Story for the Day: Boomerang

The Kali is the Lucentian returning knife. It is a blade given only to those who are trained by the Lucentian crown, and while many assassins and guildsmen learn how to use its returning properties to great effect, none can craft one as easily and effortlessly as Rannig. Part of the upcoming book The Myrellenos:

Peppone peered at Rannig, who had taken a large rock from his pocket and was forming a curved depression in the centre of it by pressing against it with his thumbs, grinding his immense thumbs along the inner ridge and querning into a chevron, and then glanced at Bartleby, who was watching Rannig out of the corner of his eye and beginning to miffle to himself about the possibility of mineral elasticity.

                “He really thinks other people can do the things he can do?” Peppone asked incredulously.

                “He’s a bit o’ sunshine on a flower,” said Brogan, “but he’ll break every bone in yer body and wear you for a coat before thinkin’ about it.”  

                “I suppose I’m lucky my bones bend—“ The grating sound of Rannig rounding off the corners of his rock with his thumbs and forefingers gave Peppone a vertebral thrill. “—and grateful he seems to like me.”

                “Rannig loves everybody, nindano,” Danaco assured him. “It is impossible for him to do otherwise. Is not that so, my giant?”

                “Aye, boss,” Rannig replied, heaving his chevron rock into the wind, and then, with a look of horror, “’Cept bugs. I don’t like bugs, and they don’t like me, so we’re even.”

                The rock whirled away from the ship at an alarming rate, spinning furiously across the sea, lifting the surface of the water as it went. A tide formed behind it, following the rock as it banked, and when it returned to the ship, it came with a wave, one that pooled under the keel and crashed against the dock, causing every moored vessel to riffle and roll. Rannig caught the rock with a loud smack against his palm, and Bartleby immediately pried it from his fingers, pressing it against the pages and sketching its outline into his book.

                “Hold still,” said Bartleby holding his notebook against Rannig’s lower back. “I must get the proper dimensions of this.”

                “Ye can have it, Bartleby,” said Rannig, looking down at the old man. “I only wanted to see whether I could get it to fly and come back.”

                “Really?” Bartleby asked, his wide eyes welling. “Oh, thank you, my boy. I will do a thorough study on it once I have finished my notes. How you got it to gain such traction—and you even tapered the body—NO!” holding the rock away from Feiza, as he came to inspect it. “Go away, you redolent riddlemy-wrong.” Bartleby blew at him. “Shoo! This is my returning rock now. The boy gave it to me, not to you.”

                “Sure just wanted a look at it,” said Feiza, pouting and folding his arms.

                “To see how best you might slip it into your pocket? Well!” Bartleby removed his hat, exposing a plume of dead skin and dust from his scalp, tossed the rock into the folds, and tucked his hat tightly around his ears. “There,” he glunched. “Now no one may look at it.”

                “I can see it danglin’ in yer hat, Bartleby,” Rannig giggled. “It’s weighin’ down the end and all.”

                Bartleby tucked the end of his hat under his ear, his hat quickly slumped to one side, and everyone simpered and smirked to themselves.

                “There’s for your miserliness, my friend,” Danaco laughed. “Rannig let you have his little whirligigge for your own amusement, but I am sure he meant you to share it.”

                “Boss,” the giant guffawed, “Bartleby’s not gonna share it.”

                “He will if I tell him to, as I mean to do. Come, Bartleby,” Danaco entreated, holding out his hand, “be a good little scientist and let me put the rock in the gallery, for everyone’s use.”

                Bartleby bugled out his dissent.

                “Go cale or go cobs,” said the captain decidedly. “You have already sketched it in your book, and it might be laid to my care, that we may all enjoy its use at a later hour.”

                The captain would not be denied, and Bartleby, compelled by the rules of the captaincy and the sea, was forced, by much pain and little liking, to relenquish Rannig’s rock to the reigning power, muttering to himself, “Wretched slops and swabbers. You should be giving them all wackets against the binnacle for treating a science experiment like a futile friggle-fraggle.”

                “Magochiro,” the captain called to him. He tossed the rock toward him, and the silent Bizarmin caught it between two fingers. “Keep it in your headwrap.”

                “No!” the old man cried, wringing his robes in mental agony. “There are yeasts living under there! That man’s headwrap is an absolute distillery!”

                “One that you might consider for your experiments, my mashmaker, but you need not flump over Rannig’s rock. Microbes and fungi be what they may, they cannot melt rocks, thought they might nibble at them from time to time. Magochiro will be its keeper for the evening, punishment enough, I should think, for your being such a pebble-peeling snudge aboard my ship.”

                Bartleby stood behind Rannig, held to his pant leg, and glowered ferociously, hating everybody.

                “Don’t be angry, Bartleby,” Rannig chortled, patting the old man on the head. “Ye’ll tear my pants if ye twist ‘em any harder.”

                “I will twist them if I like,” the old man raled, in a semi-sobbing voice.

                Rannig shrugged. “I can always make ye another rock—“

                “You can?” the old man cried, instantly elated. “Here, take the brick I was saving and make it out of that. The composition will be different, and it cannot be thrown at the same velocity, due to the porus nature of the clay, but anything in the same style will do. There, take it, take it, my boy, and make it before the captain can confiscate it.”

                The brick was offered and querned and molded, and Bartleby was sanguine again, sedulously hovering over Rannig’s hands, watching him grind the brick with his fingers, and Danaco shook his head, divided between amazement and resignation.