Ruby chatted with her rescuer as he harvested the leg off one of the fattier sharkhounds, telling him her story, without any coaxing. She’d needed someone to talk to, and he was the first friendly face she’d met in this entire world. Eric listened to her, offering few words, but she could tell he was paying attention.
He picked up the gun along the way, examining it with curiosity before slinging it over his shoulder.
Soon they reached the edge of the island. The black-sailed ship floated there, moored to a palm stump. It really was more of a big boat than anything. In the distance, the other ships that had arrived were fighting each other, a contest of boarding and blasting with magic. “Oh hell,” Eric muttered. “I’d hoped you would be safe here.”
“W-won’t I be?” Ruby asked.
“No,” he replied. “If those ships get closer, they will raid my boat and likely take you hostage, if not kill you.”
“Oh,” Ruby muttered. “W-why are all these people here?”
“They want the Red Anemone,” said Eric. “Same as you, same as your captor. It’s a powerful artifact, and worth a good deal of money at that.”
“I need it,” Ruby said, quietly. “To live.”
He patted her on the shoulder. “I need it for my lady love, Guinevere, princess of Ys. But we shall see if I can use its power to cure you.”
“It can do that?” asked Ruby. “I thought I would have to keep it.”
“The Anemone is a piece of a god,” said Eric. “It has powers beyond the boundaries of ordinary magic. I don’t know its limits, but we can try.”
Ruby’s heart soared. “So you’ll help me get it?”
“Yes,” he said. “First, we must make sure you’re safe while I fetch the Anemone.”
“I could just…go with you,” she replied.
He gave her a pained smile, and said, “It will be very dangerous. I want to keep you here on the boat for now.”
Ruby bit her lip. She would have agreed without question before this. But now that she’d executed her own plans, freed herself from captivity, she wanted to…keep being useful.
But he was right, and what’s more, he was an adult willing to do her a favor. So she just nodded.
“There is something you can do to help me,” said Eric, squeezing her shoulder. He let her go and walked over to a barrel, setting the rifle on top. “Call your kratt. I want to bind him to this weapon.”
“Oh!” Well, that was something. “I can do that!”
The Earth was waning when Bob emerged from the water as a mass of kelp, its little mask pinned to the ball of algae by a few sad thorns. It must have vacated its original shell when the ship sank. It was a wonder it hadn’t fully melted away in the salt.
In that time Eric had disassembled the gun, removing various bits and pieces Ruby couldn’t imagine the purpose of. He took off the stock and replaced it with a deeply curved hardwood handle, and screwed a spearhead to a pipe sticking from under the barrel. As soon as Bob had slithered onto the deck, Eric forged some sigils on the deck by shaping water into ice.
In a flash of green, Bob’s spirit transferred from the kelp body to the gun. Ruby could see the spectral form of a little imp hanging around Eric’s shoulder. He raised the gun and pulled the trigger, and at the same exact moment, Bob flicked his finger, launching a whole bullet through the barrel at arrow speeds out to see. “Good enough,” said Eric. He gave Ruby a thumbs up. “I’m going to go and sabotage the enemy ships, make sure they keep fighting each other instead of getting too close. I’ll be back in perhaps an hour. Eat some sharkhound meat. It’s good raw,1 and it’ll help you build up your strength. and if you’re in trouble, shoot up a flare.”
Before Ruby could reply, he threw himself into the water. Before her eyes, his legs merged together into a fishy tail. He cut across the water like a dolphin, heading off for the battle.
Ruby waved goodbye, feeling like things were moving much too fast. He hadn’t even told her he was a merman. Maybe merfolk were just like that.
Ruby sat and prepared another MRE, and used a knife to carve off the thinnest slice of sharkhound meat from the leg, partly because she was a little grossed out by it, and partly because she felt trepidation about using too much of Eric’s stuff, even if he gave her permission.
The Earth overhead went completely dark. The moon was starting to peek out from behind it, slowly brightening the sky, but for a moment it was pure dark, and the stars all came out at once. Ruby looked up at them, eyes wide, not because they were beautiful here—though they were—but because the constellations looked just the same as they were back home. With a cup of mac-and-cheese-and-shark warming her hands, and the gentle roar of the waves, looking up at the same sky she’d always loved, she could pretend she was home, and that things were good again.
Then she heard a howl, and dropped her disposable cup of military grade pasta. Ruby jumped to her feet, knocking over her stool, and saw the source of the disturbance; a young sharkhound climbing up the gangplank. She cursed herself for not retracting it. The beast was the size of a black bear, its hide a cool aqua blue with a pale underbelly. An X shaped scar crossed its nose, just slightly off center from the point of its snout. It was breathing hard like a pug, and she realized it was wounded, a terrible gash in its side. Its pointy, canine ears drooped with exhaustion; one of them was notched and torn.
The sharkhound howled again; it sounded so much like a coyote. Ruby drew the blue rod, preparing to douse it with boiling water, then it looked at her and let out a long blast of air from its gills, like a tired sigh.
Oh, she couldn’t do it.
“Here boy,” she muttered, putting down the rod and reaching slowly for her backpack. She pulled out the packet of bladefish steak that Bob had gotten for her this morning—was it still even good? Should she have eaten it?—and unwrapped it. The sharkhound’s head followed the steak as she waved it around. She tossed it and the meat landed on its face, covering its eyes. It barked and shook itself hard, knocking the meat loose while also throwing itself off balance. It tumbled onto its back, fin bending painlessly, and started nipping at the meat from its prone position.
Ruby laughed. “What a bozo…”
Once it had finished it crawled towards her on its belly, whining. She was reminded of that wound. “Poor thing,” said Ruby, crouching down and patting its nose. The wound was bad, but already scabbed over. She didn’t know anything about veterinary science, but maybe she could do something about it.
“I’ll be right back.” she said, patting its nose again as she straightened up. She went into Eric’s cabin. He’d mentioned something about healing potions, and there they were, two bottles of red fluid in a first aid box bolted to the wall. Ruby took one, not wanting to use up all of Eric’s stuff, and took it out to the sharkhound, whom she was already thinking of as Bozo. With her free hand she tickled him under his chin until he rolled over onto his side, exposing the entire wound, then she sat down above his head. She’d noticed sharkhounds weren’t very good at turning their heads up, and she didn’t want to get bitten. “This might sting a bit,” she said, stroking along his shoulder. “Don’t bite me, okay?”
She opened the bottle and poured it out onto the wound. Bozo squealed and spasmed, but Ruby kept her hand on his shoulder and it seemed to keep him from thrashing too hard. The wound bubbled and fizzed as the scab melted off, then as new flesh grew in. A few shark teeth fell out of the wound, and Ruby frowned, remembering how Callisto had been dragged into the water.
In the end Ruby didn’t need to use the whole bottle, and now there was a rough patch of scar tissue on Bozo’s flank. She’d read that sharks had remarkable regeneration capabilities, and it seemed like the potion had mostly just helped it along.
Bozo rolled to his feet, panting happily, and nuzzled her, almost knocking her over with his bulk, and she laughed and hugged him. A crazy thought crossed her mind. She was totally unequipped for something like this, but she’d been making so many new and exciting decisions all day, she was on fire. Even if it was a bad idea. “Do you want to stay with me forever, Bozo?” she asked.
Bozo made a weird gurgling noise. It sounded happy though.
“I’m not hearing a no,” said Ruby, and she reached into her backpack, pulling out her mother’s bracelet. Ruby had bound and commanded a demon today; a silly little imp, sure, so weak she could have snuffed out its life by accident if she’d drawn on any of its power at all. But Bozo was a powerful beast, surely strong enough that she could bind him without harming him. In point of fact, he was a monster, not a spirit. It was only spirits she’d been unable to form pacts with, surely this would work…
She undid the clasp and the two halves of the bracelet split apart. She put one on her wrist, and the other on Bozo’s. The sigils activated in a flash of light.
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Typically, a familiar must be placated with some of the practitioner’s energy. The artifact used her mother’s, but it was designed to transfer all the authority to Ruby when the transaction was complete. A familiar binding was deeper than a minion binding, and required the creature’s consent, as far as it could go to express willingness. There was a moment of questioning on Bozo’s face before a warm feeling flooded into Ruby’s heart. He’d accepted! Then she felt his power flowing into her spirit and—
Spiraling down into the sucking void she had in there. Bozo let out a whistling cry and started to shrink. Ruby wailed. She’d killed him, he was gone, she always messed everything up—
It stopped. Bozo had shrunk considerably and was now the size of a bulldog, but he…seemed fine. He seemed confused at suddenly being so much smaller and chased his tail, as if trying to find his missing mass.
Oh, he was much cuter like this.
“Sorry about shrinking you,” said Ruby, with a goofy smile on her face. Bozo looked at her, and he seemed to understand her, to an extent, or at least the expression on his fishy face was something like deep thought. “I’ll try to fix it. When I’m all better you’ll probably grow…I think. Just sit tight for another day or so…” She yawned and laid on her side. “I’m gonna rest my eyes, you let me know if anyone comes, okay?”
Bozo barked in the affirmative. But Ruby was already drifting off.
> The dream came again. It was the same as before, the helplessness as the crow killed Henry and Fenetre. But this time, there was a change.
>
> This time, Ruby’s mother was there.
>
> For a moment, she felt a tinge of hope, even as the crow woman picked her mother up by the hair. “It’s alright,” said her mother, almost placidly, as the crow’s talons approached her throat. “I didn’t expect you to save us.”
>
> Ruby’s heart shattered. “Mom! I-I want to save you, all of you!”
>
> “You can’t, Ruby,” she replied. The crow’s claws passed through her neck like water. As her body slumped to the ground, her head kept talking. “You never could.”
Ruby woke once again with her heart hurting, but for once it was not worse than the day before. The dream was fading from memory, but the last little bit persisted, playing over and over in her mind’s eye. It was true; she couldn’t save them, she couldn’t do anything. But, it was just a dream anyway, they weren’t in real danger!
But if they were, what could she do?
Ruby clutched her face in her hands and wept.
A heavy hand settled on her shoulder and she jerked upright, almost falling backward before someone caught her. It was Eric, looking no worse for wear, but concern plain on his face. “My apologies for startling you,” he said. “I’ve just returned. That creature was here, watching you,” he gestured and she saw Bozo standing by the gangplank. He woofed and Ruby briefly had an irrational moment of panic, berating herself for not thinking about what Eric’s reaction would be to seeing a sharkhound on his ship. But clearly he reacted just fine.
“Thank you for not kicking him off the boat,” said Ruby.
“It was obvious you had bound him,” he said. “You seem to have a talent for it.”
Ruby shrugged and wiped at her eyes. Bozo trotted over to her side and she put her arm around his neck.
“You should be able to use his power, sparingly,” said Eric.
Ruby felt a twinge of excitement at that. She could channel magic? She could do things, she could put all those sigils she’d memorized to use! “Would you teach me?” she asked, looking up at him with watery eyes.
Eric furrowed his brow. “Perhaps I can give you some pointers, when my quest is over.”
“I mean, can you teach me, on the way?” She clutched at his pant leg. “I need to go with you. I need to.” She couldn’t say, because I need to prove to myself that I’m not a burden, because even she didn’t know that.
Eric sighed, and put his hand on her head. “You will perhaps be safer at my side than on this ship. Safer still, once you’ve learned to use your power. Very well.”
“Thank you!” Ruby hugged him around the legs.
He laughed and picked her up, slinging her over his shoulder. “You will be more comfortable in the cabin. I’ll keep watch, so your little friend can be in there with you.”
Ruby did dream again, but gained no further insights. She could not tell if her condition had worsened or not; the change was very minimal if so. It must have been Bozo’s influence. She kissed the top of his head in thanks.
They set out at first light. Dawn, like the evening, was blue and dim, not the romantic colors she’d loved at home.
She changed the form of her clothes to clean them, switching her running shoes out for hiking boots as well as adding a belt with a sheath for her rod (the bandolier had been taken by Callisto long ago), all under Eric’s advisement.
Ruby could finally see what Eric had done to the ships out in the harbor. She’d been half imagining that they’d all be burned to husks or sunk, but no. Instead they were tangled up in kelp, rising from the water and up the masts, tearing sails and breaking rudders. There were other signs of combat as well, holes punched into hulls, many ships laying low in the water or tilting dangerously. The sea monster was gone, its yoke floating uselessly some yards away from its ship, its hawsers cut.
“Many of those folk can breathe underwater,” said Eric. “They’ll be coming ashore as soon as they’ve secured the ships.”
“Why do they even need ships?” asked Ruby.
Eric laughed. “There are many reasons. To carry supplies, of course. And artillery. To carry off large hauls of booty. To carry allies who cannot breathe water. There are many humans in Undaina, did you know? As well as mundane animals. Not just fish, but livestock, hounds, birds. Water being so necessary for life in the material world and all, this is the elemental plane most hospitable to Earth life.”
Ruby nodded. “I’ve noticed the seagulls. Umm,” she twiddled her fingers. “I noticed you look a lot like a human person. But you’re a merman.”
“I am,” he said. “Let’s get moving.”
She thought she’d offended him until he started speaking again. “We’ve little time, so we’ll walk and talk. My father was a human, not local, but a soldier and explorer from a country called England. He fell in love with a mermaid, as many sailors do, followed her home, won her heart, and a place in the court of Ys.”
“Where is Ys?” asked Ruby.
Eric chuckled. “Like all islands here it moves, but it tends to stay in the warmer waters to the south. Anyhow, I carry his sword and sail his boat.”
Ruby tugged at a lock of her hair. “Sailors don’t really use swords anymore, or sailing ships.”
“Oh I know, I’ve been to Earth a few times. I’ve seen how times have marched on. I’m just older than I look.”
“How much older?”
“Father was a veteran of the Napoleonic wars.”
“Oh!”
“He was rather young when he enlisted, mind you, and married later in his life. I’m only one hundred and fifty of your years.”
“Oh!”
“But enough stories,” said Eric. “Time to practice.” He held up his hand and a ball of aqua colored light formed in his palm. It swirled and flowed like slow fluid. “I’m sure you know the concept of channeling.”
“Drawing energy from the environment into your body,” said Ruby. “I could draw from Bozo too, but it would probably hurt him…”
“Correct,” said Eric. “As you’ve never done it before, I’m sure it’s hard to envision how it works. But there is a sigil for channeling.” The energy in his hand formed into a simple magic circle with a large arrow pointing down. “If you keep in your mind’s eye, it will help you feel what you need to feel. Just be sure to imagine that the point is not aimed at the ground, but directly at your heart.”
Ruby nodded very seriously and imagined the sigil. She’d been told how to do it often enough, before her mother became certain there was no point. She’d been expecting it to take forever, so she was surprised at how easy it came—too easy. She saw immediately that all the energy she was channeling was falling right into her void. She strained a bit and forced it into her hand.
Aqua light flowed up her veins and formed into a little ball, rather like Eric’s. But there was something else too, a black aura, like ink made of light, that mixed with the teal, weaving through it in counterpoint to its motion. Ruby’s ball broke up shortly after.
“Very good,” said Eric. He said nothing about the black goo. Perhaps he’d been expecting it. “Sharkhounds can heal themselves, and channel and shape water. You should be able to do the same.”
Ruby looked over at Bozo. “You can shape water, Bozo?”
He yipped, and some thin threads of water rose up from the ground, forming into a crude ball on the tip of his nose. Ruby clapped.
“That’s rather good, for an animal,” Eric said with a smile, “but with your human intellect, you can do even better, with practice. But before we get there, try to push the energy you channeled into your rod, then push the water out into the world.”
It took her a few tries, and Ruby hissed in panic when she almost splashed Bozo with boiling water before she remembered how to adjust the temperature. Control began not with the water but with the rod itself; she found herself adjusting the temperature and the length of the rod with her mind and will.
When she finally managed to shape the water properly, she could tell some of the black gunk had gotten into it. It smelled like salt, even when she tried to create fresh, and even when she set the stream to scalding hot, it always felt like it was taking something away from her targets rather than putting something in.
Then when she finally managed to curve a shot, the stream forged itself into the shape of a hand. It snatched a gull out of the air and it died instantly. Ruby’s arm went slack and she almost dropped the rod. The forged hand collapsed and the gull fell to the ground. Bozo ran after it. Eric went to her side, held her shoulder and wiped her brow. “Is that…bad?” she asked.
“It took a lot out of you,” said Eric.
Ruby shook her head. “My magic is coming out all bent. Mom said it was because of my spirit. Does that mean I’m evil?”
“Magic is neither good nor evil,” said Eric. “How you use it determines morality. Try to do good in this world, and you will be good.”
Ruby bit her lip and nodded very seriously.
Bozo came back, with the gull in his mouth, and left it at Ruby’s feet, wagging his tail. Ruby made a face, but Eric scooped up the gull and put it in his pack, then gave Bozo a pat on the nose.
At last, they reached a cave, really the place where the jaws met. Most of the space was filled in with dirt and the roots of plants, but there was a small opening right where the bones joined. Even this was slightly overgrown with roots, so Eric hacked at it with his saber. In the meantime, Ruby pulled a flashlight out of her pack, and shone its beam into the ever widening hole.
Moments later, it was wide enough for a man to cross the threshold while stooping. Together, the three of them stepped into the mouth of the island.
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1. FYI kids, the meat of regular ocean sharks must be cooked. When raw, it contains high levels of ammonia that make it taste like piss.