The Questory of Root Karbunkulus - Quill (23 page)

The aforementioned ears went red. “How’d you
know to find us here?”

“ I didn’t. I was just takin’ Corky out for a
run. Good timing’s what I’m thinkin’”

A miracle is what the others were.

“We were trying t’get to Divit.” Dwyn
said.

“Well, you’re not too far off. But best
y’come with me t’the island for the night. Hover surfin’ ain’t much
fun in the pitch black, now I’m thinkin’. I’ll take ya t’Divit in
the mornin’. C’mon, now. I dunno ‘bout you but I could eat a
Grielog right now.”

Root was the last to board the water
carriage. She took Haverly’s hand like the others had and that’s
when she noticed that it was not an ordinary hand. It had the
fingers, all five of them. But these were each joined by a flap of
thick skin. Haverly Sintamore was webbed.

Cool.

Root took the middle seat of the carriage,
which was almost exactly like a land carriage except where wheels
should have been there were four long skinny boards, two to each
side. Skis really. Waxed to a shine. The back of the water carriage
sunk low while the head was high and open with a lofty podium type
seat way out at the front. This is where Haverly sat holding
Corky’s reins.

“Right, Corky boy. Let’s get a move on.” She
clicked her tongue.

The tortoise took off with three times the
speed that had been expected. Root closed her eyes, preparing for
the splashing cold of his wake but it never came. She took a
clenched peek and saw that some invisible shield protected the
entire carriage. It sprayed the water to the sides, keeping even
Haverly who was front centre, for the most part dry.

“Ninety nine bottles of Chuck on the wall,
ninety nine bottles of Chuck. Take one down, pass it around…”
Haverly handed over a green bottle labeled Chuck -Vintage Now. Lian
eagerly took a swig, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and belched. A
large pink bubble escaped him. Mmmm, good stuff. Haverly handed off
two more bottles to Dwyn and Root. “…Ninety eight bottles of Chuck
on the wall.”

They were just launching into the fifty-third
verse when Corky pulled them onto the shore of a small island.

“Ah, home sweet island.” Haverly said and
leaped from her seat. “Let’s eat.”

Root had polished off her second bottle of
Chuck, which was like an effervescent drink of bubble gum. With
each gulp she had tried to outdo the previous bubble burp and had
managed to get her globes quite big actually. Bigger than Dwyn’s
which sucked pretty bad. Feeling safe and cheered, she leapt from
the carriage and followed her teammates after Haverly, even
surprising herself with a friendly stroke of Corky’s stocky,
heavily scaled leg.

Haverly led them to a small, lived-in
campsite a few feet away. She waved her hand to start a fire and
soon had skewers of some sort of ocean creature and seaweed
sizzling overtop. Bottles of Chuck were replaced with steaming mugs
of Chorm and Corky was hunkered down with a hill of greens.

The island was tiny; one could probably walk
its perimeter in an hour. It was Haverly’s oasis, her windowless
summer cabin where she could escape Divit’s nonsense for a
while.

“What do you mean, nonsense?” Lian had
asked.

“I mean, all that bogus crap goin’ on.”

“Bogus crap?”

“Digging around, rooting up things that are
best left alone!” Haverly spat beside the fire, not in anger, in
routine. “Used to be a place where you could go away for days and
not lock your doors. But now! Now there’s so many strangers comin’
and goin’. Heck, y’can’t even get a good night’s rest for all the
noise.”

“Why? What’s changed?” Dwyn asked.

Haverly squared herself. A venting was coming
on. “It’s like this, kids. Divit was once all under water. Didjya
know that?”

“Yeah, the Drowned City.” Lian said. His
friends gave him a news-to-us look.

“Right.” Haverly went on. “Ages ago. Way
before your time. Before mine even, though I still got the genes.”
She held up her hands and spread them open. The webbing stretched
wide. “Not everyone’s webbed, evolution and all. But some of us
still pass it on. My great grand dad was the last of us Sinatmores
t’have gills but I still see the odd one here and there. More eats,
kids?”

They shook their heads. The meal had been
surprisingly good, once one could get past its squeamish texture
and color. They were stuffed. And now far too interested to be
diverted with food. Haverly continued, enjoying her soapbox for the
time.

“Anyhoosit, where was I?”

“The Drowned City.” Dwyn said, eager for its
story.

“Right. The Drowned City. Been underwater for
ages and best left that way is what I’m thinkin’ but oh no, there’s
treasure down there. Lost treasure. Money to be made! Which in
itself ain’t bad. Nothin’ wrong with makin’ a buck. But so many
came all at once. Greed in their eyes! The Drowned City gold rush,
y’know what I’m sayin?”

They nodded.

“It wasn’t done proper. They took to ‘er like
swine, plunderin’ the great city as far as I’m concerned. And they
weren’t satisfied with just anything neither. Nope, they were
lookin’ for the big one, know what I’m sayin’?”

TheValadors shook their heads.

“The big one! The prize! The goldmine!”

More head shakes.

“The Song, kids! Where y’been?”

“The Song?” Root said.

“Holy Mother of the Sleeping Socks! Don’t
they teach y’all anything in them Scholarlies?”

“Nothing about a Song. ” Lian said,
joining

Haverly’s disgust. “They only teach what they
want you to know. Ever since the Guardian, they changed the
curriculum. You can’t even find good information in public Word
Pantries anymore. It’s all been specially selected. What’re they
hiding is what I’d like t’know! It’s so frustrating! I know I’m
kinda lucky…sort of… ‘cause sometimes my dad lets me get books from
the council pantry. But even then, they’ve been tampered with and
weeded out. It ticks me off! It ain’t’ right”

Ain’t?
Root thought but never said
anything.

Haverly blinked, taken aback by the sudden
fury of Estrella’s son, a ranting that she was used to dominating.
“Oh. Well…yeah.”

“So, what is it?” Dwyn dove back in.

“Well, let’s step back here a bit. A little
History one-o-one.” Haverly leaned in her seat, collecting the
memories. “Y’all know what a HaloEm is, don’tchya?”

Their eyes popped.

“Yeah!”

“Oh yeah!”

“That’s what we’re here for! A HaloEm
Quill!”

“Well, that ain’t no easy find, kids. People
been seeking them for a long time. I’m told there are only five
left in all of DréAmm.”

“That’s what we were told, too.”

“Makes for a difficult undertaking. A HaloEm
Quill is mighty indeed. But I’m talkin’ ‘bout something even more
powerful. The very thing that gives the HaloEm their magic in the
first place. Or more importantly their life.”

“The Song?”

“Bingo, a prize for the boy!”

Dwyn beamed.

“Uh, Haverly. What exactly is the Song?” Lian
asked.

Haverly went silent. She scanned the faces of
her guests, taking in their eyes one at a time. When she was
finished, she spoke lower. “Right. Now, I’m gonna share somethin’
with you kids, somethin’ ain’t never been shared before. ‘Cause
it’s my feelin’ that you can be used in this somehow. A hunch I
guess. Comin’ with the fact that I found y’all and I know
happenstance when it hits me. Now listen close.”

The team leaned forward, chomping at the
bit.

“Not very many know this, but the HaloEm came
from the Drowned City.”

“That’s why they’re looking for the Song down
there!”

“Another bingo. Now, don’t interrupt.”

“My grandfather, bless his spirit, was born
in the Drowned City…before it collapsed of course, when the sea was
its friend and people lived in harmony with it. He wasn’t there
long before the Fall and escaped with barely a shirt on his back.
He, like so many, pioneered a new life for himself above ground,
making the difficult transformation from sea to land creatures. But
he never forgot his roots, and in particular his third birthday in
which he was visited by an actual HaloEm. The memory of its beauty
and majesty stayed with him until his dying day. And on that day,
just before he made his transition, he gave his only son, my father
a special gift indeed.”

“The Song!”

“Wrong. Now don’t interrupt…To his son, my
father, he gave…two eggs. Big as Corky’s they were. But beautiful.
In sight and sound. They were iridescent and they glowed as if they
were the eyes of Celstyria.”

“Who’s that?” Root asked.

“Celstyria was goddess of the Daystar.” Lian
sounded off dully, as if reading from an almanac. “She ruled in
light and truth and begot one daughter, Shalayna the Adored.”

“What he said.” Haverly agreed.

“Hey, isn’t Shalayna the chick from Milwart’s
speech, the one who was friends with the HaloEm and got all those
awesome powers?” Dwyn asked excitedly.

“Chick?” Root and Haverly said at the same
time.

Dwyn flushed. “Sorry. Lady, I mean.”

“If y’mean Queen Shalayna then, yes, that’d
be her.” Haverly tried to get back on track. “So, my father and two
glowing eggs. Got that?”

The team nodded.

“And from these two eggs came music. A sound
so lovely, so stirring it made one’s heart ache in wonder. Those
are his words. Ache in wonder. I love that.”

The team was right with her, as if a haunting
melody had come to them from the Drowned City itself.

“Of course, my father accepted the gifts, not
knowing what they were but stricken by their beauty.

“Years passed. Eventually my father moved on
with his life and the eggs were forgotten in the passing of time.
Until, on my third birthday, they hatched.” She paused in the
coincidence, enjoying the collaboration from her audience. “I
didn’t see the hatching. Only my father did. He’d heard a sound and
drew open the drawer and there they were in front of him, blind and
cryin’ for food.”

“HaloEm.” Root whispered in awe.

Haverly nodded and continued over their
gasps. “Well, he took to his task with great devotion, raising the
HaloEm in secrecy, even from my young eyes, for already there were
those that sought to steal of their power and would use all means
to do so. My father loved the HaloEm, as his father did before him
and under his reverent care, they grew.

“But as my father had feared, something went
wrong. After a certain point the HaloEm stopped growing. He knew
what it was, for he had read it in his father’s journals. They had
reached puberty and were in need of a particular nutrition, one
that came only from the…” Haverly paused. “C’mon, kid. Now’s your
cue.”

“The Song?” Dwyn said.

“Indubitably! The Song! The HaloEm were in
need of the music, that hauntingly beautiful Song from which they
had come. Or they would die.”

“Of course, immediately my father returned to
the HaloEm’s empty egg shells where he’d first heard the music. But
it was gone, broken free with the hatching. So, where had it gone?
He desperately returned to his father’s papers, delving into the
HaloEm lore and seeking anything from which he could learn of the
Song. He discovered nothing other than his father had been stumped
at the same impasse.

“The HaloEm grew weak. With each passing day
that he returned to them empty-handed their gentle spirits drifted
farther away. As fate would have it, the very day that he had given
up entirely he and the HaloEm were led to victory. He had taken a
long, surrendering walk along the seashore of our home. It had been
so long since he’d done this. Soon he was exhilarated in the wind
and water and he began collecting beach treasures as he had always
done since he was a boy.

“He picked up a strange shell and held it up
for inspection. It caught the wind through its hundreds of small
holes and, in that moment as the sound came to his ears, he knew
his search was over.

“He brought the Song to the HaloEm and let it
soar over them, falling like snow and transforming them into the
powerful stags of wonder and beauty that you know of today.”

It was a wonderful story, one that left the
Valadors flushed and cheered even as the chill of night took
over.

“So, the Song. That’s what people are
searching for now in the Drowned City?”

“Yeah. A fool’s errand.” Haverly half
laughed. “If they only knew.”

“Knew what?”

“There ain’t no Song anymore.” On their
imploring looks she continued the final stretch of her mythical
tale. “My father watched the HaloEm grow to full health and soon
they took to the wild, to the White Woods, the new woods that
sprang up on the base of the Bansper Mountains. You prob’ly heard
of ‘em.”

They nodded.

“But they’d often come back to visit my
father. And that’s when I saw a HaloEm for the first time. And let
me tell you. It changes you. After that I couldn’t sleep for the
power and the magnificence. They were…” she shook her head slowly,
still captured and lost for words.

“Well, then dad died. The war and all. And
many HaloEm were slaughtered until eventually they were thought to
be extinct, which was fine with me. The less who knew my secret,
the better. They were safer that way. I saw my two HaloEm rarely
then. Even my son saw them only once during all that time. I’ll not
forget the look in his eyes, I tell ya!

“Then one night, the HaloEm came to me. And
they were troubled. They told me the Song was in great danger.
There were dark forces seeking its power. I promised them right
then and there that me and my son were gonna charm a cut of the
White Woods and bury it.

“But that day never came. A fire broke out in
the stable where I had been hiding it. We tried to get in but the
flames had already risen into mountains, scorching everything in
reach. My son ran inside to try to save the Song. I tried to stop
him but he tore free of me. Then he was gone, swallowed in the
heat.” Haverly paused. “He never made it. And all my father’s and
grandfather’s work, the journals and papers…lost. Before I could
even read ‘em. So, there ain’t even anything t’pass on.”