by Sam Hall
His laughter rung in my ears as I stormed out of the pub, shoving past creatures taller, furrier and more muscular than me, with teeth that could easily rip my throat out, but I didn’t care. As I burst out the front door, the cool night air felt good on my heated skin, but nothing, nothing was going to make this better. “Fuck!” I shouted, my voice echoing in the quiet, “Fuck–” A steady hand closed over my shoulder as the sobs came. It was too much; I couldn’t carry it anymore. The exhaustion of a million sleepless nights crashed down upon me, ready to grind me in the dirt and turn me into dust.
“Ash–”
“No,” I cried, my voice a mournful wail, “no, no, no!”
“We’ll get her back, love, I promise. We’re not leaving this mutt-filled zoo until we do.”
“We . . .” I couldn’t even get my vocal cords to work. We were travelling to a stately home, no doubt full of soldiers, with a bagful of dodgy guns and two out of four people who could shoot them. For the umpteenth time, I wondered what the fuck my grandmother was thinking, casting that spell, giving us the shop. She had to have known what Tess was going to do. Tess had been picking up rocks with holes in them and looking for four-leaf clover since she was old enough to understand what they were. My mind kept going back to the body rotating slowly on the spit, over and over, Gump’s knife slicing through the pink flesh, him taking it to his lips. “Oh, God,” I said and stumbled over to the road to throw up what was left in my stomach.
“Here, this will help,” Gabe said, passing me a bottle of water.
“This is all very touching, but where are my shiny things?” I turned to see Gump and a group of his cronies, standing around the doorway of the inn. Pretty much every clawed hand was resting on the hilt of a sword or around daggers.
“You’ll get ‘em,” Gabe said. “Flea, look in the bag for the pistols. Watch the magazines.”
Flea looked at Gabe for a moment, then nodded and strolled over to the bikes. “Is that you, Natty Ferris?” Gump asked, “What are you doing, fraternising with monkeys?”
“Leading ‘em to you, Gump,” Natty replied, a quaver in his voice.
“As you should. So, these are my shinies?”
“They’re called guns,” Flea said, “and I’ll give them to you once we’re on the bikes.”
“That wasn’t what was agreed–”
“Nothing was agreed other than that we give you two. We are going to give you two, but if you think I don’t know that you’ll start aiming them at us the minute I hand them over, you’ve got another thing coming,” Gabe said. “Natty, you with us?” His eyes darted around, but he nodded quickly. “You know the way to the citadel?” Another nod. “C’mon, Ash, let’s go get your sister.”
I dumbly followed his direction, tucking my face down into his back, closing my eyes and hearing the sound of the bikes roar to life, smelling in his scent of smoke, laundry liquid, and musk.
“If you leave without handing over the shinies, I’ll–”
“You’ll alert every thug between here and the citadel, I know,” Gabe said. "This isn’t my first dance, Gump. I know your kind. Power through a network of alliances and backroom deals. We just want to get the girl and go back home and we have to do that by coming back here.” He slowly moved the bikes out to the road, Flea following behind and then nodded to Flea. He tossed the two pistols on the ground, closer to the bikes than the creatures, pulling his own gun out of his waistband when some of the furries took a step forward. “They’re there for the taking, just let us get clear of the place and you can take ‘em, as agreed.” I watched the muscle in Gump’s jaw flex and shift. He was trying for studied nonchalance, but the tension in his shoulders said otherwise. “You right, Flea?”
“Yep, Natty’s told me where to go. I’ll take the lead,” and with that, his bike roared off.
“Be seeing ya,” Gabe said and then took off after him.
25
Two things I learned about riding a motorbike in a pre-industrial society: one, riding on stone roads is a killer on your joints and two, it’s weird driving around in the pitch dark with no streetlights. We zipped down what seemed like the main road until we came to a large bridge that o indicated the end of the city. I strained my eyes to try and see what was out there, but all I caught were shadowy grey shapes. We rode in the darkness until I noticed Flea’s brake lights come on. We drew up beside him and he said, “Natty says there’s a town just up from here. We can’t ride in, we’ll wake the dead and freak out the locals. We’ll pull up at the town limits, then wheel the bikes in and crash at the local inn.”
“Might not be much more than a bed of hay in a stable,” Natty said.
“That’s OK,” I said, feeling the weight of the night now heavily. “Just somewhere to sleep is fine.”
“I’m surprised how accepting the innkeeper was,” I said as we walked into the sweet-smelling interior of the adjacent barn.
“Travellers come from all over to our world,” Natty said. “I sell goods to about five other sellers in alternate realms. They don’t travel outside the city as much, but Williamsburg is close enough to see some travellers. You guys at least look like monkeys.”
“Nice, so what is the deal with monkeys, anyway?” I asked, looking over one of the stalls and seeing a naked person curled up in a pile of hay within it.
“These would be the draft animals,” he said, pointing to the bigger, more muscular males. “These would be the milkers.”
“Milkers?” I swallowed hard. “They have women in there, to milk?”
“Well, yeah, tastes nice on cereal and a cold glass on a hot day. What?” Natty said.
“Women only produce milk when breastfeeding babies. Where're the babies?”
“They take ‘em when they are young, bottle feed them. If they survive, they grow up to be used around the place or sold to someone else. If they don’t, well, the meat is very tender.”
“You eat babies?” I asked, my jaw dropping open.
“Well, not me personally. It’s expensive meat, mostly only the hoity-toity class that buys it. That prince your sister is with. . . . What?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, feeling the tell-tale hot and cold feeling rising, along with my bile.
“Well, do it out there,” Flea said, dragging his saddlebags over to an empty stall and dumping them in it.
“Do you need some air, love?” Gabe asked, drawing me against his chest. I swallowed and swallowed again, feeling my stomach settle somewhat.
“It’s OK. It’s just a shock, though I guess it shouldn’t be. We do the same thing to cows at home.” I lift my face from against Gabe's chest watching Flea in the stall, “You seem to be taking this all very much in stride, Flea?”
He shrugged, pulling a hoodie from his bag and pulling it on. “In some ways, I feel like TV and movies have totally prepared me for this point. Like watching Syfy and stuff like that makes this normal. The other part of me is kinda just stunned, got no words, and can’t get my head around it. It might take a while for that part to come back online, but the thing is, what’s important is getting Tess back.”
“I really appreciate your help,” I said. “You haven’t known Tess for long.”
“Yeah, but I wanted to, y’know? When we first walked in there, I was like . . . who’s that girl? Felt like I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I get it, last night was probably just a bit of drunken fun for her, but I guess if there’s a chance for me to play the white knight and ride to her rescue, well, that can’t hurt my chances, hey.”
Gabe and I ended up on a surprisingly comfortable pallet of blankets and sleeping bags and crunchy hay. For a while, I felt like the smells of hay, raw timber and faintly, urine would be enough to keep me awake, but I lay there within the warm circle of Gabe’s arms, listening to his breathing coming in long and slow and eventually dropped off.
“So, talking monkeys huh?” the shopkeeper asked, looking us over with wide eyes. “You sure they are sentient? They
could be just mimicking us.”
“Nope, they’re travellers from another world. I’ve seen it, amazing tech; stuff like you’ve never seen before.”
“In our world, you got fur, you’re an animal,” I said.
The shopkeeper's greenish yellow eyes shifted to me and then narrowed, “That a fact? Well, here you look like some kind of weird baby animal. No fur like decent folks . . .,” he said, turning to package up our orders in paper. “This some kind of thing now? Furless ones coming through? One came into town just the other day. Looked a bit like this one,” he said, pointing to me, “though I must say you all do look the same to me.”
“A girl? Blue eyes, brown hair?” I asked, feeling a surge in my chest.
“Didn’t much notice the gender, but it had a brown pelt like you say.”
“Did she look OK? Happy, sad, frightened?”
The shopkeeper frowned, then shrugged, “Who’m I to say what a monkey’s feeling? Them science folk think it’s pure fantasy to propose monkeys have feelings like higher order creatures.”
“So, where did she go?” I asked, ignoring that little gem.
“Went to the portal on the far side of town. Damned strange thing, Jeseph travels it all the time, taking goods to the citadel, but I can’t abide it myself. The fella who runs it tried to explain it, but it sounds like pure nonsense. Your body disintegrating only to reform again on the other side? Seems preposterous! Jeseph swears it’s not painful or nothing, but his maid has said that sometimes she thinks he might have changed as a result of it.”
“I thought we’d be able to catch her on the way, going via carriage,” Gabe said grimly.
“She must be already there,” I said, feeling my heart begin to race. Some cannibal prince was wooing my sister, laying the ‘misunderstood guy with a heart of gold’ shit on thick. She’d be eating it up with a spoon; she’d spent her whole life waiting for this kind of thing to happen. If we didn’t get there soon. . . .
“This portal, is it multidimensional?”
“No, nothing like that,” the shopkeeper said with a shake of his head, “Just opens the way between the citadel and here. Prince wanted it to the city, but the government wasn’t having none of that. He can’t travel through it himself, but it lets the people who supply the castle come and go quickly. As I was saying, Jeseph the fishmonger–”
“We need to get through that portal,” I said.
“Obviously, but–”
“Unless you have a whole ton of gold, you’re not going through,” Natty said, looking worried. “Portal travel is for the elites only.”
“And people who deliver stuff to the citadel?” I asked. I turned back to the shopkeeper, “Is there anything you want delivered through the portal?”
“Not me, I don’t deliver to the mucky mucks, but you could check the other shops in town. Many of them send deliveries through. Try Jeseph for starters. Not sure how they’ll feel, sending monkeys to do a job that should be done by honest furry citizens, but you might get lucky.”
We weren’t. “Why should I give my goods to a bunch of newborn rats like you?” Jeseph said. “Brill here has been making my deliveries for the past six years. No reason to start using pinkies for anything other than the donkey work and mine don’t talk back, like normal folks.” Brill, a weaselly-looking guy with slick brown fur and a narrow face, just smirked at us from behind the counter. We tried the dressmaker, the baker and the candlestick maker and got nowhere. I tried to tell them about Tess and the prince, but that was a mistake. The proprietors just got more anxious. The prince may no longer be a power in this land, but people’s minds were obviously still catching up to that. No one wanted to piss the cash cow in exile off.
“I give up,” I said finally. It was early afternoon already and we had wasted most of a day trying to get through the portal. My mind was racing, a slide show of all the horrible things that could be happening to Tess was on high rotation. Objectively, I knew that wasn’t likely to be an issue; he had to try and woo her first before deciding to make her the main course, but what if she started being a smart arse from day one, making it clear he was going to get nowhere? What if his ‘wooing’ was somehow coercive, particularly in light of the contempt most people in the world seemed to have for us pinkies. What if he couldn’t stomach trying to seduce what he essentially saw as a dumb animal and had her offed? Gabe must have seen all of this in my face as he came over and surrounded me in his arms.
“It’ll be OK, we’ll find her.” It didn’t help, didn’t make one bit of difference to my persistent fear that something was going to happen to Tess, but there was one small comfort. I wasn’t alone.
“Look, I hesitate to suggest this, but it may be our only option,” Natty said.
“What?”
“The prince is looking for monkey girls, to try and break the curse. Volunteer to be one.” Natty started backing up at Gabe’s expression, taking one step, then another as Gabe hissed his displeasure.
“No, Gabe, he’s right.”
“So, you’re going to be offered up to that fuck wit now, too?”
“Not really, I just have to pretend. You two can be my bodyguards, Natty can be Gump’s emissary.” This didn’t reassure Natty at all. I was worried for a moment that he would bolt, the thought of impersonating one of Gump’s cronies seemed to be even more terrifying than my gun-toting boyfriend. “Natty?”
The furry man straightened his waistcoat and visibly swallowed, then gave me a quick nod. “I may have need of your portal if Gump finds out I was using his name.”
“Sure,” I said, “it’s yours, but Natty, are you going to be OK? We could just keep riding if that would make you feel more comfortable.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “This is the best way.”
“Ok, let’s get the saddlebags on the bikes, we need to have everything with us. That’ll travel OK through the portal, right?” Flea asked.
“I guess so,” Natty said with a shrug. “I’ve never even seen the portal before.”
We all got to see it for the first time together. One of the shopkeepers had let slip the portal would be opening in the late afternoon, so we assembled with all the delivery boys around a grassy clearing with two large standing stones and a lintel. People started to get to their feet, sensing something we didn’t, then there was a bright-blue flash between the stones and a portal much like the one in our shop opened up. A bunch of well-armoured soldiers filed out, followed by one with a helm with a long white plume. “Alright then, who have we got today?” the man demanded. Flea elbowed Natty in the ribs and we surged forward, much to the irritation of the legitimate delivery staff. “So, who are you then?” The face under the helm was wolfish, his fur a ticked silver and he sported a most impressive rack of carnivore’s teeth. His narrow yellow eyes took us in and frowned.
“Natty Ferris, milord, with a delivery from the city for His Highness.”
“And what’s that then? He don’t need no more monkeys, got a stable full of them.”
“Not monkeys,” I said, “well, not the kind you use for meat.” The soldier’s eyes grew wide, then flicked to Natty.
“A gift from Gump,” Natty said.
“He charged us five counterweights in gold for the first one. Why’s he giving them away for free all of a sudden?”
“And he feels terrible for that insult, milord. This monkey and her bodyguards are a gift to make up for that oversight.”
“Figures he might be under a new government if the curse is broke, eh?” The captain looked around him for a moment, then shrugged. “Sentient monkeys are a rare commodity and His Highness doesn’t care much as to how I come by them. Bring the girl through, ditch the males.”
I started to cry out, but Gabe stepped forward, “Do you think either of us could beat you in a fight?”
“Pfft . . . little monkeys like you? Not likely.”
“Well, do you want to be responsible for preventing what may be the opportunity for your lor
d to regain his . . .?”
“Rightful form,” Natty said.
“Rightful form because you wouldn’t let a couple of weak monkeys through? The girl won’t go through without us, so it’s your choice.”
The captain’s mouth spread wide and his tongue lolled out as he smiled. “You know he’s just as likely to fillet the both of them the moment you get into the manor, don’t you?”
“A risk we’re willing to take,” Flea said.
“Your funeral,” the captain said, “and I will be at the feast, picking the meat off your insolent bones.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Gabe said. The captain stepped back from the portal with a flourish, beckoning us further, only stopping when he saw the guys wheel the bikes through.
“And what are them things?” he asked, holding out a paw.
“Monkey-less carriages they call them,” Natty said. “'Tis a strange contraption that has come from their world. Haven’t seen them get them to actually work, but they seem somehow attached to them.”
“Fucking stupid monkeys,” the captain said before turning to the first delivery boy.
26
“Whoa,” I said, coming to a stop just outside the portal. We’d walked from the grassy plain on the outskirts of Williamsburg to the courtyard of a massive stately home in a split second.
“Yes, yes, a feat of engineering for you pinkies, I’m sure, but you can’t stand here,” the captain said. “There’s a huge amount of food about to come through that gate for the prince’s dinner tonight, and you need to get out of the bloody way.”