Fire Sail

by Piers Anthony

  It was tempting indeed, but now his honestly was kicking in. “Tess, I went through this with the mermaid. If we have this night, I will be so hopelessly in love with you that I could never break it off, and we would both suffer worse.”

  “Me too. So I guess we can’t.”

  “We can’t,” he agreed.

  “I need to have a good long cry on an understanding shoulder. Do you think Nia would serve?”

  “Yes. She has done so for me before. But then who would comfort me?”

  She smiled sadly. He could tell by her tone, though he was still facing away from her. “Let’s ask her.”

  They put their shirts back on and went together to see Nia. “Oh, fudge!” she swore. “I was hoping it wouldn’t be this way this time.”

  “We’re being realistic,” Dell said. “We’re both hurting.”

  “I understand all too well. Well, we’ll just have to share. Come to me, the both of you.”

  They came to her, and the three of them lay on Nia’s bed, Tess on one side, Dell on the other side, sobbing into her shoulders while she stroked their backs and murmured sympathy.

  Apart from that, it was a good night.

  Chapter 12

  Sea Kingdom

  In the morning Tess bid them a tearful farewell and quickly stepped off the boat, not prolonging the agony. They saw her become the giantess and stride away without looking back.

  “She’s a nice girl,” Santo said. “It’s really too bad you couldn’t make it with her. I know why you can’t, but it’s sad.”

  “I seem to be fated to encounter nothing but good girls I can’t keep,” Dell said. “Bleep it to bleep.”

  “You really shouldn’t swear,” Ula said. “We children can’t make out the words, and couldn’t understand them if we did, but we still feel the heat.”

  “We do,” Win agreed. “But we do understand your pain.”

  “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

  “Now on to the next adventure,” Nia said briskly. “Tata, give us a map to the Sea Kingdom.”

  The map appeared on the dogfish’s screen. Santo set the sail, as he had learned to do from Dell, and Win oriented the craft and started the wind. They were on their way, and loving it.

  Soon their route took them to the sea, and then under the water. The boat went into submarine mode, cruising through the depths. Surprised fish watched them pass.

  Then progress slowed. The craft was catching on something where nothing should be. What was happening?

  Nia looked into the periscope. “Oh, Limburger cheese!” she swore, managing to bypass the Adult Conspiracy as she often did. “We’re snagging on seaweed.”

  “I’ll fix it,” Squid said. “That’s my job. I’ll use my tentacles to untangle anything that’s there.”

  “Tentacles?” Santo asked. “I thought octopuses and squid didn’t actually have tentacles, but arms.”

  “Don’t be a purist,” Squid said. “Tentacles are anything a cephalopod uses. Arms are what people use. I prefer to be tentacular, at least when I’m in the water.”

  “Wait half a moment,” Nia said. “I don’t trust this. We’re not close to the bottom or the top. There should be no seaweed here. I don’t think you should go out alone.”

  “Maybe I can help,” Dell said.

  “You’re not equipped for the deep sea,” Nia said.

  “There’s something I have wanted to try, with my enhanced talent. Now’s the time.” He stroked his hands over his own throat, turning it greenish.

  “Color won’t help you breathe,” Nia said.

  “But gills will. I have painted gills that should work in the water.”

  “Now that’s an innovation,” she agreed. “But there’s a lot of pressure out there, and it’s cold.”

  “Yes. I will paint my body to be cold and pressure resistant.”

  Nia rolled her eyes. Fortunately they stayed in her face. With the Demoness Metria it would have been another matter. “What do you think, the rest of you? Should we let him try this?”

  “Sure,” Win said, and the others nodded.

  “Um, I’ll have to take off my clothing,” Dell said.

  “We’re children,” Win said. “We don’t care if you’re bare. It’s just adults who care if anyone’s bare.”

  “And not all of them,” Nia said with a hint of a lurking smile. “But maybe leave your underpants on. You can paint them too.”

  Dell stripped to his underpants, then stroked himself all over, toughening his skin without stiffening it. He even stroked his eyes, carefully, so that they would be able to operate effectively underwater. Finally he donned swim fins from the craft’s supply store. He was ready.

  “I will watch,” Nia said, her spooky eyes appearing over her head. “If there’s any problem, signal me. I don’t know what we could do from inside, but at least we’ll be in touch.”

  They went to the upper deck and stepped through the shield that fenced off the sea. Suddenly they were in the cold dark water, lit only by the ambiance of the boat. Since it was the boat they needed to unsnag, that was enough.

  Squid had reverted to her natural form, a cute little cephalopod with eight tentacular arms and a bulbous head. She flashed barber-pole stripes to make herself quite visible, then gulped water and jetted down below the craft. Dell followed, stroking with his fins and breathing via his gills. The more he learned about the way the Good Magician had enhanced his paltry talent, the more he appreciated it. This was fun!

  Below, they saw how the sea weeds had wrapped around the rudder and prevented it from moving properly. Also, they were holding back the boat.

  Squid swam close and focused her tentacles on the strings of weeds. They resisted. In fact they reared up and made as if to grab her too.

  Uh-oh. This was not mere drifting seaweed. This was worse. It was alive and aware. In fact it was the dread kraken monster, half a Mundane mile across and deadly. The nastiest predator to meet.

  He looked at Nia’s hovering eyes. They looked worried. The eyes knew what the two of them were up against. The worst monster of the sea.

  But of course he was not about to let it get Squid. He would have to fight it, or at least discourage it somewhat so they could get away. He gave the eyes a quick thumbs-up, then concentrated on the combat. He had a battle strategy.

  Dell quickly doffed his right flipper, tucking it into his underpants waistband for the moment, and ran his bare hand back over his body. This time he was adding extreme slipperiness, so that nothing could catch him or hold on to him. Then he took the flipper and stroked it, making its edge razor sharp. He did the same with the one for the left hand. If he was up against a kraken, he needed to be armed.

  He swam to join Squid. When a weed tried to grab her, he stroked the blade of his fin across it, neatly severing it.

  Suddenly all the streamers of weed were in motion. They attacked him, coming in from all sides. He slashed his fins in circles, cutting off the weeds. The few strands that reached his skin slipped off, unable to cling.

  Squid’s head nodded. She focused on the rudder, laboring with all eight limbs to unwind and pull off the weeds, while Dell protected them both with his slashes. Before long she had the rudder free.

  Then the kraken plunged in with fifty writhing strands shining with what Dell feared was poison. That was no good!

  He acted immediately. He stroked his own body again, making it poison resistant, then did the same for Squid. She understood, and let him do her tentacles.

  The weed strands wrapped around both of them, oozing the poison. They couldn’t actually hold Dell, but did form a kind of cage. They waited. But nothing happened; the two of them were now immune. “Tough beans, filament face,” Dell said into the water. It came out as bubbles. Vines caught the bubbles, and got the words.

  The strands shudd
ered with something like rage. The monster wasn’t used to getting balked even momentarily, and evidently didn’t much like it. Neither did it like getting talked back to.

  Dell resumed cutting, chopping up the cage. Soon bits of weed filled the water around them, and he was free. But the remaining weeds hauled Squid away.

  Oops! He had been so busy cutting himself free that he hadn’t thought that the vines on Squid’s other side weren’t getting severed. She was not slippery in the same way he was; the kraken had hold of her.

  He powered after them, but now a living mass of strands crisscrossed between them, coming in faster than he could cut them. The monster was getting away with Squid. She would not last long, once it was able to focus its malign attention on her.

  Nia’s eyes watched helplessly. Then they changed. They became larger, and their lenses were reflective. No, not that; they were giving him a view through them, into the boat. There was the peeve, flapping its wings for attention, looking down at Tata. And the dogfish was turning bright fiery red.

  Why this color? Why right now, when Del had a child to rescue? He hardly needed the distraction.

  Nia herself appeared in the lenses. She held up a sign. BURN IT!

  Oho! They were telling him how to fight the monster. Tata must have delved into a database and gotten the information. That meant it should work.

  Dell stroked his fins, turning them a similar shade and heating them until they burned, literally. Then he dived back into the fray, fencing madly.

  Every strand he touched sizzled and shrank, badly burned. Soon the other strands were pulling away from him. Now, no longer impeded, he swam after Squid. He caught up to her, reached around her, and burned off the lines that were hauling her to the monster’s mouth, if it had one. She was still bound, but loose to that extent.

  Yet more strands were massing, forming a writhing wall so thick it would be difficult to burn through it. The kraken had not given up on them. How could they get away?

  “Squid,” he bubbled at her. “Ink. Dragon turds.”

  She nodded, understanding. She remained bound, but emitted a dense cloud of ink that made the gloom of the water become the black of night. It stank, too, probably of kraken repellent. Meanwhile he passed his hands across his body again, turning it an ugly brown, for the time when it would become visible again: the brown of a dragon turd. He was pretty sure the kraken would not consider that tasty.

  The ink slowly dissipated, revealing the sight of—two bobbling turds. The strands approached but weren’t interested in those. Dell was gambling on his judgment that the monster was not phenomenally smart, so would not realize that the disappearance of live prey and substitution of dead feces might have a connection.

  Sure enough, the wall of strands drifted apart as the creature searched elsewhere for the prey. They had room to swim. But of course the moment they did, it would become evident that they were alive, and the chase would be on again. Still, they could not afford to delay too long, lest by sheer chance the kraken bang into them and mess up their disguise.

  Squid was immobile, playing her part. That meant she had not had the chance to untangle the cocoon of strands around her. She would not be able to gulp water and jet. He would have to carry her.

  He didn’t dare use his heat to burn the strands around her, lest he burn her too. So he held her with his elbows, and stroked powerfully with his feet. They zoomed back toward the boat.

  More strands came after them, suddenly alerted, but he moved his hot fins menacingly and the vines did not close in. They might not be much for smarts, but they remembered the burning. Meanwhile Squid was working her way free of the severed lengths that bound her, and by the time they reached the boat, she was clear. She did not swim away from him, though, aware that the kraken was waiting for the chance to nab her again.

  Dell went right for the upper boat and burst through the shield. “Get out of here!” he exclaimed.

  Win’s wind blasted forward, and the sail ignited as Santo spread it. The craft lurched ahead.

  Now Squid, so brave and responsive during the battle, re-formed as the girl and collapsed in tears. Dell picked her up and held her. He carried her to a chair and sat down, holding her on his lap. “You did great,” he told her. “You freed the rudder and the boat.”

  She just cried, her tears carrying a track of black ink. She was after all a child. She was also an alien creature whose life processes and feelings he did not really understand. All he could do was hold her, so she could feel the safeness and comfort while she recovered. Slowly she did.

  “You saved me,” she said. “You could have left me there.”

  “No I couldn’t!” he countered.

  She was satisfied with that. She drifted to a tired sleep, and he was glad to continue holding her.

  “Uh-oh,” the peeve said.

  Dell didn’t like the sound of that. “What?”

  “We didn’t get far enough away, in time.”

  “But we escaped the kraken.”

  “Almost,” Nia said. “It seems that when we got away, it retired in a huff. It sank, and its sinking caused a whirlpool. That’s what it does.”

  “A whirlpool?” Now he saw the water rushing past, outside the shield.

  “And we are caught in it. We can’t sail out of it; the whirling water has hold of the hull. We are being drawn down.”

  Dell considered that. Had they only thought they had escaped the monster?

  “Bottom,” Ula said.

  “Yes, we’re going to the bottom,” Nia said. “Where the kraken is.”

  “It must use the whirlpool to catch prey that might otherwise escape,” Dell said. “Like us.”

  “What can we do?” Nia asked, looking ungrandmotherly rattled. That was not a good sign.

  The others looked blank. That wasn’t good either.

  So it was up to Dell. He cudgeled his errant brain. He had always liked to understand obscure things. Was there something in his memory that might help?

  Then he got it. Maybe. “The yacht has toilets.”

  “To be sure,” Nia agreed. “And showers. We’ve all used them.”

  “Where do they flush?”

  Tata’s screen blinked as he delved for the answer. “There’s a big septic tank in the hold that stores the wastes until the time comes to empty it, along with the bilge water, every week or so,” the peeve translated. “In fact, it’s about due now. Otherwise it backs up. We wouldn’t like it when it does that.”

  “I suspect not,” Nia said, with a trace of a smile hiding behind her worry.

  “It surely stinks,” Dell said with satisfaction. “But why don’t we enhance it a bit? Is there a stink horn in the pantry? You know the kind that, when you step on it, it emits a foul-smelling noise and a dirty brown stench no one can stand?”

  The children tittered. Stink horns were a favorite mischief bomb for the young.

  “Actually there is,” the peeve said. “It is used to clean out vermin every year or so. Once it clears, the vermin are gone and the people can return.”

  “Flush it down the toilet.”

  “Hey, why waste a perfectly good stink horn?” the peeve demanded.

  “Because when we get to the bottom of the whirlpool, just as it quits because the kraken has landed on the ocean floor and can’t descend anymore, and the monster reaches for the boat to bite it in half so it can get at the goodies inside—”

  “We’re the goodies,” Nia snapped, unamused.

  “Then we will flush the enhanced septic tank into its open mouth. That may distract it while we escape, again. This time it won’t be able to make another whirlpool. Not till it rises to the surface for another feeding.”

  They considered that. Then they all broke out in laughter.

  They did it, while the boat whirled ever tighter spirals down to the mouth
of the whirlpool. There was the monster, monstrously huge, slurping its gaping orifice with its giant maul of a tongue.

  The boat settled toward that awful hole. The tongue slurped closer.

  “Bombs away!” Dell cried, and Tata sent the code to jettison the septic bilge.

  There was a moment of stillness, followed by a gulping sound. Then the kraken vomited. The boat rode the wave of it, then fired up the sail and forged forward, unobstructed.

  “I almost feel sorry for the monster,” Nia said. “But not quite.”

  “Stink horns do have their uses,” Dell said, satisfied.

  They were on their way again, none the worse for wear. In fact they had accomplished a necessary house cleaning in the process.

  They followed Tata’s map to a canyon under the sea. There was a town.

  “A what?” Dell asked.

  “See for yourself,” the peeve said.

  Dell looked. There was a sign saying THE SEA KINGDOM.

  It seemed they had arrived.

  The boat had been cruising just above the sea floor. Now Win guided it to the ground. “Hey!” Dell said, surprised. “It looks as if the water’s gone.”

  Then a school of fish swam by, led by their teacher fish. The water wasn’t gone.

  Now a young woman walked toward them. She had long sea-green hair and a blue-eyed complexion, and a remarkably buxom shape. “Ahoy the boat!” she called. “We are expecting you. I am Ann Noy.”

  How could she walk there, and talk to them, if she was in deep water? Something odd was afoot or afloat.

  Dell shared a glance with Nia and the children. “Uh, Tata, maybe you should sniff her,” he said.

  The dogfish scrambled out of the boat and swam to the woman. He sniffed her delicate slipper. “Growr,” he sounded off. Since he used a speaker rather than air to make sounds, there was no problem with the water.

  “Ah, I see you recognize my type,” Ann said as Tata returned to the boat. “Yes, I am a bad girl. I have necessary information for you folk. May I come aboard?”

  This time their shared glance crashed into the mast before it got established. What could they do? “Yes,” Dell said cautiously. “But we don’t trust you.”