Grundy ignored her. He spoke to the ocean in whatever language its creatures used. In a moment he said: “I think I have it. The fish are taking word to an eclectic eel.”
“A what?” Irene demanded. “Do you mean one of those shocking creatures?”
“An eclectic eel, dummy. It chooses things from all over. It does nothing original; it puts it all together in bits and pieces that others have made.”
“How can something like that possibly help us?”
“Better ask it why it will help us.”
“All right, woodenhead. Why?”
“Because I promised it half your seeds.”
“Half my seeds!” she exploded. “You can’t do that!”
“If I don’t, the storm will send us all to the depths.”
“He’s right, Irene,” Chet said. “We’re over a barrel, figuratively speaking.”
“I’ll put the confounded golem in a barrel and glue the cork in!” she cried. “A barrel of white-hot sneeze-pepper! He has no right to promise my property.”
“Okay,” Grundy said. “Tell the eel no. Give it a shock.”
A narrow snout poked out of the roughening water. A cold gust of wind ruffled Irene’s hair and flattened her clothing against her body, making her look extraordinarily pretty. The sky darkened.
“It says, figuratively speaking, your figure isn’t bad,” Grundy reported with a smirk.
This incongruous compliment put her off her pace. It was hard to tell off someone who made a remark like that. “Oh, all right,” she said, sulking. “Half the seeds. But I choose which half.”
“Well, toss them in, stupid,” Grundy said, clinging to the side of the craft as it pitched in the swells.
“But they’ll sprout!”
“That’s the idea. Make them all grow. Use your magic. The eclectic eel demands payment in advance.”
Irene looked rebellious, but the first drop of rain struck her on the nose and she decided to carry through. “This will come out of your string hide, golem,” she muttered. She tossed the seeds into the heaving water one by one, invoking each in turn. “Grow, like a golem’s ego. Grow, like Grundy’s swelled head. Grow, like the vengeance I owe the twerp . . .”
Strange things developed in the water. Pink-leaved turnips sprouted, fuming in place, and tan tomatoes, and yellow cabbages and blue beets. Snap beans snapped merrily and artichokes choked.
Then the flowers started, as she came to another section of her supply. White blossoms sprang up in great clusters, decorating the entire ocean near the raft. Then they moved away in herds, making faint baa-aa-aas.
“What’s that?” Grundy asked.
“Phlox, ninny,” Irene said.
Oh, flocks, Dor thought. Of course. The white sheep of flowers.
Firecracker flowers popped redly, tiger lilies snarled, honeybells tinkled, and bleeding hearts stained the water with their sad life essence. Irises that Irene’s mother had given her flowered prettily in blue and purple. Gladiolas stretched up happily; begonias bloomed and departed even before they could be ordered to begone. Periwinkles opened their orbs to wink; crocuses parted their white lips to utter scandalous imprecations.
Grundy leaned over the edge of the raft to sniff some pretty multicolored little flowers that were vining upward. Then something happened. “Hey!” he cried suddenly, outraged, wiping golden moisture off his head. “What did they do that for?”
Irene glanced across. “Dummy,” she said with satisfaction, “what do you expect sweet peas to do? You better stay away from the pansies.”
On Dor’s side there was an especially rapid development, the red, orange, and white flowers bursting forth almost before the buds formed. “My, these are in a hurry,” he commented.
“They’re impatiens,” Irene explained.
The display finished off with a dazzling emergence of golden balls -marigolds. “That’s half. Take it or leave it,” Irene said.
“The eel takes it,” Grundy said, still shaking pea out of his hair. “Now the eclectic eel will lead us through the storm to shore, in its fashion.”
“About time,” Chet said. “Everyone hang on. We have a rough sail coming.”
The eel wriggled forward. The craft followed. The storm struck with its moist fury. “What do you have against us?” Dor asked it as the wind tore at his body.
“Nothing personal,” it blew back. “It’s my job to clear the seas of riffraff. Can’t have flotsam and jetsam cluttering up the surface, after all.”
“I don’t know those people,” Dor said. The raft was rocking and twisting as it followed the elusive eel but they were somehow avoiding the worst of the violence.
A piece of planking floated by. “I’m flotsam,” it said. “I’m part of the ship that wrecked here last month, still floating.”
A barrel floated by on the other side, the battered trunk of a harvested jellybarrel tree. “I’m jetsam,” it blew from its bung. “I was thrown overboard to lighten the ship.”
“Nice to know you both,” Dor said politely.
“The eel uses them for markers,” Grundy said. “It uses anything it finds.”
“Where’s the riffraff?” Irene asked. “If the storm is here to clear it from the seas, there should be some to clear.”
“I’m the raf’,” the raft explained. “You must be the rff’.” And it chuckled.
Now the rain pelted down full-strength. All of them were soaked in an instant. “Bail! Bail!” Chet screamed thinly through the wind.
Dor grabbed his bucket-actually, it was a bouquet Irene had grown, which his spelling had fouled up so that its nature had completely changed-and scooped out water. Smash the Ogre worked similarly on the other side, using a pitcher. By dint of colossal effort they managed to stay marginally ahead of the rain that poured in.
“Get low!” Grundy cried through the weather. “Don’t let her roll over!”
“She’s not rolling,” Irene said. “A raft can’t-“
Then the craft pitched horribly and started to turn over. Irene threw herself flat in the bottom of the center depression, joining Dor and Smash. The raft listed sickeningly to right, then to left, first throwing Irene bodily into Dor, then hurling him into her. She was marvelously soft.
“What are you doing.?” Dor cried as his wind was almost knocked from him despite his soft landings.
“, m yawing,” the raft said.
“Seems more like a roll to me,” Chet grumbled from the rear.
Irene fetched up against Dor again, hip to hip and nose to nose.
“Dear, we’ve got to stop meeting this way,” she gasped, attempting to smile.
In other circumstances Dor would have appreciated the meetings more.
Irene was padded in appropriate places, so that the shocks of contact were pleasantly cushioned. But at the moment he was afraid for his life and hers. Meanwhile, she looked as if she were getting seasick.
The craft lurched forward and down, as if sliding over a waterfall.
Dor’s own gorge rose. “Now what are you doing?” he heaved.
“I’m pitching,” the raft responded.
“We’re out of the water!” Chet cried. His head remained higher despite his prone position. “There’s something beneath us! That’s why we’re rolling so much!”
“That’s the behemoth,” Grundy said.
“The what?” Dor asked.
“The behemoth. A huge wallowing creature that floats about doing nothing. The eclectic eel led us up to it, to help weather the storm.”
Irene unglued herself from Dor, and all of them crawled cautiously up and looked over the edge of the raft. The storm continued, but now it beat on the glistening blubbery back of the tremendous animal. The craft’s perch seemed insecure because of the way it rolled and slid on the slick surface, but the enormous bulk of the monster provided security from the heaving ocean.