Three Times Chosen Read online

  Long enough to snatch back the Grohial hoped Durgay.

  Exposure to the elements became the least of his worries. Etched against the backdrop of starkly white sands in crystal clear water where visibility extended to forty plus feet, the greatest danger lay in being spotted by straying eyes topside. Durgay had just the remedy to lessen that peril. Previous explorations of Harvest Shallows uncovered an underwater cave pitting the inside rim of the reef wall ten feet below and to his left. His plan was unsurprisingly simple. Alongside Lorea, he would hole up in the grotto until the falling night inked the lagoon, at which time Durgay would embark on his submerged dash upriver, burgle the stolen relic, and collect the waiting princess to board the roller coaster tidal outflow back to the open sea.

  If only Her Royal Pain-in the-Arse would stop dillydallying and descend quicker! Motioning for the coasting princess to hurry up, Durgay noticed something terribly amiss. Risking discovery and a slap on his face for his effrontery, he demanded in a strident click, “Where's my trident, missy?"

  Slow to overcome her dazedness, Lorea stared blankly at her empty hands. The Seaguardian's precious toy must have slipped out of her grasp during her wild ride. Indignant, her scorn outdid Durgay's gruffness. “Why is every mermale preoccupied with where his shaft is!"

  There was no time for Durgay to reply. Splashes on the surface preceded backlit silhouettes entering the lagoon from the beachfront. Humanoidal figures plunged rapidly, menacingly spread-eagled, like spiders abseiling on sticky strands. In their midst a heavy fibre net unfolded with dreadful purpose, its squarish dimensions steered by handheld guide ropes strung from each of its rock-weighted corners. Lorea failed to notice the impending danger even as the mesh engulfed her, snaring the unsuspecting princess. Wrapping the rope webbing tightly about their staggered catch before she could react and struggle, her kidnappers promptly hauled the netted Lorea upwards.

  Dozens more potential captors plopped into the sun-warmed waters of Harvest Shallows towing a second, huger net meant for the robustly built merman. Knowing he should dive the remaining forty-five feet to at least attempt to hide in one of the clumps of seagrass whispering in the bottom eddy, Durgay floated immobile, frozen by fear. Weaponless and outnumbered, he did not even put up token resistance as the Landhopper divers swarmed over him, trussing up the compliant Cetari warrior in a cocoon of constricting cords. Meekly accepting his demise, he neglected to cringe from the stone-headed mace clubbing him into senselessness after they dragged him ashore.

  Chapter Three

  "Looksee here at what the boys landed!"

  Ryops, Dokran Teh of the Piawro, looked vacantly up at his tallish magician-priest, careful to hide his revulsion at Eskaa's fathomless cruelty to animals, before surveying the pair of freshly caught man-fish dripping suspended from individual tripods of bakau poles. Removed from their capture nets, only the dazed female hung free of restraints. Her more dangerous male companion, pummelled into unconsciousness, had his hands bound securely behind his back by knotted cords of the same coconut fibre rope cruelly looped about the base of their tails and tautly strung over the apex of each trivet, then tied off around the trunk of a nearby coconut tree. A freshening south-easterly, swaying the crowns of the other palms dotting the beach, gently rocked the hunters” catch-of-the-day, the timber supports creaking in protest.

  "Congratulations, Eskaa,” the chieftain deprecatingly croaked. “You've netted two Fish-with-Hands. Throw in a couple of breadfruit loaves and they should feed the masses nicely."

  The lanky Landhopper wisely disregarded his leader's dry wit. Backing Ryops was a seven strong honour guard of emotionless Shurpeha. The sword-bearing warriors were famously intolerant of any disrespect shown toward their boss and Eskaa's personal followers no match for their fighting prowess.

  His tallness notwithstanding, the Subos of Lunder Atoll appeared cloned from the same mould that spawned his identical looking chief and primitively club-armed captors milling curiously around the strung up Cetari.

  Essentially giant bipedal frogs, the Piawro visibly looked the part. Bulging eyes, sporting horizontally slit daytime pupils, sat seemingly grafted onto a snub-nosed head perched at the end of a thickset neck sloping down from hunched shoulders. Stubby, four-fingered hands sprouted from arms overly long for the squat body, compounding the amphibs top-heavy appearance. Coated in an overall olive-green colouration, the shiningly dry and warty skin was mottled in additional shadings of lemon and russet, harking back to their evolutional beginnings when camouflage enhanced survivability in their tropically forested coastland home.

  Nudging the six foot mark, Eskaa easily would have towered over Ryops by a full two feet were it not for a peculiarity of Piawro physiology. Resulting from their unique amphibian ancestry the islanders stood everlastingly stooped over, their upright stance birdlike due to backward facing knee joints bent in awkward permanence. These muscularly kinked hind legs, unable to straighten, denied the amphibs adopting the familiar two-legged walking and running gaits intrinsic to other bipeds, conferring instead the hopping motion from which their belittling Cetari nickname derived.

  The scarlet and indigo macaw quills forming the feather collar serving as Eskaa's priestly insignia rustled in the rising sea breeze. Leaning heavily upon his partnering badge of office—a forked, wooden staff topped by a bone rattle—the deputy leader of the Piawro glowered at his weakling superior, weighing up his response. He then quipped, “Fish and hips for tea tonight?” prodding Lorea's waist with the sharpened butt of his rattling staff.

  Ryops needed no such adornments. Only the chieftaining males of the Piawro possessed poison glands, the fleshy cerise ear sacs advertising rank as well as warning of danger. “We'll need a more substantial catch than this pair to feed the rest of the island,” he bluntly told his second.

  In a muttering croak for Ryop's eardrums only, Eskaa selfishly answered, “The tastes of the few outweigh the hunger of the many.” Rank brought with it privilege and damn the untitled, according to the Subos's philosophy of greed.

  Pulling his narcissistic priest off to one side, Ryops censured him under the broiling mid-afternoon sun, the burning sands hot underfoot. Recognition between the amphibs centred on differentiating voice tones and the Dokran Teh's timbre was unmistakably grim. “The Piawro are starved of food and space, and you can't think beyond filling your own belly! Eskaa, you didn't have me dragged from my siesta all the way down to the beach simply to discuss what's gracing tonight's dinner menu."

  Gesturing with his crooked staff to the Cetari dangling behind him, the rattly bones underlining his defending croaks, Eskaa urged, “Look past the Fish-with-Hands as mere seafood takeouts, delectable as they are, and tell me what you see."

  Flummoxed, Ryops shrugged his hunched shoulders. “A couple of fish out of water."

  "Look past the obvious."

  Ryops attempted to do just that and came up empty-handed.

  "Spies,” accused Eskaa.

  Blinking his lidded eyes, Ryops challenged the summation. “Preposterous!” he declared. “They're obviously male and female; a mating pair who carelessly wandered into the lagoon to spawn. Can't really blame the lustful fish for that. It is a romantic setting, even for dumb animals."

  "They're far from being that."

  Sighing loudly, Ryops fixed his disagreeing Subos with a judgmental stare. “We've had this discussion countless times before and my viewpoint stands unchanged."

  "As does mine. Do not foolishly discount the Fish-with-Hands as mindless beasts, like you always do, Ryops. Treat them with the same respect you'd afford a hurricane, for they are just as unpredictable and destructive."

  "Nonsense, Eskaa. Before today there had been no sightings of Fish-with-Hands for two generations. If not for this capture, I'd have guessed them extinct."

  "An unwise assumption,” said the criticising Subos. “They've merely been lying low in deep water. Planning. Plotting."

  "Scheming what? They are stupid fish in
capable of stringing together a strand of pearls, let alone complete a sentence."

  Jumping on the opportunity presenting itself, Eskaa offered up Lorea's confiscated black pearl necklace to his mocking leader as proof positive of Cetari intelligence. “I ripped this off the neck of the female. It's clearly a handmade symbol of rank."

  Unwilling to concede the point, Ryops asserted, “An octopus has arms, four more than your handy fish combined sport. That doesn't make it any brighter than a coconut crab"

  "But possessing a language does."

  Back on that old seahorse.

  "I've been making a study of the whistles and clicks the Fish-with-Hands produce. Diving to the bottom of the lagoon, I sit outside the entrance for as long as I can tolerate the salt, listening to the underwater sounds borne by the incoming currents. That's how we intercepted this pair so quickly. I heard their approach, Ryops."

  "Hearing doesn't necessarily mean understanding,” countered the doubting Dokran Teh.

  "On the contrary, my chieftain, monitoring fish chatter blesses me with a rudimentary comprehension of their speech and I overheard these two talking over invasion plans."

  "Eskaa, that's crazy talk. Why would fish, even smart ones, choose to invade the land?"

  "Dunno. All I fathomed is that the Fish-with-Hands are talking war."

  Highly sceptical, Ryops put his Subos to the test. “Convince me then. Hold a conversation with one of them."

  "R-Right now?” stammered Eskaa.

  "What better time. You have a captive audience.” Ryops was insisting his histrionic magician-priest put on a good show.

  "I can't. They're both out to it."

  "Makes it a tad difficult to prove your theory, eh Eskaa?” Taking a short hop past his grumbling Subos, Ryops steadied the rocking merman, twirling Durgay to face him. Gazing deeply into the lidless, unblinking eyes, searching for a glimpse of receptivity, he croaked in disgust at his own foolishness and shoved the senseless Cetari away, necessitating Eskaa to dodge the swinger.

  Pleased at foiling his childhood sparring partner, Ryops had weightier problems than errant seafood to ponder. “Gut them like the fish they are and feed the fillets to my Shurpeha,” he gruffly ordered, bounding up off the beach headed into the mangroves, his retinue of protectors scrabbling to form up behind their retiring chief.

  The chuffed guard commander, a hulking toady by the name of Chulib, licked his lipless mouth and smugly said, “Better hop to it, Subos,” then showed off to the glowering Subos with a parting swish of his obsidian-edged timber sword before shouldering his round bamboo shield and jumping after them.

  Eskaa shot imaginary daggers into Chulib's receding back. The Shurpeha were a major hurdle in his goal of personal advancement. Those wretched slashers of theirs! Representing the coconut cream of Piawrod armaments, the three and a half foot long macana made a potent weapon, capable of decapitating an amphib in a single, two-handed blow.

  Created by red hot molten lava spewing from a shoreline volcanic vent and rapidly cooled by the ocean amid a hissing cloud of steam into glassy-textured dark rock, shards of emerald-black obsidian—honed to a sharpness keener than steel—slotted snugly into grooves chiselled along the opposing edges of the wooden sword and glued firmly in place with thick breadfruit sap. Prized beyond any other item on the island, the precious obsidian remained the sole property of the Shurpeha, employed to enforce Dokran Teh authority. Not even Eskaa's loyal band of religious groupies dared tackle the slash-and-cut weaponry that rendered the chieftain's bodyguards nigh on invincible. Conservative stone clubs were no match for a well-swung macana.

  Prudently waiting until chieftain and company hopped out of sight into the jungly foliage, Eskaa put his own plans into motion. Growing up alongside Ryops enabled him to precisely gauge how far to test his boss's limited patience. To his flunkies he barked the command, “Hoist the male Fish-with-Hands over to the lagoon and dunk him. Quickly now! I don't want him expiring before we have a chance to play twenty questions."

  "What of the female?” one of his devotees asked.

  Running a stubby index finger down Lorea's breastbone, Eskaa whispered in her earhole, “You are someone special, my dear. I sense it. Killing you will bring your school out into the open.” Knowing more about the Cetari than he let on to Ryops, the Subos slurped his lengthy, prehensile tongue over the mermaid's unresponsive face, his drool moisturising her drying cheek skin. “Ever kissed a frog, princess?"

  "The female? What is to be done with her?” the lackey pressed.

  Whirling on the interrupter, Eskaa thwacked him on the noggin with the bony crown of his staff. The foolish amphib cowered from his master's wrath, rubbing his bruised head. “Do as the Dokran orders and dress her for the Shurpeha evening meal. Save her hands for me. Instruct chef to cut them off and fry the digits up in a little coconut oil. I'm in the mood to snack on fishfingers."

  * * * *

  Squalid best summed up R'bat City. There was no better, or worse, description for the principal Piawro settlement. Not even the squalor of the scattered outlying villages compared to the grunge debasing the Lunder Atoll capital. Thousands of dingy timber and mud pithouses infested a clearing hacked out of Corakk Jungle at the southern foot of the dormant volcanic mountain forming the imposing epicentre of the island. The conurbation of semi-sunken lodges had the odious look of warts blotching the landscape, a tropical cancer diseasing paradise. The smoky exhalation of the primitive metropolis, cast by the uncountable cooking fires steadily devouring the jungle, choked the lower slopes of Mont Plaas, making the slumbering volcano appear to have sprung a leak at its base.

  Entering the nucleus of Piawro society at a slow hop, Ryops gagged on the malodorous stenches. Wood smoke tainted air already fouled by stinking, overflowing communal latrines polluting the congested civic centre. The musty pong of untold amphib bodies overlaying the nasal assault, Chulib organised half of his shepherding Shurpeha into a vanguard to clear a path for the returning Dokran Teh through the smelly mass. Not everyone gave way courteously enough to the guard captain's liking, compelling him to order the use of abusive croaks and the occasional shove to dole out his will. Jumping protectively alongside his disgusted chieftain, Chulib gave sly hand signals for the attendants bringing up the rear to close ranks, intent on preventing Ryops from being jostled.

  What he could not shield his chieftain from was the swelling dissonance that had Ryops hopping the gauntlet every time he set a webbed foot outside his lodges. Vociferous demands for more food and housing, better sanitation, peppered the big boss of the Landhoppers daily. Risking a bashing for their outspokenness, the brasher hecklers openly accused the badgered Dokran Teh of incompetence, insisting he address the problems of the Piawro forthwith or handover management to a more capable amphib. Surprise, surprise, Eskaa's name was craftily touted.

  A bark from Ryops restrained Chulib from thumping the treasonous talkers; rioting was the last hassle he wanted to contend with. Upping the pace of his van instead, the leaping commander ushered his chieftain over and through the malcontents in twenty-foot bounds along a switchback dirt incline, gaining in no time the guarded gate to the bamboo palisade fencing the palatial compound sited advantageously on a basaltic shelf overlooking the city.

  Once safely inside Ryops dropped his escort apart from faithful Chulib, who accompanied him to the architecturally notable roundhouse generations of Piawro leaders before him had dwelt in. Squatting on a mat of woven palm leaves spotlighted by the shaft of afternoon sun slanting through the uncovered doorway, he invited the Shurpeha's senior officer to sit a spell. Preferring to stoop, Chulib leaned himself alongside his sword up against the mud-plastered walls, oblivious to the sense of history permeating the room. The underlying basalt blocks, cemented with mortar in a circular plan, muffled the jeers reminding Ryops of the unfixable mess he inherited.

  "Chulib, you don't realise just how lonely at the top it is."

  Unsure how to respond to his chief's opener,
he offered, “Dokran, if it's company you desire, I can easily send for one of the concubines. Going for a swim with her should lift your spirits."

  If only forgetting my troubles was that simple.

  "Take a gander outside, Chu, and you won't see anything but the woes of the Piawro. Hunger, not hatred, riles that mob out there. Who can blame them? Overcrowding is the root cause of the critical food and housing shortages. Compounding those problems is the habitual deforestation. Corakk is not an inexhaustible resource. Everyday our loggers fell more trees, shrinking the jungle. Pretty soon there'll be no wood to fuel our campfires nor lumber for much needed homes. Already the wildlife is depleted to the point that the only fresh meat we can catch is the odd sugarcane rat, and they're hardly what I'd call a meal. As for the fishing, that'd be totally nonexistent if not for the odd tiger fish swimming into the lagoon and I for one am growing sick of shark fin soup.” Ryops sighed pessimistically, adding, “The Piawro can't subsist on coconuts forever. What are we to do?"

  Chulib proffered no answer. He was a thumper, not a thinker.

  Fixing his guard captain with a questioning stare, Ryops angled for straightforward counsel. “Do you think Eskaa is right about the Fish-with-Hands having smarts?"

  "Fish is meant to be brain food, Dokran."

  Mulling over Chulib's unfussy cliché, Ryops fished deeper. “Their questionable intelligence aside, in your opinion should I consider the Fish-with-Hands harmful?"

  "All wild animals should be treated as dangerous."

  Unaided by his chief bodyguard's middle-of-the-path perspective, Ryops gazed broodingly at the dreary vista despoiling his line of sight. The warty pithouses only added to his gloomy impression of the Piawro rotting from the inside out, the scrawny and grimy amphibs clustered around the few cooking hearths spewing out pleasanter aromas completing the dismal picture. If only one of his predecessors was born a visionary possessing enough guts and prescience to avert the present state of affairs, the plight of the Piawro might not be so hopeless.