Tales From the Crucible

by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells

  “Well. It doesn’t look like anything metal actually got harmed in here.” If it had been, he might need to call Minerva. Wires and processors and the like weren’t his expertise. He got out some spider silk thread and stitched the wounds. Then he covered them with a thick layer of honey salve. The stuff helped powerfully in healing, and wouldn’t harm any creature that licked their wounds.

  Taryx frowned. Did this creature even have a tongue? He looked his patient over. A few of its tentacles had three-pronged attachments, but they appeared to be hand-like, with no mouth in sight. Taryx couldn’t find one anywhere on it. Perhaps all those magenta panels over its spherical body gathered in solar energy? Or maybe it absorbed æmber and used that to power itself.

  “I don’t know nearly enough about your kind, whatever you are,” Taryx whispered, “but I hope I’ve done enough that you can mend and make it back home, wherever that is.”

  All of his patients eventually made their way back home. It was what patients did. Even if it took this tentacled orb years to recover, it would move on some day. Taryx was just a healer. That was his role. His niche. Nothing more. Even Jani had left him, in the end.

  Thinking of Jani made the air inside suddenly feel too thick to breathe.

  “I’m going to step out for just a moment and let you rest. I’ll be back shortly.”

  He left the creature drenched in sunlight, in case it really was solar powered, and ducked outside. His bark felt too tight, like it was about to crack and start peeling.

  Taryx turned to his garden. To those who didn’t know how to look, it would appear to be just another part of the forest. Berry bushes grew in the understory, mulched by the nut trees above. Herbs grew here and there in patches of dappled light. Trees lay where they had fallen, inoculated with mushroom spawn – some of the mushrooms blooming in glorious pink and blue frills, others dormant for the time being. Numerous other mushroom species grew in his woodchip beds and around the bases of living trees in balanced symbiosis.

  Taryx filled in the hole in the woodchip bed where his guest had crash landed. Then he walked over to his herbs and pinched them back, encouraging bushy growth. He breathed in the freshness of them, their brightness. He marveled at the scalloped edges of the leaves and their bright, new-green color. Then he turned his hand over and let them drift away to become part of the mulch.

  Most things in the world were temporary, ephemeral. Leaves grew, then withered. Trees soared to the top of the forest, only to become a home to mushrooms. Jani was gone. And one day, Taryx’s sorrow would dissipate, too. He hoped.

  Taryx only wished he could make it happen faster. But even if you heaped leaves into a compost pile, even if you turned them every day, they would only crumble so quickly. He couldn’t simply burn his grief away like it was a flush of invasive mushrooms. He couldn’t prune it off. Or carve it out of himself. Or keep it at bay with a well-made salve. Grief was more persistent than foot-lichen. And it annoyingly insisted on being composted one painful day at a time.

  Taryx sighed at himself, then took a quick stroll through the rest of the garden. All was in order, so he returned to check on his patient.

  The second cot was empty. Panic swelled in Taryx’s throat. That creature hadn’t been in any condition to fly. He started for the door, but then he glimpsed part of a wing sticking out from under his own cot, in the shade.

  “Are… are you there?”

  It burbled unhappily and tucked its wings all the way into the dark shadow under the cot. Taryx frowned. Usually he didn’t have any difficulty understanding the needs of creatures, but this wasn’t exactly a natural being. Perhaps that’s why he’d found it so unnerving at first. Even its flesh might have been grown in a vat, if it was some kind of probe designed by Minerva’s people. It could even be one of the faeries of the forest – made by the Architects themselves to help keep balance in the world.

  But Taryx had glimpsed faeries before. They tended to be lithe, graceful creatures, and his patient was neither.

  “Is the light bothering you?” Taryx picked up his kettle and moved it back to the small table in the center of his room. The æmberflowers rustled and spread out to better stare at it – replacing shafts of sunlight with green shade.

  His patient shuffled out from under the bed, pulling its spherical body forward with those long tentacles.

  “You’re not solar powered, then. Are you some kind of cave-dwelling faerie?”

  It didn’t say anything. It just climbed back onto the cot and lay shivering silently in the darkness.

  On its second day, the creature began to explore, walking on its tentacles. By the third day, it was flying. It followed Taryx as he harvested and sliced mushrooms to dry for various healing compounds. It watched – if it could watch, without any eyes – as Taryx drilled holes in a newly fallen tree so he could hammer in wooden plugs he’d already colonized with quickbalm mycelium.

  The creature clumsily picked up a drill in its tri-pronged tentacles and tried to create a hole, too. The poor thing was still shivering, even on a warm day like this. Occasionally, a purple-black spark spluttered from the end of one of its tentacles. Maybe it was still injured somewhere in its wires? Taryx was no expert when it came to technology. If the creature worsened, he’d call Minerva; there was a button for that on the control panel of the kettle.

  Already, though, Taryx liked having its company. How could he not find the creature endearing, with how earnestly it was mimicking him right now? It wasn’t so hard to get out of bed in the morning when he woke up to the comical sight of this creature poking at the teakettle, as if trying to decide if the kettle was alive or not.

  But patients weren’t meant to stay. “You don’t need to help me. Or try to repay any sort of debt. Your life is your own. Now that you can get about, you should return to your own kind. You’ll recover better in your native environment, wherever that is.”

  It wrapped a tentacle around Taryx’s arm and whimpered in that whirling, burbling way. “Brmm, brmmm.”

  Taryx sat on the log and stroked the top of its spherical body. “You don’t have to go today. But you should start thinking about it.”

  It nestled closer against his chest and purred like a cat. A winged, tentacled cat.

  The creature didn’t leave the next day. Or the next. It followed Taryx around, sometimes lending a tentacle, and burbling unhappily anytime Taryx tried to shoo it away.

  Had something bad happened to it among its own species? Something that looked like itself couldn’t have inflicted those two deep gashes on its back, but if it had been manufactured, perhaps its creator had attacked it? Or perhaps it no longer had a home to return to.

  Taryx reminded himself this was only temporary. Still, couldn’t they be friends for now? An ephemeral thing. Like the solstice flowers that bloomed once a year, and only for an hour at that.

  Taryx had a skein of yarn lying about – a gift from one of the elves who lived nearby, after Taryx treated her for a nasty viper bite. He’d meant to make a sling out of it in case he needed one, but instead, he had knitted a hat. Then he put it on top of the creature. “There. That might keep you warmer. I’m not really sure. Do you like it?”

  “Brrm, brrm,” it burbled happily, stroking the hat. It didn’t seem to be shivering quite so badly now, and only emitted one or two little purple sparks. Taryx was no master knitter, but his lumpy hat and the round creature seemed perfect for each other.

  “I can’t keep calling you it. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll call you Burble.”

  It showed no signs of hearing. Instead, it picked up the teakettle and started flying slow laps around the house, making the æmberflowers rustle every which way. It had done that before – it seemed to be the creature’s favorite game.

  Taryx sighed. “Well. I don’t know if you can even understand me. But you don’t seem to mind. Burble it is, then.”

  The next morning, a tri-deer staggered into the clearing in front of Taryx’s house, snuffing and g
runting in pain. Its three horns flashed green and yellow in warning to other tri-deer, and the tufted ends of its three whip-like tails thrashed in the air.

  It held one of its dainty hooves off the ground, where it dangled at an unnatural angle. Taryx approached slowly, hands held low and spread wide. “You’ve found help. You’ll be all right now.”

  He reached out, laying a finger on the tri-deer’s face. It calmed a little. “Good job. You’re safe. I’m going to fix your leg. Let’s have you lie down.”

  He made some quickbalm mushroom tea and gently trickled it over the leg. The edge of the bone was just sticking out of the skin. A compound break. This wouldn’t be easy to set. He readied his splints and bandages, then he tried to ready the deer. He fed her a whole dried cobalt mushroom – as much as was safe. It would make her less than lucid, but he never gave patients enough to knock them out entirely. Most creatures who fell asleep from eating the cobalt mushroom didn’t wake up again.

  She blinked sleepily. Her flashing horns slowed to a heartbeat tempo, pulsing yellow green, yellow green. Her tails flopped this way and that.

  “All right. I’ve numbed you as much as I can. But setting this still won’t be fun. Breathe deep, if you can.”

  The tri-deer obeyed. But as soon as Taryx wrapped his fingers around either side of the break, she kicked out with her good leg. Her hoof thudded solidly into Taryx’s side, deeply gouging him. Taryx grunted as sap pooled around the wound. He proceeded, tightening his grip – but the deer flailed her broken leg. Taryx had to drop it, for fear of doing her more harm.

  “Brmm brmm.” The familiar sound seemed sad to him. Taryx stepped back from his patient and turned to meet Burble. It passed him a bandage.

  “Thank you.” Taryx wrapped the bandage around himself. He’d have to tie the deer up next, unfortunately. He rarely needed to restrain patients, and he hated doing it. But, well, tri-deer were good at panicking. Prey animals often were. Those instincts had kept her alive, and she couldn’t readily set them aside.

  Burble floated up to the doe. She didn’t even notice it, with her eyes glazed over blue, thanks to the cobalt mushroom.

  “She’s injured. She didn’t mean me harm,” Taryx clarified, though Burble didn’t seem angry. Perhaps curious? A tri-deer might be as strange to it as Burble was to him.

  Burble gently reached out one of its feathered tentacles, laying it on the side of the deer’s face.

  Her horn slowed, then stopped flashing all together, turning a neutral brown. Her tails stilled. She breathed deeply and steadily, blinking slowly.

  Taryx stared. “How… what did you do, Burble?”

  Burble gave a self-satisfied coo.

  Taryx hurriedly knotted off his bandage and moved to check the deer’s pulse. It was strong and steady, just like her breath. She wasn’t panicked any more. “Did you inject her with a drug? Was that some kind of hypnosis? Or did you stun her?”

  Of course Burble couldn’t answer.

  Well. What was done was done. Sitting around wouldn’t make things any better for the doe. Taryx laid his long, multi-jointed fingers around the delicate leg. She didn’t move. Taryx set the break – quite nicely, given that the doe didn’t flinch the entire time. He splinted and wrapped the whole leg.

  “Well. That much is done. You should come back every week so I can check on it until you’re healed.”

  She licked him with her small pink tongue. Taryx sat by her for the next hour, until the cobalt mushroom wore off. Her eyes turned from orbs of deep blue to the pale blue of the sky, to their usual white-and-brown. She scrambled up onto three legs, blinking like she was a little disoriented, but no worse for wear. Moving fairly well on her uninjured legs, she walked away, disappearing between the trees.

  Burble’s wings buzzed energetically. Instead of sending out a few sparks, it let off two small jets of celebratory flame, then flew in excited loops over the house.

  That same afternoon, a brightly colored male bumblebird arrived with a gouge in his back. Something with a sharp beak had tried to eat him for lunch and failed. Taryx hadn’t even gotten the quickbalm tea ready when Burble lovingly laid its soft tentacle on his delicate wings. The bumblebird relaxed entirely.

  With such a still patient, Taryx used his thin fingers with extreme precision, cleaning out the wound and packing it with salve. When Taryx had finished, the bumblebird buzzed and stretched, casting rainbows with his iridescent wings. Then he flew out the opening in the æmberflower roof.

  Taryx stared at Burble. Was it some kind of doctor-faerie? He could think of no other easy explanation for why it was so capable at sedation. There were plenty of predators who might use poison to stun their prey, but Burble didn’t eat.

  “You’re a marvel,” Taryx whispered.

  Burble burbled happily in response.

  Over the next three days, Burble helped treat two more patients, putting them into a relaxed, distant state while Taryx worked. He almost wanted to get his friend Minerva out here to analyze just how Burble was doing it. She’d come if he called – like all good Logotarian scientists, she loved a good research project. But, however much he’d like his curiosity satisfied, it felt wrong to subject Burble to such scrutiny. Especially since it was in such good spirits. Burble no long shivered. It could fly faster, quicker, with more precise turns. The thing was a feat of engineering, or nature, or both.

  Taryx headed out to burn back a stand of cobalt mushrooms growing on his sky cap bed. Burble followed. With its hat hanging askew, it looked like Burble had its head curiously cocked.

  “The cobalts are useful, but invasive. If I didn’t burn back their colonization efforts, they’d take over my whole garden,” Taryx explained, gesturing at the half-dozen brilliant blue mushrooms sticking out of the woodchips. It was a slow process – first wilting the cobalts with his torch, then smoldering the area around them.

  Burble approached the nearest flush of cobalts and lowered one of its three-pronged tentacles.

  A jet of flame shot out. In a heartbeat, the mushroom crumbled into white ash. Burble turned toward Taryx, as if waiting for approval. Taryx hurried over. The mushrooms were gone, along with the mycelium underneath the surface – cleanly and neatly burned out.

  “Would you mind doing that to all the rest of the blue mushrooms on this woodchip bed?”

  “Brrm brrm.” With incredible precision, Burble incinerated each and every one while Taryx stood back and watched in awe.

  Burble wasn’t just a doctor-faerie. It was like it’d been made specifically for Taryx. First sedating patients, now incinerating the cobalt mushrooms. Was it possible that the Architects had designed this creature of flesh and filaments for him? For this forest? For the tri-deer and the bumblebirds and all the others who’d benefited from its help?

  If that were true, Burble wasn’t just a patient. And it didn’t have some other home to return to. This was where it belonged.

  Taryx might never need to worry about being alone again.

  The next morning, Taryx woke before the sun. The sky outside was blue-black and freckled with stars. One moon was full, the other crescent, like it was winking at him. On the other cot, Burble lay still, a dark round shadow against the faint light.

  “Burble. Are you still sleeping? Maybe you don’t even sleep. Anyway, I’m going for a stroll to one of my favorite places. Would you like to come?”

  Burble rolled up on its tentacles and responded in that peaceful, familiar, “Brrm, brrm.”

  “Excellent. Let’s head out.”

  Burble had done so much for the forest already. He ought to see the best view it had to offer. If the Architects had crafted Burble just for the Lesser Uncanny Forest, surely they’d given it some way to appreciate the beauty here.

  They headed east first, then turned north and forded a shallow stream.

  A harsh voice cut across the pre-morning stillness of the forest. “What new invasive horror have you adopted, Taryx? At least the last one was an elf.”

>   Gaalm, the leader of the elves who lived this way, stepped around a tree, hands planted on his hips. He had pale blue skin, the color of icicles, and eyes that shone gold from lid to lid.

  Taryx had never much liked the brash elf, but he still politely turned his palms outward in greeting. “Hello, Gaalm. I should be asking you what you’re doing out so early.”

  “Fishing, of course.” He held up his spear. “Not that it will do me any good, now that you’ve scared the fish away. What is that thing following you?”

  “Its name is Burble, and it’s a faerie, thank you very much.”

  “What kind of mushrooms are you growing, Taryx?” Gaalm asked. “That thing’s no faerie. It doesn’t belong here.”

  Arguing with Gaalm was worse than arguing with a rock. Rocks, at least, didn’t insult your friends. “Thank you for your opinion. We’ll be going now.”

  Gaalm grumbled about the fish and about things that did and didn’t belong in the forest, but he didn’t stop them. Taryx kept a good pace, the faster to leave him behind.

  “Well, I’m sorry not all the neighbors here are friendly.”

  Burble wasn’t paying the least bit of attention. It had found a stand of whistle grass and was brushing its tentacles over it, eliciting pipe-like tunes. Around the next rise, it found the sentient fog. The fog tended to lay low in one of the depressions near the path. It never spoke, but if you got close to it, it would form a face to mirror your own.

  Looking at Burble confused the fog a great deal. It stretched one way, then the other, eventually deciding on becoming a ball.

  Taryx had needed to point such things out to Jani. The elf had always looked upward, noticing rope bridges, nests, and which trees had moved since their last visit.

  A whir startled Taryx. For a heartbeat, he thought something was wrong with Burble, but then he spotted the real source of the sound – a leaf faerie, sputtering between the trees like its mechanisms were damaged. Did faeries have someone like himself to go to when they malfunctioned? He took a step toward it, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come. Faeries were like that.