Heretical Fishing

Book 2: Chapter 80: Brotherly Love

Beneath the pink and orange sunset of a beautiful winter’s day, two brothers stumbled arm in arm along a seldom-traveled dirt road.

“We’d better get back to the farm,” David slurred as they both wobbled.

“Aye.” Trevor upended his bottle, taking a deep swig. He sighed with the burn that ran down his throat, warming him from the core. “Da will tan our hides if he learns we been out drinking all day instead of working.”

A few seasons back, things had kicked off between their home village of Cedar, and those bog-water drinkers over at Bengal Village. As a result, the brothers hadn’t been able to buy any of Bengal’s moonshine for most of the year. So, when a merchant had come through with some of the swill—and speaking all proper like, so they knew he wasn’t a Bengalian in disguise—they’d bought as much as they could afford.

“Say what you will about those goatherders over in Bengal, they sure know how to make a damned good brew.” Trevor tipped the glass bottle up, his eyebrow furrowing when none came out. He shook it, a scowl deepening when only a few drops fell onto his tongue. He turned to glare at his brother. “You drank the last of it, David, you bastard?”

“Me?” David reeled back from his brother, indignant and swaying. “You’re holding the damned bottle!”

“Aye! Which makes it even worse! Ye drank the last of it right out from under me, you poxy son of a goat.”

“Oi, oi, oi. You leave my mother out of...” David hiccuped, a flushed grin coming to his face. “We have the same parents. You just called yourself a son of a goat..”

Swaying without a shoulder to lean on, Trevor pointed the now-empty bottle at his brother’s thieving, mother-besmirching face. “You take that back.”

With the dexterity of a dehydrated man that had been day-drinking moonshine for the last eight hours, David backhanded his brother. Well, he tried to, anyway. By some miracle, he managed to smack the swaying bottle extended toward him. It made a dull tink as his knuckles collided with it, sending it sailing into the treeline. Both wobbling violently, their heads spun to follow its trajectory.

“You ungrateful, mother-insulting toad lick—”

Trevor cut off as a streak of colors shot past them, traveling east to west along the road. The speed of it was incredible. They both turned, intending on seeing what it was, but there was nothing there.

“What in—”

A wall of wind slammed into their backs. If they had been sober, perhaps they could have withstood it. Instead, they fell like long-dead trees in a hurricane, landing in a tangle of limbs as dust sprayed over them. Both brothers slowly climbed to all fours, spitting dust.

Trevor, locking eyes with his brother, chortled. “You look like you been tilling the soil with your teeth!”

“Yeah?” David got to his knees. “Well, you look like you been shovelin’ dirt with your head!”

Both pairs of eyes narrowed, a lip curled, and they burst into laughter.

“That damned bog-swill is some good stuff,” David said, finally making it upright and holding a hand to his brother.

“Aye,” Trevor agreed, using the offered hand to pull himself upright. “We’ll have to get some more soon. Might not be so bad dealing with them bog-water drinkers if we can get more bottles...”

Shoulder to shoulder and their spirits as high as the clouds above, the brothers stumbled back toward their village.

***

Watching the two men go, Maria, Borks, and I shared a smile.

We waited until they were far away before hopping down from the tree. After accidentally sprinting past them at cultivator speed, all three of us had scrambled upward, hiding from sight.

“Phew!” Maria brushed her hands off. “That was close.”

“No kidding. Lucky they were so drunk.”

Maria giggled, covering her mouth. “I’m not so sure how I feel about the church’s trade route being used to facilitate whatever those two were up to.”

“I don’t know,” I replied, looking down the road after them. “I kinda love it. They seem like fun.”

“Should we go say hello?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“We probably shouldn’t be seen, but we could trail them. Checking they got home would be the right thing to do...”

She rolled her eyes, smiling at me. “Right. It’s definitely because you want them home safe and not because you’ll get enjoyment out of their banter.” She bent to scratch Borks’s head, who was staring up at us with unconditional love. “Come on, then. Let’s go make sure those farmers make it back to their village.”

We trailed them for a good half hour, our enhanced senses of hearing easily picking up their voices. The words they were using, however, were a different story.

“Are they getting drunker?” Maria asked, scrunching her nose. “What are they even saying?”

I laughed, keeping it quiet enough that we wouldn’t be overheard. “I think that was something about a barn cat or a cactus needing water. Could have been either, honestly.”

The two brothers’ voices trailed off. When we stepped further through the trees, I saw why. They’d arrived at Cedar Village, just as Ellis had marked on our map, and we barely caught sight of their still-swaying backs as they stumbled around a stone and mortar wall. The mortar was half covered in moss, the plant flourishing in the damp forest air. The buildings beyond stretched toward the sky, their walls built of the same materials and only slightly less afflicted by the green growth. Smoke rose from chimneys, glowing a deep orange against the almost-set sun beyond. It looked like a little village right out of a fantasy novel. The only thing missing was elves, or perhaps a low-flying dragon.

Or a bloke that can shoot beams of explosive light from his fist, I thought, smiling at myself.

Cedar Village was almost as beautiful as the picturesque bay back at Tropica, and we stood in silence a moment longer, taking it in.

“David and Trevor!” a feminine voice called, breaking the silence. “You get your butts here this instant so I can smack some sense into you!”

One of them mumbled something unintelligent, but the tone was questioning.

“What? You thought I wouldn’t know my idiot sons bought some of that poison from Bengal when the merchant rolled through? When your da couldn’t find you, I checked your hiding spot. And what did I find? A bottle missing!”

A series of hurried smacks rang out through the trees, followed by slurred protests.

“Oh, you think this is bad? Just wait until you da finds you!”

Their mother slipped into a tirade filled with such vitriol and passion that Maria and I raised our eyebrows at each other.

“I feel like I should write that down,” I whispered. “That would put some hair on Paul’s chest.”

She hit me on the arm softly. “Don’t even joke about that! Helen would slap you silly.”

“Naturally... but it could be worth it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on. Let’s go find a place to camp before you get any more brilliant ideas.”

“But then we won’t get to hear their da beat their hides like an old carpet…”

“Let’s race, then,” she replied, shooting me a grin. “Loser has to cook dinner!”

Before I could reply, she was off, dashing through the trees to the northwest. Borks raced off after her, his golden hair streaming with his passage. It was a terrible punishment for losing; I loved cooking. What I couldn’t ignore, however, was a challenge.

“You want a race, huh?” I rolled my shoulders, watching them as they tore off through the underbrush. I crouched, sent chi down to my legs, then exploded into motion.

A half hour later, Maria was leaning on her knees, huffing. “Not... fair...” she got out between breaths.

“Not bad, huh?”

She collapsed to the ground, her sweat-streaked hair sticking to parts of her face. “Your chi advancement or whatever it is—I want it.”

Borks let out a groan of agreement, also laying on his side in the grass.

The entire time we ran, I’d used just enough chi to stay ahead of them. I wanted the race to be close, and the result was the exhaustion Borks and Maria were currently experiencing. We’d covered an insane amount of ground, running around the village and next to the road along our plotted path. When we reached a crossroads Ellis had marked down on the map, we took a left and headed south. It was a little out of the way, but there was a vital pit-stop we had to make. I gazed out at our reason for visiting, anticipation burbling to the surface of my consciousness.

The lake was the largest I’d seen since coming to this world. The sides of it were raised, looking like nothing so much as a crater. There were no streams coming to or from the body of water, meaning there was good potential for finding a new species. The far bank was as far across as the river mouth back home, and my fingers twitched as I dreamed of casting out my line. With the daylight almost gone, though, there were more important things to take care of.

“Take your time to recover,” I said, stretching. “I’ll get started on the camp.”

It took little time to set our tent up, and even less to collect wood for a campfire. As I blew on a tiny flame sprouting beneath a teepee of sticks, Maria knelt down beside me. The fire grew, quickly consuming the dry wood.

“You know,” Maria said, leaning her head on my shoulder. “You’re pretty well domesticated.”

“Yeah, my girlfriend is lazy, so I naturally learned to—kidding! Kidding!”

She withdrew her pinchy fingers, smiling behind her pout. Borks shoved his head between us, tongue lolling from his panting mouth as he stared up at both of us.

I rubbed Borks’s head. “Let’s see if this lake holds any fish.”

After setting our rods up, I removed the chunk of bait.

“It’s a shame we didn’t find any of the pungent eel over the last couple days,” Maria said, pinching her nose as I removed the ripe eel from its wrappings.

“Yeah. This should be enough to do the trick, though.”

I ran a knife through the eel, cutting off two thin pieces. Maria had a smaller hook on her line so we could target different sized fish at the same time; we had no clue what the lake held. I slipped the baits on each of our hooks, then we stepped forward together.

“After you,” I said, delighting in the look on Maria’s face.

“No. Please.” She ushered me forward. “Ladies first.”

“Oh, such a gentleman!” I replied, batting my eyes.

She giggled, covering her mouth in the way that always made my heart flutter. I cast my line out, aiming right for the middle of the lake. It landed with a satisfying plop, as did Maria’s, just a little closer to shore. Sitting beside each other, with Borks at our feet, we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

“Well, this is a bit disappointing...” Maria said, chewing her lip as she stared at the water.

I reeled my line in. It felt heavy, and sure enough, the bait was untouched.

Maria sighed. “I was so excited, too. I guess there’s nothing in this lake?”

“Maybe...” I replied, thinking of something.

“What are you doing?” Maria asked as I cut my tackle off the end of my line.

“Testing a theory...”

I grabbed a sabiki rig, tying it to the end of my rod, then walked down to the water and cast it in. It landed close to shore, making a quiet splash barely heard over the calls of insects. I wound the line in so it was tight.

“You think there are smaller fish here?” she quietly asked.

“Yeah,” I whispered back. “Surely there’s something...”

She wrapped an arm around my back, leaning against my torso as we both stared out at the calm lake.

Something tugged at the line.

I inhaled sharply, adrenaline spiking and shattering the calm that Maria’s proximity gave me. I held the line tight, waiting for the bite.

Bump.

Bump.

The fish bit the hook, immediately trying to swim away. It was a small thing, but that didn’t make it any less exciting as I brought the hooks toward the surface. With a smile on my face, I lifted it up out of the water, swiveling so it entered the campfire’s light. The moment I caught sight of it, I froze, blinking at the flailing limbs.

Maria’s hand jolted on my back, gripping onto my shirt.

“... what the frack is that?” she demanded, her voice shrill.