The platy family proved to be excellent hosts, and the travelers spent the most relaxing evening and night in days luxuriating in their hospitality. In exchange for some selections from Gragelouth’s stock, the fanner additionally provided them with substantial supplies of dried fish, fruits, crayfish, and freshwater oysters, as well as vegetables from the garden. Even Gragelouth had to admit that the riparian hermits had been more than fair in then’ dealings. As a result, they did not miss the supplies they bad been unable to obtain in Hygria.
The boat was sturdy and larger than expected. There were four sets of oars, which since they were traveling with the current no one expected to have to use save perhaps to fend the craft off the canyon walls should they grow unexpectedly narrow.
The single lateen-rigged mast was stepped solidly into the keep fore of the cabin. Its sail remained furled as they pushed away from the rustic rough-hewn dock and rode the tranquil waters of the tributary into the fast-moving current of the Sprilashoone.
They watched the farm recede behind them until a bend in the river blocked it from their view. The six youngsters ran along the beach, clicking then- bills by way of farewell, until they too disappeared from sight.
Buncan found himself wondering if he would ever see the little valley again. Certainly Gragelouth might, in search of what trade goods remained behind.
“This is more like it.” He made the comment to no one in particular as he leaned against the bow and watched the canyon slide by. The layered sandstone and granite glistened in the morning sun. Wild lizards and other native inhabitants scrambled in and out of clefts in the rock, pausing occasionally to peer from uncomprehending eyes at the boat drifting past below. Others sped out of the craft’s path, then- subaqueous activities temporarily disrupted.
“A definite improvement.” Having jumped over the side to cool himself, Squill had climbed back aboard over the low stem and now lay on his back on the front deck, soaking up the sun. Gragelouth handled the tiller while Neena hung over the side, trailing a paw in the water.
“To be back on a river.” She let out a low, whistling sigh. “ ‘Tis more than I could’ve ‘oped for.”
“I am glad you are pleased.”
She turned to look at the merchant. “Don’t you ever lighten up, guv? You should try an’ be more like me bro’ an’ I.”
“No one can be ‘like’ an otter except another otter,” Gragelouth declaimed firmly. “Your kind possesses the most extraordinary facility for delighting even in unpleasant circumstances.”
“Maybe so, pinch-face, but even you ‘ave to admit that our present circumstances are ‘ardly anythin’ but unpleasant.”
“I must confess that I am increasingly sanguine about our current situation.”
“Crikes, don’t overdo your glee. You might strain somethin’.”
“I miss the old wagon,” Gragelouth continued, “but one must be prepared to make sacrifices in pursuit of great goals.” He nudged the tiller slightly to port. “I admit that this method of transportation is both cooler and easier on certain select portions of one’s anatomy.”
“Bloody well right.” She swiped at a surface-swimming fish and missed. “So chill, and try to enjoy yourself.”
It required a conscious effort on his part, but by their fourth day on the river the ease of travel and promise of more of the same had even the perpetually dour merchant smiling. The current had increased and the walls of the canyon grown sheer, but they passed through with impunity.
It was midafternoon when a distant hum in the air pricked Squill’s ears. He was lounging near Buncan, who was taking his turn at the tiller. Gragelouth and Neena were down in the main cabin, cobbling together a lunch.
“Now there’s a sound,” the otter murmured, sitting up straight.
“Wot’s a sound?” Neena emerged from below, carrying a plate of assorted cold cuts. “Rapids?”
“Probably.” Squill helped himself to the food but ate with unaccustomed gravity.
Not much time had passed before the noise had grown noticeably louder. “Big rapids,” he muttered as he cleaned his whiskers with his tongue. He walked around the central cabin to stand in the bow, craning forward while sampling the air with nose and ears.
Moments later he shouted back to Buncan. “Oi, mate! We may be comin” up on a bit o’ a problem.”
“What sort of problem?” Buncan yelled up to him.
“ ‘Tis the canyon. It seems to disappear just ahead.”
Buncan strained to see ahead. “What do you mean, ‘it seems to disappear’?”
“ ‘Ard to tell.” Abandoning the bow, the otter scampered monkeylike up the mast and clung to the top, shading his eyes with one paw as he stared forward. Buncan squinted up at him.
“See anything?”
“Not bloomin’ much. That’s the problem.”
Gragelouth’s smile had vanished. “I do not like this.”
“Didn’t the duckbill tell us this river were safe?” Neena murmured.
“He’s never been down this far,” Buncan reminded her. “He told us that, too. He said there might be rapids.” The roar had intensified, progressing from loud to deafening. “Sounds like more than rapids to me.” He called to their lookout. “Anything yet, Squill?”
The otter was silent, looking like a large brown comma astride the punctuation of the mast. A moment later he let out a sharp bark and slid down to rejoin them. His eyes were alert as he confronted his tall human friend.
“Ain’t no rapids to worry about.”
“That is a relief.” Gragelouth sighed.
“ ‘Tis a waterfall. A bloody big one, near as I can tell.”
The merchant blinked doe eyes and then turned away to commence a desperate study of the passing banks. By this time the rock walls they were traveling between verged on the perpendicular.
“There is no place to land here. No place at all!” His thick claws dug into the wood of the gunwale. “We are going to go over.”
“Just keep calm, everybody,” said Neena. “Me bro’, ‘e’s been known to exaggerate. Now Bunkoo, do you recall the tale o’ when Mudge an’ Jon-Tom ‘ad to ‘andle a situation like this?”
Buncan thought back to the stories his father had told him. He nodded eagerly as the one she was alluding to leaped to mind. “The Sloomaz-ayor-le-Weentli! The double river.”
“Righty-ho. An’ remember ‘ow they escaped it?”
He nodded vigorously. “Gragelouth, take the tiller. My friends and I have magic to make.” Passing control of the boat to the merchant, who was becoming progressively more unglued with each passing moment, Buncan dashed below and returned seconds later with his duar.
“The Sloomaz interdicted four waterfalls at the Earth’s Throat,” he reminded his companions confidently. “Surely we can spellsing our way down one.” Ahead of the boat the now thunderous roaring had given birth to a dense, rising mist.
“We’d better,” agreed Squill, “or in a few minutes we’re all gonna be mush an’ kindlin’.”
“Words.” Buncan strove to inspire them as he strummed the duar. “Lyrics. Get on it.”
Neena stared at her brother. “I don’t know anythin’ about flyin’ over waterfalls.”
“Think of something.” Gragelouth clung to the tiller as though it were some graven wooden talisman, fighting to keep them on a straight course in the grip of the now relentless torrent.
“Floating,” Squill mused. “Gently descendin’. That’s wot we want.”
“I’m going to play.” Buncan felt the mist beginning to moisten his skin. They must be very close now. “You two improvise. Fast.”
They could see the edge through the fog, a boiling white froth marking the spot where the water plunged to depths unknown. The cascade might be a dozen feet high, or a thousand. Surely not that much, he thought as he played.
They were almost to the rim and he was beginning to panic a little himself, when the otters finally began to sing.
“Water
rises and water falls
Can’t turn away when it beckons and calls
Got to go over, got to see wot’s below
But we gots to land gently or we’ll sink, don’t you know?
Wanna set it down light as feather off a crow
Don’t blow It now Land us gently by the bow.”
The otters rapped smooth and easy, and Buncan followed them without effort. The glow at the duar’s nexus was concise and clear. None could have hoped for tighter harmony or crisper playing.
None of which was very reassuring when the boat nosed over the thundering edge of the falls and shot straight down, picking up speed rapidly as it fell.
Though they had to cling to the gunwale to keep from sliding down the deck and over the bow, the otters managed to keep singing. Buncan fell back against the rear wall of the central cabin and braced himself with his legs against the fortuitously narrow doorway. He needed to keep both hands on the duar. Thick arms wrapped around the swaying, useless tiller, Gragelouth dangled in midair above the now vertical deck.
They never did learn how tall the waterfall was, but it was high enough to allow the otters to slip in two more verses before they hit bottom. Whether Gragelouth’s screaming added to or hindered the spellsong was something else that would remain forever in the province of the unknowable.
Rocks leaped up at them, sparkling strangely silver. Water-saturated wind tore at their skin and clothes and fur.
An instant before they were smashed to bits on the rocks, a pale-green mist enveloped the entire boat. Gragelouth let out a terminal moan and shut his eyes. There was no pain as they struck, though Buncan experienced a sensation as if his entire body had gone to sleep and a million minute splinters briefly pierced his torso.
Boat and bodies shattered on the silver boulders. Through the mist he thought he could see his friends fly apart, still singing bravely.
He sensed the disparate parts of himself tumbling along underwater, sucked downstream by the inexorable current. Not far away he observed his disjointed hands still playing the miraculously intact duar. One of his eyes turned to look straight at its mate, and he blinked at himself. His mouth floated a few feet away, spinning lazily in the flow. His detached ears picked up the unmistakable and now slightly mystical rap of the otters. He felt no especial desire to try to locate his brain.
Bits of Gragelouth drifted by, the sloth’s uncommitted mouth bemoaning its fate in a gurgling litany.
Imperceptibly at first but with increasing speed, the fragmented parts of Buncan and sloth, of otters and boat, began to come together, to realign themselves within the river. He watched the boat re-form from two sides at once, since his separated eyes were momentarily located both to port and starboard. Shattered planks and crushed supplies slowly reconstituted themselves. The process, like the water in which they now drifted, was unnaturally silent.
It was also less than perfect. The cabin was set too far forward, and the tiller reattached itself to the stern upside down. The mast restepped itself at a slight angle. But the result was definitely their boat.
At the same time, he experienced an irresistible tugging sensation as the roaming parts of his body were ineluctably drawn toward each other. Eyes sought out sockets, organs the torso, feet their missing ankles.
It was that final verse, he mused with detachment of a different kind. Not an instant too late, they had finally hit on an effective combination of words and music.
He watched with considerable interest as his various body parts swam toward him, wherever “him” was centered. Fingers, toes, other extremities rejoined the rest of his self near the boat’s stern. Gragelouth was becoming a recognizable furry blob proximate to the tiller, complete to his clothing. Squill and Neena re-formed on the bow instead of the stern, where they’d commenced the spellsong. More than once Buncan had heard Jon-Tom employ the expression “gone to pieces.” Hitherto he had considered it only a metaphor. As the echo of the spellsong brought them together again, it struck him that he was breathing underwater. Or was he?
He took a deep breath and hesitantly felt of himself. He was whole once more, seemingly only a little sore for the experience. Forward, the otters struggled to their feet and hurried to rejoin him. Gragelouth lay slumped on the deck, as wrung out as a used towel in a public bath.
They were sailing along down the Sprilashoone, boat and bodies intact, the river flowing mellow and unthreatening beneath them. Also on either side of them. And overhead. They were in a watery tube, or tunnel. It was noisy as well as impossible.
“More like the Sloomaz than we thought, wot?” Neena examined the watery conduit quietly.
But it was not at all like that fabled river which ran through the northern ranges of Zaryt’s Teeth, as they discovered when the boat gave a sudden lurch and sailed up the side of the tunnel, continuing its progress until they were cruising along upside down, the original surface of the river directly below mem.
Buncan grabbed instinctively for the cabin doorway, then released it when he saw that he wasn’t going to plunge headfirst to the water below.
“Nothing in Dad’s story said anything about sailing upside down.”
Squill came sauntering toward him, hanging on to nothing. “ ‘Ere now; you don’t look quite yourself, mate.”
Buncan had to strain to hear clearly. Water in his ears, no doubt. He frowned as he considered his friend. “Neither do you.” Actually, neither did anyone.
For one thing, Squill’s head was protruding not from his neck but from his left side, just beneath his arm. His other arm was waving from where his head ought to have been. Then there was the more subtle problem of his left arm having been swapped for Neena’s. The slight difference in length was a clue, the disparity in fur color a dead giveaway. Not that they could compare fur, because Neena, to her utter mortification, was beneath her clothing as bald as a newborn human.
Nor did Gragelouth escape the confusion. Sizable, hairless, naked ears stuck out of the top of his head, whereas Buncan had acquired the sloth’s ears: comparatively small, gray-furred flaps of skin. That doubtless explained his current hearing difficulties.
They gathered upside down at the stern to contemplate their physiological disarray. Just as the boat had not reformed perfectly, neither had they. It was evident that in the process widely scattered body parts had sometimes taken the path of least resistance. In several instances this was not merely comical, it was downright embarrassing.
“Definitely a few kinks in that spellsong,” Buncan muttered.
“As kinked as this river,” Gragelouth added.
“This simply ain’t gonna do.” The hand atop Squill’s head gestured angrily.
“It certainly ain’t.” Neena was all but in tears over her condition. “Look at me. Just look at me!” She indicated her furless limbs.
“At least they’re in the bloody right places,” said her brother from beneath his arm.
Gragelouth’s absurd human ears twitched involuntarily. “The solution is clear. You must fix your spellsong and then sing it once again.”
“I knew we should have finished stronger,” Neena grumbled disconsolately.
“Thank goodness we got our own voices back.” Buncan shook the duar lightly. Water droplets fell past his head. A few experimental strums revealed that the instrument had survived the fall and subsequent awkward reintegration unharmed.
“This ‘ad better work.” Squill leaned against the cabin, bumping his head.
“Don’t make it sound like it was my fault.” Buncan tilted his head slightly to glare at his friend. “You two were the ones who came up with the lyrics.”
“Well, you were responsible for the bleedin’ accompaniment.”
“Arguing will help none of us.” Gragelouth held on to the tiller, more for support than out of any realistic hope of steering the inverted craft. “Please concentrate. I very much want my own ears back.”
“Hey, I didn’t ask for yours.” Buncan strummed his instrument l
ightly.
The otters conferenced briefly before Neena looked up, her face full of concern. “Wot if we try this again an’ it just makes things worse?”
“Wot could be worse than this?” Her brother regarded her from somewhere in the vicinity of his thud rib.
“Do you guys remember the words?” Buncan asked them.
Neena smiled wanly. Even her whiskers were missing. “I thought I were goin’ to die. When you think you’re goin’ to die, you remember everythin’ right clearly.”
He nodded, readied himself. “Let’s pick it up near where we left off.”
As they rehearsed, the boat slid down one side of the tubular stream, across the bottom, and began to crawl slowly up the other side.
“And let’s hurry. I’ve never sailed on anything like this before, and I think I’m starting to get what Dad calls seasick.”
“Oh.” Gragelouth examined him with interest. “I thought your present coloration was another consequence of our unfortunate condition.”
As the boat described acrobatic loops within the tunnel of the river, they sang and played. A now familiar silvery flame gradually enveloped the entire boat, sweeping over and through each of them with a cold, prickly sensation. It faded with the song.
When his vision cleared, Buncan noted that Squill’s head and arm had exchanged places. So had his own ears and Gragelouth’s, along with other portions of their anatomy no one had had the courage to discuss in detail. Neena had reacquired her coat of dense, carefully groomed fur, though she didn’t relax until she had counted each and every one of her restored whiskers.
Everyone was very much relieved.
“That were ‘orrible.” Neena preened herself as best she could without a comb. “Imagine goin’ through life with no more fur on your body than a “uman!”
“See,” said Gragelouth, pointing. “Your hymn of restorations has rejuvenated our craft as well.” Sure enough, the crooked mast had been straightened.
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