Chapter 13 #2
That damn Sage. Always knowing more than they let on. Always moving pieces across a board I can't see, operating on information that shouldn't exist yet. I've stopped being surprised by it and started being irritated.
"What's your name?"
She gives me a smirk that I swear I've seen on someone else's face, but the memory won't solidify. "Thalia. I'm here to help you get back to your Elle."
Everything in me sharpens. "Where is she?"
"Not here."
"Take me to her. Now."
"You may be the prince, but I'm afraid even you can't make demands in this instance." She says it without malice, almost gently, like she's delivering bad news she's had time to make peace with. "She's not in this iteration. But it's crucial that you get to her. Time is running out."
Peeble emerges from my collar, apparently deciding that hiding is no longer necessary. "Thalia! Oh, aren't you a beauty! I love the whole look you've got going. Very mysterious, very cloak-and-dagger. Could you be a doll and tell us how to find our precious, sassy Elle? We miss her dearly."
"That is an understatement," I say.
Thalia glances both ways down the alley and nods to herself, her expression shifting from calm to urgent.
"We must hurry. We only have moments. You need to get aboard a ship called the Crimson Emerald.
The current Elle and Kaelren of this iteration are aboard.
You must not engage with them. Do not approach.
Do not interact. They're headed out to the Starblush Sea.
When the right moment comes, you must make a leap of faith. "
"What does that mean?" The words come out closer to a growl than I intend.
"Wait, wait, hold up." Peeble lands on my shoulder and raises a claw. "Not to state the obvious, but Mr. Broody here isn't exactly camouflage. Six-foot-something, silver eyes, corruption marks, a general aura of menace. Don't you think two Kaelrens in such a small space will cause issues?"
Thalia nods. "Yes. The Sage knew this would be a problem, so they gave me this." She reaches into her cloak and produces a vial. Violet glass, no bigger than my thumb, filled with a liquid that bubbles and shifts even though no one is shaking it. The contents glow faintly.
I stare at it. Then at her. "I'm supposed to trust a stranger and drink that. What if it knocks me out and you murder me?"
She chuckles. The sound is too warm for someone who just met me at knifepoint. "I guess you'll have to take a chance and find out. It depends on how much you want to get back to her."
Peeble leans in and sniffs the vial. Their antennae twitch. "Ohhh, it smells like grape. Bottoms up, pretty boy. I'm ready to go home."
I sigh and look at the vial. I look at Thalia, who watches me with those green eyes that know too much. I think about Elle, scattered across time, waiting for me in some iteration I haven't reached yet, trusting that I'll find her because I promised I would.
I take the vial and throw it back in one gulp.
The regret is instant.
Fire blooms in my chest, then spreads inward, burrowing into my bones.
My skeleton shifts. Literally shifts, the architecture of my body rearranging itself with a series of wet cracks I hear from the inside.
I'm shrinking. My spine compresses, my legs shorten, my hands curl as the fingers thicken and stub.
The pain is extraordinary, a deep wrongness, every nerve in my body screaming that this isn't how I'm supposed to be shaped.
My vision whites out. When it comes back, both Thalia and Peeble are looking down at me. Way down.
Peeble begins to laugh. A full-body, wings-buzzing, mandibles-wide cackle that makes them tip sideways. Except they're no longer on my shoulder. They're hovering at what used to be my chest height.
Thalia covers her mouth with her hand, but her eyes are dancing.
Peeble wipes a tear from their eye with one leg. "Oh, that Sage. That was a choice."
"What happened to me?" I snap. Except my voice has gone up approximately two octaves. It comes out thin and reedy, like someone stepped on a pipe and air is whistling through the dent. "What is so funny?"
They both collapse again. Peeble is wheezing, which I didn't think beetles could do.
I look around wildly and catch my reflection in a shop window.
A forest dwarf stares back at me. Four feet tall.
Maybe four-one if I'm being generous with myself, which I am not inclined to be at this moment.
My front teeth jut over my bottom lip and cross over one another at awkward angles.
My eyes are two different colors: one muddy brown, one an unsettling yellowish green.
There are bald patches on my head where hair has given up entirely, and what remains sticks out in tufts that suggest a longstanding adversarial relationship with any form of grooming.
I am, without question, the least attractive creature I have ever seen. And I have seen Auradelle.
I wheel on Thalia. "What kind of joke is this? I would almost have preferred you murdered me."
Peeble is still laughing. "Well, I can guarantee no one will recognize you now. What shall we call you? Oh, oh—I know. Frank. I think it has a really nice ring to it."
I am going to squash that beetle into paste.
"Look," Thalia's voice cuts through the chaos, and the urgency in it pulls my focus back. "I know this isn't ideal. But we are out of time."
As if the universe were conspiring to prove her point, a voice bellows from the docks below. "All aboard! Last call for the Crimson Emerald! All hands report!"
Thalia grabs my arm. She has to reach down to do it, which is a humiliation I will process for the rest of my probably short life, and locks those green eyes on mine. "Kaelren. You must not fail. Remember. Leap of faith."
"What does that even—"
But she's already moving, stepping backward into the shadows between buildings, and between one blink and the next, she's gone. Like she was never there at all.
Peeble tucks themselves into the collar of my shirt, which is now enormous on me, hanging off my new frame like a sail, and says, "Come on, Frank. Let's get moving. That ship isn't going to sail itself."
We make it to the docks with seconds to spare.
The Crimson Emerald is exactly what I'd expect from a pirate vessel run by a version of me.
It's large, fast-built, armed to the teeth, and painted in deep reds and greens that are either a bold aesthetic choice or a complete lack of one.
Crew members are hauling lines and securing cargo, shouting at each other in the organized chaos of departure.
I march up the gangplank with as much authority as a four-foot forest dwarf with crossed teeth can muster, which is not much.
A hand the size of a dinner plate lands on my chest and stops me cold.
The hand belongs to a sailor who is approximately the width of a doorframe, with a neck like a tree stump, arms that look like they've been wrestling anchor chains since birth, and a face that has clearly lost several arguments with sharp objects.
"Where do you think you're going, short stuff?"
Every instinct in my body tells me to put this man on the ground. I am a prince. I am a warrior who has fought and killed things that would make this dockworker faint. I am—
Four feet tall with bucked teeth. Right.
I open my mouth to respond, but Peeble beats me to it, whispering from inside my collar.
"Tell him you're a seasoned galley hand with twelve years' experience on the Blackwater Circuit."
"I'm a seasoned galley hand," I say, in this horrible squeaking voice, "with twelve years' experience on the Blackwater Circuit."
"Tell him you can gut a marlin in under two minutes and that your stew has been praised by captains across three ports."
I repeat it. The sailor stares at me like I've grown a second head, which, given my current appearance, wouldn't be much of an improvement.
"Tell him your mother was a sea witch and you can sense storms three days out."
"Peeble," I hiss under my breath. "That's ridiculous."
"Say it."
I say it.
The seaman squints at me for a very long moment.
Then he shrugs. "Well, we do need extra hands swabbing the deck and in the kitchens after the last guy got eaten.
You'll be in bunk room six. Stay out of the way and don't speak to the captains unless spoken to.
Especially the missus." He leans down and lowers his voice.
"The prince named the ship after her, and he doesn't take kindly to people messing with her. "
If only he knew.
I board the Crimson Emerald, and we set sail.
My supervisor is a woman named Gretta.
She stands roughly five-foot-ten, and wears gold hoop earrings large enough to serve as bracelets. She's missing her front left tooth, which she makes up for by having the loudest voice of anyone I've met in any iteration.
"You." She jabs a finger at me within thirty seconds of me finding the kitchen. "Pots. Now. I want them scrubbed until I can see my own pretty face in them, and I'd better look gorgeous, because I am."
"I—"
"Did I ask for a speech? Pots. Now. The mop's in the corner for when you're done. Then you're scrubbing the deck from bow to stern. Then you're peeling vegetables for the evening stew. Then—are you listening, gnome?"
"Dwarf."
"Did I ask?"
She did not ask. Gretta does not ask. Gretta tells, and the universe rearranges itself accordingly.
I scrub pots. I mop floors. I peel enough root vegetables to feed an army, which is essentially what this crew is. These stubby, graceless dwarf hands, cramp and blister because the calluses I earned over centuries apparently didn't survive the transformation.