“It’ll be interesting to see how they collect the fares,” Tiana commented. “Water nymphs must be pretty much in contact with the water at all times or they’ll start to dry out.”
If Joe had been at all aware of the previous night’s activities, he did not let on to either of them, and seemed perfectly happy to accept Irv’s contention that there was more in the purse than he’d thought. He really began to wonder about his Dad, though; he knew that Joe had lightning reflexes and could pop up out of an apparently sound sleep, sword in hand, at the merest sound of danger. For the simple life, the boy thought, things were sure getting complicated, with everybody keeping secrets from everybody else.
Now it was their turn to be besieged by the vendors as they loaded back on. It was kind of the honor system on who got on first, but it wasn’t much of a crowd and the line was pretty much self-enforcing.
Irving looked inside and wasn’t sure he liked it. “Hey! This tub’s sinkin’!”
An old guy with a thick gray beard taking a cart aboard chuckled. “Don’t worry about it none, son. They decide if the water comes in or stays out. Just you wait!”
The small boys who’d unfastened the ramp now waded into the water and got hold of ropes floating there on the surface. Then they ran back and attached hooks on the ropes to an assembly at each end of the ramp and gave a shout. Something pulled on the ropes from the sea, raising the ramp, which hit a wooden catch at the top of each side and clicked into place. The boat lurched this way and that, and suddenly was floating free. The deck had only a few inches of water in it, but now the water seemed to coalesce in clear spots and from those spots arose, almost oozed, the shapes of two of the water nymphs. They had an unnerving, Other-Worldly perfection to them, and they looked exactly alike, each about four feet of total feminine sensuality.
“Don’t touch the hair, boy,” the old man cautioned in a low tone. “It’s like sea nettles. Stings like crazy.”
“Welcome to the Daryia ferry,” they said in unison, in truly musical, singsong voices. “Please give us your fares now as we pass among you. After we are squared away, the water will recede and there is fodder in the forward hold for the animals which is included in the fare.”
“I wonder what happens if you don’t have the fare?” Irv mused.
“Then they take you,” the old man replied.
That was not a comforting thought.
Even up close, the fairy nymphs seemed weird, like beautiful but extreme sculptures made of glass. Irv, like all the other men, couldn’t really take his eyes off the creatures.
When one got to them, Joe, who’d appropriated the money pouch, fished out six gold pieces and dropped them in the nymph’s palm. The pieces sat there a moment, then seemed to sink into her hand, and you could watch the golden coins go down through her into the water and then to who knew where?
“I’ve never heard of nymphs running a ferry before,” Tiana commented. “Nor tamed hippogryphs, either.”
The nymph shrugged. “It beats lying around all day being seductive,” she responded. “It’s an old troll ferry that was abandoned during the War. We looked at it and decided that sitting around looking sexy for a few thousand years had grown kinda old, so we did it. The hippogryphs are not tame. They’re partners.”
Joe thought some reply to that was called for, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t think of one. Finally, Tiana commented, “It’s nice to see some independent businesswomen here for a change.”
As soon as all the fares were collected, the nymphs melted into the water, and, true to their word, the water itself began to drain out somewhere, until the deck was as dry as a bone.
From what was now the front came a series of splashes and an eerie, hypnotic siren song, and the boat began moving in earnest.
Although the crossing should have taken no more than twenty-five or thirty minutes, it was tricky in the crosscurrents of the big river, and there were constant adjustments this way and that.
Finally, Joe muttered, “What I want to know is what they do with their money.”
“Perhaps it is best not to know that one,” Tiana replied. “Even nymphs might like pretty baubles, and who knows how they live under the water, but what and where does a hippogryph go to spend it?”
Irv just shook his head in wonder. Maybe this place wasn’t so much like home after all.
He went over and jumped up on some of the side-bracing so he could look out at the passing scene. The ferry landing was already receding in the distance, and they Were about to clear the bend and go out into the mainstream of the river itself.
As soon as they did clear, he could look back and up and saw, or thought he saw, the point near the next bend where they’d spent the night. Looking the other way, Marquewood still wasn’t much, although, beyond the trees, he thought he saw the roofs of some buildings that perhaps marked the town.
The river itself was amazing, both as a main highway for the entire continent and for supporting lives and livelihoods of both humans and nonhumans. It had an abundance of fish; he’d watched some being caught from small jerry-built piers near the landing, and while the fish looked, well, pretty strange, they were still fish and it was still pretty much what would be expected.
Just in front of them, a small school, or whatever they’d call them, of mermaids popped up out of the water and shouted and waved, not to him or the passengers, but to the strange nymph who was both captain and teamster up ahead. Up close, the mermaids’ skins did have a rather bluish cast not evident from shore, and their hair was a much darker blue, but they still looked remarkably like a bunch of schoolgirls out in the river for a swim.
Part of the reason the trip took so long was the number of small islands that had been built up by the river’s deposits near the bend, forcing them to thread their way through small inlets separating the mounds. And yet, even the small islands were covered with trees and bushes and the nests of exotic tropical birds. Some mermaids were sunning themselves on a big rock at the end of one of the islands, and on shore a number of dark shapes seemed to writhe and then go into the water. Alligators, maybe? Or something else as weird as barking, bearded fish.
Here and there some water nymphs would rise to the surface and seem to walk on or even slightly above the water, shouting things in their operalike singsong voices to those handling the boat. Somehow, it drove home just how vulnerable land-dwelling humans like him were on this thing. Not only did this river have all the dangers of any tropical river or even any deep river, except maybe the ton of pollution Earth added, but it was also home to a number of races as intelligent in their own way as humans were, but as different as night and day from humans as well. There might be whole civilizations living beneath these waters, with who knew what powers and what kind of lives?
Finally, they began to come in to the opposite shore; the one they left now seemed eerily lost in a late morning mist. The town itself was still mostly masked, starting on a bluff well up from the river landing and sheltered by thick, almost junglelike vegetation.
He wanted to see how they came in, but a yell from Joe ordered him down and he reluctantly obeyed. He quickly saw why; the bumps and jolts of the operation might well have shaken him off the side or, if he’d leaned too far forward, into the river itself.
“We’ve still got a little money,” Joe told him, “so we’ll catch a bite to eat here and get what news we can of the route. I want to find out if there’s anything nasty between here and Terindell.”