A Monk's Tail

by Kyle Spencer

  Although this ship does look much nicer.

  And the crew on this one seems a lot more...friendly.

  The captain greets us once we’re all up on deck. “Alright then, we’ve got all our papers in order. Cargo and crew are cleared by the port authority, so in case anybody asks, you two are three cases of rum, you’re a barrel of molasses, and you’re a few pieces of fruit.”

  “Hey!” Susi tries to look indignant but can’t resist Saltana’s charm.

  “So where are we staying?” I ask.

  To answer, Saltana barks at one of her crew. “Myra!”

  “Aye, Captain!”

  “Show our guests their quarters. The rest of you lot! We ship off at six bells!”

  Floorboards creak underfoot down into the belly of the ship. A hazy fog of incense clings to the ceiling and makes the entire area smell like jasmine. Blue luxorbs bob in tiny glass jars. Their light makes the inside of the ship seem like an underwater seascape. The walls are covered floor to ceiling in various doodles and drawings with a tiny name beside each one. Anvi drew a circle of sea serpents, Shreya drew what looks like a Roc with the sun setting behind it, Vanya drew a family of otters smiling and waving, and Myra drew an otter with scales and a distinctly serpent tail.

  “Captain’s quarters is up there.” Myra points upwards through the ceiling to the back of the ship. “Crew’s quarters is there. You’ll be down here.”

  “Wait. Isn’t that the cargo hold?” Susi peers down the next set of stairs at the piles of barrels and crates.

  “You thought the captain was kidding when she said you were cases of rum?” A devilish smile spreads on her lips. “C’mon, it’s not so bad. Me ‘n some of the other girls made a nice little nest for you lot. And I doubt you’ll be sleeping much down there anyways.” She winks at me. I wink back.

  “Come on.” Talia pulls me by the ear down the stairs. A few lanterns guide our way to a corner of the hold where space has been cleared out and some hammocks have been strung up. There’s an empty crate to put our things in. Ooo! The hammocks are actually quite comfy, too.

  “So what about your shop?” I ask myArchy as I settle into the woven hemp net. “You do know that we won’t be coming back this way for a while.”

  If ever.

  “Is funny and long story.” Archy smiles and rubs the back of his head. “You see, I burned down shop.”

  The rest of us blink a couple of times. Then, as one: “What???”

  “That was neither funny nor long.” Susi frowns.

  “I was collecting important tools and research notes when I accidentally knocked over bowl of gunpowder into candle.” Archy explains.

  “Why were you storing gunpowder next to fire?!” I yell.

  “Why did you even have fire?!” Susi adds. “Why didn’t you have luxorbs?”

  “Small oversight.” Archy shrugs. “Either way, what is done is done. I did manage to brings guns and other supplies. Plus something special I have been working on.” A hammock sags under his weight. “Oh. I am fine, by the way.”

  “Archy, I’ve seen you writing notes with smoke literally pouring from your ears. I’m beyond worrying about you.”

  His laugh is good to hear.

  Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!

  “Ooo! Ooo! I wanna see the ship take off!” Susi scrambles up the steps. A bemused Archy follows her.

  “So you and him,” Talia waits in her hammock until the heavy footsteps disappear, “How did that happen?”

  “Chance.” I shrug.

  “Come on. There’s got to be more to it than that.”

  “Not really. When I first came to Aquarian I was pretty out of my element. Wound up sleeping in the abandoned buildings of Old Town. One day I got knocked out by Archy’s door when it got blown off its hinges by an explosion. Archy brought me in, took care of the fist-sized lump on my head, fed me some of his awesome soup, and that was it. I started helping him around the shop, mainly cleaning up his messes but also testing out his various experiments. Got the scars to show it here, here, and a few other places you won’t appreciate me showing you.

  “Anyways, one day Archy saw an ad in the paper; there was a troll, um, trolling around in the sewers. Didn’t harm anybody. Scared the shit out them though. Yelling at them from sewer grates and saying they couldn’t cross the road unless they ‘answered me these questions three’. It was all pretty silly shit. But regardless, there was a reward for anyone who could go down into there and get Reggie - that was his name, tell you in a second - to leave by any means necessary.

  “The first would-be hero to go down never came back up. Well, never came back up in one piece at least. They eventually found an arm and a foot floating near the docks, but that’s it. The next three to go down were never found at all. After that the reward doubled and became too good to pass up. Archy saw it as an opportunity to test out his newest creation: a flintlock pistol that could kill the user just as easily as the enemy.

  “I wasn’t too keen on going down into the underbelly of a large city with a deadly deadly troll, but hungry bellies and lean pockets are good at convincing you to do stupid shit. So, with six of these newfangled guns and a warhammer on my back, I began trudging around for hours in the city’s waste - which actually isn’t my worse experience, but that’s another story.

  “Now have you ever seen a troll? The stories are true; trolls are uglier the Hel’s asshole. But they’re not the slavering, rabid beasts the stories would have you to believe. Don’t get me wrong; they really do lurk under bridges and eat goats and shit, but they’re actually quite gregarious about it.”

  Riddles in the Quasi-Dark

  Well, come along! I've got two spears,

  And I'll poke your eyeballs out your ears;

  I've got besides two curling-stones,

  And I'll crush you to bits, body and bones.

  - Gruff Mattis the goat, right before smiting a bridge troll

  Fuck this smelly-ass sewer. Fuck these weird-ass guns. Fuck this heavy-ass hammer. And fuck this stupid-ass troll!

  “You don’t look like your having much fun.” The voice spins me around too fast and I fall on my ass, sending my lantern into the muck. Sewage seeps up my sleeves and around my waist. A deep laugh echoes out of the shadows.

  “Hah-ha-hah! Now it looks like you are having less fun. Sorry about that - didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Deep down I know who - what - is talking, but the voice is not what I was expecting. There’s a dark savagery to it, but with a sense of refinement. It’s like a stone knife polished and painted to look like a golden dagger. It stirs something strange in the pit of my stomach, the same place that twisted in knots when listening to all those ghost stories as a child.

  A thick layer of sewage gloms onto the lantern, making it cast wavy brownish-green lines of light on the tunnel walls. A few feet farther down the walls open up into more tunnels, one to the left and one to the right. A long spindly arm, already green but made sicker in the lamplight, reaches out of the shadows on the left and grasps at the loose stones jutting out of the wall. The four fingers are thin and bony, like someone simply attached very large spider legs to a hand.

  “So have you come to try and kill me too?” The fingers drum against the stone. Matte black claws make a rhythmic tak-tak-tak-tak that bounces through the tunnels. “‘Try’ being the operative word.”

  “Just came down here to talk.” I slowly get back to my feet, never taking my eyes off the shadow with the arm.

  “Need all those fancy weapons just to talk?”

  “Safety precaution.” I shrug. The shadow laughs, a slopping wet sound.

  “You’re different,” Another hand crawls out of the shadow. “Not like those other fools that came down here with their pitchforks and torches. Now really, who in their right mind would bring open flame down here? What with all the volatile gases wafting around.”

  “Wait, really? Pitchforks?” I’m actually a little surprised by that.

>   “I couldn’t believe it either. Not that it did them any good.”

  “Apparently.”

  The troll finally decides to show itself, unfurling from the dark tunnel like a nightmare marionette. Its skin is a slimy, pallid green. Arms and legs grow way too long for its stumpy little torso, although this thing is not lacking for muscle whatsoever. The head is bereft of any hair and shines like an oily egg. No nose; only two long vertical slits for nostrils. The eyes are lidless and black with a thin ring of yellow to mark where the actual pupils are. The ears are saucers slapped flat against the sides of its head. But the mouth...oh, the mouth. Large and wide, almost cleaving the head in two. Yellow teeth with no sense of symmetry or shame poke out at different lengths. Dry black blood and gore crust the corners.

  Being two or three heads taller than me, it almost scrapes against the ceiling. It gazes down at me with those strange black eyes and smiles. The scent of blood and shit slaps me in the face. Hard. The troll sits itself down in the middle of the sewage, knees to chest and arms wrapped around its legs. I stand there, staring, confused as Hel and trying to keep my heart from hammering out of my ribcage.

  “My name’s Reginald, but you can call me Reggie.” He sticks out a mire-soaked hand. I can probably reflect on it a million times and still not understand why I decide to shake a troll’s refuse-covered claw while sitting in the dank sewer under a metropolis, but it just seems like the polite thing to do.

  “So what do you want to talk about?” He rests his chin on his knees like a cub waiting for a story.

  “Well I came down here to ask you-”

  “Oh! Do you like riddles? The others didn’t much care for them - the only answer they gave was trying to stab me.”

  Oh, what the Hel.

  I give Reggie the ‘go ahead’ gesture and he goes all giddy.

  “Alright. You’re running a race and pass the person who’s in second place. What place are you in now?”

  “Easy. Second place.”

  “Okay, okay. That was just a warm-up. What grows when it eats, but dies when it drinks?”

  “Shit. Um...gimme a second.”

  “If you guess wrong, I eat you.” Reggie smiles, releasing more of that blood-shit stink.

  “What?!” I take a few steps back and reach for one of my pistols. Reggie rolls on his back, laughing his ass off.

  “Hah-ha-hah! Of course I won’t eat you! That would just be plain rude.”

  “Oh. Of course. I knew that.” My paw relaxes. “And it’s fire, by the way.”

  “Nicely done! Here’s another: Imagine you’re in a dark room. How do you get out?”

  Oooh that’s a tricky one. And this troll doesn’t seem half bad, besides obviously shredding his prior company to bits. But seriously, who brings a pitchfork?

  Reggie leans forward, the yellow rings in his eyes growing larger. “Give up?”

  “Not yet. Can you repeat it one more time?”

  “Of course. Imagine you’re in a dark room. How do you get out?”

  I snap my fingers. “Stop imagining!”

  A pout forms on Reggie’s thin lips. “Thought I had you with that one.”

  “You were close. Now I gotta be real with you for a second, Reggie. This trip to the sewer is going a lot better than I expected, and your riddles are delightful -”

  “Thank you.”

  “- but we both know why I came down here.”

  “So you are here to kill me.” Those black orbs narrow and a row of yellow teeth show themselves.

  “No. No. I never said that. But there is a rather sizable reward from the city for anyone who can get you to just go away.”

  “Go away?”

  “You’re scaring a lot of people up there, Reggie. Someone’s worried that you’re going to just up and start eating everyone real soon.”

  “Well now I admit to being tempted by a few morsels, but I know better than to just start eating random strangers. Brings a lot of unwanted attention, you know?”

  “I think that ship has already sailed, don’t you?”

  “True. But what if I refuse?” He looks past me to the large hammer on my back.

  “That would be unfortunate for everyone involved.”

  “Indeed.” Black claws pick at a pimply green chin. “How much is the reward?”

  “I thought trolls don’t use money.”

  “Just because we don’t have need of currency doesn’t mean we don’t understand its value.”

  I throw out a number, adding two extra zeroes just to be safe. Reggie nods sagely. “See, now things are starting to make sense. Guess I can’t really blame those others for being so reckless.”

  “I can. Tell you what: let’s have ourselves a wager,” I must be fucking crazy, “I give you three riddles. You miss one, you gotta leave. You get them all correct, then...you get to eat me.” Reggie’s eyes grow wide and a sluggish black tongue runs circles around his mouth. He begins to reach out a long arm to me but just before that black claw (black from blood, judging by the smell) touches my nose he jerks his arm back.

  “But what if I don’t want to eat you? You’re the best company I’ve had in a long, long while.”

  “Oh thank the gods!” I nearly collapse. “Well, um, how about this: You get them all right, I visit you every Moon’s Day with a new set of riddles.”

  He rolls back and forth on his haunches, giggling and clapping his hands up over his head. I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.

  “Alright then,” I begin, “What is so delicate that even saying its name will break it.”

  “Silence.” I’m not even allowed a breath before Reggie answers. His face sinks from eager excitement to instant boredom. “I’m a two-hundred-year-old troll. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  Shit.

  Rifling through my brain I start a riddle triage, trying to find one that would stump this bastard. Nope. Nope. Nope. Too easy. Nope. Forgot the answer. Nope. Aha! One that Archy told me while we were cleaning up after an especially messy lab explosion.

  “What has no windows, no doors, but a room filled with people?”

  Squishy green lips purse together as a large black claw scratches the top of the troll’s head. The yellow rings in his eyes slowly roll back up into his head and his lips begin a silent repetition of my riddle. It’s creepy as Hel and I can’t help but shiver a bit.

  Slowly the eyes roll back and he frowns. “I don-” He stops and stares at his forearms, long, taut, and green. “Is it...a cucumber?”

  “No fucking way.” I fall back against a wall as Reggie slaps the sewage around him in glee.

  “Hah-ha-HAH! One more! One more!” He scootches closer and lays his head in open palms.

  There’s no way I can win. I pulled out all the stops with the cucumber one. What else left is there?

  Wait…

  I can’t contain my smile. “ 食事を食べる前に抱く物は何？”

  “Huh? Wait, that’s no fair! You can’t use other languages!”

  “Hey, a riddle’s a riddle. You gonna answer or not?”

  Those long spider-like hands flex and release a few times until they clench and start banging against the trolls temples. A nasty snarl grows and those hollow eyes stare at me.

  “Give up?”

  Black eyes stare daggers into me.

  “板.” I smile and give the troll a ‘what can ya do?’ shrug.

  “You cheated.” His voice is low. And threatening.

  “Maybe in the spirit of our wager, but not the letter. We never establish - oh! Ah...ahem - never established what languages were and weren’t...hey now, no reason to get all worked up about it. N-now just stay where you are, unless you’re coming over for a congratulatory handshit oh shit oh shit!” The tunnels shake with Reggie’s rage as I haul ass away from him.

  Left, right, left, left, right, left, right, right, and lost. Standing at the edge of a large cistern I glance behind me. Nothing. Across the room the tunnel continues its lab
yrinthine path. The only sounds are the steady drip-drop of water and the frantic drumbeat of my heart. Then the voice.

  “What has no hands, no feet, no eyes, and no skin?”

  Oh gods why did he have to turn it into a riddle?

  As quietly as I can, I place the lantern at the entrance to the cistern and cautiously make my way around the edge. Two of my pistols are already soaked through, rendering them nothing more than fancy little clubs. If I slip and fall into the room’s deep central pool all I’ll have left is my hammer. There’s a little ledge perfect for crouching in the shadows. The rancid water (if it could still be called that) slurps at my ankles.

  “Hva er svart og hvitt og rødt overalt?” Reggie’s voice seems to float up out of the pool.

  I get it now; he’s just jealous that I thought of the language thing first. I crouch lower, trying to hear something - anything - besides that damn dripping. Nothing.

  Wait...not nothing! Scattered amongst the hypnotic water drops there’s a small tapping, like a bird pecking at crumbs on a cobblestone street. Listening to those sounds at the edge of darkness I barely register that my paws have crept over and now have a death grip on Archy’s pistols. I don’t move them.

  Then the smell hits. If something can overpower the stench of a million peoples’ worth of waste, you know it’s bad. And it only gets stronger the longer I wait. The tapping grows louder as well, but the damn acoustics in here make it sound like it’s coming from everywhere at once. Crouching as low as I can, I continue to wait in the shadows.

  The lantern wobbles. Two pistol barrels slowly train on the far entrance. Thumbs begin to apply pressure to the flintlock but they remain in place. A little more...a little more...a little more...now they start to cock back. My paws begin to shake and my breath rattles in my throat.

  Click! The flintlocks sharply set into place, throwing an echo down the tunnels. Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck I forgot how loud those things can get. And now that strange tapping has stopped. Triple fuck.

  I’m so focused on the entrance with the lantern that I almost don’t see the arm that reaches out of the opening to my immediate right. Not right beside me but up above, near the top of the tunnels archway. Slowly and deliberately, Reggie spider-climbs out of the tunnel and up the wall, his shiny green head on a swivel. Oh shit. Since when could trolls climb on ceilings like that?! That’s not in any of the old folk stories!