Another thrust of moth-wing in her vision. Loquolchi came neck and neck, shrilling through her drawn-back teeth, her star-mount flashing sparks in time to her song.
One final high note from Loquolchi, and...
There was nothing between them as they sailed over the finish line.
Thighs and biceps trembling, Cinrak’s dismount was more fall than finesse. Loquolchi managed to maintain some of her diva flow as the star let her go but only thanks to the products of a moth’s bottom. Obligatory cheers and a hish-hush of surprise rippled through whiskers and cupped claws. Not just the second winner in the history of the Great Chase, but a dead heat!
Cinrak grimaced into her now-mutilated bow tie. So many things warred within her pirate soul: love and annoyance for her marmot beau, pride and surliness at the shared win, a tenderness for her star.
Strangely, the two mounts bobbed in place, as if waiting.
Orvillia stepped forward, her crown lighting the way. Cinrak’s gaze and canny thoughts moved quickly from queen to waiting star to the light kept captive inside the headpiece by generations of rat queens.
Orvillia paused, watching the prize of Cinrak’s face. Her eyes flicked up at the same time she flicked a wicked knife free of her sleeve. Whispering deep, strange words, the queen tapped her right paw to the centre of her crown. The jewel throbbed, silvery light encasing her paw, creating a glove shimmering with the gifts of the sky. Orvillia tapped her wrist with the knife’s edge—gently, a ritual only—and the doppleganger paw broke free, leaving its flesh twin behind.
The crowd gasped.
“As petitioned, as promised,” Orvillia said, offering the ghost glove to Cinrak. “Will you marry me?”
Cinrak trembled as she bent low over the glimmering prize. She kissed the paw, real and unreal; the latter as solid as the former. “My majesty, nay. I love ye, but the sea is my mistress.”
The crowd tittered, and fairy hairdos flashed green and blue in surprise. Relief bent Orvillia’s grin into a jaunty angle.
“As for you...”
Orvillia turned to Loquolchi, who perfected her best sweeping bow, the moth dress aflutter. She looked between the capybara and marmot, her gaze dipping for a moment from midnight shrewd to a new-moon ocean delight.
A touch of left paw to the crown, a flick of the knife, and she presented another phantom finery to Loquolchi. “Will you marry me?”
Loquolchi pulled upright and brought the spectral spoils to her heart. “By the stars, no! I love you, but the stage always comes first!”
Orvillia breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s settled then. Marriage is such a ridiculous institution--all silly glances and restrictions on who to take to bed. Those tokens will get you into my court any time. Use them at your will, my loves.”
Orvillia planted a kiss on each of their cheeks, one-two, one-two. Blushes flourished. Tense glances offered reconciliation, then Cinrak and Loquolchi buried kisses in each other’s furry faces.
The crowd roared. Two consorts to the queen? And unmarried? Outrageous! Romantic!
Cinrak’s grin almost broke her face in two.
“One more thing, m...my love.” Cinrak said.
The queen cast an eyebrow as sharp as her knife.
With her rapier-honed reflexes giving the queen no time to react, Cinrak snatched the crown from Orvillia’s brow. The crowd fell into chaos, guards having to be elbowed back by Orvillia.
A swift twist of metal softened by the internal star’s breath, and Cinrak snapped the crown in two.
The star flowed out of its prison.
A thrum gripped the hearts of every rodent present. The two star-mounts danced around their freed sibling, bearing it carefully back to its cradle of the long, deep sky. Orvillia muttered a furious incantation, but the star ignored her, racing upwards. She heaved a sigh, shrugged, and offered Cinrak a smile equal parts shrewd and conciliatory. Oh aye, Cinrak knew she had a wily one on her paws here!
Loquolchi fiddled with the two pieces of the crown trying to fit them back together.
Cinrak put her arms round her two best girls. “Now ain’t that a sight,” she breathed.
Moon moths danced after the retreating stars, the Paper Moon dared another squizz, and the crowd sighed in sheer delight.
Search for the Heart of the Ocean
Tail the Fourth:
A Chinchilla, Beasts of the Deep, and a Lost Jewel, Oh My!
* * *
The North Wind stood to attention as the IRATE vessel Impolite Fortune sailed past the headlands towards adventure.
Captain Cinrak the Dapper, capybara pirate extraordinaire, breathed it all in, her mind’s eye turning the scene into words she could slip to a bard for the perfect opening of an Epic that should—would—be written if—when—Cinrak returned with her jewelled prize.
The grinning waves. The beaming sun. The figurehead meant to represent and yet not represent Rat Queen Orvillia straining to be off, reaching to embrace the open ocean. There, atop Shag Rock, chiffon streaming, Loquolchi, First Marmot Diva of the Theatre Rat-oyal, shrilling out the ‘Ode to the Ocean’. Before, on the docks, Loquolchi telling Cinrak she better come home alive or so help her, she’d kill Cinrak herself. And the Impolite Fortune herself, gleaming hard as the jewel she was setting out to find.
Cinrak blew her marmot lover a final farewell kiss, then saluted claw to brow for the North Wind’s spectacular contribution.
“Everything ship shape and ready to be fancy free, ser,” said First Mate Riddle, a patchwork rat, snapping a salute forepaw to chest.
“Open her up, Riddle m’lass.”
“Yes, ser!” Riddle slipped her eyepatch to the other side and glared with an empty eye socket down the deck. “You heard the cap! Let ‘er fly!”
The excited crew sang open the snapping sails which whispered taunts to the North Wind. As the breeze stiffened, Cinrak clutched her portfolio tighter. The North Wind could get frisky when excited. It would do her no good to lose star-turns of hard-won secrets to the greedy water.
One pouting snout stood out. Riddle twitched her head towards a young grey chinchilla skulking near the down ladder. Cinrak sighed, straightened her purple paisley bow tie, and pulled at the hem of her green silk waistcoat.
Time to deal with the new cabin girl.
“With me,” Cinrak growled in passing.
The girl put her head down and followed. Cinrak could almost take it as an insult, but she remembered well her own first sun on an IRATE vessel.
Cabin door clicked shut. Desk drawer lock clicked, hiding the portfolio. The pirates of IRATE loved each other, but at the end of the sun they were still pirates.
Cinrak drummed forepaw claws on the immaculate desk top.
“Competition be fierce for the apprenticeship you be doin’,” she said. “Ev’ry cabin girl from the Impolite Fortune have become respected commanders in the IRATE fleet. Ye balance looks good, m’girl, but your mind be elsewhere.”
The little chinchilla folded her arms. She was of age to serve with IRATE, but her thin arms, delicate paws, and drooping whiskers needed plenty of discipline to deal with the heavy work and merciless weather.
“Yes, ser,” the grey chinchilla sighed.
“Minerva, is it?” The girl looked away, clenched her jaw. Cinrak thought of how the youngling had winced when her mother had smothered her in farewell kisses. “I promised yer m’arm you’d be in fine and safe paws. An’ that comes with the IRATE life-time guarantee. But you gotta work with me here, Minerva. If it be a boy or a girl or a school or a desert caravan that be callin’ yer name, ye betta be tellin’ me now. Us IRATE pirates not be takin’ disrespect.”
The restless and heavy silence grew, getting itchy around the edges.
Deepest Depths, thought Cinrak. Maybe it would be best if I dropped this little one off at the next port.
The chinchilla burst out, “It’s not that I don’t want to be here, ser!” Then she looked everywhere for her escaping words.
Cinrak sat back. “Go awn.” She gestured towards a stool. The girl slumped down with a sigh.
“I do respect the Independent Rodent Aquatic Trade Entente, oh, I do, ser!” The chinchilla found her animation, black eyes gleaming. “I’ve wanted nothing more to be a pirate and serve on the Impolite Fortune and meet the people of the deep since I was a wee one, but I...”
Something familiar in the set of her whiskers, something deep in her dark eyes, made Cinrak decide. “I be listenin’. That’s what a good captain does.”
The chinchilla lifted her chin, flicked her whiskers once. “I am not who my m’arm told you I am. My name is Benj, and I am a boy. A cabin boy. If that means I must be displaced from serving on the Impolite Fortune, so be it. But please, ser. I do so want to meet the mers. And there’s something about the ocean, something out there, I can...smell it. If you must, set me ashore again, just don’t send me back home.”
Cinrak blinked once. Oh. A lost boy. This was much easier to deal with than a homesick apprentice.
“Deepest Depths, Benj. On Orvillia’s Crown, I swear yer most welcome here. The Impolite Fortune welcomes crew of many genders an’ fluidities. Ye be need guidance of that nature, talk to Cookie. Or second mate Zupe, they like to be a boy sometimes.”
A sigh like a great weight left Benj, and on the return breath, his chest swelled up. His smile finally crept in, if a little late to the party. “And you?” he said in a tiny voice.
Cinrak straightened her bow tie. “I be happy to teach you a thing or two ‘bout dapperness. It in me name.”
“Ser, thank you, ser.”
“Now. Go find First Mate Riddle. She be showing ye how to make bunk. Then see what supplies Cookie needs run fer dinner.”
“Yes, ser!” Benj’s salute smacked whip smart against the breast of his leather jerkin.
“And Benj?”
“Yes, ser?”
“We be makin’ a pirate of ye before this mission is over, and ye’ll earn your name addendum.”
“Yes, ser!”
The cabin door slammed and the room winced.
Cinrak chuckled and retrieved the secret portfolio. Maybe she’d become more ship m’arm than captain to the boy, but thems the wave breaks.
The shadow trailing the Impolite Fortune made Cinrak nervous, and it took a lot to make her nervous.
And this shadow was a lot: too succinct to be cloud reflection, too precise to be a fish roil. Too early for whales this far south, and too far off shore for a bank of inktons.
Cinrak didn’t believe in monsters, except when she did.
Three suns past Merholm, the shadow dissipated when Cinrak gathered the crew on deck for an evening feast. Everyone came dressed in their best frills and frocks, silks and stockings. Deck feasts were a prelude to some important announcement, and the Impolite Fortune’s turn of direction had had the crew muttering for suns. They heartily tucked into the platters of chilli or lemon doused fish, paella, cornbread, and orange grain pancakes. Cinrak decided to wait until they were well into their cups of cinnamon rum and honey whiskey before making her case.
As she practised her speech in her head, her gaze fell on Benj; he was a good, fluffy boy, faithful to mer-hair anemone tea. Cinrak often found him on deck late at night staring moonily down at the swift-still water, a cup of the sweet red beverage in his forepaw. It even sounded like he was whispering to the Paper Moon when it peeped shyly from behind clouds. He wouldn’t be the first apprentice to have a sweet love affair with the delicate celestial.
Cinrak banged her cup for attention.
“As ye can see by how well the North Wind blows, our journey didna end with the entente renegotiations at Merholm. I hope ye all enjoyed yer time partakin’ of the archipelago’s wonders, and getting’ acquainted with our mer friends.”
While the crew hollered and whistled, Benj blushed. The charming mers had fascinated him, and he’d spent hours in their library stuffing sea lore into his small big brain.
“But that be only the first phase of our mission,” Cinrak continued. “I be sorry to inform ye, we be not on a mappin’ and patrol of the southern coasts.”
“Coast five suns back-thataway,” someone yelled, and others laughed.
Cinrak took a deep breath. “I be blunt. The mission we undertake is a folly of my ego. The journey be difficult, treacherous, and one into the unknown. One which, in the end, will restore Queen Orvillia’s crown to its rightful place of beauty an’ style ‘mongst all the great jewels in the land. She be deservin’ only the best since I broke it asunder. Therefore, I go in search of...the Heart of the Ocean.”
Excitement rippled through the crew. Not a strand of fur moved on Benj’s body.
“I be not expectin’ any o’ this crew to fall in line with my wild schemes. As always, once ye assessed the rules of engagement, ye be more than welcome to dissent. There still be opportunity to make a swing towards the Gargan Peninsular, and I’ll let any crew member off at Gigantia and collect them on the way back.”
“That’s if we come back,” Riddle joked.
Cinrak let the feels have the run of the place for a moment: laughter, drinks swilling, quills and teeth and claws clicking, voices chittering.
“But ser,” broke in one of the deckpaws. “The greatest jewel in the world is said to be guarded by the the fearsome kraken, as tall as the queen’s castle with tentacles longer than ten vessels nose to tail!”
“Which is why, m’dear, we not be partakin’ of the flesh of the inkton,” Cinrak explained. “Kraken’s cousins have proven intelligent and good friends of rodentkind. Friends not be eatin’ friends. The mer archives tell us, yes, once beasts of Kraken’s size did exist. It be not our place to tempt the Depth’s wrath.”
The entire crew undulated two digits in a v shape of warding. Except Benj whose black eyes widened, and he sat straight up. Cinrak hoped superstition would come to him soon. All good pirates needed it.
Cinrak continued. “After star-turns of research an’ consultation with mer scholars, a bit of falling on the good side of Our Chaotic Lady, an’ a touch of ego, I come to the conclusion we must go to the Edge of the World.”
This knocked the air out of the crew and the North Wind. The South Wind kept its own council, and a good right it had to do so. The oceans did not give up their secrets lightly.
“The edge of the world, ser?” someone yelled. “Everyone knows the world is round. Just look at them horizon!”
Someone else shushed them with ‘read a book of human-tales.’
Cinrak stilled the rabble by holding up a forepaw. Benj’s whiskers quivered, emphasizing his stillness.
“The Edge of the World not be a myth or a human-tale. It be a riddle which points towards a great force of the natural world.”
Now Benj’s eyes were bulging out of his skull. Disappointment chipped out a little of Cinrak’s pride. She had hoped the cabin boy would be tougher than this.
Someone tapped Cinrak on the shoulder.
No. All crew were at the table.
Something tapped Cinrak on the shoulder.
A shiny wet tentacle slid into Cinrak’s vision. And kept going. And going. Undulating up onto the Impolite Fortune’s deck.
As the quivering Paper Moon pulled a cloud across its face and the rising Moth Moon peeked over the horizon, the crew dissolved into screaming, flailing chaos.
The kraken had a long, globular, and moist name.
“But she says you can call her “Agnes” until you get the hang of the rest of it,” Benj said, stroking a tentacle tip. The tentacle wriggled gently. A single castle window-sized eye peeped over the rail. The kraken’s orange spade-shaped head went up and up and up, slicing against the blue sky.
Cinrak closed her eyes for a moment, pretending she was below decks with the rest of the crew. If one couldn’t see the beast maybe it would stop existing. It hit Cinrak: Benj hadn’t been mooning at the water all those nights, he’d been talking to the kraken! Cinrak strained her ears in Agnes�
�� direction, but all she could detect was a hum like the wind strumming its favourite tune in the riggings.
“What be—” she attempted and failed the full name. “—er, Agnes wanting?”
“She’s excited that someone came looking for her,” he said. “She wants to help you find the Heart of the Ocean. She’s lost it too. She’s lonely, and she says it’s nice to have friends round these parts.”
This was all a bit too much. The tiny cabin boy translating for a monster who would barely make a morsel of him. The Impolite Fortune tracked all this time. A lonely monster of the Depths becalming the ship with a hug. Her reputation wouldn’t live it down if word spread that Cinrak the Dapper had almost wet her second-best pair of pants.
“Agnes wants to know why you’re looking for the Heart?” Benj said, quiet, like he was apologizing. Agnes blinked affirmation, her eyelid nicking a few splinters off the railing.
Cinrak straightened her vest and bow tie. Despite the big fright, she was proud of Benj. She didn’t know well how ocean or star magic worked, but perhaps there was a bit of the chinchilla in the kraken, or the other way around. Honesty, a pirate’s mainstay, was the best solution.
“As I be responsible for breakin’ apart Queen Orvillia’s crown to set free the Star of a Thousand Star-Turns, I bear responsibility for replacin’ the crown jewel with something equally, if not more, magnificent. The fabled Heart of the Ocean be the perfect solution. A prize worthy of Cinrak the Dapper and the Queen’s legend. But if Agnes is the Heart’s guardian, I be more’n willing to negotiate custody of the jewel.”
A few more of the crew had crept above deck, rodent faces vacillating between dread and wonder.
Large tentacles wiggled, setting the startled ocean a-slosh. Benj chewed his whiskers, absent-mindedly stroking the tentacle. “Agnes says there may be the possibility of a deal.”
Cinrak beamed.
“There’s a slight problem. The riddle of the Edge of the World. It’s not much of a riddle at all.”
The crew held their breath.
The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper Page 6