The Princess Beard

by Kevin Hearne

  “There, I think.” Alobartalus was pointing at a now-hatless man trying desperately to climb up the nets and getting terribly tangled, due to a magnificent peg leg and a very fancy coat.

  Morgan marched over, grabbed the man by the lacy jabot, and dangled him over the boards. He was not a large person, but he kicked and squealed, shouting, “Gerroff! Gettemoff! Blasted weasels! Rabid little stoats!” Morgan snapped her fingers in front of his nose, and he focused on her. His brow first furrowed, then splayed apart and upward in helplessness. “Um…avast?”

  “Do you surrender?” she barked.

  The captain looked taken aback. “Why would I? We’re not in a fight. We requested aid, and you’re doing a blasted poor job of aiding us!”

  “You demanded our ale!” she shouted.

  “We requested aid! If you can’t read semaphore, that would be your own fault. Now, can you help pacify the weasels or shall I set the whole thing ablaze and just take over your ship instead?”

  Morgan flicked her eyes at Tempest. “Tie him up, would you?”

  As Morgan took hold of the man’s lapels, Tempest fumbled with the rope. She clearly hadn’t done her knot-tying homework. The captain, of course, wasn’t helping but was rather flipping and flopping like a thirsty fish, screeching each time an otter approached. Alobartalus stepped in and deftly trussed up the captain like a roast goose. Morgan placed him gently on the deck and shouted to Luc, “O Captain! My Captain! This puddin’ pants surrenders!”

  Soon Feng stood before the bound captain, and Luc glared down at him as otter mayhem rampaged adorably across the deck. It was hard to hear anything or take an assertive stance, thanks to the plethora of playful mustelids. Captain Luc kept trying to say authoritative things, but then the other captain would see an otter and scream, frightening everyone.

  But Morgan had an idea.

  “Milly Dread!” she called, using what she considered her Princess Voice, for although she was a lady, not a princess, she’d been taught to bark authoritatively at people by several governesses.

  The old woman put down the otter she’d been brandishing like a weapon and looked up. “Yes, mum?”

  “D’you still have that barrel full of fish guts?”

  Captain Luc eyed Morgan appreciatively as Milly nodded. “Course I do! Several, in fact! Ye never know when a few dozen buckets of rotten fish guts’ll come in handy!”

  Morgan grinned. “If you could pop one open, please—a newer one? And feed the otters? Then we could all hear our beloved captain threatening this fool.”

  “Good good good good good,” Luc said, bobbing up and down on Feng’s shoulder.

  Pleased as punch, Milly Dread used her sword to pop open a barrel, and the otters immediately swarmed toward her on The Puffy Peach in a squirmy brown wave, making a chorus of excited squeaks as Milly tossed out bits of chum and cooed at them like they were kittens. Although the smell was nigh intolerable, the noise level went down considerably, and all eyes returned to the two captains.

  “Now, as I was sayin’, what’s all this?” the parrot barked. “Forrrr I am Clean Luc, captain of The Puffy Peach, and it would appearrrr I have the advantage of ye.”

  “I’m Captain Blondbeard,” the captain said, drawing up his beardless chin in a failed attempt to look authoritative. “And this whole thing is a terrible misunderstanding. We’re not even pirates!”

  “Oh, please,” Morgan said. “You’re flying flag number seventeen, your ship is all black, and you clearly demanded our ale!”

  “Untie me, keep the weasels off me, and I’ll explain everything,” the captain said, sounding as exhausted as anyone Morgan had ever met.

  “Do it,” Luc said. “But keep yourrrr cutlasses handy.”

  The deck had gone mostly silent, the sailors of both ships confused and suffering an adrenaline drop and not really spoiling for bloodshed. The otters—for otters they were, no matter what the confused captain called them—were all now sitting around Milly Dread in an orderly sort of way, perked up on their haunches and patiently awaiting gobbets of guts. On Luc’s command, Alobartalus deftly untied his knots and tidily stowed his bit of rope, which Morgan found commendably thrifty, although personally she would’ve cut the man free to make an impression, per Chapter 7 of the manual, “How to Make an Impression by Chopping Things from Ropes to Cabbages to Heads.”

  Freed, the captain stepped back, rubbing his wrists and looking like he hadn’t slept in days. As he spoke, he didn’t focus on Luc or even on any of the crew. His eyes perpetually scanned the deck, and he shuddered each time he saw an otter, something Morgan would not have considered possible a few short moments ago, as they were insanely adorable.

  “This here ship is The Morel Turpitude, and usually we just haul gourmet mushrooms up and down the coast and scare pirates away with our sail. We’re really merchants with some pirate trappings, you see. People note the black sails and the peg leg and tend to leave old Captain Blondbeard alone.”

  “But you don’t have a bearrrrd,” Luc observed. “And your hairrrr is brrrrown.”

  Sticking his nose in the air, Blondbeard stuffily muttered, “It’s a family name. Anyway. We took on this live cargo in Humptulips. They told me it was ducks. Ducks I can manage, I promise you! I am simply a master of ducks. But as soon as we cleared Truffle Bay, I learned that I literally had no ducks to give. The boxes were solidly built with the normal amount of air holes, and we were given firm coordinates to the island for their delivery. Mack Guyverr they call it, although I’ve been in and out of the Macks for decades and never heard of it. And there was a barrel of foul-smelling stuff we were supposed to smear on the hull for some reason.”

  “And what happened then?” Luc nudged.

  “It’s the otters,” Blondbeard whispered. “They escaped. It was madness!”

  “They seem pretty chill just now,” Tempest said, and they did.

  “That’s because your lass is feeding them chum. I’m not sure what happened, but as soon as we entered these waters, they went insane. Broke out of their crates, and quite a surprise that was, as they’re most definitely not ducks. Squirming up and down anything that held still, scratching with their creepy wee paws. And the squeaking. Pellanus save me from the squeaking!”

  Blondbeard abruptly sat down, put his arms around his leg and peg, and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

  “So ye didn’t seek a fight?” Luc asked.

  Blondbeard shook his head but did not remove his thumb from his mouth to speak.

  “Aid,” one of his sailors said from nearby, where he sat on a barrel, nursing several deep scratch marks and a bruise on his cheek shaped like a seashell. It was the man who’d waved the semaphore flags. “Just aid. I’ll be haunted by those wee paws until the day I die. One of ’em threw a clam at me!”

  Morgan was watching her captain carefully to see how the parrot handled this peculiar situation, which hadn’t been covered in the manual.

  “Well, then. My advice to you, lad, is to let the otterrrrs go. Just drrrrop ’em off on the nearrrest island and find a morrrre pleasant carrrrgo.”

  “But we won’t be paid if we don’t deliver!” Blondbeard whined.

  “Ye won’t be sane if ye continue. Look at ye, sittin’ about suckin’ yerrrr appendage.”

  With that, Luc directed Feng back toward The Puffy Peach, leaving his crew to pick up their weapons, help their victims to their feet, and wipe the otter plops off their boots. But Morgan still had questions, and there was nothing in the manual against interrogating idiots who were simply bad at otter management.

  “Why would anyone ship several hundred otters?” she asked.

  Captain Blondbeard stood, straightened his coat, and shrugged. “It’s best not to ask. People have peculiar ideas about fads. I’ll never forget the summer of pet rocks.”

  “Who hired you?”

>   The captain gave her a more appraising look. “And why should I tell you?”

  With a huff of annoyance, Morgan picked up the nearest otter and aimed it at the captain, holding it under its armpits. The otter made a charming clicking noise and flapped its feet. In response, the captain screeched and ducked, his face hidden under his arms.

  “Tell me who hired you, or I’ll…I’ll…” Utterly at a loss, she poked the otter’s nose into Blondbeard’s hair, making the man scream bloody murder. Frightened by this reaction, the otter clambered up Morgan’s shirt and curled around her neck in a pleasant sort of way. It was almost like wearing a helpful if somewhat oily scarf.

  “All I know is that the ducks—which turned out to be otters—were supposed to go to the Mutae Mercantile Association on Mack Guyverr.”

  “What was that first thing?” Morgan asked. “How is it spelled?”

  “M-u-t-a-e,” Blondbeard replied. “Family name, I guess. Not that we can ask them anytime soon, because we’re not only off course now; we’re headed in the wrong direction. Otters have no sense of direction. You know what? I’m out. If you’d like to take my cargo, be my guest. They’re already mostly aboard your ship anyway. I’m going straight back to Humptulips and taking on something easy, like a conference of squabbling academics or a nice load of bricks. Or even pet rocks or troll dolls, at this point.” He flapped a hand at her and turned away, trudging toward what had to be the captain’s quarters.

  Morgan, Tempest, and Alobartalus seemed alone in a bubble of understanding, surrounded by chaos and wounded soldiers bearing otter bites and clam-shaped bruises. Morgan looked from the dryad to the elf, her hand stealing up to stroke the purring otter around her neck.

  “Do you know what that means?” she said as everything clicked.

  “That we won our first fight?” Tempest said, flexing an arm.

  “That that guy’s going to have a heck of a phobia for the rest of his life?” Alobartalus said.

  “More than that.” Morgan looked at the swarm of otters surrounding Milly Dread, horror and revelation fighting for supremacy on her face, for she was very fond of word puzzles. A certain problem had been bothering her ever since that greasy visit to Dinny’s, and she’d finally found the missing puzzle pieces. “He said this shipment was for the Mutae Mercantile Association. The MMA. And Mutae is EATUM spelled backward.”

  Tempest’s jaw dropped, and Alobartalus shook his head in horror as Morgan continued.

  “EATUM is otters. EATUM is made of otters!”

  Flightless creatures such as humans and dwarves, Luc observed, always indulged in some heavy breathing after near-death experiences. They also breathed heavily during near-sex experiences, he’d noticed, and often when they were confronted with an attractive cheese plate with assorted crackers and fine mustards. But the breathing after a near-death experience was always Luc’s favorite, because it was a prelude to some colorful complaints and imaginative promises of what the bipeds would do the next time they were confronted with mortal peril. Usually these threats of future violence involved the stuffing of limbs, vegetables, and/or small animals into orifices they had no business spelunking, but occasionally they involved biochemistry and a healthy dose of outrage. They hadn’t exactly been threatened with death by boarding Blondbeard’s ship, but they had thought they were going to be, so their bodies reacted as if they had. They were all panting fantastically, and Luc hooted in amusement.

  “If I ever meet whoever’s behind this otter business,” Feng ground out between gasps, “I’m going to shove an exploding seed pod covered in the toxic secretions of a bog frog so far up his—”

  “I’m going to force-feed him fermented cabbage!” Skånki Jorts shouted as he shook a meaty fist at the southern sky, mistakenly thinking that consuming the cruciferous vegetable would be fatal for all species and not just dwarves. “His intestines will explode and liquefy his abdominal cavity into a slurry of blood and excrement!”

  “I’m, um, going to tie him up in the front row of a hardcore yodel-polka joint in Grunting,” Morgan vowed, and shrugged when everyone looked at her with blank stares. “What? I’ve heard that’s a terrible way to die.” The otter perched on Morgan’s shoulder made a startled meep sound when she shrugged, and Morgan apologized to it. “I really need to come up with a name for you, don’t I?”

  “Neverrrr mind that now,” Luc called, and then, once their attention swiveled to him, pointed a wing tip at the retreating merchant ship. “Look therrrre, me salty dogs—that’s rrrright, you’rrrre salty now! Ye see how harrrrd Blondbearrrrd is tacking to the east? He wants to get back to the safety of the coast just as we want to make it to the safety of the islands. But they won’t make it, no they won’t: That I can tell.”

  “What’s so unsafe, Captain?” Morgan asked.

  “We drrrrifted into deep waterrrrs while we trrrransferrrred the otterrrrs to our hold.”

  “And thank you again for that, Captain Luc,” Morgan said.

  The full-bellied otters were much more tractable, and Milly Dread was confident that she could keep them fed and happy until they reached the tower of the Sn’archivist. There they would set the otters free to form a new colony, since the Sn’archipelago would be home to plenty of delicious sea urchins and other shellfish. Captain Luc had no more wish to see the otters ground up into EATUM than Morgan did, and several of the crew members had turned a bit green, realizing that they had enjoyed EATUM in the past.

  “Yes, yes, well, I hope ye didn’t become too attached to Captain Blondbearrrrd therrrre. He’s still in the kill zone, ye see, floating above his own death, which may be stirrrring even now in the depths of the Urrrrchin Sea! I know we arrrre headed for dangerrrr as well, but taking a chance on the sirrrrens is saferrrr—especially when ye sail with me! But the only way ye can pass safely in deep waterrrr is if the huge, hungrrrry thing beneath the waves is sleeping—orrrr alrrrready full.”

  “What thing?” Vic asked.

  “A monsterrrr—but not like the ones we’ve faced! No tampoon can kill it. They call it the cavemouth. It can swallow a ship whole, me hearrrrties, and that’s no lie. Therrrre is no stopping it, no escape—look!”

  The sea foamed and bubbled around Blondbeard’s ship. Its crew panicked, some of them leaping overboard in a desperate attempt to escape, but it was no use: They and the entire ship disappeared into the maw of the most massive creature on Pell, the cavemouth whale, as it erupted from the dark waters.

  Various exclamations of wonder and horror escaped from Luc’s crew as what appeared to be a mobile island rose up past the crow’s nest of The Morel Turpitude, closed its mouth at the zenith of its surge, then crashed back into the sea. Only Tempest seemed unimpressed with it.

  “Huh. Its skin is gray with an a. How sad,” she said. Luc saw Morgan’s eyes go round and wide as she stroked the otter around her neck.

  “I’m sure glad we got you and your buddies off there,” she murmured.

  “Meep,” the otter agreed.

  “Ye see?” Luc called. “Ate the whole ship, and it has rrrroom for morrrre, I guarrrrantee. That’s why we’ll hug the shorrrres, wherrrre the bottom is shallow enough that it can’t get beneath us, and hope we don’t lose too many bodies to the sirrrrens.”

  “Too many?” Tempest said. “Don’t you mean any?”

  Luc fluttered his wings. “What, ye mean save each one of ye from being lurrrred to yourrrr doom? I suppose it is possible if irrrregular. But only if ye do exactly as I say!”

  “We’ll do it,” Morgan said, and the others all chorused their agreement.

  Filthy Lucre craned his head around to look at the sea ahead and then turned back to them. “Fine. Now listen. Sirrrrens arrre not human women, or dwarrrrf women, or any kind of women on top with fish tails on the bottom.”

  “They’re not?” Skånki cried. “That’s not what my last captain sai
d.”

  “Same here. How do you know?” Feng asked.

  Luc cawed. “I know because I’ve seen them! Theirrrr song doesn’t worrrrk on me. They don’t want to seduce a one-eyed parrrrot to his doom. I’ve flown to theirrrr islands and I’ve seen them in theirrrr grrrrottoes and I’m telling you, they’rrrre not fishy at all. How that myth got starrrrted and why it’s perrrrsisted I cannot fathom. But the fact is they be birrrrds, like me. Except not. Bloody huge, they be, with human heads and faces and vocal corrrrds, and with dirrrrty brrrrown plumage. And if you don’t drrrrown trrrrying to swim to them, they will eat you.”

  “Eat me?” Feng said.

  “Eat you. Talons will rrrrip open that belly and pluck out the spleen as an appetizerrrr, and then they’ll nibble yourrrr liverrrr while you’rrrre still alive. I’ve seen them do it! They asked me if I wanted a bite of one of my own salty dogs! And despite me tellin’ ye this, when ye hearrrr them sing, ye won’t hesitate. Ye will jump in afterrrr them, gladly, lurrrred by those sweet magical voices singing some completely awful lyrrrrics.”

  “Will their song affect me?” Tempest asked.

  “It affects all bipeds, so farrrr as I know,” Luc said. “Though I admit I have neverrrr seen the rrrreaction of a drrrryad beforrrre. Do you want to rrrrisk it?”

  “No,” Tempest said, shaking her head. “Tell us what to do.”

  “We have a limited amount of rrrrope belowdecks. Tie yourrrrself up to a crate if ye can and coverrrr yourrrr earrrrs until someone tells you it’s safe. That will be me orrrr Vic.”

  Tempest flinched. “Why him?”

  “He’s not a biped.”

  Tempest glanced at Vic and he winked at her. “I’d prefer it be you, Captain.”

  Luc whistled and continued. “This is vital: Do not uncoverrrr yourrrr earrrrs out of currrriosity orrrr to check if we be past! As soon as you do, you will be lost! A single note frrrrom theirrrr song will ensnarrrre you! Be patient and live!”