Ohne Dich – 13 & 20 Aug. 2019 – Taffeta

1496 DR, 20 Elesias
(About a month after this conversation)


It's slow going in the dark, now far enough into the woods that little of the waning moon's light filters through the high canopy of oak, ash, and rowan. Fortunately Carrot seems to see through the darkness better than Taffeta, and is even a little better at moving quietly than Aila and Idari were at the same age. Or, at least, the same maturity. Taffeta still isn't sure how quickly ratfolk develop. She'll need to learn more about that, she thinks as the two of them carefully pick their way across the forest floor, hand in hand.

For most of the journey Carrot has been quiet, crying sometimes. But now her small voice asks, 'Auntie Taffeta… did you come all this way to help Tugark?'

Taffeta replies in a whisper, 'Yes, love, and to help you. When we heard you'd gone missing and your d- Tugark looking all over for you, we all wanted to help. Idari and Aila wanted to come too, but like I told you, they need to stay extra safe at the moment… But I told them I'd do my best.' In fact they were the ones who insisted that Taffeta go in the first place - as fond as she was of Carrot, she was very unhappy at the idea of leaving the girls with only Nerry and Rose to defend them. But when they threatened to go on their own, Taffeta gave in.

The pair move forward a while in silence, apart from the rustling of leaves in the breeze and underfoot, and the calls of the night-waking creatures of the forest. Then Carrot asks, 'How did you all get to the Pearls?'

An odd question, Taffeta thinks: so unimportant, what with everything that's happened. The girl just wants to fill the silence, she realizes. So she does her best to imagine a cosy hearth-fire and warm food and drink, and time for a story.

'Well, love, at first we didn't even know where to go, or what the Pearls was. All Tugark knew was he'd got back from his trip and you were nowhere to be found, and there were the notes that you know about. So he asked us all to come and help: me, Daisy, Sunday, and Rholor.' An uncomfortable group for Taffeta: two of her closest friends; a self-righteous ass who she associated with Daring Heights' indifference to her family's abduction; and Tugark himself, whose foster-daughter Carrot was one of her own daughters' best friends but who had lost a lot of her trust when he sided with their kidnapper at his trial. Not to mention the perpetual nagging fear that one of them might not be who they seemed at all.

'So there we were, talking about what to do, when Coll came up with a letter from Nowhere.' A name to make the meeting even more tense for Taffeta - the man who had taken her husband and children captive. She tries to keep her voice light and quiet. 'Said Tugark should talk to Samantha about the missing children, and something about his old map too. And then Samantha told us about the Pearls.'

Before that conversation, Tugark and Rholor had heard about 'the pearl' only as a sailors' tale, a mythical prize of immense value. Some said it was a single pearl of huge size, others that it was a ship sunk with a cargo of treasure. Samantha told him what it really was: a haven on the bottom of the ocean for outcasts and the unwanted. The orphans and street children of Daring Heights had somehow come to know of it and started going there.

'Now, some of us wondered whether there was any need to worry, if the Pearls was a good place and people were going there willingly.' This was Sunday - whose childhood had been spent fending for herself in unimaginable conditions - Taffeta could well imagine that the idea of such children making their own way to a safe haven would have seemed welcome, never mind that they were doing it without any adult help or protection. 'But Tugark said he'd been to a…' she pauses, trying to remember the word - 'a "utopia" recently and he didn't trust them. And he was right, wasn't he? Anyway we knew you wouldn't have gone off without saying goodbye.' Glancing into the darkness beside her, she sees the nod of Carrot's rust-furred head.

'Samantha didn't know how to get there so we went to your room - I hope you don't mind - and there were your notes with the directions. That's when Rholor sent you a message, you remember?' It was a long, anxious wait for Carrot's reply, and when it came it was not reassuring: 'I can hear you. We are not safe. We need help.' That was when Tugark had broken the chair in anger and distress. Best not to mention that.

'So we followed your note,' Taffeta continues, also choosing not to mention the arguments about how to interpret them, which were resolved only by further messages to Carrot, wherever she was. 'Took the ship from Port Ffirst, Tugark's ship, and sailed a long way, even after it got dark. Then we saw the glow underneath the water. So Daisy used magic to turn herself into a great big whale!' A little gasp from her right reminds Taffeta of story-time with her girls, back in the Reaching Woods. Before any of them had heard of Kantas or Daring Heights.

'The rest of us swam down with Daisy the Whale - she made it so we could breathe in the water too - and Sunday rode down on a giant seahorse. We had a bit of a close call with some sharks on the way down, but we got past them safely and we got to the bottom of the sea.'

The voice comes from Taffeta's right again as she clambers over the trunk of a fallen tree: 'Um… how did you get in?'

Carrot herself, as Taffeta now knew, had teleported straight inside the Pearls, not arrived by sea like her foster-father and his allies. And, from her time there, she must know there were no doors to outside. Just a self-contained complex of huge, featureless, faintly glowing domes and covered corridors built on the ocean floor and held together by magic that also protected them from being crushed by the pressure of the water above.

'Well, the first - watch out for that log, love - the first dome we came to was completely blank, no way in at all, and we couldn't get in by magic either. So Daisy had a word with one of the fishes and it told us there was a broken dome further on and we went in there. I guess it must have been the canteen? All full of water, it was.'

'Yes,' Carrot answers, hopping down off the toppled trunk and landing with a little more noise than Taffeta would have liked, 'They told me the kitchen wasn't working.'

Taffeta takes the rat-girl's arm and stands still, listening and, as much as she can, looking around for anything out of the ordinary. Satisfied, she resumes the walk, and the story.

'Tugark managed to get the big metal door open and we went through the corridor into the… the playroom?' She remembers the toys and children's drawings scattered around the room - this one free of water, aside from the pool that the group had let in when they opened the door from the half-flooded corridor. Drawings showing happy children with wiggly lines radiating from their heads and from the head of the large, chunky grey figure. Sunday reading out slogans from hand-made posters: 'LIES ARE BAD. THERE IS NO NEED TO LIE HERE. YOU ARE SAFE.'

'From there we went into the dome with the garden in. Did you ever go in there?'

'I did once,' says Carrot quietly, ‘but I had to hold my breath and swim through it fast. So I didn’t see it very much.’

This confirms what Taffeta and the others guessed: this dome was deliberately full of water. 'Well, it was a very nice garden. There was lovely coral and seaweed and underwater flowers and little fish. But then when we were about to leave a big monster came out from behind some of the coral!' Taffeta looks and listens to her right, checking that the child isn't too frightened by this turn of events. But Carrot seems all right, so she continues. 'It was like a great big head with one eye in the middle and two little eyes on stalks, and it had pincers like a crab!'

A very faint 'Ooooh' comes from Carrot's direction.

'It did not seem very happy to see us,' says Taffeta, really beginning to feel like story-time again, in spite of everything. 'In fact it even tried to fight us! But we soon put a stop to that. Daisy even brought a big piece of coral to life to help us! Then we went into another dome where there were lots of books and things.’ Can Carrot read? wonders Taffeta. Yes, of course, she wrote those directions. ‘Daisy’s coral friend didn’t like being out of the water so she took it back into the garden. And Sunday remembered something she’d seen in the playroom that she thought might be important, something that had reminded her…’ Taffeta trails off, ‘Well, I’m not sure of what – but she went back to look and told the rest of us to go ahead. And in the book room Tugark found a map that matched the little piece he’s had all these years…’

Taffeta pauses, suddenly realizing that she doesn’t know whether Tugark has ever told Carrot about the map. But her doubt is dispelled when Carrot asks excitedly, ‘What was it? What was Tugark’s map of?’

‘It was a map of where the Pearls are! So, really, it was always leading him to –’ As she says the words, Taffeta realizes she’s said the wrong thing. ‘– to come and help you,’ she ends. But she knows Carrot must have had the same thought as she did: it was always leading him to where he ended up. At the bottom of the sea. Forever.

She slows her steps and asks gently, ‘Do you want to stop?’

A slightly sniffly voice replies, ‘No. Carry on with the story.’

This isn’t quite what Taffeta meant, but all right. Where to pick up the story again? The next part doesn’t make for a good story: Rholor said he wanted to read just one book, then he read a book, then he went into a trance, then he went and got another book and asked Daisy to read it. At this point Taffeta lost patience and went back to the coral garden to try another exit – and was just trying to wrestle the door open when…

‘Well, then there was a great big crash and the dome was completely smashed! And there was a huge shadow going past above us, on and on and on – can you guess what it was?’

‘The dragon turtle,’ says the small voice.

‘That’s right. But we didn’t know that then. We just knew it was something very very big. So we ran – mind this branch here – we ran to the next dome. Daisy’s coral friend came too. I think the dome must have been where you came in.’ They learned later from Carrot that she had come to the Pearls by teleportation, presumably arriving in this sort of reception area where there were the faded remains of a teleportation circle and various posters that the others said were meant to welcome new arrivals. ‘There wasn’t anything there, though, so we went back to the garden again and through the last door. The corridor was all broken, so we had to swim to the next dome.’

‘The school room,’ says Carrot. ‘That’s all where we could go after the tunnel broke.’

‘Yes,’ replies Taffeta, remembering the desks and wooden building blocks floating in the flooded space.

‘Did you… did you go to the private room?’

‘Yes, we did.’ Daisy had read out the stern, official-looking sign saying ‘PRIVATE’.

‘What was it?’ asks Carrot nervously. She must have been warned firmly not to go into that dome. But there was no need to keep it secret now.

‘It had lots of bottles and tubes and things, on shelves and tables. The dome was cracked and full of water. And there was a big glass tank in the middle, and it was broken too. And swimming around in the dome was another big monster! This one was like a big mouth with a lot of tails or tentacles, and it was very slimy.’

‘Like the others?’

‘Yes, like that,’ says Taffeta, who still doesn’t fully understand the connection – though Rholor and Sunday and Daisy seem to think they do. ‘This one didn’t like us either, and we had to have another fight. Y– Tugark was very brave in that fight, he really showed that thing who was boss.’ Taffeta doesn’t mention the unfortunate demise of the coral creature in the battle, despite Daisy’s desperate efforts to revive it. She also doesn’t mention the many jars of mucus – apparently the same slimy stuff that covered the monster – collected on shelves all round the dome. Carrot already knows about those.

‘So then we went back to the school room and we were just about to try another door when we saw you!’ More exactly, they saw another door open a little and then close again. And then they saw the massive shadow fall over them again, and then they ran as the laboratory and the school room were both smashed to pieces behind them, flooding the corridor they were in. Which meant that when they opened the door of the next dome… ‘Sorry about that, by the way,’ says Taffeta, as she remembers briefly glimpsing the slight figure of Carrot in the space before the huge rush of water smashed into her and flattened her against the far wall. Of course the group quickly revived her, with Rholor healing her wounds and Daisy casting a spell of water-breathing, and Tugark receiving a returning a mighty hug once his young ward was conscious again.

For a little while Taffeta has had the feeling that the sky is getting lighter. And there’s no more story to tell, because Carrot knows the rest. So the two small figures end their journey and quietly start to make camp, both remembering what came next. A severed arm floating in the water past Taffeta’s face – a familiar, red arm – Nowhere’s arm, with letters cut into it. Moving to the final door; sliding into the ethereal plane and stepping through the ghost of the door into another flooded dome – this one filled with children. Happy children, swimming around and playing. Slimy, happy children, covered in the same grey stuff as the monster, breathing without difficulty in the water. The older ones moving when they see her appear, forming a protective circle around a large metal creature that starts to walk towards her, hefting a spear.

She remembers the door opening behind her and the metal thing suddenly halting as it sees Tugark enter, suddenly kneeling in front of him. Tugark reaching forward and taking the spear from the unresisting gauntlet. The head opening – a suit of armour, after all, and covered with glass containers, some empty, some full of that same grey mucus. The look of recognition and amazement on Tugark’s face as he sees the scarred, weathered, slimy face inside the helmet. The half-orc’s fist whipping out toward that face but being pushed off-target by one of the children. Then, for a long time, just the two men looking at each other, as if having a silent conversation.

She remembers the armoured man suddenly slumping forward onto his face and the children scattering in panic. The back plates of the armour swinging open to reveal dozens of needles sticking out all over their inside surface and dozens of punctures in the man’s barnacled, sore-covered back. The glow of the dome suddenly going out and the sound of the glass starting to crack.

She remembers lighting her driftglobe and trying to gather the children together; the children batting her away, clustering round Tugark and the fallen human. Tugark pulling the man’s body out of the armour and then starting to climb in. She remembers shouting out and starting towards Tugark, but too late; seeing the armour close around his body; seeing the glass bottles of mucus start to empty into the suit, into the needles, into – she imagines – Tugark.

She remembers the vast shadow falling across the dome, and out of the gloom something like an eye approaching – like an eye, but almost as big as the entire dome. Tugark, in the armour, staggering to his feet. The eye moving away slightly, then swinging slowly, hugely, towards the dome again, and then something crashing into the glass – something the shape of an upturned ship’s prow and the size of a fortress. Tugark facing the creature, brandishing the spear towards it. The colossal thing moving slowly away. The glow returning to the dome.

She remembers hurrying back the way she’d come, vanishing into mist as many times as she could and then just half-running, half-swimming the rest of the way to find Sunday, who was just emerging from the playroom after hearing the crash from the far end of the complex. The two of them returning to see Rholor and Daisy standing on the sea bed just outside the door of the dome, Tugark just inside the door with the children gathered round him, and Carrot embracing him tightly. Tugark gesturing to Taffeta and the others to go upwards, back to the surface, and shaking his head at any entreaties to come with them. She remembers understanding what he had resolved to do, though not why; swimming over to grasp his arm and look him in the eye; his nod in return. She remembers holding Carrot’s shaking body tightly and swimming, with the rest of her companions, to the surface.

She remembers slumpin on the deck of the Venture under the moonlight, exhausted. Carrot explaining between sobs that Tugark and the children could never come back, could never breathe air again; that this was the price of being able to live under the water and to speak to each other with their minds; and that the armour is what keeps the whole complex running and also keeps the dragon turtle from destroying it. She remembers the others debating what they could do, while she held and comforted the distraught girl.

In the end they slept, and the next day swam down again. Through a combination of magic and gesture, they learned from Tugark what he had learned from the children: they had come to the Pearls of their own free will to escape lives on the surface where they were treated as worthless. Over time they had realized that the person in the suit of armour was what kept the domes warm and lit and proof against the pressure of the ocean; and they had realized that his power and life were fading. One of them had learned of a practice by which a healthy person could share blood with an ailing one to give them strength, so they had used the teleportation circle – still functioning then – to get messages to their old friends on the surface and persuade some of them to come down to give a little of their blood to the man in the suit. Some of the visitors had gone back to the surface afterward, some had stayed. Carrot had been the last to come and help, but when she had tried to go back, the circle had degraded too much and could no longer teleport. As for Tugark himself, all he could add to the story was that the man in the armour was his old ship’s captain, who had spent his life in search of the legendary ‘pearl’ and, apparently, found it. Had he created this place? Tugark thought it unlikely, and Rholor, reading the books in the library, had had a vision of an altogether different man with wild ideas of a community that rejected the corruption and cruelty of the world and lived without lies or secrets, knowing everything in each other’s minds. Rholor believed the man had been there as recently as five days before they arrived, but now he was gone. None of the children knew anything about the origin of the place: the domes and the man in armour had been there when the first of them arrived. The surviving records suggested that the dragon turtle had at first been used to protect the site of the Pearls during the construction of the buildings, its mind controlled by the original wearer of the armour. But when its work was done and it was released, it was so angry at having been enslaved in that way that it became set on destroying the complex and especially the wearer of the armour. Whoever wears it, Tugark said, has a mental bond with the creature. It allows the wearer to keep the turtle at bay, but it also means the turtle can find him wherever he is.

After spending the rest of that day helping Tugark to make some small repairs to the domes and adding what extra protections they could to the complex, and after a short discussion with Carrot and Tugark about the young rat-girl’s future, Daisy, Rholor, Sunday, and Taffeta returned to the Venture. She remembers more talking, more ideas. Move Tugark and the children to some other underwater place like Zeyshel – but the dragon turtle would pursue them there. Take the children away and then come back and release Tugark from the armour – but the children wouldn’t leave him, and anyway there was no being sure that Tugark could survive without the armour any more. Kill or tame the dragon turtle – perhaps, one day. But not with the resources at their disposal now.

She remembers having little to contribute to all this, and a growing worry about her own family, back in the depths of the Angelbark Woods alone. Persuading the others to return to Port Ffirst and put her and Carrot ashore. The two of them resting at the Cavernous Seashank before setting off, under cover of darkness, across country toward the forest.

She had explained to Carrot and Tugark that, at the moment, she and her family were far from the comfort of their house in Daring Heights, isolated from friends and relatives to avoid bringing danger to them. She had explained that a terrible fiend was, sooner or later, going to come for her and anyone close to her, but that her friend Paw was trying to find out something that would help her defeat the fiend. After weighing the risks and the alternatives, Carrot and Tugark had agreed that Carrot should nonetheless live with Taffeta and her family. So now they are on their way back to Nerry and Rose and Aila and Idari.

Settling down for the night, huddling close to the exhausted Carrot to keep her warm, Taffeta remembers a piece of paper that Daisy gave her before they parted. She said it was one of a series of notes that a young goliath messenger had been passing around to various people in Daring Heights. The notes were from Varis and were something about going somewhere and finding some information – Taffeta hadn’t really followed what Daisy was saying or why she thought it was anything to do with her, but somehow she has a bad feeling about it. Well. There’s no use worrying about it now. When she gets back, she’ll ask Nerry to read it to her. For now, as the day is dawning, she lays down her head and tries to sleep.