“Look at them…” Eddy said. “The pictures here. That’s a mermaid. And these are mermen. That’s a shark, and those are whales. This is a story. … I don’t know this story. … But I think it starts here…”
He reached toward the largest of the gems. Rustle flitted up and threw his weight against Eddy’s palm, pushing it back.
“Don’t!”
“What?”
“There is so much magic here, you need to be very careful. Who knows what could happen?”
“Well… If we make it happen, we’ll know what will happen, right? Besides, why come in here if not to make something happen?”
“We will. We will make something happen. Just… keep your hands to yourself for a moment. Let me look things over before we do.”
Eddy nodded. For now, there was plenty to see, even if Rustle didn’t want him to do anything. He made a game of trying to identify the various carvings. Seven mermaids and seven mermen, with a many-armed mermaid between them. That was a goddess from the old days: Tria. A long stretch of curling shapes extended out before her. They seemed too random to be a pattern, but too precise to be the natural texture of the rock.
“Rustle, do you know what these shapes are, here?”
Rustle darted up and investigated.
“They look like flames.”
“Flames? Is that what flames look like?” Eddy said.
“You don’t know what flames look like?”
He shrugged. “Things don’t burn down here. How would I know? … And why would there be a carving of Tria with fire in front of her.”
“I don’t know… Who is Tria?”
“This here is Tria, with her fourteen attendants. Always she has that many, and six arms. She is the maker goddess.”
“The maker goddess?”
“Yes. Not the maker of the world. That is Mer. Tria is the maker of… things you have to make. Machines. Buildings.” He pointed to an engraving of a chain. “Chains. Probably Tria made this chain in this story.”
“A goddess,” Rustle mused. “And there’s a dish or something there in the middle of the room. Great-great-grandmother said she knew of a place where there was much magic, pictures of gods and goddesses, and a dish. She called it a… an altar? Does that sound right?”
Eddy nodded. “Sure. There are altars. But this wouldn’t be that. Not for Tria, anyway,” Eddy said.
“How do you know?”
The merman followed the engraving of the chain up along the ceiling as he replied.
“Altars are for offerings. And Tria doesn’t need offerings. Not like you would make at an altar. For Tria you make little dolls. Altars are for Tren. And there is no Tren on these walls.”
“What would Tren look like?”
“Like a merman, but with a tail like a… small, soft shell, tasty… a lobster, not a fish. He is the god of… It is hard thinking of the words now. I think it is time for the talking spell again. He is the god of bad.”
Eddy found where the engraving of the chain ended. It was a shackle of sorts, carved around a long, curving shape. When he followed that shape, he found it crisscrossing with others. It almost seemed as though he was too close to see all of whatever it was the engraving was supposed to be. He drifted backward, looking about. The weaving, curling shapes converged, and he realized that what he’d at first thought was a simple background to the rest of the carving was in fact all part of a single, massive, tentacled creature.
Something about the form, now that he could see it for what it was, chilled Eddy to the bone. It was… wrong. He had seen many tentacled creatures. The octopus, the squid. This was not one of them. There were pieces that were not so different from merfolk. The tentacles emerged from where a merman’s tail would be, and from the torso, thin arms with spindly fingers. There were four arms, though, each with three fingers. The head was more like a gar or an eel, but carved with the angular lines of a crustacean’s armor. It had three eyes. One on either side of its head, and a third in the center of the forehead. It was a thing comprised of mismatched parts, familiar shapes combined into something wholly other. Something that simply should not be.
He was still coming to terms with the primal dread that crept in around the edge of his mind at the sight of the creature when he realized he was hearing an odd trilling noise from beside him. He turned to Rustle and found that the little fairy was quite obviously speaking—and becoming visibly agitated at that—but Eddy could no longer understand him. The poorly cast speaking spell had worn off entirely.
Eddy fetched the spell book from his bag. The cover was lightly tattered from the tumble he’d taken when he’d been washed down here, but the pages were all intact. He found the spell and carefully pronounced its individual words for the first of what he assumed would be at least half a dozen readings. No spell but water-for-air seemed to take hold in a single reading. Nevertheless, he had no sooner had he spoken the final syllable when the trilling resolved into the clear, distinct voice he’d come to associate with his new friend.
“Goodness…” Rustle breathed, eyes wide and fingers twiddling in the water around him. “Do you feel that?”
“What is wrong?” Eddy asked.
“Nothing is wrong. Something is so, so right. The spell… it swept over me like a wave. I can still feel the power of it crackling around me. And all without you focusing.”
“Oh, yes, yes. The focusing. That is a thing I was supposed to do.” He tipped his head. “I think maybe still I said some words of the spell wrong. The words I am saying do not feel as smooth as the words I am thinking.”
“Never mind that,” Rustle said. “Is there another spell? See if you can do more. I’ve been trying my magic, but it doesn’t feel much stronger here. I think maybe this is specifically for focusing merfolk magic.”
“Maybe? Maybe! Let me see. Something short.”
Eddy flipped eagerly through the book. Much of the magic was very complex, but one page was remarkably sparse.
“What is that one?” Rustle said.
“Oh, that is not an interesting one.”
“What is it? What is it?”
“This makes cold, hard water.”
“Ice?”
“Yes.”
“Try it! It would be useful for me to know ice magic. My grandfather was the last one to cast ice magic at our pond.”
“If you want.”
Eddy turned his eyes to the page.
“Don’t forget to focus. Pay attention to the words, gather your mind.”
“Yes. Yes. You also pay attention. Maybe then you can cast the spell after.”
“Excellent idea!”
Eddy nodded and once again looked to the page. He still wasn’t entirely certain how one focused one’s mind on something as basic as speaking a few words, but he did his best to follow Rustle’s directions. He set the book down, held his palms forward to the center of the room, and spoke the words with slow and deliberate care. As he approached the end of the spell, he felt a peculiar and intense sensation he’d never noticed before. His mind and body tingled, like his soul was humming with power, and with the final word, a lance of white energy spiraled forth. As the light faded, the water it rushed through revealed itself as a crackling, complex looping shape of solid ice.
“I cast the spell! I did the thing!” Eddy crowed, grabbing the helical bit of ice. “So cold! Never have I done magic like that so well.”
“Now me, now me!” Rustle said. “Quick, before I forget the words!”
Eddy nodded enthusiastically and swam around behind Rustle, crunching idly at the ice like a stick of candy. As difficult as it was for Eddy to understand how to focus, it was abundantly clear that Rustle was quite good at it. The same humming, tingling sensation of growing power began with the first few syllables of Rustle’s casting, seeming to radiate out from him. He was barely halfway through the spell when the temperature of the water started to drop sharply. Little crystals formed, wafting and swirling in complex patterns as
he neared the end of the spell. Then, with the final word, a blinding flash…
#
Rustle blinked and shook his head, little flakes of ice drifting from his hair. The light from the spell was quite intense, filling his vision with blobs of purple and blue that very slowly receded. When they did he was awestruck by what he saw. Unlike the neat coil of ice that Eddy had managed, great columns of ice had been conjured in a radiating pattern, like a star burst of glass-clear ice crystal. Where the ice met the walls, it formed great, blue-green mounds of frozen seawater. Some of the thinner tendrils cracked free and drifted up to the ceiling. Most remained braced against the walls and hung in the water like a wondrous sculpture of some sort.
“Wow…” he said, voice hushed and eyes wide. “I know it’s just this chamber, the way it’s bottled up the magic, but it is astounding to feel such power all the same. You see, Eddy? That is the sort of thing that can happen if you properly prepare your mind before casting. Reason enough to learn to focus, wouldn’t you say? … Eddy?”
The fairy turned to find, much to his dismay, that the scattered nature of the spell had not been limited to in front of him. Despite Eddy having the foresight to take cover behind the fairy, a bolt of ice had struck him directly. His lean body was encased almost entirely in the water-clear ice. Only his head and one of his hands had escaped being entombed it the frigid coating. His serrated teeth were tightly clenched, and one eye was twitching a bit.
“Y-y-you are v-v-very good at m-magic, Rustle. L-less good at aim…”
Chapter 6
Rustle flitted and darted about the room, his voice raised in a squealing cacophony as he looped around irregular columns of ice.
“What do I do! I killed him! I killed my friend and I’m trapped in a strange chamber in a strange tunnel in a strange cave in a strange mine in a strange rift at the bottom of the sea! I’m going to die here. Why did I do this! I should have known better than to try anything like this! I should have stayed near my pond. That’s what the males are supposed to do!”
“C-calm d-down!” Eddy said. “This isn’t b-bad.”
“It is bad. You’re frozen! You’re going to die! Only the best water fairies can survive freezing.”
“It is different for us. Th-the ocean gets cold. W-we have to not freeze, so we d-don’t.”
“So, you’ll be fine?”
Eddy blinked again, slowly. “W-what?”
“I said you’ll be fine? Tell me you’ll be fine!”
“I’ll b-be fine. I just… Can’t breathe much… So, I’ll s-sleep…”
“Until when!?”
The merman blinked again, even more slowly. “Until the ice is g-gone…”
“But that could take forever! The water is warm but it’s a lot of ice! And the bag with the food is frozen in there with you! Eddy? Eddy!”
The merman’s eyes fluttered shut as he drifted into a trembling doze. Rustle flitted up to his face and grabbed him by the ear.
“Don’t fall asleep! You’re strong! Break the ice!”
Eddy didn’t stir, too far into the slumber now.
For a moment, Rustle let the panic have complete control. He buzzed in tight circles, tugged at Eddy’s hair and slapped his face. He flipped back and forth between desperately trying to wake his friend and simply darting about like a lunatic.
“No! No. This helps no one,” Rustle said, placing his hand on his chest to try to steady a heart that was buzzing faster than his wings. “You caused this, you can fix it.”
He looked about. Encased in the mound of ice along with Eddy was most of their equipment. The pick—not that he could lift it—was sticking out the top of the mound a bit behind Eddy’s head. The bag was practically it its core. On the floor of the chamber, however, his ‘claw’ had been jostled free at some point. It had a crust of ice, as almost everything in the chamber did at the moment, but the warm water had already fractured it. Rustle darted down and tugged at the ice, hauling free big flakes of it until the sharp gauntlet Eddy used for scraping and shaping rocks was free.
Rustle gave the tool an experimental tug, grabbing hold of one of the rubbery hide straps that held it together. He found that by working his wings and his legs for all they were worth, he could lift it. He placed his tiny feet on the floor of the cave, crouched down and hefted the glove over his head. Without a hand inside it, the thing flopped down over him. In fact, no amount of shifting or juggling could maneuver the glove into a configuration that didn’t either block his vision, foul the motion of his wings, or leave the glove dangling uselessly below him.
His frustrated search for better handholds did, however, dislodge one of the pointed teeth that extended from one of the fingers.
“No! Now I broke it! I’m spoiling everything!” he muttered, throwing the tooth aside. “I was the careful one. I was the one doing everything right, everything the cautious way, just like the elders teach, and look at the mess I’ve made! Think… What else do the elders teach? A fairy is small, but a grove of fairies is big. A job is big, but the pieces of the job are small. With enough fairies, a job is only as big as its smallest piece, and any fairy can handle the smallest piece of a job.”
He huffed and kicked one of the glove’s straps.
“All of our lessons are only good if there are lots of us.”
Rustle turned aside and eyed the bit of glove he’d thrown. It was lodged in the bottom of the mound of ice that held his friend. He buzzed over to it and levered it back and forth. The motion not only dislodged the tool, it caused a chip of ice to float free. He hefted the single tooth and looked at the veritable mountain of ice.
“The job is still made of small parts…” he mused. “Parts small enough for one fairy.”
He tugged at the straps that had formerly held the tooth to the glove and, with a bit of effort, managed to tie them into a loop he could grip with his hand. The single tooth was half as tall as he was, but quite light. Holding it by the strap, it looked as though he were equipped with a vicious and barbaric-looking shield. He flitted back, angled its angled tip, and darted forward to drive the tip into the ice. With all of his weight behind it, it bit considerably deeper, and a few shoves and yanks fractured a larger chunk of ice free.
“I don’t have a lot of fairies once…” he said, tightening the loop and buzzing back for another blow. “But I’ve got the same fairy lots of times. I guess today I’ll learn if that’s just as good.”
#
Quite far to the southwest, Mira was patiently waiting just below the surface. It was tempting to give up and leave, as she’d lingered for several hours without so much as a glimpse of a boat, but she knew better than to do that. Reliable, consistent, and fair contacts among the surface people were vanishingly rare these days, and having developed a mutually beneficial trade relationship with a Tresson woman, she wasn’t about to risk it by letting her impatience get the better of her.
She peeked her head above the waves and shook the water from her hair, scanning the horizon and squinting at the brightness of the sunset. A smile lit up her face as she saw the distinctive patchwork sail of her trade partner. She ducked beneath the waves again, worked her tail, and breeched, sending a sparkling cascade of water into the air to catch the attention of the enterprising mariner. The sailor dropped her sails and Mira swam eagerly to the edge of her tiny, single-person fishing boat.
“I am so sorry to have taken so long,” remarked the Tresson woman in a thick accent.
“You need not apologize, Disaahna,” Mira said. “I am only happy that we didn’t miss one another.”
The woman pulled back a flowing hood to greet the mermaid with a smile. Mira had met precious few humans in her time—it was seldom wise to linger near them, lest she risk encountering some of the more unsavory aspects of the species—but those she had met all had the same dark skin baked darker by the sun. Some of the other merfolk of Barnacle had a similar complexion, but none of the humans seemed to be as fair-skinned and fair-haired as she.
“I had a very hard time finding what you wanted, but I think I have something you will like,” Disaahna said.
She carefully tugged a small bag from the deck of her boat. A bit of fiddling with knots and rummaging through the contents revealed a small, sun-bleached skull. It was perfectly white, with the distinctive, wedge shape of a lizard of some kind.
Mira gasped and tugged at the edge of the boat to pull herself higher. “It is gorgeous… What sort of creature is it?”
“A rock gecko, or so the shaman in the neighboring tribe said. I have three of them, and many other bones besides. Take it, see if it is what you wanted.”
Mira reverently cradled the intricate skull and swam back from the boat, holding skull first where a pendant might hang, then against her head where a bow would normally sit.
“I can think of dozen ways to use it. And that’s assuming there isn’t just a collector who wants to have it.”
“So strange,” she said, shaking her head and holding out the bag for Mira to return the skull. “No gold for you. No silks. None of the things everyone else trades for. You want bones.”
“They are so exotic, Disaahna. And there simply isn’t any other way to get them. Besides, is it really so different that you want these?”
Mira offered up the small sack of pearls. At the sight of it, Disaahna’s eyes widened and she eagerly traded her bag for the pearls.
“You want the little impurities from our oysters and clams, I want the skeletons of your desert animals.” Mira sifted through the bag and turned up a tiny snake skull. “Imagine it… these things live in a place with no water at all… It is almost mythical.”
The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Page 7