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Eddy swam from the entryway into the heart of his home. Rustle hurried to keep close, glancing about as he went. Eddy may have claimed the home was not much, but it was still the most remarkable thing Rustle had ever seen. The largest room, roughly in the center of the home, was well lit with a netted jellyfish. The walls, ceiling, and floor were covered with a mosaic of shells. Here and there, hollows hosted colorful sponges or fronds of seaweed as decorative accents. He followed as Eddy swam to an adjoining room, a pantry of sorts. Bundles of fish, eels, and assorted other treats were tethered to the floor with green twine.
“These are fresh! Mira knows the things I like best!” he said, tugging another fine mesh bag from a small chest of carved stone. “Do you eat eels? If you do, you will never taste a finer one than this!”
Rustle nearly ran face first into the offered sea creature. He darted backward to avoid it.
“Ugh. No,” Rustle said. “I don’t eat creatures.”
“You should try! It is a new thing. You want to know new things! I will bring with me an extra that you can enjoy if you like.”
He stuffed them into the bag and swam the next room to grab a small roll of strange cloth before returning to the better light of the den. Perhaps he was too frightened when they’d first met, or his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the weak light, but Rustle realized he’d never taken the time to really observe his new friend. There was a marked difference between he and his sister. Admittedly, Rustle had only gotten a fleeting glimpse of her through Eddy’s hair, but she didn’t look so different from a fairy woman, save for the size, the lack of wings, and the fishy tale. Eddy was overall more aquatic in appearance. His skin had a blue tinge, shifting subtly to silvery gray scales on his tail. His build was wiry, with spindly arms and a lean chest and midriff each looking like they’d been threaded with iron-hard muscle. His eyes were a bit larger than seemed proportionate, dominated by an opalescent gray iris and a slit-shaped pupil.
Noticing that he was being observed, he stopped his preparations long enough to offer a smile, revealing teeth that were a measure more serrated than one might have expected. Spiny fins flanked his face on either side, and similar spines gathered in clusters in places like his forearms and his waist. Even his fingers were tipped in claw-like nails. Taken individually, his traits should have made him monstrous, but they’d somehow arranged themselves in a way that was curious, friendly, and enthusiastic more than they were fearsome. Though perhaps Rustle would feel differently if he were to find himself on Eddy’s bad side.
“We won’t be back until nearly time for sleep. Most of a day. If you don’t want eel, what do you eat? We’ll need some.”
“I eat nectar, mostly.”
“Nectar?”
“From flowers. It’s sweet.”
“Oh! Sweets. Like for children. I have some.”
He swam into the pantry and returned cupping some shiny, grape-sized balls in his hands.
“Take one. Try!” he said, urging them forward.
“What are they?” Rustle asked.
Eddy plucked one between his thumb and forefinger. It was squishy, revealing a thin layer of something resilient and clear around a purple interior.
“They are sweets,” he repeated. “Like for children.”
“So you said, but—”
“Try!”
He poked the little ball in Rustle’s face. It was the size of his head, so rather than popping in his mouth, the covering ruptured and Rustle got a face-full of the filling. At first, he pulled back and spat it out, but when the flavor fought its way through the surprise, he found it was actually delightfully sweet. It was a more complicated flavor than violet nectar—his personal favorite—but it was rather tasty. Even getting a mouthful of seawater along with it didn’t ruin the flavor.
“It… isn’t bad,” Rustle said. “What is it made of?”
“Things that grow along the shore. I do not know what they are called. Mira buys these for after we eat sometimes, as a treat.”
“I think they’ll do as a meal.”
“Then I bring it for you.”
He disappeared into the pantry and returned with a glass jar to pop them into before stowing them in his bag. With that done, he commenced tightly rolling up a peculiar outfit made from the same material as the bag, then slipped his hand into a tool that looked like someone had tried to fashion a mole’s claw out of a handful of shiny white stones.
“Ready to go to work?” Eddy asked. “You will see my farm, and my mine. Many things no fairy has seen! And you can tell me of things that no merman has ever seen. Such fun!”
“I’m ready when you are—whoa!”
Eddy hadn’t waited him to finish answering, reaching out to snatch him by the legs and position him atop his head to hold tight to the hair. With that, he swam happily out the door and into the darkened depths beyond.
Chapter 3
Rustle held tight to Eddy’s hair and watched the little circle of sea floor illuminated by the merman’s bracelet. When he’d agreed to come along with Eddy, he’d imagined his discoveries would be a bit more… substantial than they were turning out to be. It was true that his brief appearance in the merfolk town of Barnacle had given him a wealth of fresh knowledge, the primary lesson he’d learned since then was that the sea was very big and very dark. There was also the “deep” that Eddy had warned of, a pain that would creep up as they ventured further downward. No less than five times during their journey, Eddy had to stop to let Rustle’s pain ease. The final time had required a few careful recitations from the spell book to chase the last of the pain away.
“We are close,” Eddy said. “My farm is not very much, like my home, but you shall see it all.”
“What sort of a farm can you have beneath the sea? I only know that humans and such have them, but they need sun,” Rustle said.
“Not sun here. Just warm. The good warm water is what it takes. From below.”
“Good warm water from below,” Rustle said. “Maybe when we get a moment, we can work on that spell, so you can speak more clearly.”
“Yes, yes. But not soon. Work first.”
He swept lower and slowed his pace. Rustle experimentally released Eddy’s hair and worked his legs, arms, and wings. At this speed, he could just about keep up. Though it took much more effort than simply hitching a ride, it felt nice to have a bit of control over where he was going. At least until he felt a stir of motion in the unseen water around him that flashed images of predatory creatures waiting to gobble him up. He darted a bit closer to Eddy for the sake of safety.
It was subtle, but his host was clearly more at ease in this part of the ocean than he had been even in Barnacle. The smile on his face was wider, and his motions had a more confident, smoother, more graceful quality to them. Another sign that he was entering the depths better suited to mermen than mermaids was the glow that was beginning to form at the edges of his irises and the tips of his fins and spines. It wasn’t enough to illuminate their surroundings even as well as the jellyfish lamps in his home, but it provided enough light to give form to sea floor around them.
“Here. This is my farm. Stay far from the pointy piece in the middle. Very hot. It will burn if you go close.”
Rustle strained his eyes to see the tableau opening beneath him, but with only Eddy’s natural glow, he could only make out the faintest hint of wafting forms and angular, gnarly rock formations. He could see that the farm was tucked nicely into a little rift in the sea floor. Hidden and protected as it was from the open water, Rustle decided it might be acceptable to take the measured risk of summoning some light of his own.
He shut his eyes and fluttered his wings. For a fairy, glowing took little effort. Indeed, most times it took more effort to avoid it. The smoldering blue of his own light swelled and pulsed, and slowly the ‘farm’ revealed itself to him.
A tall, narrow spire jutted up from the center of a strip of waving red fronds. The density and variety of the
life here almost made up for the sparseness of the journey here. Back in the forest, most things were variations of blue or green, gray or brown. Here, every color in the rainbow seemed to get equal consideration. The stone was marbled with turquoise and yellow. The fronds ran the spectrum from pale yellow to brilliant red. Long, narrow tubes jutted up from the waving seaweed and winked with wriggling green and white forms. Scattered among them were fish and things which Rustle didn’t even know how to classify. Some looked too perfectly painted with brilliant, contrasting color to have been anything but the daydream of an idle artist. Others had the rocky, misshapen visage of something the gods knew most would never have to see. They did not scurry and hide at the arrival of the merman or the sudden appearance of light. It was as though they knew that they belonged here and anything else which might arrive was of no concern to them.
“The pointy bit there, in the middle, is where the good warm water comes from,” Eddy said.
He pointed to the milky white plume of water gushing from the top.
“Don’t go close. Very hot. The pointy things with the rushing water will burn. But look around. There isn’t much here that will try to eat you, I don’t think.”
“I would prefer a bit more certainty than that,” Rustle said.
“Me too!” Eddy said brightly.
Without further elaboration, he disappeared into the waving fronds and the slow, steady scrape of his claw-shaped tool on stone commenced. Rather than rely upon Eddy’s weak assertion of his safety, Rustle joined him among the fronds. The merman looked up from his work and smiled.
“You want to know what I do?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” Rustle said.
Eddy held up the claw tool.
“Scraper, from worm teeth. Big worm teeth, from down low.”
He pointed to the stone, where assorted little snails and other hard-shelled creatures held tight to the stone and burrowed among the silt.
“Little clingers. They eat the bottom parts of the fronds, and then the fronds float up and I can’t have them. No good. So I scrape.”
It was oddly beautiful to watch as Eddy worked. These were the same snails whose shells adorned his bracelet and provided light when jostled. As a result, each scrape across the stone caused a sweep of glowing points to appear where the snails were hiding. Though the ones on his wrist were small, many along the stones grew much larger. The merman pried one free. It was about half the size of Rustle if he were to curl himself up.
“Such a pain, these. Always scraping and sifting. But once they are off the bottom, they have a soft bit, see?”
He pointed at the underside, then raised it up and slurped the snail from its shell.
“Good eating,” he said, juicily chewing it. “Enough of these and I don’t need lunch. And a good hard shell. Mira uses them. She makes things to sell. They don’t glow as good as the small ones, but very pretty in the right light.”
Rustle winced a bit as he watched Eddy snacking on the creature. The merman popped smaller one off a stone and offered it up.
“Try one?”
“No.”
He scratched his head. “You say you want new things, but you don’t want any of the new things.”
“I want to learn new things. I don’t need to taste them to do that.”
“You do if you want to know what they taste like.” Eddy tossed the snail into his bag and continued to maintain the roots of his patch. “What do you want to know?”
“What is that spire that sprays the hot water?”
“It is connected to way down deep. Water goes way down deep, where there are things that aren’t up here. Then it gets hot, because it is hot way down deep, and it makes it spray up and bring the new things with it. And here and there creatures eat the new things, and they grow up bigger stronger. Also, lots of different colors! Here, come, come.”
He swam through the forest of fronds until he reached what at first glance was a stretch of the rift covered with polished stones, but they fluttered now and again, causing stirrings of silt and puffs of water.
“These here, these are our shellfish. They have been in the family since my father’s father. They make pearls. Big ones. And they make them faster than anyone else's I know.” He moved a stone to reveal a little bag of them. “These are ones I found that weren’t nice enough for selling. But look at them.”
He tugged the bag open and dumped them out into his hand.
“Pearls?”
“Yes! You don’t know them?”
“No.”
“Little, pretty, hard things. Air-breathers pay much for them. And most are white, but we have blue, yellow, red, mixes of colors, colors that are different if you look in different light, or in a different way. Very special. Only in farms like this.”
Rustle picked one up out of Eddy’s hand. It was tiny by merfolk standards, and a bit misshapen. It was about the size of Rustle’s fist and had a unique and gorgeous luster. The fairy was astounded by the piece.
“May I have this?” he asked.
Eddy smiled. “Yes, you can have. Maybe when you go back to the surface, you will bring me something special, yes?”
“I don’t know if there is anything that would interest you.”
“You bring the thing. It will interest me. To me, that pearl is a small one I can’t sell, but you look at it like treasure. This is why we help each other, yes? Show each other the trash the other will treasure! I have much work to do, but maybe we’ll find more trash for you.”
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Much of what Rustle reasoned must have been the morning was spent tending to the roots of his frond patch, weeding out those too small to be of any use and harvesting those that had grown large enough. When that was through, Eddy donned the odd garment he’d packed away. It was a thick, rough gray hide, like some manner of leather but with a rubberier texture. It covered him along the front like a smock, and was paired with a skirt of sorts to protect his tail and thick mittens to protect his hands. It even had something of a backward hood with tiny slits in it to see through, such that when fully dressed the wasn’t a scrap of flesh exposed from the front.
“What is this all about?” Rustle asked.
“The hot thing, it is best if it does not grow too tall, and that it does not clog,” Eddy said, fitting the claw over the mitten. “So I have to shape the top sometimes.”
He glanced left, right, and up, then lowered his voice and whispered. “Also, I need this for getting into my mine. We go there next.”
He swam up while Rustle watched. Curious as the fairy was, the heat from the water plume was already as much as he could handle. Perhaps sensing Rustle’s curiosity, after Eddy had chipped away a bit of end of the spire, he caught the removed piece in his gloved hand and swam back with it.
“This is very special,” he said, holding bit of stone, still so hot it made the water around it sizzle and shimmer. “These bits have very much of the same new things that are in the water. And they are lucky. If you bury one of these under a new home, that home will be a place of wealth and happiness. I will leave it here. Maybe you will take it with you. Not so much trash as the bad pearl, but still interesting. That is for later. Now we go to the mine. Inside we will have lunch, and then more work. There are many new things for you there. Things even mermaids never see. Come!”
He grabbed his bag and swam deeper through rift. Rustle buzzed along as best he could, but a mixture of his own fatigue and Eddy’s enthusiasm caused him to fall behind. He wasn’t terribly concerned about it. In all of the time they had been in the rift, nothing particularly large and frightening had reared its head. A few of the more grotesque denizens of the deep he’d seen could probably make a meal of Rustle if they tried, but they were all far too slow to catch him even at his diminished speed. And with the glow of his fins and spines, Eddy was simple enough to spot at a distance. So, Rustle moved at his own pace and gazed at his surroundings.
Beyond the grounds of Eddy’s ‘farm,’ the rift w
as a much wilder and more chaotic place. A few threads of the same feathery seaweed grew here or there, but they were joined by prickly or spongy growths of various types. Other hot water spires jutted up, each with their own bloom of life around them. Through time and practice, Rustle found his connection with the water very slowly developing… though sometimes he could swear he felt a hint of the crisp, lively energy of wind and air even here in the water. He stopped and touched his fingers to the stone. It wasn’t possible, of course. How could there be anything more than a little trapped pocket of air like the one near the shore? And even something that large didn’t seem likely. Still, knowing that didn’t change the fact that he could feel the shadow of a whisper of a breeze somewhere beneath him. So strange…
“Come!” Eddy called. “Nearly there!”
Rustle set the consideration aside and fluttered along after the merman until he reached what was easily the least inviting patch of sea floor he’d yet encountered. A section of the rift wall had eroded away somewhat, and in the inky blackness within the scoured-out tunnel, scalding hot water and cloudy silt swirled and churned. The more jagged and horrid-looking growths and creatures he’d spotted along the way seemed utterly enamored by the opening, gathering around its perimeter and giving it the look of a snarling mouth ringed with teeth.
“I found this one day, looking for good stones,” Eddy called, the rush of water making it difficult to hear him. “Most times the hot water comes up through the stone. I see this here, with the water in the stone, and I think, maybe there is more tunnel behind. And there is. So much good things behind it. And because it is so hard to get to, no one else ever comes. No one even knows it is there.”
“You have to swim through that?” Rustle called.
“Yes! But I have these clothes. If I am fast, it does not hurt at all.”
“What about me?”
“I have this bag!”
“Eddy, I don’t like being—”
“It will be fast!” Eddy assured him.
Before he could object further, the merman snatched him and tossed him into the bag. Eddy launched forward, pinning Rustle to the bottom of the satchel amid the glass jar of sweets, a few eels, assorted shells, and other loose ends. The bag shook and a few errant spritzes of hot water made it past the flap, but it was over after a few seconds and a mitten-clad hand reached in to free him.
The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Page 3
