Jon-Tom did his best to ignore the jostling, eager crowd as he strummed the suar and considered what song to sing. The harbor of Yarrowl lay spread out before him, full of tall sailing ships and smaller craft. The thick aroma of salt mixed with that of cargoes from distant lands and the raw sewage which the ships discharged into the bay.
Surely he was accomplished enough to execute a simple transportation song before a crowd of rubbernecking onlookers? Wasn’t that what being a professional was all about? Mudge stepped smartly past, jingling his purse full of coins and grinning behind his whiskers. The otter looked exceedingly pleased with himself.
“Not bad, mate. Maybe there’s somethin’ to this spellsingin’ business after all. With your talents and mine we could do ourselves proud.”
“Don’t forget, Mudge, that I have to make a boat appear or else you’ll have to give all these people their money back.”
“Yeah, let’s see some magic,” shouted one of the spectators, a small black bear clad in a silvery toga and leather cap. The cry was echoed by several others in the crowd. They had business to attend to and were starting to get edgy.
Jon-Tom leaned over to whisper to his companion. “Maybe you should have waited until I had a chance to try a simpler spell first. This isn’t a duar, remember.”
Mudge put a reassuring paw on his friend’s shoulder. “I ’ave confidence in you, mate. I know you won’t let me down, or your public either. Didn’t you always tell me you wanted to perform for an audience?”
“Yes, but that just involved singing, not magic.” He eyed some of the heavily armed spectators uneasily. “And this isn’t quite the type of audience I always dreamed about.”
“Now listen, mate, ’ere I’ve gone to the trouble o’ linin’ up enough money to pay for our ’ole journey and then some and you’re ’avin’ second thoughts. ’Tis unbecomin’ for a spellsinger. Wot would ’is sorcerorship say about this distressin’ lack o’ self-assurance?”
“I just wish you hadn’t promised them so much, that’s all. Naked crew members! I’ve no intention of conjuring up any such thing.”
Mudge winked. “Right, but they don’t know that. Ah, a couple more potential customers. I’ll just slip over quiet-like and ease them into the audience while you’re gettin’ started.” He melted into the semicircle of onlookers. A couple of margays regarded Jon-Tom out of wide eyes.
How had he let the otter talk him into something like this? Nothing for it now but to try. If he failed they could always return the money Mudge had collected. He strummed the suar again, having already settled on a song. With its single set of strings, the suar was much easier to play. No reason not to proceed with confidence.
Half closing his eyes and trying to concentrate on the water next to the dock, he began to sing. The crowd quieted immediately, hushed and expectant.
Despite Jon-Tom’s best effort the first song produced nothing save some mutterings of discontent from his audience. He tried again, his fingers a blur against the suar strings. He felt confident and in control of himself and his music. If anything he was in better voice than usual.
Not so much as a single gneechee appeared.
The water lapped against the shore, driftwood bumped against the dock pilings, and the crowd stared at him unpleasantly. Wrong song, he told himself. Wrong instrument, too, but he had no choice there. Try another tune, and fast.
This time it went much better. Perhaps he simply needed the warm-up. The air above the water began to fluoresce. A few oohs and aahs rose from the crowd. Crabs clinging to the base of the pilings scattered. But while some of the onlookers claimed to be able to see outlines forming in the mist above the water, nothing solid materialized.
“Where’s the damn boat?” an elegantly attired wallaby demanded to know.
“Yes, where are the females?” asked the tall hare standing next to him.
“This we can see for free in any tavern,” growled a large spectator near the rear of the crowd.
“I’m still warming up.” It sounded lame even to his own ears, Jon-Tom knew.
“You said that after the first song,” hissed a lynx. Scarred and missing one ear, this tough-looking customer was fingering something short, sharp and curved. “Let’s see something—or let’s have our money back.”
“Magic isn’t science,” Jon-Tom pleaded. “Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“We were guaranteed magic.”
“I want my gold back!” shouted a tall simian from the crowd.
“What do you mean ‘guaranteed’?” Jon-Tom asked the lynx. “Nobody can guarantee magic.”
“Your friend the water rat did.” Light flashed off the curved knife the lynx was manipulating.
“He did? Mudge?” Jon-Tom strained to see into the crowd. There were representatives of many species facing him, but not one otter. Especially not one particular otter. “Mudge!”
The otter had disappeared along with his sackful of money. It appeared that Talea’s threat to sic the Lynchbany law on him had finally lost its hold. Having taken the opportunity to acquire some traveling cash of his own, he’d departed for distant parts unknown, leaving Jon-Tom to deal with an increasingly sullen, angry crowd which had been “guaranteed” a demonstration of real magic making. That was something Jon-Tom couldn’t promise Clothahump, much less a mob of newly fleeced citizens.
“Look, you have to understand that I didn’t promise you any magic. I can only try. That’s all any spellsinger can do. It was the otter who made all the promises.”
“We don’t argue that.” The voice was that of a squat long-whiskered mole who eyed Jon-Tom from behind thick, extremely dark glasses. He was brandishing a four-inch-long bone blade. “But he ain’t here no more, minstrel, and you are.”
“I’m not a minstrel.” Jon-Tom overtopped most of the crowd. Now he tried to take advantage of his height to make himself as imposing as possible. “I am a spellsinger.”
“Then prove it,” snapped the mole, “and I don’t mean by making pretty colors in the air.”
“You’re damn right I’ll prove it!” He was shaking, partly from anger and partly from fright. “I said I’d conjure up a boat and conjure up a boat I will.”
While he’d been arguing with the crowd a far more appropriate song had come to him. Confident now, he turned back to face the waters of Yarr Bay. Once more he began to sing, once again his fingers danced over the suar’s strings, and this time something far more cohesive than colored lights began to take shape atop the water. No gneechees swirled curiously around it, but he wasn’t singing for the gneechees this time. He was concentrating on his song.
Part of the problem stemmed from the fact that not many rock songs dealt with boats or ships. He didn’t dare use the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B.” again. That had been a near disaster. So the song he sang now was one of his own devising, improvised words set to the official theme music by Walter Sharf for the old Cousteau television specials. Add a little reggae and what more suitable combination of themes for calling up a proper boat? Perhaps he might even create a copy of the famed Calypso itself. Let the natives sneer until he confronted them with the reality of a modern, diesel-powered craft.
Several members of the crowd broke and ran. Most remained to stare in awe. Yes, conjure up the Calypso with its radar and complex electronics! Doubt his ability, would they? Double-stringed or single-stringed instrument in hand, he’d show them what a spellsinger was all about.
Twisting and flickering, the intense lights pirouetted above the disturbed surface of the bay. As he brought his vibrant, improvised tune to a rousing conclusion the lights softened and ran together, began to condense and solidify to form a cloud of pink incandescence which finally blew apart to reveal floating lightly on the water—a boat.
On its bow it bore the outline of a golden merman and the legend CALYPSO. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the famed Calypso itself that bobbed gently in the backwater eddy. It wasn’t even a reasonable facsimile.
It was a zodiac, one of the inflatable rubber craft that the crew of the Calypso utilized for short excursions away from the main ship. It was not very impressive.
“What the hell’s that?” The lynx leaned forward and squinted at the black-skinned apparition.
“Floats it does, but t’aint no boat for sure,” commented someone else near the back of the crowd of onlookers.
“Of course it’s a boat.” Now Jon-Tom was angry as well as frustrated. “Any idiot can see it’s a boat. What else could it be but a boat?”
“It’s no boat.” A rat clad in shorts and a shirt with puffed sleeves waded into the murky water to poke at the zodiac’s flanks. “It’s just a big balloon.” He tapped the big black outboard motor that hung from the zodiac’s stern. “What’s this funny-looking hunk of metal for?”
The crowd’s initial astonishment was rapidly giving way to a general feeling that they’d been had. To them a boat was a creature the length of a dock and tall as a three-story building, with billowing sails, intricate rigging and a wooden hull. What a boat was not was a flattened bunch of black balloons. Knives began to appear in profusion, brandished in company with numerous homicidal expressions. They’d wanted a boat, they’d paid for a boat, and by the ancestor of every creature present they were damn well going to have a proper boat or else they were going to take it out of this so-called spellsinger’s hide.
And where was the crew of lithesome lovelies?
“All right,” Jon-Tom told them, “I’ll prove to you that this is a boat.”
“Pillows,” growled the lynx, taking a step forward. He grinned, showing dirty fangs. “You know what I think? I think I’ve been cheated, that’s what I think.”
“It’s a goddamn boat!” Trying not to show the anxiety he was feeling, he walked into the water, pushed the rat aside, and sat down in the back of the zodiac. The bow rose slightly.
“See? A bunch of pillows wouldn’t support my weight like this.” The mob was crowding toward the water’s edge, muttering loudly. “And this is a magic oar.” He primed the engine, praying it would start when he hit the ignition.
