Tall Tales: The Nymphs' Symphony (Scott T Beith's Tall Tales Saga Book 1)

by Scott Beith

  “Well, we will just have to be extra nice to them then.” She giggled, getting a certain thrill from the idea of danger, maintaining a happy little smile towards me as I began to wonder if she and her brother were any different after all.

  I fell back, resting on one of Vallah’s front legs as she sat calmly still just next to me, annoyed for some time at being left in the dark about Anara’s plan, but eventually gaining a secret level of excitement about the prospect of another adventure.

  Much of the day was spent drifting over the mountains and valleys, the ride showing us the true extent of travel required to get out of The Borderlands and across the desert of The Badlands.

  Lush spring greenery had almost instantly turned desolate and dry as we passed over the mountain ranges that divide our borders, the lack of roads and fences being a clear indication of how bare and barren this wasteland was. Of all the problems The Badlands had, it was simply just too far from water or rain to physically nurture any vegetation whatsoever.

  I was greatly intrigued by it all, though, as I’d never seen anything quite like it before. It was so foreign, yet breathtaking. I felt the need to map it, taking out Midas’s gold pen from my coat pocket just to sketch my best attempts of my marvellous travels so far on the back of Crystal Caverns’ mine map we had brought for our journey.

  Ordinary shades of blue and green were nothing but orange and brown smudges below us, as beneath was nothing but dried old wood, dirt and sand.

  Although from up in the open air, appearances could have been deceptive – we were moving incredibly fast after all. The fact of the matter was, at such speeds it was taking us only minutes to travel what quite possibly could have taken days to ride on the ground.

  Before we knew it, we had already entered through the deep fissuring cracks of an enormous prehistoric tree trunk, making our descent into this mountainous tree gap only to encounter the blimp beasts’ entire hive network. It was enormous! Anara and I had to take turns in peeking out of the thin patches of silk web on either side of our basket cage, observing all of the hive’s incredible layout. The overall spaciousness seemed endless as we hovered through countless turns of waxy white and yellow hexagonal colosseums.

  The minor buzzing noise that had accompanied us the entire journey had amplified into an ear-ringing symphony as other creatures flew through these great waxy hexagonal walls in close proximity, our blimp flying through one of the highest and most empty cell chambers, arriving at the dry and rotting outskirts of the infamous Honeycomb Hideout landing site.

  It was almost as if these creatures could be controlled by its inhabitants, for the beasts seemed to be working for the pirates who proceeded to help guide our beasts downwards along a dried old pipeline ravine, only to land us dead in the middle of the dilapidated runway that stretched out before leading into the next cell chamber, of which the pirates’ lagoon and boardwalk docklands must reside.

  Upon a very harsh and abrupt landing, we were shaken vigorously all over again, detaching from the immortal bug that had taken us here along with the rest of its pollen ball payload. As it flew away just like that, clearing the dry chamber ravine in order to allow other blimps next in line to land and do the same.

  The place was like a city in the sky, hardly different than stories of the wisp angels and their white puffy cloud heaven; although unlike those stories, the place I describe was home only to hundreds of filthy and sweaty industry workers running the airfield like one would a port or docks at peak hour.

  Working nymphs wearing hard hats and large aviator glasses were sorting through the travellers and their belongings in one crazy yet controlled fluster. Somehow managing to facilitate the cargo coming in from these colossal flying hornet creatures in unison with them, clearing and cleaning off any small critters or stowaway parasites that the beasts couldn’t see or deal with without the help of these nymphs.

  I was gobsmacked by what I was seeing congested all around me, but it all had to wait because I could hear the cutting of webs from our cage, the four pollen corners becoming unbound by a hot scythe on a pole that slit right through the silk ropes that had been linking this basket together.

  “Anara, hide us!” I hissed, grabbing our timid spider’s front leg and the back of Anara’s hand as she turned to face the red hot blade.

  “You can relax, you know. No one is going to recognise us,” she said, pulling up her coat as she dropped a small hood over her head.

  Our cage split in two timbering halves, the servicing airman holding out his long cutting blade in caution, only to lower it upon the sight of us and our giant baby spider. “Why good evening, ladies,” said the medium-sized grown man, his accent familiar, but his tone quite flirtatious, yet disturbing. “Welcome to the Hideout. Now, if you would be so kind, please state your business with us today,” the pirate nymph then demanded, holding out a clipboard registry that he kept attached to the pole of his hot curved poker. The airman tucking his clipboard into his sweaty armpits as he extended out a free hand to help us down from the unbound bottom net, and usher us off the runway before more blimps came down.

  “We’re just passing by actually,” Anara said in the deepest voice she could muster.

  The guy stood there looking puzzled before squinting to look through her hood and at her face. “Is that you Anna?!” he questioned, moving to unveil her hood in order to get a better look at her face.

  “Oh, alright, you caught me,” Anara said, smiling towards him. “Yeah, it’s me, Anna,” she proclaimed, giving me a short frown that indicated for me to go along with whatever con she must have already concocted during a previous endeavour. “I wanted to surprise you,” she said, ducking past a small bronze brazier of fire and the scythe in his right hand as she leaned inwards to formally hug the hot and sweaty man.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said ecstatically. “How are you?” he asked.

  “I’m good,” she responded cheerfully.

  “When you said you’d come back, I didn’t think it would be so soon. Please come. You must be parched from your travels. We have the finest foods good money can buy,” he said, extending his free hand out to me as well, trying to usher us away from the runway.

  “Axel, I’m sorry. But we are in a rush. Would you be able to give us a ride to the mountain ranges?” Anara graciously asked.

  Axel’s smile dropped a little upon hearing this, but he generally seemed over the moon to still be able to help us. “You know I would do anything for you,” he said, “but unfortunately you’ve missed the cut off point. We don’t have any more hornets flying out till tomorrow morning,” he stated with a grim face, his look matching both Anara’s and mine as we looked to each other in concern.

  “But don’t worry, girls, there are always vacancies at the Capricorn – it’s the offseason. Anna, I’ll pay for you and your friend to stay there through the night,” he reassured us.

  “Is there any chances you’d be able to organise another one? We really need to leave tonight,” Anara persisted.

  “It is really important,” I emphasised, feeling the immediate danger of overstaying our welcome here in this renegade hideout.

  “Look around,” he stated. “It’s near night time. It’s not safe for nymphs to travel outside of the hive’s protection now,” he informed us, his eyes shifting to another final unattended blimp as it began to descend towards where he’d picked us up from.

  “Please, my brother is out in that night,” Anara then admitted to the man. “Is there nothing you can do to help us?” she added, hoping to sway the man with the news.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” he said with a sincere tone. “But there really isn’t. We don’t control these creatures. We’re at their mercy, and they won’t fly out again until the flowers re-rise tomorrow,” he explained. “All we do here is interpret where they go and book passages accordingly… If your brother is smart, then he’ll wait out the night, and I’ll make sure you head out for him on the first available flight
in the morning.”

  “Now I’m sorry, girls, but I do have to attend to the last few arrivals. I can meet you at the Underbelly Bar at work’s end, if you like?”

  “Thank you,” she replied, gracious to receive any help at all. The two of us nodding our heads and waving him goodbye as he rushed back to his post along the centre strip of the waxy white runway.

  “So…” Anara said, placing her arm around my shoulders, “let me show you around.”

  “Ok, Anna,” I said in a frazzled tease.

  “If anything, it’s more of an abbreviation than a lie.” She laughed as she guided me away, pointing me towards a large unused rusty irrigation pipe that led into the next cell chamber. Walking through that ancient aqueduct system while following the travelling crowd and taking in the sights.

  There was supposed to be some large beautiful society the scholars all used to rave about. But after the dryness and heat of our landing, I had low expectations of where we were going. I was lucky not to have voiced my thoughts about it, as I would have had to eat my words the second I came across the first pipeline crack and got to lay fresh eyes on this miraculous hidden city directly across the rusty pipe and its pier line.

  It looked phenomenal: a waterfront empire completely out of this world. The huge desert water pipes we’d just walked through played a big part in lowering a traveller’s expectations of this fair city, only to heighten pure excitement when one could actually look out from the lowering sky deck and witness the great architectural marvel that was the magnificent pirate bay. It was a giant boardwalk empire, surrounding a lagoon of fresh water that had spilled out from the roofing above. Where at the centre of this society was a magnificent ancient Aztec structure built up like a mountainous pyramid from the reef and coral at the bottom of the water.

  Once we reached the end of the pipes, the pipe merely converted into a wood and concrete form of floating boardwalk pier that took us on a full panoramic tour across this great water-gate harbor town. For the first time in history, I was pushing both Anara and Vallah to move faster, tugging them as if my tired princess and weary arachnid pet were under my command and being ordered to come sightsee just that little bit quicker.

  Anara grinned amusingly at me while we continued to walk out over the top of the bay. I was filled with complete awe over its sheer size and unexpected beauty. It was a bright blue turquoise bay settled with hundreds of street lights that enlightened multiple pockets of large gold oil rigs throughout the circular lake-sized lagoon. Many of these rigs spewing out bright yellow liquid pollen that floated on the water’s surface, where miners collected it into barrels.

  Too thick to mix, the water was left crystal clear, and anytime a spurt of this golden magical goo surfaced its way out from the bedrock, it was almost immediately scooped up by tired hard-working miners on the pier and in canoes, leaving all these exhausted commoners to harvest the substance for those who owned the industries.

  Although their faces looked grim and bleak, much like they were slaves to this kind of labour, it was very hard to see them as slaves, seeing as whatever company was responsible for this mania, was also responsible for making this place as beautiful and attractive as it was. Indeed like all the scholars had dictated, it seemed the current owners of this land had gone to great lengths to maintain a clean, high-class and crisp image for those newcomers like me.

  I watched Vallah dangle her head over the ledge of the pier, nipping at the gold pollen oil from the closest spurting geyser tap beside the pier. And lord did it look like it was toxic, but like a keg barrel full of liquid sugar, her energy returned to her as if she had been zapped by something electric. The nectar they had here was clearly something lucrative in nature.

  “That’s raw honeycomb,” Anara said to me, pointing out a rich man’s delicacy long since outlawed inside our own borders, prohibited for its highly addictive effects upon smaller creatures like ourselves. “Still costs more than gold back home, but here it’s free for anyone to take,” she said. “Most industries make their money here in other ways. But it’s good for you to east in small doses – used to be used in all sorts of remedies, but all the tradesmen here take advantage of the miners who become addicted to it over time,” she added as I looked down in wonder at the shimmering fluid.

  Vastly abundant across much of the large lake, harvesters from many nymph cultures seemed to come out and participate in its extraction. This central mining hub was filled with schemers looking for a quick form of fortune and profit. Whereas just like how Anara explained it, realistically speaking, it seemed like only the tradesmen and officials that together ran this place got to live like kings under their enforced martial law.

  The business supervisors were basically goblins, causing poverty and then taking advantage of poor miners’ greed – clever enslavers who leased out the excavating equipment and made deals with every mercenary, paying them to police the streets, acting like a government and its military. The whole town was run by a militia of bandits posing to enforce the peace, if nothing more than to give a false sense of security to the tourists, like us, who’d come on the simple belief that it was an ordinary and civil functioning society like the cashed-up one we’d come from.

  I had read much about this place, and although I had the impression those authors were bribed to give great reviews, even they couldn’t help but mention that peace was forever held by a frayed string. Made most clear to me as we side stepped away from the pier’s lower edges, watching two nymphs fight with officials over the rights to keep their equipment for another day. Every miner on the pier was scrawny, frail and weak; it was crazy that what they mined was a staple food source, yet they were still so starved.

  Perhaps their greed and lust for riches was more severe of an addiction – for some it was the insatiably obsession for profit that meant they would rather sell the nectar than eat it themselves.

  On first expectation, this place truly did seem wondrous, but under disingenuous advertisement. The waterfront city secretly fed these foolish miners a dream of wealth and prosperity, as a means to provide favour for all the corrupt hotels and merchants that helped run this town. Making sure all of the currency made here would never leave here either. It was an ingenious trap, where those caught in its very centre weren’t even aware they had become prisoners.

  Fortunately for us, however, being the wide-eyed vacationers they believed us to be, we were welcomed in like royalty, with the mafia-style cops so inviting and friendly with their waves and smiles, none of them wanted to risk scaring us away so soon. Instead, they guided and protected us, steering us away from all the degradation that was the rugged up shanty parts of the bay’s other side.

  We reached the docks in the centre of the city, where workers were still scooping up the gelatinous honeycomb product, removing the glistening gold puree from the beautiful canals.

  Shipyards were all closing up, employing the few lucky labourers who worked hard during their overtime. They hustled out their final hours of their last weekday night, filling their large shipping crates by the barrel, making sure every inch of its pollen juice was taken before nightfall struck and the natural geyser fountains stopped spurting, due to the closing of night.

  We headed up a ramping hill of a second-story slope and witnessed the light dim over the bay as the artificial lights took greater hold in helping brighten up the market area and keeping the spotlight focused towards the fountains and monuments of this place’s rulers, keeping the congested and slimy ghettos in the dark. The gas-lit streetlights igniting in fiery burst sequences one by one, slowly aiming and luring the herd of travellers and vacationers towards the high-rising building estates centred around a great classy pyramid hotel.

  Rising up in boardwalk platform levels, below us, in the dark, I could see the miners’ makeshift shelters, which were made out of torn rags and tarps – huts basically constructed with whatever fabric the locals could rummage together. They were the slums I believed Radament grew up in. An
d after seeing it firsthand, and hearing him talk about where he came from a few years ago, I could finally understand his obnoxious and unflattering attitude, accompanied by his general lack of motivation to do anything inspirational or productive with himself, even if others saw him as a symbol of heroism and hope.

  You could never truly escape a place like those slums, which is why I felt so guilty and horrible for seeing it and then simply walking on over it, pretending to be one of the other over-privileged youths whom most of the crowd was surrounded by. As we set out on our own private mission to improve the living conditions of the kingdom we represented. A place much more lush and thriving for all its people.

  14

  Complex

  Exhausted from walking, we followed the other adventurous travellers as they moved across the long and arduous low level pier. Some riding in fancy wagons being pulled by different types of enormous insect creatures. Vallah, Anara and I surprisingly managing to blend right in with all the other colourful characters throughout the culturally diverse bayside waterfront markets.

  From freely roaming to being banked up in one enormous merchant crowd, we were suddenly queued behind a lengthy group of slow stepping vacationers. Vallah and I having no choice but to faithfully follow Anara and these high-born families towards the middle focal point of town.

  Mixed in with a crowd of thieves and scoundrels as this boardwalk bridge ended by the waterfront boulevard of the mountainous mainland island, we were finally introduced into this city’s grand exhibition point. Cutting straight through the town’s lively market square and over towards the giant triangular stone mass that this floating society had been built around.

  Vallah was rather skittish and untrusting as we walked through the city, no doubt seeing danger everywhere she looked – not a great difference to how I felt myself. For me, there were real moments of trepidation and concern. None more terrifying than being bumped by a jolted crowd and accidentally pushed face to face into the eyes of a gigantic desert scorpion. That spiky armoured monster gazing back into my eyes with a look of serious threat and aggression, only to brush me and all other intimidated nearby patrons out of the way with the back of its thick razor sharp pincer claws, rebelliously forcing itself right through the long queue of this feeble crowd as it pushed in front of us all, dragging along a wealthy carriage by a thick rope that had been tightly wrapped around the beast’s huge poison-dripping stinger.