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“HOLD THAT DOORWAY!”
“Send a runner back to the barracks, get everyone up here now. No, I don’t care if they’ve just come off duty! Now!”
“Urgh.”
“Help,”
Fluppit felt Sari shake her shoulder twice before the spell of the pandemonium around her was broken, “We can do nothing here, let’s go.” Dragging their trolley against the flow of deploying guards, and carrying it between them down the stairs, they took the long route round to the place Dun had described to her as The Gates of Death. Uncle Nev called it The Old Sluice. Back when Dun had gone to war with the Collective and had started that long slog towards tenuous peace between the Underfolk and the Overfolk, the whole place had been destroyed due to something with the river, or so Uncle Nev had said.
It was very strange to finally be back there. The stairway they were on opened into a long, wide chamber bifurcated by a strong stream running its length, and into the Underdark. There wasn’t a single face of this whole expanse that hadn’t been violated by the war. Not a wall stood without fissures and holes from needle-fire and what the ragged mouth of the cavern would say as its long tongue of water spilled into the deeps, Fluppit didn’t dare guess.
Everything about this place and the stories her family told about it had weight. How much it stood for and what its destruction meant and cost. Fluppit let the gentle breeze blow through her fur and let the full scope of her Air-sense take everything in. She owed all those long-lost folk that at least.
“Here she is,” said Sari quietly from the far side of the stream. “Come on over and bring a bottle and the cutters.”
“How did you get over there?”
“If you take your whiskers out of the clouds for a minute, you’ll feel the plank in the middle there.”
“Huh. Okay.”
“Take care in the middle, it’s a little bendy.”
“Woah,” Fluppit flapped violently to keep her balance, then ran the last steps.
Sari was on her knees in the corner of the tiny fragments of what was left of the wall and the room it butted up against. She turned to Fluppit, “Cutters?”
“Oh yeah,” Fluppit slapped them, handles first, into Sari’s gloved hand.
“Thank you.” She turned back to the small clump of plant life she was working on, then carried on talking, not really to Fluppit at all, narrating her actions as if she was reading the entry in a book. “Silkthorn. Beautiful but pointed. Only grows on broken ground.” Fluppit heard the snick of the cutters. “Bottle please.”
“With fixings or not?”
“No fixings needed for this one. It is desiccated in its natural form. Just straight in the bottle please.”
“Ooh!”
“Careful. It’s sharp, get it in the bottle and bung it please. Now, where’s that paw?”
Fluppit proffered the finger with the thorn wound. Sari squeezed it, “Ow!” She leaned in low to sniff at the blood spreading out on Fluppit’s pad. “Is it okay?”
“It’s fine,” said Sari, “but better to check. These thorny plants can have some nasty fungi as passengers.”
Fluppit shuddered. Sari produced a pinch of powder from a pouch at her belt and pressed it onto the wound. “Will you need to put a dressing on it?”
“Hardly, it’s tiny. The air getting to it will have it heal in half a span.”
“What about the nasty fungus?”
“That’s what I was sniffing for. It has a distinct musty smell. With it, our sample wouldn’t have been much good anyway. It’s all good and so are you. Now let’s get that bottle labelled and get out of here.”
“Oh good. This place is giving me the creeps.”
“I would save being unnerved. This is the first span of our journey.”
The trip back over the plank was a whole load easier than the journey there. Fluppit put the bottle back into the trolley. She strapped the bottles down and reinstated the tarpaulin.
When she was still there a hundred clicks after having strapped the tarp, Sari said, “Are you okay, young pup?”
“Oh yeah. I was just thinking should we name her?”
“Who?”
“Our trolley. It feels like saying ‘our trolley’ for weeks will be boring. I think she should have a name.”
“Okay,” Sari took the trolley handle. “What do you suggest?”
“I dunno,” Fluppit chewed her lip. “Something relevant? Maybe name her after a plant?”
“What about Silkthorn?”
“That’s hardly lucky,” Fluppit said, turning back to where the hard-earned bottle was, “that thing bit me. How about a person name that’s already a flower name—rose? Something rose? Rose something?”
“Roses bite too you know.”
“How about Daisy?”
“Oh. I like that,” said Sari. “Good reliable name. Bellis Perennis. Or woundwort. Used in healing. Perennis means enduring, if that isn’t a name filled with the kind of luck we’re going to need, I don’t know what is.”
“Yeah,” said Fluppit. “I like that. Daisy it is. What does Bellis mean?” Fluppit had been still while she was contemplating, and Sari had gotten several long strides ahead of her.”
“War.”
“What? We’ve just named our trolley perpetual war?”
“Can’t have everything,” Sari said over her shoulder. “Besides it’s too late to change it now.”
“Why?”
“Terribly bad luck to change the name of your vehicle. Come on, we’ve got the world to save.”
With her jaw still hanging, Fluppit jogged to catch up.
“She’s got a song, you know,” said Sari.
“Daisy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No way.”
“Seriously. It’s an eons-old song that was found on a fragment of recording in a machine folk archive. Some think it was used for divining purposes by the ancients.”
“How does it go?”
“Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer do.
I’m half-crazy all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage.
We can’t afford a carriage,
But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle made for two.”
“Sounds like a love ballad to me.”
“It’s a recording sung to an ancient called Dave. It’s difficult to tell from the tone of the voice what was meant by it.”
“What’s a bicycle?” asked Fluppit.
“No one knows. Do keep up.”
