He soothed, his voice no longer contai
ning its familiar edge of mockery. “Everything’s fine.” He leaned closer to her. “We’re fine.”

  The woman’s fingers tightened around the weapon and she held it out as though keeping the attackers she was unable to see at bay. She turned in a rapid circle, ending up back where she started, the blade held out like a fencer’s, pressing into his stomach.

  “Rance, we’ve talked about this.” He told her plainly. “What have I told you about trying to stab me?” He pointed at the weapon. “You pull that knife on me like that and I’ll end you with it.”

  She instantly stepped forward, moving so that her forearm was braced against his chest and the knife was held back out of his reach, waiting to strike up into his body.

  He nodded in approval. “Better.” He used his boot to reposition her feet so that she had stronger balance. “You have me dead to rights now, Dove. There’s no way I’m walking away without getting stabbed at least once. You control the pace of the fight because you know right where I am without needing to see me.” He put his hand over hers as it fisted in his coat. “Tighter.” He squeezed her fingers. “Keep me close enough that I can’t dodge to the side, but not so close that I can hit you or you can’t put force behind the blade.” The posture put his face inches from hers. “See how much better that feels?” He asked, his voice low and gentle. He leaned closer. “Natural…”

  She pulled back suddenly, breathing hard. She looked uncertain or panicked for a moment, then returned to her original more elegant fencing stance.

  Uriah swore and gazed up towards the heavens in frustration. He looked back down at her for a moment, then let out a long breath. “I really don’t know why you always insist on holding the knife that way, I really don’t.” It sounded more like an observation someone makes while they’re thinking about something else. “You’re not fencing; you don’t get points for style, and the fight will continue even after you score a hit.” He tried to move closer again, ignoring the fact that the knife was now pressed against his chest hard enough to draw blood. A crimson stain spread across his shirt, which he paid no attention to. “You’re fucking blind now!” He reminded her. “I don’t give a shit how you used to fight, or where you learned it, you do it like this now and it’s going to get you killed! Is that what you want!?! Huh!?! Is that what this is!?! You got people who count on you, girl!” He reached down to take hold of her wrist and pulled her forward to press her forearm against his chest again. “So you hold onto me tight, goddammit!”

  She yanked her hand away and roughly pushed him back a step.

  He tripped and fell to the floor.

  She stood over him, returning to her graceful textbook attack posture, rather than the prison yard stabbing technique advocated by her partner.

  He got to his feet and evidently realized he’d been too harsh and immediately put his hands up to show they were empty… then stopped when he remembered she couldn’t see them anyway. The realization visibly hit him and he swore under his breath, looking down at the floor, his face lost and terribly sad.

  “I…I’m sorry, Rance.” He choked. “That was…” He swallowed, at a loss of words for the first time since Taylor had met him. “Well, to be honest, that was utterly characteristic of me, wasn’t it?” He laughed humorlessly in self-deprecation. “Frankly, I think you’d be better off if you did stab me, using any stance which would make you happy. The gods know you’ve proven time and time again to be smarter than me about everything else, so you’re probably right about this as well.” His voice became gentler. “But until then, everything’s fine.” He repeated soothingly. “I assure you, I can kill anyone in the room at the moment, should it come down to it. Hell, everyone in the room. They pose us no threat. There is nothing for you to worry about. We are fine. I swear to you, no one will hurt you.”

  The woman swallowed, still looking upset but visibly calming down now that her terror upon awaking to total darkness was passing. She held the blade tighter, reached out to quickly touch her partner’s chest as if to make sure he was really there, then silently returned to her room.

  Uriah held the door open for her, gently ushering her inside without touching her. “That’s right. Try to get some sleep, Dove. If you need anything or want to talk, I’ll just be downstairs, okay? I…”

  The door slammed in his face.

  He leaned forward to rest his forehead against its wooden surface for several breaths, then made a frustrated fist and drew it back as if to punch the doorframe in anger over how he’d handled the incident— and one presumed his life in general— but stopped inches from the wood and merely opened his hand again helplessly.

  He took another deep breath, and when he turned around, his typical overly dramatic joie de vivre had returned. “My partner is feeling overset at the moment.” He announced to the room, as if they all hadn’t seen and heard the entire conversation.

  “’Overset?’ Hell, that bitch is losing it.” One of the other crewmen on the balcony observed bluntly, his voice slurred from drink. “I know I’m new and all, but I’ve always said having a woman onboard was bad luck, even if we aren’t at sea.”

  Uriah spun around to face him, his expression looking suddenly unhinged. “Yes, that you did.” He began to laugh, his tone manic and… unsettling. “That you did. I think what you…” Uriah unexpectedly went for him midsentence, going from dead stop to charging forward faster than anyone Taylor had ever seen. He tackled the man, slamming into him full force and driving them both straight through the second floor railing and down onto one of the tables on the floor below. The decaying wood of the tabletop shattered into splinters with a crash, causing the rest of the crew to dive out of the way. Uriah landed on top of him, hand clenching the front of the man’s shirt as he pummeled him, blow after blow, screaming inventive obscenities and what could only have been Grizzwoodian vulgarities.

  Uriah’s men tried to pull him off, but he got in one final punch to the man’s face which looked like it broke something because the man spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth. The crew physically picked Uriah up and carried him off the man, as he continued trying to break free, pointing at the man’s bloody form. “How’s your luck NOW, you fucking asshole!?!” He kicked at the man but missed because he was now out of range. “I’ll eat your fucking heart!” The men tried to carry Uriah further away, but he pulled his Khopesh sword and they dropped him like a stone to escape his wrath. He hit the ground and turned in a slow circle threateningly, backing the men off with the long sickle blade.

  “Easy, Cap’n. Eeeeeasy.” A muscular bald crewman advised, holding up his hands and taking another step back. “No need for that.”

  Uriah turned to look at him, then pointed the tip of the blade at the bleeding man. “Dobbs, if I ever see that man again, I’m going to hang you both from the yard arm.” He walked past the man he’d knocked down the stairs at the start of his conversation with Ransom. “This fellow I’m ambivalent about.” He decided casually. “He can stay, I suppose.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.” The bald man nodded, quickly setting about clearing the room of his boss’ victims.

  Uriah started to make his way back towards Taylor, taking a deep breath. “Now where was I?” He thought about it for a second. “Ah, yes. Ransom is simply anxious. Perhaps it’s the excitement over all the money we will soon be making, yes?” He paid no attention as his men began to drag away the dazed man he’d just beaten half to death. Blood was still oozing from the crewman’s face and formed twin trails across the floor as the crew dragged his limp feet through the puddle and towards the door. Uriah ignored the grisly evidence of the fight. “She’s really quite emotional when it comes to mountains of gold.” He sank back into his chair, his voice carefree but his eyes looking more tired than she’d ever seen them. “Hers are a passionate people. I blame their climate.”

  She stared at him in silence. “Was that how they do it in the Grizzwood?” She asked. “Was that the dispassionate ‘no feelings bullshit’ kind of relationship I shoul
d try to emulate?”

  He absently picked at the tabletop, ignoring her sarcasm.

  “You okay?” She finally asked after a moment. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Talk about what?” His tone conveyed utter confusion, as if everything were perfectly normal. He grabbed for another bottle, his knuckles bruised from the fight and shaking from adrenaline and rage. The gold rings on his hands were stained with blood and gore. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Yes!” She told him a little too quickly, eager for something to take her mind off of this evening.

  He finished pouring and slid hers over to her. “To the merry and short life, chasing blood and treasure.” He stared into his drink as if the liquid inside held some mysterious answer to his problems. “And all the miraculous things that are forever out of my reach.” He raised his glass in toast, his voice sounding hollow and somber. “The black flag forever.” He pounded back his drink, emptying the glass in one swallow and began pouring himself another. “Ah, Cormoranian rum. It’s like drinking fire sweetened by the souls of tiny puppies. I’d forgotten how much I loathe it.”

  She quietly watched him again, trying to decide what she could say. “Baseland has a flower…” She began.

  “I’d be surprised if it did. I used to live there, you know. One of my brothers still does.” He interrupted, taking another swig of his alcohol. “That place is nothing but ash and maniacs now. Everything else has been mined out or rusted away, thanks to this war. I imagine that someone, somewhere, at this very moment, is working on an allegorical painting called something like ‘Death of Innocence’ or ‘God Hangs His Head’ which depicts the last flower in Baseland being pulled from their rocky soil and chucked into some kind of smelting cauldron shaped like a human skull.” He finished off his glass and poured himself another. “All existential and shit.” His words were slurred now, his Grizzwood accent and vocabulary more prominent as the alcohol continued to take effect. Gone was the textbook pronunciation and thesaurus vocabulary which he seemed to like to use in an attempt to hide his low roots, replaced by rough curses delivered with the deep guttural drawl characteristic of his homeland.