by Robert Bevan
“What are French fries?”
“Fried potato sticks.”
Captain Longfellow scrutinized her. “Where did ye get fried potato sticks?”
“I didn't,” said Katherine. “Like I said, those are the only words I remember.”
“Ye be a mysterious one indeed, Captain.”
Katherine noticed that there was no sign of mockery in his voice when he called her Captain. She should probably keep working this mysterious foreigner angle. It was getting her some respect.
“Let me try one,” said Randy. “Dónde está...” He bit his lower lip in thoughtful concentration, then his eyes lit up. “el baño!” he finished triumphantly.
The gnomes all stared up at him perplexedly, then one of them pointed to a tree on the side of the path.
Randy frowned. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“What did you say?” asked Captain Longfellow.
“I asked him where the bathroom is. Foreign languages weren't really my strong suit.”
Neither is your native language, Katherine refrained from saying. Randy regularly took enough abuse from Denise, and she didn't feel the need to pile any more on him.
“Be there nothing else ye can say to them?” said Captain Longfellow.
Katherine bit her lower lip. “If we really put our minds together, we might be able to say I have a bathroom and ask them where the French fries are.”
Captain Longfellow sighed. “Not terribly useful.” He looked down at the naked gnomes. “Gestan.”
The gnome who had first greeted them nodded. “Gestan.”
Katherine tried to think of what the word gestan might have meant in English, but she couldn't come up with anything. Judging by the look on Randy's face, he was trying to think the same thing, and coming up with just as much for his effort.
The gnomes disengaged and started walking further up the path.
“Let's go,” said Captain Longfellow, bending down to grab the box handle nearest him. Everyone else followed suit, grabbing their own handles. They lifted the box and followed the crowd of what Katherine desperately tried to keep from thinking of as Mexican Ewoks.
About thirty more minutes passed before the ground leveled out. They were high enough above the fog to give Katherine a tiny hint of vertigo. She knew in her head that a fall from where she stood would continue through the fog for a much longer distance, but she force-deluded herself to imagine the fog as a soft, pillow-like surface.
Thankfully, the gnomes led them away from the edge, and into the island's interior. It was less of a jungle wilderness than Katherine had expected, and more like a well-cultivated orchard. There were oranges, lemons, grapefruits, and other citrus varieties that she didn't recognize. Scurvy was certainly not high on the list of these people's problems.
Beyond the orchards were vegetable gardens, sectioned off in squares with paths running grid-like among them. Now that the trees weren't obscuring her view, the moonlight was enough for her to make out the curve of the tree line on either side. She guessed that in the light of day she would see that they composed a full outer ring, and that the vegetable gardens formed a similarly concentric ring.
After they passed the gardens, they walked through a series of pens which housed pigs, chickens, and some strange-looking reptilian livestock that Katherine didn't recognize and hoped she wouldn't be asked to eat.
The next ring was a thick bamboo forest, with some stalks growing as tall as twenty feet. Given the utilitarian nature of the outer rings, Katherine assumed that the Sombali people needed to take advantage of every square inch of land they had. She was surprised that they let bamboo grow wild like this. Of course it was useful for making the animal pens, but there was only so much of the stuff they needed for that. Even if they made their shelters with it, they couldn't possibly need this much of it.
The adorably ugly children ran ahead, disappearing into the bamboo and shouting excitedly.
When the bamboo cleared, Katherine saw the justification for them growing so goddamn much of it. Their entire village was made of the stuff. An outer perimeter of tiny houses gave way to a second ring of houses which were just as tiny, but raised a level higher on thick stalks. These weren't simple huts either. There was complexity and beauty in their split-level design.
“This is incredible,” said Katherine. “I wasn't expecting this level of... sophistication.” She realized her praise might be mistaken for condescension and felt bad for voicing her assumptions aloud.
“Hmph,” said Denise. “So they built a couple of shacks out of sticks. Big deal. Look at them, running around naked as the day they was born. Ain't nothing but a bunch of spearchuckin' savages.”
Katherine allowed herself to feel relatively better about her assumptions.
“Ye'll find no spears here, dwarf. The Sombali be completely peaceful. Since nobody knows how to find them, or that they even exist, they have no enemies. And I aim to keep it that way.”
“Well la-di-fuckin'-da. What the fuck are we even doing here? What's in this box that we had to lug it up a goddamn mountain to give it to a bunch of filthy peacenik fuckin' hippie midgets?”
Captain Longfellow stopped the procession, lowered the box, and lifted the lid. “Hardtack and dried beef.”
The children, as well as some of the more shameless young adults, swarmed them again. But this time they didn't get all gropey and grabassy. They were interested in the same hard tasteless biscuits and chewy strips of beef that the captain had been rationing out.
They passed it around excitedly, but no one took so much as a single bite of it.
Denise glared up at Captain Longfellow. “If you had all this food aboard the boat this whole time, then why was you being so stingy with it?”
“It wasn't for us.” Captain Longfellow gazed admirably at the gnomes. “It be for them. It was all I had on me the first time I met them. They thought it was the greatest thing in the world. For all they produce on the island, you'll notice there be no wheat nor cattle.”
“You'll notice I don't give a fuck,” said Denise. “Why did we come so far out of our way to deliver snacks?”
“The Sombali be a very religious people. From what I've been able to understand, they worship the god whose face be carved into the side of this very mountain, who puts out the fog which keeps them safe from the dangers of the outside world.”
Denise sighed. “Maybe I ain't makin' myself clear. I don't give a shriveled up dog turd about their shitty island or their fog-puking god. What's in this for us?”
The crowd of gnomes quieted. Those behind Captain Longfellow stepped to the left or right, leaving a clear aisle running between them. In the doorway of the hut at the end of the aisle stood a wild-haired gnome, older than any of the others by at least a couple of decades. His body was coated with the same dry orange mud as the rest of the gnomes, but his face was covered with blue mud.
“Wongfallow!” he said, spreading his arms wide and grinning. His teeth were silver and triangular, the top ones and bottom ones fitting together precisely like the teeth of a bear trap.
Captain Longfellow returned the gesture. “Gestan!”
Three or four of the older children ran up to the old gnome, apparently named Gestan, took a knee, and held up offerings of hardtack and beef jerky.
Gestan accepted a bit of beef from one of the children, then waddled past them toward Captain Longfellow.
Katherine caught one of Longfellow's crewmen eyeing her with some weird smile on his face. He looked away as soon as she spotted him. She thought he was just checking her out until she noticed two more of Longfellow's men giving Randy, Attal, and Denise the same look. It was conceivable that they might be checking out Randy and Attal, if that's what they were into, but Denise? Nobody was into that.
Katherine made a mental note to keep aware of her surroundings in case these guys were up to something, but turned her attention back to Captain Longfellow and Gestan.
The old gnome stopped before
the captain and held his right hand forward. Captain Longfellow got down on one knee, bowed his head, took Gestan's hand in both of his and gave it a gentle kiss on the wrist. Then he offered his own right hand to Gestan, who took it in both of his, opened his mouth wide, then bit down hard on Captain Longfellow's thumb.
“Jesus Christ!” shouted Katherine, paralyzed with horror at the sight of Captain Longfellow's blood flowing out of the mad old gnome's metal grin.
“Captain!” cried Randy.
Attal remained silent, but his eyes betrayed his terror.
“You was right, Katherine,” said Denise. “They're a bunch of goddamn cannibals!”
Katherine and Randy rushed forward, but two of Longfellow's men blocked their way. Were they in on this? Had they set their own captain up? Was this an unnecessarily complicated mutiny?
Taking a second to reassess the situation, Katherine noticed that while Captain Longfellow was grimacing in pain, he wasn't making any move to defend himself or free his hand. She'd seen him fight on the rear deck of the Maiden's Voyage. He could hold his own against the biggest sword-wielding badasses on the sea. Surely he could defend himself against one old gnome armed with nothing but a set of metal dentures.
With a groan and a crunch, Gestan's teeth clamped together, and he pulled his head clear of Captain Longfellow's thumbless right hand. He tilted his head back, his face completely slathered in the captain's fresh blood, then spit the thumb high into the air. When it landed on the ground with a soft thud, the crowd of gnomes cheered. Much to Katherine's surprise, Captain Longfellow's men cheered right along with them.
“What the ever-loving fuck is going on here?” asked Denise. Katherine had to admit that she was wondering the same thing.
Gestan regarded Captain Longfellow, who remained kneeling but looked like he might fall over any second, then turned back toward the house he'd emerged from and shouted a few words.
Another blue-faced gnome ran out of the house with a fist-sized hermit crab shell spewing white vapor, not unlike the fog which blanketed the island and surrounding shoals. He ran past Gestan and offered Captain Longfellow the shell.
Maintaining as much grace as he was capable of, Captain Longfellow accepted the shell, gave the blue-faced gnome a slight bow, then guzzled back whatever was in it. Dark purple liquid ran down his cheeks and chin as he greedily gulped down as much as he could take.
Gestan's assistant stood close by the captain, holding his hands below the shell is if he expected him to drop it. Captain Longfellow didn't disappoint, dropping the shell right into his hands and collapsing to the ground, writhing in pain.
Katherine didn't know what to do. She hated to just stand around while the situation kept going from bad to worse, but this all appeared to be part of some sort of ritual which Captain Longfellow was knowingly and voluntarily taking part in.
“Is he... okay?” She felt stupid for asking the question, as he was clearly not.
Nobody bothered responding. Those in the know simply stared like watching a man die an agonizing death right before their eyes was the most natural thing in the world. Katherine, Randy, Attall, and Denise simply stared in horror and morbid curiosity.
Finally, the captain stopped groaning and squirming. Katherine hoped that at least his spirit was at rest.
“Sons of sea whores,” he said between gasps. “That never gets any easier.” He slowly rose on his left arm and wobbly legs, keeping his maimed right hand tucked under his blood-smeared shirt. When he finally got steady on his feet, he raised his right hand, showing off an inexplicably healthy thumb. “Olla!”
“Hola!” the gnomes shouted in return. The children thought that was hysterical, laughing until tears streamed down the sides of their faces.
Katherine stared at the ground. This was no illusion or sleight of hand trickery. There was still a savagely-removed human thumb lying on the ground in front of Gestan. There was still Captain Longfellow's blood smeared all over the crazy old gnome's face.
Captain Longfellow held his re-thumbed hand down to the apprentice, who returned the shell to him. He turned to Denise, holding up the shell.
“This, dwarf, be what's in it for us.”
Chapter 39
The noise had subsided, but the damage was already done. Ravenus was awake from his nap and couldn't get back to sleep. After a long deep yawn, he wondered why the sled wasn't moving. Had they reached their destination? Maybe they were taking a break to eat. He was starving. Those shadow monsters had wiped out or driven away every animal in the forest. There were no rotting deer carcasses, no maggot-riddled squirrel corpses, not so much as a grub. He wasn't sure how much more of Chaz and Cooper's food he could stomach before he lost control and gobbled up one of the boars' eyes. The only reason he hadn't done so already was because that would only prolong the time they had to spend apart from Julian. Still, there was only so much temptation a bird could withstand.
He grumpily squirmed his way out of Chaz's bag, and his heart nearly stopped when he discovered what caused all the noise that had woken him up. Chaz lay still on the ground next to the sled with three arrows sticking out of his back. His mouth and eyes were wide open, the latter looking delicious. Ravenus felt his gizzard grinding as he considered the ramifications of eating just one eye. If Chaz was dead, he didn't really need his eyes. But if he was alive, removing his eye might do him in. Ravenus was no doctor, but Chaz looked pretty dead to him.
No! Stop!
He ruffled his feathers, shook the thought out of his head, and took in the rest of the scene.
Cooper lay face down at the edge of some pool with more arrows sticking out of him than Ravenus could be bothered to count. The satyr and some elf Ravenus hadn't ever seen before were in similar condition.
The pixies were conspicuously absent. Ravenus supposed they could merely be invisible, but it seemed unlikely that they wouldn't be responding to their traveling companions' current predicament. Ravenus gasped. Had they been behind it? Those butterfly-winged freaks! He should have known better than to trust them. Still, it was odd that they'd leave behind their sled and... BOAR!
If the boar had been shot, the question of whether or not to eat their eyes posed less of an ethical conundrum than the question of whether or not to eat Julian's friends' eyes. He checked the front of the sled and found that the boar were missing.
“Shit.”
This was silly. Why should Ravenus starve himself to preserve a couple of dead bodies? It wasn't as if they were going to remain in pristine condition out here in the wilderness in the time it would take for him to find Julian and lead him back here. He decided to give Cooper, Chaz, and the other mammals a little while to show some sign of being alive before he confirmed them dead. An hour seemed fair. In the meantime, he needed something to distract himself from thinking about eating their eyes.
There were a couple of bags on the sled. Ravenus didn't hold out much hope that they would contain anything decent to eat, but it wouldn't hurt to take a peek.
The buckle holding the bag closed proved too complicated for him to unfasten with his talon, but the strap it was connected to was easy enough to shred. When he finished tearing the strap, he lifted the top flap of the bag with his beak.
The lack of aged raw meat couldn't really be considered a disappointment because he hadn't expected to find any. All he did find was a few of those little fluid pouches like the one that the pixie woman had forced him to drink from. It hadn't been as bad as he thought it would be, but neither was it what he wanted to fill his belly with.
Then a thought occurred to him. If he could pour one of these down Chaz or Cooper's throat, he'd be able to definitively tell whether or not they were genuinely dead.
The question of which person to test first was easy enough to answer. Ravenus would never be able to flip Cooper's massive body over. Chaz was already on his back with his mouth wide open. The real challenge was figuring out how to feed him the liquid.
He knew from his experience
with the bag's buckle that he didn't have any hope of opening these containers as they were meant to be opened. He'd have to tear them apart with his talons. Doing that while balancing on Chaz's face might prove tricky though.
Suddenly, he knew what he had to do. He'd been spending so much time in the company of mammals that the most obvious and natural solution nearly flew right over his head.
He tore into the bags until the green fluid inside them started leaking out. He lapped up as much as he could, but most of it soaked into the bag's fabric. After five containers' worth, he guessed that he'd probably drunk enough to fill one of them. That would have to do. He couldn't stomach much more of the stuff.
After flapping his wings to land gently on the ground, Ravenus hopped over to Chaz. He leaned in and placed his beak inside Chaz's mouth. It smelled bad enough to make him thankful he wasn't poking his face inside Cooper's mouth.
Summoning up the fatherly instincts within him, he started heaving. He heaved until he felt the sweet liquid coming back up his throat. It was a paler, more opaque shade of green coming back up. When his belly was even emptier than it had been before he'd drunk the liquid, he stood back.
Chaz still wasn't stirring. Ravenus started salivating, but his conscience nagged at him to try just one last thing before savoring that delicious sticky-sweet burst of ocular fluid.
The contents of Ravenus's stomach were pooled in Chaz's still-open mouth. He had to figure out some way to force him to swallow. He hopped up on Chaz's chin, leaned over, turned his head, and clamped his beak down on Chaz's nose to close his nostrils. Then he let his feet drop off Chaz's chin and pulled them up to force Chaz's mouth closed. It was not the most comfortable position he'd ever experienced, and he didn't think he could maintain it for more than a few –
Chaz's face started convulsing, and Ravenus struggled to maintain his hold until he finally heard a gulp.
“AWAAAWA!” said Chaz, or something to that effect. “Bwahama wawa bwa bwa haya!”
Ravenus let go of Chaz's face and flapped to the ground. “I cannot understand what you're saying.”