Sailing Ether Tides

Sailing Ether Tides

Book: 1 MissAdventures with Admiral Amy

Ch: 1 Scuppered.

Amy Ward, Pirate Princess of the Shallow Sea took a deep breath, filling her lungs with wet, sticky air. “Wilf, rig for action, get that dunnage secured! Rio, get ready! Prepare to come about!”

Her crew hopped to their stations and did it smartly… her wide smile of approval made her dark cheeks redden around two bright, plum purple dimples.

Her plump, pink, dusky lips, bared in a hungry smile, predator’s gaze and ridiculous tricorn hat seemed fit for the lead in a stage play, rather than guiding a small boat through a dark swamp, hunting a monster.

The rest of her was all business. Her unique seafarer’s armor of triple knit trapdoor spidersilk and enchanted wooden laminate plates was functional and well fitted, and ready for battle. Also ready for business was a heavy naval arbalest, mounted amidships with Rio manning the enormous crossbow.

“Port side, off the bow…” Wilf called from near the tall, majestic horsie figurehead of Adventure yacht, Seahorse, sailing out of Wheatford.

With a loud *Clack*, a yard long, inch thick, miniature spear went hurtling across the marsh, too swift to be perceived by mundane human eyes. Something enormous bellowed a terrible cry of pain and rage into the wetland, sending birds winging skyward for a mile around.

A tall, slim young man with dark skin and a close cropped nest of jet black, kinky curls tipped his weapon forward until it clicked loudly. With a quiet grunt, the lightly armored youth of around sixteen brought his weapon back up and fired again, sending another horrific roar into the sky.

“It’s big! Really big.” Wilf called out from the bow. “Head for deep water!” He leapt to the deck with a surprisingly graceful movement, especially considering the heavy armor of bloody red and golden amber striated, haunted plumwood he wore.

“Deep water?” Amy called back. “Are you sure?” Wilf nodded, since his mouth was busy. He bit the python hide fingertip of his armored gauntlets and pulled them off, tucking them carefully away on his belt. He brought his favorite weapon up and began to work his foe’s ending in sweet, piercing notes of music.

“Really Wilf? Down under?” Rio sighed as he brought his weapon up and began to tap and thump on the wooden box of his crossbow mount, keeping time for his younger brother.

Traveling in a fried out kombi,

On a hippy trailhead full of zombies!

Amy sang brightly, her sweet voice drawing songs from the reptiles, birds and insects that either weren’t smart enough or weren’t able to flee.

Rio drew another yard long shaft from his supply, he checked the leather fletchings, sighted his weapon and satisfied himself that it was suitable…

“Pfft.” Amy blew a raspberry at him, between verses.

“Papa made those, they’re fine.”

“I’m just nervous…” Her brother grumbled.

“We won’t get in trouble…” Wilf muttered around his flute, Forest’s Breath. “It’s hunting us.” He murmured, before picking his tune back up.

“Yeah… it’s hunting us.” Amy said with a little too much conviction.

“Amy…” Wilf grumbled. “This was supposed to be a training journey. I’m not registered as an Adventurer, yet.”

“Well, then don’t ‘Venture… you can just play the flute while we kill… it…” Her words trailed off into shocked silence as something enormous staggered into view among the trees and reeds.

Twenty feet tall and roughly humanoid, a nightmare amalgam of swamp muck, moss, plant matter and human bones staggered into sight.

“Gahh!” Rio yelled angrily at his sister. “Not again!” He growled. “We aren’t rated for class D threats! They’re gonna suspend us for a month!”

“I’m gonna get demerits before I get my badge.” Wilf grumbled unhappily, as he pressed the flute back to his lips and glared at Amy.

She cut her little boat around, leaving a roostertail of spray in the sunshine that filtered through the trees. She motored for the deep channels where the mangroves ended, as Rio hurled another bolt into the thing… Drawing out another world shaking roar of insensate fury.

“Keep it interested, we need it to follow us.” Wilf shouted over the thunder of water against their hull, as the twenty foot long wooden boat skipped over the smooth surface of the swamp. “I’m really mad at you, Amy!”

“My guy said it was a bog crawler… not… whatever that is!” Amy grumbled back at him. She slowed the little wooden motorboat to keep the thing pursuing them, as the water rose to its knees, its hips, then higher.

It slowed as the absorbent materials grew waterlogged and heavy. Silt churned up from the bottom in its wake as the creature waded after them swiping with ten foot long arms of thorny wood and bone fragments

“Your ‘guy’?” Rio demanded archly. “You mean Reegil…”

Amy dug deep, pouring more of her rapidly depleting Mana into the latest model of Wardco Ringmotor™. She heeled the little boat around again, drawing the thing out into the slow flowing river channel.

“He’s usually spot on!” She grumbled. “That’s why we should have brought Frankie!”

“No!” Wilf shouted angrily, a rare display from the taciturn lad. “He’s not even fifteen yet, Amy… and he isn’t even an orphan!”

“Neither are we!” She shot back. “Orphans, I mean…”

“Amy… I’m with Wilf.” Rio said very carefully, as he tipped his crossbow forward to recock it with the occult device the massive weapon was mounted to. The young warrior was sweating and looking shaky as he brought his magical artillery piece back into line. “What did you bring, Amy? I know you filched something from papa.” He held out his hand to the girl at the tiller expectantly.

She smiled shyly and pulled a bright white arrow of terrifying size from her sleeve, where it could never have fit. “Thunderstruck…” She said with a grin.

“He’s gonna be super pissed.” Wilf grumbled. “Does he even know we have the boat?”

“Of course!” Amy called to the armored warrior lad in the bow. “I told him we were going camping in Wicklowe’s cove!”

“We are camped there…” Rio muttered, as he fitted the bolt into his weapon with a sigh. “We’re in huge trouble no matter how this works out, Amy.”

The boat slid out into a small open bay, ringed by huge golden mangroves and hugging the Shallow Sea with long, sand bar arms. A trio of colorful cottages stood by the waterside, next to a short wooden pier that had seen far better days.

Out in the open water, the creature roared again and turned to retreat back among the trees and tall reeds of the swamp. Wilf dropped his beloved flute, letting it hang from a cord around his neck as he and Rio both placed their hands on the gleaming white shaft of whatever exotic material their half mad father had found and enchanted.

“Amy!” Wilford Ward barked at his older sister, when he got a good look at the arrow in question. “This thing’s dangerous!”

“That is kinda the whole point…” Rio murmured, as he sighted on the lumbering giant’s back.

*Clack*

The white arrow shot out in a twinkling blur of sparkling dust and a faint, eerie feeling that raised every hair on the little boat’s crew, making them all stand straight out, even Rio’s.

“Bring us around, get some distance!” Wilf shouted, as the giant felt the weapon strike it full in the back. It roared and turned on the boat in renewed rage, already chest deep and moving more quickly. “It can swim!”

Amy was shaking and gasping as she slammed Seahorse into a sharp turn and cut for open water.

“Rio, take the helm…” Wilf called, before he noticed that Rio was also nearly unconscious from Mana drain.

He rushed aft and took the tiller from Amy’s trembling, senseless hand. He eased her onto the deck and took control himself, motoring for the cove entrance as fast as he could manage. “I’m pretty mad right now, Amy.” He sighed to the nearly unconscious girl at his feet.

Behind them, the creature had become a small island of flotsam and filth, undulating across the water’s surface unwholesomely, in pursuit of the boat. Slowly, almost imperceptibly a soft whine began, not so much a sound, as a vibration in everything.

The sensation built until a loud buzzing crackle rang out, followed by an ear shattering roar and a flash of lightning, reaching up from the creature and into the clear sky above.

Clots of smoking, smoldering filth rained down on the sea and the tiny boat, splatting onto the water and deck in reeking piles. Wilf turned the boat about and slowly motored back into the cove and to the battered and sagging pier. “You guys gotta clean the boat… we are in so much trouble…” He grumbled at his sleeping siblings.

“Hey! You went ‘Venturing without me!” Frankie grumbled, when they returned to the little cluster of cottages, both older teens leaning on fifteen year old Wilf.

“Yeah… and we’re good and busted for it too.” The stocky young warrior grumbled. “I’m gonna be up ‘til almost midnight calling in scavengers to eat all that crud.”

Franklin Knubbel grinned and shook his head. “My cousin Dean runs woolcrabs just up the coast… They’ll love this stuff.” He nudged a pile of the crud with the toe of his shoe and nearly gagged at the maggot riddled clot of rotting fish inside.

“Gross, what was it?”

“Undead flesh and rotting filth, cobbled together under the influence of a malign spirit.” A sweet, chirping, chittering voice called from the shore. “A bog ratling grown too large and haunted by a remnant ghost of humankind and a monstrous infestation…” A sleek, long, brown furred creature slipped from the water and stood up on two stubby legs, balanced by a wide, muscular tail.

“Something you should not have been sent after…” She purred with a hint of acid in her tone.

“Streeka!” Amy gasped in joy, despite her exhausted state and the general disgustingness of the local area.

“Yes… I have been watching… and listening. I will report what I heard to your parents, Amy.” She scolded the young woman in her language of coos, sharp barks and chitters.

“Courage is a virtue, but it hangs around with ‘Stupid’ too often for comfort.”

“Awww… But Streeka…” She whined pitifully.

“You knew better, but you chose to listen to Reegil… That greasy sack of fishbait has his own agenda and is not to be trusted.” She barked at the girl, slapping her tail on the sand for emphasis. “Now, show me your baths… I have rotting filth in my fur!”

#

“I can’t believe our folks had you follow us…” Amy complained. “Where’s the trust?” She and Rio were in the bath with Streeka, shaman of the otter tribe of the Meeting Waters, while Wilf and Frankie went to visit the local crab herder, on Seahorse.

She stretched her long otter body in the steaming pool and sighed happily. “It’s been too long since I bathed in these waters…” She popped one golden eye open and glared at the dark skinned and slender girl strumming a guitar on the curb of the bath, dangling her feet in the water. “You’re still in trouble, girlie.”

“Aww…” She sulked. “Reegil said it was just a bog crawler…”

“A bog crawler is still outside your remit as apprentices. You should have fled and reported it to the guild immediately.” She chirped unhappily. “If you had not managed to destroy it… I have no arms nor arts that could have aided you.”

“We had it handled…” Wilf muttered, as he slipped into the baths with an exhausted sigh. “I had a few hundred hermit crabs and crawdaddies eating it from below… we would have just had to kite it up the shore a ways until it gave out.”

“And if your Mana ran dry? What? Try to use your heads…” She grumbled. “Your father’s influence…”

“Our teamwork sucks, Amy.” Rio complained from his favorite spot under the waterfall. “No viable intelligence, slipshod planning and terrible communication…” He sighed.

“We’re in for it and we deserve it… well, not Wilf or Frankie…” He looked around their little camp and smiled. “Amy, don’t be in such a hurry… the world won’t run out of monsters before we’re ready.”

“Hmph…” She sniffed at him, but he could tell; she knew how close they’d come to disaster.

“Easy for you to say… you’ve got badges and been on Adventures already…” Frankie grumbled.

“Yeah, what about Benny and Maya? Stuck at the palace all the time…” Wilf grumbled.

“Not everybody wants to spend all their time wandering the woods, Wilf.” Amy remarked with a grin.

He glanced around their camp and grinned at her, the way papa always did when he was the only one who was going to get the joke.

He took in the three cottages with a wide embrace; his own, of neatly mortared river stones, forming a high foundation, pierced with windows, each neatly shuttered with sturdy oak panels. The structure was topped with a bright red tile roof, just like the one at home.

Next door was Rio’s simple and homey stucco dwelling, with a flat, crenelated roof, cheekily hinting at a castle… but one painted in a light pink hue and decorated with murals of tropical seaside views at sunset and boasting wide windows.

Finally, Amy’s gingerbread cottage of bright colors and cheery flowers stood beside her brother’s homes. It was wild confection, shingled in scales of wood, each one a unique shade of the rainbow. She was in charge of the garden this trip, so it was a riot of perennial blooms and flowering fruit trees.

Pointing to each little house in turn, he nodded and winked at his team mates. “Cause we’re roughing it?” He asked quietly. “We should head back tonight and face the music…” He giggled a little foolishly at that word choice.

“Come on… I’ll be right there with you, all the way.”

“Not me!” Frankie sniffed. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Wilf gave young master Knubbel his most sober gaze of faint disappointment, until Frank buckled under the relentless, gentle pressure. “All right… team time… but I’m making it clear to my folks it was all you Wards… I’m an innocent young lad, fallen in with a rough crowd!” He murmured woefully.

“Do we really have to head back tonight?”

“Yeah…” Rio mumbled as he toweled off and dressed. “Sooner we fess up, the easier it will be.”

He nodded to the elegant otter woman half asleep in the bath. “She’ll be snitching on us by morning no matter what.”

The shaman of Beast’s cult huffed through her nostrils in amusement and hugged her lucky rock onto her tummy, as she prepared to take a nap. “There’s fresh monster squid and some possessed shrimp in the fridge…” Wilf muttered to the sleepy aquatic mammal. “We’ll leave the bath and my house here, til morning.”

“Sweet child…” She mumbled happily, swatting his cheek with her paw in sleepy delight. “Blessings of Beast and Joy on you…”

The whimsical gingerbread fancy and the colorful adobe vanished as the sun lowered to touch the treetops. The structures evaporated in a gentle breeze, blowing away into misty nothing with a soft tinkling chime.

The tile roofed riverstone house remained, as did the garden and baths, as the four kids piled into Seahorse, their Mana replenished and ready to face what lay ahead… and their soon to be furious parents

#

Liam Kinnis, count of the eastern marches and forestlord of county Kinnis smiled out over his rough and tumble domain. Fresh plaster and new planted gardens showed here and there in the abandoned woodlands that surrounded his county seat. Years in and he was starting to actually see real development at the edges of town. Soon, with a little luck, he’d have it all…

He read the scroll once more, with growing pleasure.

‘We need a change of scenery… Mind if we wander up your way for a while?’

The note was signed by a looping figure, drawn in a single stroke, ending in a line bisecting the figure, terminating in an elegant whorl. Gary’s ‘Treble Clef’ symbol was as odd and distinctive as the man himself.

“Tawny… we’re going to have company…” He called into his ‘palace’. The old keep had been mostly repaired… and was mostly habitable. Unless one had spent a year working and living in the magical hotspring inn of Gary Ward, mad wizard of Wheatford Town and Parts Unknown.

He and his wife Shai Ward, master smith and journeyman mage, were worth their weight in silver, just for their skills and crafts alone. Their arts, magical and otherwise were almost more than one could hope for.

“Company? Oh dear…” The countess came out on the parapet and leaned against her husband with a long, slow sigh of exhaustion. “Who are we hosting? Some tiresome cleric? One of your father’s vassals?” She demanded, carelessly passing responsibility for her father, duke Leopold Belen, off to her husband.

“Both.” He mumbled, hamming it up for his wife and pretending at annoyance. “Some jackass and his wife are coming to see about starting an inn… maybe you’ve heard of them…”

Her high pitched squeal of delight told him she’d spotted the seal on the scroll tube… or noticed that it was a delicate and surprisingly tough construct of finely laminated sheets of paper thin flame maple. That damn thing nearly glowed with the sheen of well rubbed and polished lacquer. He slipped the tube into his desk for re-use…

His fool brother could make a fortune selling those fabulous scroll tubes to nobles all over the twelve duchies. Instead, he just sent them out, holding his correspondence… as though they were parchment envelopes.

Tawny, the lady Trelawny Kinnis, priestess of Healer and countess of the realm, snatched the scroll from his hand with a giddy smile and devoured the short, neatly written note in an instant.

“It doesn’t say when…”

“I know.” Her husband replied, with a smile of his own. “Here, I thought that master merchant Preven Yost adding us to his monthly route was the best news I’d had all week…”

“Yost is putting us in his… oh, that’s good news too!” She began to hum a sweet, simple melody and leaned against him a little more. “Do you think they know?” She asked, fondly rubbing a slight swelling in her middle.

“Who knows…” He mumbled. “Amy will, when they get within a mile.”

“Amy and the boys are not here.” Gary murmured quietly from their bedroom, where he was sprawled on the bed, looking awful.

“They’re on punishment duty with Esperanza… they took on a haunted bog crawler unsupervised.” He murmured weakly. “A really big one too.” There was a hint of pride in his voice, even though it sounded like the words were being slowly strangled out of him with a garrote.

“You’re still unranked?” Tawny asked with concern, as she examined their sickly friend. “How did you manage to sneak in here in this condition?” She demanded.

“Shai helped…” He gasped. “She’s always letting me get away with things she should really shut down, by rights… ever since… you know.”

“I’ll be speaking to her about that, young man!” The countess scolded her friend and comrade. “Coming back from the dead is no excuse!”

“She’s coming up to the palace now…” He whispered, as he fell asleep on their bed, snoring loudly and drooling on the comforter.

The sound of sweet, musical bells playing a cheerful melody rang out from the front door far below the balcony the young count and countess had been enjoying.

Sweet music… and the raucous voice of a hill tribe woman tearing strips off of the house guards with her razor sharp tongue.

“Aye, an ye think yer so able, reach fer yer sword…” She barked. “An ye call me ‘barbarian wench’ I’ll treat thee as such a one would!” She snapped at some poor fool.

“Kendal?” Tawny asked calmly.

“No doubt.” Count Liam answered with a smile. “He’s been needing this lesson for a while I think.” The young lord said, as a loud, metallic banging and clatter began… and ended with a soft cry of pain and misery.

He leaned over the parapet and looked down on the scene at his front door. “Oh, dear…” He muttered crossly.

“Shai… did you cripple my retainer? How did you even get his whole boot up there?”

“Fie, brother… I took his foot out o the boot, ‘ere I stuffed it up there… I be nae some rabid beast, tae maim a man fer bein a fool.” She pointed to his bare left foot and unbroken leg. The rest of corporal Kendal was spread on the flagstones, in a scattering of weapons and crumpled armor plates.

“You’ve been studying with sir Rolf…” He murmured with appreciation. “Corporal Kendal…” He called down to his battered retainer. “Please don’t insult my sister again… she’s a gentle soul, who loathes violence.”

#

Amy sat in the crow’s nest on Esperanza’s Bounty, enjoying the sway and bob of the topmost mast. All around, the Shallow Sea spread out in its subtle splendor.

Ringed by weathered mountain peaks and low, rolling hills in the misty distance all around. Dark clouds were stacked up out on the open sea, beyond the twin lighthouse towns of Ports Watch and Sill, overlooking the channel out into the blue water.

“Storm coming!” She called down to auntie… Captain Ranza, at the helm. Amy used one of her vocal tricks to whisper her message in her captain’s ear. Just for fun, she included the entire deck crew and Esperanza’s dolphin familiar, Falco, leaping the bowspirit and playing in the waves.

He chittered and took a mighty leap, spinning wildly as he knifed back into the sea, his high pitched, chattering giggle scattering over the waves like sunlight on water. He held a long whistled and clicked conversation with Wilf and Rio, discussing something, while they tuned up.

He was probably just showing off for the pod of lady dolphins cruising lazily by and eyeballing his sleek, blue and gold body…

‘The boy is a snack…’ Amy thought to herself, as she watched from above. The music started dramatically, with thundering drums from Rio and Wilf’s bass guitar. She sighed, with a wide, happy smile on her cheeks, pulled her golden butterscotch ‘Teleblaster’ out and joined the fun.

As if sensing her thoughts, Falco flipped up onto his fluke and did a long, smooth, gliding, dance. It was almost exactly like… It was the moonwalk, no doubt. Falco was biologically incapable of grabbing his genitals, or wearing a shiny glove…

Amy pushed that idea away for later. He did have a firm grasp of the various ticks and tricks that the ‘King of Pop’ was best known for. ‘Tee-Hee, Mamasay mama sa mamusakusa’… and ‘Shamown!’ scattered over the waves, as Falco strutted his stuff with the kind of shameless braggadocio usually reserved for sailors’ talk, when too long at sea…

The goofy fishmammal even whistled and clicked along with the kid’s rendition of ‘Billie Jean’, as he danced across the water, drawing sparkling, aquatic giggles from several of the moist, sleek maidens he was trying to impress.

“Scandalous flirt!” Ranza laughed over the waves at her idiot familiar. “That’s how you catch Clam-mydia and Salmon-ella!” She giggled at her fish.

Every member of the little ship’s crew groaned dramatically, as she trotted out those stupid puns that never made sense… Even she wasn’t certain what was going on, but they felt naughty and a little nasty… like all the best jokes!

“Gross, Ranza.” Uncle Ward said softly, as he landed silently on the aft rail. “Permission to come aboard?”

The only sound for a moment was the wind and the creak of sail and rope, as a vague and frightening shadow bat asked for permission to board.

“Only if you will not vanish without warning…” She purred dangerously.

“Uhh, my brother’s kids are aboard…” He murmured so softly that only she heard.

“So… you will have to be quiet.” She whispered back, with a wink that made the batwinged, talon footed deity perched on her railing smile. His smile blew the busty ship captain’s hair back with an almost physical wave of divine power.

“Can you be quiet…” He asked very softly, as he stepped to the deck with bare human feet and no wings at all.

The instant he touched the deck, Yusef, Marc and Dante, the stolid, quiet, normal human crew members of Esperanza’s Bounty shuddered with some unnameable dread and looked over their shoulders. Miggs, the ship’s cat murred happily and immediately began twining between the feet of a tall, brown haired, brown eyed, lean and muscular man with a smile that seemed too perfect to be real.

“Ohhh, Captain…” Nicolai called very loudly, from the galley. “Ward is here…!” His announcement was unnecessary, but required by long held tradition.

Until Ward, dryad of the golden fig and demigod of Death and Vengeance made intimate physical contact with one of the Ward children or the captain, he would remain an insubstantial and menacing shadow form, visible only briefly, from the corners of mortal eyes.

Marc had walked in on the pair of them in the forward hold once… not knowing that their frequent visitor was aboard.

He refused to speak of the matter, but had become obsessed with tantric yoga ever since. Finding Marc posed in strange positions had become common aboard the little ship.

“Yes, I’ve come visiting… for a few hours.” He said, with a much lower intensity smile.

Rio, Wilf and Amy came stampeding at their uncle and hugged him as a group, squeezing him mercilessly. “Ahh, thanks kids…” He sighed, as he became fully physical in the world.

“You know, Ranza… Liam could show you the art of bonsai… then I could visit more easily.” He purred, reviving a long running interplay between the two weirdos.

“So this one might be at your beck and call? No, Esperanza’s Bounty is my home… Unless you wish to become a member of my crew?” She purred. “I have a cabin boy position available…”

“All right, enough you two…” Wilf rumbled with a smile on his broad face. “I’m still an innocent child!”

“I’ve come with a small request…” Ward murmured with a wink at Ranza. “We’ll discuss what positions might be available later…” He whispered, before getting back to business.

“There’s an Island not too far from your present course, you’ll come near it tomorrow morning at this speed. Amy can probably see it from the tippy top, lookie outie thing…” He said casually, just to infuriate Ranza and tease Amy.

“That’s what they call it where I come from…” He protested with wide eyed innocence, when they objected to his super accurate nautical terminology.

“Crow’s nest… what a silly name…” He sulked absurdly, sitting on Ranza’s chair, with her and the ship’s cat curled up in his lap.

“So, this island…” He continued.

“I know the one… it’s cloaked in mortal dread and fear for a mile around. Even pirates and other sea vermin can’t approach.” Dante muttered sourly.

“Exactly. I need a small crew of intrepid mortals to stroll in and plant these.” He held up a few small potted plants. “Once these are planted, the rest will take care of itself… I think.” He shrugged.

“Mangrove has a foothold there, so do Cypress, Pine and a few others, but they can’t manifest there. Too spooky. My lovely niece and her handsome, talented brothers will be able to land with no troubles.”

Flattery and glib words aside, a thrill ran through the three young sailors in training.

“So,” Amy said with a wide grin of her own. “A forbidden island untouched by mortals’ feet in who knows how many centuries… sounds fun!” She turned on Esperanza with a feral, hungry grin and pointed to the low, round, common sailor’s cap on her head. “I’m gonna need my admiral’s hat back, auntie captain, this is pirate business!”

#