The Wilder World

by Jeff Hook

  Karugo felt almost sorry for it. I’ve been there, he thought.

  “Nata, we’re about to have dinner,” said Martha. “Please excuse us. We don’t have enough in our house for unexpected guests.”

  “My house,” said the creature. “Until you pay up, this is my house. My farm. These might as well be my kids, for how well you’d have fed and clothed them without my help.”

  “We’d have made it. Hungry, but we’d have made it,” said Seth. “If we knew the terms, we’d have never agreed.”

  The orange creature laughed a strange yipping laugh. “The terms were right there. It’s not my fault you were too stupid to read and understand the math behind them. Or maybe you thought you could put one over on me?” It contorted its face into something resembling sadness, helplessness. “Trick the poor defenseless foreigner?”

  “Knyn scum,” muttered John.

  The Knyn’s face broke into a huge grin dominated by sharp teeth. “Such language,” it whispered, licking its lips. “I guess you don’t want to go to the pleasant slave markets.”

  Karugo no longer felt sorry for the Knyn. Even when he’d been shunned and hated by the rest of the island, he’d tried to be good. He’d tried to fit in. This thing… he hated how it treated the family who’d been so nice to him.

  It crossed its arms and looked at him and Hishano again, narrowing its eyes. “What do you want?” it asked them.

  “We’re going to save our island,” said Hishano immediately. “And then we’re going to save the world.”

  “Interesting,” said the Knyn. “How are you going to do that?”

  “We’re going to get money and sail for Tarabrant.”

  “Money. Interesting. I can help with that.”

  “Don’t do it,” said Seth. “You’ve seen how she operates.”

  “This won’t be a loan,” announced the Knyn. “You don’t have to pay it back. It’s free money. Why? Because I’m interested in you. Fascinated. I’ve never seen people like you before, and I want to know more. What are your feelings? Where do you come from? How do you live?”

  “There’s a catch,” said Seth, trying to keep the anger and hatred from his voice. “There’s always a catch with her kind.”

  “The passage is, what, two mezsil? I’ll give you ten times that, because I want you to be taken care of. And for all of you,” the Knyn turned to the family, “I’ll forgive your debt. All of it.”

  “What’s the catch?” asked Seth. Shock had drained the color from his face.

  “No catch. I’m curious about this new type of people I’ve never seen before. If they answer all of my questions, then they get what they want, you get what you want, and everyone wins.”

  Everyone wins.

  Karugo considered it. The family would love them. They would save the island, and then the island would love them. Cheering crowds in his head, all the people of Tandoku Island asking him the story… it was almost comical how easy the ending was. ‘We fought pirates, we escaped crazed wild animals, and then we… told some strange talking cat creature about ourselves.’ This was almost perfect!

  He said yes.

  ——

  Hishano knew this thing was bad news even before it spoke of slave markets. Seth and his family had treated his friends well, and anyone who made them react like this couldn’t be good.

  The Knyn had hurt this family somehow, had hurt H’raldri somehow, in a way that Hishano didn’t fully understand, but he knew he couldn’t let it get anywhere close to Tandoku Island. He didn’t want his family cowering in their own dining room at the sight of some oversized cat.

  This thing was just like Jack and Freddy, except it accomplished its devilish schemes with words instead of swords.

  He was shocked when Karugo said yes.

  “Don’t do it,” he said.

  “Don’t you want to help people?” asked Karugo. “Everyone’s going to love it.”

  Couldn’t his classmate see what was happening? He would, eventually. He’d seen it before once Jack had drawn his swords.

  Hishano glared at the Knyn. “You’re the one who made this family so poor. You think we’re going to let you anywhere near our island? You’re just like a pirate! I’ve had someone cut me in half, and you’re still the worst person I’ve ever seen!”

  The Knyn just raised its eyebrows, unfazed. “Only one of you needs to talk to me and you’ll get everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  Karugo gave no sign that he was reconsidering.

  Words weren’t working. Violence seemed to be the way of the outside world, so it was violence he would try next.

  Hishano stepped forward and punched the Knyn.

  Ishū’s jaw dropped in surprise.

  The Knyn didn’t budge an inch, but it did backhand Hishano and send him flying, crashing into a leg of the table. The table leg broke and the surface tilted, emptying food, plates, glasses, and silverware alike onto the floor in a slow horrifying slide. A vase, a crude clay thing that had nonetheless been hand-painted with care, crashed onto the floor and broke. For a brief moment of time Hishano could see the lone, delicate flower lying in a puddle of water, surrounded by multi-colored shards, until the pot of stew hit the ground and covered the flower with fragrant creamy brown liquid.

  Audrey burst out crying.

  Seth and John stepped between the Knyn and the other members of their family, but Hishano could tell by the looks on their faces that they knew they were powerless.

  The Knyn snarled at Audrey, “I should be the one crying. After all, I just broke my table and my favorite vase.”

  She ambled over to the door, almost lazily, her studied nonchalance a bitter contrast to the tension pulsing through everyone else.

  “The offer is good any time you want,” she said in a light, purposefully casual voice. “But just so you know: I’ll find the island no matter what. I’m the richest woman on Havlam, and I get what I want.”

  10

  Stakes

  Nata laughed as she walked away from the farmhouse, cackling loudly until she was out of earshot.

  Her short triangular ears twitched, making sure that she hadn’t been followed. All they detected was the buzz of cicadas and the whoop of whatever bird was still out this late.

  When she reached the woods — when she could feel sure of her safety — she let her shoulders sag, let her face droop, let those nagging doubts come to the surface.

  The Knyn were feared and despised in nearly half the world, so she might as well get some mileage out of it, right? The villagers here were just Enzu.

  But it was risky. No one in that family would seriously try to injure her, probably, but if she actually confiscated their farm — especially if she sold off the children — it would sour the rest of the town. The threat of the Knyn retribution vessels might stop most of the townsfolk, but there were always one or two who didn’t properly think through consequences.

  With all her new money she’d have to hire some guards.

  From a different island, preferably.

  She ran through the encounter in her head, looping through different ways this scenario could play out. The smaller green-skinned Enzu was dangerous; not physically, because he was clearly untrained, but mentally. She’d been about to turn the spiky-haired green boy, but then the smaller boy had faked a hot-blooded temper and entered a fight he could never win, all to create a distraction. He’d manipulated his own emotional display and injured himself to get what he wanted. He reminded her of… well, of herself.

  A kindred soul.

  She reached the river and instead of crossing the bridge immediately lay down on the grassy bank. The stars here were strange, in different shapes than those of her homeland. Well, the land where she had been born, at least, deep in the core of the Mezazi Empire.

  That was the wrong path to take her thoughts. She tried to stop them, but it was too late. Now she was thinking of growing up under the palm trees, of her father teaching her to count, his thin orange
paws — thin even then, before age caught up with him — moving around piles of mezcops, challenging her with how fast she could tally them.

  Trying to fit in with her older brother and his friends, tossing coconuts at hissing crabs and then sprinting across the beach trying to not get sprayed.

  Of long evenings with her best friend Raquel, talking about business ventures and boys.

  All of this had been before the incident, of course. These memories were painful, but the memories from afterward would have been even worse.

  Lost happiness is bad enough without remembering what replaced it.

  These green Enzus, though… they could change all of that. If she could find a new island, sell it to the Mezazi or claim it for her family… she smiled at the thought, and a bittersweet tear came to her eye.

  I’m going to make you proud, father, she thought. I’m going to be rich, and then you’ll have to love me again.

  ——

  Hishano stared at the wreckage of the kitchen from his position under the table.

  Blood dripped from his arm, courtesy of a gash that had already healed.

  He crawled out from under the table, trying to avoid the stew that spread slowly across the floor. He wasn’t sure why, since he was already a mess and the stew was already ruined.

  Martha grabbed the pot of stew and righted it. “Some of it’s still left, and the other two dishes are fine,” she announced. “We’re going to eat.”

  “What about the plates?” asked John.

  “We’ll share,” said Seth. “We’ll make do and share plates until we can afford more.”

  Unspoken was that none of this would matter if they didn’t meet the Knyn’s deadline. The creature would come and take everything this family owned, and the only thing that would stop it was to somehow come up with the one hundred and fifty-seven mezcop in interest payments they owed… or to give away the location of Tandoku Island.

  The table leg was harder to correct than the plates. There was no replacement, and the broken-off part of the leg had too many splinters knocked away for it to fit well in its old position. “I’ll go get a bucket from the barnyard,” said Anna. “It’s just the right height to hold one of these up.”

  The rest of the family stood in silence after the older girl left. Only Martha seemed to have any idea of what to do — she picked up the pieces of dishware that were somehow still intact and placed them on the counter, then instructed the children to pick out the smaller scraps. “We’re going to feed this food to the animals, and we don’t want a shard of plate to rip up their insides.”

  Once Audrey and the other two smaller children were busy and distracted, she turned to Seth. “Do we have the money?”

  “I’m sure we’ll come up with something by then,” Seth said with as brave a face as he could manage. “Their rent will help, and we can sell one of our animals. Lydia needs new shoes, but they can wait a month, since she’s not doing hard field work yet. I can use the money set aside for those. Then if we scrape up—”

  “They should do it,” interrupted John. “They should take the offer.”

  “No!” said Hishano. “We can’t give up our people.”

  “Give them up to what? Getting visitors?”

  Martha frowned. “They want to stay hidden, and good for them. Those Knyn are all the same. They’ll come in acting like they’re trying to help, but before you know it they’ve got the whole island mortgaged and under their thumb. That’s if the Mezazi Empire and the Baltese Raiders don’t get to them first.”

  “Well maybe,” huffed John, “if they’re not stupid and don’t take deals that they can’t afford—”

  “Don’t talk about your father that way!” snapped Martha. “Holt died because we were so poor, and it was take the deal or see another of you go. It’s not stupid to do what’s necessary to save your children.”

  Hishano tensed. They were starting to yell and fight. This didn’t happen on Tandoku Island. The only time he’d ever seen tensions this high he’d ended up cut nearly in half on a burning ship.

  “We will always do what’s necessary,” said Seth solemnly. John and Martha both turned to him, expectant. He’d calmed the waters, and while he couldn’t remove the tension entirely, his voice was able to blunt the sharp edges of the mood. “We’ll do what’s necessary and, if possible, we’ll also do what is right. I think we can get the money within the week, if we scrape and save, and if our guests help us. Can you help us?”

  Hishano nodded. He grabbed the ten mezcop from his pocket and held them out. It was painful to let them go, painful to see the money that should have gone toward their boat fare transferred from his small, soft, green hands to Seth’s large, callus-laden grasp, but he knew it was the right thing to do.

  Seth whistled as he received the money. “You did well for your first day.”

  “H’raldri said that we’d get paid more tomorrow if we find what he needs.” Would it be enough? The boat fare for all three of them was two mezsil, so in total they needed to come up with three hundred and fifty seven mezcop if they wanted to pay off the interest on Seth and Martha’s farm and afford passage to the next island. It would be a challenge doing even one of those things, but both? And what if the boat came early?

  Ishū started asking about some idea on how to make money in town while Hishano did the math on what they would need. Fifty mezcops per day. Five times what they’d been ecstatic to receive this evening.

  They couldn’t do it. They would have to choose between saving the farm and getting on that ship.

  Audrey had been watching him, studying him, and her face fell as his did. Then her expression turned to anger, and finally a determined pout. “I’m going to be an adventurer,” she said. Martha and Ishū were still discussing Ishū’s plan, but the others could hear her.

  “Not until you’re eight,” whispered Seth, almost as if by habit.

  “If we lose the farm, I’m not going to wait,” she said. “I’m going to go out to sea, and I’ll explore places, and find treasure, and I’ll send money back to you. I’m going to help people, help people like us, and fight bad guys.

  “And whenever I meet a Knyn,” she said solemnly, “I’ll kill them.”

  11

  Collection

  Gum-Gum Guffy was excited — they were gonna collect taxes! It wasn’t quite as heroic as catching wanted criminals, but it would have to do for now. It was weird that Sam hadn’t told them about this part of their mission beforehand, but that was okay. Captains had secrets, and all doubts were washed away when Guffy saw how excited the rest of the crew was. Far more excited than they’d ever been chasing Evyleen.

  After a couple of days at sea the town finally came into view.

  “That’s smaller than expected,” said a sailor. “Are you sure there will be enough, uh, ‘tax revenue’?”

  They were putting quote marks around words again. What weird sailors!

  “We do our duty, even if the town is smaller than expected,” said Sam. “And remember, if they resist, then it’s our duty to collect taxes by any means necessary.”

  The crew laughed and Syldris licked one of her detached spikes longingly, but Guffy gasped. He’d heard about bad people who avoided paying taxes but he’d never imagined meeting one!

  As the boat drifted closer he could see people pointing. Then he could see them running. Why would they do that? Were they behind on taxes?

  A small delegation of five men appeared out front. Four of them carried pitchforks and one of them had a cannon!

  “Get out, pirates!” yelled the man in front. He had large arms on a relatively thin body. Maybe he was some sort of blacksmith.

  “Put me on shore,” Sam said to Guffy.

  Guffy wrapped an arm around Sam and extended it until the captain was above the shore, then placed the man on the ground.

  “They’ve got good powers,” said one of the men, his voice quaking.

  “I said get away, pirates!” yelled the black
smith.

  “Pirates?” Sam yelled back. “You’ve got some nerve, calling us upstanding government agents ‘pirates’.”

  “I want to see proof!”

  “Of course, of course,” said Sam. He yelled back toward the ship: “Syldris, go find the proof while we dock.”

  Sam strolled toward the five men and they backed up. The man by the cannon tensed the most, getting ready for action. It looked as if the small cannon was already loaded; it was small enough that it would take dozens of shots to make the ship unsailable, but it was large enough that it could end a man’s life in one hit.

  “I want proof before you dock,” said the blacksmith.

  “Well, that’s not very tolerant,” said Sam in a disappointed tone. He came ever closer and began to turn his body into tin. “I’d expected more from people who are soon to be part of the Mezazi Empire.”

  Two of the men’s jaws dropped, but the blacksmith and the cannoneer held firm. The cannoneer had his finger on some sort of trigger.

  “Freedom. Tolerance. Power,” Sam said viciously. “That is the way of the Mezazi Empire. Don’t tell me that you’re deficient in all three.”

  The cannoneer’s finger moved a hair’s breadth farther than it should have and the cannon ignited. The metal ball sailed straight at Sam and he took it, iron on tin. It made a dent, pushing part of his torso a couple inches out of place.

  “Unreal,” gasped one of the men, horrified.

  “That’s our captain!” yelled a crew member in joy. “Go repossess those tax dodgers!”

  “I have freedom, I have power, and I have more tolerance than you scoundrels.” Sam reached the cannon. All but the blacksmith had backed away in terror, so it was the blacksmith that he grabbed. One metallic hand wrapped around the man’s throat. “This is all the proof you need.”

  “Just like he did in the stories,” said another crew member.

  “Haha, oh yeah… I’ve been wanting to see this.”