Chapter 128

Does Hawkin Know He’s Base-building?

In dam chambers that smelled of salted wood, I stirred awake. I wiped dew from my snout before it trickled and forced sneezes from me. I pawed my whiskers clean and I rolled onto my back and began licking myself clean.

Perhaps it was my slurping which disturbed Ella from her sleep. She woke up and rolled to her butt. Her gaze fell to the dense poof of blue and yellow and green that she’d slept in.

“Oh, it's so wet!” she said.

I was exhausted from cleaning myself. That’s how much work we’d done yesterday. “I can’t lift my arms.”

“They’re going to make breakfast for us, right?” Already she was rubbing her tummy.

“That’s what they said.”

Ella rolled up onto her feet. She put a hand to her belly, and went cross-eyed for a moment. “Oof.”

“You okay?” I said.

Mooloo strode into the chamber. “Oysters and seaweed are ready for us!”

Just those few words had Ella open her eyes. She seemed to suddenly come fully awake.

Ella trailed Mooloo, and I trailed Ella, and we took the tunnels to the outskirts of Float-some barge. The dam was shallow there, and there was a pit of muddy water. Steam rose from the surface in the early morning fog. Castor besties, which we learned they called themselves, dipped into the mud bath. Wide bowls floated upon the silky mud. Some bowls held heaps of seaweed, and some bowls each held a pile of large oysters.

I rubbed my eyes, because the fog and the early morning made me feel like a film blurred my vision. Blinking, I tested my vision and found that Ella had swiftly entered the mud pool. She floated on her back, round as a dolphin’s forehead. Her arm was outstretched, and her hand paddled the water just at the edge of one of the bowls of oysters. By the time I joined her, she had opened three oysters.

Our entrance did not go unnoticed, and we were the only two that didn’t blend in. Castor besties rippled the water and surrounded us. Was today a relaxing day off for them? They seemed relaxed as if the whole day was ahead of them with nothing to do and nothing to fret. Ella and I fielded curiosities, and we wound up recounting our adventures. They were quite curious about my best friend.

“Oh, and Thrush is two percent red bestie, too! He ate a determiner diamond, and it worked on him.”

“Determiner diamond,” said an elder bestie. “We know all about that!”

Our ears perked and switched forward.

“Thousands of years ago, when we were your age, we lived with the shiny ones.”

The shiny besties? The original besties? Had these elders truly met the original besties? But wasn’t it said that the original besties lived thousands of centuries ago? …Wait—what? Was it true?

“They weren’t shiny, Serus!” said another elder bestie. “They were the color of summer berries.”

“Pipe down, Veta!” said another. “They were as dark as the bat caves near the northern boulders.”

“Now listen here, Orm!” said yet another. “Their fur matched that of the sea. Warm, clear, and endless.”

Mooloo, floating on his back with his hands beneath his head said, “They never agree.”

Another agitated bestie said, “The jungle! They were the color of the jungle!”

Serus spoke up. “How am I supposed to tell these pups about our history when you’re all shouting out nonsense?”

When elder besties bickered, there were no holds barred. They attacked each other’s declining mental state, and they scoffed at each other’s memories. It seemed that every color was named before Serus wrestled control of the conversation.

“Fine, fine,” said the seemingly oldest of them. “Get on with it.”

“As I was saying,” said Serus, “this was after all the other ones left. The yellow…the blue…the frayed…the curly…”

“Curly?” I said.

“Oh, yes! But those besties were there long before my time. I’ve only ever seen the shiny besties from which all other besties originated. You two are the first I’ve seen of other determiner besties.” Serus pointed at our chests. “But you’re not quite blue or yellow. You’re splattered?”

Around a mouthful of oyster, Ella said, “The splatters happened when we saw the splatter besties.”

“Weren’t you paying attention?” said Mooloo.

“Ah, yes! That’s right, that’s right.” Serus cackled. “Well, I grew up a castor bestie, when only the castors and shiny besties remained on the island. We had built a dam much bigger than this one. It was connected to an estuary on our home island. The shiny ones lived on the land, and the Castors lived in the dam. Life was good until a hurricane severed us from the island. When the weather cleared, we found ourselves on the open sea.”

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“What happened to the shiny besties?” said Ella, battling a soft burp.

“They were the color of the jungle!” said an elder.

“Rubbish!” said Orm. “They were as dark as the caves.”

Serus glared at his kin as he continued. “As far as I know, the shiny besties remained. Now, where exactly they remained, I have no idea. There have been many attempts to locate our lost home, but none have ever returned from the voyage.”

By the blue besties! The shiny ones remained? They might still be alive? Tingles rippled beneath my fur. I felt my heart beating.

“But they’re still alive?” I said.

“I don’t see why not. The island offered better protection from the hurricane than our dam, and we survived.”

Ella and I turned wide eyes to each other. She even paused, the oyster shell in her hand slowly clamping shut.

∞

Until evening, Ella and I talked endlessly.

“Wow…”

Gah, they might still be alive! Shiny! They were shiny! Okay, maybe the elder besties were unsure about their color, but shiny stuck with me. The castor besties enthused us with every tale they knew of the shiny besties. Meanwhile, I shared warm-warm beer with them. Even while we played board games, we could not stop asking questions.

Oh, I hoped they still existed! Were they living and breathing right now? How far were they? What a feeling…such legendary besties suddenly seemed so real. It was like they stepped out of mythos and became real!

Man, why did Float-some barge have to be our last stop south? Barnacle-eyes was the perfect goblin to sail the seas in search of the shiny ones! If any goblin ship could survive at sea, it was those under her care and skill. Yeah-yeah, I understood fine and well…She had obligations…She was on a schedule…She had a voyage to complete…Lavenfauvish was next.

Would Thrush help? I was suddenly scared to ask. What if he couldn’t find them because they were long deceased? Oh, I had to ask him…maybe after the voyage.

I sighed. What an adventure it’s been. I couldn’t believe we had to meet so many different besties. I loved them all! Ella was still the best—no contest! Psh.

Along the edge of Float-some barge where we could still see the fleet, Mooloo found us. “So, splattered ones… It's been a week.”

A deal was a deal, so I poured a libation from one dreambon ale. Thrush stepped through a bright slice of air. Though the castor besties had seen him from a distance, and although they had been warned, I could tell they couldn’t help but shrink back from the horrifying beast. Thrush had wild blue-green eyes. He had more rows of teeth than usual, and his teeth were piranha small.

His eyes throbbed in their gigantic sockets as I explained our circumstance. Ella backed me up with “Yeah…mhm…Yup…mhm…That’s right.”

“Hmm.,” said Thrush. “A trade? Material in exchange for halting your job, otherwise Barnacle-eyes’ fleet will be torn apart?”

Mooloo, with his head slightly ducked, said, “Can you do it? Boggo offered five times the material we’d be able to get from these goblin ships.”

“No, no! I said three times!”

“He said you’d throw in some warm-warm beer too.”

I gasped so hard that my mouth went dry. “I said no such thing!”

I beckoned Thrush to lower himself so that I could whisper to him. He need to know that the castor besties were scavengers—a little selfish about it—and they would take anything.

Thrush smiled, and most of the castor besties fell back with a scream. Thrush said he was happy to help. He had things he’d been meaning to unload for quite a while. He dumped whole trees, piles of branches, staves of barrels, pencil shaped fort poles, scraps of metal, bandit weapons, bandit tents….

And while Thrush created what seemed to me like a mountain of stuff, one of the younger castor besties rolled one of Hawkin’s ethereal barrels over.

He brought the barrel to a stop at Mooloo’s webbed feet. “Where to with this one, boss?”

Mooloo’s eyes were wide, and he spoke as though he were in a daze. “…North-western jetty 144...”

Thrush became unstoppable. The mountain of junk kept growing. Castor besties scrambled to start carting things off. Mooloo put on what seemed like a mischievous smile. He rubbed his hands and approached Thrush.

“Say…since Boggo said you’d throw in a ton of beer…those weird barrels sure looked nice…”

“Thrush, no! Thrush, don’t listen to him! I said no such thing!”

“I trust you, little Boggo. I have more barrels, but they’re filled with spit beer. I only have waterskins of warm-warm beer.”

Mooloo snapped his fingers. “Let’s see it.”

Thrush proffered an ethereal waterskin. Mooloo held the floppy thing, but he quickly shook his head. “And the spit beer?”

An ethereal barrel appeared between them. Thrush poked a hole with a claw on the barrelhead and tipped it so Mooloo could sip.

Mooloo puckered. “Got any empty ones?”

“I do.”

“We’ll take ‘em!”

Thrush being Thrush needed something in return. In moments, Mooloo entered Thrush’s yurt where they began negotiations. Mooloo’s voice was raised for a minute before I heard the first slap of a number of high-fives. Castor besties began rolling barrels out of the yurt and toward the edge of Float-some barge.

Ella climbed the mountain of junk that was still a long way from dwindling. “Boggo!” she said.

I climbed up after her, and we sat at tip-top with a view of the castor besties expanding Float-some barge. The sky was near twilight, and the sea blackened without the sun. We watched Hawkin’s bright chimeric-colored barrels break apart in bestie paws. The staves held their bright colors as they were added like piles of sticks to Float-some barge where the island touched the sea.

Ella had apparently squirreled away some oysters, and she cracked them open on her lap as we gazed. After a slurp, she pointed her snout at the lighthouse-bright ethereal colors. “You think it’ll attract anything tasty?”

I imagined what lurked in the sea. “Hopefully. Something tasty…and boring.”

“We’ll certainly have an easier time spotting this island the second time around. If we ever come back here, that is.”

“Do you think the original besties ever tried to find the Castor besties?”

“Might’ve been harder for them. If they were never forced out to sea, they wouldn’t know anything about sailing, let alone know how to find a moving island.”

The sun lowered behind the horizon, and all the world was black. Hawkins barrels shone so bright, that we could see the reflection in all the besties' eyes behind us. Farther behind, I saw the gleam in goblin eyes too.

“Yeah,” I said. “It was hard to find, wasn’t it?”