Dirt MerchantsA Story by Newk Another story I wrote for a class, this one more recently. The sun had finally broken through the wisps of white that had enveloped it for so long, leaving itself unhindered as it continued on its downward arc, just passing the top of the shoreline cliffs. If one were to look over the opposite edge of the boat, the old man knew, one wouldn’t quite be able to tell which stretched further: the shadow of the boat, or that of the cliffs. Either way, the sandbars had never formed on this stretch of coast, so coming this close would really do nothing but give the top deck some nice shade. It wasn’t simply the beauty of this place that drew the Osni’s senses to rest. When a ship is this close to the cliffs of the Rayan Coast, it’s also quite close to the Rayan Mountain Range a bit further beyond them. Sometimes, a sailor can hear the most beautiful echoes off the pristine mountain faces. Even at this distance, he could just barely hear the roar of a faraway mountain lion blending in almost perfectly with the light lapping of the waves against the cliffs. The most significant sense here, though, was smell. On a ship like this, such a sense was undoubtedly a curse nearly everywhere the crew worked, though the soothing scent of fresh dirt in the hold made it seem more like a tranquil farm than a sweaty brine. On the deck, the air was open to the outside, though ultimately the difference amounted to little more than the faint tinge of salt. Osni was glad that he had allowed himself this moment. The coast was straight here, so he wouldn’t have to steer as much. Besides, a bit of relaxation was good for the mind, especially after so long in the Red Waves. Some of the crew might not have needed this, but four sailors manning a six-man boat could always use a rest. He gazed down from his place at the wheel onto the deck. Speaking of the crew, two of them had quite readily come up into the sun with him, even if the kid wasn’t exactly stopping to enjoy the scenery. Irm, the former pikeman, was lying near the front of the boat, shouting some sort of story up at Les, whose small shape Osni could barely see climbing in the rigging at the other end of the boat. Maybe it was just his eyes finally getting as old as the rest of him. The old man chuckled to himself. Those two had been swapping stories ever since they’d met. Maybe if Irm was more educational about the whole thing, he could teach the kid even more than his own old bones could. “Anyway, you really shouldn’t be up there.” shouted Irm just loud enough for the boy to hear him. “Really?” Les said, swinging happily on one of the ropes. “You don’t seem too upset.” Irm chuckled. “What, you’re just going to live your whole life determining what is and isn’t safe based on how mad I get?” “I figure if I do, I won’t be bugging you about it much longer.” “Sure won’t! Say, how’s the wind in our sails?” “Pretty good! Any stronger and I might actually want to come down!” The fourth crew member shuffled up the stairs from the bilge, stretching from what was clearly a long nap as his eyes adjusted to the light. Osni didn’t blame him. Poor guy had been up for far longer than he should have back in the Red Waves in case their totem couldn’t handle the strain. “Sleeping in the dirt again, Ister?” Irm shouted to his brother. “You have any idea how totems work? They can only protect so much area around them. I don’t know who put our decrepit old thing in the crow’s nest, but that dirt is cursed.” The tone suddenly became much more somber. “Oh.” Osni paused to get his maps, and breathed a sigh of relief. Cursed cargo is never a good thing, but they were in luck. He chimed in. “Up ahead is a river delta. There should be a town on the far side. We’ll be able to get a disenchanter, don’t any of you worry.” “Oh!” Ister got an idea. “Think they’ll buy the dirt?” “No. We’ve gotten quite far along our journey, but we’re still in Rot territory. If the disenchanter’s cheap, though, maybe we could get some compost. Make it healthier.” Les, having just come down from the rigging next to the two, began to back away, vowing to himself that he would continue to do so until he either fell into the water or his point was made. It almost came to the former. “What’s wrong, Les?” said Osni. “I’m sorry, it’s just- compost always stinks up the ship. For weeks.” “So do you.” Ister chimed in. “But it got enough compost from the dirt serfs that sold it to us!” “So did you. Straight to the face, I might add.” “It’s not my fault their holidays are stupid. Besides, do you really think the disenchanter will be that cheap anyway?” Osni and Ister both responded in unison. “No.” Les stammered for a moment. Ister started walking away. “You packed your pistol wrong!” Osni shouted after him. “Been leaking powder.” He was answered with a groan. “And don’t walk away just yet, we all gotta look at the dirt! Irm! Drop the anchor and follow!” “Well.” Osni said to the others. “Be glad we’re still afloat.” In front of the four sailors was several tons of fertile, nutritious topsoil that on any other day would be primed and ready for a happy welcome at the Firelands docks and a fat profit to go with it. Today, though, there were quite a few problems subtly poking their heads out of the wall-to-wall pile. Not many could be noticed in a cursory glance, but closer inspection revealed them as obvious: a slight shimmer in the air, a small, twisted sapling growing from the planks of the hull, and most noticeably a slight crimson tinge to the whole room, even as far as the bunks on the other side. “Oh, come on.” Ister grumbled. “What’s it going to do, sink us?” “Look around, Ister.” Irm snapped. “The dirt is making the wood grow branches. You think it’s not eventually going to do something that lets water in?” “That’s exactly what I think, Irm. Ugh. Look, I know my curses, and this stuff barely even registers. Why don’t we just sell it and pretend nothing’s wrong? No one in the Firelands would know the difference.” “But it’ll spread.” Osni chimed in. “If our friends over there try their landscaping efforts with this, it’ll spread to every one of their would-be farms.” “That’s bad.” Irm chimed in. “Crippling the latest project of a world power would bring their whole military down on our heads. Might bring every military down on our heads. Hell, the only people who might ever be happy about it are those weird curse cultists from my hometown.” Ister chimed in again. “Captain, have you been poking through my books again?” “Yeah, I did. They’re interesting. What’s got you so on edge today, kid? Was it all that time you spent awake back there in the Red Waves?” “It’s nothing, it’s nothing. I keep telling you, those books are good for general instruction, but the fine details are bunk.” “‘How to Tell if a Curse can Spread’ was the main lesson of a whole chapter, Ister. And that shimmering air means it can.” “Fine. Fine. It can spread. We’ll get it disenchanted.” Suddenly, there was the sound of a large stack of paper crashing to the floor. Osni, Irm, and Ister all immediately turned around. Sure enough, a large stack of paper had crashed to the floor. “Oops!” Les shouted. “Heh heh. Dropped my next business venture while flipping through my potential profits.” Irm rolled his eyes as a slight grin formed on his face. “Oh, what scam are you pulling now?” “Excuse me! Ahem.” Les straightened a tie that didn’t exist. “I am an entrepreneur. You should come along when we get to the town. See the master in action.” Irm winced. “I think I’ll just go to the bar, Les. Besides, we won’t be in this town long.” Les finished gathering up his papers and hurried back up the stairs. “Then I’d better get ready to sell fast!” Irm was awoken by a slow rumbling noise. It wasn’t much of a rumbling in and of itself, since the boat wasn’t vibrating, but it was a noise. And that was enough to wake him back up. “Sorry!” Osni shouted to no one in particular, though Irm was the only other person on the deck. “Must’ve grazed something. I’ll steer away from the shore.” Irm groaned, trying to sit up. He was still tired, but he knew that if he tried to go back to sleep he might not be able to. He would make do. “Where are we?” he half-shouted to the old man. “Middle of the delta. Town’s on the far side. Should come into view soon.” He looked out past the boat. The cliffs had receded, and in their place were several streams that seemed to flow together and apart at random until they finally reached the ocean, pockmarked with the islands that made up the rest of the delta. The far side would likely have held the town, but it wasn’t quite in sight yet. He heard footsteps from behind him. Ister was coming up the stairs again. He seemed to be in a much better mood than the last time he had done it. “Well gentlemen, if my timing is right, we should be coming up on the town now.” He started walking towards the front of the boat. “What’s it looking like to you?” “Nothing.” Irm said back. “We can’t see it yet.” Ister was looking over the front of the boat by now, clearly having been made aware of this fact in both ways at once. “Oh. Well, tell me when we get…” There was a pause. Irm didn’t like that. He stood up. “What’s wrong, Ister?” “Why is the color of the water changing?” Irm sprinted over. Sure enough, the water had lost its dark blue hue and was slowly becoming a shade of cyan, which seemed to be from some sort of light shining beneath it. The ship began to slow as the water thickened into a viscous soup. “River nymph!” he shouted, grabbing his brother. “Get the sand dollars from Osni’s cabinet and get them to him.” “Okay.” Ister began to sprint as fast as he could back towards the stairs as Osni looked up from his maps. Even if Irm hadn’t shouted, the old man would have known what was going on. After all, the boat had to be completely stopped by now. But all he could really do was wait for the sand dollars. Irm could feel the wood beneath him rise slightly as the water got brighter. He knew what was coming next, but all he could really do was stand there. He heard a thumping noise from the stairs. “I got them! I got them!” shouted Ister, holding a few enchanted sand dollars strung together in a circle while running up towards Osni. Irm looked around the boat. On the starboard side, away from the shore, he could see the head of a woman. Her face was just coming into view. While it took a while for him to process the smooth, greenish-black thing he was confronted with, he was familiar with what it entailed. This woman had drowned long ago. Osni snatched the enchanted string from his young crewmate and immediately began shouting some sort of incantation. It didn’t seem to have an effect at first. Irm knew this was his cue. He calmly walked towards the center of the boat, and turned to face the drowned woman. “Oh great patron of the river…” he began, stopping abruptly. He had noticed something. He started talking to the woman again, if a bit half-heartedly, though his eyes were locked on his brother. Ister was still here, staring at the woman. By now, most of her rotting body had risen over the side of the boat and come into full view. Most of it was covered in some sort of seaweed, stuck to her by the wax of her body’s former fat, but it was still clear that the body underneath was bloated in many strange places. She had no hands. Ister slowly approached her, the look on his face betraying nothing but a mild fascination. He was only a few steps from her now. Irm stopped. Osni’s chant wasn’t working, and neither would his appeals. “Ister!” He shouted. “Get away!” Ister stopped, frozen in his tracks as if by some unseen force. The woman drew breath into her rotten lungs, preparing to shout a curse that could ruin the ship and everything on it. First, though, she had to tell them something. “You will not sail again” she rasped out, and though she spoke as loud as she could, only Ister was close enough to hear her. Ister did not seem to react. The only thing he did was slowly move his right hand towards his hips. “Ister, no!” shouted Irm. In a swift motion, Ister drew his pistol and fired straight into the woman’s head. Les was awoken by some shouting up on the deck. It wasn’t normal shouting, that’s for sure, no ‘Land-ho’s or ‘Raise the sail’s. He could sleep through that like a baby underneath a pile of bricks who was dead and also sleeping through it. No, this was the other kind of shouting. The kind that makes you and maybe someone else cry when you do it. The ever-elusive art of Cry-Shouting. He hopped out of his cot. This was an occasion, and occasions warrant investigation. He gave the dirt a quick look again. Yep, that was quite a bit of corruption, and it sure wasn’t wearing off. Spicy. He’d better hop up on the deck, now. So he did. Irm was fighting with his brother. He did that sometimes. “What does that matter? You killed the nymph!” “Of course I killed the river nymph! The sand dollars weren’t working! You sure didn’t seem to be doing anything but shouting at me!” “You don’t understand what you’re talking about! We could have handled that!” “Understand!?! At least I seem to have understood that it was actually an emergency! Unlike you, mister take-a-nice-stroll-down-the-ship!” “You need to seem calm when you’re dealing with these!” “Which is why you kept yelling at me, I assume!” “Maybe because you were about to get yourself killed!” “Better that thing than me!” “What? That thing is a river nymph! The town’s fisherman probably got half their catch from her blessings! Now that whole town is going to starve because of you!” “Me!?! It attacked us! I’m guessing that a spirit that goes around trying to kill random humans isn’t going to provide for a town!” “Well maybe she attacked us because of all the corrupt magic radiating from the hold! You yourself said it was more cursed than anything you’d ever seen!” “I never said that! I even said it wasn’t too cursed to begin with!” Les looked over at Osni. He was quietly steering hard port, towards the shore. Wait, was he crashing the ship? That would be hilarious! He looked over to where he was turning. No, Osni was just pulling into the town’s dock. It looked like it hadn’t been used in years, but the old man had experience with docks like that. He would pull them in. “Hey!” Les shouted to the brothers, who were still yelling. “Prepare to disembark, you two!” He lowered his voice for a moment. “And, uh, don’t mention any of this to the townsfolk, okay?” Les would never admit it to anyone who asked, but he was still lost. Well, it wasn’t that he was lost lost, it’s just that none of these buildings had any sort of sign he could read. He supposed that signs weren’t a naturally occurring resource in the Rotlands. Maybe literacy wasn’t, either. He hoped it was, though. He just needed to find whoever interpreted the laws in this town… aw, whatever. He would admit it. “Excuse me, fine madam.” He said to a passing woman. “Would you kindly direct me to the town judge?” “Dunno why you might need ‘im, kid, but if the Jester-folk raise their kids ta have legal grievances even at your age, I’m pityin ya. Building right behind ya.” “Ah, thank you! And trust me, my people are quite kind to our children. This is more of a… special project of mine.” The woman noticed Les’ expression and immediately started to back away. Les just shrugged and went inside. The inside of the building had the same general stink as the rest of the town, but Les noted that he had somehow only noticed it when he had entered the building. Maybe he was just used to the smell below decks mattering a lot more than the smell of the open air. After all, below decks was where he slept. Above decks was just where he did everything else. Inside was a cramped room filled from wall to wall with a regular-sized desk positioned directly in front of the door, so that there was barely enough room to stand in front of it. “Can I help ya?” There was a grizzled old man behind the desk. It was already late in the afternoon, and Les could tell this man was feeling the effects of that. How a judge could possibly be that busy in a town this small, though? Alas, that may forever remain a mystery. “Hello!” Les shouted far too loudly, dumping a pile of papers onto the desk with a loud thunk. “I’d like to get these certificates approved!” The judge seemed confused. “Approved…?” He picked up a flyer. CERTIFICATE OF HAVING OWNED AT LEAST SEVEN GOLD COINS AT ONE POINT IN TIME “What.” He looked back up at Les, who had adorned his face with his best salesman’s smile. “What do ya even mean ‘approved’?” “Well buddy,” Les said, putting one of his arms on the man’s shoulder while wildly gesticulating with the other. “Imagine this: I go out, set up my booth, start selling certificates of having owned gold coins. No one cares. What’s a certificate worth if people might not even believe it? BUT! Imagine this. I set up my stand, right? I set up my stand selling certificates of having owned seven gold coins. Certificates... that hold up in court. THAT is the key to some spectacular sales, right there.” The judge’s expression didn’t change. He barely even seemed to process that Les had stopped talking. “What.” Les kept smiling. He was going to be here a while. Ister wasn’t really that angry anymore. Sure, his brother had yelled at him, but that happens all the time. Nothing else happened. Well, nothing else bad. Besides, he was the one sent to hire the disenchanter, and that meant he got to hold the money. It wasn’t that this was a big accomplishment or anything, but the others had been reluctant to let him do important things ever since he signed on. After all, Irm was always right there next to him, and he was the responsible one. Now, though, Irm was at the bar, and that meant he got to do something important. Something very important. He knocked on the door. “Hello? Are you the one I’ve heard about?” The door in question was the door to an old, formerly abandoned house on the opposite side of town from the docks. Formally the door to a hastily-constructed temporary outhouse, it had been attached to this structure when a wealthy local desired to start renting it out to visitors. It was no bed and breakfast, but it was a roof to put over your head when you needed it. The door was made out of an odd, greenish wood that seemed all too common in the town’s architecture, and if one looked closely they could still see the old outhouse symbol in the center. If one looked at all, they could see that it was opening, if only slightly. “Hell of a way to start a conversation.” “I’m sorry, it’s just… I heard you were in town. A Sister of Lament, right? From the Firelands?” “Yes. What do you want?” Ister cleared his throat. “I heard you were offering your services to the locals while you were in town, and was wondering if you could help us with a little problem we’re having. You see, we were in the Red Waves for a while, and our totem got--” “You’re not local. You’re Jester-folk.” He paused. “I mean-- we have money.” He jingled around a small brown bag in his right hand. “I’m busy.” “Look, we’re just passing dirt merchants, okay? We were actually on our way to the Firelands to sell to your government. We’re with the agricultural effort.” There was a pause. “Okay.” The door opened. On the other side was a very tall woman, her figure wrapped tightly in a dark cloak so that hardly any of her could be seen. She immediately began walking towards the docks. The two stared at the dirt. They both knew it wasn’t good. “How much dirt is this?” asked the woman, as if she meant to ask earlier and had simply forgotten. It probably just hadn’t occurred to her, though. “We only paid for about two tons, but they gave us a bunch more just because they needed a sale. Captain Osni’s a good haggler. He’s probably still haggling with the harbormaster for the price of our mooring right now. Or, whatever passes for a harbormaster for a single--” “This could take a while.” “Got it.” Ister replied. He noticed the woman somehow beginning to levitate a small amount of dirt in front of her, the glow slowly fading as it returned to its natural color. The smell changed back to normal in a way that made Ister wonder if he had ever notice it change when the dirt was corrupted. Said dirt flew backwards, some of it landing on Ister’s shoulder. “Hey.” he protested. “Gotta separate it.” the woman grumbled. “You, really, definitely should not do that.” The woman paused. “Why?” “It’ll-” Ister calmed his voice a bit. “It’ll get dirt all over the rest of the room.” “Wasn’t paid to keep it clean.” Ister grumbled for a moment. “Okay.” he said. He moved towards his cot on the other side of the room, and sat on it while he began to pack his pistol. The woman looked nervous. “You’re packing your pistol.” “Yeah, yeah. I just forgot to do it earlier, is all.” The woman stopped. Ister sighed. “Look, the Cap’s gonna have my head if he knew I was walking around with an unloaded pistol. He always wants the crew to be carrying weapons at all times, and no one knows why. At least I’m not my brother. He has to carry his old pike.” The woman continued, focusing on disenchanting the dirt closest to the starboard side. “Why that side?” Ister asked. He got the feeling he should shut up, but had never really learned what that feeling meant. “If I remove the infected dirt from one side of the place you keep your dirt, I can put clean dirt on that side once its empty. That way you don’t have to move as much when... I’m gone.” Ister knew something was wrong. “What is it, lady?” Suddenly, the woman’s arms shot out from beneath her cloak and began clawing at the dirt near the starboard wall, flinging it every which way, including into the pile of clean dirt. “There’s something here” she half-shouted as she desperately flung dirt all over the cabin. An even brighter red glow began to emanate from the wall she was focusing on. Ister stood up, almost frozen in place. The woman had found something. Engraved into the wall was a set of crimson runes, each inscribed into the wall to form an arc, and each radiating powerful corruption. If she excavated any more, she would find a full circle of them. The Red Waves hadn’t influenced this dirt at all. “Well.” said Ister, walking over to her with his fully-packed pistol. “You weren’t really supposed to find that.” © 2019 NewkAuthor's Note
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