There are only two ways to find Undaine-on-the-Sea, and they are perilous. The first is for either the very brave or the very foolish: become lost. Do not carry a map, do not consult a compass, do not ask for directions. The way is fluid and ever-shifting; if you set out with any of these things, you would be wise to lose them… or risk losing yourself. You might step over a root in a dense forest and careen over a seaside cliff, or perhaps will fall asleep in a meadow only to wake on a cold, jagged rock a cable or more from the shore. You may even go quite mad and forget your purpose, building a new home for yourself in a hollowed-out tree with insects and mice as your only companions.
The second way is the surest, but the wait may be long. You will need to travel on the back of a giant flying carp. No matter how much the path may shift, a carp will always find it. Perhaps it is their whiskers that pick up on the subtle fluctuations in the air, perhaps a carp in the air is always a little lost anyway, or perhaps they hear Undaine-on-the-Sea calling them home.
But how, I hear you ask, are you to find a giant flying carp? First, you must travel to a small mining town nestled in the Copper Basin of a shadowy mountain. Don’t fret, traveler; I have a map for this part of the journey at least.
This is the only town to ever trade with Undaine, a relationship that has been fostered over hundreds of years. A few times a year, a glittering parade of giant flying carp emerges from the foothills. They are weighed down with baskets of flowers, bricks of beeswax, and bundles of fresh ocean fish carefully preserved in inky newspaper. These sojourns have no fixed date, so you may need to stay in town for several weeks or months. I’d recommend staying at an inn called The Copper Goat. Of course, there aren’t many other options- it’s the only inn in town.
You will duck beneath tiny copper bells hanging from red strings in the doorway. Maybe you hit your head, maybe not. If you do, do not act surprised or frightened at their sound; a fear of bells is considered highly suspicious, and you may be made to sleep out in the goat pen.
Agnes will greet you in the Main Room. In her younger years, she roamed the hills with her goats; foraging, exploring, tearing her skirts, and getting into trouble. Tracking her down used to be an all-day affair. These days, however, you are far more likely to find her inside… though still with her goats.
Maybe you arrive on a busy day, and the inn is bursting with life. Children haul wood to the big stove and race back out to play in the snow, parents calling after them to remember their chores. In the kitchen, two women gossip hard over a boiling pot of hearty stew. A young man works on a loom in the corner, eavesdropping on the women’s conversation. He is pleasantly distracted and does not notice that a goat has begun chewing on the trailing threads of his work. A man kneads dough on a long wooden counter, and a group of school-age boys and girls hang fresh charms in the windows. Agnes will be at the center of all of it, checking the ovens, catching dropped stitches, and shooing the goats away from a vegetable basket. Before you can ask for a room, you are handed a carrot and knife and told to chop.
Or perhaps you have arrived on a peaceful day. Agnes cards wool in a well-worn chair, feet propped up on an ottoman, while the cast iron potbelly stove chugs out heat. The snow on your boots melts the moment you step inside. Goats of all sizes (and a few sheep) graze on hay that has been stacked in one corner or nap lazily around the room. A goat with a broken horn rests his head on Agnes’s shins, gazing at her lovingly while she works. A few dozen more tiny copper bells hang from the rafters, chiming softly in updrafts from the fire.
Agnes rises to greet you, her old bones creaking. “Oh, you looks likes you’ll be wantin a rooms then,” she says.
Before you know it, you’re swept upstairs to a cozy room with a small window overlooking the lake. More tiny bells hang from the window hinges and rafters. You may toss and turn your first few nights away in this room, kept awake by Agnes snoring from her chair in the Main Room below or the soft chiming of the bells, or the looming shadow of the mountain just across the water. Maybe the strangeness of it all will be enough to make you give up your journey entirely… but you seem the hearty sort. It will take more than the uncanniness of night to scare you off, even if the shadows of the mountain stretch and shift and move in unnatural ways.
Make yourself comfortable, you could be here for weeks or even months.
Does the prospect of such a long wait bore you, adventurer? Worry not- you can pass the time and earn your keep shoveling goat manure or hauling wood. There is never a shortage of chores to be done. They will leave you tired down to your bones and ease your nightly tossings and turnings.
The best nights at the inn are ‘Goat Nights’- the nights Agnes brings the goats indoors. Maybe it is too cold outside, or maybe the dark, eldritch shadows of the mountain have crept a little too close to the borders of the town. You watch from the safety of the bells at your window as they stretch languidly across the crisp snow, shifting and splitting into long, brittle fingers.
Do not linger at the window for too long, it will do you no good. Better to spend these nights in the Main Room with Agnes and her goats, where she will teach you to card wool and spin it. If you’re patient enough and learn to spin without breaks or lumps or throwing a fit, she may teach you to weave.
Your patterns will never be as beautiful or intricate as Agnes’s, but the blanket you make will be butter-soft and warm. Maybe you will even get halfway through making a sweater before the carp arrive. Best of all, if you are very patient and have a willing ear, Agnes may tell you stories from her wild youth.
“Oh he mades me so mad,” she says, shaking her head as she recalls the neighbor’s son and his romantic pursuits of her older sister. “Sos my brother Georgies and I- my younger brother you know, we was always gettins’ into troubles together- we makes this map. Very detaileds, very complicateds, all nonsense of course. Georgie was good at that sorts of thing. We tells him our sister, Rosie, she’s waitins’ for him with a picnics and to just follows the map. So off he goes that way all excited and of we go, this way…”
While you work by the flickering lamp light, fifteen sets of hooves clomp noisily around the wooden floor. But when Agnes begins her stories, they settle in to listen alongside you.
“Now there’s two things yous should knows about cows,” Agnes says, holding up two knobby fingers with yarn wrapped between them. “The first is if you’re nice to em, you can leads em just abouts anywheres. Especially if you has some real nice turnips, which it just so happens Georgie an I did. Thing two about cows is this: you can get cows to go upstairs pretty easy, they don’t minds it a bit, but you’ll have a hards time gettins em to come backs down again.
“So that poor neighbor boy he comes home, all flustereds for not findins’ Rosies and not undersandins’ the maps and abouts to get in troubles for skippins’ out on his chores for the day, and also maybe he fell a few times and gots all scrapeds up, which we didn’t plans on and we did feel a bit bads about that. Alls he wants to do is have a lie-downs in his nice cozy beds except he can’t- cuz we gone and broughts a cow up to his bedrooms. We wanted to brings three of em in but wouldn’t you know it, cows is a lot bigger once you gets em indoors. And here’s the kickers- which we didn’t knows it til later on accounts of we got outta there quick as we could- but that cow made herself rights at home on his mattress- which at the times was on the floor- and she took herself a little naps. Head on the pillow and everythin’.
“So then, and here’s the real kickers of it all, that neighbor boy and I gets a little more grown up and he turns out kinda handsomes. One thing and another happens, Rosie goes off travelin’ the world- she’s always been an explorer- and wouldn’t ya know it, I’m the one gettins’ marrieds to that neighbor boy. We tie the knots, have a real nice party, so on and so forth, we gets backs to our new home, this very buildins, and guess what we finds in our bed? A cow. Georgie’s weddins’ present. But we didn’t complain! Cuz we needed the cow.” She pauses her weaving and looks over the top of her glasses at you. “Everyone shoulds have a cow.”
There is a question that pricks at you whenever Agnes tells these stories. Framed photos of people crowd the walls of the Main Room and up the staircase. The inn is full of people during the day, running errands or doing chores. There is no shortage of company… yet you have never met any of the big family in Agnes’s stories.
For now, you will not ask The Question. It feels too tender, too delicate.
Perhaps one night you share a drink with Agnes at a local pub and find that she still has a wild streak in her.
She drinks a full-grown man under the table before playing several rounds of pinfinger, only bleeding a little. You try to bandage it for her but she brushes you off and buys a round of shots for everyone. A pretty young bartender distracts you for a moment with a flutter of her lashes and when you turn back around, Agnes has climbed atop a rickety wooden table to sing a song so perverse it gets you both thrown out on your asses. You hum it in front of the goats the next day and swear you see them blush.
A few days later, the carp arrive.
They are more beautiful and colorful than you can ever imagine, winding their way down the mountain and into the village center. They carry spring with them and the town unfurls like a welcome banner. Shutters are flung wide, a fiddler lays his hat down in the square and begins to play, and stalls spring up on every street. Children scramble in and out of the crowds, fists sticky with sweets. Enjoy the revelry, but keep your wits about you. One of these sticky fingers might try to find their way into your pockets.
You wander the festivities with Agnes, her arm looped through yours. You never realized until this moment how tiny she is. Even as you take in the wonders around you (you’ve never seen a flying fish, I’m sure), you find yourself gazing down at the top of her white head in wonder. How lucky you are to have this feisty, intimidating woman for a friend.
You jump as a giant carp nudges your free hand with a damp nose. It gazes up at you with round eyes full of trust and you give it a small, uncertain pat.
All around is the steady hum of commerce.
How much copper for five bottles of pitch-black ink? Special-made by the Barnacle Lady.
A few of my best-laying hens in exchange for a fishing net woven from mermaid hair?
And what can you offer in exchange for transport to Undaine?
Agnes leads you to a wooden stall creaking beneath the weight of hundreds of miraculously fresh fish.
“This here’s Eamons,” she says, gesturing toward a rugged-looking middle-aged man whose shoulder-length, dark brown hair has a strange seaweed green tinge to it.
Before Agnes can say anything else, Eamon leaps out from behind to stall to wrap her in a hug. He jostles the stall and a few fish slide off, slapping wetly against the cobblestones.
You bend to scoop the fish; making yourself useful has become a habit by now. As you place them back on the table, you feel someone watching you. A girl of about twelve stands a few feet off, flanked on each side by two lazily grazing carp. Her hair is the same brown-green as her father’s but her wide eyes are a much darker brown. She holds a large blue glass bottle in both arms, using it to mist the fish with the air of someone who has been given a solemn task and is determined to perform it well.
“You hafta wrap ‘em in the paper,” the girl says, “or they’ll spoil. They go bad real quick here.” She isn’t bossy or condescending, only confident. You do as you’re told.
“Miss Molly Mae, come meet your Auntie Agnes.” Eamon and Agnes have finished their hug but he keeps one arm wrapped around her stooped shoulders. He is beaming.
The girl, Molly Mae, places the glass bottle gently on the ground with both hands before picking her way primly over.
“How do you do, Auntie Agnes,” she says, offering her hand.
“Oh quites well, and I thanks you for askin’, Miss Molly Mae.” Agnes matches the girl’s formal tone and shakes her hand once, firmly. She does not crack a smile, but you know her well enough by now to spot the twinkle in her eyes.
The girl smiles a little, delighted at being taken so seriously. “You can just call me Molly, Auntie Agnes.”
“Thanks you Molly, that does save me a bit o’ time. A good things at my age, seeins’ as how I’m runnins’ out. Now I’d like yous to meets a dears friends of mine.”
You shake Eamon’s hand warmly, but offer Molly the same firm, respectable handshake she seems to prefer.
“Eamons will take you to Undaine, and be goods about it,” Agnes says, patting him on his hairy cheek. “He’s a very goods boy.”
Of course you know nothing is free, so you offer him your lumpy, half-finished sweater as payment (you plan to finish it on the journey). He eyes your dropped stitches and irregular pattern and politely declines. What he would like are stories- any stories. They can be true, made up, half-remembered.
“Just so long as they’re good,” he says. “We’ll be in town a few more days, so you got time. Miss Molly here loves a good adventure story though, don’t you, minnow?”
Molly grabs her father’s hand and looks up at him, eyebrows furrowed urgently. She says nothing, but he understands. “Adventure stories with happy endings, please.”
Her brow relaxes and she nods at you, satisfied.
“They loves a story up there,” Agnes says. “Especiallys a true story with just a hints of exaggerations. True fisher folks, even the ones what don’t go out on boats.”
You are in your room at the Copper Goat, packing your bags. Agnes sits on the edge of your bed, feet dangling like a schoolgirl.
“Oh you’re in for such a treats,” she says, kicking her feet a little. Excitement sparks her eyes, but there might be a tinge of sadness there as well.
A few nights ago, on another Goat Night, you finally asked Agnes The Question.
“Where is your family?”
“All around!” she crowed, throwing out an arm. This set off a round of lazy bleating; the goats were too warm and happy to be properly startled, but felt they had to keep up appearances.
You laughed and stroked the forehead of the nearest goat. It huffed contentedly, resting its heavy head in your yarn-filled lap. You did not ask again, but as you banked the fire later that night, she told you.
“Rosie never cames backs. Never heards from her. Maybe somethins’ happeneds, she gots hurts or died, I dunno. Maybe she just gots lost. I always hoped she was havins herself some darns good adventures and thens founds a place she loved and hunkereds down. I do wish she cames backs for me, though.
“I likes to pictures her beins a cowboy somewheres, catchin tornadoes and sellins em in jars. Or a pirates with a great big parrot on her shoulder. I thinks, maybe the parrots was a sailors thats gots a curse puts on em. Maybe they’re in love. Maybe nots. Or maybe she’s livin in a big city with a different festival every day and fireworks every nights. I wouldn’t be likin that- too noisy- but Rosie woulds.”
Agnes went quiet for a bit then.
“I like the cowboy one,” you said as you settle back into your seat. Or maybe, “I hope they got the poor parrot sailor’s curse lifted.” Or maybe you didn’t say anything at all because you’ve learned to wait.
Agnes sipped her whiskey, lost in thought.
Then, “Georgie dieds a year after the weddins’. We always joked how that boy had a big heart, well now. We didn’t knows how true that was. Turns outs havin’ a big hearts like that can do you in. One mornin I sees him go out to the fields, all bouncy in his heels like he always was, only he never comes back. I go out to looks for him, and I finds him there next to a baby goats whats got torn apart by coyotes or some such. He was colds all over by the times I got to him. That boy loved his goats so much, I think his too-big heart just broke. Dropped ‘im dead right next to that poor baby.”
Another few moments of silence passed before you asked, “and the neighbor boy? Your husband, what happened to him?”
More silence. Then, “There was a neighbors boy. Never had time to gets married to him though. Died two weeks afore the wedding. Accidents at the mines.”
You said nothing, then.
Or maybe, even though you knew words could never heal this magnitude of loss, “I’m sorry.”
“Thank yous,” she said. She reached out and squeezed your hand. You sat, cradling her papery hand in yours, until she leaned her head back in the chair and began to snore.
Your first few nights at the Copper Goat, you slept with a pillow clenched over your ears to drown out these snores. They were loud and incessant, and punctuated with bleats from the goats. You tossed and turned and wrestled your way into fitful sleep, cursing the old crone’s nasally tremors.
On this night, however, you kissed her forehead before making your way up the stairs. You tucked yourself into your cozy little bed and let her honking snores rock you to sleep like a lullaby.
“Looks likes we got another Goats Nights on our hands,” she says now, looking out the window.
It isn’t a Goat Night, not really. The sun is bright and warm with Spring and the shadows from the mountain have been quiet and reclusive. You don’t correct her, though. You’ve begun to suspect Goat Nights are not always just for the benefit of the goats.
“A Goat Night, indeed,” you say.
Your breath mists in the early morning air as you wait on the front steps of The Copper Goat. Agnes waits with you, much quieter than usual. She stamps her boots on the porch, knocking a bit of warmth into her old bones.
“You gots your stories ready?” she asks.
You do.
“They don’t needs to be true,” she reminds you. “They just needs to be real.”
You nod.
Your eyes sting with the threat of tears, but before they can spill over you catch sight of the Carp Caravan.
It all happens so fast. Your bags are thrown onto a cart carried between two carp while Eamon helps you onto the back of a third. As you settle into the unfamiliar saddle, Agnes tucks something into your hand.
“For lucks,” she says, reaching up to pat your cheek.
You open your hand to find a little copper bell on a string of red yarn. You clutch it tightly as you wave goodbye, letting this strange scaly procession carry you up into the mountains and all their moving shadows.
CREDITS:
Soundscape created using freesound.org
goats and birds morning crete 3 by Rimmer
Goats at Biertan, Romania by AntonioZozobra -- https://freesound.org/s/468968/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
Wood fire in a fireplace / living room by flwrpwr -- https://freesound.org/s/614885/ -- License: Attribution 3.0
soca_goats1.wav by LukeIRL -- https://freesound.org/s/75097/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
bells.wav by keweldog -- https://freesound.org/s/181139/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Rabbit Jingle Decor by karinalarasart -- https://freesound.org/s/443970/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Train Passing By 184 with Horn, Bell, Engine, Whooshing, Track Noises, Outside Ambiance.mp3 by FunWithSound -- https://freesound.org/s/593035/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
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