Cargo for the Butter Dock
There was a low rumble, the water around the skimmer began to jiggle frantically, and the barge began vibrating as if some giant unseen hand were shaking it. POP! CRACK! CRASH! KAAR-SPLOOOSH! Shaking violently, the skimmer tossed and rose up on waves that threatened to capsize the boat. A deafening noise reverberated in the closed confines of the cave—echoing and echoing again as the sound raced down unseen chambers and bounced back again and again.
Aboard the skimmer, now some distance out on the Ocean of Dreams, Helga saw the flickering light of the oil lamps on the Club Wolf sentry boat disappear, as the entire rock face looming over the passage through which she had so recently passed, cracked and broke free. Visible for an instant in the flickering lamplight playing across the rocky chamber walls, Helga watched in shocked fascination as the rock slab toppled slowly outward, as if the mountain above was slowly turning its head to look at her. Then, a split second later, the rock slab fell free and a massive shower of debris completely buried anything familiar about the site. The thunderous sound of the collapsing rock made Helga think her head would explode from the shock wave. Huge waves, instantly splashing outward from the rock slabs slamming into the water, swamped the barge, soaking every beast on deck in the frigid water. In tandem with the soaking waves, a vast cloud of dust spread out over the Ocean of Dreams, shrouding the skimmer in a hideous, choking haze.
Simultaneously, a choking cloud in the dust spread outward over the lake. Coughing and wheezing, knee deep in cold water, all the beasts on the half-submerged barge howled with dismay at the drastically altered situation in which they found themselves. To the good, the swamped, but sturdy skimmer was still afloat. And except for being soaked in freezing water, none of the beasts aboard was injured. On the bad side of things, it was unclear if the skimmer was of any further use and they were now in absolute darkness, the huge wave having drowned the lamps and the choking dust adding a feeling of oppressive dark.
“LANDROLLERS, REEK! GO TO HIGHUP MODE!” Stench called out from the darkness. We’ll raise up the skimmer and drain ’er out! I know from poling that the water is shallow around here—not more than a maybe six or seven feet deep. That’s shallow enough to drain ’er out!”
“Zero wrong, Stench!” Reek laughed, “I’d been thinking that your old brain was all made of dung! But you’ve got a good idea, this time.” Helga could hear Reek sloshing across the deck toward the center of the skimmer. Soon, amidst the coughing and sneezing caused by the dust, Helga heard the grinding-clanking of a set of gears going to work. Little by little, she noticed the barge seemed to be lifting up. Slowly, inch by inch, with every turn of some unseen crank Reek was turning, the skimmer rose higher and higher.
“The water level is falling! What on earth is he doing?” Helga said to Christer excitedly. “Is that crank he’s operating?”
“I don’t know what he’s doing,” Christer responded. “But somehow, he’s raising up the boat and the water is flowing out!”
“Landrollers, Slime-Face.” Stench snarled out of the darkness nearby. “You don’t think Reek and I are gonna walk when the skimmer hits land, do you? We’ve got super-sized wagon wheels that can be cranked up and down—long as we’ve got good strong slaves to pull us, no place we can’t go!” Stench paused, then laughed harshly. “Har-Yet-Yet-Har! In highup mode with the wheels extended all the way, we can sit 20 feet off the ground if we want! Har-Yet-Yet-Har! And sure comes in handy for draining ’er out, too! Har-Yet-Yet-Har!”
The skimmer lifted higher and higher. Although she could not see what was happening in the pitch darkness, she could hear Reek cranking furiously, some gears screeching, and timbers creaking as the skimmer rose. As the barge rose, Helga felt the water pouring off the flooded deck. Soon she was sitting, the water drained away, shivering in her soaked garments.
“Now what?” Christer muttered, noticing several dim yellow haloes of light coming towards them. Helga’s eyes were scratchy as she peered through the fine dust hanging in the air, trying to see who or what was approaching. The lanterns of several Club Wolf sentry boats illuminated the skimmer as they converged at the troubled boat.
“Hallo, frippers,” a voice hailed, as one of the sentry boats pulled alongside. “Heard some fierce commotion and came to investigate. Tradin’ or trippin’ today? Call out your game.”
“We’ve got cargo for the Butter Dock,” Stench called out, returning the hail. “Fresh butter for Tilk Duraow. We’re strong in our timbers and sound in our crew, but our wicks and lamps are drowned. Can’t see a blasted thing in this infernal haze. We’d be mighty pleasant if you’d guide us to the Butter Dock.”
“Chew the foot, frippers! Lights comin’ over!” Several lanterns were lit and handed to Reek, who reached over the side to bring them aboard.
Reek hung the lanterns and the sentry boats pulled away from the skimmer. “Follow us,” one of the Club Wolf sentries called out. “We’ll see you into the Butter Dock in no time.” Moving across the lake, gradually the dust began to settle somewhat and it became easier to breathe. Little by little, Helga could see more of her surroundings in the lantern light.
Weird shadows flickered across the haze-shrouded lake. As the skimmer followed the sentry boats, a fantastic menagerie of ghostly shapes appeared amidst the shadows, then faded away again. One after another, fantastic shapes flickered, ghostlike, in the haze for a few moments, and then, were replaced by others. It was as if the skimmer were threading its way through a labyrinth of grotesque alien worlds—or as if it sailed through an entire country of ruined villages, filled with stark blasted walls and huge broken buildings fallen into hideous shapes. What surely was a place of monstrosities and terror in good light became a sinister, haunting realm of nightmares in the hazy flicker of lantern light.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Helga said somewhat irritably to Christer, who was chuckling loudly next to her. “How can you laugh in a place like this?” she demanded, as his laughter increased in tempo.
“HA-HA-HA-HO-HO-HO!” Christer guffawed. “HA-HA-HA—this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time—HO-HO-HO! I haven’t thought about any of this stuff in years! HA-HA-HA! This is just too funny!” Christer was laughing so hard that his large bulk shook wildly.
“What on earth has gotten into you?” Helga asked irritably. “What are you laughing at?”
“Please, Helga,” Christer blubbered through his roaring laughter, “please, it’s just seeing that idiot Sam tickling Miss Frightful—HA-HA-HA!—at least that’s what we called her—she was our teacher when—HO-HO-HO-HA-HA-HA—when we were wee beasts!”
“But where are they?” Helga asked in exasperation. “I can’t see anything!”
“Some of the rocks look just like Sam and Miss Frightful—looks like Sam is tickling her! HA-HA-HA! I haven’t thought about that in years, but the rocks remind me of it. HO-HO-HO! Oh this is too much—and over there’s that hilarious dream I once had where I was riding a bat!”
“That’s why they call it the Ocean of Dreams,” Reek commented. “The weird shapes here grab your mind and make you see things—if you can dream it, you can see a rock formation that resembles it! Hard to believe, but true. Every dream or nightmare you’ve ever had might come back to you here—they kind of reach out and just grab your mind. It’s really eerie at first, but the more trips you make through here, you get used to it.”
Christer gradually calmed down and his laughter settled into irregular, low guffaws as some new image leaped to mind amidst the rocks. Helga, however, was startled by what she saw in the formations. It seemed to her that she and her mother, Helbara, were back on that ill-fated river, years before, with Wrackshees closing in. There was her mother going off to meet the Wrackshees—protecting Helga who was hidden in a hollow tree—how could it be that these rocks were so realistic? It was as if she were there exactly as it was.
“HA-HA-HA!” Christer’s laughter snapped Helga back to the present. “What is the matter with you!” she yelled. “How can you laugh at time like this?”
“Why not,” Christer replied with a grin. “Why spend the last days of my life weeping and wailing, rather than laughing and singing? We are bound off to be worked to death—why not laugh in the happy memories of the old days that come to mind? And…,” he paused and looked at Helga, “isn’t it good for me to laugh and rejoice now, being in the company of the prettiest Wood Cow I ever laid eyes on?”
Helga blushed at this unexpected turn of the conversation. “You are an absolute loonie, Christer! A nut-case!” Helga laughed, recovering herself. “Now what good does that comment do you? I don’t have the slightest interest in returning the compliment.”
“Oh, a saucy and cheeky sort, to boot!” Christer said, smiling.
“Not at all,” Helga replied, “I just don’t compliment beasts acting like complete idiots.”
“Then we are a pair,” Christer chuckled, “because it’s clear you don’t have a particle of good sense.”
“Well, I never heard the equal to that!” Helga laughed, despite herself.
“Now don’t get me wrong,” Christer said with another chuckle, “I don’t claim to be your equal—why the world would be a fearsome place if there were two of us like you!”
“If you want to see me being fearsome,” Helga growled with a smile, “you just keep up your being a silly humbug—when we are in desperate trouble and getting worse by the minute—look over there!” She pointed through the hazy light. A dock was coming into sight in the half-light.
The quay appeared to be deserted, but as the skimmer approached, a cry from a sentinel—“Ranks and swords! Troops forward!”—sounded ominous. Although a glimmer of daylight—could it actually be daylight, Helga wondered?—seemed to filter down from some unseen opening to the outside, it was difficult to distinguish the entire outline of the quay and its surroundings, due to the dim light and the almost malignant air that caused her eyes to water.
Helga struggled not to gag as her lungs filled with pestiferous odors. To breathe the vapors swirling around the skimmer as it came into dock seemed to carry feelings of melancholy and loneliness deep inside a beast. Through the swirling vapor, the sounds of heavily-booted running feet and further charges and commands seemed sad and forsaken. Christer noticed the effect also and immediately his jesting ceased.
A drawbridge clanged down to the skimmer and a running troop of heavily-armed Skull Buzzards rushed up the drawbridge and took up stations in two columns lining the drawbridge, razor-sharp swords drawn and at the ready.