Chapter 13 The Gold Thief of Lake Dumast
The Gold Thief of Lake Dumast
Day three hundred and one
Dear Diary,
We set sail about three days ago aboard Elena’s ship. Ferndock is now completely under the Elmswood Rebellion’s control, as are its surrounding hamlets and towns, thanks to the support of pissed-off farm folk.
In the wake of our success, we’ve begun to hear word from other rebels in hiding that they plan to launch assaults on their nearby townships as well. What have we started? I mourn daily for this loss, but at least with all the commotion I might be able to escape at some point.
Currently we are headed to the great city of Atlantis (the 2.
0 version, not the one that fell into the sea in a horrific catastrophe that was entirely not my fault).
Elena said that before Ferndock’s fall, she received word from Magnate Tritonia about uprisings from rioters and rebels popping up outside the city.
Brim is hopeful that they can take the city with the help of these rebels.
Ha! His optimism is pure stupidity at times.
Atlantis 2.0 is a fortress on the lake, and Magnate Tritonia is as sharp as my old wardrobe attire (I mourn for that as well), and even with Elena’s navy the rebels won’t stand a chance.
Anyways, we have to cross Lake Dumast first. Once we get there, my plan is to sneak off while everyone is preoccupied with not dying. Beni’s future goatdom and the opening of my future jam shop (name idea: Damn Good Jam Goods?) could be just weeks away!
Someone plopped down next to him where he’d laid out a blanket to sit against the deck railing of Elena’s master galleon, the Fierce Feline.
The ship itself was quite magnificent, built with rich cedar wood, strong sails, and copious amounts of windows.
The sky and lake stretched on into one seamless color of spirited sapphire blue, and, with the warm breeze and gentle swaying of the ship as it cut through the waves, he felt lulled into a drowsy sort of peace.
“Another conquest?” Bronwen asked, looking down at his journal.
He flipped the cover shut. “No. Just logging all the locations Benjamin and her kids are hitting. Atlantis 2.0 has always been Benjamin’s dream vacation, although I don’t think she’s liking the ship ride over.
” He looked to the she-goat on his right, who had stuck her head through the ship’s rails. “She gets seasick.”
Bronwen raised her eyebrows in surprise, as if she, too, noticed the green tint to the goat’s face. “Imagine that,” she drawled, before poking her fingers at the basket at his feet, where Baby Goats One and Two were snoozing beneath blankets. “And you still haven’t named these two?”
“I’m terrible at names,” he admitted.
Apparently he wasn’t the only one. Some within the rebellion had taken to calling themselves the Necromancer and His Dearly Dead, which sounded more like a punk bard group Morfran would have listened to during his teen years.
Hugh had tried to name them the Rebellion of Rebels, which of course everyone shot down, and Gueldefore had offered the name Knight Gueldefore and the Magnificent Four, but as to who the four in reference were, no one rightly knew.
Morfran guessed he was trying to broadcast himself as a knight and do so with a rhyme, which made Morfran think of the man as pompous as well as stupid, especially because you couldn’t rhyme fore with four.
Morfran, who inwardly just called them the Elmswood Rebels, publicly suggested they call themselves the Fools of the Forest, or the Dumb, Dubious Dwellers, to which many thought he was joking.
He wasn’t. Anyways, it was still up for debate.
“Let me hear what you have so far.” She leaned in, her long brown-gold braid falling forward over her shoulder. In the morning sunlight her eyes were a bright sea green, and he noticed her lashes were long and thick. He suddenly felt self-conscious.
“Hairy Henrietta.” He pointed to the brown-spotted female.
Bronwen nodded slowly but said nothing.
He pointed to the male. “Larkspur Larry.”
“Larkspur is usually purple,” she stated.
“Yes. And?”
“This goat is pure white.”
“Fine!” He tossed his hands in the air. “You try naming them.”
“No.” She sniffed a laugh, sitting back against the railing and crossing her legs out before her. “That’s your burden as the goats’ stepfather.”
He scowled, stuffing his journal into his pack, where his seductive black leather pants were wadded up at the bottom. Unfortunately, Bronwen happened to see them.
“Hold on.” She reached over him—once again, she smelled like posies—and tugged the leather pants out. She held them up like a banner, and he felt even more self-conscious, as if they were a baby blanket he took everywhere he went.
“Captain Elena should string these up with her pirate flag,” she said. “It’d send a message.”
“No,” he said before he could think. One, if Ravana saw these she might—she was clever—put things together and realize that Morfran was in cahoots with the rebels and officially announce to the kingdom that he had run away.
Then everyone would be looking for him and he’d never escape.
And two: he still liked the way his butt looked in them.
“No?” She lowered them, raising her eyebrow. “And whyever not?”
He tried to think of a lie that’d sound reasonable, but then she said, “Don’t tell me you wear these when you’re alone?” A smile quivered on her lips. “You do!”
“I do not.”
“Then why keep them?”
“Well, it’s just…” He looked at her. “So I can sport them for pretty women. Turn around and I’ll put them on for you.”
She flushed as he’d expected she would, and also as he expected, she changed the subject.
“You told me Ravana got her powers from the Man of Lettis, who lives just off the coast of Atlantis 2.0,” she said. “I want you to take me to him.”
He scowled. “I told you where his tower is already. I’m not a chaperone.”
“No,” she replied. “But you did serve Dark Lady Ravana at one point, and she’s the horrid person who did this to me. It’ll be a way of mending your past grievances.”
Just then Benjamin began hacking up green-tinged goat vomit over the side of the boat. He patted her shoulder, all while trying to shrug Bronwen off. “Why do you even want the hex removed? It could be a lifelong lesson in not overworking yourself.”
“Not overworking myself? It affects me even when I’m asleep! Every night since we’ve left my hammock keeps falling out of all the ties I fasten, and I keep waking up on the ground.”
“That’s what that noise was?” He woke each night in panic at the loud thwump, thinking Ravana had somehow rallied together a full armada with cannon ships and was launching supreme warfare on them.
He gestured at Bronwen’s braid. It was lovely and neat and tied off with a little white ribbon. “You’ve done your hair nicely, and every other day, too. Maybe you’re just overthinking things.”
“I don’t braid it. Gueldefore does.”
Morfran frowned. Of course the knight knew how to braid hair.
And of course he’d braided Bronwen’s. I can braid hair, too, he thought begrudgingly.
Ravana had taught him, saying that one day they’d have daughters who’d inherit their callousness, and that cool braids were a requirement for wicked princesses.
Well, if the knight thought he was so fancy that he could braid hair, Morfran would go one step further and agree to escort Bronwen to the Man of Lettis.
Never mind that he dreaded meeting the man about as much as he loathed soggy sandwich bread and wet socks and catching his pants’ belt loop on a nearby drawer knob and getting jerked aside by it.
“Fine.” Morfran stroked Beni’s back as the goat slumped down and set her head on his lap. “I’ll go with you. But only after we take over Atlantis 2.0.”
She beamed. “Thank you, Bernard.” She squeezed his arm and left, leaving Morfran simultaneously cranky and confusingly pleased.
He wasn’t used to having people willingly fetch his roast beef sandwiches, or grip his arm in gratitude, or come up to him and thank him for freeing Ferndock, as several rebels had done over the past few days.
And now here he was, having helped peasants take over a major stronghold he himself had conquered years ago. Well, it’d be ending soon enough, and he’d be fleeing across Lake Dumast with three goats in tow. It’d be bliss.
Ruminating over these thoughts, he continued to soothe Beni by rubbing her belly until she fell asleep, and then he carried her and the kids down into one of the cabin rooms for safekeeping and resurfaced back on deck.
By then Brim and Elena were both standing on the quarterdeck at the helm, pointing off in the distance and frowning.
Had they finally spotted land? They should be coming up to the coast soon. He joined them. “What is it?”
“Can’t quite say, Bernard.” Brim lowered his eyeglass and passed it to him. “But it doesn’t look natural.”
When he peered through it he saw nothing at first. Just water and water and more water. Then he saw it, in the water. “A whirlpool?”
“The water just started swirling.” Elena collapsed her eyeglass and grabbed hold of the steering wheel, which was carved into two strange creatures eating their tails in a circle.
On closer inspection they looked like dragon-kitties.
She needed a new obsession. “I don’t think I can go around it, either.
It’s expanding more rapidly than I can turn us away. ”
“So, what? We’re going to run the ship into an unnatural whirlpool and just hope we don’t get flung around like a child on a runaway carousel?”
“I don’t know, Bernard,” she snapped, shooting him a lethal look.
Though she kept his secret, she still hadn’t forgiven him and had shown the same animosity towards him since that night in her living room.
“Whirlpools aren’t something that happen in Dumast. Though there is folklore about a creature living in the depths of the lake… ”
She’d said it somewhat ominously. Both he and Brim waited. “Yes?” Brim prodded.