neetha Napew - Son Of Spellsinger

“Floating,” Squill mused. “Gently descendin’. That’s wot we want.”

“I’m going to play.” Buncan felt the mist beginning to moisten his skin. They must be very close now. “You two improvise. Fast.”

They could see the edge through the fog, a boiling white froth marking the spot where the water plunged to depths unknown. The cascade might be a dozen feet high, or a thousand. Surely not that much, he thought as he played.

They were almost to the rim and he was beginning to panic a little himself, when the otters finally began to sing.

“Water rises and water falls

Can’t turn away when it beckons and calls

Got to go over, got to see wot’s below

But we gots to land gently or we’ll sink, don’t you know?

Wanna set it down light as feather off a crow

Don’t blow It now Land us gently by the bow.”

The otters rapped smooth and easy, and Buncan followed them without effort. The glow at the duar’s nexus was concise and clear. None could have hoped for tighter harmony or crisper playing.

None of which was very reassuring when the boat nosed over the thundering edge of the falls and shot straight down, picking up speed rapidly as it fell.

Though they had to cling to the gunwale to keep from sliding down the deck and over the bow, the otters managed to keep singing. Buncan fell back against the rear wall of the central cabin and braced himself with his legs against the fortuitously narrow doorway. He needed to keep both hands on the duar. Thick arms wrapped around the swaying, useless tiller, Gragelouth dangled in midair above the now vertical deck.

They never did learn how tall the waterfall was, but it was high enough to allow the otters to slip in two more verses before they hit bottom. Whether Gragelouth’s screaming added to or hindered the spellsong was something else that would remain forever in the province of the unknowable.

Rocks leaped up at them, sparkling strangely silver. Water-saturated wind tore at their skin and clothes and fur.

An instant before they were smashed to bits on the rocks, a pale-green mist enveloped the entire boat. Gragelouth let out a terminal moan and shut his eyes. There was no pain as they struck, though Buncan experienced a sensation as if his entire body had gone to sleep and a million minute splinters briefly pierced his torso.

Boat and bodies shattered on the silver boulders. Through the mist he thought he could see his friends fly apart, still singing bravely.

He sensed the disparate parts of himself tumbling along underwater, sucked downstream by the inexorable current. Not far away he observed his disjointed hands still playing the miraculously intact duar. One of his eyes turned to look straight at its mate, and he blinked at himself. His mouth floated a few feet away, spinning lazily in the flow. His detached ears picked up the unmistakable and now slightly mystical rap of the otters. He felt no especial desire to try to locate his brain.

Bits of Gragelouth drifted by, the sloth’s uncommitted mouth bemoaning its fate in a gurgling litany.

Imperceptibly at first but with increasing speed, the fragmented parts of Buncan and sloth, of otters and boat, began to come together, to realign themselves within the river. He watched the boat re-form from two sides at once, since his separated eyes were momentarily located both to port and starboard. Shattered planks and crushed supplies slowly reconstituted themselves. The process, like the water in which they now drifted, was unnaturally silent.

It was also less than perfect. The cabin was set too far forward, and the tiller reattached itself to the stern upside down. The mast restepped itself at a slight angle. But the result was definitely their boat.

At the same time, he experienced an irresistible tugging sensation as the roaming parts of his body were ineluctably drawn toward each other. Eyes sought out sockets, organs the torso, feet their missing ankles.

It was that final verse, he mused with detachment of a different kind. Not an instant too late, they had finally hit on an effective combination of words and music.

He watched with considerable interest as his various body parts swam toward him, wherever “him” was centered. Fingers, toes, other extremities rejoined the rest of his self near the boat’s stern. Gragelouth was becoming a recognizable furry blob proximate to the tiller, complete to his clothing. Squill and Neena re-formed on the bow instead of the stern, where they’d commenced the spellsong. More than once Buncan had heard Jon-Tom employ the expression “gone to pieces.” Hitherto he had considered it only a metaphor. As the echo of the spellsong brought them together again, it struck him that he was breathing underwater. Or was he?

He took a deep breath and hesitantly felt of himself. He was whole once more, seemingly only a little sore for the experience. Forward, the otters struggled to their feet and hurried to rejoin him. Gragelouth lay slumped on the deck, as wrung out as a used towel in a public bath.

They were sailing along down the Sprilashoone, boat and bodies intact, the river flowing mellow and unthreatening beneath them. Also on either side of them. And overhead. They were in a watery tube, or tunnel. It was noisy as well as impossible.

“More like the Sloomaz than we thought, wot?” Neena examined the watery conduit quietly.

But it was not at all like that fabled river which ran through the northern ranges of Zaryt’s Teeth, as they discovered when the boat gave a sudden lurch and sailed up the side of the tunnel, continuing its progress until they were cruising along upside down, the original surface of the river directly below mem.

Buncan grabbed instinctively for the cabin doorway, then released it when he saw that he wasn’t going to plunge headfirst to the water below.

“Nothing in Dad’s story said anything about sailing upside down.”

Squill came sauntering toward him, hanging on to nothing. “ ‘Ere now; you don’t look quite yourself, mate.”

Buncan had to strain to hear clearly. Water in his ears, no doubt. He frowned as he considered his friend. “Neither do you.” Actually, neither did anyone.

For one thing, Squill’s head was protruding not from his neck but from his left side, just beneath his arm. His other arm was waving from where his head ought to have been. Then there was the more subtle problem of his left arm having been swapped for Neena’s. The slight difference in length was a clue, the disparity in fur color a dead giveaway. Not that they could compare fur, because Neena, to her utter mortification, was beneath her clothing as bald as a newborn human.

Nor did Gragelouth escape the confusion. Sizable, hairless, naked ears stuck out of the top of his head, whereas Buncan had acquired the sloth’s ears: comparatively small, gray-furred flaps of skin. That doubtless explained his current hearing difficulties.

They gathered upside down at the stern to contemplate their physiological disarray. Just as the boat had not reformed perfectly, neither had they. It was evident that in the process widely scattered body parts had sometimes taken the path of least resistance. In several instances this was not merely comical, it was downright embarrassing.

“Definitely a few kinks in that spellsong,” Buncan muttered.

“As kinked as this river,” Gragelouth added.

“This simply ain’t gonna do.” The hand atop Squill’s head gestured angrily.

“It certainly ain’t.” Neena was all but in tears over her condition. “Look at me. Just look at me!” She indicated her furless limbs.

“At least they’re in the bloody right places,” said her brother from beneath his arm.

Gragelouth’s absurd human ears twitched involuntarily. “The solution is clear. You must fix your spellsong and then sing it once again.”