The Questory of Root Karbunkulus - Quill

by Kamilla Reid

  “What he said.” Haverly agreed.

  “Hey, isn’t Shalayna the chick from Milwart’s speech, the one who was friends with the HaloEm and got all those awesome powers?” Dwyn asked excitedly.

  “Chick?” Root and Haverly said at the same time.

  Dwyn flushed. “Sorry. Lady, I mean.”

  “If y’mean Queen Shalayna then, yes, that’d be her.” Haverly tried to get back on track. “So, my father and two glowing eggs. Got that?”

  The team nodded.

  “And from these two eggs came music. A sound so lovely, so stirring it made one’s heart ache in wonder. Those are his words. Ache in wonder. I love that.”

  The team was right with her, as if a haunting melody had come to them from the Drowned City itself.

  “Of course, my father accepted the gifts, not knowing what they were but stricken by their beauty.

  “Years passed. Eventually my father moved on with his life and the eggs were forgotten in the passing of time. Until, on my third birthday, they hatched.” She paused in the coincidence, enjoying the collaboration from her audience. “I didn’t see the hatching. Only my father did. He’d heard a sound and drew open the drawer and there they were in front of him, blind and cryin’ for food.”

  “HaloEm.” Root whispered in awe.

  Haverly nodded and continued over their gasps. “Well, he took to his task with great devotion, raising the HaloEm in secrecy, even from my young eyes, for already there were those that sought to steal of their power and would use all means to do so. My father loved the HaloEm, as his father did before him and under his reverent care, they grew.

  “But as my father had feared, something went wrong. After a certain point the HaloEm stopped growing. He knew what it was, for he had read it in his father’s journals. They had reached puberty and were in need of a particular nutrition, one that came only from the…” Haverly paused. “C’mon, kid. Now’s your cue.”

  “The Song?” Dwyn said.

  “Indubitably! The Song! The HaloEm were in need of the music, that hauntingly beautiful Song from which they had come. Or they would die.”

  “Of course, immediately my father returned to the HaloEm’s empty egg shells where he’d first heard the music. But it was gone, broken free with the hatching. So, where had it gone? He desperately returned to his father’s papers, delving into the HaloEm lore and seeking anything from which he could learn of the Song. He discovered nothing other than his father had been stumped at the same impasse.

  “The HaloEm grew weak. With each passing day that he returned to them empty-handed their gentle spirits drifted farther away. As fate would have it, the very day that he had given up entirely he and the HaloEm were led to victory. He had taken a long, surrendering walk along the seashore of our home. It had been so long since he’d done this. Soon he was exhilarated in the wind and water and he began collecting beach treasures as he had always done since he was a boy.

  “He picked up a strange shell and held it up for inspection. It caught the wind through its hundreds of small holes and, in that moment as the sound came to his ears, he knew his search was over.

  “He brought the Song to the HaloEm and let it soar over them, falling like snow and transforming them into the powerful stags of wonder and beauty that you know of today.”

  It was a wonderful story, one that left the Valadors flushed and cheered even as the chill of night took over.

  “So, the Song. That’s what people are searching for now in the Drowned City?”

  “Yeah. A fool’s errand.” Haverly half laughed. “If they only knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “There ain’t no Song anymore.” On their imploring looks she continued the final stretch of her mythical tale. “My father watched the HaloEm grow to full health and soon they took to the wild, to the White Woods, the new woods that sprang up on the base of the Bansper Mountains. You prob’ly heard of ‘em.”

  They nodded.

  “But they’d often come back to visit my father. And that’s when I saw a HaloEm for the first time. And let me tell you. It changes you. After that I couldn’t sleep for the power and the magnificence. They were…” she shook her head slowly, still captured and lost for words.

  “Well, then dad died. The war and all. And many HaloEm were slaughtered until eventually they were thought to be extinct, which was fine with me. The less who knew my secret, the better. They were safer that way. I saw my two HaloEm rarely then. Even my son saw them only once during all that time. I’ll not forget the look in his eyes, I tell ya!

  “Then one night, the HaloEm came to me. And they were troubled. They told me the Song was in great danger. There were dark forces seeking its power. I promised them right then and there that me and my son were gonna charm a cut of the White Woods and bury it.

  “But that day never came. A fire broke out in the stable where I had been hiding it. We tried to get in but the flames had already risen into mountains, scorching everything in reach. My son ran inside to try to save the Song. I tried to stop him but he tore free of me. Then he was gone, swallowed in the heat.” Haverly paused. “He never made it. And all my father’s and grandfather’s work, the journals and papers…lost. Before I could even read ‘em. So, there ain’t even anything t’pass on.”

  Haverly turned to the team, her eyes flickering with the fire in front of her. Or perhaps within her.

  “I have told you all this, not to prevent you from seeking your Quill but that you may do so in reverence and respect.”

  The Valadors vowed nothing less.

  Root nestled up between Stogie and CPR, teetering between sleep and wake, lulled in the rhythm of the sea. The last thing she saw was Corky drawing in his great arms and legs and head. His shell rested like a giant stone saddle in the sand.

  26

  VULCHERK AND CO.

  The morning’s routine of clinking pots, hissing kettles and sizzling pans, along with the rumbled greetings of Corky roused the team from sleep.

  Haverly was a conscious host and made sure her guests were well fed and comfortable before ushering them once again into the foamy seats of her water carriage.

  The ride was even better in the morning with shards of sun glinting off the waves and the added entourage of seals and whales and dolphins. Corky sped along relaxedly. His huge head bobbed and snorted playfully in his domain. Root looked at Dwyn. He was watching the dolphins with new eyes. She could feel his pride and gave him an affirming nudge. In the same moment Lian patted him on the back. He had done it. He had become a creature of water. The great sea had befriended him.

  And now, with the forest and the swamps and all the white knuckling behind them, finally they were going in the right direction. They could hardly wait to get back in the game, especially in light of the synchronous meeting of Haverly and her history with the HaloEm. To them it was a sign indeed. The HaloEm Quill was calling them.

  The port of Divit was much like any other, a rounded bay of turquoise water, sand and wooden piers, busied with boating vehicles and the industrious calls of sailors. Only Divit also harbored tortoises. Hundreds of them. Some even bigger than Corky, many smaller. Purple, green, blue. Some had been painted with names, of which Root read “Marine Queen” and “Chicken of the Sea”. Some were pasted with a collection of tags, not unlike bumper stickers, naming off famous port cities and towns of DréAmm. Haverly directed her carriage past these to a magnificent stone bridge.

  “Welcome to Divit – Pearl of the Sea” was engraved in bronze lettering into its sub-structure. It had three round tunnels beneath it with a fleet of water carriages queued up for each. Corky took the left tunnel, with the shortest line up.

  “Need t’buckle up now, kids!” Haverly called. “Gets bumpy! Now, watch yer fingers!” She pushed a switch on her console and the team watched a tinted plexi-dome begin to close around them. It glided over Haverly and sealed with a fffffttt, cutting off any outside noise.

  “Where’re we going?” aske
d Root somewhat nervously.

  “Takin’ the snakes.”

  “What?”

  “The snakes. They’re underwater tunnels. Take ya t’where y’need t’go. Or close as they can, being only the three mains’re in use now.”

  “Y’mean there are more?”

  “Heck ya! Hundreds! Spreadin’ out under Divit like water roots. But, like I said the snakes ain’t used much other than the three heads on account a nearly all Divitinians have taken to land and don’t need ‘em like they did in the Drowned City. Most’re prob’ly plugged or inhabited by now, if y’know what I mean.”

  Images of rolling, slippery appendages and nasty yellow eyes tucked away in dark water tunnels came to mind and Root shivered.

  “Here.” Haverly handed over a bottle with a stopper. “Just one pair each. Don’t put ‘em on yet. Not unless y’have to. Just hang on t’them, just in case somethin’ happens. Not that anything’s gonna happen…least not in my whole time snakin’…but y’never know…anyway, they’re good for three hours.”

  Lian read the label: Horace Gastral’s Finest Gills. Long Lasting. Minimal Scarring. He looked at his teammates and nodded. “These’re good. Dad uses them.” He passed them out. They looked like bandaids, the only difference being that when these bandaids were pasted on they’d literally meld into the flesh of your neck and become gills.

  Root looked at Dwyn. Why was it that everything she found utterly horrifying, he found to be down right exciting? He clutched his Gills, a picture of elation, while she put hers in a pocket so she wouldn’t have to be reminded that at any time she could be drowning and needing to sport, of all things, a set of gills on her neck.

  “Allrighty then!” Haverly secured her goggles. “Hang on! Here we go!

  Swoosh!

  The tunnel gulped its traffic as if it were a gargantuan whale and the carriages a measly mouthful of Krill. Haverly and her passengers flew forward and descended into the burrowing tube. Water soared past them in a blur. The tunnel bent sharply around a corner and Dwyn fell into Lian’s lap. Having felt too cool to buckle up he was now swiftly reconsidering and clicking the lock around his hips.

  The tunnel swerved around another corner and then rose up. In the slowed speed the water became clearer and the kids marveled in the sea life outside of them. Fish, gleaming of color swiveled by with nary a second glance. Huge stars, mottled and spiny clung to the tunnel sides, neon pink and blue and orange. A whole fleet of Ocean Ants marched below, piling into their own mounded city.

  The tunnel dipped like a roller coaster on a waterfall, plunging the water carriage into further blurry depths.

  “Hate this part. Always lose my stomach!” Haverly called out.

  The falling eventually slowed taking them around smaller curves until at last Haverly cried. “This is it! Hold on!”

  The water carriage suddenly torpedoed upward, defying any laws of gravity. Root gripped her teammates as, with a deafening roar the whole of their vehicle, Corky and all shot out of the tunnel. It went airborne for a moment then landed with a huge splash on the surface of a round pool. Corky thundered his approval at the landing. Haverly gave him a nod and lifted her goggles to rest on top of her head. “Everyone okay?”

  “Awesome!” Dwyn thumbed up. His friends, a little less enthusiastic were nonetheless unscathed.

  “Incoming!” Someone called out just as another water carriage exploded out of a neighboring pool. Haverly and the team seemed to be skimming one of several pools that were continually popping out carriages. A landing pad of some kind.

  “Hupcha, hupcha, Madam Sintamore. Got no time for an accident today. Had enough of ‘em last week when the trainees were out.” said an elderly gentleman in a sea-green uniform. His long, black moustache was curled up like a corkscrew.

  “No problem, Brinslip, I’m a goin’” Haverly nodded to the man whose attention had already left her for a bunch of young hotdoggers he was sure had no license.

  Haverly had Corky pull their water carriage out just before they were about to be rear-ended.

  “Hey, watch where yer goin’!” She hollered at the other driver.

  “Well, this ain’t no parking lot, lady!” came the reply.

  Haverly humphed and joined a lineup that was bottlenecking along a small river. Up front two men of identical sea green uniform directed the traffic from atop a center tower blotted in starfish. Haverly was gestured straight through into a grand canal leading into the Eastern portion of Divit.

  The city of Divit, the new one, was built on canals. Haverly removed the tinted dome over the carriage and directed Corky slowly through the watery streets where off to the sides the kids could see walkways and buildings built above ground. Nearly all of these were of light, adobe brick with a most welcoming display of awnings hanging in all manner of color. Like cheery bright flags.

  Cherry red awnings waved from the windows of an eatery called “Sea Legs” where people sat outside on a patio, sipping tall drinks under matching cherry red umbrellas. A deep yolk yellow color waved over the door of a market store. Flanking it, the same yellow hung over displays of fresh fruit and vegetables. A tailor shop had decided on emerald green awning and a salon had taken on the color of ocean blue over its door and windows.

  Directly beneath the streets, floating in the water were parked many more water carriages and their tortoises, most of which were dozing in the warm morning sun. Haverly found a free space and eased Corky in. She threw his reins on a large iron pole, not bothering to tie them up. There was no need. Corky would stay as he always did, enjoying the sun like his tortoise brothers and sisters.

  “Watch your step now.” Haverly said while offering her hand from the bottom step of a stone staircase.

  The team climbed and unloaded onto a cobbled walkway that seemed to skirt the whole of Divit, forking here and there with new branches that coiled around buildings and into the city’s inner reaches. A short stone wall served as a safety rail. Haverly leaned on it and went over directions.

  “The city centre is around that bend, then your first right. Then straight on. Y’can’t miss it. Should be able t’get all your supplies there. And the fellers over at Iguna’s’ll fix yer Road up like new. I’m bettin’ they’ll even waterproof it for ya. I’m headin’ opposite t’get my hands done. It’s a webbed thing. B’sides, I get a bit claustrophobic in cities. Anyway, here.” She handed over a roughly drawn map. “That’s my place. Easy peasy. Just take a Turtle-taxi, they’ll know. Got any money for that? No worries. Take this, should be enough and if it ain’t, they’re rippin’ y’off.”

  “But that’s way too much, Haverly.” Lian said as he watched her pass out a cut-glass coin to each of them. He knew it was Icerock, one of the most expensive substances out there.

  Haverly shrugged him off with a friendly pat on the back. “If you’re gonna be late comin’, just slip in the stable. Not the old one, which you’ll recognize by its charred remains. The new one, a jaunt or two down. It’s all nice n’ comfy like. Even a bed for Corky. I’ll set some bunks up and a place for the Hovers and…wha’dya call that thing again?”

  “CPR.”

  “Right. Okay then kids, we’ll be seein’ ya later. Have a good time.”

  Haverly accepted their many thankyous with ‘don’t mention it snorts’ then strolled down the walkway whistling.

  Divit’s city centre looked as if a rainbow had been wrangled into it, there were so many brightly colored awnings lining the streets. And cafes. Lots of cafes full of chit chatting people and the flaky remains of artisan pastries on plates. Businesses were boutique and small. And there was not a stitch of garbage to be seen. Though a quaint town charm had been well preserved here, there was a clear sense of sophistication bubbling to the surface. Fashions were articulate and pleasing. Attention was given to beautification from polished street lamps to freshly painted signage. Even Hovermutt parking was tidily designated to lots. Root loved it instantly.

  All except one building. A s
tore. A looming, mighty beast of a store.

  Vulcherk and Co.

  As with all of its franchises this one scorched the street with its big, black bones. Even the awnings were black. A gigantic silver ‘V’ gleamed across a central spire that soared high overhead. The windows were tinted with ‘Vs’ in them. People were coming and going and Root cringed at the notion that she would be one of them. Couldn’t she just keep the Brotswin? They seemed to be fine without it now. Yet, even as she thought of it she felt an urge to trap herself in its screen.

  Rats.

  She pulled it from the travel pack, still in its box. “Olly olly oxen free!” she sighed. The box didn’t budge. How embarrassing. It didn’t believe her.

  Dwyn raised his eyebrows. She knew he was just teasing but it still bugged her. She was so over the whole thing. Really she was. She had every intention of going through with this. No matter the pang of loss.

  Root refocused herself, eliminating any thoughts of keeping the Brotswin. It had to go. It was not good for them. She would sell it to Grotius Vulcherk. “Olly olly oxen free!” The box clicked open. She snatched its treasure and with an unamused look to her teammates, set to cross the street.

  “We’ll take Road to Iguna’s and then meet you over there.” Lian pointed to a lavender storefront that said Miss Steampot’s. “There’s a Hovermutt lot right by Vulcherk’s. Y’wanna take them?”

  “Fine” Root muttered. This was so unfair.

  She gathered up Pilsnips, Hana, Stogie and CPR.

  “Have fun.” Dwyn added with a mocking pat on the back.

  “Hardy har har.” Root said, pulling away.

  The man at the Hovermutt lot was very friendly. He let them park side by side and didn’t even charge extra for CPR. Root tied them to posts and started for Vulcherk’s. She was halfway there when CPR trotted up behind her.

  “No CPR. You stay!”

  CPR wagged her tail and did a sort of ‘neigh’.