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The Mermaid's Tale

Page 12

by D. G. Valdron


  “Goblins aren’t so bad,” someone said, “but they’ve got all these clicks when they talk, even in trade speech. It’s all Tiktiktik.”

  “Tiktiktiktik,” someone trilled, and stopped abruptly. “Ow, that hurts!”

  They laughed.

  “So what are Mermaids, anyway?” I asked.

  “They’re holy,” the Captain said simply.

  “But where do they come from? Are they a mixed race?” I persisted.

  “Mixed race?” the Captain looked confused.

  “They come from Selk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Selk and what?”

  “What?”

  I grunted with exasperation.

  “Like Arukh, from Vampire and Goblin. Kobold, dwarf and goblin. Hobgoblin, Human and Goblin. Mermaid, Selk and what?”

  “Just Mermaid. If you’re blessed, a Mermaid is born. We don’t have mixes.”

  “I don’t know,” a fisherman at the far corner said speculatively, “look at Shishini.”

  I looked around.

  “He’s not here.”

  “Oh.”

  “Shishini looks like a Dwarf.”

  “No he doesn’t!”

  “Where’s the hair? Where’s the great big nose?”

  “But he’s short and squat like a Dwarf. He has hands like a Dwarf.”

  “But he looks like a Selk.”

  “Swims like one too.”

  “Shishini could be a mix.”

  They seemed doubtful.

  “Maybe a little mix,” the Captain said finally. “But we don’t get much mixing. Other people don’t do it like us.”

  “How do you do it?” I asked. How could they do it differently?

  That provoked ribald laughter.

  “The normal way,” someone said.

  “Dwarves do it laying on land.”

  “Uck!” came a response.

  “I did it on land once,” a fisher woman said. Her name was Fha something or other.

  “With a Dwarf?”

  She made a face.

  “Don’t be grotesque. With a Selk. We were young.”

  “How was it?”

  “It was awful. We couldn’t find a good position. Half the time he was crushing me. We got all scratched up and pebbles stuck to my ass.”

  “If that’s how Dwarves do it,” a Selk said, “I’m not surprised they look like they do.”

  “I hear that Vampires do it on horseback?” a Selk addressed me. “Is that true?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That sounds like hard work.”

  I grunted.

  “We hardly see Vampires, just the wagon drivers, and they stay away from the water. Why is that?”

  I shrugged. “Vampires don’t like water.”

  “I hear it’s because they have a great big stone in their gut, so that if they go in water, the stone will weigh them down, and they’ll drown.”

  “Is that true?” Jervo asked.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  This fascinated them.

  “How big a stone?”

  I indicated something the size of my head.

  “How did they get it in there?”

  “Different ways.” I offered imaginative possibilities for males and females.

  “What’s it for?”

  “It helps them to ride. Keeps weight low.”

  “Aaah,” the Captain said, “it’s all clear now.”

  They nodded their heads wisely. I grinned at them.

  “Tell me something,” I asked, “as I came here, I see houses tethered. Why?”

  “Oh,” said the Captain. “Spring floods. Our houses float. Tethers keep them from sailing away.”

  “Arrah,” I said. Floating houses. Right. They were making fun of me, I decided sourly. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

  “Arash,” the Captain said suddenly. “We’ll call you Arash, its the easy way to say it.”

  I shrugged.

  “Rishi,” someone suggested.

  “Arash, Rishi, same thing.”

  “Very strong, are you from the same as... Hagrara.”

  “No,” I replied, “different blood.”

  “Not so strong,” said a heavyset Selk. “I can pull twenty, twenty-five nets. She pulled six and tired.”

  “You weren’t watching her,” the Captain said, “you were on the other side. She pulled a whole net, all by herself, and faster than we could.”

  “Fighter’s strength,” Jerva said. “If I was in a fight, I’d want all my strength at once, when I needed it. Not spread out.”

  “There you have it,” the Captain said, sorting the last basket. “She’s a fighter, not a fisherman, and good thing too, or she’d put us all to shame.”

  There was still a pile of fish, gathered into a mound before us. The fishermen had made this pile, selecting particular fish and setting them aside for reasons unknown to me.

  The captain pulled a large fish forward, and produced a flint knife.

  “You eat fish?” he asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, good. I heard someplace that you drank blood?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He glanced at me, worried for a second.

  “Will you feast with us?” he asked nervously.

  “All right.”

  He gave a relieved bark. “I should have asked you earlier. Bad luck to put a person to work and not feed them.”

  With nimble fingers he gutted the fish, tossing the innards casually over the dock, excising fins and tail. He spread the opened fish out, and picked another one.

  Other Selk, produced their own flint knives and began to carve up fish.

  I watched them with interest. The way the fish were opened up reminded me of Mira.

  “You use stone knives?” I asked casually.

  “Nothing better, copper, bronze. Hard to handle, too much work to maintain. A good flint you can trust to serve you well,” the Captain said.

  Three economical cuts, and the fish was laid out flat. Some of the Selk were already eating the raw fish.

  “Asanavo,” the Captain shouted. “You and Vhalalah, have finished eating. Check the pots. Perhaps we’ll have a treat for our guest.”

  The female who’d had sex on land, and another Selk got up to pull up lines that hung from the dock’s pillars.

  “Here,” the Captain said, putting a piece of fish in my hands. “Eat. It’s good.”

  They all stared at me as I put the fish in my mouth and chewed.

  “We feed this city,” the Captain said, “we Selk. Sure, the humans dig up roots and things, and the Dwarves bring things down the river, and once or twice a year, the Vampires will drive animals through. But that’s not enough and not steady enough. That’s just a change of diet now and then.”

  In the city, I’d eaten smoked fish, or dried fish, or the heavy fish that the Dwarves kept in sauce barrels, thick and rancid.

  “We catch the fish steady. No fish, no eating, no city. That’s why the other Kingdoms bow to us.”

  Other Kingdoms bowed to the Selk? As far as I’d been concerned, they might as well not have existed, until lately. How much of that was real, and how much their own inflated delusions?

  The Vampires boasted that the city only existed because they drove enough cattle meat in during the migrations to sustain the population.

  “Wagons are here,” a Selk said.

  “I see them,” the Captain replied.

  I glanced. Away from the dock, there were a couple of wagons, Vampires drawing them. I made out a Gnome and a half dozen Dwarves. They seemed to be keeping busy with the wagon.

  Foodstuffs changed from season to season. But fish were a big part of peoples’
diets in most seasons. They were, I decided, more important than I’d thought them, if not as important as they thought.

  The fish was light and fresh. Uncooked, it was different than I’d tasted before. Almost clean. It tingled on my tongue.

  It reminded me of when I was younger, raiding the old Troll’s fish traps. Afterwards, I’d begun to make my own. They hadn’t worked very well, until the old Troll had come upon some, and mistaking them for his own, fixed one. Stupid Troll.

  “It is good fish,” I said. They applauded.

  He grinned.

  “Next time you want good fish, the way they should taste, and not what the Dwarves give out, you search me out.”

  I nodded.

  “What about iron?” I asked bluntly, “is it better than copper or bronze?”

  He looked up at me, blankly.

  “Oh,” he said, “you mean that Troll foolishness. Never seen it. Personally, I don’t think it’ll catch on.”

  “Got a couple,” the female Selk called.

  “Check the rest, and bring them over,” he ordered, before turning back to me.

  “Copper and bronze,” he said, “they might have their uses, but there are a lot of other things that work better for most purposes. I’ll take a good flint any day.

  “But iron? Who’d have a use for that?

  “No,” he concluded, “it’s just more Troll nonsense.”

  “Did you know,” someone told me, “that the Trolls are working on a gadget to make nets?”

  “I’ve seen those nets, too regular, all the same size holes,” someone said. “Didn’t Chermi try one out?”

  “Yeah,” someone laughed, “fell apart after a day.”

  “You know what the Trolls did?”

  “What?”

  “They went to Chermi and asked him to tell them everything that had gone wrong with the net.”

  This provoked general laughter.

  “Did they have a couple of days to spare?” someone chuckled.

  “Chermi would complain over every knot in a good net,” the Captain told me conspiratorially.

  “Arrah,” I said, nodding wisely.

  “That’s the way Trolls are,” someone said. “Flighty and irresponsible. They have no sense to them.”

  That’s the way Trolls are? Flighty and irresponsible? I thought incredulously.

  “Have you ever met a Troll?” I asked.

  The Captain shrugged.

  “No, but everyone knows that Trolls don’t have a lick of sense. They’re always chasing off after any damn fool notion that passes through their heads. Like making iron that no one needs, or a device to make nets that no one wants.”

  Fools, I thought. They’re complete fools. If anything, they were stupider than the Mermaids, to be so completely mistaken about Trolls. Trolls watched. Trolls were hideously clever, hideously dangerous. Trolls were to be feared.

  There was a sort of superficial sensibility to what they said, but it was the wrong shape to fit in my head. Besides, anyone who’d ever met a Troll wouldn’t dare to think of them like that.

  Trolls were simply dangerous. That was all you had to know. That was all that mattered.

  “More than a dozen!” reported the female, Fha... no Vhalala, was her name.

  “Good,” the Captain said, “enough for everyone.”

  She dropped off a basket, in the centre of the group. I stared at it dubiously. It was full of armoured crawling things, like giant insects.

  “Scuttlers,” the Captain said, fetching one out. “Bottom dwellers. We catch them in pots... well, we call them pots, but they’re a sort of basket.”

  He tore a claw off and cracked it between his teeth, holding the rest of it carefully so that its waving pincers and remaining claw stirred futilely.

  “Good eating,” he said, sucking the meat out.

  He tore off a pincer and handed it to me. I took it dubiously. He tore another pincer off for himself.

  “Uhhh,” he grunted, putting it between his teeth and looking at me expectantly.

  I put mine between my teeth. He seemed to smile. He moved his jaw in a certain way, cracking the shell but not crushing it. I did the same.

  Then he took it out and used his thumb to pry the shell apart and the meat out, he put the meat in his mouth. I repeated his action.

  “Good?” he asked.

  I chewed, and nodded. It was almost sweet.

  As if it was a signal, the other Selk began to pull their own Scuttlers from the basket.

  Jerva seized a large one and handed it to me.

  “The big one is for you,” he said.

  I held it carefully so it’s waving claws couldn’t reach me.

  “Arrah,” I said staring at it. Ugly thing.

  Arukh of the sea, I thought, crawling along the bottom, all useless claws and pincers and armour at the mercy of everything above.

  “You live to die another day,” I told it, and hurled it back into the waters.

  One Selk, watching me, nudged another, almost smiling. I pretended not to notice them.

  Jerva and others passed me pincers, which I cracked and ate.

  Finally, as we were finishing, the Gnome and a Dwarf approached us.

  “Phissitik,” the Captain said, mispronouncing obviously. “You’re late again. If you’d been faster with the wagon, you’d have been able to share in the feast.”

  The Dwarf shrugged. “Wagon takes the time it takes,” he said. Behind him, other Dwarves approached.

  I moved up from my sitting position, crouching warily. The Dwarf glanced at me. He stopped and looked me up and down.

  “Strange visitor,” he grunted.

  “Fine company,” the Captain said. “Told us Vampire secrets.”

  The Dwarf grunted.

  “Good catch.”

  “Fill your wagons, good fish too.”

  Shrugging back into my greatcoat, I stood by while the Gnome and the Captain haggled over prices. The Captain finally settled for a price that I thought was much too low.

  I watched the Dwarves and Selk ferry the bushels over to the wagons. The two waiting Vampires stood with their oxen, and refused to come close to the dock.

  I watched them.

  “Heading up town?” I asked the head Dwarf.

  He looked at me, blinking.

  “Need a fighter?”

  “For fish?” he asked incredulously.

  I grinned.

  “Lot of things can happen,” I replied, easily.

  He stared at me, trying to gauge my intentions.

  “You can come with us,” he said finally, “pay you a copper. Everybody but the Vampires walk on the way back.”

  I shrugged.

  “Pay first,” I told him.

  He fished out a piece of copper, and flipped it to me.

  I stepped towards the wagons. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned snarling.

  It was the Captain. He stared at me soberly.

  “This thing you do for the Elders,” he said. “You will find it, won’t you? For the Mermaids.”

  “Find it,” I said, “and kill it. For the Mermaids.”

  I grinned as he drew back.

  The two wagons groaned under the weight of the bushels of fish. Two Vampires rode the oxen that drew the wagon, guiding them. The Gnome sat upon the second wagon. The rest of us, a half dozen Dwarves and myself, walked alongside.

  “You took a good price,” I said to the Gnome. “It costs much more in the markets.”

  He laughed.

  “Zizga! Hah. Every time I see him, I worry about him stripping the feather cloak from my back.”

  Zizga. The captain had never told me his name. Accidental? I doubted it. He’d been free with the names of his companions.

 
“You didn’t bring it,” I observed. He wasn’t wearing ceremonial robes, the feathered cloaks of the gnomes.

  “I did once, early on. It stank of fish for a week after.”

  “Whites” I asked.

  “Flatheads,” he replied, and looked at me strangely, wondering how I knew to guess.

  “You should make a healthy profit on the fish.”

  He shrugged. “Salting and smoking, curing and barrelling. Every fishmonger bargaining us down, taking their own cuts. Not that much. We’ll be lucky to cover our costs. That copper you extorted may break us. We’ll have to see.”

  I laughed and walked over to keep pace with the head Dwarf.

  “Strange folk,” I said, “no use for copper or bronze.”

  He nodded. “Strange folk indeed. Peculiar ways. Come too early, and they’ll make you eat raw fish. They had me eat a sea bug once, pretended that it was a treat.”

  I grunted in answer.

  “Nowadays, we make sure to stay well away until we see they’re finished the catch feast. You’d be amazed at the things they’ll drag up and eat.”

  “Which are better,” I asked, “fish or beast?”

  The Vampire riding the ox nearest to us burst out laughing.

  “What a question!” she exclaimed. “Beasts, you can ride, they carry and draw, they provide sustenance of many sorts, leather and bone. Fish? All you can do with fish is eat them.”

  She made a sour face.

  “If you have a taste for that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t know,” said the Dwarf reflectively. “Hard times without fish. Hard times without beasts. I’d hate to choose.”

  I nodded.

  “Fish stink,” the Vampire offered.

  “Beasts don’t stink?” the Dwarf asked.

  “Healthy smell, smell of life. Fish stink of death.”

  The Dwarf stared at me.

  “We don’t see many Hagrik around here,” the Dwarf said finally.

  “We don’t see any,” the Vampire commented.

  “Perhaps you don’t come often enough.”

  “Twice a day.”

  “Arukh like the night.”

  “No,” said the Vampire, “nothing in Selk places but Selk. A Goblin comes, that’s news. We hear about it. Never heard of Rughk coming here.”

 

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