Chapter 3 - Team Games and Candles
“Oh marvelous. Good teeth, meaty neck. And look at those slick calves. Yes, I’ll take this one.”
The tourist chosen stepped to one side of the mildewy coliseum cellar. He joined three other tourists previously picked for the team. The flabby man inspecting and choosing them folded his arms with a golden-bracelet jangle, and glanced carelessly at his rival captain. In his prune-syrup voice, he went on, “Your turn. Shame you missed that catch. But, the market’s still ripe with good flesh.”
The rival captain - a muscled man with thick grey hair, shoulders lousy with moles, and a single-strap, laminated-parchment robe - glanced at his glamorous contemporary with contempt. He sized up the unpicked tourists. After a moment he jabbed a muscled finger at a boney tourist in sackcloth at the back. “You there, are you a warrior?” asked the old captain. The sackcloth tourist nodded. “Then join my team. Win your glory,” The sackcloth tourist stepped beside his new team.
Mr. Grey stood among the still-unchosen tourists. He looked past the captains, at the stone stairs leading from the sunken crypt. Woolen balls soaked in stagnant puddles near the base of the steps. A murky lime light filtered faintly from some upper opening of sky, and it gleamed off the rugged rectangular slabs. Along with it came a low, wet growl; like a gargling smoker. It reminded Mr. Grey of the dragon engines churning the cafeteria pool water, with greater enormity. He wondered for the dozenth time what cruel sport awaited them in the arena.
Mr. Grey returned to the picking. Oddly enough, though Mr. Grey had no stake in the tournament’s outcome, and though clueless to the contest’s nature, he found himself - when either team captain took their turn selecting - wanting to be chosen next. At the least, he wished not to be chosen last.
The corpulent captain shook his head at the other’s choice; the golden chain he wore slid across his glistening sternum. “I’ll tell you,” he began in an aside to his rival, “you won’t have a real team if you keep to such selecting. A good choice is like a fine cowsowhorse: thick about the trunk, big in the head, pliant.”
The older captain reached up, took a handful of the wide net draped overhead, tangled his fingers in its scratchy cords, and let his arm dangle. The net stretched; the torch behind it threw patchwork shadows over the unchosen. The older captain lifted a leg, hooked the bottom rung of a wooden stool on his toe, dragged the stool over the rough stone with a rattle and scrape, set his foot atop, and leaned creakily. He looked the part of grizzled captain; not of a tourist-prison tournament team, but of storied war galley, leaning with a hand on the rigging and a foot on the gunnels. He scanned the room with a cool eye: the prisoners, the rusted basins of egg-smelling washing water, the wool balls vainly trying to mop the pooling water.
With gravel, the older captain said, “It’s your pick.”
The plump captain laughed at his senior’s display; his golden earrings jangled. “So it is! Hmm, let me see. No, too small in the hands. And not this one. Just look at that forehead; skull thin as parchment. Ahhh, but see this fellow here. Skin like sandal leather! I’ll have him.”
The man’s fingers had stopped their roving over Tom. Tom looked sideways at Mr. Grey. Mr. Grey said softly, “He did choose you, Tom.”
Tom smiled as if it were no matter. He went to stand with the other burly members of his new group.
The gold-toting captain again jingled with mirth. “Another quality piece to my collection! You’ll be finished in tocks, if you keep to this lopsided farce.”
The other tightened his grip on the net, and narrowed his eyes. Spit flew from his lips as he pointed and said, “You’re a warrior. Get over here!”
The old captain’s finger had landed on Mr. Grey.
Mr. Grey stepped from the group. He thought the old captain’s wiry team would probably prove less able in anything physical than the group of muscular, heavy men the gilded captain chose. But then, Mr. Grey knew nothing of the contest. He was just glad to have his picking done. He nearly stumbled over one of the wet wool balls as he joined his team.
At length, the paunchy captain chose another tourist of muscle. It came back to Mr. Grey’s captain. The old man had been looking over his team. His eyes had found those of Mr. Grey, and followed the gaze to the unchosen faces. Moving on that track, the old man’s eyes settled on the arms-crossed, sunflower-eye-robed shape of Honeydew. She tapped her foot in rapid splashing on the wet stone. The old captain wasted no time. “I’ll give that’un a chance at laurels,” he said, pointing to Honeydew.
Honeydew looked dubiously at the grizzled captain’s skinny team. Mr. Grey performed a not-quite-reassuring nod. She shrugged and joined them.
While the bulky captain made his next choice, Honeydew leaned in close to Mr. Grey. She said, “This works. You and I focus on hurting Tom. He’ll get to the infirmary first, and have time to grab his mallet.”
Mr. Grey said nothing. He glanced at Tom, and reached for the familiar casing of his ticker. Honeydew took his silence as agreement.
Pointed finger by pointed finger, the captains split the remaining tourists into two teams. All the while the close, monstrous gargle of the dragon engine built and built in Mr. Grey’s ears. He tried picturing the event. Perhaps they’d be riding a giant steam-fish, or swimming through artificial rapids?
When the patchwork shadows of the net fell on the last two tourists - a wrinkled octogenarian knitting a scarf, and a grimy Starharbor orphan - Mr. Grey’s captain turned to the other. He said, “You take ‘em. Both,” . He said it in a growl, while looking over his own team approvingly. It was an obvious attempt to spare someone’s being last-chosen.
“Trying to pass the low stock on me, eh?” asked the jingly captain. “Weaken my picked whole?”
“Every player’s a boon. Just take them.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Putting you at such a disadvantage. But… if you’re insisting.”
The octogenarian and orphan joined Tom on the beefy side. The teams were set. Immediately, Mr. Grey’s captain spun his forefinger through the air. Mr. Grey’s team filtered toward the lime lit stair and the gurgling dragon engine.
Tom suddenly spoke from the back. “No, I’m on Mr. Grey’s team,” Every face turned as one; turned to stare at Tom. He stepped boldly between the two groups.
Tom’s captain jiggled with cheer. “That won’t do my good fellow. Come, step back in line.” He reached a hand to Tom’s shoulder; Tom’s scowl stopped him short. The captain crossed his arms and pouted falsely. “This isn’t fair. I won’t have my team disadvantaged.”
Mr. Grey opened his mouth to say that ‘everything would be alright’, and to tell Tom that he should ‘rejoin his own team’, when the old captain’s mole-coated palm settled on Mr. Grey’s shoulder. “It’s alright lad,” he said. “The fishes picked the winner and the loser eons ago. Join your friend.” He gave Mr. Grey a light shove towards Tom.
Mr. Grey’s eyes searched for Honeydew’s. He tried - tried - filling them with a look of resigned apology. He caught the old captain’s eyes instead. He felt it indecorous to decline the well-intended gesture. He said, “Thank you, sir.”
Mr. Grey joined Tom on the other team. His new captain laughed again, and said, “The more the merrier. Now can we pass all this pre-game drama?”
But as the old captain stomped once more to the stairs and the ominous gurgle, Honeydew stayed. Her impatience reached its limit. In a growl she asked, “Will someone please say what we’ve been picked for?”
The older captain dropped back down the first step, lifted one of the dripping woolen spheres from a murky puddle, tucked it in a grey-haired armpit, and answered, “Whirlpool Coliseum Dodgeball.”
“Let those who are about to play have a clean, fair match. Let there be no under-girdle strikes. Let there be no bandying that the ball brushed only the brim of the robe, when it be plain to all present that the ball did bounce the body. And let The Glory Days Rain-Fish Detainment and Entertainment Facility Whirlpool Coliseum Dodgeball Tournament… begin!”
Instantly after the announcer’s last word, metal trumpets blasted. The latch fastening Mr. Grey’s log raft to the marble coliseum wall came unbuckled. Mr. Grey set a leg and heel stiff on the back floor of the hollowed log. He steadied himself as the log lurched forward. It veered at an angle. Veered; into a swirling, spraying, dragon-engine-wailing whirlpool.
Across the broad, circular floor of the coliseum spun a maelstrom. The water ran with glass translucence. Mr. Grey fought for balance on the log; crystal waves smashed his sides, and the crystal foam sprayed in his eyes. The other members of his team managed their own logs with varying success. Some crouched low like pouncing cats, rocking in time with their crafts, scooping up heavy woolen dodgeballs floating in the water. Some struggled like Mr. Grey. Some of the tallest and heaviest on his team fell in the swirl the moment their buckles loosed. The trumpets rang out their disqualifications.
Mr. Grey saw Tom a few logs ahead in the spin. The cloud zeppelins on his robe skimmed over the clear water. He rode his log with strong, controlled swaying; as though he’d been born at sea, nursed atop driftwood by the rocking waves. Tom lined up a throw with his right hand, and let fly a soaked ball with his left. The missile soared across the whirl’s frothy eye. It smacked wetly against a foe’s chest, and knocked the man into the drink with a splash.
Tom pumped an elbow in triumph. He turned and saw Mr. Grey swirling behind. Tom gave Mr. Grey an encouraging thumb, then a sudden warning cry. Mr. Grey looked and saw a wet bell flying at him. He scissor-crouched just under its flight. The dodge unbalanced him and he fought for control, while the dripping wool sphere soared past. It smacked into one of his teammates, a big woman. She tumbled from her log with an upheaving splash, and the soldiers crowding the stands jeered at Mr. Grey.
“The Grey one’s playing for the other side!”
“Disrespectful to the fishes!”
“If you’re not going to catch balls thrown your way, at least pick one up and throw yourself!”
This last voice shouted above the dragon roar, with a familiar tone. Mr. Grey glanced at the stands while striking a crouched balance. In a pillared upper balcony lined with sculpted marble statues of shrimp, Diegeonary Ordus quivered. He paced back and forth along a silver-gilded balustrade. He looked uncomfortable in his seat, and hot in his face. He screamed again. “Come on man. Don’t just squat there. Put some effort in!”
Mr. Grey - never one to ignore orders from a king’s official - scooped a wool ball drifting on the swell. He stood like a new deer on the wet log, and looked across the pool’s eye.
The opposite team’s lighter bodies gave them an advantage in this sport. They balanced on the logs easier, and only two had tumbled at the launch. Mr. Grey saw the opposition’s grizzled captain, manning his log with practiced feet, landing shots hither and thither. Mr. Grey looked farther back in the swirl. He saw Honeydew. She seemed to bloom from her log as a sunflower bouquet. She leveled her own wet ball. Her eyes settled, not on a player, but on the posturing and angry diegeonary Ordus, up on his podium.
Mr. Grey saw her pause for a tock. She considered tossing her ball at the soldier. The tock passed, and Honeydew had to use her missile to block a throw from Tom. She turned her wrath back on the game. She retaliated with her own hurl. Tom swayed aside.
At this point, Mr. Grey’s log had drifted nearer Tom. Mr. Grey raised his voice over the dragon engine. “Wasn’t that throw a bit hard?”
Tom roared back at him. “That’s our idea! Don’t just float around the pool; engage in the game!”
Tom and Honeydew hurled balls back and forth. They hurled at each other, they hurled at other players. They matched their captains, and the soldiers in the stands, for rallying cries.
Mr. Grey weighed the cold, wet wool in his still-dry, grey fingers. Once he brought the dripping shot up to his shoulder. He readied a toss. But Mr. Grey’s fat team captain knocked the target into the frothing crystal first. He lifted his ball again a moment later. But his new target - a middle-aged woman in a chicken-wing robe with enormous ankles - was just keeping above water. She wheeled her arms in arcs of wrinkled, flapping skin. The shot felt unsportsmanlike, and Mr. Grey held back. Tom did not hold back. The wool connected; the waves rolled over the ankle-lady.
Water and tocks churned together under the broad, metal, dragon-engine-driven paddles. What had been two-dozen-odd ballers for both teams, became twelve for the opposite side, half a dozen for Mr. Grey’s. Tom, Honeydew, and Mr. Grey remained; unstruck from their logs, counter to Honeydew’s proposed plan. Not, however, from lack of enthusiasm by Tom and Honeydew. Both employed their full power in every throw. Their balls either tossed players from logs, or cracked out on the arena’s marble.
Mr. Grey had yet to throw his first ball, and the crowd of soldiers let him know.
“Is this guy even awake right now?”
“Come on pal, that waif was completely open!”
Even Tom yelled at Mr. Grey to, “Be a team player. You can’t afford to waffle. We’re losing, badly.”
Another voice from the stands yelled, “Just throw the ball already!” The last cry again came from Ordus. Mr. Grey interpreted the scream as a lawful command. Without considering friend from foe, Mr. Grey picked the first player he saw, dialed back his arm, and pitching-machine-hurled the wet, woolen globe.
The ball whizzed across the whirlpool’s eye.
It struck an opponent. The grey-haired captain with the laminated-parchment robe took the blow on his moley shoulder. The old man triple spun in the air while his log sailed from underneath. Then he dropped into the waves.
Mr. Grey felt bad as he recovered his stiff balance. The old captain had treated him kindly. But the clapping from the stands lifted Mr. Grey’s spirits. He turned to Tom, hoping for a sign of approval.
Tom’s back faced Mr. Grey. Mr. Grey saw Tom duck. Mr. Grey just had time to see a dark, round, wet, wooly shape rocket over Tom’s head. The shape widened, filling his vision, and smacked hard into Mr. Grey’s face.
Mr. Grey sank like a statue.
In the dizzy-spin and half-drowning which followed, Mr. Grey’s senses fed him only small fragments. He heard the announcer call it a rough shot. A moment after he felt himself dragged from the pool. His eyes flooded, for a tock, with rubies. Blood, he thought at first. Then, that he’d somehow fallen into a Wine Medo pond. Then he realized it was only a cardinal-feather gauze wrapping his forehead.
Mr. Grey thought, ‘at least this worked with Honeydew’s grand scheme’. He felt dizzy. Two soldiers rolled him onto a stretcher and carried him from the arena. He would try his best, he decided, to get their things from the infirmary.
Just as he passed from the open stands, into a dark tunnel leading from the coliseum, he heard a rising commotion. As of warriors, locked in shouldery combat. He heard, also, the distinct wheeze of bagpipes.
“Fight on my fellows; you pilgrims and day-trippers! Fight to see the sights! Fight to smell the smells! Fight fast, for soon we must fly. And most important; fight for Jodee Coats! Yeepyeepyoopyoopyoop!”
A young man’s deep, sourceless voice reached Mr. Grey through his delirium. He felt sure the last utterance had been garbled by his bandaged head. Mr. Grey lifted the feather dressing off his eyes and squinted.
The Glory Days Rain-Fish Detainment and Entertainment Facility overflowed; not with water, but wild brawling. In every ankle-deep street; around every moss-covered, half-sunken fish statue; on the pebbled quarry paths high above; tourists from outside the facility battled the Glorious Defense Force. The Defense Force soldiers fought with fist and foot. As Honeydew had said, they’d left their guns behind during the dodgeball tournament. The tourists wielded a diverse array of weapons: wooden mallets, metal clubs, boney shoulders. They used these liberally against the facility defenders.
Among both ranks, men and women brandished enchanting instruments in battle. Mr. Grey had expected trumpets for the soldiers, but most of them carried small leather drums. They used handfuls of pebbled and quick battle-beats to trip tourists by enchanting laces into knots. The tourists, on the other hand, carried instruments of music varied as their instruments of war: fiddles, flutes, trumpets, tubas, oboes, kotos, and one tourist in a mistletoe robe with a torso-harnessed drum-kit. The players enchanted their foes with sand in the eyes, or soreness in the throat, or hangnails. Over all the diverse, tumbling strains, Mr. Grey once more heard - distinctly - the high-pitched bagpipe wheeze.
Mr. Grey’s litter-bearers had dropped him when they saw the attacking tourists. Now Mr. Grey lay alone on his stretcher in the midst of the bustle in a flooded street; soaking his lower robe. Mr. Grey palmed himself to a rigid stand with the help of a splintery driftwood wall. He swayed. He stabilized his spinning head with a wet hand. He looked along the flooded street for Honeydew or Tom. He saw neither.
Mr. Grey decided to go to the infirmary. That was Honeydew’s scheme. That was his reason for going, he told himself. No other.
He set his feet splashing along the flooded paths between quarry buildings. He stumbled - genuinely stumbled, not ‘introduced an asynchronous half-step into his walking rhythm’ - across the open spaces. The tumult of battle and enchantment rolled past like ripples from the prow of a sailing ship. Soldier and tourist alike ignored Mr. Grey like a teetering drunk. The screaming and smacking of battle rubbed against his ear, but the fighters let Mr. Grey slip through. Just ahead, a mass of screaming tourists threw themselves against an organized line of soldiers formed into a wall of bracers and breastplates. Mr. Grey lurched at precisely the right moment, and flanking-maneuvered around the formation. He glided, wraithlike, through the battle, neither affecting nor being affected by its participants. The same as he’d glided, wraithlike, through the Tockwork Crags; with less control.
In this way he reached the infirmary.
Mr. Grey felt instinctual, animal, in his actions. He sank like an old hound against the inconspicuous building’s firm stone. He’d found walking somehow taxing. He breathed heavily through his nose, like a snorting bull, against the wall. Two tourists - a brother and sister, one wearing a deerskin robe, the other one of palm leaves - charged past Mr. Grey. He opened his mouth to say, “After you, by all means.” They chimed through the beaded infirmary threshold without looking at him; perhaps because Mr. Grey lay like a chameleon against the wall’s dull stones.
Mr. Grey waited courteously while the pair went alone inside the squat structure; in case they needed privacy with an attending physician. Disjointed enchantments resounded off the rough quarry walls, and the noisy crash of shoulders and armor joined the noisy crash of water pouring over the sawtooth cliffs. He heard a cry from that same young voice. “Let us wet our socks, fellows! We must get gone fast! Yes yes yes yes yes. Before the soldiers find guns. HAHAHAHAHA!” Mr. Grey also heard, closer, the bagpipes’ skirl.
Mr. Grey actually had meant to wait. But his knees buckled, and his vision swirled like a bubble’s membrane, and the song and smash of battle crept closer with each ticker tock in his pocket. The two who’d gone in ahead were probably attackers, Mr. Grey belatedly realized, who’d entered the infirmary as looters rather than patients. With these ideas driving him, Mr. Grey stumbled through the beaded threshold.
Mr. Grey passed down a zigzag, narrow hallway, lined in animal skins and frescoes of human anatomy. In delirium he passed by the infirmary office door. He passed through a further set of interior beads. Mr. Grey unintentionally entered the warehouse, the same Honeydew had schemed to infiltrate. The building must’ve been of non-Euclidean architecture. From the outside it had been a square, single-story construction of stone. But inside, the warehouse ceiling rose into darkness, high past the scant flickering light of the room’s candles.
Crates and barrels rose like a forest around Mr. Grey; tall, thin, uneven stacks. Mr. Grey tried placing his palm on these to steady his stumbling gait. But the towers of quarry supplies, hardcotton rations, and tourist-luggage teetered at the faintest touch. He stumbled on, unaided, through the dark, crooked woods.
Mr. Grey tripped and nearly tumbled full over when his foot met some unseen, soft mound on the floor. He barely caught himself against a gaunt tower of suitcases, which wobbled. Mr. Grey plucked the nearest half-melted candle from the top of a suitcase, and brought it lower to the floor.
Two bodies lay sprawled across the rough tile. They were the looters who’d run in before. He saw they still existed from the way their breath stirred the dust. The bright cherry marks on their skulls showed they’d been bludgeoned. Also on the floor, against one nearby stack, he saw more familiar shapes: Tom’s mallet, his violin, and the rest of their luggage.
From outside - down the crooked hallway and through the warehouse woods - came the clash of battle and bagpipes. But both were drowned by a sharp, ringing blast in Mr. Grey’s ears. He turned unsteadily.
Ordus strutted from behind a stack. A victory march blared off his seashell horn. His feet twisted in a military about-face to Mr. Grey. He blew a last, loud peal, stopped next to Mr. Grey’s belongings, and sheathed the trumpet across his back, next to his gun. The marching tune faded, but a triumphant look lingered in his flushed cheeks, clenched fists, and savagely-happy eyes.
Ordus crossed his arms, and said, “Well… well… well. So you thought I didn’t know your plan? Stupid! The Sun Fish sees all, knows all. I read his omens in the condensation on my trumpet’s bell. I knew you’d come looking for these.” He jerked his head toward the violin and mallet. “I’ve caught you in crimes against the king. No more pretending you’re just some tourist grunt. You’re going to tell me exactly what Jodee’s planning.”
“That’s not quite… oh, pardon me,” said Mr. Grey. He waited a tock for the forest of stacked crates to stop swaying, then went on. “I meant to say this. Yes, technically speaking, I did come for the violin. And the rest of our luggage. But-”
“From the statue’s mouth! Are you Jodee’s personal grand enchanter then? I bet you and Jodee think you’ve got the Clam Fish on your side. You think your fiddle’s blessed against wrong notes, don’t you? Well I’ve got news for you buddy; that isn’t even close to true. If you think any of the great Fish would help a criminal - a traitor! - you’re lying in your own ear.”
“Please… I just don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not working with Jodee. And I don’t know much about clams.”
“Yeah right. Rat-hair lady spilled everything. You and Jodee go way back. And don’t pretend you don’t know that the Clam Fish blesses fiddle players particularly. Do you think I’m stupid?”
Ordus stepped closer. To Mr. Grey, the diegeonary seemed to reel his flushed face back and forth like a duck. The distant bagpipe drone filled Mr. Grey’s brain. He felt his body sway; he could not keep steady. From outside, there came once more the young man’s cry. “Time to get us gone; they’re taking the armory. The guns are coming!”
Ordus smirked. He reached into a pouch, threw a clatter of pebbles on the floor, and redrew the trumpet from its holster. Mr. Grey wondered why he’d stowed it in the first place. Ordus said, “Last chance buddy. I don’t want to enchant on you, but I will if I need to.”
Mr. Grey opened his mouth. But saying words seemed hard; or, for that matter, thinking them into sentences.
Ordus shook his head. “So be it,” he said. The angry, armored soldier brought the trumpet to his lips.
Suddenly, the pipes that had been droning louder and louder with each tock, stopped. A scurry sounded behind Ordus. The Diegeonary and Mr. Grey turned. A shape sprung around one of the teetering stacks. It rushed and whacked Ordus with a set of bronze bagpipes. The instrument let out a single wheeze. Ordus collapsed in a heap.
Mr. Grey saw, standing before him… Well, it must have been a dizzy-vision! A man, with a bronze breastplate matching his bagpipes, a ragged robe in the single-strap style, and in place of a head, a candle. The man had no eyes or mouth or face at all. Just a partially-melted, unlit, wax candle, where a head ought to go. Mr. Grey took a shaky step back. Just then, Honeydew and Tom rushed in behind the strange man.
“No time to explain,” said Tom in quick growl; like a tram racing through a gravel canal. “He’s on the attacker’s side. He’ll help us break out.”
Honeydew clicked her agreement, and added, “Let’s get gone.”
Mr. Grey raised a finger. He wanted to suggest that these attacking tourists - and the man with a candle for a head - didn’t seem to be on the law’s side; given they’d just assaulted a military outpost and bludgeoned a king’s soldier unconscious. His eyes caught, however, the dry tip of the raised, grey digit. The room closed to a dark tunnel around that little finger.
Mr. Grey didn’t feel a thing when his body hit the hard tile floor.