The Order of Odd-Fish

by James Kennedy

  She started. It wasn’t her imagination—something was whispering. Little voices all around her chattered softly in the darkness.

  A rock struck the back of her head.

  Even before Jo could cry out, Nick whipped out a slingshot and fired a stone into the darkness. There was a squish and a shriek, something tumbled from far above; a hushed gibbering echoed in the gloom all around them, and then there was silence.

  “What was that?” said Jo.

  “What? What?” said Ian wildly.

  “Shhh! Calm down!” said Nick, bringing his squid around. A creature was floating dead in the water—a gray, furry, monkey-like beast with a cruel little face and clawed hands and feet.

  “The groglings are out,” muttered Nick.

  “Groglings!” said Ian. “I’ve never actually seen one before.”

  “You’ll see plenty of them down here,” said Nick.

  The whispers returned, all around them now, louder and angrier. Nick held up his hand and listened to the hushed voices. Jo and Ian looked around into the darkness but saw nothing.

  “It’s not safe here anymore,” said Nick.

  “Where—”

  “Shhh! Follow me!”

  Nick spurred his squid onward, and Jo and Ian followed, surging through the thick water. The voices got louder and bolder, and stones whizzed through the air, struck off the walls, and made little splashes explode around them. Jo could just barely see gray little shapes climbing the ceilings and popping in and out of holes, every moment fiercer and more numerous. What had been an excited whispering and then an agitated chattering was now the roar of a hundred tiny throats, echoing up and down the caverns, filling their ears with a raucous gibber.

  “Go!” shouted Nick. “Don’t stop! Faster!”

  The groglings leaped out, flying from everywhere at once, as though the darkness had congealed into a hundred snarling shapes, dropping from the ceiling, springing from the walls, bursting out of the water. Nick tore them off and flung them away, Ian flailed uselessly at them, and Jo screamed as they climbed all over her, nipping her with slimy teeth.

  Nick flung away his torch. “Hold your breath!”

  “What?” yelled Ian.

  Nick’s squid reared and then plunged underwater with a tremendous splash. Jo grabbed her squid with both hands as it too bucked and dived. The slimy water gurgled all around her as the squid twisted wildly through underwater tunnels, and Jo could barely hold on. Then she broke the surface again, into darkness. She heard Nick’s voice somewhere, and a moment later Ian’s. Jo clutched her squid nervously. It was so dark she might as well have been blind.

  “Jo? Ian? Everybody here?” came Nick’s voice, just as jaunty as before. “That was close. The groglings have been getting peevish lately.”

  “Peevish, you say!” said Ian with heavy irony. “A touch out of sorts, were they, old chap? Perhaps a spot of tea would set them to rights, what?”

  “I’m sorry if that was too interesting for you,” said Nick coolly. “Perhaps you’d prefer something less stressful. I understand that knitting is very soothing.”

  “Knitting? I’ll knit you!” said Ian.

  There was an awkward pause.

  “Okay, that was kind of stupid,” said Ian.

  “Enough,” said Jo. “Where are we?”

  “Um…I’ve never been in this part of the cathedral before, actually,” said Nick, and Jo’s confidence sank. “But don’t worry. The squids know their way. I think.”

  The squids snorted quietly as they nosed their way down the pitch-black tunnel. Jo didn’t like being unable to see—her imagination created claws reaching out in the darkness, or a rotting face smiling inches from her own. When Nick’s squid brushed against hers, she gave a little shriek.

  “I think we’re coming to the center of the cathedral,” whispered Nick.

  “There aren’t any groglings here,” said Jo. “Why not?”

  Nobody answered. And the farther the squids swam down the flooded passageway, the nearer they drew to the cathedral’s center, the weirder Jo felt. She felt they were approaching a huge, slowly beating heart, murmuring just beneath human hearing. The water seemed warmer here, the darkness thicker, as though it was a substance of its own.

  They were suddenly dazzled by a flood of light and heat.

  A gigantic golden mouth opened before them. The huge, strange mouth was set in a carved brass wall swirling with olive and apple jewels and silver glyphs cut in curling grooves. The light blazed from the mouth itself, although the throat beyond was dark. Jo screamed and the squids panicked. It seemed the ruby-lipped, black-throated mouth was rushing forward to devour them, with all the noise and fury of an oncoming train, and Jo saw, or thought she saw, crouching in the darkness deep in the throat, a horrible shape.

  Jo barely got a breath and dug her fingernails hard into her squid’s hide before the squids howled and dived underwater. Her ears felt crushed with pressure, the water rushed by so fast she almost lost her grip, her lungs were tight and empty, she needed to breathe—soon she couldn’t wait another second—her grip was loosening, sharp lights were stabbing behind her eyes—and then the squid burst above water. Jo gasped for air as the squid plunged away, and was gone.

  Jo was left treading water. She couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t touch bottom. All was silent except for the occasional drip.

  “Ian!” rasped Jo.

  Nothing.

  “Nick…?”

  There was no answer. She swam a few strokes, but she couldn’t see where she was going. She tried not to think that she might be trapped or hopelessly lost—that nobody would ever find her down here, not even her body. For a dreadful minute she treaded water, her legs tiring, breathing deeply, trying not to panic. Then, echoing somewhere in the darkness, she heard a faint coughing. She swam toward it and saw a dim light ahead, and two figures on a concrete shelf near a sewer pipe where—thank God, thought Jo—daylight trickled through.

  Too tired to speak, Jo paddled the last few strokes and grabbed the shelf. Ian helped her crawl onto the concrete, where Nick lay sprawled out as if dead. Ian kicked open the sewer grate, and Jo smelled the fresh air. They were out.

  Jo and Ian stood outside the pipe awkwardly. It was a hot, cloudless day, and not a breeze stirred in the humming city.

  “Are you okay?” she said at last.

  “I don’t know…yeah, I think so,” said Ian weakly. “But Nick got knocked on the head pretty hard. Luckily I had a chance to grab him, before that…I don’t know. It was all too fast.”

  There was a nasty cut across Nick’s brow, and his scalp looked sickeningly askew. Jo gingerly smoothed his hair.

  She was astonished when it all came off at once.

  Jo was left holding Nick’s wig in shock—staring at his real hair, which was long, wavy, and blond. Nick’s face seemed even more effeminate than before. Even—

  Ian shouted, “I knew there was something strange about this guy!”

  “Nick’s a…girl?” said Jo, unable to believe what she was seeing. “Then what—”

  “Go through her pockets,” said Ian. “Maybe she has a wallet, or identification, or something.”

  Jo awkwardly searched through Nick’s clothes and found a familiar jeweled key. She held it awkwardly for a second before she realized what it was.

  Ian said slowly, “What…what is Nick doing with Lady Agnes’s key?”

  Jo stammered, “M-maybe we should go back to Lady Agnes’s house, or…”

  “If she’s still alive!” said Ian. “I think there’s more to this ‘lad of the streets’ than we thought! Jo, what if Nick is ‘Duddler Yarue’? This is a fiasco—I bet if we go to Lady Agnes’s house, we’ll find her dead! How else could he have gotten the key? This Duddler Yarue probably just took us underground to finish us off!”

  “Impossible,” said Jo weakly—but it all hung together. Lady Agnes’s house wasn’t far away. They took off, half running, half walking, dragging “Nick”
roughly between them. They were all drenched, their bones ached, and they smelled like the sewers; people in the street watched them suspiciously. Just when Jo was afraid the police were going to stop them and ask why they were dragging around an unconscious girl, they finally arrived at Lady Agnes’s. Jo slipped Nick’s jeweled key into the lock and opened the door.

  There was nobody home. Jo and Ian carefully called out “Hello?” and “Lady Agnes?” but no one answered. Ian searched the house, looking in all the rooms, while Jo heaved “Nick” onto Lady Agnes’s chair in the front parlor, examining the cut on her forehead.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” said Ian, coming in with some bandages he’d found. “Where’s Lady Agnes’s butler? Didn’t Lady Agnes say she never left the house? And why was this girl acting like a boy?”

  Jo suddenly realized what must have happened.

  “That’s it!” she said. “I knew I recognized Nick somehow!”

  “You recognize Nick?” said Ian slowly. “Then why didn’t you tell—”

  “No, Ian, there is no Nick! And no Duddler Yarue—no Lady Agnes, either. This girl—she just made it all up!”

  Ian looked at Jo as if she had told him Lady Agnes was an ape.

  “Listen, it all fits!” said Jo. “Why would Nick have Lady Agnes’s key? And why isn’t Lady Agnes here now? Because Nick is Lady Agnes! This girl dressed up as an old woman, gave us a quest, and then dressed up as a ‘lad of the streets’ and met us outside! Lady Agnes, Duddler Yarue, Nick—they’re all the same person—they’re all characters, played by this girl!”

  “Wait, wait—”

  “You said it first,” said Jo. “You told Lady Agnes this wasn’t a proper quest, but something out of a bad detective novel. You were right—we were in a bad detective novel! It was all a game! This girl—Nick, Lady Agnes, whatever—she’s been playing with us!”

  “But how could she fool us into thinking she’s two different people?” said Ian.

  “Because she’s an actress! She even practically told us her name! It’s the oldest cliché in the book. Unscramble the letters of Duddler Yarue. This is the girl from Teenage Ichthala!”

  Ian gasped. “Audrey Durdle?”

  “Right, you’ve got me. I knew I’d get caught sooner or later.”

  Jo and Ian turned, confounded. Audrey Durdle—for it was she—opened her eyes, nursing the lump on her head. “Nick” was gone, and so was “Lady Agnes” Audrey’s real voice was husky and low, as if she had a slight cold, without a trace of Nick’s boyish drawl or Lady Agnes’s deathly croak. Even her eyes were different—not feeble like Lady Agnes’s, or bright and hard like Nick’s, but sleepily mischievous.

  “I’m actually glad you found me out. I don’t know how many more fake quests I had in me, you know?” Audrey smiled uncertainly at Jo and Ian, as if hoping that they’d appreciate the joke, and a little nervous that they wouldn’t.

  Jo said, “I’ve seen you on Teenage Ichthala, but seeing you here—”

  “Oh, please don’t talk about that show,” said Audrey, wincing. “I am so sick of it. I wish I’d never taken that role. All anyone wants to talk about are those idiotic Ichthala myths. The show bores me to death. The only way I have any fun or meet people is by making up these fake quests.”

  Ian snapped out of his astonishment.

  “You wanted to…to have fun?” he said angrily. “You wanted to meet people? We are squires of the Odd-Fish, not your toys to play with! We could’ve been doing other quests! Real ones!”

  Audrey had looked shyly hopeful, but all at once she froze in embarrassment.

  “Ian, don’t be petty,” said Jo quickly.

  “No, he’s right. I guess I was wasting your time.” Audrey looked away. “I didn’t call you at first because I was tired of doing this Lady Agnes thing. But then one day I was shooting in East Squeamings when you two ran through the set, chased by all those Wormbeards and the police, and I thought, Here are two people I want to meet.”

  Ian said, “That was not exactly our finest hour.”

  “I don’t care,” said Audrey. “I just want to see your lodge. I want to meet the other squires.”

  Jo whistled. “If we took you to the lodge, Nora’s head would explode.”

  “Who’s Nora?” said Audrey. “What’s wrong with her head?”

  “She’s a Teenage Ichthala fanatic,” said Ian. “If she met you, she’d tie you down and slap you until you’d told her every last thing about that show.”

  Audrey hesitated, then finally said, “But…can I really come?”

  “Of course,” said Jo. She looked over at Ian.

  “I’d be glad to have you,” said Ian.

  For the first time, Audrey smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

  Audrey walked with Jo and Ian back to the Odd-Fish lodge. It was a beautiful night, and the city felt young and new; all of Eldritch City glimmered around them as they walked and talked. Jo felt something fragile, as if she was on the verge of something that was all the better because she didn’t know exactly what it was. The streets were invitingly dark and the lights seemed fresh and bold: glaring lights over the boulevards, lonely lights in apartment windows, garish lights in the shops, the red flash of a lit match, the buttery glow of the moon. Jo looked from Ian to Audrey and back again as they talked and walked, their faces passing in and out of the light. They took the long way home.

  JO and Audrey became fast friends. Audrey dropped by the lodge often, usually in some new disguise: one day she was a stuttering deliveryman, the next a hapless tourist, and once she fooled everyone into thinking she was Sir Festus. Audrey had a seemingly inexhaustible collection of false whiskers, men’s clothes from thirty years ago, and fat suits.

  At first the other squires didn’t believe Audrey was really the Audrey Durdle; only after she reluctantly acted the Ichthala part, with its peculiar voice and mannerisms, did everyone shout with recognition and crowd around her in wonder. Audrey also admitted she was the “Lady Agnes” who had sent them on so many ridiculous quests. Some of the squires were furious at first, but Audrey was too charming for anyone to be angry with her for long.

  Then there was Nora. When they’d first met, Nora had said, trying to stay calm, “So, is it really true that the Belgian Prankster wrote Teenage Ichthala?”

  “Oh, he’s the one who wrote that crap?” said Audrey. “I just read whatever they give me.”

  Nora flinched, slightly daunted, but pressed on. “Still, you can’t deny that the nefarious plans of the Silent Sisters are foretold in your show! Doesn’t that scare you?”

  “You don’t seriously believe that Silent Sisters nonsense?” said Audrey, surprised. “That’s just fantasy, you know.”

  The expression that came over Nora was like watching two speeding trains collide. Her face went from incomprehension to shock, pity, and then barely restrained contempt in a matter of seconds. “Well, of all the—whatever,” said Nora, and for a few days treated Audrey coolly.

  Audrey hadn’t meant to be rude; to make up for it, she gave Nora the scripts for all the episodes of Teenage Ichthala that hadn’t been released yet. “We finished filming the series last week,” said Audrey. “So I don’t need them anymore, anyway.”

  At first Nora was elated and threw her arms around Audrey, but then she suddenly pulled away, gasping, “Wait—did you say Teenage Ichthala is ending?”

  “Yeah, we wrapped it all up last week,” said Audrey. “Those are the last eight episodes.”

  Nora looked as though she had been stabbed. Clutching the piles of scripts to her chest, she whispered, “Excuse me…I’ve got…a lot of work to do….”

  After that day, Nora was rarely seen anywhere but at the café around the corner from the lodge, where she pored over the scripts obsessively, scrawling notes in the margins, constructing bewildering charts of arrows and boxes and labels. Sometimes Jo would ask her what she was doing, but Nora would only answer, “No time. I’ll tell you later. It’s all here, Jo—everyth
ing,” and then go back to her notes, trembling with excitement.

  Jo’s life became more interesting with Audrey around. Audrey breezed through the lodge as though she owned the place, opening doors and exploring places that Jo hadn’t even guessed existed. Sometimes they were caught straying into forbidden rooms, but if a knight scolded them, Audrey’s face would go blank, as though the knight were speaking a foreign language. When the knight was gone, Audrey would go back to doing whatever she pleased.

  One forbidden room was Dame Myra’s greenhouse, a glass fortress on the roof of the lodge full of freakish plants either nearly extinct or the unhappy results of Dame Myra’s crossbreeding experiments. The squires stayed away from the greenhouse. Rumor was that a couple of years ago, Dame Myra’s squire had carelessly brushed against a shrub, and a few days later, leaves grew all over his body; a month later, his skin became bark-like; finally, his feet sprouted roots. There was nothing to be done. He was discreetly planted outside the city and not spoken of much anymore. Dame Myra hadn’t had a squire since.

  So when Jo and Audrey sneaked into the greenhouse, they crept very cautiously down the aisles of plants, careful not to touch the bizarre flowers and weeds. A clump of chartreuse moss muttered scathing insults as they passed; a writhing, hanging lump reached out oily vines, desperate for affection; deliriously colored butterflies as big as Jo’s head fluttered all around, and the air felt warm and heavy with moist smells.

  Audrey prodded a large, fleshy mass. “Jo, what’s this plant?”

  “That’s not a plant. That’s Dame Myra.”

  Audrey frowned. “Well, how odd.”

  Dame Myra sighed, got up, and trudged away to water some beeping crystal-like flowers on the other side of the greenhouse. Audrey followed, chattering casually at her. Dame Myra seemed alarmed that anyone would talk to her and kept casting confused glances back at Jo. Amazingly, Jo and Audrey never got in trouble for this or anything else they did; there was an air of innocent privilege about Audrey that somehow excused her.