The Tides of Avarice

by John Dahlgren

  The pirate, for his part, hadn’t noticed either of the Pickleberries scuttling past him, so swiftly and light-footedly had they been moving. He was a big, fat groundhog whom Sylvester had seen around on the Shadeblaze. It wasn’t any wonder the two female lemmings’ rapid progress had eluded the slow-witted animal’s attention, especially since he’d been taking the opportunity of being left on his own to help himself to a bolstering swallow or two from the flask in his pocket. But Sylvester’s heavier lumber was another matter altogether.

  “Oi!”

  “Well, darn it,” said Viola’s mom. “You great clumsy oaf, Sylv—”

  “Oh, stow it ’til later, you old bag,” Sylvester hissed back at her.

  For the first time in a very long time, Mrs. Pickleberry was stunned into silence.

  “Oi!” the pirate cried again, far more clearly than before, when his shout had been partly smothered by the glug of grog he’d been clandestinely trying to swallow at the same time. “Fugitives sighted! This way! This way!”

  There must still have been a few pirates left aboard the ship, too, because suddenly the Shadeblaze’s bell started clanging.

  Blang! Blang! Berrrr-laaaang!

  The groundhog began lurching across the dock toward them, drawing his sword laboriously from his belt. “I got the scum in me sights, Cap’n!” he bellowed. “This way! This way!”

  Sylvester darted his eyes this way and that.

  The dock was almost entirely in darkness except for the lights shining onto it from the ships moored there. Farther along, though, perhaps a couple of hundred yards from where the three lemmings cowered in the inky shadows, there was an outburst of light and sound.

  A tavern!

  A dockside tavern!

  If only Sylvester and the other two could reach it, maybe they could lose themselves among the carousing throngs?

  Some fat chance.

  But, right now, it looked to be the only chance they had.

  Beggars can’t be choosers.

  “Follow me,” he hissed at Viola.

  “But—”

  “No arguments. Just follow!”

  “This way! This way!” bawled the oafish groundhog again. He had a patch over one eye. The other looked rheumy from an excess of grog. The fact that Sylvester could tell this meant the pirate had gotten far too close to them.

  “Now!” Sylvester yelled.

  He ran like the wind in the direction of the brightly lit tavern.

  Behind him he could hear the rattle of claws on stone as Viola sprinted in his wake. He hoped her mother was doing the same and hadn’t stupidly stayed behind in the hopes she could win a fight with a groundhog. The pirate was stupid and half drunk and addle-brained, but he was twice the size of Mrs. Pickleberry. When it came to a brawl between a lemming and a groundhog, there could only be one winner, and it wasn’t the lemming.

  Rolling pin or not.

  The two hundred yards seemed to get longer and longer the farther Sylvester ran. His breathing was like a thunderstorm in his ears. Ahead of him he could see the front of the gaudily illuminated pub as if through the wrong end of a telescope, like a tiny but preternaturally bright image at the far end of an extremely long tunnel whose dark walls were pressing in on Sylvester’s eyes.

  Out of his peripheral vision he became aware that Viola was pulling up alongside him.

  “Soon be there,” he gasped, not sure if he believed his own words.

  “Keep running!”

  It was almost a satisfaction that she seemed as puffed as he was.

  “Daphne?” he forced himself to ask.

  “Behind us.”

  “Okay.”

  “Run!”

  He was already running, he thought resentfully, as fast as he was able.

  Which was faster than the drunken groundhog. Sylvester could hear the pirate calling, “This way! This way!” still, but from a distance that grew increasingly larger each minute. For sure, the other pirates must be scuttling to try to intercept them, but so far there was no sign of them. Maybe the lemmings had been lucky and all of Rustbane’s verminous crew had happened to be on the far side of the harbor when the lemmings had chosen to make their dash for freedom.

  Maybe.

  Unlikely, but anything’s possible, isn’t it?

  Sylvester could now make out the name written on the sign that hung out in front of the tavern.

  The Monkey’s Curse

  I didn’t need to know that, he thought wildly. I could have put all the effort of reading those words into trying to run a bit faster. I could have …

  He realized he was thinking nonsense and just concentrated on trying to get to The Monkey’s Curse as quickly as he possibly could.

  Now there were indications of the other pirates in hot pursuit. Shouts. Cries. Heavy footfalls.

  “There they go! Catch ’em!”

  Rustbane’s voice commanding his men, but from a good distance away. There were other pirates far closer, though. It was going to be touch and go who made it to The Monkey’s Curse first.

  Just to this side of the tavern was a vertical slit of darkness.

  An alley.

  You couldn’t even see it was there until you were almost on top of it.

  Sylvester let out an unintelligible grunt and jerked his head towards the black streak.

  Viola drew up beside him, her eyes flaring. She’d seen the alley too. They were just going to have to trust luck and the Great Spirit Lhaeminguas (or perhaps even the triple-breasted goddess?) that Mrs. Pickleberry, trundling along in the wake of the two younger lemmings, had spotted the dark haven likewise. And that none of the pirates had. That was a lot of luck to be calling on. Especially when your heart was about to burst through your ribs.

  Then Sylvester and Viola reached the alley. They ran at full speed straight into pitch blackness, and tripped over a heap of debris and garbage cans, which sounded like a bomb going off in the middle of a hardware store.

  “Yaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!” screamed Viola as her mother landed at full tilt on top of her, rolling-pin end first.

  Sylvester could hardly hear them. His ear was jammed hard up against a half-cooked pumpkin someone had wisely thrown out when it got too old. He had the suspicion that a single feather’s worth of extra force and his head wouldn’t be on the outside of the pumpkin any longer.

  A horrible faux quiet descended on the interior of the alley. A faux quiet broken only by the painful gasping of the three lemmings and the pocka pocka pocka as one last can lid settled itself down flat on the ground.

  It wasn’t a real quiet, but when the lid stopped moving it seemed like it was real.

  It was faux because nowhere this close to a pub like The Monkey’s Curse could ever be truly quiet, even when the pub was empty.

  Despite the cacophony of the lemmings’ arrival, it was obvious no one inside the tavern had noticed a thing.

  But the pursuing pirates had, though.

  “See that?” said a voice from the end of the alley.

  It wasn’t the voice of the groundhog, alas. This was someone who sounded much brighter. And soberer.

  “It’s where they put the trash out from the pub,” said a companion of the first speaker.

  “And those horrid little hamsters just went full pelt, hell-for-leather into it, din’t they?” said the first.

  “That’s my guess too. You got a lantern?”

  “Naw. Here’s Toadsbreath with one, though. Hiya, Toadsbreath.”

  A glimmer of light crept into the end of the alley. Sylvester could just make out a tangle of furry limbs that he assumed must be Viola, Mrs. Pickleberry and himself.

  And what looked like a ten-year accumulation of rotting food and empty bottles and cans.

  “We’re not hamsters,” he muttered angrily under his breath.
“I keep telling you, we’re lem—”

  “Shut up, you halfwit,” said Viola hotly in his ear.

  The three of them stayed very, very still.

  Disconcertingly, the garbage stayed rather less so.

  Maggots.

  Sylvester prayed Viola wouldn’t realize that’s what those clammy little movements were.

  “You going in after them, Toadsbreath?”

  “How stupid d’you think I am?”

  “You want the long answer or the short one? Oof!”

  For a moment the lantern’s beam darted here and there all over the alley walls, and then it steadied again.

  “Now listen, Viola,” said Sylvester as quietly as he possibly could and still let it be possible for her to hear him.

  “What?” she answered in the same, almost silent tone.

  “I’m going to create a diversion.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Create a diversion, so the pirates all start chasing me. In the confusion, you and your mom’ll have a chance of making good your escape. Okay? On the count of—”

  “Don’t be such a complete gormless lamebrain, Sylvester Lemmington, you hear me?”

  This wasn’t quite the reaction he’d been anticipating. “My hero, my hero, my hero, pardon me while I swoon,” had been more the sort of thing he’d had in mind.

  “Now you listen to me, Sylvester Numbnuts,” Viola was saying. “We’re all three of us in this together. There’s going to be no heroic sacrifices. Got that?”

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  “Ess zere somepatin ze matteur?” said a squeaky voice that was totally unknown to any of them.

  Sylvester was the first to recover his wits.

  “Huh?” he said.

  Well, some wits, anyway.

  “You een need of a little sanctuary from ze big bahd piratical goons, yes?”

  “You could say that.”

  “I jus’ did, mon ami.”

  “No, what I meant was—”

  “Stop messing around, Sylvester,” said Viola. “If this person can help us lose Rustbane and his louts we should listen to him. He probably knows this island and we don’t.”

  “Yes. We’d be glad of your help,” said Sylvester.

  “Zen follows me.”

  “How can I do that?”

  “Well, all you needs to do, mon ami, is put ze one leg in fronts of ze other one and—”

  “No,” Sylvester whispered urgently. “What I mean is I can’t see you. If I don’t know where you are, I don’t have much of a chance of following you, do I?”

  “Ah, yes. How silly of moi. ’Ere, Mr. Lemming. You take my paw and I will guide you.”

  The paw that slipped into Sylvester’s was small, hardly larger than that of a newborn lemming. Sylvester wondered if it could possibly be a child who was trying to save them. But no, that didn’t make sense.

  For his own part, he took Viola’s paw. He could feel her adjusting herself so she could grab Mrs. Pickleberry’s.

  “Iss we all set now?” said the perplexing, heavily accented little voice out of the blackness.

  “As ready as we’ll ever be,” replied Sylvester.

  “Good, mon ami. Then ’ere we go.”

  ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

  Later, Sylvester did his very best to forget the nightmarish journey they took from the darkened alley to something approximating safety.

  The journey didn’t last long and it didn’t take them very far, not in terms of sheer physical distance, anyway, but it left deep scars upon his soul.

  He’d expected their invisible savior to lead them farther back into the alley, or perhaps to one side of it or the other. Sylvester wouldn’t even have been too surprised if their route took them upwards, perhaps to a high window concealed from the ground by the angle of the wall.

  Instead, though, the route led down.

  Down through layers of wriggling maggots, putrescent meat, vegetables liquified by rot, more maggots …

  And those were only the identifiable bits.

  The unidentifiable bits were worse.

  They smelled a lot worse, anyway.

  “Where are you taking us?” Sylvester began to say to the insistently pulling guide beneath him, but he got only as far as “Where are you gwish schwabble bleeuch” before his mouth filled up with some lukewarm, jelly-like substance he resolved to take particular care never to taste again.

  A few moments later he could hear Mrs. Pickleberry, who’d been muttering away in a semi-audible stream of complaints and curses, getting a mouthful of the stuff as well, which silenced her, so the news on the jelly-like goo front wasn’t altogether bad.

  By now, the four creatures had shifted themselves so that each, with the exception of the stranger with the bizarre accent, was reaching out with one paw to grab an ankle of the person in front. With their free leg and free arm they sort of half-hauled themselves, half-swam down into the squishily resistant filth.

  After a minute or two, Sylvester discovered to his surprise he no longer especially noticed the stench of the garbage. He’d never have believed he could become acclimatized to it. Then abruptly they were falling out of the greasy embrace of the slick refuse and into open air.

  Luckily, the drop wasn’t a long one.

  Sylvester lay on his tummy on an earthen floor, heaving a long sigh of relief that against all the odds he was still alive, when a sudden enormous impact in the middle of his back told him he should have had the presence of mind to roll over out of the way of Viola.

  “You darling,” she said quietly, sounding a little winded. “You lay here to break my fall.”

  That was when Mrs. Pickleberry landed on top of her.

  “We iss all apresenta and correcta, yes?” said the small voice.

  “I think so,” said Sylvester, extricating himself from under the two Pickleberries. He reached gingerly upwards and discovered that the ceiling of wherever they were was quite low. Standing would be out of the question, and it would be wise to be cautious about sitting up too impetuously.

  From above, he could hear the muffled noises of some very heavy somebodies rootling around clumsily in the spilled garbage. Also from above, but off at an angle, there were the sounds of drunken revelry: out-of-tune singing, shrieking, perhaps a fight. The Monkey’s Curse was obviously doing a whale of a business this evening. Sylvester hoped it’d carry on doing so once Rustbane’s mob of ruffians invaded the premises in search of three fugitive lemmings. The Shadeblaze’s crew would be certain the runaways must be hiding somewhere among the motley crowd of drunks and could waste hours before becoming convinced otherwise.

  Misdirection, thought Sylvester, listening as his breath grew easier and more regular. It’ll be the second time tonight we’ll have used it to our advantage.

  Unless, of course, we’re nuts to be doing that.

  We don’t know who it is who’s brought us here.

  Frying pans.

  Fires.

  Out of one and into another.

  Hope not.

  Just then there was a faint gleam of light, and for the first time Sylvester was able to clap eyes on the person who’d led them out from under the very noses of the pirates.

  A mouse.

  He stifled a laugh.

  Among lemmings, mice were generally considered the lowest of the low. Put it this way, for a lemming there isn’t generally a way to look at the rest of the rodent brotherhood that isn’t up. Rabbits and groundhogs and beavers are bigger, way bigger, and in the archives at the Library in Foxglove Sylvester had read of rodents called coypus that made even rabbits, groundhogs and beavers look pretty paltry. Rats and squirrels are quite a lot smaller than lemmings, but they’re also generally regarded as quite a lot cleverer and more resourceful. Rats
in particular have a streak of cunning ruthlessness that makes lemmings seem positively benign. So, if a lemming wants to look down the not terribly impressive length of its coarsely haired nose at anyone, who of the rodent persuasion does it have left?

  Mice.

  That’s about it.

  And chipmunks, of course.

  Except chipmunks, damn them, are so damned cute.

  And they’re bright too, the little stinkers. Bright enough to run rings round the average lemming.

  So that just leaves mice.

  For a lemming brought up in a conventional household, as Sylvester and Viola and Daphne and, in fact, every other lemming he’d ever known had been, the prospect of being rescued from seemingly inevitable death by a mouse ranked about as low on the scale of ignominious circumstances as you could ever dread reaching.

  Yet that was exactly what had just happened to Sylvester and the Pickleberries.

  They were going to have to learn a different way of judging those around them, that was all.

  Sylvester didn’t mind the prospect of philosophical readjustment. He’d read enough in the Library to know that whoever judges others by outward appearance is doomed to a sticky and well-deserved end.

  He wondered how Mrs. Pickleberry was going to react to the notion.

  Mrs. Pickleberry reacted to the notion by waddling straight up to the small black mouse who’d saved them, picking him up and planting a great big slobbery kiss on the little creature’s cheek.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she breathed. “If ever I needed a hero, that was the moment, and you came along just in the nick of time.”

  So much for preconceptions, thought Sylvester wryly.

  “What’s your name, you sweetheart?” Mrs Pickleberry was asking the mouse.

  “Zey calls moi Rasco,” said the little black mouse, cleaning his whiskers with an industrious paw. “Zat is because it is my, ’ow you say, nom?”

  “Love that accent,” said Mrs. Pickleberry.

  “Mo–om,” said Viola.

  “You’re called Rosco?” said Mrs. Pickleberry, ignoring her daughter.

  “Rasco. An easy enough mistake to make. Mon Papa ’e was so delighted when myself and my seventeen siblings were born, ’e went out and drank ’imself a ’ole glass of cognac before going down to ze offices to register us. ’E was trying to call me Rosco but it came out as Rasco, so Rasco is ze name I ’ave to zis day, no? ’Ave pity on my little bruzzer, ’oo was supposed to be called Farthing.”