by Drew Hayes
* * *
Justin resisted the urge to whistle as he clutched the heavy grey key in his right hand. It took some serious effort though. He was feeling uncharacteristically upbeat, thanks in part to the pear sitting in the knapsack he had slung over his shoulder. The rest of his cheerful mood was due to the excitement of getting to purchase brand new state of the art equipment for their business, plus an extra bit of joy from an entry he’d happened to notice when looking at the harbor master’s ledger.
“Justin, we missed the turn for our pier,” Dustin called.
“We didn’t miss it; we just have something else to take care of first.”
“What’s left to do? We got the pear, got the key, and bribed the harbormaster not to stop us when we set sail.”
“Yes, but the winds are beginning to settle down, so others will likely be allowed to leave port soon as well.”
“So what? You think the girl will chase us?”
“Certainly not; but it appears we aren’t the only ones after this little glowing fruit,” Justin replied, turning down a different dock and looking at the numbers attached to each of the massive silver locks.
“You think Lawrence hired someone else?”
“I doubt it. Though he did forewarn us that the contestants would be looking for the pear too.”
“Sure, but they had no way to know it was with the good doctor, let alone that she’d jumped islands.”
“I thought so.” Justin stopped in front of a nice, fairly new boat. It was considerably larger than the one he and Dustin had traveled on; theirs was little more than a rowboat with an engine that left three passengers very uncomfortably cramped. “However, I feel fairly certain that it was not someone else with the name ‘Thunder’ that signed this boat into the harbormaster’s log.”
“That’s my brother, always catching the minute details.” Dustin stepped forward to admire the sea-vessel in a new light. “Should we steal it?”
“If only we could. Somehow a man who lashes boats to piers when their owners are away strikes me as a bit too smart to use locks that take the same key.” Justin tried his key on the lock anyway, just to make sure. His suspicions were confirmed when it wouldn’t even fit all the way inside, let alone turn.
“Too bad, it looks a lot more comfortable than ours.”
“Agreed. Still, just because we can’t make use of it doesn’t mean we have to let it become a tool against us.”
“You know, Justin, I think I saw a few small anchors laying on the deck of a boat a few yards back.”
“Did you, now? I think we might just have some use for them.” People often thought Dustin was stupid, and while Justin agreed that his brother was dumber and quicker to anger than he, it didn’t mean Dustin didn’t have the occasional spark of insight. Justin felt a twinge of pride as Dustin hustled down the dock and leapt aboard the unattended small ship. He returned seconds later dragging a pair of anchors roughly the width of extra-large tennis racket. Justin accepted one then tested the heft of it in his hand. Yes indeed, this would do an excellent job.
“You first,” Dustin offered.
“No, I think you deserve the first swing,” Justin countered. “You’re the reason we succeeded, after all. If you hadn’t held off that crowd, I doubt I ever would have tracked her down in time.”
Dustin beamed with pride so brightly that for a moment the birds floating around them thought a new lighthouse had been installed. He walked onto the boat with a look of determination and raised the anchor high over his head, eyes unwaveringly locked on the wooden floor beneath his feet. Justin looked on with pride as his brother demolished someone else’s property.
In different circumstances it might have been quite a touching moment.
* * *
Lawrence was at the temple’s gates when his phone rang. He was impressed he still got reception this far out, but then again, he hadn’t sprung for the ultra-mobile model for nothing. Lawrence knew quite well that an operation could be made or destroyed based on how effective its communication was.
He paused in front of the moderately-sized stone building, an ornate opening before him that seemed to descend further back into the mountain it jutted out from. For all the talk of Felbren as an annoyance, the people of his island still clearly had enough faith that he looked over them to go to some impressive lengths. That, or this had been constructed for some earlier, greater god and Felbren’s followers had merely moved in over time. Both seemed reasonably viable.
He pulled out the phone to see Justin Goodwin’s number glowing in blue letters across the screen. About time; he’d expected this call hours ago. Lawrence clicked the “accept” button with his thumb.
“Yes?” He paused, listening to Justin’s cocky voice over the background of waves slapping against wood. “Excellent. Where are you?” Lawrence adjusted his supplies so they weren’t cutting into his shoulder. “I see. Well, you know where to go next. What about the girl?” He doubted Kaia was any threat; to be honest, Lawrence wasn’t certain she’d even known what she had. “You can? The others too? Be careful not to be followed.” Justin’s voice was doing everything but giving itself a hand job with all the ego flowing through it. “I see. Well, aren’t you thorough? Just be certain that-”
This time Justin’s voice was filled with shock as he yelped into the microphone. Lawrence pulled the phone from his ear and cursed. He waited until Justin seemed to have calmed down then resumed his conversation. “What happened? Slow down, what did the beer do?”
There was another sound from Justin, this one not a screech or a yelp but a moan. Lawrence knew that moan; he’d inspired more of them than he would generally admit to. It was the guttural wrenching of someone who had just realized the precariousness of their situation and the fragility of life. Lawrence closed his phone and slid it back into his pocket. Any more conversation was a waste of time; he had learned everything he needed to simply from that moan.
Lawrence headed forward into the maw of the mountain, the open temple door engulfing him in stale darkness after only a few steps.
* * *
“Mother fuckers!” Thunder yelled, shaking his first angrily at the white shape bobbing on the sea and the two men grinning gleefully within it.
His sentiment well summed up the feelings of the group. They’d barely missed the brothers, arriving just as they were pulling away from the dock. Thunder had been ready to leap in after them, but April had pointed out his injury and Mano had reminded him that swimming on rough water in the middle of piers with wooden beams everywhere was just asking for trouble. Instead, they’d run to get their own boat, only to find floating splinters where it had been docked. The largest chunk was a piece of the bow that was still chained in place; the rest had been claimed by Iohalo.
“I dug that boat!” Thunder shouted.
“Damn it,” Kaia swore. “If only we’d been faster.”
“We ran as hard as we could,” Clint pointed out. “I’m not sure what more we could have done.”
“Is it me or are they lifting something at us?” April squinted and leaned forward slightly, neither actually improving her vision but still making her feel as though they had.
“They seem to be toasting us with beer cans,” Falcon said. Her own eyesight was excellent despite the advance of years her eyes had endured. One might wonder if it was part of why she’d chosen the name Falcon to begin with; however, it was probably just a coincidence. “Actually, it looks like the same beer the fisherman gave us with the boat.”
“They stole our beer? That is just dropping insult on injury!” Thunder doubled the enthusiasm of his fist shaking.
Amidst their ranting and curses, Mano stood silent, staring out at the water. When they’d first seen the boat, he’d imagined he saw something, a fleeting shape among the waves. His eyes kept scanning the water carefully, searching for confirmation of his suspicions. He was probably wrong; this was the wrong part of the sea and way too close to the docks. The odds against it w
ere staggering. Still… Mano had seen firsthand that odds didn’t matter so much when you were the one in a million. Besides, after everything he’d done in the last day with this group of wackjobs, maybe it was time he took his own leap of faith.
“Hey, Clint, I’ve got a question.”
“What’s up, Mano?”
“That voice thing: how far is the range?”
“No idea.” There was a brief pause, and then the other voice came from Clint’s mouth.
“The farther away something is, the weaker the effect will be. If you’re thinking of sinking the ship, forget it. The most I could do is turn it over, but it’s small enough that they could flip it right back and barely be annoyed.”
“I think I have another idea. Fair warning, it’s probably crazy.”
Clint laughed, a genuine bark of humor that was snatched up by the wind and carried down the coast to cheer whatever lucky ears heard it. “At this point, I don’t think I would trust a non-crazy idea anyway. Lay it on us.”
* * *
“Look at those dipshits on the dock. I wish I could see their faces better.” Dustin didn’t half-ass his gloating, going full on with the enjoyment of seeing the others’ frustrations.
“Be quiet, I’m calling Lawrence,” Justin said, one hand cupping the phone to his face and the other burying a finger in his free ear. The damned ocean might be pretty and a convenient means of escape, but it made it hard to hear. At last the electronic ringing in his ear gave way to a click and a voice. “Lawrence, it’s Justin. We’ve got the pear.”
“Hell yeah we did,” Dustin said, pulling out some beers from the case they’d liberated from the other boat before sending it all to the ocean’s floor.
“We’re on a boat off the coat of Alendola.” Justin’s eyes flickered back to the shoreline where the mini-mob was still stymied in frustration. “She’s no issue. We sank their boat; in fact, I can see her and the others stuck on the dock right now.” They appeared to have stopped yelling, Justin noticed, and were clustering around Clint and the island boy. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t like that.
All at once there was a… a something that rippled out from the shore. It wasn’t anything that could be seen or heard; it was more like Justin felt his stomach drop out for a moment, as though he were on a roller coaster for less than a half of a heartbeat. He shook it off easily, chalking it up to the boat’s insufferable rocking, and tried to focus on what Lawrence was saying. This effort was cut short by another interruption, this one far less ethereal.
Justin and Dustin both let out yelps as the beer they’d stolen exploded from the cans, showering all over the boat, their bodies, and the open sea. Every can detonated simultaneously, leading Justin to briefly wonder if the others had somehow foreseen these events and stuffed tiny explosives in the alcohol. Then he realized just how insane that theory was and got back to business.
“Sorry about that,” Justin said hurriedly. “The beer blew up for some reason, it caught us off guard.”
Lawrence was saying something else, but Justin was distracted by his brother, who was frantically signaling for his attention. Justin was about to tell his brother to shut up when he felt something bump their boat. He glanced into the water and let out a low, miserable groan. Somewhere in the back of his brain he registered the click from the other end of the line as Lawrence hung up on him; however, that tidbit of trivia was being filed away for consideration at a much later date, if there was one. Justin wasn’t counting on any future activities as the hammerhead shark circling their suddenly too-small and too-frail boat slammed against it once more, sending Justin and Dustin tumbling to the wooden base.
Both brothers clutched at the small seats, gaining a considerable number of splinters for their efforts. Justin’s phone began ringing again; he glanced down and was surprised to see “Dr. Kaia Hale” appear on the screen. He’d forgotten that less than two days ago they’d been coworkers, here to do something as innocuous as shoot a commercial. Of course he had her number, but why was she calling right now? To gloat? No, that’s what he or Dustin would do; she was more decent. She could clearly see the danger they were in; maybe as a local she knew some trick to make the shark lose interest.
Justin snatched the phone up right before the next bump, this one violently tipping them to one side before they mercifully settled back in the right-side up position. “Help us!” Justin yelled into the phone, all sense of composure and cunning savaged away by the shark situation.
Kaia’s voice, in contrast, was smooth and confident as she spoke to her former attacker. “Mano says if you turn around right now and come back to the dock, you might get back before his friend tips you over.”
“His friend?” Justin was about to protest the lunacy of such a statement, but another hard knock forced him to realign his priorities. “Okay, fine, you win, we’ll turn back. I’m just not sure that we’ll make it.”
“Mano says if you toss the remaining beer cans and what is in them out into the water, one by one as you go, then you might just get here.”
“You’re insane. All of you are completely off-the-wall, batshit insane.”
“Fucking right.” The cold slush of New York that had infected Kaia was beginning to slip through her voice. “And Justin? If you look, even for a second, like you’re thinking about going anywhere other than the pier right in front us, Mano will have his friend devour you two and shit you out as krill food.”
“What about the pear?” Justin had one trump card left and he would be damned if he didn’t play it.
“Sharks don’t eat fruit. Start rowing, asshole.”
* * *
Handling the Goodwins proved to be a rather simple matter once they reached the dock. It seemed the experience of being pursued by a shark like little more than mobile appetizers took a significant bit of the fight out of them. Mano and Thunder relieved Justin of his backpack as soon they were on the wooden dock, Mano pausing only long enough to pour the remaining beer into the water. The dark shape trailing beneath the waves slipped over to them, enjoying the remaining liquid as it dispersed in the water.
“When I get back to Kenowai I am going to dump a whole case in the ocean for you,” Mano promised his finned friend.
“I’ll kick in one as well,” Kaia said. Her wrist seemed to hurt a bit less as she watched the brothers scramble across the wooden slats, desperate to get to dry land and safety from the razor-toothed menace. They made it about ten steps before the others circled around them.
“You tried to steal the pear,” April accused. “We’re not letting you get away with that.”
“It’s just a pear, that’s barely a crime,” Justin sniped back.
“Assaulting our friend is a big one, though,” Clint pointed out.
“Plus, you deep dropped our boat,” Thunder added.
“You don’t have proof of either of those things,” Dustin said.
“Actually, we do,” Kaia said, her hand rummaging through the backpack Mano had handed off to her. At last her fingers closed around a well-known shape that emitted a familiar current. It was strange to think she’d once been unsure if that energy was really there; the minute she touched the pear this time she could feel it flowing all the way down to her bones. “In case you forgot, I’m the one you beat up, and trust me when I say the local authorities will be more inclined to believe me than you.”
Dustin opened his mouth to protest, but Justin cut him off with a quick motion. “Fine; you can get us arrested, possibly even prosecuted. Since you didn’t call the cops while we were rowing in, I trust you want something else from us instead.”
“We want to know why you stole the pear. Who hired you, how’d they know, the whole nine yards,” Clint demanded.
Justin sneered. “You want us to give you all that just to beat a trumped-up misdemeanor assault charge? Thanks, but no thanks. Go ahead and call the cops.”
Clint looked at the others and shrugged. “Well, we tried to do it the nice way.” He
started walking forward. Justin and Dustin braced themselves to resist, and immediately found Mano and Thunder at their sides.
“No go, bro.”
“It would be best if you relaxed for this and did not struggle,” Mano encouraged.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dustin was looking a bit uncertain. For the first time in a long time, his brother didn’t seem to be in control of their situation.
Clint stopped directly in front of Justin, then reached down and took his hand. Justin felt a strange pulse run across his skin as Clint’s eyes closed and concentration spread across his face.
“Now then, let’s see what secrets you’ve been hiding.”
* * *
Felbren didn’t appear in a flash of lighting or a swirl of energy; instead he merely stepped out of the corner of the temple, like he’d been hunched over waiting for someone to call and had heard his cue. His ‘cue’, in this case, was a small cup of whiskey, a slice of fine meat, and an apple left on his altar, all of which had been incanted over. Lawrence preferred to think of them as incantations rather than prayers because praying implied a certain level of faith, and at this point he was working from knowledge rather than Belief.
The medium-statured god looked the same as he had in the dream; even his clothes were identical. Immortal beings, much like geniuses, have better things to occupy themselves with than fashion. Most simply find a look that suits them and stick with it.
“You’re here early.” Felbren helped himself to the offering, starting with the meat which sizzled in his hands then washing it down with the whiskey.
“I came to tell you that my people failed and Kodiwandae has the pear.”
Felbren cocked an eyebrow. “You traveled to my island to tell me that? Most people try to avoid giving a god bad news in person. It doesn’t really play out too well.”
