The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Read online

  “It is very heavy. Fins aren’t so good for pulling things backward,” he said.

  “Be careful,” Rustle advised. “… But what does the front half of it look like?”

  Eddy pulled himself forward between the two legs and just barely managed to ease his head between the wall and the metallic body.

  “There is not much body left. It is very stubby. There is not much tunnel left. Just a little ahead. The tunnel ahead is very rough. I think maybe this thing was digging it.”

  “A digging machine? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  Eddy glanced over his shoulder. “I know. Isn’t it great! I think maybe I can push it out if I get ahead of it. Watch the bag.”

  He wriggled back into the clear section of the tunnel and dropped his bag far enough back to give him room to move the mechanism. As the tunnel had taken a slight up-turn in this section, the bag slid quite a way along the glassy floor before coming to a rest. He took his pick in hand and darted back up to the widest gap he could find. It took a bit of lashing of his tail and tugging with his arms, but he managed to cram himself into the space ahead of the mechanism.

  “What does it look like!” Rustle called.

  From the echo of his voice, he’d retreated quite far. Eddy carefully ran his fingers along the wall.

  “The wall is sharp here. And there are all sorts of chips and flakes down on the bottom.” He squinted and poked at the flakes with the pick. “The ones near the machine look round, like they were half-melted. Yes… Yes, and there are lines here on the walls. Like the marks I make when I dig, but deeper and very much the same to one another. A pattern. Definitely this machine was doing the digging.”

  “What about the machine? What does the front look like?”

  He turned and analyzed the previously unseen bit of apparatus. A somewhat blunt beak of sorts jutted out from center. Little flecks of black had been driven into the metal there, and it was a bit more polished than most of the rest of the surfaces. Six perfectly round, amber-colored domes were set into a stout ring around the beak. Most were fractured or rendered cloudy, but the two along the left side appeared to be intact. Each had a thin sheet of metal hinged above it, a shutter of some sort.

  “Well?” Rustle urged.

  “It looks like a swordfish. One that has too many eyes. And ran into walls until its nose got blunt. And the nose is a little too round.”

  “That doesn’t help me, Eddy. I don’t know what a swordfish looks like. … And from that description, it sounds like it doesn’t really look much like one anyway.”

  “Hmm… What do you know that I know… Oh! You know the eel I offered? The tasty one?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is like the head part of an eel. But too many eyes, no mouth, and too round. And only the head part. Because the rest of the thing looks like blocky tuna wearing a skirt made of legs.”

  “You are very bad at describing things, Eddy.”

  “Maybe you are very bad at imagining things! I will push it out until you feel like you can come and look at it, and then you will see.”

  “Wait! Just be sure it isn’t moving or alive or anything first. If it’s just sleeping, I don’t want you to wake it up. We’ve woken up enough dangerous, magical things already.”

  “It does not seem like it is moving, but that is good thinking, Rustle. I will listen close.”

  He set his pick down and pressed his hands and ear to the warm surface of the mechanism.

  “I do not hear anything. Nothing like a heart. But I do not know what the inside of a big mechanical thing would sound like. … Wait… I do hear something…”

  It was subtle, but something was rattling.

  “I hear it, too,” Rustle said. “It’s not coming from inside the creature, it’s coming from under it. Get out of there!”

  “Good thinking!”

  Eddy gripped the mechanism and hauled himself forward. It was a tight space to navigate and trying to do so swiftly didn’t make it any easier. He’d barely gotten his shoulders free when the rattling revealed itself to be just the first audible indication of a growing rumble that shook the entire tunnel. This wasn’t the same thunder that had drawn them here. This was something far more substantial. This was the same sort of earth-shaking that so frequently spoiled the routine and damaged the walls back in Barnacle. But this was more powerful… and much, much closer to the source.

  The merman eased his chest through and was on the cusp of slipping entirely free when the heavy mechanism shifted. With a metallic clank it rocked to the side, pinning Eddy to the wall. He cried out.

  “Eddy!” Rustle yelped.

  He darted forward and tugged at the merman as he struggled against the machine. Despite his exceptional strength, Eddy didn’t have the leverage to shift it aside.

  The rumbling was getting worse. The water transferred the motion with destructive efficiency, rattling their bones and threatening to deafen them. Fractures split the wall of the tunnel behind them. Fragments of razor sharp stone pelted fairy and Merman alike.

  “Go! Rustle! Go!” Eddy called, waving the fairy away.

  “What about you!?” Rustle cried.

  “Don’t worry!” Eddy smiled through the fear. “I bounce good, remember? Better I get buried than you!”

  Two cracks racing across the ceiling met. A slab of stone dropped down and shattered behind them. Pulverized stone began to pour through behind it.

  “I can’t just leave you!”

  Eddy didn’t waste time arguing. Instead, he snatched Rustle firmly in his grasp. Trapped as he was, he had precious little range of motion, but he didn’t need much of a windup for what he had in mind. A snap of the wrist hurled the fairy’s streamlined form like a dart.

  #

  Against his will, Rustle cut through the water, as more of the ceiling tumbled down around him. He buzzed his wings and flailed his limbs, trying to bring himself to a stop. The terror that seized his brain was almost maddening. His fairy instincts screamed at him to take this precious head start and swim for all he was worth away from the collapse. His concern overruled them. Eddy was his friend, they were in this together, and he was in danger.

  He brought himself to a stop and turned. Bravery, alas, wasn’t always enough. He’d barely managed to begin his heroic flit back toward the merman when the roof of the tunnel completely let loose. Stone collapsed, forcing the water aside. A wall of water and debris struck him, forcing him backward faster than he could ever hope to fly. He and Eddy’s bag, the only loose things in the tunnel, launched, slid, and bounced along its length until they were both ejected ahead of a plum of waterborne dust.

  Rustle coughed and shook dust from his hair, trying to get his bearings. He was drifting in the center of a cloud of silt. He could scarcely tell up from down. His meager natural glow barely illuminated more than an arm’s length around him. He held still and clutched his hands as the rumbling continued. There was a very real threat that the whole cavern would collapse, but the concern that pierced his chest and burned his mind was all for his friend.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the earth calmed again. Rustle waited and watched as the dust settled and his vision cut farther into the water around him. When he could finally see the floor of the cavern, his heart dropped.

  “No…”

  The whole of the floor had slumped downward. Riddled as it was with these bizarre, unnatural tunnels, it completely gave way. Where once had been the entrance to the tunnel that held his friend now was nothing but a field of jagged stone.

  Rustle buzzed about, tugging at this stone and heaving at that. He would have to move half a mountain if he hoped to find Eddy, but right now his mind refused to even entertain the possibility that his friend was lost. He spotted a distinctive form among the rubble and cleared away a layer of silt to reveal Eddy’s bag. He plunged inside and emerged with the digging gauntlet, then ducked inside again and found the single claw he’d dislodged earlier.

  Prope
rly equipped he went to work, digging and chipping at the broken ground.

  #

  In Barnacle, Mira held tight to the wall as the last of the earthquake subsided. It was the worst the city had endured in many months. When the danger was gone, she surveyed the damage. Her own home had only one fresh crack in the wall, but from the sound of it, others nearby weren’t as lucky. She swam to the exit. There were at least two homes she could see that had taken considerable damage, and one had partially collapsed.

  “Does anyone need help?” she called.

  The community had sprung to action more quickly than she had. Injuries seemed to be minor, and at least one of the damaged homes was mercifully empty when it had succumbed to the quake. Any other time, she would have rushed to help regardless of the fact matters were well in hand. Not right now. She knew in her present state of mind, she would be of little use.

  For the last hour she had been drifting about in her home, casting frequent glances to the west, in the direction of their farm and mines. Eddy wasn’t late yet. The return tide was only just starting, and thus on a normal day he would only have just been leaving for home. That hadn’t steadied her nerves. Ever since her chat with Disaahna she’d had the worst feeling. When the earthquake came, it was almost as though she’d been waiting for it.

  She surveyed the lesser consequences of the tremor. Things were in terrible disarray around her. Displays of bones had toppled to the ground. Eddy’s spare tools had tumbled from their hooks. She reached down and gathered the worn, crooked pick he kept for light work. It, like most of their tools, had belonged to their father. She gripped it tight, then swam for her room. She rummaged about in the mounds of clutter that had once been her personal library and wardrobe.

  “Where is it?” she muttered, thumping books into rough piles.

  She’d not looked into her old spell book in years. In truth, there were only a handful of spells she really made use of. A bit of language, the indispensable water-for-air, and a handful of warding and defensive spells to protect herself were enough to allow her to survive and thrive. She’d memorized the rest of them—it was part of her education--but as with any spell it was usually best to refresh oneself rather than risk miscasting. But her most basic spell book was nowhere to be found. Without it, she couldn’t be certain she would have proper protection from depths much further down than Barnacle itself.

  There was no telling what had happened to her spell book. In another state of mind, she might have suspected her brother, but at the moment she was too busy feeling anxious about him to feel suspicious of him. So she abandoned the search.

  The book she’d misplaced was anything but rare. There were probably three more similar books to be found within Barnacle. But her fellow residents were busy picking up the pieces. What’s more, the more her mind swirled and churned through the terrible things that might have happened at the farm, the more she feared she might need help. And if Barnacle was busy recovering, her next best bet for help was the nomads. They were never far from Barnacle this time of year.

  Mira grabbed a large conch shell. She cleared away some of her fallen belongings until she uncovered a small chest set into the floor. Among the charms on a chain tucked within her bodice was a small silver key. She clicked the chest open and revealed a satchel of hand-picked gems and pearls. She hoped she wouldn’t need them all, but for what she had in mind, she’d need something. Those people didn’t work for free…

  Chapter 9

  Eddy stirred weakly and tried to focus his eyes. He was in a great deal of pain, but in his slowly clearing mind, that was good news. If he hurt, it meant he was alive. His natural glow fell upon a claustrophobic chamber mounded with shattered rock. Little patches of glass-smooth stone here and there suggested the collapse had sent him down into a similar tunnel that had been bored beneath the one he’d been exploring. Some larger slabs of stone were propped up by the metal hulk he’d been investigating. Those slabs had in turn sheltered him from the debris above.

  He flopped some stone from his tail and winced in pain. He was covered with lacerations, but none were deep enough to be the source of this pain. He’d at least strained a muscle, at worst torn it. Again, as injuries went, it could have been worse. A shake of his head made the world around him swirl sickeningly. He must have taken a terrible blow. That was worrisome, but still ranked among the least of his problems. Far more pressing was the grind and clatter of still-settling stone. The void that had sheltered him was terribly small. As he pulled himself entirely free of the stone that had mounded atop him, there wasn’t even room enough for him to stretch himself out to his full length.

  A bit of sifting, taking great care to avoid completely shredding his hands, turned up his pick, which he carefully freed. He gave one experimental jab to what he deemed to be the weakest—and therefore hopefully the thinnest—spot in the layer debris beyond the sheltered area. A stone shook free and the entirety of his shelter trembled. It was clear, one wrong move and the roof would come down upon him.

  “When the only actions available lead to disaster, think instead. Contrary to my usual methods, but desperate times call for it, I suppose.” He felt his head and checked for blood. “Ah, well. At least I don’t have to filter my thoughts through that broken translation spell.”

  He cupped his head and weighed his options.

  “I cannot rely upon Rustle for rescue. There is just no telling how far I am. … Or if he’s even survived. And digging myself out is plainly out of the question.”

  Eddy looked to the mechanism beside him. He painfully pulled himself closer to the device.

  “But what about you? As far as I can tell, you were making that tunnel. And I would wager if we searched to the end of each of those tunnels we would find another one of you. … Unless the others got to wherever they were going. Which introduces the question of where you were all going. Another fine mystery that Rustle and I could solve.” He shook his head again, quickly regretting it. “No, Eddy. Not right now. Like Rustle insists. Focus is important. Doing something is what will get you out of this, but learning is what will reveal what needs to be done.”

  He investigated the details of the device that he’d only gotten a glimpse at prior to the collapse. The thing was by any measure a work of art. He’d never seen metal plates joined with such skill, hammered with such precision. There was considerable wear—this thing had visibly done a great deal of hard work in the past—but for the life of him he couldn’t see any damage that might have stopped it from functioning.

  “I am no mechanist, but the only bit of you that seems truly broken is a few of your eyes.”

  He leaned low. Some of the glass orbs were shattered. Most had large dents and scars on the shutters that covered them. Two, however, were fully intact. To his frustration they were currently the two half-buried in debris. He dusted them off with the care of a historian. Some of wafted water cleared them without threat of scratching them. As the water cleared, he noticed another detail.

  Until now, what little they’d found that wasn’t simply volcanic rock, air, and water was covered with runes and carvings. Here, they were remarkably absent. The only obvious blemishes on the surface were the pebbled marks of hammers on some of the rare curved sections of the device. But on the flat section of the ring where the eyes had been mounted, there was a slight recess. In that recess was a stamped emblem, like a maker’s mark. It was two tools crossed. One was a round-headed hammer. The other was a rather cruel-looking spear with two uneven length prongs.

  “That’s curious…” he said, blinking to be sure he wasn’t seeing things. “That is surely Tria’s hammer. But that spear…”

  He rubbed the maker’s mark with his thumb.

  “It looks like the Spear of Tren. Why would anything bear the marks of both The Maker Goddess and The Breaker God together?”

  A trickle of fine dust and a sprinkle of pulverized stone rained down from above him amid the worrying sound of settling debris.

&
nbsp; “Less time wondering, more time learning,” Eddy said.

  One of the mechanism’s limbs—whether they should be called legs or arms was of little concern—was entirely free of debris. He lifted it and found, despite some patina fouling some of the joints, it still moved quite freely. In trying to clear away enough stone to reveal the base of another of the arms, he found more markings. These were far less mysterious, just a few symbols of ancient script.

  “Let us see here… it looks like… It looks like it says Borgle. Is that your operator? Or is that you? Come to think of it… I haven’t found any controls yet. No holes for cranks… No handles… No wheels for water to turn… What made you function, my mysterious friend?”

  A hunk of black stone slipped free from the roof of his slowly failing shelter, narrowly missing his tail.

  “If I do not learn the answer soon, I may never learn.” He said, his seemingly impenetrable air of optimism finally showing the cracks of panic. “Think, Eddy. Focus. Focus…”

  He ran his hands over the surface. The metal wasn’t so different from the bars of the gate to the chamber they’d found. That was a place all about magic and focus. And while the carving depicted Tria, central to the room was an altar, which only Tren required of his followers.

  “The old tales tell of all sorts of mechanical marvels crafted by Tria. That could mean this is the work of the divine… Or at least work in the name of the divine. But if it bears Tren’s influence, that would make it unholy. As unholy, perhaps, as the altar… And maybe fueled by the same thing.”

  Another stone shifted, this time bashing him in the shoulder. The flow of black sand that followed was steady and didn’t seem to be slowing.

  “Out of time. Nothing to do but try it. It can’t make my situation any worse.”

  He smeared his thumb against one of his many injuries to gather some blood, then wiped it across the beak of the device. Nothing happened. Next, he applied blood to the nameplate. Again, nothing. The flow of sand had been joined by fragments of sharp, broken stone. The last thing that seemed distinctive was the maker’s mark. He brushed a thick smudge of blood across it.