Phantasmical Contraptions & Other Errors

by Jessica Augustsson

  Soggy Singalong

  by

  Shondra Snodderly

  The tavern was dark for midday, even with kerosene lamps burning on every table. The sailors that had taken refuge inside clustered around the tables, clutching their tankards and muttering about the approaching storm. Someone mentioned glimpsing an airship, covered in chains and iron rods, checking in at the docks, but he was quickly glared into silence. No one talked about the storm chasers. Rumor had it that mentioning them drew their attention, and a storm chaser always brought trouble with him.

  Bartleby hunched over the bar and stared down into his own empty tankard. Knowing his luck, he would be out in the worst of it in the next hour or so.

  He waved the barkeep over for a refill and glanced over his shoulder at the door. He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. Half-past two. Maybe there would be time to finish this drink before he was dragged away from the safety and warmth of the tavern and into the waiting arms of danger. Probably not, knowing the professor. Bartleby shuddered.

  The barkeep caught his glance and jerked a thumb at the door. “You waiting for someone?”

  Bartleby took his newly refilled tankard and drained half its contents in one long pull before answering. “Dreading is more like it,” he said.

  The barkeep chuckled. “Hiding from the missus, are you? You’re in good company, lad. Ole Gregory over there has been hiding from his wife for over a week now.” He gestured with a heavily tattooed arm toward a pile of greasy rags in the corner booth.

  The rags shifted to reveal a man’s equally greasy face. Bartleby thanked his lucky stars that the lamps on the tables were kerosene and not candles or carbide lamps. The protective glass was the only thing that kept Gregory from lighting himself and taking the entire tavern with him. “That’s two weeks, Theo!”

  “Yeah? Maybe I ought to start charging you rent for that booth.”

  “Charge all you like,” he said. “I’ve got no money for her, and I’ve definitely got no money to give you.”

  “I hear the storm chasers are always hiring,” the bartender muttered.

  “Not on your life!”

  “I’d trade places with him in a heartbeat,” Bartleby said. He dug into his pocket for money to pay the tab.”

  The barkeep wiped down the copper-topped bar where a customer had just finished his drinks and left. “She that bad, eh?”

  Bartleby had never been married, and he opened his mouth to say so, but behind him, the door banged open. Every head but one turned to regard the newcomer. Bartleby didn’t need to look. He already knew who it was.

  “There you are, my boy!” The professor, disheveled as usual, with his shirt misbuttoned and his goggles hanging around his neck, walked right up and clapped Bartleby on the back, making him choke on his ale. “Honestly, you should have left a note. I’ve been looking for you for ages now.”

  “I’m sorry, Professor—”

  The professor waved his words away and looped an arm through Bartleby’s. “That’s all right. No harm done. There’s still plenty of time to get out while conditions are right. Trust me. You won’t want to miss out on this experience.”

  Bartleby dropped his payment on the bar, but the barkeep pushed it back at him with a shake of his head. “On the house. God save you.”

  The clouds had darkened considerably in the short time Bartleby had been inside. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn night had fallen.

  The professor had no time for such observations. His attentions were on the complicated-looking brass instrument in his hands. When he was satisfied with the readings, he thrust the instrument into his bag, took Bartleby by the wrist and pulled him along in the direction of the docks.

  It was slow going, as it seemed everyone in town was intent on moving in the opposite direction. Bartleby and the professor had to shoulder their way through single file. Behind them, in the town square, Bartleby caught sight of the local ballooner tying down the stays of his passenger basket to keep the enormous thing from blowing away.

  “Professor,” said Bartleby, “I think the weather is about to take a turn for the worst. Shouldn’t we be heading back? You know, where it’s safe? We can wait out the storm and go on your adventure later.”

  “Nonsense, Bartleby. These conditions are perfectly suited to our purposes. Who knows when the weather might be this perfect again?”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance and Bartleby thought that he and the professor had vastly different opinions as to what constituted perfect weather.

  When the crush of civilian bodies subsided, Bartleby saw that they were not the only ones headed toward the docks. He recognized a few of them from the tavern. Sailors, all headed back at the last minute to secure their ships against the coming storm. A few wore the heavily-padded work uniform of the storm chasers.

  Bartleby hurried to the professor’s side. “How on Earth did you convince a crew to get out in this?”

  The professor smiled. “Have a little faith, my boy. I’ve taken care of everything.”

  Raindrops pattered across the weathered planks of the dock, washing away the grime of the city and any confidence Bartleby might have had in his employer.

  Every ship they passed had its sails down and its gangplank up. Any men on deck only glared down at Bartleby and the professor as they passed. One particularly grizzled-looking captain spat and crossed himself. The professor paid none of them any mind.

  “Professor, I don’t think any of these ships are going out today.”

  The professor scoffed. “Well, of course not! Have you seen the skies? No captain worth his breeches is going to leave the safety of the harbor today. Maybe not for a few days if they’re intelligent.”

  Bartleby thought of the storm chasers that had passed them by and his heart sank. “Please tell me you didn’t book a ride with the storm chasers.”

  The professor scoffed. “Of course not! What sort of idiot do you take me for?”

  Bartleby wisely kept his mouth shut.

  “Don’t misunderstand me. Those chaps are doing the good work, but they’re terribly misguided. It will be at least another hundred years before we’re advanced enough to harness lightning in any useful way. If they do catch anything out there, they’ll likely be blasted right out of the sky. A storm like this is nothing to be trifled with.”

  “Then why are we going out in it?” Bartleby knew nothing about sailing, and he lacked the physical qualities required to become a sailor. It was part of why he had chosen to become a field scientist. The job had promised to be far less strenuous and far more intellectually fulfilling.

  “Because we are men of science, my boy. We can’t let a silly little thing like the weather stop us from seeking out new discoveries. Ah, here we are.”

  Bartleby stared down at the flimsy rowboat and prayed the professor was playing some sort of practical joke. It looked as if someone had slapped old roof shingles together and called it a day. At least three inches of stagnant water sat at the bottom, and Bartleby was convinced the only thing keeping it from ending its misery by sinking to the seabed below was the thick, frayed rope that held it to the dock.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “A very friendly chap sold it to me at an incredible discount. He seemed awfully glad to be rid of it for some reason. Oh, well. His loss is our gain. Get in, Bartleby. If we hurry, we should reach our destination with time to spare.”

  To Bartleby’s horror and amazement, the boat did hold them without crumbling into pieces and floating away. The professor thrust the oars at Bartleby and after some initial fumbling, they were on their way.

  As soon as they were away from the docks, Bartleby suddenly regretted having so many drinks and nothing solid for lunch. Every time the boat rocked on a wave, Bartleby was sure he was going to find himself hanging over the edge of the boat, introducing the ocean to the contents of his stomach.

  His misery seemed to pierce the armor of the professor’s enthusias
m. He snapped his spyglass closed and leaned over, taking the oars from Bartleby. His face contorted into a rare expression of concern.

  “Are you ill, Bartleby? Why didn’t you say something earlier? Here, let me take over for a spell.”

  Having been relieved of rowing duty, Bartleby curled up in a ball of misery in the bottom of the boat.

  The professor flailed around with the paddles, managing only to splash more water into the boat. It didn’t matter, though. The rolling of the waves was doing a fine job of carrying them away from shore.

  All around them the sky blackened, the sea frothed and rolled, and lightning flashed, giving Bartleby fleeting glances of civilization slowly disappearing into the horizon.

  The professor’s enthusiasm was back in full force. He paddled and sang snatches of sea shanties he must have picked up from passing sailors on his way to purchase their wreck of a boat.

  “This is so invigorating,” the professor shouted over the thunder and the wind. “I envy you, Bartleby. Your station in life makes so many things possible for you. Alas, I am doomed to the life of an intellectual. Manual labor is something I rarely get to experience.”

  If he had been feeling any better, Bartleby would have gladly told him where he could stow the oars, the boat, and the whole damned expedition. Instead, he moaned and put a soaking wet arm over his face.

  “I think we’ve come far enough.” The professor pulled up the oars and lay them in the bottom of the boat next to Bartleby.

  “Where are we, Professor?” Bartleby sat up to look around, but he couldn’t tell any more sitting up than he’d been able to while lying down.

  “We’re right where we need to be, my boy. All that’s left to take care of are a few precautions. Lift your arms, please.”

  “Precautions?” The professor slipped a rope around Bartleby’s waist and knotted it tight. He secured the other end around the bench where Bartleby was sitting. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of wax, which he stuffed directly into his own ears.

  Bartleby waited for his share, but the professor only sat there, a clueless, beatific smile on his face. “Professor?” He pointed at his own ears and shrugged in a gesture that he hoped would translate to “Where’s mine?”

  The professor only grinned wider. “No, my boy,” he shouted. “This is for you. Surprise! Happy birthday, Bartleby. I bet you thought I’d forgotten.”

  “My birthday? But that was last month.”

  “Don’t thank me just yet, Bartleby. Wait until afterward.”

  “After what?” But then he heard it.

  Cutting through the roar of the ocean and the howling winds was the sweetest note Bartleby had ever heard. It started out soft and sweet, and then other notes followed. The song sounded familiar, like something his nanny would sing when he was still a boy playing in the nursery.

  Words followed the notes. The singers promised him a quiet desk job in a quiet office. Perhaps in a university. The professor would be somewhere far away, indulging his flights of fancy on a far-off continent, far away from Bartleby and his studies. All he had to do was step out of the boat and go to the singers. They would take care of the rest.

  Without another thought, Bartleby flung himself out of the rowboat toward the source of the music.

  Then he hit the water and promptly sank like a stone.

  With his ears empty of siren song and his lungs full of saltwater, Bartleby remembered another important reason he had never become a sailor.

  He couldn’t swim.

  Bartleby flailed against the water, but if it was impossible to tell up from down above the waves, it was even harder underwater. Everything looked the same, and it was too dark to see the surface of the water.

  He was pretty sure he had worked it out, but as he started to swim in the direction he thought was up, something grabbed him around the waist and pulled him in the opposite direction.

  Bartleby’s first thought was that an octopus had him. He grabbed for the tentacle in the hope of fighting it off and gaining his freedom, but the creature was relentless, and much stronger than Bartleby. He kicked, flailed, and clawed, but nothing he did made any difference. The octopus was winning, and Bartleby was about to become its dinner.

  But to his surprise, instead of the painful snap of a beak in his side, there was a blast of cold air, and a voice Bartleby thought he’d never hear again.

  “Here we are, safe and sound. Lucky for us the storm chasers spotted our boat and helped me pull you up. I might have been wrong about them. Remind me to ask if they’ve ever glimpsed a thunderbird.”

  Bartleby struggled into a sitting position and looked around. They were definitely not in the rowboat any more. This ship was polished and sturdy-looking. Instruments of every kind were secured to the walls, and every one had a heavily insulated storm chaser monitoring it. Not a one of them chose to make eye contact with Bartleby or the professor. The ones who had to pass them by on their way to a new task hurried their pace as they got close. He didn’t think any of them would be interested in sharing their stories with the professor.

  The professor, to his credit, didn’t notice. Instead, he sat back on the bench with a sigh and a wistful smile. “What a treat it must have been to hear a siren’s song and live to tell the tale. I hope someone thinks to give me something as special as that for my birthday. Tell me, Bartleby. Were you able to take any notes while you were ensorcelled? Any standout memories I could include in a report?”

  Bartleby opened his mouth and coughed up a lungful of seawater.

  “It was a long shot, I suppose. And besides, what kind of birthday gift would it be if I turned it into a field study? Next time, we’ll come prepared. Waterproof notebooks. Maybe a hatchet so we can hack up the boat and attract mermaids. Wouldn’t that be something? Mermaids and sirens in the same day!”

  Bartleby didn’t answer. Instead, he occupied himself with counting up the days left in his apprenticeship and wished the days could go a little faster.

  Shondra Snodderly hails from Saint Joseph, Missouri. When she is not wrangling kids or making seasonal desserts, she can usually be found wrestling a new story onto the page. Other works of hers can be read on Smashwords or listened to on YouTube.

  The Kraken

  by

  Kimber Camacho

  1 - Beata

  “Hoi, girl, wake up,” said someone in a rough almost-whisper, concurrent with a light shake of Beata’s shoulder.

  With a shuddering inhale, Beata drew into a tighter ball, not lucky enough to have the comfort of a delay in the jumble of horrible memories rushing into her mind almost the instant she was yanked out of her dark, dreamless sleep.

  Shouts and screams above-decks, the rocking and jolting of the whole ship under attack, and Mumma with a fierce expression on her face kissing Beata tearfully as she held her too tight, murmuring for her to keep quiet, hush, not a sound. Mumma shutting her up in the big trunk with the few bits of clothing she hadn’t dragged out of it, pushing the handle of a knife into her shaking hands and telling her to be brave before shutting her inside. Even more muffled sounds, on and on and on, the movement of the ship made strangely gentler from inside the trunk, while somehow more frightening. Savage voices, Mumma shouting, angry, desperate, and then her shrieks rising above the angry male voices. The trunk being shoved a couple of times, thumps and scrapes all around it, and then the lid flying open to reveal the blurred shape of a large man only long enough for Beata to bellow with her usually small voice and thrust the pointy end of the knife at the shape with all the strength of her panic. Warm liquid on her hands, a harsh voice shouting, then another, and before she can focus on anything a blinding burst of pain to the side of her face sends her into darkness.

  “Hoi, come, come,” the voice spoke again, the hand on her shoulder shaking her once more. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just give you water and clean you up a bit.”

  Beata’s mouth and throat felt drier at the very thought of getting
a drink. She uncovered her face and slowly, suspiciously, looked up at the shadowy shape crouched nearby in the rippling bluish light of a near-failing piezo-lantern. It must have been nearly three days since she’d had more than a desperate mouthful of stolen raindrops, caught by tilting her throbbing head back as she and her fellow captives shuffled along the dock toward the low mud-and-salvage buildings of the port market. She couldn’t even speak, her tongue like a half-dead thing hiding in her mouth, but she mouthed the word “please”, because the manners her mumma had taught her were automatic, even after all that had happened.

  “Sit up a little,” whispered the unknown person as they did something that sounded like water being dipped into, with a swoosh and fading trickles following. “Here. Here, sip. Just little sips.”

  Beata pushed her back up against the hard surface of a trunk behind her and blinked a few times at both the painful stiffness in her body and the crust of matter in her eyes. When the wet mouth of a container of some kind touched her bottom lip, she sipped with a soft sound of desperate need. The water was a little cooler than the ambient temperature, had the tiniest hint of a salty aftertaste, but was otherwise wonderful. She wanted to gulp it, to tip the container over her face and drink while the coolish liquid bathed her grubby skin, washing away some of the grime and dried fear-sweat; however, her stomach gave an unpleasant clench at the first big sip, so she forced herself to stop and breathe in between a few more tiny sips.

  “Good girl.” A cool something was brushed gently across her mouth, then the rest of her face. “They gave you the sleeping poison,” the unknown person explained as they—she? The voice, though a whisper, sounded female—continued to wash Beata’s face with a wet cloth. “The big, strong prisoners and the difficult ones are too much work, so they get put into a deep sleep for the journey. Since you’re a tiny little thing, obviously you were difficult.” The whisper, sometimes blending into a soft murmur, didn’t sound cruel or derisive, but not wholly gentle; perhaps “somewhat kind” came closest.