The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Read online

  “Look, I don’t understand that garbled nonsense you’re spouting, so you can just shut that mouth for all the good it’s doing.”

  Eddy slumped a bit. It seemed he would have to rely upon the spell again.

  “If you come and do a hit as your first thing, I do a hit back,” he said, struggling to resume use of the badly cast enchantment.

  “Ah. So you can talk. In a fashion,” the creature said.

  “Who are you?” Eddy asked.

  The stranger pulled a hunk of dislodged digger from the wreck and propped it up as a makeshift seat.

  “Mab Mill-Mason,” it said.

  “I am Eddy. I am a merman.”

  “Are you? You look a bit more fishy than I thought they looked. I have it in my head that mermaids are half and half.”

  “Mermaids are. Mermen are different. Are you a very small human, or a normal-size dwarf, Mab?”

  “I’m a dwarf. Isn’t it obvious?”

  “I have seen as many dwarves as you have seen mermen.”

  “Mmm… I suppose that stands to reason.”

  “It does stand very much to reason. But now we each have seen one of the other type of thing. Eddy the merman and Mab the dwarfman.”

  Mab’s hirsute brow furrowed. “For someone who can barely talk, you can certainly fit a lot of mistakes into a single word. No one says ‘dwarfman.’ I’m just a dwarf.”

  “Oh? But mermaids and mermen are how we say it.”

  “That’s fine. You talk about yourselves however you want. But no one else sees the need for that. And even if we did, you got it wrong.”

  “Did I?” Eddy leaned forward and squinted. “Are you a dwarfmaid?”

  “It’s just dwarf! Not dwarfman, not dwarfmaid!” Mab snapped. “… But yes.”

  Eddy pointed. “You have hair on your face.”

  “Very observant.”

  “I did not know anything that wasn’t a man could have face hair.”

  “And I didn’t know a merman looked like a monster. Nice of fate to give us both a chance to be ignorant.”

  Eddy smiled. “Yes! It is very nice, and a fair thing. But I still wonder, why did you attack me, Mab the dwarf who has hair on her face.”

  Mab shut her eyes and shook her head.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked.

  “A few hours.”

  “I’ve been here years. Most everything I’ve run into has tried to kill me. When sort of thing happens enough times in a row, you make it a habit of making sure you strike first.”

  “Well I am very much not trying to kill you.”

  Mab removed a gauntlet and rubbed her neck. “You could have fooled me.”

  “I was trying to be not killed by you. It is very much the same as attacking you, but different, too.”

  “Fine.”

  “Is this your home?”

  “It is now,” she muttered.

  “You have a very strange home. I am sorry I smashed through the top of it.”

  “I’m sorry I did, too.”

  “Are these diggers your diggers?”

  “These hunks of slag?” She kicked a gear. “Nothing but spare parts. They don’t work, and there’s no way for them to work. A bunch of moving parts with nothing to move them.”

  Eddy shook his head. “Not so. A digger brought me here.”

  Mab creakily stood. “It’s been ages since I’ve had someone to talk to, but if you’re going to lie to me, I may as well be alone.”

  “I tell the truth. Look! It is at the top of the hill there, waiting.”

  The merman pointed and Mab turned her head. After a bit of squinting, she fetched a cobbled-together contraption that looked to be three eyes harvested from diggers fastened together in a row. She gazed through one end and pointed the other toward Borgle.

  “How… By the mountains themselves, how did you get one working.”

  “I smeared blood on it.”

  “What has that got to do with getting a clockwork contraption running?”

  Eddy pulled himself over to the “head” of the dismantled digger and pointed to the mark. “That thing with the two points. That is the symbol for one of the gods of bad things. Tren. To please Tren you need blood.”

  “Magic…” Mab muttered. “Of course it was magic.”

  She kicked the hulk angrily.

  “Who ever heard of magic and clockwork being used together!? You stupid, worthless machine. All of that time wasted patching them up, swapping parts, collecting parts, and it was magic. And you figured it out when I couldn’t? A fish who can barely talk!”

  “I can talk very much. It is just that I am not so good with the casting of the spell for talking to people who do not talk the talk that I talk when I’m not talking with magic.”

  Mab shut her eyes angrily and quietly worked through the sentence. “Are you saying you’re using magic to speak to me, and that you cast it poorly?”

  Eddy nodded.

  “Do you think that’s supposed to make me feel better? That you’re bad at magic and you still figured it out when I didn’t?” She turned back to the broken digger and thumped it repeatedly with her boot. “Stupid, stupid, stupid machine!”

  “Why are you so very much angry now?”

  “Do you know how many years I’ve been here?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I!”

  “I see. No sun and no tides, time can be not easy to count.”

  “I’m a dwarf. We go months without seeing the sun. Marking the hours as they pass is something we all learn to do intuitively. But I’ve lost count a hundred times now. I may have been here five years. I may have been here twenty. The best guess is keeping track of how long it takes for the Skitter-Clamps to grow.”

  “Skitter-Clamps?”

  “That’s what I call the big things that grind these paths into the ground here.”

  “Oh, yes. Very tasty!”

  “You’ll change your tune after you’ve been eating them day in, day out for a few years.”

  “I will not, because I will be leaving soon. Borgle will help me.”

  “Borgle?”

  “That’s the digger I am making work better with these parts! Or I hope I will.”

  “Right, right. The digger. Wait. I thought you said it was working fine. I can see it moving.”

  “It is awake, but it is hurt. From the fall from the sea up above.”

  Mab clapped some dust from her hands and fetched a hammer and pliers from her belt with all of the flair of someone drawing a dagger. “If you need help fixing one, I’m your dwarf. Let’s get out of this place.”

  “Hah! You see! The sea and adventure are the same. They provide a way, no matter how bad things get.”

  The dwarf glanced about, eying the distance between herself and the functional digger.

  “How did you get this far from that thing if you’re a fish out of water?”

  “Much sliding and much crawling.”

  “Ah. Well I hope you don’t expect me to carry you. That little tussle has got my joints complaining already. I’m not a youngster anymore.”

  “No, no. I had a thought. I was working on this for helping to move better when you came and tried to kill me with axes.”

  He painfully slid himself to the project he’d been hammering on before he was assaulted. Two of the larger gears had been roughly affixed to a curved shaft between them. A bit of digger-carcass was attached to the inside of the curve, producing a sling of sorts.

  “What is it?” Mab said, scratching her head.

  “Wheels! For land moving!” Eddy said proudly.

  “You’re trying to make a cart?”

  “Or something. Anything for land moving. But it isn’t a good moving thing yet. More hammering is needed, I think.”

  Mab marched up and gave it a rattle.

  “Wobbly. You’ll need to shore this up with a brace. And here you’ll want a counter balance. This needs to be straightened. That should be peened
over… Give me a few moments. I think I can get you rolling.”

  “Yes, please!” Eddy said. “Very, very please! But let me watch. I want to know the way to build a thing like this. I think people at home will use them.”

  Mab fished around in the scattered mound of parts and made a few selections, then went to work with speed and skill while Eddy watched with rapt enthusiasm. And to think, he was beginning to wonder if this adventure had taken a turn for the worse!

  Chapter 13

  Rustle buzzed about in the wobbling bubble of air he’d dragged down with him. For a last-ditch effort to solve the issue of not being able to breathe water, the bubble was proving to be quite a workable solution. It took concentration to keep it in place around him, but beyond that, if he was focused on his work, he could almost forget he was even underwater.

  He’d found his way back to the jagged ground where he’d lost Eddy and was scanning through the wavy surface of his bubble for the lost merman’s bag. He grinned as he spotted it, not a dozen yards from where he expected it to be.

  “At least I’m still good at navigating by the wind,” he murmured to himself, flitting to touch down on the shattered black stone and silt of the cavern floor.

  He tugged open the flap.

  “The spell book…” he said, almost reverently.

  In his journey back to this place, he’d been wracking his brain for what he could or should do to find and rescue his lost friend. An idea had come to him, but before he could even attempt it, he would have to liberate the spell book from the bag. The task was more easily said than done. The book was many times his size, and though fairies were stronger than they looked, he was by no means the strongest fairy he knew. He wriggled into the bag. His improvised air supply caused it to bulge and billow. No matter how he heaved, pushed, buzzed, or shoved, he couldn’t get the tome to shift.

  “All of the magic I could ever want to learn, and I can’t get to it!” he cried in frustration.

  He took a moment to rest and think about a solution. All of this traveling, and all of the magic he had been using, had him utterly exhausted. His tiny body burned with fatigue. Now that he’d taken a moment of respite, he discovered just how much of a fight it was to keep his eyes open. He laid back and gazed up at the bag above him. Inflated as it was with the air he’d dragged down with him, he could almost imagine it as a little home. It was cramped enough to make him uncomfortable—small spaces were not a fairy’s favorite—but the open end was enough to mitigate those feelings. He fluttered his wings a bit to get them to lay flat beneath him, then put his aching mind to work solving his problem.

  Rustle’s imagination offered up meager, ill-conceived solutions. He could try wedging the spell book open while it was still inside the bag. … No, there wasn’t room. He could cut the bag open. … No, it was rubbery and tough. Being tossed about as much as it was hadn’t so much as torn or punctured it. Even with the digging claw, he didn’t imagine he would be able to get through it.

  Bit by bit, his imagination shifted to other, more enjoyable tasks. He found himself reminiscing about his home. So bright during the day. Nice and cool a night. Predators never came very near. The flowers were heavy with nectar. Oh… Nectar. The sweets Eddy provided were passable, but nothing compared to a sweet, sticky draught of honeysuckle. He could feel it trickling down his throat and spilling over his chin. He could hear the language of his people, complex and musical, not filtered through a spell. It was such a wonderful place, he wondered why he’d ever gotten it in his head that he needed to leave its borders to explore. The image of it dancing in his head was enticing enough to push even the magnificent and compassionate Merantia from his thoughts.

  The reverie shattered when he felt himself tipping upward.

  “What?” he snorted in a daze.

  The book he was laying atop flipped up on end, dumping him out into the warm water. He flailed about and tried to get his bearings as the former contents of the bag plunked down around him and the bag streaked toward the surface. He swam after it and splashed into the air to take a breath, then gazed down. The bag was floating on the surface.

  It took him a second or two to realize what had happened. He must have dozed off. Without his mind focused upon it, the bubble he’d dragged down with him bobbed back to the surface, ripping the bag along with it and tipping its contents out. He may not have had the strength to lift it by himself, but his inborn affinity for manipulating air meant the bubble he’d formed was more than a match for it.

  “Wow…” he said. “I wish I’d done that on purpose.”

  He prodded at the bulging bag until it upended. The trapped air spilled out and it drifted back toward the floor of the cavern. The half-second of sleep and the rude awakening had done little to restore his strength, but now that the book was free the promise of its contents was enough to spur him downward, once more with a fresh bubble of air in tow. He lifted the cover of the book. Words formed in his mind as he swept his eyes across the shapes. It was different this time. The words didn’t have a precise meaning. They were incantations, not meant to be understood. They were meant to sculpt mystic forces. It wasn’t as simple as knowing how the words sounded, he needed to be able to recite them properly. Failure to do so correctly could produce a malfunctioning spell like the one that Eddy had muddled through to enable them to communicate. Doing so with a less innocuous spell could have far more troubling results.

  “I can’t try ‘water-for-air.’ For all I know if I botch it I could end up unable to breath either. But there must be something that can help me, and that won’t hurt me if I cast it wrong…”

  He leafed through the pages. Slowly, as though the thoughts themselves had become jealous for being ignored, he felt his adoration and devotion to the exquisite and infallible Merantia weave back into his mind.

  “I should learn something impressive…” he mused. “Just think how proud my dear Merantia will be when she discovers I’ve learned the magic of her people…”

  #

  Bult, Sitz, and Cul swam along the rift, gazing at the sea floor lit by their combined glow.

  “You ever seen a farm, Sitz?” Bult asked.

  “Nope,” Sitz said.

  “How are we supposed to find one if we don’t know what it looks like?”

  “We know what the rift looks like, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “So we swim until we see a part of it that looks like someone’s been digging around in it. Simple.”

  Bult nodded. “That’s good thinking.”

  “No. That’s just ordinary thinking. How long have we been swimming and you didn’t speak up to ask that question until now? What were you doing if not watching for something out of the ordinary?”

  “I don’t know. I was just sort of following. I figured one of you knew.”

  “Lucky we did,” Sitz said.

  He turned to Cul.

  “Or at least, lucky I did. Because Cul here’s clammed up again.”

  “Hmm?” Cul said, looking up at the sound of his name.

  “You heard me. You were sure chatty with that shore-lover. And now that you’re back among your own you’re quiet as a jellyfish,” Sitz said. “I never knew you had a taste for the shore.”

  “It’s interesting, that’s all.”

  “Plenty more to see down here than there is up there,” Bult said. “The three of us have seen more of the world than any shore-lover or surface-dweller ever will.”

  “I know that. But the thing is, I’ve seen what I’ve seen. And I haven’t seen what she’s seen. New is new, even if there’s not much of it.”

  “So it’s just novelty then,” Sitz said doubtfully.

  “I don’t like your tone, Sitz,” Cul said.

  “You were making eyes at her. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with having a maid here and there, so long as they don’t meet. But those weren’t the eyes you were making. Nomads and shore-lovers don’t work together in the long haul.”

  �
��You don’t know what you’re talking about, Sitz.”

  “He thinks you’re falling in love with her,” Bult said.

  “I know what he’s talking about,” Cul snapped. “I’m saying he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I just met her today! How fast do you think a merman can fall in love?”

  “Not that fast, but you’ve had plenty of time to think you’re falling in love. Plenty of time to get dragged by the current far enough along to find yourself in a bad place when it finally lets you go.”

  “What do you care about it anyway? Since when do you have an opinion about who I talk to?”

  “Since I’m the one who’ll have to drag your mopey tail around behind me when we head on our way and you’re left pining for her.”

  “Has that ever happened?”

  “Not to you maybe, but to plenty of others. Remember Hadge? Tried to take a shore-lover with him. The shore-lover couldn’t keep up, ended up costing us four whole tides and a rendezvous before they finally cut it off.”

  Bult nodded. “And then we had to deal with him and his heartache.”

  “That was after we did business with that same mermaid for over a year,” Cul said. “You’re seeing things that aren’t there, Sitz.”

  “Care for a wager?”

  “On what?”

  “If it turns out you’re falling for this… What’s her name?”

  “Mira.”

  “If it turns out you’re falling for Mira, I get the gem she paid you. If we leave her behind and you don’t drag the floor like a bottom feeder, I’ll give you mine.”

  “Deal. Easiest gem I ever made. And look. There’s the farm. Let’s go.”

  The three came upon the orderly, well-maintained rows of fronds and swam down among them.

  “Say… Whoever this missing brother is, he does good work,” Bult said.

  “So now we found the place, what are we looking for?” Sitz said.

  “You know what the sea floor looks like after a bad trembler. Anything that looks like it happened recently and might have hurt someone. Simple,” Cul said.

  They drifted down and began their investigation. Bult, in particular, was intrigued by the bed of bivalves that made up the pearl farm.