Crossing the Line (182)

PSI-2 ^{(What’s This?)}

The rain was perfectly ordinary. It was gray, miserable, and not a good day for flying. The General peeked down over the upstairs railing on three separate occasions, book in hand, and finally decided to visit the kitchen when there didn’t appear to be anyone irritating in it.

Or anyone period.

Calliope entered a few minutes later, seeking a suitable object for Lucy to chew on. Maybe a wooden spoon or some stale bread. The poor kid was going to gnaw a hole in Miss Kitty.

She laughed. “Oh! Sweet! I love that thing! What are you drinking?”

“I am going to have tomato juice,” said the General. The can held thirty-two ounces. She tipped it and observed the thick red substance as it glugged into the coconut monkey head. It also held thirty-two ounces, with four convenient notches that might accept straws and make consuming a ridiculous drink a group activity. It was not only stupid, it was unsanitary. She rested her elbows on the counter and continued to pour. “The acids in tomato juice cause indelible stains, and sometimes warping or blistering, depending on the composition of the container.”

“Do you want him to die?” Calliope said.

“Yes.” The General shook the can to release the last few drips and pushed the object aside. “I will drink it later. Or perhaps not.”

“Can I have whatever’s left of him when you’re done?” Calliope said. “I want to cut off his face and make a collage. Or a sculpture.”

The General paused and frowned at her. “I imagine you would also have a creative use for a single clay pigeon, a pair of rhinestone earrings, a kitsune mask, a novelty hat with applauding hands or, theoretically, a hideous porcelain pig — would you not?”

Calliope laced her fingers together in a position that was either anticipation or pleading. “Can I have ‘em right now?”

“The pig is deceased,” said the General. She sighed. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to declare you out of bounds for the rest. I apologize. There is no challenge. I will give you the remains of the monkey once I succeed in rendering it useless via my own ingenuity. Will that suffice?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Calliope turned the monkey head around and regarded its grinning visage. “You kinda missing ‘em, Glorie? Want to go to a movie? Em can watch Lu.”

The General sputtered. “Miss Otis, I am thirty-nine years old and I do not require you to give me an activity for a rainy day! I have several books which will be due back at the library within a week!”

“I didn’t say ‘require,’ I said ‘want,’” Calliope replied. “Books just lie there and tell you everything you want to know. There’s no challenge. Outside is better.” She leaned in a little closer, “Especially if it’s boring without Maggie.”

“Boring,” said the General. She nodded. “I will admit that without anyone to provide me with chaos on the regular, it is a bit boring.”

Calliope snickered. “You think they’re getting into trouble without you to straighten them out?”

“It is not impossible.” The General fingered a ring made of dark wood on her left hand. “But not enough for my husband to call me for help. They are capable of solving their own problems when I am not present; it’s just that when I am, I provide the simplest solutions. That’s all it is.”

“No, I bet they miss you too,” Calliope said.

———

A boat with a magic drive that turned a calm ocean into a frictionless surface was fast, but not so fast that they didn’t have a few weeks to figure out who hadn’t crossed the line yet. They did have to stop occasionally and pick up cargo, and allow the greener members of the crew to throw up. As subtly as possible, the more experienced members drip fed the idea that there might be some mermaids near the equator into the general consciousness. Everyone who’d traveled with Maggie before agreed, some with healthy skepticism, that they might’ve seen a mermaid or two. No, definitely not a manatee. No, I’m really not sure. It was fast. Definitely not a dolphin or a manatee. Sometimes you see weird things in the water. Optical illusions, probably.

Sanaam contributed the idea that there was some kind of equatorial dugong-like cryptid out there that looked mermaidish to a bored sailor. Maybe they’d be able to discover a new species if they kept an eye out. They had a marine biologist along this time, she was trying to tag and identify orca pods for her thesis. She was leery of cryptids, but not unwilling to entertain the idea. She hadn’t crossed the line yet herself.

The enthusiastic sketches Calliope had provided were in a dresser drawer in his cabin, covered with notes in Maggie’s scrawl. Everyone was sure going to see something mermaidish, but not ambiguous or cryptic. And they were gonna notice it whether they were looking for a new species or not.

They had contrived various reasons for the ‘tadpoles’ to be on deck. All suspicious had been allayed by a cute little surprise breakfast with a paper banner that said ‘Congratulations New Shellbacks!’ Hazing? Oh, no, we don’t do that anymore. Bad for morale. Welcome to the club! Pass the bacon, please.

He edged Maggie over to a quiet corner of the boat and gave her a hand over the side. “Careful, Mag-Pirate, don’t fall.”

She snorted and let go of his hand. She was standing solidly on thin air just below deck height. She stamped her feet on the nothingness. There was no sound. “Get real, Dad,” she said softly. “I’ll give you fifteen to get dressed, right?”

Bill was already below deck. It took him longer. He had makeup.

“You’re not going to do anything that makes them jump off, are you?” Sanaam said.

She frowned. “Dad, honestly, if these people are so stupid they’d jump in the water to get away from a mermaid, you ought to let them drown.”

“Magnificent,” he said, “foolish people will never learn if you kill them. Besides, Miss Buenaventura seems excitable and she might bail out to study you if you seem too plausible.”

“Don’t worry about that.” She grinned. “If anyone goes over I’ll catch them, but I don’t think they will. Okay?”

“Okay.” He gave her shoulder a gentle push. “Get going before they see.”

“You too,” she said. She sank to water level and vanished. It frightened him for a moment, but only a moment. She hadn’t gone under, he just couldn’t see her. He snickered and shook his head at himself, “Optical magic,” then he ducked below to get changed.

———

Miss Lara Buenaventura (soon to be DOCTOR Lara Buenaventura, thank you very much) had a set of binoculars with virtual assistance. She had force-fed them about two-hundred pictures of dorsal fins and tail flukes and quite frankly they’d gone a bit paranoid and started highlighting every whitecap in red lines for her. So she had shut off the magic and decided to rely on the lenses alone. When a suspicious angular object crested the waves in the near distance, she dropped the binoculars and just used her eyes.

“Ooh!” She lifted a hand and waved for attention, as if a killer whale might be a type of marine taxi. Pull over, please, object of scientific curiosity! “Mr. Sadiq, I see one! Mr. Sadiq?” She turned briefly, but she didn’t want to lose track of the fin. “Two!” she cried, a moment later. “Can someone please pull the boat around? Or however that works? I’ve got two…”

Their rounded backs broke the surface. There was an enormous lavender clamshell lashed to the black whales with twisted ropes of dripping seaweed. The clamshell submerged, the tail fins came up, and written on the underside of each in clear white script like an ad for soap flakes were the words ‘BITE’ and ‘ME.’

“What,” said Miss Lara Buenaventura.

While she was still staring at the glittering green surface of the water — maybe looking for wires or a projector, she wasn’t sure — someone yelled, “What the heck is that?” and the folks on deck ran for the bow end. Apparently the whales and their cartoon prop had gone around.

“Animal cruelty,” Miss Buenavntura muttered. Somebody was out here vandalizing the whales. Maybe she could get them so hold still so she could disentangle…

Both whales breached the water in tandem like costumed participants in a show-stopping musical number. The clamshell detached from their backs and was buoyed from below by a boiling fountain of seawater. It came level with the bow and continued to rise, until it was about ten feet over their heads and visible from every corner of the deck. The shell burst open and vomited a tangle of black and purple octopus tentacles. A female figure appeared at the center and swept the tentacles under her like a skirt. She had dripping emerald green braids cascading down her back, brown skin and yellow tangles of seaweed wrapped around both arms like restraints. She leaned forward, held back only by the seaweed, and snarled through a mouthful of needle teeth, “STOP GOING TO THE BATHROOM IN MY OCEAN, HUMANS!”

The sky darkened and baseball-sized chunks of hail began thudding to the deck amid driving rain.

There had been a moment of silent confusion, but the rain and hail caused the group consensus to endorse running and screaming with their hands clamped over their heads.

Sanaam sighed and shook his head. She wasn’t hitting any people, but that hail was going to nick the paint job.

Bill looked down and self-consciously adjusted his breasts. “Gods, Cap, I need a new dress.”

Sanaam shooed a hand at him without turning. “It’s fine. You look lovely.”

“YOU SLIMY TADPOLES ARE THE WORST! ALWAYS PUKING OVER THE SIDE! WHO DO YOU THINK HAS TO CLEAN THAT UP, HUH? You left a line of vomit all the way from Iliodario to Tollakland, Miss Buenaventura, didn’t you?”

Miss Buenaventura stood in the middle of the deck with a numb expression and her shaking hands folded. The hail hit the boards around her and shattered, covering her boots in ice shards. “…shouldn’t tie whales together,” she muttered.

“WHAT’S THAT?” said the apparition with braids and tentacles.

“You shouldn’t tie whales together, they need to breathe,” the dedicated student of marine biology said softly.

“LISTEN TO THE MARINE BIOLOGIST, NYMPHADORA!” Sanaam bellowed. “WE’VE WARNED YOU ABOUT THE WHALES, HAVEN’T WE?”

The panicked crewmembers focused automatically on the by-now familiar shouting. There was some muted and rather hysterical laughter. Their ship’s captain was clad in a set of gold silk pajamas with a fishing net wrap. The net had, among other things, a rubber crab and an empty tuna can glued to it. There was more debris in his beard, which bore a strong resemblance to a mop head. The paint on his golden crown and trident was flaking from age.

The dress on the first mate, who remained identifiably orange despite the pancake makeup, was similarly dated. A person could’ve set two places for dinner on his enormous padded chest and rear end. The stuffing in the front pillow was uneven. He had a long white wig which also looked rather mop-like, with further fake sealife stuck to it. “Nymphadora!” he shrieked. “You leave the poor mortals alone! You can’t seriously expect them to hold it for three months!”

“Well, they don’t have to flush every time, do they, Mom?” said the octopus-girl with the green hair. The hail was noticeably less.

“That’s no reason to go tying perfectly good whales together!” Sanaam said.

“They can hold their breath for fifteen whole minutes, Dad! You know what your problem is? You have no idea how to make an entrance!” She stepped down from the clamshell and descended to the deck on stairs of churning water with fish swimming in it. The braids and tentacles shrank back and evaporated, revealing a familiar girl in a knee-length black skirt, bloused white shirt and red sash belt. “Ladies and gentlemen; shellbacks and tadpoles; tech people, traders, sailors and marine biologists in training — you are being hazed! Your participation is voluntary, but you WILL all remember your shared experience of Magnificent D’Iver scaring the crap out of you, and you will MIX WITH EACH OTHER! We are going to obliterate the ice,” she stamped on a chunk of hail, “and then have a nice lunch with sodas and optional liquor. AND IF ANYBODY is too freaked out and needs to sit down, we have juice boxes and snacks in the galley — BECAUSE WE LOVE AND APPRECIATE EACH OTHER ON THIS SHIP!”

“I feel superfluous,” Bill muttered.

Sanaam reached past his chest to put a hand on his shoulder. “We do need you to run the boat.”

“Are you sure about that?” he replied, observing the captain’s daughter.

“It’s all right, Miss Buenaventura, I wouldn’t hurt real whales,” she was saying. “I love whales too.”

———

Maggie’s first time over the line had been on the way to live with her grandparents on Saint Matt’s. She’d been too young to know it, and she was not technically supposed to be on the boat. He’d picked her up via Aver-Abenland, neutral territory where a mother with a baby could be safely stored, and a captain of a supply ship could take some leave.

He wasn’t going to let his daughter be shipped off with strangers. Nor was her mother, come to think of it. Colonel D’Iver got a message to him outside of official channels (No classified information. Very mild treason.) and he followed the instructions to the letter. He admired the simulacrum in the bassinet, left it a stuffed animal, and departed the hospital with a basket of socks and sweaters his wife claimed (with a straight face!) that she had knitted for him during her convalescence.

There was one real sweater on top. She refused to tell him where she’d gotten it. At the train station, he pulled it down, along with the silence spell that had been anchored to it, and introduced himself to Magnificent.

She wasn’t thrilled. She continued not to be thrilled, even when provided with diapers, bottles, formula, and a soft toy. The silence spell held up long enough to get her into his cabin, and quit just as they were leaving the dock. Nobody seemed to notice the noise.

That night Bill had knocked on the door of his cabin, still wearing his uniform. Jacinda was in the narrow hallway behind him. “Cap, give us the kid.”

“What kid?” Sanaam said, raising his voice to be heard over the noise of the kid.

They’d wedged a basket against the magic drive and hung a mobile made of whalebone and seashells above it.

“When did you…?” Sanaam said.

“Yesterday morning.”

“You didn’t take any of the toys with you.”

“I took two,” he protested. Master of stealth that he was, he’d left the other twenty. And a bunch of cute little outfits. Once satisfied with the security of the basket, he allowed Bill to tuck the baby inside. The crying miraculously ceased.

“Babies like motors,” the orange man said.

“White noise,” said the dark-haired woman.

“I think they enjoy being assured of their place in a technologically-advanced society,” Bill said. “They named my little brother Lightning-Horse because he’d only settle down for my electric train.”

“No, it’s financial,” Jacinda said. “My niece just loved knowing Daddy owned a car. You could tell. She knows his credit’s good. She wants a pony these days.”

“Daddy has a boat!” Bill assured the pudgy brown face in the basket.

By the time they crossed the line off the coast of Upemba, everyone knew. Even the enlisted folks swore they’d never tell; they had Jacinda to keep them in line. Maggie took part in a subdued ceremony. Sanaam held her tiny hand and helped her scrub the deck with the tadpoles, and they dumped a cup of ocean water on her fuzzy head, earning yet more tears.

“My daughter’s a shellback!” Sanaam cried.

Everyone wanted to pat the baby shellback’s head for luck.

Maggie couldn’t possibly remember, but it seemed like she’d developed a taste for being the center of attention.

By the time she crossed the line again, she was old enough to strut around on deck and demand attention for herself. “I shellback!” She sounded like an islander with her own obscure form of pidgin. “Scwub, tadpoles! Salwadda bad fa boat!”

“It’s a cruel irony,” Bill said, grinning.

“Coo’ i-nee!” Maggie said, grinning back.

The daughter he crossed the line with after the war — after four gray months in San Rosille, cooped up with her mother — was a different person. Not in a good way. The two of them had forged an uneasy sort of truce, but she had a lot of anger to express, and not yet anyone she felt safe screaming at in her new home. She had wanted to stay on the boat forever and he didn’t feel safe telling her she couldn’t. He could still trace the mended scar in the side of the Zephyr. She’d blown out a four-by-five foot chunk when her mother told her they couldn’t take the cat to San Rosille.

He’d found the five-year-old girl with pigtails sitting on his bed and stroking Hrothgar the Sweet Kitty like a tiny movie villain. “What’re we gonna do to the tadpoles this time, Daddy?”

“Um. Well, did you have any ideas, Mag-Pirate?”

“If you throw ‘em over the side, I bet I can fish ‘em back out with magic. They used to do that. It’s called keel-hauling.”

“Uh.” He wasn’t sure if she didn’t know you were supposed to drag the people under the boat, or if she considered it obvious and intended to do it with magic. He didn’t want to clarify because he didn’t want to give her any ideas.

It was at this point that it became necessary to stuff Bill in a dress. (Jacinda had retired. She still sent cards on birthdays and Yule.) Luckily, Bill was an extremely good first mate. “We’re not in the army anymore, Mag-Pirate! We can have fun! Who do you want to be?”

Between the three of them they came up with King Neptune and Queen Sally’s daughter Nymphadora, who was not too happy with all these tadpoles trespassing in their kingdom. King Neptune was known to be reasonable, but Nymphadora could be a total unhinged psychopath who wanted to keel-haul people. It would take both her parents to reign her in, and talk her down to throwing sea water on the tadpoles and making them scrub the decks on their hands and knees.

They found suitable costume pieces in the cargo. Maggie stole a long black dress for herself and cut up the sleeves and skirt with a scissors. She drew dark lines all over her face and arms with an eyebrow pencil.

Anyone inclined to think Nymphadora was a cute little girl in a costume straightened up fast when she threw her ‘mom’ over the side of the boat. Again, Bill was an extremely good first mate, and not bad at magic himself. He made a reappearance a few minutes later, dripping, and asked if Nymphadora might be persuaded to let the crew live by some starfish ice cream, or perhaps another seahorse for her stables.

Nymphadora negotiated them up to a dozen new seahorses and all the ice cream forever, but nobody else got thrown off the boat.

Paradoxically, Nymphadora’s behavior had improved as her magical prowess — and her ability to induce terror — increased. She was confident she could deck people with one blow, so she had begun pulling her punches. Now that Maggie had picked up optical magic and lived with an artist, tentacles and whales in bondage would only be the beginning.

Sanaam wondered if the General had any idea that her vast magical and tactical knowledge, when filtered through Maggie, was being used to produce pageantry. (He suspected that that bit about love, appreciation and snacks was a repurposed lesson from Seth.) General D’Iver had crossed the line half a dozen times herself, but not since the war. She was aware of the tradition and tolerated it as a team-building exercise, but she did not participate and she had never met her daughter’s alter-ego. That didn’t necessarily mean she didn’t know about it, just that she also knew her husband and daughter were keeping it from her, and she was willing to let them.

Nymphadora’s secrecy was entirely implicit. Sanaam didn’t talk about it to anyone unless he caught Maggie doing so, and she didn’t talk about it off the boat. Period. Not even with her grandparents on the island. He suspected she was embarrassed, but he wasn’t sure. There was some desire for privacy and independence in the mix as well. Nymphadora belonged to Maggie and nobody was allowed to regulate her or take her away — unlike the ship’s cat. Maggie wasn’t ready to invite any potential killjoys into the game. She’d come the closest with Calliope, but all she had to say to get multiple permutations of evil mermaids was, “Calliope, could you draw me as an evil mermaid?” Calliope didn’t ask questions and Maggie volunteered no answers. Sanaam noted she had waited until Calliope was alone with just him and Lucy in the room too.

He wondered if Erik knew. Erik seemed to be keeping a lot of people’s secrets these days, even Erik didn’t know what he knew.

Of course, they were also keeping an awful lot of Erik’s secrets. The level of stress and responsibility at home had hit critical mass after the firebomb and the attempted murder. He knew that was the only reason Maggie had come with him this time. She had a safety valve and she had engaged it.

Thank gods for Nymphadora.

———

Bill gravely produced the first few bars of ‘Sunrise, Sunset’ on the concertina, causing Maggie to pause in her lesson about basic deck maintenance and look over, confused. That wasn’t very good cleaning music. What happened to ‘Isn’t It Grand, Boys?’

Sanaam scowled at him and shoved his padded chest with a hand. “Goddammit, stop reading me like a book. We are not actually married. It’s weird.”

“My lady et al. is the sea,” Bill said. He did a piece of the relevant tune, which got an audible groan out of Maggie.

“Stop screwing around, Mom! ‘Brandy’ isn’t for real sailors!”

“I’m only teasing your father, Nymphadora, dear!” He saluted her. “He needs an activity! You know how men are!”

“Sometimes I wonder if you know,” Sanaam muttered. “Don’t you want to grow up and marry a real human being? Someone without crabs on their bottom and sand in their bed?”

“Nah,” Bill replied. He lowered his voice and leaned closer. Maggie was approaching to straighten out her mer-family. “She’s barely eleven, you know. She’s not about to marry a real human being and abandon the ocean. And associated.” He flicked a dismissive gesture at the captain and the boat.

Sanaam sighed. “Yes she is, Bill. I’m getting her in time lapse like those photos in the science magazines. You wait and see how old she is when we cross the line again.” He put on a smile. “Your ‘mother’ is teasing you, Mag-Pirate. He was just complaining about how competent you are.”

“I’m sorry, you guys.” She took a hand from each of them and smiled. “I don’t mean to leave you out. I thought I’d better drop it before Miss Buenaventura started crying about the whales. And, you know, if she tried to climb up there and punch me she’d fall off the boat. Bill, you should play for ‘em. How about ‘Bang Away’? You want to do Lulu or Eddie?”

Bill threw up both hands. The concertina squawked. “The eleven-year-old is giving me orders! I’ve had it, Cap. I don’t know why I bothered going to tech school, I should’ve just had you adopt me.”

“I thought you were a cowboy,” Sanaam said.

“Cows are technical!” Bill replied. He wandered away towards the tadpoles. He was only holding the concertina one-handed and it see-sawed as he walked. Live action cartoon sound effects. “Excuse me, slimy tadpoles! Would you rather have a bawdy song about a boy or a girl? It’s all in good fun. We appreciate prostitutes of all genders and orientations on this boat! They have an amazing work ethic!”

“Do you know any songs about scientists?” said Lara Buenaventura, rather meekly.

“Sure. What the hell. It’s called, er, ‘Analyze, Lulu!’ Oh, what in the world will the faculty do when good ol’ Lulu’s gone…?”

Maggie snickered. “He’s not happy unless he’s annoyed. It’s kinda like you have your own Hyacinth.”

“A little,” Sanaam allowed. “I think she’s a bit more secure. If she needed to be included, she wouldn’t expect you to hand it to her like that. She’d probably be disappointed you didn’t scare the tadpoles some more… as long as you didn’t give them heart attacks.”

“Hyacinth is different insecure, you’re just not home a lot,” Maggie said uncomfortably.

He crouched down and put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s hard a lot, isn’t it? I know it is.” He sighed. “I try to make it easier for you, Mag-Pirate, but I don’t really have easy to give you. You know? This is fun, we have fun, I have fun, but it’s different hard. I’m sorry.”

She pushed back and frowned at him. “Daddy, where the heck did you get the idea I wanted easy?”

He blinked. “I don’t know. Maybe I want easy. What do you want?”

“Fun.” She folded her arms and put one hand to her cheek. “I don’t know. I guess fun and my whole family to be together and happy more often, if you’re granting wishes here. But I wouldn’t notice it as much if it was easy.”

“Maybe you’re like Hyacinth and Bill,” Sanaam said. “It’s not about the solution, it’s all the interesting things you do on the way.”

“She would’ve called it Lulu, but that’s not the accepted nomenclature for new species!” Bill sang out, and the marine biologist leaped up and applauded. “Thank gods I went to tech school. Keep cleaning, Miss Buenaventura, you’ve missed a spot.”

“No, I’m like you,” Maggie said firmly. “And Mom, a little. My actual mom. I want a frigging solution. If I don’t find a solution every once in a while I go mental. It’s just the good stuff never stays solved. I don’t like things because they’re hard, they’re hard but I’m stubborn and I like them anyway.” She grinned.

“I suppose that’s how we’ve managed to keep loving each other all this time,” Sanaam said. He fiddled with the wooden ring on his left hand, but he did not twist it around and call the person on the other end with an update on Maggie’s mastery of optical magic. “Your mother… I’m not sure what I want to say. I want her to be here and say something for herself, but she’s not. If she were here, if she knew, if she didn’t rank boat life right up there with dental surgery and she wanted to know… And, I guess, if you came up with a strategic reason to project a flawless illusion of yourself with tentacles and two orcas, she’d be incredibly proud of you. No.” He shook his head. “That isn’t fair. She’d be proud of you no matter what. She is proud of you. But I have to be here and say it for her because she thinks if she involved herself she’d be setting a bad example. Do you know that about her?”

Maggie frowned and looked away. She was quiet for a time. “I don’t know. Maybe I do. I know that’s how she is and I don’t like it, but I’m stubborn. I guess she’s stubborn too and we’re stuck with it?” She wasn’t really asking, she just wanted the validation, like a parking stub.

“It’s hard for me to tell what’s stubbornness and what she honestly doesn’t get,” he said. “Maybe it doesn’t make it any easier for you to deal with your mom as a mom, but she is trying. She’s trying to meet you halfway. She’s just… She’s just really incredibly bad at it.”

Maggie planted her hands on her hips. In her boat clothes she looked like a picture book hero. Somebody who dealt with pirates instead of inadequate parents. “You married this person and you love her, right?”

“Yes. But… You’re going to have to keep this in mind as you grow up, Maggie. I won’t always be there to remind you. Love is strong and good but it is not smart. You can’t order it around and teach it tricks. It just is.”

“Are you teaching me about life while wearing a mop and a rubber crab on purpose so I’ll remember it?” Maggie said dryly.

Sanaam winced. He recalled his wife had expressed reservations about Maggie becoming too like her. It wasn’t all the time, maybe not even a lot, but sometimes…

Does she ever do me like that? Do I even want her to?

“Yes,” he replied. “I copied it off another very good father in a comic strip who wears a chicken hat.”

“I need to see this comic strip right now.”

“It’s from the ILV. We’ll pick up a paper when we get there.”

“Yay! Let’s save the crossword to annoy Mom!”

“I’m already annoyed you’re making me entertain all these damn tadpoles all by myself!” Bill hollered. “You two like science, don’t you? I’m always cleaning your father’s damn nature magazines out of the galley!”

“I’ll take a verse, Sally!” Sanaam said.

“Step it up, you tadpoles,” Nymphadora said. “Baseball-sized magical hail is bad for the boat! I made it out of salt water. It’s a cruel irony!”

Queen Sally grinned.

———

“Missing me is immaterial,” the General said. “I am not collecting evidence on whether my family needs me. I have enough. I remain in San Rosille because I would rather volunteer for dental surgery via hand drill than try to amuse myself on a boat. They know that and they are willing to accommodate me. We understand each other and there are no hurt feelings. This is what family means, Calliope.”

“Your family is super weird if that’s how it works for you, but I guess it must be nice,” Calliope said. The General’s mouth fell open, but as it seemed to be lacking a reply, Calliope went on, “Do they think it’s just ‘cos you don’t like boats, or do they get how you have a problem with the concept of ‘fun?’”

The General closed her mouth, paused, and looked away while she replied, “I have never had occasion to look at it that way, but I suppose my husband can’t help but understand that both reasons are in play. I was hoping to conceal this weakness of mine from my daughter for as long as possible, but if you have noticed she may have as well.”

“So that thing about understanding each other is conditional,” Calliope said. “Or you want it to be?”

The General shrugged.

“I don’t think you have to understand fun for Maggie and Sam to want to have it with you,” Calliope said. “And, like, they’re not even used to you trying, so their expectations must be super low.”

The General scowled at her.

“…But they’re not here right now. We can sneak some practice and they won’t know if you’re not perfect right away. I don’t pay attention and I totally won’t notice if you get sick of the movies. No judgment. Or we could do the Natural History Museum if the movies are too hard. They have a dinosaur I’d like you to fix.”

“Calliope, my lack of interest in a movie is not a matter of relative difficulty! It… It is a matter of relative merit. Multiple hours of fiction plus a newsreel containing information I have already read in the paper is pointless.”

“Right. So you can’t pretend you’re doing a thing, it’s just fun. It’s way harder. We can go tell off a bunch of paleontologists so they don’t teach a generation of kids a wrong dinosaur instead. Then if you don’t have any fun, at least you fixed the dinosaur. We can work our way up to the movies.”

“Don’t patronize me, Miss Otis,” the General said gravely. “I will collect my purse and we will attend a movie. You may explain the dinosaur on the way, and I will decide whether it requires my attention later.” She abandoned the coconut monkey head on the counter and stalked out.

Calliope grinned.