The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper

by A. J. Fitzwater

  “D’ya think ye could pinpoint Whale Fall on a map, cap’n?” Riddle ran her tail through her forepaws. Sometimes Cinrak couldn’t take the old pirate ways out of her first mate.

  Cinrak shared a look with Columbia. His eyes and beard glistened with more than his usual dampness. A promise passed along the silence between them. She still carried many things, but she could see how to balance them better.

  Cinrak might never enter Whale Fall again, but if her salty balance adjusted by being near the graveyard for a time, then it would be a boon to her soul.

  “Nay,” Cinrak sighed, resting her chin in her paws. “That be a’tween them whales an’ the ocean.”

  This was a secret that would be no burden at all.

  Flight of the Hydro Chorus

  Tail the Seventh:

  In Which Our Hero Discovers Unknown Depths to the Stars

  * * *

  On a tiny islet far to the west in the Felidae archipelago, Cinrak lay in the sand, wriggling in its coarse finery to attend itches of vague guilt.

  The sun threw its last warm arms around the shoulders of the Paper and Moth moons to help balance the weight between dark and night. The sky coruscated through lavender to cetacean blue to velvet violet, with citrus and silver lacing the edges.

  This Aestivus equinox race for the stars would be different. No rat courtiers cutting their eyes at a pirate’s presence, no over excited fairies, no dancing cats, no devious plans or demands. Just her capybara body, a mer hair rope, and a salty song lifted into the sky, searching for the answer to a change in the constellations.

  Searching for grain of truth in a legend.

  “It’s dangerous to go alone,” came a voice above and beyond the tideline. “Take us.”

  In one final dramatic flourish, the sun had thrown out burnt orange arms as if to say “All stars welcome to the night stage, Cinrak the Dapper, our favourite capybara pirate!”.

  Balanced at the tip of one of these arms was a chinchilla-shaped silvery glow.

  The glow burst with a ‘pwop’. The sun beam wriggled and lowered the passenger with a reverence only a giant kraken could reserve for her mind-kin.

  A-Benj the Ocean Star hop-stepped onto the sand from Agnes’ outstretched tentacle.

  “Benj me lad!” A little healthy fear strangled a surprised croak from Cinrak. She clasped her cabin kit’s wrist pirate-style. “That be spectacularly tentacular.”

  “Agnes loves to make an entrance.” Benj combed claws through his blooming brunette beard. The tea made from mushrooms of the Covetona volcano was doing wonders for his transition. “Our little secret. It’s how I get around the ocean with her without drowning or dying from wetness. And it’s how we’ll meet the stars without running out of breath for the Song.”

  “I be honoured she and ye be wantin’ to share.” Cinrak gave a deep bow in the direction of the lagoon. Agnes waved a tentacle tip back. “But I be unsure o’ what ye mean, goin’ alone. Goin’ where?”

  “Oh, Cap’n, my Cap’n. The equinox ride calls to all those made of stars. You’re not going without me and Agnes. And we wouldn’t go without you.”

  A crackle-hiss raced across the clear sky. The two turned towards the whispering waves of a different type of ocean, one that swept beyond their earthly knowns. The first overeager stars were hitting the upper reaches, breaking apart in fine showers of fire and dust to feed excited mammal eyes and gaping fish mouths.

  The mer hair coiled at Cinrak’s hip sent a staticky buzz through her fur, and she soothed the rope with soft strokes. A useful instrument since she had used it to rein in a star on that first wild ride, it had started twitching a portent some tri-tides back.

  “The stars haven’t forgotten the good you did for them. Neither has Agnes.”

  Benj pulled celestial charts from inside his thick black buckle-neck jacket, a sartorial choice that filled the pool of pride in Cinrak’s chest.

  He pointed at a constellation on the chart, then at its matching shape in the sky. Or somewhat matching; the one in the sky was much brighter, elongated, and closer than the old drawing.

  “The Eight Sisters,” Cinrak pulled on the hem of her best tailored jacket, all purple paisley highlights offset by a green silk bow tie. “Ya guessed tha same as me how they’d point the way to the changin’ tides.”

  “Not a guess. Good research. All that time spent in the Merholme libraries paid off. You put together the puzzle pieces left by astronomicalers, how the Eight Sisters approached and receded quicker than most other celestial bodies. I needed to match what Agnes could share of the blood memory her siblings left for her in the egg, how they were the arrow pointing in the direction the kraken went.”

  “I be glad yer here, truly. I was wrong to keep this all for meself.” Cinrak patted Benj’s shoulder.

  A little of the old boyish sweetness peeked out in his grin. “I think I understand. You were trying to protect us from disappointment, like a good captain does. But you can count on me. I’ve become so strong!” He flexed his little chinchilla arms.

  “But we don’t have much time. I ken something be agitatin’ Agnes lately. Oh, aye. I can’t taste her with me salt, her magic be way too strong, but I see how her colour be deepened, how she floats at night with that great eye turned up.” The kraken waved from the dolphin pile it was tickling to delighted squeals around the reef. “If mah readin’s be right, we be in need of a special song to sing up them depths. ‘Cept I ain’t a singer and what song do ye sing when ye have no breath up there? An’ as far as I ken, a kraken don’t be havin’ a voice box to speak of.”

  “That’s where you need me.” A third voice startled the three out of their collusion. Wood hush-crunched against wet sand behind them. “If I was to guess from my readings of the myths, Agnes lost her voice with her siblings.”

  “Hello, mum.” Benj planted a big kiss on Loquolchi the marmot diva’s black and grey furry cheek as he helped her out of the sculler.

  She brushed him off with a laugh. “Told you not to call me that. Makes me sound old. A diva never grows old.”

  Cinrak had the temerity to look abashed, whiskers twitching. “I thought ye were celebrating equinox wit Orvy an’ the Felidae.”

  “It’s our anniversary! I’m not going to celebrate without you!” Loquolchi studied the sky like she would study jewellery. A streak of fire cut it in two. “I’ve arrived just in time, it seems. Just as well. Neither of you can hold a tune to save your lives.”

  Cinrak squeezed her love to her barrel chest. “I wouldn’t exactly call this celebrating. ‘Sides, seems ta me ya have flyin’ on yer mind.”

  Loquolchi peeked sweetly sideways through her lashes. “Whatever gives you that idea?”

  “Yer here. Snuck up on me quite talented, must be sayin’. Congratulations on yer piratey skills, ya salty wee troubadour. An’ ya’ve pulled the Moth moon silk dress outta storage.”

  “Happy to be guilty as charged on all counts,” Loquolchi simpered, swirling the sensational silk still silvery after all these star-turns. It whispered about Loquolchi’s ankles in anticipation of taking to the sky, and the coil of mer hair rope at Cinrak’s hip whispered back a low harmony.

  Another crack of star meeting air, and Cinrak involuntarily took a step towards the tideline.

  Loquolchi pulled her back, stronger than her soft energy gave off.

  “Have you really thought this through?” she demanded. “Letting the stars take you on a flight over uncharted waters. You could drown! Or die from the fall alone!”

  Cinrak caressed her face with a soft paw. “If a pirate don’t trust the ocean to keep her well, then she be no pirate at all. And I be trustin’ them stars. They be...needin’ me. As much as the ocean.”

  “Cat litter!” Loquolchi stomped a rearpaw. “Me and Orvy need you alive more!”

  “I couldn’t live with meself if I didn’t do something to help Agnes. She has us, but she alone too, and we know that shouldn’t be the case. Creatures we only know from
myths aren’t so myth-like anymore, all disrupting things. Now we know it be the kraken’s job to keep them in balance. Agnes can’t do it all on her own.”

  “I believe you. Orvy believes you. Anyone who knows the ocean even an ounce the way you do believes something is off out there.”

  “Cap’n,” Benj murmured, looking from a chart to the sky. “We have to go.”

  “But how? We can’t breathe that far up.” Loquolchi cringed away from the wavelets lapping at her claws.

  “We won’t be riding a star. Except—” Benj tilted his fuzzy head side to side. “—in a way, we will be. It’s too hard to explain. It’s best we just show you.”

  The kraken’s spade-shaped head popped up and her single enormous eye regarded her land-based friends with unreadable depths, woven with the seas of time she had swum through.

  Benj gestured and Agnes reached out a tentacle. The tip sparkled as if the sun struck water drops, reminding Cinrak of the luminescence of Whale Fall. The light grew into a perfect orb in synchronicity with Agnes’ fluttering gills.

  Benj stepped up onto the tip of the tentacle and into the gleaming orb, his fur taking on a delicious glow. He extended a forepaw. “Welcome aboard the Agnes Express.”

  “If the kraken were out there all this time, where those sisters are pointing,” Loquolchi stalled, gesturing towards the horizon. “Why didn’t Agnes just go looking for them?”

  “Because they didn’t want to be found.” Benj stroked the kraken’s skin. Agnes shivered with delight, the love evident in the brightening of the sphere. “They had something that needed to be done beyond our ken.”

  “But they left poor Agnes all alone!”

  Benj gave a sad little smile. “She has her whale family. She has Xolotli. We have each other. She has the whole ocean. That was enough. Until the tides turned. She’s been having to battle the creatures of the deep increasingly more these last few star-turns. She doesn’t like that.” Agnes’ great flesh trembled for a moment, and the glowing orb dimmed. “She only hunts for food and those monsters taste dreadful apparently.”

  Water bubbled and popped at Agnes’ rear. The kraken raised a few more tentacles above water. Irritation at delay? A shrug? Apology?

  Cinrak had touched Agnes’ skin before—a shoulder tap here, a thank-ye pat there—but never had she stood upon the kraken. Rather than rubbery and slick, her skin had a coarse quality that helped Cinrak stay in place. The same tingle that wove through the mer hair coursed along Agnes. Agnes was older than any living being and had seen so much, yet she contained an exuberance, sweetness, and passion for people that went beyond measure.

  She was, Cinrak decided, the best of them all.

  Benj gripping his mothers’ paws tightly was the only warning. Cinrak’s breath was swept away as they rushed away from land.

  Belying her earlier reticence, Loquolchi had plenty of breath. She shoved it into a shriek that went through two octaves, then settled into a squealing laugh. “ImgoingtodiebutIdontcarrrrrrrrre!”

  Spreading her forepaws wide, to reveal the majesty of the Moth moon silk dress, she stepped to the tip of Agnes’ outstretched tentacle and burst into the soprano’s lead aria ‘Ever Bright, The Shining Falls’ from The Legion Sky.

  The pull of the ocean still having a hold on her, Cinrak quickly slung her rope around and under Agnes’ tentacle and tied it about her waist. Benj stood at ease, though he did not look down.

  Cinrak pressed her paws firm against the slight stick of Agnes’ skin as the tentacle wove this way and that, negotiating oncoming young stars.

  “Deepest Depths!” Cinrak finally found enough breath to speak. She adjusted her volume as she discovered she didn’t have to battle the wind for airspace, only Loquolchi. “Them mythmakers got a lot to answer for, not listenin’ proper to the sea folk.”

  Benj blew out a long hard breath, like there were things he needed to forget. People always underestimated his size. “We practised before this, during other equinoxes. She can only rise up when the pull of the ocean is less than the pull of the stars.”

  “When her siblin’s song is strongest.”

  “Aye. When the constellation of the Eight Sisters swings closest.” Benj’s gaze stayed true to the largest stars of all.

  In that moment it all became real for Cinrak. What Benj and the myths said about krakens and mer.

  “They not be pointin’ the way. They not be stars at all. The Eight Sisters are the kraken.” She drew a length of the mer hair rope through her claws. Now it was fair sizzling, and her fur stood on end.

  “There is much we don’t know about our ocean siblings, but one thing is true,” Benj said. “They were born of stardust.”

  Only a dull roar came from outside, the air fresh and easily breathable within. Agnes’ bubble must have properties Rodentdom’s scientheticals would start wars to research. Cinrak had told Benj she would do everything in her power to make sure that didn’t happen. It would take a cunning mix of subterfuge and truth sewn within Rodentdom’s storytellers to keep Benj and Agnes free and safe. Just the sort of use of half-truths they were railing against. Truth belonged to safety, not to maintaining hierarchies of power.

  Agnes reached up and up, the darkness intensifying. The stars’ gaze stayed steady upon them. The Eight Sisters loomed large, their sparkling arms solidifying into something more than light.

  The three moons delighted in their intricate dance. Cinrak had never seen the Silver Moon this large or bright; it showed its shy face at unusual times. With the curtain of earthly light pulled aside, she could see easily how its face swirled with its strange clouds.

  Cinrak risked a quick peek over the edge, and immediately regretted it. Their trajectory had taken them far out over the Unknown Ocean, an onyx mirror reflecting only the boldest lights.

  The boom and crackle of the stars pitched through the muffle of the bubble. Agnes wove between the bright threads with ease, making Cinrak’s heart claw at her breast bone. How did Agnes manage to breathe? She seemed in her element.

  Loquolchi cut off mid warble. “You’re not paying attention!”

  “Apologizin’, m’love. Takes some o’ us a moment to adjust to—” Cinrak had to wet her mouth to continue. “—bein’ up this high.” She scooted on her bottom towards the narrow large tip of the tentacle. “Yer singin’ be beautiful, though.”

  “It’s not just about beauty.” Loquolchi stomped her rearpaw and Agnes’ orange flesh barely shivered. “It’s necessary! If we want to attract the stars’, erm, the kraken’s attention, we need to give them good reason to come back down!”

  Benj looked helplessly between his chosen mothers. “Agnes can talk to her siblings by mind speak, but you’re right, Loquolchi, about her losing her voice. It’s been so long and they’ve seen so much, their language has probably drifted. Even the way Agnes speaks has changed in the long time she’s lived with the whales. It’s a matter of finding a point of recognition, even a small spark of sound.”

  “I be partial to ‘The Ballad o’ the Lavender Menace’ meself,” Cinrak muttered, annoyed the other two could balance and talk at the same time. “That be loud in the later verses.”

  “You would, wandering heart.” Loquolchi pinched Cinrak’s cheek. “You might think you’ve been very clever with your research and deep thoughts, but did it ever occur to you I might know a little about star song?”

  The air bubble pulsed, and Benj nodded.

  “‘The Legion Sky’ isn’t a passing fancy. I have made it my life’s joy to know the history of this mer penned opera. It’s hundreds of star-turns old and is updated every few decades. It is a living story, a rule of its composers passed down through generations.” Loquolchi paced the length of the bubble as if she was simply giving a lecture to theatre apprentices. “Alas, Rodentdom’s opera aficionados have become a little stuffy in the last three score star-turns or so, and have not truly experienced it in the medium it was originally designed to be performed in.” Her silk wings swished as
she gestured down. “Under water! Ah, but Loquolchi, you say. We are in a medium much thinner than water. Sound doesn’t carry at higher altitude.”

  She was really into this now. Even Agnes seemed into the lecture, the bubble pulsing as the kraken turned and levelled out into the middle of the celestial pack, keeping pace with the irrefragable stars.

  “But here’s the drop that gets lost in the ocean.” Loquolchi whirled. Behind her, the leading Sister of the Eight seemed to balance on the tip of Agnes’ outstretched tentacle. “Certain early versions of the opera were created to be performed atop mountains, lyrics adjusted to call to the sky. And that, my darling creatures, is why you need me!”

  With a final flourish of her voluminous skirts, Loquolchi continued to sing from the note where she left off.

  Benj and Cinrak stared, stunned.

  “Do ye ken the opera well?” Cinrak asked out of the corner of her mouth.

  Benj screwed up his face. “My mother made me learn the alto parts as a kit. But since my voice has dropped, I’ve learned the tenor and bass parts too.”

  “I ken the love song.”

  “Of course you do,” Benj smiled.

  “And Agnes?”

  “She has heard the underwater version multiple times. Enjoys it very much.”

  “But I also mean—” Cinrak circled a paw at the bubble, the constellation, the stars now so close they were throwing off sparks. “—alla this. Did she ken that now be the right time to fly high and fast?”

  “I’m embarrassed to admit that I thought her size would be her downfall.” Benj stroked the tentacle and it wiggled just a little. Cinrak gripped her lasso tighter. “She says...in all the star-turns she has...waved...yes that’s the best I can translate...waved to the sky, this is the strongest, err, pull, she has ever felt from the Eight Sisters. Her siblings.”

  “Goes against everythin’ we ken of our wordly physics, but fer now we run with it.” Cinrak wound the tail ends of the mer hair rope around her paws. “Doesn’t need to make sense now. We analyse later.”