The Search For Magic tftwos-1

by Brian Murphy

  There were no storms in Tarsis, not nasty ones anyway. Sometimes there were gentle rains. In the winter there were snows, but usually the blue sky was obliterated by a wall of white, stinging sand that could peel the paint off the leeward side of a building or the skin from an unwary traveler. The old books, the ones he’d found in the ruins of the city, spoke of sea storms, of walls of gray water pounding down on the city, but there was no one alive on Krynn who remembered those days. The First Cataclysm had taken the sea, and with it gray storms and the white, flapping sails of hundreds of sailing vessels.

  Now, after hundreds of lifetimes, there was a storm coming. A wet, cool, gray storm. And there was his seaworthy vessel, with a white sail, ready to catch the wind.

  Effram climbed down into the pit in which his boat rested on its nest of scaffolding. He’d dug the pit himself, with his own hands, into the now useless breakwater that had once protected the harbor. In a fit of faith, he’d angled the deep ditch in such a way that his ship could be floated out to sea where there was no sea.

  But, faith or no, what good was a boat built in landlocked Tarsis? Effram ran his hands over the smoothly joined planks of the hull and down to the polished keel, checking the stability of the scaffold that held the boat in drydock. The sturdy, silken heart of oak had no answers. No more than he had answers.

  He didn’t know why he’d spent the majority of his adult life building a boat in the middle of the desert, laying himself bare to insults and jeers. He didn’t know how he’d become the crazy eccentric who lived down near the breakwater. He only knew that he had looked up one day, and the boat had been almost finished, and he had become daft Captain Effram. He had faith that one day he, as well as those who called him crazy, would understand.

  As he slid his hands across the oiled hinges that held the rudder to the ship, he gazed up at the sky. The furtive spitting of rain threatened at any moment to become a deluge. The boat, a miniaturized, bastardized version of a schooner, with its wide, low deck and a sail made of tarred canvas, was as seaworthy as he could make it. He had known, for some months, that his work was done, that he was only waiting. Waiting for truth and vindication. Now, gazing at the gray line of water approaching from the south, smelling the storm in the air, he knew his waiting was over.

  He tested the hinges on the rudder, which he had scavenged off the huge doors of some long-dead lord’s stable and refitted to his smaller vessel, and checked the last of the waterproofing he’d done on the hull. The feel of storm in the air, the twisting wind and the spitting rain demanded action. It demanded he be ready when the time came.

  He went inside his hulking, old house and made sure the shutters were closed and fastened. He stuffed a piece of leftover sailcloth in the window the children had broken. Having stalled more than he could bear, savoring the anticipation, he changed into his sailing clothes. His arms and legs felt like a stranger’s inside his skin, moving jerkily and without coordination, not at all like the well oiled shifting of muscle to which he was accustomed-until he put on the heavy breeches and tunic, the cloak with its heavily waterproofed seams, the boots with soles scuffed with sand so that he wouldn’t slip on a wet deck.

  In his finery-sticky and smelling of tar-he walked down the street to one of the neighborhood markets. It was swarming with people, and he had to be among them. To see their faces as they saw him in his rain gear.

  The rain was falling softly now, big fat drops that splashed onto the cobbles and bounced back up from shining puddles. The air was cool, prickly, strange compared to the heat which normally beat down upon their heads. People hurried, heads bent, zigzagging from stall to stall, as if they could wend their way amongst the raindrops.

  The tarps erected over the stalls to keep out the broiling sun flapped in the unusual breeze and shielded the melons, vegetables, and apples from the rain. Children ran squealing, jumping from puddle to puddle. Old women scurried from stall to stall, gathering food into their baskets as if they thought the rain would wash it away.

  The air was wild and tumultuous, alive and energetic, just like the beating of his heart, and the people responded in kind, taking up the feel of it-the blowing wind and the dancing raindrops and the peculiar coolness. Effram couldn’t help but be caught up in it. Elation wavering with fear at the approaching storm. He bought a thick loaf of black bread, just in case there was no market tomorrow, and tucked it safely under his cloak.

  Despite his elation and enthusiasm at the wind and rain that was pattering ever harder onto the tarps, he saw no difference in the faces of his neighbors as they looked at him. No appreciation that he alone wore clothes that could stave off the rain and sea. He saw no realization of what the approaching storm meant.

  The baker, a man his age but with more hair and much more girth, looked him up and down, and though he said nothing, his disdain was evident. The man who sold milk and cheese and butter snickered to his wife about the Captain’s “crazy get-up” before Effram was out of range. The fruit seller refused to let him touch her, but made him put his coins down on the table instead of into her hand.

  Children darted about him, their voices sharper than the stinging drops of rain, lingering in the air despite the worsening gusts of wind. “Captain! Hey, Captain! Here’s a puddle for you to sail your boat in!” They tugged at the tail of his cloak and stomped in the rapidly swelling puddles of water, splashed him to test the worthiness of his rain gear. But at least they noticed how the drops splattered against the knees of his oiled trousers, bounced on the back of his cloak, and slithered away.

  The adults laughed and shrugged. After all, they were “just children,” and what did he expect, always acting so crazy? Only Lydia, the carpet maker, chased them away, chiding them in her lovely voice for teasing him. Effram was as surprised to be championed as the children were to be scolded. She had never noticed him before, never spoken softly to him. Beautiful women like Lydia did not notice men like him.

  He gaped at her, unable to stop himself, though pride dictated he turn his back. Her long, black hair swirled about her as she rolled up her carpets, putting them away. She was closing shop, as were many of the other merchants. The rug that disappeared into a tidy, tight cylinder was a thing of magic and beauty, so colorful it looked more like life than wool, more like a painting than woven threads.

  A dwarf went past, carrying a chair and a jug of wine and squinting as lightning flashed overhead. Effram followed the dwarf out to the street and watched, chuckling, as the fellow sloshed toward the center of town. Water was already ankle deep in the gutters, calf deep for the dwarf. To the south, more rain was coming. Much more. The sky had gone from light gray to deadly dull, and squalls with their peculiar perpendicular streaks filled the southern horizon. Water was returning to Tarsis, this time from the sky.

  Effram shivered. Fear, anticipation, chill, all swirled about him like a cyclone. No longer interested in the chaos of the market, he hurried home. He dumped his purchases on the kitchen table and went out back to check on his boat. The water in the pit was already knee deep, swirling and cloudy with sand.

  Fast. It had happened so fast. There was water in the seabed, as far as he could see! Gray ripples flecked with silver and black, like a badly tarnished mirror, stretching away to the horizon. Far too much water for the simple rain. The water must be coming from the ocean to the south, being blown by a horrendous wind.

  It was going to be a glorious storm, this strange unnatural tempest that was unlike any that had ever ravaged over Krynn! Perhaps crazy Captain Effram would be vindicated.

  He rushed back into the house and searched frantically for the coils of rope he’d bought only last spring, when he knew that he had only a few more finishing touches to put on the boat. Their use seemed so unlikely that he’d almost forgotten where he put them. He finally found them in one of the unused front rooms under a pile of canvas. Maybe… maybe this storm…

  He hardly dared hope that the water would flow high enough to float his boat. Not
even as he jumped down into the pit and found that the water sloshed around his thighs did he allow himself to dream the impossible. Rain splattered on his bald head and dripped from the fringe of hair onto the back of his neck. Rain ran under the cloak, beneath his collar, and down his spine. It blew into his eyes and dripped off his nose. It tasted salty, of the sea, and not like rain at all. But the rain was a minor nuisance, barely noticed as he scuttled amidst the strong wooden beams of scaffolding, looping the rope through strategic points, sloshing back to tie the ends to a post up in the yard.

  As he worked, the water rose. So fast. Too fast. He’d never seen such water, a rain that came so fast and furious it filled the vast seabed like a huge pitcher being tipped over to fill a tiny glass. The water rushed into the pit, swirling so that he could barely stand. He tied the last length of rope around his waist, just to free his hands. He pulled himself from beam to beam, dragging himself up onto land.

  He was soaked through to the skin, his boots full of water that chilled his feet. Only the tops of his shoulders were dry, as if he’d stepped into a lake up to his armpits. The rainproof cloak was no deterrent to this miraculous storm. It weighed twice what it should, just from the weight of water streaming off it, and it was of no use anyway, considering he was already soaked. He tossed it aside and stood in the downpour, shivering with cold and anticipation.

  Only then, standing on the edge of the pit, holding the bundled ends of rope, did he dare pray that the storm would not stop. Not until the water was lapping at his toes. Not until the ditch was full and the seabed was deep enough to bear up the weight of his boat.

  He could feel the storm strumming in the rope, tugging at the thick lines, and he closed his eyes. He dared not watch for fear that in the boiling clouds of gray approaching from the south, he would see sunlight and clear blue sky. He didn’t want to smell heat and sun. He wanted water. And thunder. And the chance to hear the hull of his boat splash into the sea.

  In answer to his prayer, no blue sky came. No sun or smell of warm sand. Only the metallic scent of storm, more water, and stronger wind. Somewhere nearby, a shutter banged against a house, loud and insistent. Air trilled across a chimney, squealing like an out-of-tune whistle in the hands of a demented kender. Water pounded on the tin roof of his equipment shed, slapped against the breakwater, and gurgled from the ancient gutter on the eaves of his house.

  The music of the storm grew ever more relentless and obstinate until one breathtaking moment he heard none of it. The sounds and the cold and the taste went away, driven out by the scraping of the boat. The most beautiful sound of all: the scratch and screech of wood against wood.

  The boat, his boat, the only boat in Tarsis, tried to lift free of the arms of scaffolding. Like a child struggling to be free of its mother’s arms, the boat rocked and kicked, trying to take its first baby steps. Trying to float.

  With a last small prayer to gods he did not believe in, Effram twisted the ropes around his arms, doubling them then doubling them again for fear of losing the ends. He braced himself against the lone post driven deep into the ground, and he yanked, putting all his body weight into it. The muscles in his shoulders cramped, bunched. His feet slipped in the wet grass. The blades of green-waterlogged down to their hairlike roots-gave way and tore free of the mud.

  Effram fell hard against the post. Air grunted out of his lungs and skin peeled away from the flesh over his ribs, but the scaffolding folded in slow motion, cracking and crying out in protest. The boat slipped sideways, threatening to crash into the side of the pit, then righted, slid down the last remaining section of scaffolding, and plopped into the water.

  The sound was a tiny, insignificant sound for so momentous an occasion. His boat bobbled, dipped, and floated, gracefully bobbing in the water, the bow nodding to him as if urging him to board.

  For a moment, Effram was too flabbergasted to accept the invitation. She was beautiful, this clumsy, pieced together, jigsaw puzzle of a boat. Pieced together of scavenged things-mostly old wood from the wrecks of Tarsis. Long and svelte at the prow, wide and square and ugly at the stern, she was beautiful just the same. Beautiful because… she floated.

  She was a boat. A real boat, not “that piece of junk in crazy Effram’s yard.” Until that moment, he had not realized how much he feared that the people who jeered at him were right-all of them, the adults who looked at him askance and the children who threw rocks and words.

  He scrambled on board, slipping on the wet planks despite the work he’d done on the soles of his boots. On his knees, he walked awkwardly to the mast and clung to it. He savored the gentle rocking as he waited for his knees to stop trembling. He waited for his heart to quiet, so that he might hear the storm again.

  There was a voice in that storm. A voice speaking to him.

  Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet, still clinging to the thick, round trunk of wood upon which he’d hung his sail. As he came upright, the first crack of thunder boomed overhead. Lightning, so blue it looked like sky, rent the clouds. For a moment, he could see nothing but jagged streaks on the backs of his eyelids. Another boom and flash followed closely, and it seemed his pounding heart had taken home in the storm, had leaped from his throat and sailed away in joy at his finally being afloat. At being only moments from actually sailing.

  Effram freed the large lateen sail from the boom and clumsily ran the rigging that hauled it up the mast. He’d practiced the maneuver hundreds of times since he set the mast into the keel, but it had been much simpler in practice, with the boat land-docked instead of rolling gently under his feet, with the sail hanging loose instead of fighting with the wind.

  The sail flapped in the strong, whirling winds, snatching the boom free of his grip. The boom swung wide and then reversed back toward him, smacking his fingers sharply for his lack of agility in subduing it, but there was joy even in pain.

  He tied off the boom, still allowing it to swing in the wind while he cast off the lines, forward and aft, that held him captive to the land. Then he used a pole to guide the boat toward the swirling sea. The boat bumped from side to side in the narrow pit, and his heart thumped as loudly in his chest as the thunder boomed overhead, for fear that the boat would beach itself before it had ever sailed.

  The churning waters caught the stern, and the boat jerked underfoot. The starboard side slammed into the rocky edge of the breakwater, crashing him to his knees, and then the boat bobbed forward and twisted in a stomach-curdling semi-circle. It scraped the break-water on the other side, wood screeching on stone. The sail snapped, fluttered, snapped, then caught the wind. The sail popped, as if every thread in it shouted as one, and then Effram and his boat were into the Sea of Tarsis, caught by the strong current, washed away from the jagged breakwater. He was sailing!

  The boom jerked in his hand with such force it felt as if it would tear his arm from the socket. The steering oar yanked from the other direction, fighting the boom for possession of his body. The prow of his boat turned to the open sea as if guided by the hands of the long forgotten gods. With a tug that threatened to topple him over the rail and into the water, the wind and the water took his boat.

  He fought with the oar, bringing the nose around so that he was parallel to the breakwater that, like a mother’s arm, encircled the southern side of what had once been the harbor of Tarsis.

  The round-bellied, clumsy boat skimmed across the ragged white tops of the waves with as much ease as a sleek, high-masted schooner at full sail. The prow of the boat cut through the water, the sail snapped in the wind, lines moaned against the blocks, and the mast overhead creaked with the pressure. But she held together, and she floated. She swam. She flew! Effram, captain of the only sailing vessel to sail the Sea of Tarsis for centuries, stood proudly in the stern and whooped his joy into the wind.

  Cries, like the screams of seagulls, called to him from the direction of the city. Effram darted a glance at Tarsis. Children, a whole swarm of them, ran along the ridge of the breakwate
r, waving their arms and shouting at him. Their little faces were washed clean, streaming with rain, and they looked as exultant at seeing his sail filled with wind as he was to feel it snapping and tugging. They flapped their arms, screeched like shorebirds, and leaped as if they, too, would catch the wind and fly. The cries now were, “Hey, Captain! You’re sailing! Ahoy, Captain, take me for a ride!”

  He waved to them, his face stretched in a grin. He’d never thought hearing that title would sound so sweet. He wished that every child who’d so sneeringly called him “Captain” and every adult who’d smiled indulgently or snickered at his passing could see him now, like this handful of children. He wished they all could see him sailing!

  Then he had no further thoughts for them, as he used the sail to turn his boat at an angle to the arm of the breakwater. The boat wallowed and groaned as it turned with all the sluggishness of a fat, sun-warmed grub, but he loved even her clumsiness. He’d expected it. With the midship and the stern built so wide, there was no way she’d be a fast vessel, but what he’d sacrificed in speed, he regained in balance. She rode low, strong, and stable, even in the churning storm.

  The wind fought him as he pulled in the sail until it was close-hauled, almost parallel to the lines of the boat itself. The wind tore at the sail as if it would rip it from its fastenings, but the strong cloth held, and the boat leaped away from the wind.

  All before him was darkness. Roiling clouds and sheeting water and lightning flashed like fire in the sky. The wind was solid as stone. It battered him, the wood beneath his feet, and tried to snatch the boom from his hands. It drove the salty rain into the side of his face so that it felt like stinging sand on his skin. It was madness to sail toward that black wall of storm, but that was just what he did.

  Effram understood the maneuvers necessary for sailing into the wind, even though he’d never had occasion to attempt them. In order to go forward, toward that unnatural blackness, he knew he had to zigzag, back and forth so that he tricked the wind into taking him into it. It seemed only another test of his will, like all the past years had been tests, leading up to this moment.