“Er—pardon me for asking this,” Jack said politely, “But why are the ropes dancing and the sailors swimming?”
“Because the ropes heard my song, but the sailors didn’t. I think the crew is deaf.”
“Like Grandpa Worthyman when he puts wax plugs in his ears to drown out Grandma Xenobia,” Jack nodded sagely.
“Oh, surely not” Bronwyn agreed, pausing in her climb up loops of serpent to grin down at them.
“It’s certainly possible they plugged their ears,” Carole said. “More likely, I guess, than that they’re all deaf. You’d better check on that while you’re capturing the ship.”
“Jolly. What if they choose to kill us while we are so kindly trying to increase their listening pleasure?” he asked.
“Why do I have to think of everything?” Carole complained. “Just do it, before we’re boarding a pile of splinters. I have to loose Cordelia and Lorelei.”
“Must you?” Bronwyn called down, just before climbing over the rail.
“I don’t think Ollie will mind me if I try to keep him from squashing the ship all by myself.”
The two-person boarding party duly boarded with aplomb more dampened, at least on Jack’s part, by nervousness than by the actual soaking they’d received from the sea, but they soon took to their task. Only two of the entire crew remained on board: the one-eyed peg-legged villain Carole had spotted and a woman clad in an olive woolen cloak.
The patch-eyed pirate grinned at Jack and Bronwyn as though he’d like to eat them and growled to the woman, “We seem to be boarded, Mistress Rusty. Whatever ye think of me mission, ye’d best ’elp me resist these ’ere buccaneers or they’ll be ’avin’ the both of us walkin’ the plank.”
But the lady was already down on one knee, her head bowed, her docile pose broken only by one hand, which reached up to jerk on the pirate’s tattered sash. “Nonsense!” she growled back. “If the Princess Bronwyn wants your leaky tub, I suggest you give it to her without further ado. On your knee, my dear scoundrel. Show your future sovereign a little respect.”
Carole meanwhile was having difficulties of her own. Using her pidgin version of the sea creatures’ language, she persuaded Ollie to refrain from squeezing the ship to smithereens while she freed Cordelia and Lorelei. Scrambling up the serpent’s slithery sides, she managed to raise herself to where she was level with the deck and about two arms’ length away from the knot. Lorelei and Cordelia were quiet. Perhaps they had fainted. She hoped prolonged separation from water hadn’t killed them. But it couldn’t have: The waves dashing against the prow could have kept even a fish of the wholly ocean-breathing kind alive.
She wondered how she was going to sing a knot loose, and wished she had remembered to borrow someone’s knife, though both Bronwyn and Jack would be needing theirs to fight pirates, she supposed. Then she saw just above her head an abandoned cutlass and grabbing it up, sliced the knot holding the net to the ship, dumping the mermaids over the side and into the sea, where she gratefully joined them.
Chapter 5
The pirate shook his head wonderingly. “I been on these seas seven hundred and fifty year, man, genie, and lad, and I never before saw a mermaid—much less two—let go of a single prisoner—much less a shipload—not to mention a young’un she thought she had a claim on.”
The ship had left the atoll behind almost two hours ago and now the pirate, who was called Jehan the Fleet, the lady, and Carole, Bronwyn, and Jack sat in the galley with mugs of tea, a plate of salt herring and five loaves of bread, smothered a piece at a time with good mint jam.
Carole shrugged. “Maybe it was because I wasn’t a very good mermaid after all.”
Jack shook his head and said emphatically, “Oh no, Honorable Lady Carole, you were a wonderful mermaid. They let go the sailors and this ship from gratitude to you, of that I am sure. Did they not give you their flute to reward you?”
Carole fingered the flute, a little whistle actually, made from a single shaft of coral. She was wearing it around her neck, on the same string as her medicine pouch. Lorelei had pressed the instrument on her when Cordelia wasn’t looking, “Just in case you should ever need to call us, small fry.”
Bronwyn smiled a knowing smile and speared another piece of salt herring, saying to Jehan and the lady as she did so, “You mustn’t make too much of it, you know. Saving your ship was nothing for Cousin Carole. She’s Queen of the Sirens. They’ll do anything she tells them. They recognized her superior magic and leadership qualities right off and insisted she stay around to rule them with us to advise her. Upset as they were about my boils, they simply couldn’t be parted from us. Needed someone like Carole to organize them. Wishy-washy lot, left to themselves.” Mercifully, she filled her mouth with food and had to chew instead of talk.
Carole made a face at her and grabbed the jam pot as it slid past her to the lowest part of the tilting table. Separating Lorelei and Cordelia from the sailors was one of the hardest things she had ever tried to do, partly because the mermaids had been so angry and so glad to get their hands on their tormenters, and partly because Carole was just plain puckered out from whistling ships about. She’d scarcely had so much as a tweet left to dance the mermaids from their prey. By the time she’d saved the sailors, she knew for sure that bubbly Lorelei and cantankerous Cordelia did indeed drown seamen for fun and profit, as they’d been telling her all along. Only out of gratitude to her for preventing their permanent change of occupation to ships’ figureheads had they released the ship and crew. Jack had been right about that. She’d also threatened to dance them on the ends of their tails for all eternity if they didn’t.
But it was nice to have the others appreciate her. Bronwyn’s lie had at least elevated Carole to Queen of something, which was equivalent and even a little above Bronwyn’s own royal status and that of Anastasia and Jack.
And if the mermaids had proved to be not so good as they were beautiful, neither was Jehan the Fleet so bad as he was ugly. He and the lady in the green cloak, Mistress Raspberry, were both old friends of the King’s, which was how the lady had recognized Bronwyn. Jehan didn’t see as well as his companion due to the injury that had cost him his eye and which was why, Carole supposed, he sported that awful squinting leer. He’d told them he had captured Lorelei and Cordelia with the aim of turning them loose on the combined Ablemarlonian and Brazorian navies.
“Me jolly roger is just for old times’ sake, ye understand,” he said. “I was in the international import-export business before I turned genie and just had a mind to try it out again, before I got to the war.”
“I too would like to go a-pirating,” Jack told him, “But I am pledged to help my Princess end her curse.” He regarded his Princess adoringly from the corner of his eye. Such a regal person, his Bronwyn. How nobly she ate with both competent hands, her fine appetite befitting her imposing figure. How safe he had felt behind her when they’d boarded the boat. Truly, this was the sort of woman worthy of his protection. Hungry as he had thought he was while choking down seaweed salads, he could manage only eight slices of bread and a few sedate cups of tea while Bronwyn polished off three times that amount.
Carole suddenly could scarcely eat another bite for yawning. The swimming she had done in the week past had honed her down, sharpened and darkened her till she felt like a blade of her former self, but the effort of moving the ship and battling the mermaids had drained her.
“So,” the elegant Mistress Raspberry said to Bronwyn, licking a bit of jam from the edge of her mouth with a rather pointed tongue which disappeared quickly between her lips. “You’ve finally decided to do something about that curse, Your Highness. What’s this about boils? You’re a liar, aren’t you? That’s what it says in the archives. I know. Sir Cyril Perchingbird asked my advice about them when last I was in Queenston. Oh, yes, I see. You were lying about the boils. Mother, what a bore for you, you poor child! I can certainly understand why you’d undertake a quest to do something about it. But I do t
hink your timing is a bit off. I mean, really, dear, there is a war on and all. Shouldn’t you wait until your father’s around to help you?”
“My father can’t be bothered with silly things like curses,” Bronwyn said.
“I think she means, ma’am, that he has tried,” Jack said, checking Bronwyn’s eyes to make sure he was on the right track, “and it has become too important, too urgent, to wait. Besides, the Princess feels it is her curse, not His Majesty’s.”
“Yes,” Carole said, yawning gustily and leaning back in her chair, cradling the back of her head with her hands. She did remember to brace her feet firmly against the shifting deck while she reclined, so as not to be thrown to the floor when the ship rolled. Her companions and the galley kept disappearing beyond her heavy eyelids, but she continued to try to explain, somewhat mumblingly, to Jehan and the lady, “See, when the King tried to cure the curse, he went after the tax collector, only then the tax collector wasn’t a tax collector, and Bernard says he’s really my mother’s uncle which is why he’s a wizard and looks like us. Except, it wasn’t him—I mean, it wasn’t the wizard tax collector who made up Bronwyn’s curse even though he put it on her, because Anastasia says it was a witch named Belburga.”
“Ogress,” the lady corrected softly.
“Ma’am?” Carole undrooped her eyelids to see the lady looking at her with a sort of wry wistfulness, like a cat wanting to sit on two laps at once.
“Yes, ogress. Belburga is an ogress.” The wry wistful smile turned to one full of sharply pointed teeth that matched the lady’s ears and virtually everything else about her. “I should know. She’s my mother. We have the same mouth.”
“Oh, bother!” Bronwyn said. “We’ve fallen into the hands of the enemy.” She dutifully lifted the magic shield but caught it on the edge of the table, which upset the tea mugs and sent them sliding down the starbound-tilting table, and crashing to the floor. Her pronouncement was lost amidst a lot of wiping up.
“Hardly,” Mistress Raspberry said when the drips were mopped. “Mother and I aren’t close—obviously, since she’s been in Frostingdung since she abandoned me to go there when I was only fourteen.”
“But that’s terrible!” Carole mumbled, her eyes slitting open again in what would have ordinarily been, had she not been so sleepy, wide-eyed sympathy. “Jus’ terrible.”
“Not really. Actually, it was one of the high points of my life. When she abandoned me, my father finally decided to raise me himself. He’s a much better parent—and had a lot more to teach me. He’s a great wizard, you know. A friend of your father’s, Your Highness, though you may have never met him. We live in the woods, and Father almost never leaves home—except for such dire emergencies as the war.”
“But if your father is a good man, why did he marry an ogress?” Jack asked. “They are very bad, are they not? They eat people, I think my grandmother said.”
“Well—perhaps the old, pure-blooded ones once did. But like practically everyone else in Argonia, ogres and ogresses interbred, mostly with giants and wizards and witches of ill repute at first. Eventually some, like my mother, took to social climbing and mingled their blood with that of a better class of people. As is often true of the more deadly species, ogres have always had a certain crude fatal charm. Mother, in her youth, was apparently more charming than most. And she doesn’t eat people, you understand. She just sort of nips at them until they feel thoroughly shredded.” She smiled a sardonic, pointed smile. “At which time she chews them up and spits them out. The phrase ‘to eat one’s heart out’ might have been coined in recognition of my mother.”
“No one with any sense would be fooled by somebody like that!” Bronwyn said.
Mistress Raspberry looked at her pityingly. “Perhaps no one with any sense, my dear, but several men with other outstanding qualities certainly were. As I’ve mentioned, my own father is quite a powerful, prominent wizard. My younger sister, Daisy-Esmeralda, was sired by a he-nymph who did have the sense to turn himself into a tree to escape the mess he’d gotten himself into. Daisy’s had a fondness for growing things and animals since she was a tyke, as a consequence. And Mother always encouraged my elder sister, Lily-Pearl, to be very superior about the fact that her father was a prince, albeit a minor one. Lily used to drive us all crazy with her white dresses and rose-petal-and-milk baths, which Mother insisted she take every day to ready her for the day when her prince would come. Fortunately for us all that scheme worked. Poor Loefwin was dazed from a near-mortal wound at the time and had recently undergone what amounted to an unusual religious experience. He never stood a chance. Though I rather pitied him, I didn’t particularly care for some of his ideas, and when I heard Mother and Lily-Pearl discussing how we would all go live with him in Frostingdung, where Lily would be Queen, I ran and hid. Mother was in such a hurry to leave she didn’t look for me very hard, and I haven’t seen any of them from that day to this.”
“And no great loss that is, I’d say, Mistress,” Jehan put in.
“Perhaps not. But still, my friend, one misses one’s family. Daisy particularly was quite a decent sort. I’ve often thought she’d have been much happier if she’d hidden with me and come along to live with Father. He’s elvish himself and as dotty about animals as she is. Besides, I’m hoping to persuade Lily-Pearl to use her influence with King Loefwin to get him to join into the war on Argonia’s side. I received word from one of my father’s—er—envoys that Ablemarle has been trying to bring pressure to bear on Frostingdung to side against us.”
“Do you always hop aboard the nearest pirate ship when you want to attend family reunions or propose political alliances?” Bronwyn asked.
“Not exactly,” Mistress Raspberry replied amiably. “Jehan once served me in his former capacity as a genie. After I liberated him and obtained my wishes we remained friends. Why not? Naturally, when he expressed a desire to resume his maritime career, I saw no reason to avoid indulging my wish to see my family again.”
Jehan grinned rapaciously and said through a mouth full of fish, bread, and jam, “That’s how I knew to stuff me ears, y’know, against them sirens. From me geniein’ days. You’d be surprised what a lad can pick up bobbin’ about in the sea in a bit of crockery.”
Two days later, the lookout spotted the first of the monsters. “She blows!” he cried, and everyone swarmed onto the deck to see what blew.
“Off the port bow, Cap’n,” the mate told Jehan, pointing.
“What is it, sir?” the bosun asked. “I can’t make it out.”
“The poor creature,” Mistress Raspberry said more softly than any of them had heard her speak before. “It isn’t blowing. It’s bleeding.”
And it was. Blood gushed upwards from the fin on top of its head, and also from the stubby tentacles sprouting from every part of its body. It was spotted black and white, like a killer whale, and was twice as large, though unnaturally large, as if it had swollen.
“Well, I never,” Jehan breathed. But he did again, and frequently, all that afternoon. No one went below after the first sighting, but stayed on deck to watch as more of the mutilated creatures surfaced briefly and disappeared again beneath the waves. “Tis a mortal shame, that is,” Jehan said, nodding towards one of the surfacing things. “But all the same, I hope all the really big’uns has died of whatever it is afflicts ’em.” He squinted expectantly down at the deck beneath his feet, as if waiting for a tentacled back to burst through the boards, and thereafter, everyone else cast an occasional apprehensive glance downward too.
Towards late afternoon their vigil was relieved by another kind of sighting.
“Land ho!” the lookout cried. “Frostingdung dead ahead!”
Jack, Bronwyn and Carole exchanged quick glances. The deformed sea animals had to be some of Lorelei’s monsters. Were there worse yet to come? Creatures fearsome enough to make even a siren shudder?
Jehan apparently thought so. “Lower the jolly roger, bosun,” he ordered. “If the sea beast
s looks that bad, I don’t want to think what the people are nowadays.”
* * *
The people looked perfectly normal to Bronwyn, even slightly better than average at first, so tired was she of seeing the same faces and hearing the same voices day after day on shipboard. And the land looked beautiful. Stable, stationary, stretching up a swelling hill topped by a squat square castle, not a wave in sight from the shore inland as far as the eye could see, except for the river off to the right, and she wouldn’t look at that. Once she set foot on the beautiful gritty ground, it didn’t shift, wiggle, squirm, bounce, slide, or do anything but lie there.
Jehan’s fears about leaving them seemed baseless. The port town where they landed appeared quite ordinary, except that it was cleaner and neater than the few coastal fishing villages Bronwyn had seen. Everything shone with whitewash and the people walked purposefully through the narrow streets. Nets fenced shore from sea along the waterfront. Reassured that no one was going to eat his passengers as soon as the ship disgorged them, Jehan sent them ashore in the long boat, towing Anastasia’s chariot upon which the swan had situated herself like a chicken brooding a singular egg. Once the four people had been handed ashore, the sailors jumped back into their boat and rowed for the ship as if their lives depended on it, and perhaps they did, for moments later a brisk wind bellied the sails and bore the ship away again, which was fine with Bronwyn.
Mistress Raspberry pointed to a series of mortared stones half drifted with sand at the base of one of the cottages. “King Loefwin’s work, those ruins, I’ll wager,” she told them. “Outer Frostingdung was Suleskeria, before the conquests.”
“What a learned young woman you are,” Anastasia said approvingly, spreading her feathers to dry in the sun. She too was glad to be out of the salt water. It was certain to have damaged her once-excellent human complexion.
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