The Princess Beard

by Kevin Hearne

  “So what is it you want, then, Mr. Otterman?” she said, trying to stall without letting him see that her hands were shaking.

  The troll tipped his hat. “To employ you. You’re clearly better fighters than any of my men are—or were. Take over working security for the docks here, and I’ll pay you beyond your wildest dreams. There’s plenty of free corporate housing, swimming pools, sushi buffets, generous benefits, and paid time off. There’s even a water slide on the other side of the island.”

  Morgan gritted her teeth. “Funny. The workers we met said they were prisoners.”

  “They are. But you’d be staff. And I won’t tell the outside world that I’m harboring a fugitive. You’d be free and safe for the rest of your life. All I ask is that you cease defying me.”

  “And you’ll give Otto back?”

  The troll smiled a smile that might’ve been benevolent if his mouth didn’t look like a crater full of hippo fangs with a generous coating of plaque. “As a show of good faith, you have your men put down their swords, and I’ll give ’im to you now.”

  Morgan turned to face the pirates. She gave Luc a nod, and he nodded back and then gave Vic a nod. Vic nodded at Luc and then at Feng and then at Morgan, then again at Qobayne, as they all knew Qobayne hated being left out. Morgan nodded at Al, and then it got very confusing, because they were all just bobbing their heads knowingly at one another when clearly no information had been shared.

  She set down her rapier, the others followed suit with their weapons, and she held out a hand. As the troll dropped Otto into her grasp, Morgan stuffed the otter down her shirt and fell to her hands and knees, rolling away, just as Feng picked up and tossed a cannonball to Vic, who threw it right at the troll but missed, sending it sailing by his head with an audible whoosh. All the pirates leapt out of the way, and only Vic and Angus were left standing, the troll scouting for a better weapon and then, finding none, taking off at a run, right for the centaur. Feng kept tossing cannonballs to Vic so he wouldn’t have to work to reload, and the centaur chucked them at the troll as fast as he could. A couple more sailed by the troll, but then one slammed into his gut, making him say, “Ooph,” and slow down a bit, allowing Al to run up and toss a handful of elvish glitter in Angus’s face.

  The troll began sneezing tiny little baby sneezes and turning red and dancing around, and Vic smacked him with a cannonball upside the head, knocking off his hat. Angus stopped and roared, red-faced, before sneezing mightily but tinily. Vic’s next cannonball caught him right in the ribs, knocking him over.

  “Bowling for trolls!” Vic shouted, giving Morgan a look of intense urging as he recalled the troll’s attention and ire to himself.

  And that’s when Morgan realized it was her turn. She placed Otto on the ground, stood, and ran for the troll as he clambered to his feet, thrusting her rapier right through where she figured a trollish kidney would be, under the ribs. As Morgan yanked the sword out, Angus fell over again, spurting sludgy blood, and she stabbed him on the other side.

  “Going to kill you, girl,” the troll wheezed between itty-bitty sneezes, on his hands and knees. “Gonna put you through the machine downstairs and separate out your component parts for profits.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. She put a boot on the troll’s side and kicked him over, and wounded as he was, he fell like a drunk elephant.

  On his back, the troll was a huge mound of flesh, and Morgan didn’t want to get too close to those ham hands, which could’ve squished her to pulp. Vic came to stand by her side, Luc on his shoulder.

  “Will ye give him merrrrcy, lass?” Captain Luc asked. “Forrrr although ye’ve the mind of a captain, you don’t have the hearrrrt of a pirrrrate. Ye’ve neverrr taken a life beforrrre—”

  “Are you kidding?” Morgan said, her voice husky with feeling. “I’ve killed like a dozen guys since we got here, and I don’t feel bad about it at all. Because they know that what they’re doing is wrong. If it were right, then those barrels would be clearly labeled Otter Bits and this island wouldn’t be secret and its operations would be aboveboard.

  “But, no, these guys come to work every day and watch otters get put in cages and then fed into that deboning machine, and then they watch the barrels get shipped out under the name EATUM for innocent waitstaff to hawk to innocent halfings, and it’s all a big lie for money. It’s nine kinds of exploitation for self-interest, and that’s not the kind of person the world needs walking around. They’re sociopaths, or at least jerks who’ve learned to numb their empathy just so they can amass more money, and that kind of person is the sort who ruins the world and laughs at the suffering of others.

  “Perhaps a lady would try to reform him, and perhaps an attorney would prosecute him to the full extent of the law, but me? I’m just a pirate. And this pirate believes some bad guys can’t be saved, and shouldn’t be.”

  “So how will you punish this villain, then?” Luc asked in that same ringing tone. “Will ye dispatch a ship to the POPO, and—”

  But Morgan just stuck her sword right in the troll’s heart and ended his reign of terror.

  He died with ululations and a torrent of diarrhea.

  Al swayed on his feet and held his nose, breathing through his mouth. “Pfauugh! Victory doesn’t smell very good,” he said, looking at the mess the troll had made.

  “Oh! Hey, uh. We won? I guess?” Vic said, looking around for more enemies and spying none. “But where’s Tempest? Did she go back for the otters? I lost track of her after she took care of that arrow wound for me.”

  Morgan looked at the centaur solemnly, and Al felt his throat go tight as Morgan pointed to the huge willow tree with a cannonball embedded in its trunk.

  “She was a dryad, Vic. Every time she healed someone—”

  Vic swallowed hard. “She grew that brown stuff.”

  “Bark, yes.”

  “So she—” Vic choked up.

  “She knew it would happen,” Morgan said. She stepped a little closer, and the willow branches swayed hungrily toward her. “She always knew.”

  “But she did it anyway,” Vic said, his voice tiny.

  “She did, and because of her sacrifice, we won,” Morgan asserted. “But we need to finish it. This business needs to end. We can’t let someone else come in here and continue Otterman’s enterprise. There are going to be more ships delivering otters. There are going to be other ships coming in to collect their ordered EATUM. We need to send Dinny’s their final bill.”

  “Well, yeah, for sure,” Vic agreed, “but what about Tempest? I mean…she saved my life. Maybe all our lives, in a way. Are we just gonna leave her here? This rooftop isn’t exactly a verdant meadow or a lush forest.”

  Al spoke up. “You can’t move her, because she’ll eat you if you try.”

  “Naw, she wouldn’t do that. She saved me!”

  Shaking his head sadly, Al said, “But that was her last act in her human form. Now she’s a carnivorous tree. Standing between us and the exit, I might add.”

  “So there’s nothing we can do?”

  “I didn’t say that. You can make her human again. You just have to feed her lots of fresh meat.”

  “Any meat?”

  “Any meat, so long as it’s fresh. Not those barrels of EATUM.”

  “No, I would never! That’s horrific!” Vic trotted over so that his rear faced the body of Angus Otterman and kicked out, effectively punting the troll toward the trunk of the willow tree. As soon as the body tumbled beneath the canopy, the branches whipped down like so many chelicerae and drew the still-bleeding corpse toward the trunk. The trunk shifted and groaned and the cannonball fell out as Angus Otterman’s head and shoulders got shoved in. There weren’t any chewing noises but rather some popping and grinding. Everyone had to look away.

  “That’s a good start,” Al allowed. “Now you just have to keep f
eeding her.”

  “For how long?”

  The elf shrugged and winced a little at the crunching noises. “As long as it takes. I don’t think it’s ever been quantified. But she’s saved many lives during her time as a human, healed many wounds. She has to balance that out in death as a willowmaw before she can walk on two legs again.”

  Vic blinked, then nodded. “Okay. I can do that. Yeah.”

  “Excuse me?” Morgan said. “Do what?”

  “I’m gonna figure out a way to keep feeding that tree. I mean, if I just walked away from someone who saved my life and left them to starve to death on a lonely rooftop, how could I ever lift my head again and meet anyone’s gaze? I mean…” He extended his hands. “I owe her. I wouldn’t be standing here now, or ever again, without Tempest’s help.”

  “Arrrre ye sayin’ ye want to stay on this blasted island, lad?” Captain Luc asked.

  “Well, yeah. There’s a debt to be paid. I’m gonna pay it, somehow. There has to be a way. I mean…if we take over things—I guess we kind of have already—we can take this ruin and make it beautiful again. One day at a time, we right the wrongs. We clean up the mess. We swab the deck.”

  “Damn right!” Feng said. “I…well.” He looked at Captain Luc. “I’d like to help him, Captain, if I may. I lost too much at sea. It would be good to help build something great.”

  “And I,” said Gorp. “It’s gonna be years before I get the nightmare of that processing plant out of my mind. Best thing I can do is help tear it down and watch those otters we saved sail away with you.”

  Captain Luc bobbed his head. “Good good good good good! I underrrrstand. Anyone who wishes to stay herrrre may do so. I am no trrrroll who compels someone to worrrrk. But let us move to the otherrrr side of the willow while it is occupied, and then make decisions.”

  Everyone edged around the willow, which was slowly drawing the body of Angus Otterman into its maw. Al was about to pass by the pile of cannonballs that Vic had used to bring down the troll when an odd detail drew his attention. There was something stamped into the iron, an uneven surface on what was normally a solid sphere of potential destruction. He drew closer and grunted as he picked one up to examine it.

  OTTER BALL, it said, and in smaller text underneath, 42# SHOT, and in yet smaller text on the last line, MMA ARTILLERY.

  Al looked up with the euphoria of revelation and shouted, “Otter balls beats troll!”

  Everyone turned to stare at him, and he realized that he had neglected to inform most of them of the secret prophecy of Pellanus as revealed to the Sn’archivist.

  “This is an otter ball,” he explained, pointing to it, “because Otterman was trying to be clever, see? Vic hit him with these and it dropped him. And the elf butts were important too—I mean, wow, right? The troll was about to snuff Morgan and then ta-daaa! Elf butts!” Al waved at the two tall elves in PITA shirts. “Theirs, I mean, not mine! Well, uh, maybe you didn’t see that because you were busy. But trust me when I say that Otterman was distracted at a crucial moment by the wanton shimmying of their taut, firm buttocks! It gave me the chance to dispel his magic protection so we could bring him down! Which means the Sn’archivist wasn’t mad, he really was divinely inspired by Pellanus, and Pellanus wanted us to end this horror! We’re the freewill instruments of divine prophecy, and my dream of visiting the Sn’archivist wasn’t actually a waste of time! Isn’t that great?”

  Al’s eyes tracked the many, many faces staring at him as if he were the mad one, and it gradually dawned upon him that he had used entirely too many exclamation points without proper context. Perhaps he had a little Sn’archivist in him, after all.

  “Well, look, everyone, I’m a bit excited at the moment and I can explain in calmer, rational tones at a later date on a still night over stale beer, but for now let’s just say this happened exactly as it had to happen yet wouldn’t have happened at all if it weren’t for every single one of you being precisely the person you are. Thank you, sincerely, for being so awesome.”

  They all seemed to understand that part, at least, and gave him a weak smile for it, and Al noted for future reference that perhaps he should have said that last sentence first and then shut his piehole.

  Once they’d all safely edged around the canopy of the new willowmaw, Captain Luc cawed and cleared his avian throat with a trill.

  “Beforrrre we leave this rrrrooftop, I want ye all to pause and say a few worrrrds if ye feel like ye should. Otherrrrwise we will assume ye feel the same as those who have things to say now. I will say this: I neverrrr sailed with a drrrryad beforrrre Tempest, and I know I neverrrr will again. That will be a rrrregrrrret of mine until the end of my days. My one eye has seen many a marrrrvelous thing, and of them all, she was one of the best. I will always be honorrrred to say that I once gave herrrr passage and sharrrred a ship’s biscuit with herrrr.”

  Morgan sobbed and said only, “She was my friend. One who didn’t care about who I used to be but who cared about who I am now. That is all.”

  Silence fell until Vic gulped audibly and said, “When we first met, Tempest didn’t like me much. And it took me a while to figure out why. But now I know; I get it. And if I could be granted just one wish, I’d like to be able to tell her I’m genuinely sorry for how I behaved, and then I’d leave her alone. I guess that wouldn’t be a very good gift, especially in comparison to the one she gave me, but I think maybe she would have liked that. I also wish I could conjure up something she’d like to eat now, but cakes and tea aren’t going to satisfy a carnivorous tree. So, uh…” Vic’s lip quivered. “So I’m going to try to be as good a person as she was. She wanted to help people. That’s what I’m going to do. And I’m going to start by helping her. And when she’s had enough meat that she’s able to walk around again, I’m going to welcome her back, and then I’m going to leave her alone and help someone else.” He ducked his head and wiped his eyes before continuing. “You never expect the people or the moments that change you forever. You only see them after they happen to you. So I just want to say it out loud: Tempest changed me for the better. I’m so lucky to have met her. And I am going to do my very best to live up to the person she was. That she is, I mean! I am Pissing Victorious, son of Sucking Fabulous and Barfing August, and I swear I will not leave this island until my friend Tempest can walk away from it.”

  There were some sniffles and sobs after that, as well as a few murmured instances of “The son of what?” but Al joined the rest of the crew in deciding that there was nothing else to be said in memoriam. Tempest’s unique gift to him? Well, he would put that into practice soon.

  “Rrrright, then,” Luc said. “I think we should firrrrst securrrre the island. Then decide how to maintain it. And then we must choose who will go with me to find the trrrreasurrrre and who will stay. I pledge this to ye all now: Those who stay to defend this island frrrrom capitalists—no easy task!—will still get an equal sharrrre. We will come back in a couple of weeks. But I will rrrrequirrrre a crrrrew to accompany me to the island. Let us go below and decide.”

  The subsequent hours were a whirlwind of activity.

  Feng discovered the actual office of Angus Otterman, where documents revealed that he had been born in a wee hamlet of Kolon as Seamus MacThroatpunch. Examination of an address book allowed Feng to compose letters on MMA stationery, informing the owners and regional managers of Dinny’s that the production of EATUM would cease immediately and they should not expect their orders to be fulfilled or make any orders in the future; they should, in fact, remove EATUM from their menus on receipt of the letter due to possible contamination.

  He and Gorp decided that they would first renegotiate worker shares of the business to distribute profits among them and then continue the foundry side of the MMA business. Al was as surprised as anyone to find that Feng was a genius with numbers and that Gorp knew how to write a heck of a business lette
r; they were clearly the right crew to stay behind. But they had Vic for muscle too. Anyone who came to Mack Guyverr insisting on being paid for otter flesh, or claiming that they had the right to sell otter flesh, would find themselves carried bodily to a private conference on the rooftop with the big boss to discuss it. There they could argue as long as Tempest would let them.

  Leaving many friends behind, Al set sail with Captain Luc, Morgan, Qobayne, a skeleton crew, and a whole lot of otters to seek out treasure near the wee island of Mack Elmorr, located past Mack Ribpe to the north and east of Mack Guyverr. It was a ghostly beach of barren white sand, unremarkable unless one wished to point at it and specifically remark upon its sadness, but off its coast, halfway across the channel to Sinuicho, a tall expanse of rock thrust proudly up from the waves, the pinnacle of some long-forgotten mountain underneath the sea. Coral reefs grew around it, however, and so ships avoided the rock. Off the reefs were kelp forests, and that meant sea urchins and other edible goodies. The otters were encouraged to make their new homes there, and all but Otto left the ship to start a new colony. Luc ordered the anchor to be dropped and they rowed a dinghy out to the reef and waited for low tide. They had to wait a long time.

  When the waters finally receded, the reef became obvious. Their boat rested upon it, and they were able to step out and walk around. Luc led Al, Morgan, and a crew with shovels to a small pit of sand that was invisible until the moment they stood before it. But it would’ve been visible, of course, to someone who could fly and look down at the world from a different point of view.

  “Therrrre,” Captain Luc said, pointing a wing. “Dig and let us be gone as soon as possible.”

  Al dug in with gusto. With esprit de corps. With moxie.

  They hit something after only a few inches. They hit it again and again, in fact, until they found the edges of it and could dig more judiciously. A half hour’s work, and they had excavated enough sand to open a sizable chest.