Deomans of Faerel_Contemporary Fantasy

by Ted Fauster

“What? This?” He pulled the klutzy device from his face and pointed toward the prow. “The woman’s bust at the bowsprit. You know, the big carving built into the prow? It is hollowed out.”

  Jack strained to see ahead, cursing inwardly at his terrible land-sight. “You pulled it out of her bust?”

  Marlin sighed. “No, from the bust, the bust of the woman…” he pointed.

  “Oh yeah,” Jack said, realizing his mistake.

  Marlin looked up at him strangely, his buck teeth sticking out. “There’s a bench inside, and a big spot-lantern hidden in her mouth. But I’m afraid it’s filled with mostly water now instead of brynstan oil.”

  “Brynstan.” Jack nodded. “That’s the stuff that originally powered the engine for the paddlewheel.”

  Marlin bobbed his head. “A sulfur ore that’s mined in the Underlands. It powers just about every mechanical device throughout the lands. Brynstan oil is a derivative that’s commonly used to fuel lanterns and such. There’s a little left in the galley lanterns, and in your quarters. Thankfully, we won’t really need much.”

  Jack nodded. “Okay.” He pointed toward the prow. “So I suppose that’s where the, uh… navigator… is supposed to sit?”

  Marlin grinned, nodding. “Captain Grantham referred to it as the lookout. But I think navigator has a more pleasant ring to it, yes.” He looked anxious.

  Jack waved him on. “Well, go on ahead. I’m not stopping you.”

  Marlin became nearly buoyant with excitement. “Ooh, I almost forgot, there are speakholes.” He pointed excitedly to a round hole just above the wheel. “See, there’s one up there too! We can talk to each other through them!” His face turned sour. “Although it is sometimes difficult for me to hear you when the weather is bad.” He gave one last perfunctory look. Jack laughed and waved him off again.

  Jack sailed on until he was sure he had total control of the ship. He’d added a shiny cutlass to his ensemble, just one of many fine weapons he’d found in a cabinet at the back of the captain’s quarters. Whoever this Grantham guy was he sure had a swashbuckling sense of style. Jack could get used to that. Pirates were awesome.

  The sword was a magnificent piece of work. The blade was made of a silvery metal and was long and curved. The tip was scalloped and ended in a sharp point. The hilt was expertly fashioned from a golden metal, with a wide, curved hand guard shaped like a dragon. A jade gem about the size of a golf ball was fixed into the pommel. It felt a little strange to be wearing a dead man’s clothes, piloting his ship, and now brandishing his fanciest sword, but he soon got over it.

  After only a few hours, his skin became itchy and his head began to ache. Possibly the wind accelerating his drying. He leaned forward and spoke into the can, the speakhole, as Marlin had called it. He needed a break. He needed water.

  He brought the ship to a complete stop and stripped down to his skivvies—which now consisted of a tan cotton breechcloth that could almost pass as a pair of boxers—and dove headlong into the sea.

  Something about the immediate liquid hug he received, complimented by the somber softening of sound—a deadening of noisy airborne static whose stand-in was a much more subtle and rich symphony of vibrations that could be felt over his entire body—made him feel instantly at home. With his duo-lenses snapped into place and his neck slits fully dilated, he spread the webbing between his long toes and gave a swift kick.

  His sight on dry land may have been handicapped, but his vision beneath the waves was incredibly robust. Although there was nothing but wide-open sea about, there was much more in the water than any normal man would have been able to glimpse, even one wearing dive goggles.

  The sea was a cocktail of colors that shifted from soft blue-greens, subtle pears, and shades of turquoise to rich jades and an almost glowing lime. Aided by a kind of sonar-hearing that perfectly synched with his superhero-quality vision, he was able to sense every shimmering wave, every softly ebbing current. Everything form the tiniest krill-like speck to the darting outlines of schools of fish became absolutely inescapable.

  He extended his toes and gave another good snap, zooming off a surprisingly far distance into the briny deep. He glided to a stop and nearly panicked when he realized he could no longer see the ship, but he almost laughed out loud when he realized the ship was going to have to be a pretty good distance away to go un-sensed. His underwater senses were just too good. It was like finding a screaming hunk of Limburger cheese in an otherwise empty refrigerator.

  After half an hour or so, he resurfaced without the usual gasp for air that ordinarily followed a lengthy submersion. He looked over at the stark, almost disappointingly two-dimensional image of the rusty ship. At last, his duo-lenses slipped away and his stunted land-sight returned.

  “What’s the matter?” Marlin inquired as he clambered back aboard. “Do you need more time.” But the truth was he didn’t. Once he’d become fully submerged, it hadn’t taken long for his body to completely replenish itself. Just a tiny bit of seawater flowing past his gills had provided an almost immediate rush that felt as if he had swallowed an entire case of energy drinks.

  “I’m fine, Marlin. Just fine.”

  He decided that he and Marlin should probably go below and figure out a better method of navigating than just sailing about. He was quite used to the workings of the ship by now, but the Prinkipria was just sailing on aimlessly. It was time to get serious. They needed to plot a course. But there was still one more matter that begged for attention.

  Within the privacy of the captain’s quarters—a rustic but somewhat elegant place that contained a puffy bed, a kind of woodstove, a bookcase, a few cabinets and some furniture—Jack came clean, fully admitting his complete and utter ignorance of the sea. He immediately felt hollow for not having said so before.

  “I mean, come on. I was raised in a desert.”

  “In a desert?” Marlin snorted. “H… how is that possible?” But he hadn’t really asked the question. It was said more like someone trying to avoid becoming the butt of a joke. He adjusted his glasses and pushed through the pile of maps and charts they’d heaped upon a table. “Not to worry. The ship has found her new captain.” He looked up. “So, how much sailing time have you logged altogether?”

  Jack shook his head. “I never said I knew how to sail,” he reiterated. “I’ve never actually been on a ship before.”

  Once more, Marlin didn’t really seem to be listening. “Not to worry, not to worry,” he mumbled as he continued to browse through the documents, his fleshy nose twitching. “You’re an intelligent man, as am I. I’d wager you also have a propensity for learning.”

  Jack scrunched up his shoulders. “Well, sure. I mean, I pick up on things pretty fast. But I’ve never been on a ship before.” He laughed nervously. “Hell, I’ve never even seen an ocean. Any ocean.”

  Marlin looked up, utterly perplexed. “But… but that’s simply preposterous.” His stubby tail drummed nervously against the floorboards. “Were you imprisoned somewhere as a youth? Held captive in a tank?” Jack crossed his arms and shook his head, not quite sure of just how next to proceed. Marlin nearly burst. “Well come on then, out with it already!”

  “I… I don’t remember.”

  The oversized rodent shook his head and muttered something beneath his breath. “Right. Well then.” He adjusted his glasses and returned his attention to the documents, spreading them out across the table so that Jack could see them as well. Some were charts of the stars, others of what looked like currents or tides within whatever ocean it was they were now sailing. He finally selected a weather-beaten expanse of yellowed paper coated with wax. He smoothed it out before him.

  A rough map of an ocean, some continents, and a few rather intricate bestial sketches were scrawled on it in varying colors of ink. Marlin scrunched up his furry face as he examined the sketch, then he drew the index finger of one paw across the surface, tapping a black fingernail at a point somewhere in the middle. Quickly, he covered up the wri
ting that appeared above the spot. He jutted out his bucktoothed jaw, looking up at the ceiling with his eyes pinched shut as if he were about to sneeze.

  “Alright then. So I’m guessing you’ve no idea what part of the world you’re in, let alone what ocean?” When Jack shrugged, he moved his paw aside. “Right. Well, it’s a tough one to remember. We’re in the Eastern Seas.”

  Jack chuckled. “Okay. Let me explain.”

  Marlin pushed back from the table. “Explain? Everyone’s heard of the Eastern Seas, even the most common of commoners. How could you possibly have never heard of them?”

  Jack no longer saw any point to keeping his mouth shut so he just spilled the beans. Besides, if he was going to get anything done, to make any progress at all, he was going to have to speed things up considerably. This was taking far too long. He was going to need help too, and keeping Marlin in the dark was just too much of a gamble.

  He told him everything, even the part about waking up in the hospital. When he had finished, he looked down at his pale-green skin.

  “I can only imagine what this looks like, what this sounds like, but I’m just a man,” he said. “Nothing more.”

  A curling grin spread across Marlin’s furry face. He removed his glasses and began polishing them with the tongue of his shirt.

  “The Renewal,” he said blandly. “All races have their own version of that same, sad story.” He held out his stubby arms in mock solemnity. “The legend speaks of a group of Travelers from another world who will open the doors for a life after death, a chance to commune with a benevolent power greater than all the gods of the Underworld.” He snickered. “Tales, nothing more than tales to give hope where there is none. We all die, Jack. We all die sad and alone.”

  “Look,” Jack said. “I’m telling you the truth. I was sent here to help.”

  Marlin curled the flexible arms of his spectacles back over his ears. “Help? Help with what? The Renewal is a fairy tale. No one actually believes in it. Except maybe for a few fanatics. It’s ridiculous to believe that anything happens after we die.” He chuckled. “We are all simply born to live out our lives as best we can until we are placed in the ground. It’s as simple as that.”

  It sounded so much like what most people said back on Earth, only there were plenty who believed otherwise, who believed there was something more after death, that you didn’t just rot in the ground.

  “Well, it’s not just me,” Jack insisted. “A few others came along. Two women and another man. I’m supposed to meet up with them in someplace called Arythria.”

  The fur above Marlin’s eyes squished up in a bunch. “Arythria? The place where the mad angel is said to live all alone in the Felsen Bog?” He laughed again. “Oh that’s rich! Simply rich!”

  Jack couldn’t tell where that left them. He suddenly felt both silly and angry. He’d never been very religious, but he had been raised with at least some semblance of faith. Somewhere, deep down inside, this was eating at him in a way he hadn’t expected.

  Marlin seemed to sense his anxiety. He stood slowly. “Look, Jack. I want to believe you, really. But you have to realize what you’re telling me is about as crazy as it gets.”

  And all of this coming from a four-foot talking hamster…

  Jack thumped his index finger down on the stack of maps. “Look, let’s just get to Arythria, shall we.”

  Marlin held up his paws. “Okay, I can show you how to get to Arythria once we make Overgaard. Arythria lies inland.”

  Jack folded his arms and nodded. “Okay then.”

  The entire conversation left the little rodent with an ever-doubting look upon his face. But at least the air had been cleared. Marlin expressed his sincere thanks for finally being back at sea. His only parting suggestion was that Jack keep his little secret to himself, which only made Jack all the more perturbed.

  There was no sense in fighting about it. Clearly, Marlin now believed he was nothing more than someone who had lost his mind. If it got him to Arythria then he didn’t really give a damn. For now, there were more important things to attend to—like the large craters speckled across the main map.

  “The sailors call them vaults,” Marlin explained as he adjusted the arm of some brass device. He stepped to one of the oval windows and held it up to his face. “Basically, they’re bowl-shaped depressions in the seas.” He crossed back to the desk to check the map against whatever reading he had just taken. “Usually round. They can drop down suddenly.”

  “You mean like potholes?”

  Marlin lifted his eyes. “I’m not sure what a pot-hole is. But yes, these are holes of sorts, places where a ship can slip down and become trapped.”

  “Pretty wild. What’s at the bottom?”

  “The bottom of the sea or the bottom of a vault?”

  Jack raised one brow.

  Marlin chattered his teeth. “Now don’t get testy. You keep insisting you’re from some other world. I’ve no idea how much you know. Look here,” he said, pointing to a long, wavy set of parallel lines. “These are the natural shelves in the sea. The entire surface is made up of different elevations.” He held his paws out flat, shifting them up and down. “Different levels of water. For the most part, shelves are navigable, as long as you can find a strong enough current to pull you back up. But if you travel down too far and it can be difficult to climb back out.”

  He ran his stubby finger round one of the swirling crater shapes. “Vaults are different, like holes in the ocean. Most of them are just big depressions where a ship can drop down and become lost forever.” He moved his finger over to where one that looked more like a small hurricane had been circled in red ink. “But some of them are shortcuts.”

  Jack blinked in amazement. The fact that the seas were uneven, that they were made up of different layers, sort of like a stretched-out liquid Grand Canyon, was amazing enough. But this was something just plain weird.

  “You mean to tell me that some of these things, these vaults, can be navigated? That there’s a way to… to pass through them?”

  Marlin nodded. “They’re called tunnel vaults.” He drummed his finger on the red circle. “And this is the very one we travelled through, in this very ship, to get here. It we can manage to pass back though it will take us to within a day’s sailing of Overgaard.”

  Jack liked the sound of that. He pushed the chart aside to reference one of the maps, one that showed the island. From the looks of things, the tunnel vault wasn’t that far from the island at all. He looked up at Marlin with just a smidge more compassion.

  “Wow. You’ve been this close to something that could have taken you back home this entire time?”

  Marlin shrugged. “And what was I to do? Fashion a raft out of bamboo and palm fronds and float straight out into the damn thing? These vaults are tricky. You have to enter them at the right angle and speed. If you don’t, they can suck you under or even spit you straight back out.”

  Jack nodded, trying to ignore the fear in what the little hamster had just told him. Still, just the thought of having been so close to salvation had to have been an agonizing disappointment for the little guy. Marlin just grinned and held up his wineskin.

  “Thank the gods for this.” He took a quick sip. “Made the time pass much, much more affectionately.”

  Jack stared. “So what became of the crew?” he asked. “The others?”

  Marlin grew sullen. “They were pirates, Jack. The Raratong have encountered them before and they’ve no use for them.” He wouldn’t say anymore, but Jack got the idea.

  Marlin returned to his chair. Together, the two of them examined as many documents as they could. Most weren’t much help, but there were enough of them to construct a loose hypothesis of where they were in relation to the island, and in what direction they would have to travel to hit the tunnel vault.

  “They’re rare,” Marlin added. “So it’s not like we’re going to stumble into the wrong one. The problem is that there are many other vaults out ther
e. Some even move. These are called roving vaults.” He hunched up his shoulders and shuddered. “Yes, we’ll want to steer clear of those.”

  Jack scratched at his chin. The answer suddenly became so obvious. He nearly slapped Marlin from the chair.

  “I’m a fishman! When we spot one of these vaults I’ll just swim out ahead of the ship and check things out!”

  But Marlin didn’t sound very supportive of the idea. “Yes, I suppose that could work. But vaults can be very dangerous. And you’re not even fully versed in what it is you’ve transformed into. You’ll need some time to adjust, time to get used to your new body.”

  Jack chuckled. “I thought you said you didn’t believe me?”

  Marlin tsked and rolled his eyes. “I never said I didn’t believe you. And in any case, you certainly believe that you are from another place, another fabric of existence. I am simply saying that if you believe that, then you probably don’t remember how to swim.”

  Jack just smiled. Marlin gave another one of his condescending grins, the kind that should have been impossible for someone so fuzzy to pull off. He hopped from the chair and waddled over to a bookcase along the far wall. He tilted his head as he surveyed the spines, humming to himself. At last, he pulled down a book and tossed it over. Jack caught it in midair.

  “Well, in any case, you’ll need a quick education if you’re going to survive.”

  Jack looked at the cover of the book he’d been tossed, a very plain looking tome bound in green leather, the title of which was, The Rusalk.

  “That’s as good a place to start as any,” Marlin said. “You are Rusalk, Jack, a creature of the sea. Your home is there but you can travel on land as long as you like, so long as you immerse yourself in water every few days. It’s all in there.”

  Jack patted the cover. “Thanks.” But Marlin wasn’t finished fumbling. He dug out another book and tossed it over, this one a much smaller black pocket book with gold lettering and a weird symbol on the front.

  “This one you’ll want to keep on you at all times. Not everyone has the ability to use them, but they will most certainly suit you if you can.” He held up a similar book of his own, which he then tucked into his belt. “It’s a book of cantrips, simple, one-word spells written in old Suul. Anyone can use them. You choose the ones you want to memorize each night before you go to bed. Some can be used over and over while some can only be used once per day. It depends on your experience. You’ll remember them until the next nightfall when you’ll need to memorize them all over again. It’s simple, and an easy way to make use of some very handy little spells.”