Somewhere in a vast sea, under a starry night sky, a galleon sailed along calm waters in time with a subtle music. The ship’s wooden planks gently creaked with the soft sway of the vessel. The waters lapped up, caressing the hull. The sails cupped against the low push of the ocean breeze. To an onlooker, the galleon’s music might seem like noise. Yet to a sailor, these were like instruments in an orchestra providing a constant ambience.
The only music an onlooker might recognize as music was the melodic plucking of a lute coming from one of the galleon’s rowboats. In the boat was a woman reclining back to view the sky. She was thin with an elegantly featured face. Her eyes were a deep green, her skin had a tone like copper. Her ears bore the unique pointed shape of her elven people. She wore a bandana on her head beneath a tricorn hat which was tilted so as not to obscure her view of the stars. In her hands was a lute crafted from dark wood and a simple design. It was the lute of one well-travelled.
Her hands moved gracefully about the strings. The fingers of her left danced along the fretboard, the fingers of her right plucked a harmony of three parts which wove a tune that fluttered like the galleon’s flags in the wind. The song was familiar to her in a way like instinct. It was something that came from inside of her, and every time she had tried to recall where she had heard it was like grasping at the space where a memory once was.
There, on the side of the galleon, in a rowboat she had lowered to be close to the water, the elven maiden played a song with no name and no lyrics.
The elf stopped playing, letting the last chord ring out into the night until the sound of it was swallowed by the water’s lapping against the rowboat. She sighed deeply and gazed at the stars. She was all too familiar with being a minority on a vessel of humans. She found them a curious race, capable of so much even though they slept for so many hours each night. Those hours gave her time to herself, time that she treasured while aboard a ship where privacy was a bygone commodity every sailor left ashore.
An odd feeling drew the elven maiden from her thoughts. Something about this quiet night felt suddenly queer. She slowly sat up in the rowboat, and soon it became clear. There in the waters was the form of a woman, only visible from the top of her breasts upward. Her skin was blue and accented with scales like a fish’s. Wet, red hair hung loosely at shoulder’s length and framed a face bearing round features and eyes with bright red irises. One of her arms held on to the rowboat. The elven maiden recognized what it was who now accompanied her.
It was a mermaid.
“That song,” the mermaid began in the common language. “Where did you hear it?”
“I don’t remember,” the elf admitted. She noted a momentary look of disappointment in the mermaid’s face.
The elven maiden recalled what lore had to say about mermaids. Beyond the tall tales of sailors who speak of terrifyingly beautiful women luring men to watery deaths, she knew that mermaids were descended from Fae, much like her own race of elves. Many considered them monsters. The woman who held on to the rowboat did not seem monstrous. Not yet.
“I assume it is as familiar to you as it is to me, then,” the elf noted.
The mermaid looked somber. “You could say that.”
The conversation stalled. Wooden planks somewhere in the galleon gave a long, mournful moan.
The elf searched for something to say, and finally decided. “I’ve never been able to learn the lyrics, only the tune.”
“You’ve added harmony around the melody,” the mermaid complimented. “I like it.”
“So you know it, then- the song?”
The mermaid nodded. “It is a part of my people’s song.”
The elf let a look of concern slip onto her face.
“The one you use to lure men?”
The mermaid gave an amused giggle, and the elf could tell it was genuine.
“It’s more complicated than that. Our songs are really one song. The way the folk of the land think they have a song for this and a song for that is silly. It’s all just one, great song.” The mermaid paused and her face became unreadable. “It is the same song whether we sing to enchant a man or sing to comfort our children.”
The elf detected something in the mermaid’s tone, some imperceptible sadness she could not put her finger on. She was considering how to go about asking when the mermaid spoke.
“You are an elf, no?”
The elven maiden noted the abrupt change in topic. She nodded and removed her tricorn hat and bandana, revealing wild golden hair that had the shape of a flame in the wind. The mermaid stared at the elf for several long moments.
“Wood elf, specifically,” the elven maiden admitted. “Some call me ‘Duchess’, some call me ‘Badger’. You can take your pick.”
The mermaid’s gaze upon the elven maiden was unmoving and unreadable.
“My name is Naunet, it is my true name. Might I know your real name, that I may call you by that?”
“I don’t wish to be rude, but I hate my given name and wish it were erased. ‘Duchess’ or ‘Badger’ are names as real as any.”
Naunet shrugged. “Then it shall be ‘Badger’, if between those two I am to choose.”
Badger nodded.
“Are you a bard, miss Badger?”
“You could say that,” Badger replied with a grin, repeating the mermaid’s own words. “I spin stories and collect lore. I get into no small amount of trouble and mischief. I drink, I sing, I fu-…” Badger cut the last word short. “…I possess the tongue of a sailor and am often quite vulgar.”
Naunet giggled again, and her round features formed an adorable smile. “I see that. Though you needn’t worry about offending me.”
Badger reclined back again, placing her hands once again on her lute. She was no longer concerned about whether the mermaid was a threat. Clearly, this was not a monster. She strummed a single chord which rang out into the night air.
“You said you spin tales. You must have travelled far.” Naunet’s eyes were intent. Badger was not sure if her look was flirtatious, curious, or something else.
“I have,” Badger replied coolly, trying to sound mysterious.
Naunet took the bait. “Would you tell me a tale, Badger?” There was a sincerity in Naunet’s voice that struck Badger as strange. It felt like a personal request, one you might ask someone very dear or familiar to you. Badger reasoned there was some cultural cue about mermaids she was missing.
“I could tell you The Epic of Tamlen, it’s all the rage amongst the folk of the land. I helped write it, you know.”
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Naunet shook her head. “No, Badger, I’d like to hear your story.”
Badger smirked widely. “You play a dangerous game, asking a storyteller to talk about herself. You’re liable to be here for days.”
Naunet giggled. “Perhaps just the beginning, then.”
The elven maiden who called herself Badger sat up in the rowboat and placed her lute beside her. Still seated, she arched her back and stretched her arms and legs.
“Very well. I suppose we shall start as close to the beginning as I can remember.”
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If I am to take you to the beginning, I should take you to an isle off the coast of Razor Bay. It is an island unceremoniously dubbed “Pirate Isle”, and you can likely guess why. With the rocky, choppy waters of Razor Bay between it and the closest port city of Dalmere, Pirate Isle was largely unaffected by the goings on in the Nortia mainland. There was war. Dragons, real dragons and their cults were waging bloody conflict with desperate rebel forces vying for freedom from the supremacy of the god-like, winged tyrants. But there was none of that on Pirate Isle. Only the rumors and stories carried by the crews of ships leaving Razor Bay toward ventures more profitable than war. The only conflicts were between drunken sailors heatedly exchanging boasts about their voyages in local taverns. Sometimes, there was even a fist fight.
And so in the early years of the Age of Dragons, I was a child being raised in a brothel on Pirate Isle. I was a foundling. My matron, who I would never call mother, had plucked me from a basket which floated ashore from the ocean- or so she said. Whatever the case, she took great care to ensure I knew that my birth parents didn’t want me. She went out of her way to remind me, especially when I was in trouble. Whoever my parents were, they had much better business to attend to than the raising of their daughter. And so it fell onto my woeful matron to rear me up. She said it was pity which tugged at her heart to open her home to me. This was, of course, utter horse shit. My matron had no pity. It was the prospect of a free laborer that she could not pass up.
My matron was the proprietor of one of the most prominent business establishments on the Isle. It was a tavern and brothel both. Sailors of every race, gender, and background came to pop corks and have their corks popped. My justification for living under that roof was cleaning up the messes. Making the beds. Mopping the ales, wines, vomit, and hosts of other strange substances off the floors. Emptying bedpans. Washing plates and mugs. No task was too menial for me.
If the matron was my adopted mother, the whores were my brothers and sisters. It was they who taught me the skills I really valued. They taught me how to laugh at a person’s jokes sincerely enough to make them think you like them. How to move unseen and unheard. How to pick every common lock I could conceivably find. How to read a person’s body language and see who they are instead of who they claim to be. They taught me the secret cant of the lowborn and the outcasts, so I could give someone a message while sounding like I was talking about the weather. All in all, I had access to a veritable horde of practical knowledge you would never find in a library or academy.
The other horde of knowledge was kept in my matron’s chambers. Her room was expressly off limits. Yet the skills my brothers and sisters at the brothel had taught me gave me what I needed to be able to slip in and explore without the matron ever catching wise. I’ll never forget the first time I silently cracked the lock on her door and peeked into that room.
It was a large room with a vaulted ceiling. There were two windows, one on each exterior wall, which viewed the shore outside and let in ample natural light during the day. In the far corner in between the windows was a bed with tall posts and a canopy of black fabric which draped down like branches of a willow tree. There was a writing desk that looked largely unused next to a series of bookshelves which spanned one entire wall. Only a few of the shelves contained books, however. Most of the shelves housed a very strange assortment of items. There were glass jars with assorted petrified limbs of various creatures I had never seen. On one shelf was a small glass case which contained a display of several different kinds of teeth.
I slinked into the room and slowly closed the door, holding the handle so that it would not make a sound. It was dusk, and my matron had left the brothel to go to her supplier in the market and arrange the next week’s orders of food, wine, ale, and such. My matron was cold, efficient, and not the kind to sit idly and chatter over tea, so I knew I had about an hour. Or three-quarters of an hour, to be safe.
With the door now closed, my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room. A boon from my elven heritage. With cat-like grace I tiptoed to the bookcases housing my matron's collection of interestingly weird things. My eyes were thirsty as they drank deep from the peculiar sights. In a glass jar with a translucent green liquid was some kind of preserved, severed hand. It had distinct teeth markings at the nub. Next to the jar, a twinkle caught my eye. A small, smooth stone caught a ray of the setting sun which poured from one of the windows. Even at first glance I could see its lustrous sheen and deep green color with marbling of orange which seemed to swim like seaweed in the ocean's current. My attention fixed on the stone and it was like there was nothing else in the room. It was mine. Something deep inside me knew this- something flowing through the marrow of my bones told me it belonged in my hand. I drew closer and reached for it.
Tap tap tap. The distinct rapping of someone's knuckles on the door startled me. Transfixed, I stood as still as I have ever stood. A moment passed in complete silence. It was a moment that felt like an eternity. My matron had returned early- far too early. I felt foolish as I realized I had never considered the possibility of her appointment in the market being cancelled or cut short. She was back, and she was going to punish me. She was going to make me scrub the floors until my hands fell off. She was going to skin me alive, bake me into a pie, and serve me to her patrons.
Tap tap. "Hello? Matron Galestine, are you there?" I recognized the voice of one of the barmaids. Of course, my matron wouldn't knock on her own door, she would just walk in. Even so, I worried. Had I made noise moving through the room? Was I so distracted by the curios on my matron's bookshelves that I didn't notice an errant creaky floorboard? Had I gasped in suprise and not realized it? Could she hear me breathing?
I held my breath.
The barmaid was going to open the door and see me, I just knew it. She was going to tell the matron I was here. I was as good as dead. No amount of menial chores would ever be enough to pay the debt of this transgression. What was I thinking? I'll be a pie tomorrow.
Soft footsteps moved away from the door and out of earshot. Of course, no one entered the matron's rooms. No one. I was safe. For now.
The smooth green pebble on the bookshelf drew my attention to it once again. It hummed imperceptibly. It felt familiar. It was the most beautiful pebble I had ever laid eyes upon. It was mine. I knew it in my bones. I picked up the stone and a feeling of satisfaction washed over me, like when you find the perfect spot to place a side table and suddenly the room's whole decorum seems complete. Also washing over me was the growing fear of my matron actually coming back early. I had to get out of that room.
Breathlessly I crept to the door, moving slowly and placing my feet where I estimate they had been before. I approached the door and silently pulled it open. A figure was at the door, looming over me. She looked down at me over her nose with an icy glare. It was my matron.
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Badger strummed an discordant triad on her lute and let it ring out into the night air. At some point during the story she had picked it back up. Naunet was hanging on to the side of the rowboat with both arms, her head resting upon them, staring at Badger with an unmoving gaze. She had been attentively silent as she drank the story in, like a flower soaking up the sun. A breeze caught the sails, tilting the galleon ever so slightly. Wooden planks on the ship's deck creaked in response.
"What happened next, miss Badger? You were just getting to the good part!" Naunet's face was bright with anticipation, almost like a child's.
"I'll get to it, I just need to stretch a bit." Badger leaned back and extended her arms and legs. She gave a groan as she tensed and twisted. With a sigh, she was back in her sitting position. She mindlessly plucked an ambient tune on her lute.
"What was the stone? Why did you feel like it belonged to you? What did your matron do to you? What..."
"Now now, all these questions and more will be answered in time," Badger chided gently with a wry smile. She had Naunet hooked on her story. She reasoned now was a good time to press for information.
"Your people's song, does it have lyrics?" Fluidly, and without thinking, Badger changed the tune she was playing into the familiar harmony from before.
"My people's song contains every lyric," Naunet corrected. Badger rolled her eyes. "Right, that part of the song. You know what I mean. Does that part of the song have any lyrics?" Naunet's face became unreadable. "Yes, but if I sing it to you..." Naunet's voice trailed off and for the first time since before the story began, and she looked away from Badger. Her eyes were distant. Badger could tell this was not a comfortable line of questioning.
"...you'll charm me into a watery death?" Badger plucked a note a little too loud and a little off pitch and bent the string, sending the note way out of tune. It was supposed to punctuate the joke. Naunet's face was no longer unreadable. She turned and looked into Badger's eyes. Her face was curved into a melancholy frown. For a moment, it was as if Naunet was going to say something.
The wood of the ship cracked and moaned like a crying child. A wave caressed the side of the galleon with a whispering splash.
"Sorry, that was insensitive," Badger offered sincerely.
"It's ok, miss Badger."
Badger could read her body language. Naunet was lying.