Kendermore

by Mary Kirchoff

  Trapspringer lifted his cap and scratched under his tight, silvery topknot. “Let me check.”

  Phineas’s heart raced as he watched Trapspringer reach into his cape and pull out a four-inch stack of faded, folded sheets of parchment. How did he hide all that in there? Phineas wondered.

  Trapspringer was leafing through the maps. “Ends-cape, Estwilde, Flotsam, Garnet, Lemish—how’d that get in here? It’s out of order. Fascinating city, though; have you been there? It’s very near Garnet—Kalaman, Kenderhome, Library of Palanthas—a wonderful place if you’re looking for a good book, but they’re a little strict about returning them—Mithas.” He looked up from the maps. “We’ve passed the Ks and no Kendermore.” He shrugged and moved to put the maps back in his cape.

  Desperate, Phineas reached into the cape and snatched the maps away, adding a hasty, “May I?” Faster and faster, he flipped through the sheets. But none of them seemed to fit with his part of the map.

  “I tell you what,” Trapspringer proposed. “If I ever find it, I’ll be sure to let you know. In the meantime, take any one of these. My personal favorite is this one here—” he said, randomly pulling a map out by its corner.

  “I only want the one of Kendermore, and you know it!” Phineas growled in frustration. He was tired of this cat-and-mouse game. What did Trapspringer want from him? “What do you want from me? Money? A share? Name it! Just stop toying with me!”

  Trapspringer stepped back, startled. “I don’t want anything from you. You want something from me, remember? You aren’t thinking very well, are you? It must have something to do with that ridiculously small hat you’re wearing. You really should switch haberdashers. Wearing a hat that’s too tight squeezes all the air out of your brain. Not to mention you aren’t wearing any shoes.…”

  “I know! I gave them away!” Phineas shouted.

  Suddenly, Trapspringer’s face lit up. “Gave them away! That’s what I did with the map! Some years ago, I gave a bunch of my maps away. There!” Trapspringer looked pleased with himself for having remembered. “I gave them to my nephew, Tasslehoff Burrfoot. He’s one of the Burrfoots I told you about,” Trapspringer continued, without noticing that Phineas’s eyes had gone blank. “He should be back here any day now. He’s marrying the mayor’s daughter, you know. When he gets back, they’ll let me out of this depressing prison.”

  Phineas’s vacant eyes traveled over the awesome beauty of his surroundings and his mind stumbled, trying to calculate its inestimable worth. He remembered the rickety bench where he had spent the night. Soundlessly, he repeated Trapspringer’s last words. Light dawned in his eyes.

  Some kender named Tasslehoff had the map, and he would be returning to Kendermore any day now.

  New strength surged through Phineas’s veins. He had only to wait until Tasslehoff showed up, and he’d have the map! But what if Tasslehoff never came back? The human remembered hearing, with some relief, that a bounty hunter had been sent after the wayward kender. And wasn’t the council holding his favorite uncle? Oh, yes, he’d be back.

  Caught up in his daydream, Phineas did not see Bigelow the gardener’s approach. He was carrying a sapling in one hand and a note in the other. As he handed the paper to Trapspringer, the sound of his voice interrupted Phineas’s thoughts.

  “I couldn’t help noticing as I was fetching it up here, sir, that it says Damaris Metwinger, the mayor’s daughter, has run away,” Bigelow announced before Trapspringer could unfold the message. “She wrote in a note that she got tired of waiting to marry someone she doesn’t even know and that she’s left for the Ruins and other parts unknown. You’re free to go, Trapspringer, since she’s welching on the marriage. Mayor Metwinger had to either give you a mayoral pardon or put himself or his wife in prison. Your nephew Tasslehoff is freed of his obligation, too, so he doesn’t need to come back either. I’m sure they’ll be sending word to his bounty hunter.”

  Phineas turned white and clutched at his chest.

  “That’s too bad,” Trapspringer said. “I was looking forward to seeing him again. Oh, well, our paths will cross eventually.”

  “Too bad about the marriage contract,” the gardener said absently, dirt falling in small clumps from the sapling’s roots as he plodded through the archways that led to the steps outside. “Kids these days have no respect for rules. I don’t suppose the mayor will be too keen on sending a bounty hunter after his own daughter, though.” Bigelow disappeared through the last archway, and his words became indistinct mutterings.

  But Phineas’s mind was reeling, an idea, desperate and dangerous, forming in his brain. Find Damaris and haul her back and Tasslehoff will still have to return—bringing the map with him. Phineas had no idea where Tasslehoff might be, but Damaris had said she was going to the Ruins, a favorite scavenging and picnic spot among the kender.

  Phineas did not notice Trapspringer skipping happily down the palace steps until he realized he was alone. He hurried through the vast archs and spotted Trapspringer’s reflection dancing in the rectangular pool.

  “Hey, wait! Where are you going?” the human called after him.

  The kender squatted on the shallow steps leading into the pool and deftly fashioned a paper boat from one of the oiled parchment maps in his cape. Wrapping a triangular piece of paper around a thin, straight stick, he attached it as a mast. Adding three small rocks as ballast, he gave the boat a gentle shove into the center of the pool.

  “Trapspringer, you said you want to see your nephew again?” Phineas asked anxiously. “Bigelow was right. The mayor will never send a bounty hunter after his own daughter. But if someone else—say, for example, me—were to bring Damaris back from the Ruins, your nephew would still have to return for the wedding.”

  “That’s awfully kind of you—what was your name again?—but not necessary. This sort of thing happens all the time with birthmates. One gets tired of waiting for the other. They’ll either get around to it eventually, or they won’t.” He jabbed at the boat with a long stick.

  “But I insist! It’s no problem, really. It’s the least I can do for that map,” Phineas added cautiously.

  “Oh, yes, the map.” Trapspringer looked up from the boat and nodded. “Come to think of it, I haven’t been to the Ruins in years. It might be fun.”

  “You needn’t come along,” Phineas assured him hastily.

  “But you’ll get lost without me,” Trapspringer insisted. “Besides, you don’t know what Damaris looks like, and I do.”

  All of this was true, Phineas had to agree. “We should leave as soon as possible. How about this afternoon after we collect supplies? And we must also make sure no one sends a message to Tasslehoff’s bounty hunter.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing, I’m a seasoned adventurer. Have I told you about the time I nearly went to the moon?” Trapspringer asked him. Phineas shook his head. “It’s a great story for the road. You just get yourself ready, and I’ll collect everything we need and meet you at your shop just past noon.”

  Phineas only hoped he could find his shop by the time Trapspringer showed up.

  Suddenly the autumn wind picked up and sent a small wave crashing over the side of Trapspringer’s little boat, sinking it in a second. Phineas wondered uneasily whether it was an omen or just a little maritime disaster.

  Chapter 9

  Tasslehoff, Gisella, and Woodrow stood on the bow of the ship: “the pointy end,” as Gisella insisted on calling it. Behind them, her huge wagon was secured to the single mast, since there didn’t seem to be much else to tie it to. The horses were tethered to the mast as well and hobbled to keep them from wandering about the deck. Their eyes rolled and their nostrils flared each time the ship rocked. Not even Woodrow could calm them completely.

  “So, let’s go,” Gisella announced abruptly. “Let’s get this thing moving.”

  Woodrow looked apologetic. “I was raised on a farm, ma’am. I don’t know anything about sailing a boat. I thought you knew how.”


  “Me?” she squealed. “Dwarves don’t even like water.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Tas began. “My friend Flint—you both remember him? Well, not very long ago, he had a bit of a boating accident. You see, Caramon—that’s our big fighter friend—was trying to grab a fish with his bare hands, and he stood up in the little boat, and it tipped over, and Flint couldn’t swim, and when Tanis fished him out, he was the most incredible shade of purple! Flint says it was from lack of air, but I say it was because he got so mad. It gave him lumbago.”

  “That’s too bad,” Woodrow said. “What does he do for it?

  “Flint says it helps to stay away from kender as much as possible,” Tas mumbled reluctantly.

  Gisella ignored Tas’s story. “How hard can it be, anyway? You just put this cloth up,” she proposed, fingering the white sailcloth wrapped around a stout, rounded piece of wood that tapered at the ends, “and then the boat goes where you point it, doesn’t it?”

  Woodrow frowned. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple, Miss Hornslager.”

  “Don’t anyone bother asking me if I know how to sail,” Tas said petulantly at the edge of their conversation.

  “Well, do you?” Gisella asked skeptically.

  “Of course I do!” he said, delighted to have their full attention. “I used to sail boats with my Uncle Trapspringer all the time.” Tas skipped happily over to Gisella, looped an arm around the mast, and swung himself in a half-circle, grinning.

  “You weren’t too far from right, Gisella,” he said, resting his hand on the piece of wood with the sail wrapped around it. “You raise this thing here—it’s called the yard—up this thing here—the mast—and hang the sail from it. But you steer with those sticks dangling off the back end of the boat.”

  “I think those sticks at the stern are called sweeps,” Woodrow said meekly.

  “I knew that, but I was trying to simplify things for Gisella,” Tas glared at him. “I thought you didn’t know anything about sailing?”

  Woodrow raised his hands defensively. “I don’t. Sorry.”

  “All right then,” Tas concluded his lesson. “All we have to do is figure out which direction the wind is coming from, catch some of it in the sail, and point our nose east. Sooner or later we’re bound to find something.”

  Tas licked his finger and held it in the air tentatively. He turned it this way and that, licked it again, and held it up as high as he could.

  Gisella leaned closer to Woodrow. “What’s he doing?” she asked furtively.

  “I think he’s trying to find out which direction the wind is blowing,” whispered Woodrow, afraid that noise would upset the kender.

  “I think it’s blowing from the north,” Tasslehoff announced at last. He turned to Fondu who, along with a half-dozen other gully dwarves, had volunteered to come along as deck hands for the “pretty-haired lady.” The deck hands were busy now spitting over the side and watching the bubbles drift on the waves. “Fondu, line up the crew.”

  With a resounding belch, Fondu grabbed his kinsmen by twos and propelled them toward the wagon. There, with their backs pressed against the side of the vehicle, they were able to form a line that was almost straight.

  Hands clasped behind his back, Tasslehoff paced up and down in front of the ragged ensemble. One of the gully dwarves—Fondu had called him Boks—jabbed his finger into his ear and was vacantly gouging and scraping when Tasslehoff spotted him. “Stop that,” the kender snapped, doing his best imitation of a fierce sea captain. “We’ll have none of that when you’re in ranks. This is a sailing ship, and you’ll act like sailors.”

  The gully dwarf hastily withdrew his finger, glancing at it wistfully before wiping it on his shirt.

  Tasslehoff began his orientation, walking around the ship and pointing out each item as he came to it. “That’s the front end up there, and the back end back there. The sides are there and there. The little house in back is the cabin. Never mind that, we’ll just call it the little house. That’s where we sleep. This big stick in the middle is the mast. We’re going to hang a big sheet of cloth on it, called a sail. Your jobs,” he said, turning back to face the gully dwarves, “—and this is really important—is helping to raise and lower the sail by pulling on these ropes.” Immediately the crew shuffled over and began yanking indiscriminately on ropes, sailcloth, and each other.

  “No, no,” hollered Tas, “not yet! Wait until I say!” The gully dwarves shuffled back to the wagon. “You can’t just go hauling on ropes willy-nilly or the whole ship will come apart. Now, one step at a time, do exactly what I tell you.…”

  Several hours later, at dusk, a kender, who was unaccustomed to giving precise instructions about anything, had managed to guide seven gully dwarves, who were unaccustomed to following instructions of any kind but especially unaccustomed to precise ones, through the complicated stages of hoisting a sail, raising an anchor, and launching an eighty-foot-long sailing vessel more or less across the wind.

  Gisella and Tas sat on the roof of the cabin, their backs against the ship’s rail. Because the cabin’s roof doubled as the steering deck, Woodrow stood to their right, manning the starboard sweep. A gully dwarf named Pluk manned the port sweep under the human’s watchful gaze. Looking like a boy about to stick his toe in icy water, Woodrow finally opened his mouth.

  “I hate to wilt anybody’s crops,” he began, “but without a map, how do we know where we’re going, and how do we tell when we get there?”

  Tasslehoff popped open one eye. “I’ve been giving some thought to that very question.”

  Gisella groaned.

  “There you go again,” complained Tas, “criticizing my ideas before I even utter them. You ought to develop a little more tolerance.”

  “Oh, let’s hear it,” Gisella moaned.

  “Thank you,” said Tas. “It seems to me that we have a long way to go back to Kendermore, at least five hundred miles, I would say. The more ground—or should that be water?—whatever—that we can cover, the better off we’ll be. So I think we should just sail east, or northeast or southeast, for as long as possible. When we finally run out of water, we’ll know that we’ve gone as far as we can.”

  Gisella turned her head slowly and regarded the kender. “Those were my very thoughts! Sometimes you surprise me, Burrfoot,” she admitted. “That settles it, then. We stay with the boat for as long as possible. Take care of the steering part, will you, Woodrow? Be a dear.” And with that decision made, she retired to the confines of her wagon.

  Woodrow looked to Tas. “For the time being, Woodrow, just steer away from the cliffs behind us. As long as they’re getting smaller, we’re moving away from them. Once they’re out of sight, which won’t be for some time, we’ll have to rely on the sun.”

  “How do you know so much about navigating a boat?” Woodrow asked ingenuously.

  “I don’t know anything about navigating boats,” Tas said matter-of-factly. “But I’m a mapmaker, and I rely a lot on the sun when I navigate on land. If it works on land, I can’t think of any reason why it shouldn’t work on water, too.”

  Woodrow nodded and watched the cliffs until they later disappeared in moonlight.

  * * * * *

  Early in the morning of their second day, Woodrow spied a land mass to the north, and by its narrow shape he knew it to be either a large island or a peninsula. He altered course to keep it in sight. “We can chart our progress by how quickly the land passes,” he reasoned.

  On the third day they passed through a channel that was perhaps ten miles wide, between the island and another spit of land. After narrowing gradually, the channel suddenly opened wide to the east. After a vote, everyone arbitrarily agreed that they should alter course again and parallel the east-west shoreline.

  That evening, clouds hid the stars.

  The sun never really came out the third day. Dawn was a dull gray, shrouded in fog. There was virtually no breeze, so the boat, christened Loaner by Gisella, made little pr
ogress. But to everyone’s relief, the wind picked up at midmorning, clearing the fog away and raising everyone’s spirits. The gully dwarves were happy enough anyway, having engaged in a game of “Gully Overboard,” in which they kept jumping, falling, or pushing each other off the boat, leaving Woodrow and Tasslehoff to toss them a rope and drag them back to the ship. Even the long-suffering human threatened to leave them in if they continued the game. Only a word from the object of their fascination, Gisella, put a halt to their antics.

  The wind continued rising steadily throughout the morning. By noon, Tas was standing in the bouncing bow of the boat, the long hair of his topknot flying over his shoulder, his tunic and leggings soaked by the spray blowing off the water.

  “If this keeps up, we should be somewhere awfully soon,” hollered Gisella, trying to be heard above the flapping canvas, slapping waves, and groaning ropes and timbers. Moments later, she retreated to her wagon to escape the wind and spray.

  Like ducklings, four of the gully dwarves fell into line and trooped toward the wagon behind Gisella. “Where do you think you’re going?” hollered Tas, collaring one of the deserters.

  “Me cold,” the gully dwarf bellowed. “All wet and blowy here. Warm and dry in little house.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Tas warned. “You’re all sailors now, and sailors don’t abandon their posts because of a little wind and spray.” At that moment, a thunderclap rolled across the sea and rain started pattering on the deck. “Or rain,” Tas added doubtfully. He hesitated. “Although rain is a lot worse than a little wind and spray.”

  The gully dwarves looked at each other, then back at Tas, confused as ever. At least they weren’t retreating to the cabin anymore, but neither were they returning to their positions.

  Tas suddenly looked excited. “I know! I’ll teach you a sea chanty.”