Rustle glanced around. “No, I don’t see anything.”
“Any… black crabs?”
“No, there is nothing.”
“Good…”
“Why? What would it mean if there were?”
“They say when we die, if we are good, a team of rays will bring us down to the heart of the sea. If we are bad, big black crabs will pull us to pieces and put our souls into oysters to become a black pearl. If they are not here, I am not dead. Or maybe the crabs and rays cannot find us here. One is the same as the other, I guess.”
“We had better not die here. When fairies die, the seventh wind sweeps us up and brings us to the rose garden of eternity, and the wind won’t reach me here,” Rustle said.
“Funny how fairies and merfolk go different places. Maybe this is the first time a fairy and a mer went somewhere together.”
“Right now, I just want to know how we’re getting away from here.”
Eddy nodded and swam up toward the surface, which was churning much more than Rustle remembered. They each peered through. Once again, the only light was their own, but they scarcely needed it to see that they wouldn’t be going back the way they’d come. Water was pouring down the face of the cliff, and they could hear the intensity of the geyser that the entrance had become.
“This… this is not all bad,” Eddy said.
“How is it not all bad, Eddy? We’re trapped!”
“Only a little.”
“A little!?”
“Yes. We are trapped in a big place. Not so bad. And the water is rising. When it gets to the pool, there won’t be much more water to add to the cave. So, it will slow, and we can escape, probably.”
“Probably?”
Eddy nodded with a smile. “Probably!”
“I don’t like probably, Eddy. I like definitely.”
He shrugged. “We don’t have that. But we have probably, and that’s almost as good. Much better than not at all.”
“What are we supposed to do until then?”
Eddy turned and gazed, eyes twinkling, into the inky depths below.
“Explore…”
Chapter 5
Rustle flitted about, trying his best to bolster his own glow to see his surroundings. From the moment his new “friend” Eddy had grabbed him and dragged him into the water, he had been bobbing back and forth between terrified and excited at the flood of new experiences. Currently, he was mired firmly in “terrified.” Being flushed through a rocky tunnel into a mysterious air-filled cave at the bottom of the sea had a way of darkening even the most adventurous creature’s outlook.
“Rustle my friend! Here, I found the bag!” called Eddy, nothing short of unwavering enthusiasm in his voice.
The fairy moved as swiftly as he could toward the ghostly glow of the fins and eyes of his companion in this ongoing disaster. Rather than the very understandable feeling of impending doom and barely suppressed panic that was gripping his own mind, Eddy remained unfailingly upbeat. It didn’t seem to matter in the slightest that he didn’t know where he was, didn’t know for certain if he would be able to escape, and was still bleeding from his unexpected trip through the tunnel. To look at his face, you’d think that he was sifting through the rubble along the cave floor expecting to find gifts.
Perhaps the most adventurous creature could keep the darkness at bay…
Eddy held up the bag. “The book is not broken. Still in the bag. And here, I found your sweets. Plenty of them. And my claw and pick. That is almost everything.”
“Almost everything?” Rustle said.
“Most of the fronds I picked are gone. Just one left. And my eels are gone too.”
“So, we don’t have any food for you?”
He shrugged. “I had most of one. And many snails, remember? I am not hungry. It is fine.”
“But we don’t know how long we will be here. At the rate the water is rising, it might be a long time until you can swim back out.”
“I am sure we will find new things to eat.”
“How can you be sure?”
“We are in the sea. The sea provides.”
“We aren’t in the sea. We’re under it.”
Again, he shrugged. “Under the sea provides, too, probably.”
“How do you know?”
“You worry too much, Rustle.”
A distant sound, somewhere between the grind of stone and a rumbling growl, faintly reached their ears. They each looked to the source in the inky void.
“I think I worry the right amount, Eddy.”
The merman didn’t answer. He was too busy swimming toward the sound. Though Rustle didn’t very much like the idea of investigating, he liked the idea of being left behind even less.
“Wait for me!” he called, darting forward and grabbing the end of the metal pick Eddy carried.
He climbed it like a tree, then scrambled up Eddy’s arm and perched himself behind his fin-like ear.
“This is a bad idea,” Rustle said.
“My best ideas are bad ideas,” Eddy replied.
The fairy held tight and tried to get his bearings, but their combined glow didn’t cut very far into the water, so he mostly saw little more than the floor of the cave as they swept along just above it.
“I hope your eyes are sharper than mine. I can’t see where you are going at all.”
“We are going forward. That is enough for me to know it is the right direction.”
The fairy looked at the side of his friend’s face. His manic expression of excitement and exploration was completely unhindered by the scattered scrapes and gashes he’d received as they were washed into this place. All things considered, though, he didn’t look very much the worse for wear.
“You can take quite a beating, can’t you,” Rustle said.
“Oh, yes. Mira tells me, if there is one thing I do good, it is bounce.” He glanced aside, trying to look at the fairy who was a bit too close to his head for him to see much more than a glimpse of. “When I was young, always I was bouncing. Bouncing off walls. Bouncing off rocks. Bouncing off other merfolk. But what I do most is bounce back.”
“It sounds like you should have spent more time watching where you were going.”
“Mira said this too!” he said. “I hope someday I can think of a way so you can meet Mira without her getting mad at me. She gets mad at me very much, though, so it will be hard not to make her mad. But you are very like her, Rustle. You think more than you do, which she does too. Me? I think after I do. Mira, she says that’s backward. She says that’s why I have so many scars.”
He held up his arm and eyed the trickle of blood and the assorted scrapes and cuts. For the first time, his smile faltered.
“I will have many new ones after this. Mira will worry. She will want to know why.”
“Only if we get out of this alive.”
He grinned again. “That is right, Rustle! If she sees me and I have many new scars, I will just remind her that at least if she sees me then the scars did not kill me. That is reason to be happy, not angry.”
“I don’t think that will work.”
He shook his head and chuckled, almost dislodging Rustle. “No, it will not. But maybe that is good too! If she is angry that I did a thing and got scars from it, I may as well let her meet you, too. She can only get so angry, right?”
“I suppose.”
“Then this is all good. Just so long as we get out of it alive. And we don’t take too long. If we take long, she will be worried. I would rather her be angry than worried.”
“If I had a brother like you, I suppose I would be worried an awful lot, too.”
“Maybe, but probably you would worry as much as her only if you had parents like mine also.”
“Did your parents bounce a lot, too?”
“No. Not as good as me. They both died. Left with the tide, but the tide didn’t bring them back.”
“Oh… I’m sorry. What happened?”
“Mother went off to
do trade in Deep Swell. A very long way away. She did not make it there. No telling what did it. Father was looking along the bottom, not far from where the farm is. Sometimes deeper down there are better things, so he was always looking deeper down. One time, when he was deep, the ground shook and things fell. He didn’t come back.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It was terrible. But the was part is the important part. Father taught me that when I was very small. Lots of things people think keep being terrible, but they only keep being terrible if you let them. Let terrible things be was and not so much be are. Good things should be are. And will. Bad things should be was. Very smart merman, my father. A good way with words.”
“It lost something in the translation, but I think I understand.”
#
Time passed and Eddy continued swimming, thrilling at the sheer size of the place he’d discovered. It was a little disappointing that so far all they’d really found was a tablet with some magic words on it and a lot of air where it didn’t belong, but any moment that could change. He’d covered an astounding amount of distance, swimming a swift and steady pace to avoid tiring too quickly. It was difficult to be certain, as he wasn’t sure how loud it was to begin with, but the source of the odd sound that had drawn them this way couldn’t be much farther along.
“Wait,” Rustle said from his place behind Eddy’s ear. “Do you feel that?”
“No. Is it more air where there shouldn’t be air? Because there’s still a lot of that, I can see it.”
“No… No, it’s different than that. I don’t know how to explain it. Do you know how I told you it was important to focus when you use magic?”
“Yes. And then you wandered off when I was trying. And found this place.”
“I didn’t… That’s not… Listen, what I’m saying is I can feel that over in that direction,” Rustle said, pointing.
“There is someone focusing over there?”
“No. There is just… There is focus there. It is like the world is focusing there.”
Eddy scratched his head. “That does not make very much sense, what you are saying, but it is better than chasing a sound I don’t know is still there. You lead the way!”
He snatched the fairy from behind his ear and held him where he could see him, then swam dutifully off in the direction Rustle pointed. Nothing felt different, but there was no denying Rustle’s reaction. The fear and caution that he’d been showing thus far was replaced by raw determination to find the source of whatever it was he felt. They wove down and up, navigating side tunnels.
“This is getting very mixed up,” Eddy said, gliding deftly through narrowing gaps in the rock. “If we go much deeper, it might be smart if we leave marks to find our way back.”
“Please, it’s just a little farther,” Rustle said. “There! You can see it!”
Eddy squinted his eyes. It was subtle—he wondered how Rustle could have noticed it at all, in fact—but there was something odd about the next curve in the tunnel. The glossy black of the volcanic rock had the faintest glimmer of its own light, a warm yellow gleam different from the blue of Rustle and the teal of his own light. He swam onward and, upon turning the corner, swam headlong into a stout metal grating with a clang.
“Ouch,” he muttered, releasing Rustle to rub his head. “I hit a place where I already bounced once.”
He blinked away a bit of blurred vision and looked over the grate he’d hit. It was made of metal, and unlike his pick, it was of very fine make. There was none of the telltale roughness of a crudely fashioned tool. There was a layer of greenish coating, probably the result of centuries of enduring the elements, yet a smear of his finger caused it to flake away to reveal a gleaming amber metal beneath. It was almost mirror-smooth. The grating was hinged at one side and had a stout lock on the other. The individual bars of the gate formed a grid so tight he could barely fit two fingers through its openings.
“This is from the Glowing Pools… No one else could have made something that would stand the sea for so long, and so well. But the Glowing Pools are very far away. I wonder how it got here.”
“Forget the gate,” Rustle said, buzzing about before the grating. “Look what’s on the other side!”
Eddy leaned against the grating aligned his eye with one of the holes. Rustle stuck his whole head through another.
The grating seemed to have been installed to block off a large room. And room was certainly the word for it. Whereas elsewhere they had traveled through tunnels and caverns with jagged natural walls, this place was shaped by hammer and chisel. The walls formed a precise dome inlaid with intricate symbols and small, faintly glowing yellow gems. The room extended off to the left, with most of it hidden from view from this vantage.
“The whole room is like… one big… cage for magic,” Rustle said, his voice hushed. “Look, see the gems? My grandmother talked about them. She said wizards use them.”
Eddy rattled the grating. The years hadn’t weakened it much, as the lump on his head could attest. He poked at the lock, probing it with his finger. It was fairly solid as well, and quite large, another indication of its age.
“I think this is a problem. A very heavy gate and a very heavy lock. But there is room for you to squeeze through. You can go see. Maybe while you look I can see if I can get this open.”
“I don’t want to go in without you.”
He rattled the gate. “Then you will have to wait until I can break this.”
Eddy raised his pick and jammed it into the gap in the grate. He threw his weight against it, then propped his tail against the wall to shove harder. The metal of both pick and grate groaned, but neither did more than flex a bit.
“Come on! You are strong!” Rustle said.
The merman huffed a bit and pushed again.
“Why… ugh… are you so excited about… urgh… the glowing rocks and the fancy roof?” Eddy asked as he struggled against his pick. “Many things glow. You and I both glow. And there are places in Barnacle with a fancy roof.”
“It’s magic, Eddy.”
“So? Already you know about magic. More than me. I can see why I would be excited about the magic, but why you?”
“Magic is so important to fairies, Eddy. You talk about being able to go up to the surface, and how the higher and more often a merman can go in the sea the more choices he has. For us, magic is so much more than that. Even the weakest fairy has some magic. But the more we know… the more we are. Fairies with better magic are stronger. They are better. They live practically forever. At least compared to weak fairies. I’m young. Still learning. But even I know that this place… this place with such strong magic… This is the sort of place made for making people stronger.”
“Really…” Eddy said, peering through the grating again. “Being stronger at magic is something I want, too. You help me. Now I want to get in there very much, and this pushing is too slow.”
“How can I help?”
Eddy tapped the lock. “This here. I have seen the inside of a lock before. There are little parts. Little moving parts. They need a key for all of them to move at once, but when they do, this part here—the big bar that goes from the gate to the… outside of the gate. That will move.”
The keyhole was just big enough for him to reach his finger into, so he stuck a clawed fingertip inside and rattled it about. “I can’t get it. But you? You could almost fit in there. Take a look. Try to get the things lined up.”
Rustle buzzed down and stuck his head in the hole.
“Wow. It’s complicated in here,” he muttered.
The fairy worked his arms into the keyhole, fluttering his wings and kicking his legs to wriggle himself as deep into the workings as he could manage. He grunted and a quiet squeak sounded from within the mechanism, followed by small waft of green dust rushing out the keyhole around him.
“Yuck!” he coughed. “There’s all sort of… stuff in here.”
“Can you move the things?”
<
br /> “A little.”
“Good. There should be little bits that don’t line up now, but do line up when you move them.”
“I see them. Three of them.” More squeaks and creaks sounded. “I can’t get them to line up. No matter how much I move one it never lines up with the other two.”
“All of them need to move at the same time, by different amounts.”
“That’s hard.”
“It is supposed to be hard. This is a thing for keeping people out of places.”
“Let me… just…”
Rustle struggled and grunted, kicking his legs as little squeaks and creaks emanated from the mechanism.
“There! They’re lined up… Did anything happen?”
“No.”
“What else needs to happen?”
He rubbed his chin. “That should be… Oh! Of course.”
Eddy grabbed Rustle’s legs and gave them a twist. Rustle made sounds of startled complaint, but as his body pivoted in the lock, the brace slid aside.
“It is good. You are done,” Eddy said.
Rustle wriggled back out of the lock and darted up to Eddy’s face. “You always do things like that! Warn me if you’re going to grab me!”
Eddy flinched and braced for a bop on the nose. “But you did good, see?”
He leaned on the gate and, after grinding away some of the grime clogging the hinges, it creaked open.
“Oh! I did! I did that! Er… part of it. We did that! Come on! Come on!” Rustle proclaimed, buzzing forward.
Eddy smiled as he grabbed his pick and swam inside. “You and me, Rustle. We’re a good team. You can feel things and go places I can’t. I can move things and do things you can’t. This will be a good story, the one about us.”
“Just so long as we are careful. It is only a good story if we live long enough to tell it.”
“We survived rushing water, we cast spells, and found new things. We picked locks and found whatever this magic place is. What could stop us now?”
“That’s one thing I’d rather not find out,” Rustle said.
The pair entered the chamber and gazed about. Though only a few glowing gems were visible from the entryway, a constellation of them revealed itself as they crept deeper. The entire domed ceiling was spangled with gems of various sizes, each smoldering with a weak but clear yellow glow. They were arranged along lines of carvings, separating the roof into irregular angular fields. The carvings along the lines weren’t writing. At least, not any sort of writing Eddy had ever seen. They didn’t even seem to have the complex shapes of some of the older runes one saw on ancient artwork and texts. As far as he could tell, they were just a fancy design. Between them, though, in the larger stretches of roof, engravings of recognizable forms created a sort of tableau with sweeping, curving designs as a background.
The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Page 6
