Chapter 4 - Oracle
Mr. Grey heard a voice; muffled through the bandage bundling his head. “So basically, all of the tourists escaped; dispersed through the land. I’d say that’s success; new potential insurgents, all over Prestige. Woohoo woohoo hah!”
The strange signoff and enthusiasm of the deep voice, broken by a teenager’s squeaks, sounded familiar. Mr. Grey placed it as the same voice he’d heard shouting over the quarry battle din. Mr. Grey turned his head in the voice’s direction. To no effect - the bandages plunged his vision in ink.
Not quite to no effect. Behind him Honeydew said, “Hold still. Whoever wrapped you made it tighter than a miser’s purse strings.” She twisted his head forward.
Mr. Grey said, “Sorry.” He’d heard anger in her voice. He held off saying all he wanted. There might be, in the sightless space, any number of listening strangers.
Mr. Grey felt something hairy rub his leg, and a huge beast’s hot breath buffet his face. Mr. Grey held his own. He waited until the creature moved off with muffled stomps. He asked, “Where exactly are we?”
The young voice answered. “You discombobulated? No surprise in that. I heard you got nailed. During the dodgeball event. Throw them hard enough, and those things are rocks. That’s what I’ve heard anyway. I’ve never thrown one.”
Honeydew yanked the bandages. Mr. Grey said, “I wasn’t conscious of it.”
“Will we be stuck here long?” asked Honeydew.
“Not comfortable?” asked the young man.
“No.”
“It’s got something though. Like, a rugged feel. The great outdoors, but inside!”
“Except for stuffy air, and grime, and wild animals. Otherwise sure, it’s got something,” Honeydew jerked Mr. Grey’s head while attacking a knot in the bandages. The headwrap cut off Mr. Grey’s sense of smell, but each mouthful of air seemed somehow filthier after her description. He took shallow breaths.
“Once that bright fish gets closer, we’ll make our next move. You could come along.”
Honeydew clicked as an auditory shrug.Mr. Grey heard a deep, rumbly clearing of a nearby throat, followed by Tom’s voice. “We’d be happy to come with.”
Mr. Grey hastened to add, “After a short conference. That’s, if you don’t mind?” Mr. Grey tried to hint at a desire for privacy. Whatever huge beast had breathed on Mr. Grey circled in the space. He heard its heavy footfalls, doubly muffled by the bandages and what sounded like a padded floor. Mr. Grey wanted out of that space; with its unseen beast, and its unknown occupants. He wanted a moment alone with Honeydew. To reassure her he’d not taken the hard blow personally; in fact, to say how light his injuries seemed, especially since they’d forwarded her infirmary scheme; even if, in the end, they’d only escaped with rebellious help.
Mr. Grey hinted, it seemed, with too much subtlety. The young man remained. He said, “Trust me, you wanna come with. Jodee’s, like, awesome. For us wanderers, she cracked open Glory Days.”
“I could tell you weren’t from here,” said Mr. Grey.
“Did the accent betray me?”
“Well, it’s just like Tom’s.” Mr. Grey heard a congested grunt of acknowledgement. He went on, “Can I ask about Jodee? About what she’s done?”
“How have you not heard? ‘The Legend of Jodee Coats’?”
Mr. Grey blindly braced.
The young man went on. “A proud, unruly daughter. Condemned to gift shops, to look without touch, to living not-existing; while only a kid. In great Glory Days; under gun and guard and fish; she came, a tourist. But she dreamed greatly: the end of the Odormoats, entering ruins, touching artifacts. ‘Jodee Coats: Liberator’, revealer of lore! Partisan Leader! When she finishes her quest, we shall mingle, free! Hoorah hoorah YAY!”
The deep, young voice concluded with an incongruous, childish shriek. Honeydew had stopped for the story. She resumed unwrapping after an uncaring click. Mr. Grey said, “Well that’s a little clearer. So she’s looting tombs? For ancient relics?”
“No no no no no, Jodee wants open bubbles! She opened Panache; broke the Defense Force. Tourists mingle with locals. Next will be Prestige,” Mr. Grey heard a rustle of robe, as of the young man swinging his arm. “Then Antiquity, then Pluck.”
“Isn’t that dangerous though? Breaking Odormoats. Mixing stranger smells. What of the feral odors?”
“Jodee says that’s a king’s lie. I believe in her. I’ve stood next to her, and her smell never bit me.”
Mr. Grey said, “If you’re absolutely sure…” Honeydew had, by this point, wrestled enough wrap away from his ears that Mr. Grey heard the young man’s enthusiasm, even if he couldn’t see the waving hands and awestruck face. The man’s illicit motives fazed Mr. Grey, but not as much as the new sounds he heard. Mr. Grey distinguished a forceful, snorting breath. It must have belonged to the prowling, monstrous creature. Not even creature - creature-s, Mr. Grey realized. Sets of what must have been enormous lungs huffed air in and out from several sides. Mr. Grey filled the blackness before his eyes with images of a damp, gloomy cave; lousy with bears.
“If there’s nothing else,” added Mr. Grey, not in his steadiest voice.
Honeydew pulled his head to one side then the other. She said, “I’m trying, okay? Do it yourself if you think it’s faster.”
“Oh sorry I meant: nothing with Jodee’s story.”
“There’s tons and tons else!” cut in the young man. His voice came from the void directly before Mr. Grey. Soft and warm hands suddenly enfolded Mr. Grey’s dry right one. He left it in their grasp out of courtesy. The young man carried on, gripping Mr. Grey’s fingers for emphasis. “You just need to be convinced, like lots of tourists. That’s why we came here. For Jodee’s Casus Belli!”
“What’s Casus Belli?” asked Tom.
“A right to make war,” the other three answered in unison: Honeydew quickly, Mr. Grey hesitantly, the young man with zeal.
Mr. Grey asked, “You need a legal decree?” An icy centipede scaled his vertebrae; lumbar to cervical. A fear that these partisans had taken Honeydew, Tom, and himself for forced labor. That Mr. Grey would be pressed to file their legal forms.
“No no no no no,” the young man’s voice reassured him, rubbing his grey fingers. “There’s easier ways. Prestige has a great, wise seer; a temple nearby. We came here to ask: ‘Where is found the Golden Lure?’”
The young man waited for someone to ask, ‘what is the Golden Lure’. Tom obliged. The Young man answered, “A gift from the great fishes; it makes kings and queens. Jodee will be queen; Candlehead himself serves her!”
The young man waited for someone to ask, ‘who is Candlehead’. Mr. Grey felt he could guess. Mr. Grey’s fingers hurt in the young man’s hopeful grip, however, so Mr. grey obliged.
The Young man answered; not loosening his grip on Mr. Grey’s hand, but squeezing tighter and tighter as he spoke. His voice oozed with awe as he told them of the great Candlehead; an enchanter of legend, here in Glory Days. Some called him demifish, son of Blob Fish. Others said the blobfish cursed him, but granted power over music. One story told how Candlehead had earned his bronze Bagpipes - which played without blowing - by winning them off a pipkin stoat in a vow of silence contest. The young man said he couldn’t split truth from legend. But if even half or a quarter were true, Candlehead surpassed every grand enchanter in Wine Medo.
Honeydew pulled sharply as the young man threw careless fractions. The young man twisted Mr. Grey’s fingers. Mr. Grey said, “That’s fascinating,” in his usual un-fascinated tone. He added, “But now if there’s nothing else…”
Mr. Grey stretched his fingers as the young man’s hands loosed his own. He heard a sulky note enter the impassioned voice. “You should see Jodee. If you did you’d be convinced. Join us on our quest,” he started again with sudden, renewed zeal. “Bring friends and fiddle; enchantment’s always helpful!”
“I’m not sure-” Mr. Grey began.
“At least to the temple, man,” interrupted the young man. He’d obviously become familiar with accents beyond Wine Medo; he grasped Mr. Grey’s words before the thought’s finish, as Tom never could. “It’s a great wonder, or so they told me. A proof of Sun Fish glory. Super worth seeing.”
Tom’s voice answered again, before Mr. Grey. “We’d be happy to come with.”
Mr. Grey tried to speak. Honeydew stopped him. She yelled, “OH FORGET IT!” She dug her fingers beneath the bandages lining his skull, took them in her fists, and yanked them apart.
The light flashed onto Mr. Grey’s eyes. He blinked in metronome time. Gradually, an image resolved itself. The young man stood in front. He wore a Wine Medo robe; a bunched lower half patterned in leaves, with two vines rising like suspenders to his shoulders, blooming in rose flowers. The youth held one hand raised against his chest in a solemn fist, clutching a careworn, cloth visa. In the far corners of the boxy room, Mr. Grey saw the beasts he’d heard lumbering. They stood in piles of straw.
They were cowsowhorses. Mr. Grey was in a barn.
Honeydew and Tom walked to either side of Mr. Grey. Mr. Grey stood. While holding visa to chest, the young fellow, to Mr. Grey’s surprise, reached out his other arm. He offered Mr. Grey a proper, courteous handshake, and said, “Just call me Nuggets.”
Roses and Honeysuckle bloomed stubbornly from the jagged crags lining a steep path cobbled in pizza plates. Honeydew veered from the group, reaped a flower near the road’s edge, and plucked its petals while she loped easily from baking-stone to baking-stone.
Tom had been swinging his head from side to side with a broad smile - the better to catch every bloom on the bright mountain road - and taking many stones at a stride. Now Tom glowered at Honeydew. Globes of sweat rolled down his face, brought there by the slope and the bright Sun Fish.
Mr. Grey came last and struggled most. His regular pace set his feet oddly on the erratically-shaped stones. As often as he trod stone he stepped on the mortar between, which clutched at his shoes’ leather soles.
Nuggets voices drifted back to Mr. Grey. “The oracle knows his fish! Yes yes yes yes yes, the oracle knows. Isn’t that right, Candlehead!”
Mr. Grey, while pulling shoe from sticky mortar, looked up. Ahead of Tom and Honeydew on the mountain road, Jodee’s partisans hiked in a clique. Nuggets bounced around the group in excited circles. And at their center strode the legend himself. Candlehead.
Candlehead did not answer Nuggets’ question. His candle towered over the partisans’ heads, and his bagpipes glinted in the bright fish light. Even the other idlers on the path to the temple - grandfathers on a refreshing walk, or father/son pairs enjoying the broad cotton country vista from the mountain - stopped to admire the passage of Candlehead and Co.
Honeydew said, “This oracle sounds more Wisdom than a seer. Or a historian. Not someone needing a whole temple.” She gestured higher with her half-plucked flower. Above them on the mountain slope (though all lay under the bubble dome) the Sun Fish’s rays shone off of a structure. The blind glare disguised the building’s architecture.
Another partisan, wearing the single-shouldered, local robe style, said, “You’ll see soon enough. The oracle speaks with the voice of the fish! It’s way more than lecturing. The oracle contemplates questions of philosophy. It tells truths; like if crops should be harvested to the tune of trumpet marches or flute melodies; Sun Fish song or Rain Fish song.”
Honeydew tore a handful of petals from her flower; Tom glared. “Why do you people over-explain?” she asked. “Just say the oracle gives advice.”
“How would you know if it wasn’t explained?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You’d be out of the loop! You wouldn’t know about the fish, or the bubbles, or the food we eat, or the names of rivers and mountains, or…”
“Do those matter?” asked Honeydew.
Mr. Grey increased his step rate. He pulled himself free of enough mortar lines to catch up with Tom. He said, “Should we be worried? About traveling with them?” He nodded at the partisans, then twitched his head to either side, indicating other pilgrims on the temple road.
Tom dropped the scowl he held on Honeydew. He shouted, “Hey Mr. Nuggets. Will the soldiers be searching? Hunting partisans?”
Mr. Grey stared at Tom with more-than-usually-cold eyes. “Ah well, thank you Tom. That was meant in confidence.” He stumbled as his shoes caught on mortar.
Nuggets said, “It’s a local holiday, is what I was told. One soldiers don’t work. Master and Novice Era. See the celebrants?”
Nuggets jumped gayly around his group and waved at the locals. Some gave him odd looks. One pair - a thin-haired father and his gangly teen son - noticed neither Nuggets nor Candlehead. As Mr. Grey trudged by he overheard their conversation.
“Will I still see the Oracle today, father? I have been looking forward to the great temple, to the ceremonies we’ll witness.”
“I’m sorry, son. Your robes have been badly soiled. From when you played in the flowers. And, as you know, the Oracle’s guard will not let pass those who cannot wear their Sun-Fish-best.”
“Yes father, I do know. How disappointed I am.”
Candlehead and the partisans moved ahead. Mr. Grey dusted his robes as he tried to keep up. He felt for the young teen.
Honey plucked her flower and tossed its petals onto the plates. Tom watched each one fall with a growing frown. He noticed Mr. Grey struggling to keep pace, turned, and waited. He said, “Just walk on the pizza stones.”
“My stride won’t match the spacing. Can we pause a tock?” he asked, loud enough to reach Honeydew. She stalked back to them.
“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Mr. Grey. He stopped, took a breath through his nose, and looked distantly, over the craggy cliffside. Honeydew and Tom shared confused glances. Mr. Grey suddenly set his violin coffin down on a wide road stone. He unhitched the clasp and said, “Actually wait a tock. I’ll return shortly.”
Taking up violin and bow and checking his tuning on-the-go, Mr. Grey hurried back down the path. He reached the spot where the father and son commiserated on the son’s soiled robe. Mr. Grey edged slowly in on their vision and politely waved his bow. After getting their notice he introduced himself, showed them his violin, pulled 3 shiny pebbles from his purse, and enchanted the dirt off the teen’s robe with a quick stinger.
The pair gave abundant thanks. The son tried grasping Mr. Grey’s hand. Mr. Grey dismissed all with a stiff wave and a quick retreat. He returned to his friends. Tom clapped softly. Honeydew plucked two petals in time with a tapping toe.
Mr. Grey put his violin away and asked, “What was I saying?”
“No clue,” said Honeydew. “Let’s walk and talk.” she moved briskly along the cobbled plates. Mr. Grey struggled - and Tom sweated - to keep up.
“Something about your wonder,” said Tom.
“What I think is this: we should leave the partisans. They are breaking laws. Even if we aren’t, we’re just asking for trouble. To the Defense Force, we’re accessories.”
Honeydew popped a petal off her flower and let it fall. “That’s true. The strutting soldier with the trumpet won’t give us a pass.” Her fingers pulled another petal and released. “On the other hand, it seems a good way to deliver your visa warrant. It’s likely they’ll lead you to Jodee.”
Tom grimaced with each flower flake torn. After a moment, however, he tossed his chin to show agreement. He added, “This is adventure. Following fellow tourists; through the Glory Days. We’ll do more this way, than by sticking to standards. This way has drama.”
Mr. Grey said, “Drama there may be, that’s no justification. We should find a town. With an embassy. Explain our situation. They’ll give us cologne, process our visas, then we can tour normally.”
Tom stopped beneath a crag’s cool shade. He heaved air through his lips like a horse and darkened his handkerchief with brow sweat. He said, “Always avoiding… Why not just follow something? Just to have a quest.”
“Isn’t that selfish, entering local affairs? We’re not involved here, in a rural row. We don’t need an opinion.”
“You’re still afraid of offroads.”
“Reallytruly that’s not it.”
“That’s exactly it. You don’t want to pick a side; you want in-between. You can’t stick to stones. You keep treading the mortar, cause it’s your habit. But the stones toughen; they build your foot’s character.”
Honeydew and Mr. Grey looked at each other, then at Tom. Mr. Grey said, “That’s… not it either. But since you broach the topic; nothing’s always right, nothing’s always wrong. Nothing’s bad with in-between. Do you support her? Agree with Jodee?”
“That isn’t the point. Right or wrong her path has risk, and that’s important.”
“Risky for others. The Defense Force is safer.”
“And unexciting.”
“Look Tom, my point is; we’re not here for lures of gold. We’re on vacation, we’re here to relax. And fill out Jodee’s visa.”
As each spoke Honeydew had plucked her flower in turn; one petal for Mr. Grey, one for Tom, one for Mr. Grey… The stalk in her hand drooped naked. At Mr. Grey’s last remark, Tom snatched the stem. Other temple visitors looked over in expectation of a row. Honeydew seemed ready for one too; she hunched her shoulders threateningly.
Tom shook the wasted flower in her face. He said, “It’s disrespectful…” He shoved the thin stalk behind a cloud in his robe, stuffed the sweat-dark handkerchief behind another, and stormed off, thundering back down the mountain road.
Honeydew marched with hot-faced rage the opposite way, toward the temple. Mr. Grey followed. She click-snarled. “What’s his problem?”
“Maybe he’s especially protective of roses,” said Mr. Grey. “You don’t think he’s leaving for good? I didn’t mean to upset him…”
“He’ll find and follow us. Not a doubt. Never a moment’s peace!”
Mr. Grey waited while Honeydew’s anger hissed away between her teeth. Then he said, “I thought you didn’t support Ordus and the Glorious Defense Force. Not that I’m ungrateful. Good that we’re on the same side.”
“I don’t care who’s trail we track if we see the sights.”
“Our best bet’s to turn ourselves in at an embassy. We should vacation through the proper channels.”
With Honeydew’s breakneck pace, they’d caught suddenly up with Nuggets, Candlehead, and the other partisans. That party was just then passing a double set of glass temple-doors. A muscled woman in a jackal-skin robe stood guard outside. She looked the two of them over and said, “Ahhhh, they’ve been expecting you… You’re friends, that is. Not the oracle.”
“Ahhh, but see how that one makes the milk blanch,” said a face with curly hair and beard. “It shivers and curdles, shying from the pewter, yet trapped inside. As a captive runs from her guard’s lash, fleeing over the pebbled prison yard, and yet ever enclosed in bars of iron and walls of stone; just so does the milk lie in that bowl.”
“Excuse us, great oracle,” began Nuggets.
“But this one holds no better,” cut in another head; immediately adjacent to the first, and of like features. A chitinous insect leg - huge as the iron strut of a steam swan - descended from above. It touched delicately into the indicated bowl and stirred the milk inside. “Too shallow by a hound’s head. It splashes and spilleth-over at delicate prodding. This bowl be the least.”
“You cannot think the far left finer?” asked yet another beardy face, directly above the first two. “Such lumpy misshapenness is an insult to the Blob Fish. And we know better than to offend in that direction. Why, better to drink direct from the cowsowhorse’s udder!”
The eleven other bearded faces chortled together; the many heads of the great oracle, laughing at its own joke.
When the heads laughed they shook their collective, giant spider-thorax. The furry-thorax shook the rebar-legs, which shook the ship-rope web. And as the web moved, the tangled shadows, cast down by the Sun Fish light coming through the translucent walls of the glass temple; those shadows, also, shook.
The partisans bowed low. Their noses pressed against the smooth, clean floor of obsidian glass. The backs of their necks faced the enormous oracle spider. Even Candlehead’s wick touched the floor in supplication. Nuggets, however, stepped beneath the web. He held forth a gilded iron bowl and said, “Please great oracle, we bring you the sacred milk.”
The densely-packed, bearded faces turned on the young man with shushing and chiding.
“Hush mooncalf!”
“You insert yourself in private debate.”
“Would you have us choose bowls without care? Have us risk a choice disrespectful to the Sun Fish’s temple?”
The admonished Nuggets backwards-crawled, still holding the partisan’s milk-sacrifice. He set their bowl down, away from the row of other bowls arrayed beneath the oracle. Nuggets dropped with his company into spine-curled supplication. Mr. Grey heard the young man sob.
Mr. Grey and Honeydew waited apart from Jodee’s lot. Above them, as above the partisans, rope-thick spiderwebs draped the ceiling like silk. The shadows they cast crisscrossed Mr. Grey’s staring face. Every miniscule patch of the temple interior - every wall, ceiling, floor - was glass. Sun Fish rays refracted from surface to surface. The light dropped and split in rainbow components through the stained-glass, jigsaw roof. It landed and bounced off the volcanic-glass floor at wild angles. It struck the frescoed-glass walls, and the walls ignited at the rays’ touch. They glowed with glass pictures of ceremony and worship. A taffyglass orchestra dressed in uniform robes of ribbonglass cowsowhorse-hair, playing their reed pipes to the grassglass figure of a salmon. An old woman with stoneglass hair, bent over the brim of her goldglass trumpet, reading crystalglass condensation gathered on its bell. A huddle of crowglass cultists, sleeping in velvetglass chairs, with a table and a silverglass carafe at their center. All these scenes grabbed the light, used it, and tossed it back through the room. The Sun Fish rays ran pell-mell through the temple interior; they only stopped when they struck a web, a kneeling tourist, or the great oracle spider.
This rushing-about of the light made the room quite bright and hot.
Mr. grey felt the setting called for decorum and courtesy - felt indeed that every setting called for those behaviors. He held his tongue, as usual, but this time Honeydew joined him in silence. She seemed impressed.
The two listened while the heads of the giant oracle spider - taking the places where eyes went on a regular spider - argued.
“With this bowl, we petition the Blob Fish’s ire. He would add bad looks to our curses of fatness and sentience. And with this bowl, we inspire the Rain Fish’s jealousy. She will lay herself darkly on the bubble over the temple, and send frozen rain to shatter our web!”
“Do you imagine the Rain Fish dares strike the Sun Fish’s shrine?”
“We all know she’s temperamental.”
On this last point there was general consensus. “But how could any bowl show proper deference to each and every fish?” mused another beardy face.
The heads considered. Each one occasionally started up in a whispered thought, only to mutter, “No, that’s not it.” Nuggets and the other partisans, though still bowed, now passed sidelong looks to each other. Mr. Grey cricked his neck at an acute angle and read their upside-down expressions. Honeydew paid the partisans no mind. She’d taken out her pocket mirror, and was trying to capture a beam of light inside. A tiny click sounded in the room each time she snapped shut the clasp.
The heads debated. The partisans looked concerned. Honeydew clicked. Mr. Grey had resolved on entering the temple to engage with neither the debate, nor the partisans’ petition. But an idea struck and, as it were, roused him. He’d 60%-listened to the debating heads and their bowl dilemma. Now his sudden thought pressed forward. Insistently.
Mr. Grey said, “Excuse me, Mr. Oracle.” The curly-bearded heads turned on him as one, cheeks anger-ruddied, spider-thorax-hair bristling. Mr. Grey spoke through a lumped throat. “Have you considered a Wine Do?”
“Tell us, man of stone, what is this Wine Do?” asked one head. The spider pulled itself closer to Mr. Grey. He cooled under its impatient shadow.
“A wine…party… event… thing. The guests drink wine and tell stories. They’re voguish in Wine Medo.”
“We dispute milk. Not wine.” the heads clucked and tisked and chuckled.
“I thought it might be transferred,” added Mr. Grey. “The Wine Do is all about gestures and stories. Made and told at precise times, in precise order. Nuggets here, a Wine Medo local, he could give you the details.”
“I for sure could, Oracle,” said nuggets after choking back a sob. His head still faced the glass.
“If you translated it to milk, you could put the fish-worship emphasis on the ceremony, and take it off the bowl. All while still drinking quite elaborately.”
The thorax-shadow lingered motionless over the stiff grey man; around its edge, the eight leg-shadows undulated. The bearded faces stared at Mr. Grey.
“Elaborately…” muttered one head.
“Drinking…” added another with approval.
“Quite,” said a third conclusively.
The heads swayed. Mr. Grey, warming somehow in the cold shadow, said, “You might try with the partisans’ offered milk.” He waved at Nuggets. Nuggets happily took the offered bone, grabbed the bowl, and held it once more forth in petition.
The oracle’s shadow shifted off of Mr. Grey. Its legs made sounds like an upright bass set down too hard as they pulled the creature over the proffered milk bowl. One iron appendage reached and stirred the milk, while nuggets held the bowl. The two-dozen eyes in the dozen bearded faces, however, remained on Mr. Grey.
“You worship the Clam Fish,” said one head.
Mr. Grey answered, “I’ve heard that before, Mr. Oracle. I don’t have a special fondness for clams.”
“Ahhh, but your violin tells a separate story. It is the instrument of the Clam Fish.”
“I don’t know-”
A head scoffed. “Insightful in wine; ignorant in fish!”
An adjacent one added softly, “All enchantments come from the great fishes, man. Your preferred instrument tells which fish’s favor you receive. The Clam is the rest-loving fish with a pearl heart. The pride and the shame that holds men back from wrongdoing.”
Honeydew had listened raptly up to this point. Now a film covered her oil-eyes. She returned to snaring light beams in her pocket mirror. Another of the spider’s heads, noticing her distraction, spoke louder. “You may see the Clam Fish wherever there is patience. Picture this: a father sits quietly, listening. His knee-high girl, fresh from the schoolyard, babbles about her day. The father plies the selfish child with question upon question. He only interrupts with the barest snippets of hard-won wisdom. He sacrifices his road-worn feelings to let his child voice her developing ones. That is the Clam Fish.”
Honeydew didn’t listen, but Nuggets and the other partisans did. They angled their ears to the great spider and attended its words. Nuggets, unable to contain himself, spoke as one in rapture. “Please awesome Prophet; Oracle of the Sun Fish. Take our offered milk - chug the entire bowl - and bless us with knowledge too! We brought a question, super important. Where is found the Golden Lure?”
“You supplicants!” said one face with an angry wave of its beard. The many faces of the oracle-spider stared down from their web. The many faces of the partisans looked up from the dark glass floor. The angry head went on, “Have you no patience? You ask a second question before the first is answered.”
Mr. Grey raised a finger - to put in that he wasn’t a partisan - but another head took up the rant where the first stopped. “We haven’t need of the milk you proffer! Do you not see the bowls already arrayed? And the details of our Milk Do have yet to be arranged!”
“Of course, Oracle,” said Nuggets. He retreated, holding the bowl with one hand, using the other to wipe tears with his tiny visa cloth.
The stern, bearded faces wore uncomfortable, guilty expressions. One asked, “Why seek you, anyway, such ancient lore?”
Another head answered ahead of Nuggets and the partisans. “The ‘why’ is within their number. Look to the huddle’s center. Legendary Candlehead - our brother in Blob Fish curses - comes to further his Glory. And with such trivial questions!”
Candlehead, of course, did not speak. Nor did he move; he knelt, forward-facing, under the oracle’s taunts. Another bearded oracle head said, “Anyone from the bubble of Antiquity might have told you that the Golden Lure lies there - Hidden! - in The Lost City of Fountains, in the silty bed of the Great Fish’s Pond.”
The oracle-heads above smirked with self-satisfaction as they looked on the partisan-faces below, which suddenly frowned and shone with sweat. The partisans turned to Candlehead with new worry in their eyes; as though the oracle spider had given some derogatory remark on wicks.
Yet another head picked up the strain. “Yes, you see now. Our answer to your grey friend was not irrelevant. You see his value in your quest.”
Nuggets whirled around the partisan cluster’s edge, spilling milk from his bowl. He ran to Mr. Grey and Honeydew with a begging look on his streaked face. “Oh please Mr. Grey,” he began. “Can’t you see the sights with us? You’d be welcome to. Like I said before, players are always helpful. And you’re a blessed one, favored by a fish. We’d love to have you along, and Honeydew too. Also that guy, Tom!”
This got Honeydew’s attention. She snapped shut the hand mirror, empty of Sun Fish rays, and looked to Mr. Grey. The oracle pretended to debate about the new Milk Do plans, but its heads side-eyed him as well. All waited for his response.
Mr. Grey said, “Well… I’m not sure it’s my thing. And I don’t think I’m blessed by a fish…” He glanced at the cursed Candlehead.
“You can have the sacred milk!” said Nuggets. He held the bowl out to Mr. Grey, though most of the milk had spilled. The oracle heads grumbled.
“I’m not thirsty. Thank you anyway,” Mr. Grey took the bowl but didn’t drink.
Every set of eyes and every pair of ears waited on him. Nuggets repeated his request. “So will you join us, and look for the Golden Lure?”