Sailing Ether Tides

Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 24 Lightning In A Bottle

From the dizzying heights, Mariah watched the world slip by, clinging to her papa’s collar in breathless wonder. Racial memories and her recollections of her time as a simple tree were a good start… But even a tree as widely traveled as the infant dryad had never seen the world from high above. Few dryads possessed even rudimentary flight; though Plumeria, her mother had wings capable of short sprints from one tree to another.

Far below, a wide expanse of wet, boggy uplands rolled by; sprinkled with an elaborate lacework of lakes, rivers and streams, all spread out before her. A small town sat at the center of the web of waterways, ruling over a network of canals branching off the main river.

The township’s streets were barely visible in the fading light… until full dark, when the tiny sparks of evening strollers or boaters with lanterns and the glow of house windows appeared, winking and glittering.

“Oh… pretty!” She gasped in papa’s ear, nestling in close to his neck as the air grew colder.

“That’s Mudwallow Bridge Town.” He whispered over the wind of their passage. “It’s the closest ‘city’ to where we’re going. Mostly water people; beaver and otterkin, but all sorts of folks…”

“Can we land and look around? Pleee-eease?” She asked, like a big girl, with only a little begging.

“Sorry sweetie, I can’t walk among Beast’s children. I need at least one of my mortal relatives along, to help me conceal my aura. Otherwise, I would cause a panic.” He smiled and nuzzled her with his chin.

“Humans are almost completely blind to my presence, but Beast’s children are much more sensitive to the natural world and how that intersects with the spiritual and divine.”

He took a slow banking turn, following one of the main canals, so she could watch the little boats sail to their homes, a tiny lantern on the prow of each returning person.

“We don’t want to scare anyone, do we?”

“Aww… That stinks!” Mariah was inconsolable, for nearly fifteen heartbeats. After a brief sulk and a little whining, she settled for a promise that they would absolutely visit a human town some day; after he spent a few minutes circling high above the lovely hamlet, letting her get a good look.

Barges and small ships plied the Rummel river, all the way up to the limits of the wide valley. The spreading vista of green, ended abruptly in a ridge of barren, stony hills, where the river fractured into a mind bogglingly complex tracery of streams, before vanishing among the low mountains.

Rising higher, they caught the dying rays of the sun, sinking away out over the Shallow Sea, warming them as they passed over the barren ridge separating the outskirts of duke Rummel’s domain and the wild hinterlands of county Kinnis.

They flew down into the dark, flitting above the treetops, guided by the whispering voices of the local bats. Under the light of the moons and stars, they flew across miles of nearly trackless forest, following the faint outline of the only road between the two lands and their new bat friends’ whispered guidance.

Only the occasional, faint scent of a cookfire showed that any folk lived here; lost among the towering, ancient trees and forgotten lands. What few, isolated homes lay below were no doubt shuttered tight against the darkness, and the things that still occasionally roamed these forests.

Finally, half an hour after full dark, a faint glimmer appeared in the distance. On the steep valley side, a small city looked out on the dark lands below, sparkling with a few lights, in addition to those of the modest keep overlooking the town.

Down by the lake side, a familiar inn glowed with garden lamps and radiant windows, seeming bright and welcoming, even from afar.

“I can’t wait to see Amy and the boys again…” She buzzed softly against his throat.

“The other’s can’t fly, Mariah… They will be a few days getting here; you’ll have the chance to meet a bunch of new normal mortals soon.” Ward whispered to his tiny daughter, when they landed just beyond the outskirts of the cozy inn yard. “For now, hang out with the family… I’ll be nearby.” He slipped into the shadows beneath a fig tree, where moonlight couldn’t reach, sending his little girl off to visit her apostate uncle and the family.

She buzzed bravely off into the night, glowing a deep, blazing ember red and trailing tiny, illusory sparks in her wake. “They grow up so fast…” He whispered to the fragment of Fig’s consciousness he knew would be listening in, from her vigil on the island; where she guarded the newborn dryad’s birth tree.

For a full turning of the seasons, Mariah’s life was bound to and dependent on that tree, rooted in the depths of Centre Port island, growing under the light of the death god’s new eldritch pet.

#

Mariah tasted the wind carefully as she set off on her first solo flight, even if it was just a few dozen yards into the house where she’d first become sentient. Years and years she’d been rooted in this fertile soil and had enjoyed the unparalleled perks of being a member of the Ward family.

How many other trees concealing nascent dryads got to roam the land, in a musical, magical home filled with light and life?

She flew around to the garden baths, to her fiery tree; with a nimble tuck of her splendid wings, she slipped through, into the common room, emerging from the hearth with a sparkling crackle of joyous laughter.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long!” She buzzed happily, into the frantic, excited welcoming embrace of her weird, dysfunctional family.

#

Franklin Knubbel was an Adventurer and a man with accomplishments under his belt, when he strolled down the dock, into his family pastures and the welcome sounds and smells of home. Just up the Rummel river estuary from the Shallow Sea; their family home stood a fair piece back from the waterside, so his folks were surprised by his arrival, despite the tall ship looming above familiar little Moonrise.

“Mom, dad? I’m home for a visit!” He called, while dropping his sandals in their cubby and putting on his slippers. “I brought the whole gang… We captured a pirate ship!”

The Knubbel family took it all in with good grace and humor, every mad, breathless word of it. “See? Little turd got me right in the kidney!” He had his shirt up showing his little brother and sister his sweet new scar. “I had to brew my own medicine on the spot… it tasted super gross! Want some?”

While Sophie was busy making exaggerated gagging noises in response to his graphic description of his latest adventure, he swiftly popped a little brown nugget into her mouth and grinned.

She coughed and sputtered in outrage, until the chocolate truffle melted away on her tongue. “Hey! Big meanie!” She grumbled, while clutching her big brother’s leg tightly.

“Go back to the part where you’re gonna to leave that haunted ship tied to the pier…” Abel mumbled after a moment. “I don’t like the idea… what if more pirate ghosts show up?”

“Ghost pirates, pop… And it’s formerly haunted. We exorcized it and gave it a good scrubbing… They aren’t like mildew, they don’t just pop back up.” He sighed slowly. “We’ll secure it before we leave, Wilf and Rio have a new curse ritual they want to try…”

“So it’s a cursed, haunted ghost pirate ship?” Ricky gasped in excited glee. “Was there… treasure?” Frantic, twelve year old boy energy crackled in the lad’s dark brown eyes, despite the looks his mother and father kept shooting over his head at Frankie.

“No treasure… but we broke a curse and watched a new dryad being born!” He grinned even more widely as the familiar music began, over by the waterside. “I’ll tell you all about the jewel crab and her wooden boyfriend after dinner.”

“Adventurers kick ass…” Ricky sighed softly, as his parents resigned themselves to their fate; another Knubble child would be answering Adventure’s siren call.

#

Rolf Belen, heir to Wheatford duchy and captain of ducal yacht Dragonfly, sighed to himself as the Knubbel’s pasture came into view. The kids were already here, which was going to make his job a lot easier… The unflagged imperial frigate looming nearby in a deep water anchorage was a less welcome sight. With sublime pleasure, he remembered that this was duke Rummel’s domain; he was just visiting.

“Oh my goddess! Is Gabbie here?” Angie gasped, when she looked up from her book and saw the tall, three-master with the sleekly raked, aggressive lines of the imperial navy.

“I doubt it… That’s an old vessel and she looks… raw, vacant.” He murmured distractedly, the kids were still putting up the houses with their strange witchcraft, drawing his curiosity even more strongly. Even after so long, he wished desperately for a hint of how the damnable thing worked.

Dozens of times he’d witnessed the ritual that drew team Ragamuffin’s home into being, from wherever it went when they tucked it away; yet it remained entirely mysterious, occult to senses both mortal and arcane.

He fiddled with the wide bronze bracer on his left arm, the control artifact that drew his internal energies away and gave him control over Dragonfly’s arcane systems.

While in use, his own senses were amplified by the enchantments carved, inlaid, stitched and woven into every piece of the little ship, with the intricate and exacting precision of a handcrafted musical instrument.

Still nothing… Usually at the helm, he could see through fog and in darkness, his sight even pierced the water’s surface for a few yards. Just so, he could smell fresh water and hear shore birds, or the sigh of a soft breeze in her rigging, no matter how faint or distant. In this case, they might as well have been inside a hedgerow, as only flickers of movement and hints of what was going on made it through the thick haze of distractions and nonsense that always accompanied the event.

Flocks of waterfowl took off and landed in wheeling, geometric patterns, almost seen things seemed to scamper and slip through the trees at the watcher’s peripheral vision’s very edge, flickers of movement and hints of chaotic sound… But only for those who attempted to resist the music, in an ill advised attempt to pierce the veil of occult mystery.

“Oww!” He grumbled, when Ester flicked his ear from behind.

“I warned you so many times… Staring into the place from which their powers come is a foolish choice, Rolf. Madness lies there, for the unprepared.” She frowned at her master, knitting her white gold eyebrows together over her cute button nose and huge, shockingly violet eyes.

“I’m a fully qualified mage, young lady.” He replied archly, while rubbing his ear… She’d gotten him good with that one.

“Fully qualified to become a gibbering idiot…” The tiny twelve year old girl gave her long, metallic silver forelock a tug in frustration and sighed.

“At least mount me for a good hard ride, before you drive yourself mad…” She complained. “I’m desperate for a good stretching!”

“Ester, remember context clues and human ways…” Angie murmured into the girl’s ear with a hug and a kiss to the top of her silky, white-blonde head. “I’ll unpack your saddle as soon as we hit shore, sweetie… I know you hate sailing.”

Angie was speaking to empty air. As soon as the ship nudged the dock’s fenders, Ester was over the railing in a spectacular, vaulting leap.

Her maneuver’s acrobatic merits aside, Angie groaned as the girl’s summer dress flared, revealing her lack of underthings… again.

“I’m in the panty cult, you disgraceful wretch!” She shouted at the girl, whose dress went fluttering to the dock a moment later. “You’re so embarrassing; goddess knows why I try so hard!”

A magnificent, radiant white unicorn mare stamped into the pasture, her long mane of white gold and shining silver horn gleaming in the moonlight as she whinnied her triumph into the sky. She reared, flailing her hooves at the moored vessels crowding the docks, as if challenging them to battle.

“I think Ester needs some exercise, my love. Best that one of the kids takes the helm, come morning. We’ll ride up the River Road, I think.” The young knight murmured happily, while his steed frolicked in the grassy meadow and leapt into the hotspring bath.

The little boat was soon overrun with gleeful friends, relations and comrades, in a swirling, friendly melee that rocked the boat alarmingly. “Let’s take this ashore, everyone…” Amy barked at the crowd of bustling people, as though she were somehow above the fray, rather than in the very heart of it. “Nobody’s sinking a boat, not in my armada!”

#

Laupin island, once an unnamed, silty mound on the edge of the estuary near the beastkin slum, was rapidly becoming a tidy little home for a small warren of rabbit folks. Several shanties and tents ringed the expanse of fresh tilled, rich earth, nestled in the scant open space among the encircling mangroves.

The Laupin girls were all over the place, planting, tilling, hanging laundry on clotheslines strung among the trees and generally turning the place into a bustling home.

Only a few remnants of the former occupants remained; the dock, a deep, clear pool of cold, fresh water bubbling up from a stony prominence on the northern edge of the island and, in a mucky little swamp over by the backside, just at the edge of the trees, was a thick walled, stone lined rubbish hut.

Tile roofed and windowless, the walls and sunken floor was covered with a dense mat of spongy, felted, pale gray mycelium.

Any biological waste, whether night soil, worn out rags or vegetable scraps that the residents hurled into the shady, doorless chamber would vanish within a scant few hours, consumed by the weird fungal mat coating every surface of the little shed.

Odorless and unobtrusive waste disposal was a luxury that had been unavailable to most of the slum dwellers, since the waste pits of Centre Port were at the far edges of the human town and the humans were generally less than helpful at the best of times.

Similar structures had cropped up in the human slum and on Westfall island as well; erected by the locals, with the help of those two odd boys and Admiral Amy. The silent fungal decomposition huts caused fewer sleepless nights, since there were no teeth, mandibles or claws involved in the process and no risk of hungry escapees causing havoc in the night.

“I still don’t understand why it doesn’t stink…” Ten year old Muriel asked her oldest sister, Joan.

“It’s magic… See that little bronze disk on the ceiling? Amy said that’s where all the stench goes. It chases bugs off too!” She thumped her feet happily as they finished their chores, tossing a huge pile of fruit and vegetable waste into the hut.

“Where does the stink go?” The little bunnygirl asked, while giving her ears a grooming.

“Nobody knows… maybe it just vanishes forever?” Joan shrugged and smiled, incurious and satisfied with the results, however they came about.

#

“Gods above and below… Where is that stench coming from?” Journeyman Hiram Wallach demanded of his wife, Mathilda. Their pleasant and elegant home in the upper market ward was by the canal, but far from the reeking dregs of the docklands, wretched slums and beast town.

That only made the all pervasive and highly localized pong more confusing.

Situated on a desirable little rise, overlooking the canal and market ward, the Wallach house stood no higher nor more proudly than its neighbors. Their well manicured front garden met the community guidelines to a tee and they possessed all the amenities and little luxuries that a proper home should have…

The pleasant home also featured a pungent, rancid, strangling aroma of a warm, well aged midden heap. No speck of filth could be seen, certainly nothing to account for the reeking, almost visible aroma of the place.

“Fire that damned bucktoothed swamp rat and hire a proper, human maid Mathilda!” The stout smith scolded his wife, while holding a posset of dried flowers and spices to his nose. “I was against hiring that beaver, no matter how cheap she was.”

“Twila?” She scowled at him ferociously and snarled right back, loudly enough that the neighbors might hear. “That wretch quit yesterday! Quit US! The ungrateful filth... “ She frowned and crushed her teeth together so aggressively that her face began to go pale around her jawline.

“She was intolerably smug about it as well! Had the nerve to tell me to sniff out my own foul stench and fled before I could beat her!”

“Find another, then! Do something about this odor and filth, woman!” Hiram shrieked, through his swiftly fading, spicy and floral pomander; he could almost see the stench closing in around him… in his own front parlor!

“There are no servants for hire at a reasonable rate in town… Even my last resort has failed utterly. The orphanage director refused to lend me any of their disgusting whelps! The wretches that our taxes support, in such luxury!” The smith’s wife shouted back, as if the volume of her voice might fend off the creeping stank.

Her own perfumed hankie had lost its effectiveness some hours ago, allowing the all pervasive aroma of a very ripe garbage pile and mounds of invisible, putrid nightsoil to clog her nostrils once more. “I’m going back to my parent’s house, Hiram!”

“Well, then I’m staying with my mother until this gets sorted!” Hiram sputtered, as he stomped out the door of his home, before pausing on the street to gasp in great lungfuls of fresh, clean, late evening air.

#

Dawn in the Knubbel’s little waterside meadow was a gray and foggy affair, forcing the flotilla to make a late start upriver. The family lounged around Wilf’s big dining table, lingering over second breakfast and chatting.

“So Maya broke into their house and drove a little bronze tack like this one into an inconspicuous spot in their rafters…” Maya coughed softly, behind Amy, interrupting the story.

“Or rather… Someone with the right talents, abilities and a taste for revenge might have installed a little magical nail like this one in their house. This one is dormant, but if one like it were magically paired to the stink rings mounted in the ceilings of the garbage huts…”

She patted a tightly lidded, wax sealed metal pail, covered with arcane scribbles and intricate ritual markings, drawn in colorful and ominous paint. “I’m gonna bury this in the back end of the meadow, Frank…” Amy said with a particularly cruel smile. “There’s a bunch of rotten seafood in here, to really get the stink rolling along. It’s only fair, they gave us the fish.”

“Amy! Maya!” Becky scolded the kids fiercely. “I’m disappointed in all of you!” She sighed after raking the group of rowdy, giggling teens with a heated glare. “Abusing the family secrets and magic like that! You could have just let it go… You should respect your elders and…” Her own giggle burst free mid lecture, ruining her plans.

“Yeah, you’re right, screw those losers.” Becky sighed, sinking back in sir Kermal’s shoulder with a happy sigh.

“Those two came by complaining while you were away.” The young knight murmured happily. “Giving them the runaround was amusing… When upset, his voice gets quite high pitched, for such a big man. I’m rather surprised and pleased with myself that I didn’t toss him in the drink as well.”

“That’s my Kermie…” The high priestess cooed warmly, snuggling in even more aggressively. “Such a gentleman.”

#

The fog began to lighten as second bell sang its muffled song from Port Clement, barely in earshot on such a misty day. Frankie kissed his folks goodbye, while Maya struggled awkwardly, while failing to hide her awkwardness.

It looked painfully uncomfortable from Amy’s position at the helm of MissAdventure.

Her shallow drafted skiff would lead the way upriver, watching for surprises that the deep water craft would need to avoid. She took the familiar tiller in hand and smiled, as Frank and Maya climbed aboard; eager to have a mostly private cruise for the morning. Amy tipped her hat to her crew; who had volunteered to sail with her immediately, since the admiral was known for her discretion and courtesy.

The smooth, red and amber striated wood felt warm in her hand, as always. Her fingertips found the runes inlaid in bronze and worked through the tiller arm of ironwood.

Bronze fittings and sleek, lacquered strips of red oak led fifteen feet forward up the little boat, to a sharp, slightly peaked prow; terminating in her family crest.

Standing forward from the prow, rose a swooping treble clef, carved in ebony and sprinkled with bone, bronze and brass moons and stars. Just above the waterline, on either side of the sharp, wave cutting, business end of MissAdventure, an eye peered out over the way ahead. They gazed out from an abstract mother of pearl embellishment suggesting the eye of a protective deity, watching from a nebula in deep space.

Today, her low, canvas top was up, providing shelter from the bright sun of early summer and from prying eyes. Amy roosted happily on her high bench, looking out over the canvas at the wide Rummel river ahead.

Poor Frankie and Maya had been crammed in with way too much adult supervision and way too many people for too long. She tucked the tiller under her arm and struck up a tune on her beloved Wardco Stratoblaster, improvising and noodling to warm up. Those two needed some private time, if only to share a lingering embrace and speak together alone…

Her nimble craft slipped over the water with little sound and almost no vibration, hurled forward by papa’s first prototype ‘Warp Core’.

Papa’d built it slowly, over several years, in collaboration with Ivy, Becky, Shai, Tallum and the noted mage Amicus Fawn. None of the others had the faintest inkling how the damn thing worked, despite long familiarity with the basic enchantments and inscriptions etched through and around the object of potent arcane mystery. When even the slightest magical influence or exploration touched the thing it would lurch and spin wildly, while emitting an aura of uncanny and occult… ookieness that confounded investigation.

At first glance, while inactive, it seemed innocuous, if weird. Just under a foot tall, it was a one gallon, heavy glass apothecaries’ jar, sealed with melted bronze and inscribed with a complex nest of cryptic etchings.

Suspended in the jar, if one peered through the intricate runes, was a small, irregular crystal that glowed faintly blue under moonlight. All around the crystal, tiny slips of paper, bearing mystic runes and cryptic markings swirled, like windblown leaves in autumn’s cold breezes.

He’d been unsure how to deal with his stable, but highly specialized prototype construct, so Gary had given it to his kids, naturally.

Wilf and Amy had been immediately certain what to do with it and were proven correct, once they finished installing it in their sturdy little skiff. The ‘Warp Core’ assembly nestled into a heavy wooden cradle, mated directly to the boat’s keel of bronze clad, enchanted, haunted magnolia wood.

Intended as a simple proof of concept, it was too small to power a serious vessel, but packed way too much energy and occult weirdness to just leave around. Now it was the motive force that made her little craft slice the river’s surface like a surgeon’s scalpel, as she slid away from the dock and into, Adventure!

#

“I forgot, we’re in civilized territory all the way to the mountains…” Amy sighed, as another mile of tranquil river bank slipped by. Frank and Maya had their flutes out, harmonizing with her guitar’s idle improvisations around ‘White Water Raftsman’. The simple bargeman’s tune gave a lot of room to play around in its loose repetitive structure, that’s probably why it had been current for centuries.

Amy mentally and silently filled in her papa’s awful puns and wordplay. Just because she always heard them in her own head, didn't mean she needed to share the pain with her comrades.

Thoughts of her mad, goofy father made her play drift into a little Steely Dan. The intro to ‘Do It Again’ began to scatter across the water, drawing the inevitable response from Wilf. His bass guitar picked up the line and started carrying it forward. Wilf’s sound began flowing from her instrument’s resonator disk, joined by Rio’s drums as they shared their mingled gifts and enchantments across a quarter mile of the river and three separate vessels.

The instruments always shared and repeated the other players in the group, amplifying the music and expanding their reach, encompassing the whole ‘Armada’ in sweet, mellow sounds.

Hidden enchantments and gifts lifted the spirits and sustained the vitality of the crew and passengers alike, despite the slow, steady draw on the internal energies of everyone wearing one of the little ornaments.

Only Wilf and Amy possessed any portion of the ‘Interface’ gift that Papa had, so only they could truly see their Mana, Stamina and Etheric pools slowly refilling under the influence of their spells.

Amy used her slowly growing interface to reference auntie Ranza’s secret logbooks, stashed in her magical eidetic memory for written words and static images. She consulted the logbook in her internal library and did a few calculations in another portion of her internal mindhome, the space she’d set aside for such things.

“We should be near Bywater Town by evening.” She whispered in the ears of her brothers, at the helms of the other boats. “I’ll find a place to pull in for lunch.” Amy whispered, before Wilf could ask.

#