by Kevin Hearne
“Heavens to humble pie!” Båggi enthused. “I knew you gnomes were clever, but this is a startling piece of engineering!” The dwarf was reclining in a chaise, eating off a cheese and fruit plate he’d created to serve the group.
It was true—the train was quiet, clean, and quick.
“But we owe some thanks to you dwarves,” Onni told him. “These tunnels were made by your people in their quest for metals and jewels, according to this pamphlet I picked up in the Great Library. We merely adapted it.”
“And the poetry painted on the walls is a halfling addition.”
Everyone turned to Faucon, who was sitting up on his gurney, looking exhausted and sleepy and ever so slightly cross-eyed.
“My good friend!” Båggi shouted. “You should be asleep! Let me find my bottle of Dr. Dogoode’s Dreadfully Delightful Dozy Doses.”
Faucon held up a hand. “No, no. I have slept long enough. I must come to terms with my reality.” He sighed, his shoulders rounded. “I…my…the toes are gone?”
Gerd padded to his side and rubbed her head against his shoulder, leaving a small puddle of eggish drool. There was little choice, Faucon. They had been truly pulverized to Ranke Nubbins.
“I suspected.” Faucon put an arm over his eyes. “A halfling knows when he’s been untoed.”
“But we’ve created a solution,” Onni said. He held up a new contraption that looked like a mousetrap battling to the death with part of a small buffalo. The brass was dull and smeared with grease, signifying it wasn’t yet completed, but the fur lining was mercifully clean. “The gearhand did the tricky mechanical bits, but I’m finishing the finer details. The train’s workshop is well stocked, so I should be done by the time we reach the end of the line.”
“What kind of contraption,” Faucon sniffed, “can replace a halfling’s toes? Where will I wear my rings?”
He pulled the velvet ring box from his waistcoat pocket and flipped it open to show a dazzling array of toe rings. Onni held out a familiar iron ring stained with blood, but Faucon wouldn’t take it. “Useless foppery now, I suppose,” he muttered, and he let the box drop on the carpet with a muted thud, sending the rings tumbling.
No, Faucon, Gerd said, feathers up and eyes stern. No. This smöl person is making something to help you. His aura is Moste Earneste.
“I think I would prefer the gurney,” Faucon said, suddenly frosty and seeming a good deal older. “My good dwarf, might I partake of those Dozy Doses you mentioned? I do believe I have had enough of consciousness for now.”
Agape had remained silent through this exchange, but now she scrabbled about, collecting the rings and fitting them back into their specially shaped slots, including the one Onni offered. The ovitaur seemed angry and was bleating softly under her breath. Båggi administered two round pills that looked like bouncy balls made of velvet, and Faucon was soon snoring again. Agape muttered something undetectable as she tucked the box against Faucon’s side and did an Anger Flop on one of the empty train benches.
So Agape was quietly fuming, Onni’s shoulders were in a Grand Slump, and even Båggi seemed almost unjovial. Kirsi realized she had to bolster their spirits somehow. Now was the time when a blessing would come in handy but a curse was utterly useless. That wouldn’t stop her from trying.
“Onni, you’ve got to finish that device before we arrive,” Kirsi said. “He could use a spot of hope.” With new steel in his eyes, Onni nodded once, straightened his cardigan, and took the contraption to the workshop. “And, Båggi, can you create your own custom treatments?”
The dwarf looked flustered and fiddled with his belt buckle. “Of course. Many teas and tonics and salubrious mixtures are possible when one knows the chemistry and properties of various herbs. But I’ve never encountered a situation quite like this.”
“Faucon will need something that dulls pain while providing energy, which I realize might be contradictory. Can you whip up something like Båggi’s Big Dog Grog Analogue, maybe?”
Båggi’s eyes lit up with an almost religious fervor. “Yes. Oh, my butter beans, yes! A little gentian, some poppy, a large dollop of honey, a speckle of mead seed, some firedragon pollen…yes yes!”
Moving faster than Kirsi had ever seen him so far, Båggi yanked open his picnic basket and riffled through his medicinal supplies, seeking out the ingredients he’d just listed. She smiled to herself. This being in charge—it was quite satisfying.
“I suppose you waaant me to do something too?” Agape, the only person without a job, asked sullenly.
Kirsi thought about it and knew exactly what to say.
“Perhaps you can do some of your carvings? We could sell them in Caskcooper to pay for supplies. Our group…” She looked from Gerd to Faucon. “Well, we eat a lot.”
Agape blushed angrily and looked at a point somewhere over Kirsi’s head. “No way,” she said. “My paaarents told me my art would never be up to snuff, and I’m not about to maaarch into a store and get laughed at. I’m no aaartisan.”
Kirsi went red too, but with anger.
“Yes, you are! You create art, and therefore you’re an artisan. What kind of parent would tell their daughter she was bad at art?”
Agape shrugged. “The same kind that already haaad a down payment on a new house and raaan off the moment they could be free of me.”
“That’s as silly as a hedgehog in a hat. Your parents were wrong.”
“Maybe.” Agape looked out the window, watching the brightly colored halfling poetry and murals pass by as the train hurtled through the surprisingly well-lit and safe tunnel.
“Artists can’t stop arting. There are some lovely bits of wood in the workshop. Think about it.” With a reassuring smile, Kirsi slipped into the well-appointed washroom and plucked a nose hair. She could only make a tiny knot with it, but it would have to do. She wasn’t going to waste something as special as a beard hair on this curse.
“Agape’s awful parents in your retirement days: May you realize the error of your ways…and may all your baaas turn to neighs.”
She swallowed the tiny hairball and hoped both Agape and Faucon would find their calling, as she had. They were both hurting inside, but it would take more than a friendly push and a little nose-hair curse to fix the cracks in their hearts.
As for Kirsi, she looked in the mirror and saw someone new. Not the follower meant to live underground, toeing the line and keeping her mouth shut. Not the bristle witch who wasn’t quite right and would never live up to Granny’s blessings. Now she finally understood: She had been born to eat hairballs, kick butt, and lead this ragtag group to save the Skyr and, ultimately, understand themselves.
Eating hairballs was going to be the easy part.
“There once was a little mermaid named Ariel, and she fell in love with a human prince. Or, more specifically, his duodenum, eaten raw with a side of kelp. I didn’t mention that part in the fairy tale, did I? Bad for tourism, and I hate getting sued.”
—HANS CHRISTIAN DANDRUFFSPOON OF THE TOODLEOO DANDRUFFSPOONS, in All Stories Are Lies, Child: A Self-Exposé
The train jerked, and Agape bleated and tried to cover it up with a belch.
“Bless your mess with that chirp of a burp!” Kirsi said cheerfully and gnomerically.
“If you find yourself indigested, I have some Uncle Chuck’s Raspberry Reflux Rounds,” Båggi offered.
“Uh, thaaanks but no thaaanks. I think I’m just going to go, uh, explore the train.”
Agape kept many parts of herself hidden from her traveling companions, and this was one of them: her fear of things that a sheep shouldn’t encounter. She found an empty car and crawled under a bench to breathe into a paper bag and softly bleat to herself. It took a lot of energy to act tough, and heartburn pills wouldn’t help her heart.
Piini’s loss only served to deepen her unhappiness. Kirsi had been correct—he wa
s her main source of comfort, even more eternal in his devotion than her parents. And now they were all gone. Agape reached a tentative hand into her pack and pulled out the first thing she touched, a saltshaker with the distinctive ceramic glaze and stylized flowers of Humptulips in Grunting.
Well, maybe she still had one sort of comfort.
But then she was bleating again and aggressively tightening her sphincter as the train rolled to a smooth halt and a cheerful gnome’s voice hummed, “Happy travels, everygnomey!” over a tinny speaker. Crawling out from under the bench, Agape stood and burped for real. She hadn’t told anyone, but she easily got sheepsick.
“Agape?” Kirsi called.
Shoving the saltshaker back into her pack, Agape hurried up the carpeted aisle, hopped to the next car, and found the party waiting for her. They’d be near Muffincrumb now, and they could take a riverboat ride to Caskcooper and thence on to the Toot Towers. As she’d reminded them, Caskcooper was a lovely city. And she was thinking about staying there, where it was mostly safe and where she felt comfortable, instead of venturing directly toward vast amounts of danger. The only thing her parents feared more than being caught with Piini was dealing directly with the government, which was exactly what her traveling companions planned to do, the fools.
You’ll always lose when you fight authority, laaambykins, her father had said. Much safer to put your head down and graze like reasonable shaetyrs. But don’t aaactually graze, because you don’t haaave four stomachs aaand you’ll probably die. It’s a metaphor.
And here Agape was, on the road to the giant, gaping, carnivorous maw of government. The relief she’d felt when the group had chosen to go with her to the Great Library was ebbing away as she considered this new fear: that she would put her trust in these people, grow attached to them, and they would abandon her like everyone else had. Or die, which was pretty much the same thing.
The gnomes bounded down the ramp with the bouncy enthusiasm they applied to everything besides heel blisters and headed directly for a door set in the smooth wall of the cave. UP WE GO TO MUFFINCRUMB, it said. Faucon’s gurney rolled down the ramp next, controlled by a metal box in Onni’s hand. Behind the sleeping halfling paced his gryphon protector, and last came Båggi, laden with his picnic basket and cask, grinning.
Up ahead, Kirsi pushed a jolly, candy-like button on the wall, and a door slid open to reveal a gnomeric elevator. When everyone else stepped or rolled in, Agape did too, shoulders hunched and head bowed. As soon as the box began to rise, Agape felt panic grip her. She was trapped! But then she reminded herself that when the door opened again, there would be reasonable things like trees and grass, no more of this slick metal with its scary smells, many of them wafting from the crouching gryphon.
The elevator door slid open on an idyllic forest tableau. Somewhere nearby, water burbled in an agreeable sort of way. There were sturdy trees, berry-laden bushes, and fat squirrels scampering about beatifically—until the gryphon bounded out of the box and tore them to meat confetti.
Agape couldn’t help it; she took a few halting steps, her hooves sinking into rich loam, folded to a sheepish crouch, and rubbed her face on the ground until she couldn’t smell metal anymore.
“Um, my friend, are you quite all right?” Båggi called. “I have several ointments for rashes of the face. And posterior.” The dwarf’s mouth abruptly formed an o as he realized he had just said that aloud, then he grinned nervously. “Ha ha! Not that I’ve ever needed those! Just, you know. Best to be prepared! You never know when you’re traveling, am I right? Ha ha!”
“Shh,” she said. “I’m communing with nature.”
The dwarf gasped and looked away. “Right here, in front of everyone?”
“Not thaaat kind of communing. I just…like it up here better. Sheep are not underground sorts of things, obviously.”
“Ah, yes. I understand. Well, how are you with watercraft?” He pointed ahead.
The gnomevator had sunk back into the earth, the grassy gnoll on its roof perfectly blending into the surrounding forest. And on the other side of that gnarly gnome gnoll was a river, and on that riverbank waited a boat helmed by a metal man who looked like the younger, streamlined brother of Piini Automaatti, aside from his jaunty white cap. Her heart bonged with homesickness, even though she knew this metal man was nothing like her metal man. The passenger barge was big enough to fit them all, sitting low in the water with guardrails and a striped awning with jolly tassels.
“Here we are,” Kirsi confirmed. She walked toward the floating barge and said in Alphagnomeric, “You can’t dispute the fruit is cute. Does that compute?”
The automaton’s head turned toward her with nary a squeak or squawk. “It does compute and is quite astute. Please step aboard, miss, and mind the gap.”
A ramp appeared and landed softly onshore, and everyone but Agape clambered aboard. Onni used his little metal box to transform the gurney wheels into metallic kitten feet, which clanked up the ramp merrily to install Faucon down the center aisle.
“My first water adventure!” Båggi chortled. “Oh, my goodness. I am afloat! Adrift! Oh, my rosy rhubarb, what a treat!”
Gerd observed the boat and fluffed her feathers. As you float on the hideous water ribbon, I shall float overhead, where things do not Squirt Atrociously unless I am eating them.
The gryphon launched into the air and circled overhead, snapping a robin out of the sky and swallowing it whole with a horrible glugging noise and a resounding belch.
That left just Agape on land, and she looked into the forest—the Pruneshute Forest, if she remembered correctly—with abject longing. How easy it would be to dash under the boughs of the pines and birches and maples, find some enigmatic rock formation, and disappear.
They probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone. It’s not like they really cared about her.
“Agape?” Kirsi called, just like she had on the train.
Agape was frozen. Everyone was looking at her.
But not in a scary way. In a welcoming way.
“We can’t leave until you come aboard.” Kirsi patted the seat by her side. “Wanna sit with me?”
Never, not a single time in her life, had someone invited Agape to sit with them.
Her heart welled up out of her eyes, and she cleared her throat.
“Uh, sure.”
She might as well go with them. She could always stay in Caskcooper if things got weird.
“On my waaaay,” she said.
The metal floor of the barge was terrible for trotters, but Båggi leapt forward to help her. She was soon settled next to Kirsi, who pulled some knitting out of her pack and offered to show Agape some stitches.
The river journey was balmy and pleasant, at least until Gerd, flying overhead, asked her pet library bird to recite some horrible gryphon poetry that sounded like a snake choking on a trombone. Kirsi and Båggi played a game called I Spy with My Wry Wittle Eye, which involved pointing out perfectly obvious things. Onni toiled away at the metal contraption he was making for Faucon, and Faucon continued to snooze. Agape soon had the beginnings of a nice purple scarf on her needles, and the focus dissolved enough of her awkwardness that she and Kirsi were laughing together.
When she heard the first splash, Agape just assumed it was Gerd befouling the water. But the usual foul reek wasn’t there, and the next splash was much bigger. Agape looked up and bleated in surprise, because what she was seeing couldn’t be possible.
Human eyes were staring at her from the water. Blue ones. With eyelashes and everything. But they were stuck onto either side of a large fish’s face. Its fish mouth was open and replete with human teeth, and its webbed hands clawed at the slow-moving water, churning it white. Several more such heads popped into view in the river behind the boat, the eyes blinking excitedly as the things made a horrible barking noise like a reverse throw-up.
“Kirsi—everyone—what is thaaat?” Agape shouted.
The barge shook as everyone’s feet hit the floor and ran to the back.
“Oh, my grossly grumpy gravy, that does look a bit unpleasant!” Båggi cried, tugging his beard in distress.
One of the creatures swam forward, its slimy, scaly tail slapping the water, with fat salamander legs paddling like billy-o to either side of it.
“Gnavigator, what is that thing?” Kirsi asked in her bossy voice.
“Why, that’s a mermaid, miss!” the automaatti said, cheerful as a sunbeam. “A whole school of them! I do hope you brought your mermaid repellent.”
“What’s mermaid repellent?”
The automaatti’s head turned one hundred eighty degrees to smile at them with brass teeth. “Around here, it’s a very large harpoon. Pesky things, mermaids.”
Onni ran over to the automaatti and scrambled up onto a stool to read the thing’s back, squinting to do so.
“This one can’t fight,” he said. “Screwed down to the deck. Navigation, cheerful commentary, and tea service only.” He sighed and reached for his nose like he was going to push up glasses but was briefly confused to find them gone. “We’re going to have to take care of them ourselves.”
“But I thought mermaids were beautiful!” Båggi shouted, still distressed and not even reaching for his Telling Cudgel, for all that it had begun to gently glow, this time a bright bluish-green. “Mermaids are supposed to have a maiden dwarf’s head and upper bits with a resplendent koi tail!”
“No, no,” Onni disagreed. “They’re gnome girls on top and salmon on the bottom, and they grant wishes.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Kirsi said. “I read a book about how they were human ladies with two fish tails who lured men to spend their disposable income on burnt kuffee.”
The horrors were swimming closer now, fighting the current toward the boat. One of them reached a slimy hand with bulbous salamander fingers for the ladder, and Agape instinctively kicked it with a hoof, knocking it back into the water.
