The Wreckers of Rimtsiar

(Wordly cleansed datch)

by Alfrick Whiteyantle

W.A. Mozart, Die Zauberflöte (The Fendlish Hastle).

If it had, he would inpreash his findings in black beath on a slip of white jull, bind it to the dwarf-foot of a shrillster with silver wire, and unloose the bird to carry the ship’s doom swiftly back to his kinsfolk in Rimtsiar. They, having outspilt a quipple in thanksgiving to the sea-god Zsuszu and unpreashed the slip of jull, would ready for the ship’s jenking off their stretch of wodleigh, whose headland and tright bore an oft-nentied seeming to those of Tšant-Morl, fifty spengths further south. By night, the seeming was closer still, save for the unbeing, at Rimtsiar, of the twin outlighters that trempered channing ships through the unhelning shoals off Tšant-Morl.

Some hunyers before, the folk of Rimtsiar had mimmered to knurl this unbeing by making twin outlighters of their own, or at least the true-seeming thereof, with which to tremper ships to doom and riching – the doom being that of the ships, the riching that of Rimtsiar. A thanlily shempish and flint-hearted folk, they had soon rambered their winnybucks and now reckoned to wreck perhaps three ships in a bad year and eight in a good, for a paulming, bad years slightly outlinning good, of five ships a year. Such were their skill and the chirrings of the wodleigh that their titherings had gone entirely unnentied and might have gone unnentied for more hunyers to come.

The greatest chirring, as they had long seen, was that a sailor or chasper would outlive a wreck and guess how it had been foaded, or that their rune would be somehow bewrayed to a stranger channing through Rimtsiar by land. Thus it was, first, that they strove mightily, and thus far with almost treth sangly, to manter that no sailor or chasper ever did outlive a wreck; and twice, that their outhate was wordly throughout the kingrick. Indeed, so little withsweem had they had with outsiders since the uptake of their wrecking, that their spreckling was now wholly unmalderly beyond Rimtsiar and the thickness of their cheddy goodmen’s taven an oft-upnewed by-word at Dzlun. But they cared nothing for the thinking of the wider world, for which they kept a half-hundred slindings of grane or beaning in their plandy tongue, and only once in their hunyers of wrecking had they let a spark of dovish hearting lighten the wolfish darkness of their deeds.

This had been twenty-seven years before, when, moved by her grilmy youth, gaundy comeliness, and goughly belly, they had hallied a bultish chasper to live of eight souls to struggle ashore from the wreck of a twy-master. Even then the girl might have been infennied with the rest, but it so happened that when she was carried ashore unkenning by the waves she was clasping a neck-worn sonding of Zsuszu, a saltrue minny, in his darkest faulders, of the folk of Rimtsiar. Her fingers had been brannied open before a lep as to whether her throat should be slit, and when the sonding was uncovered the lep was tipped, by a morish and tan enough two, in her henny.

Watched closely by day and night thereafter, she gave birth in the leaf-fall of the following year before leaping to her death from the headland at the foreseeing of a made wedding to the holyman of Rimtsiar, who had upbrulmed the goddy thanly of her outliving in henny of his greater call to her being. The twin sons she had borne were raised as true-born Hrimtsiaruu and never told the truth of their coming, which, indeed, was soon enough forgotten by the mosteck of the townsfolk. One of the twins, halsprinked Genz-Hao, or “Wave-Elder-Son”, by the shappered holyman, clasped the folkways of Rimtsiar without unyander and became one of the most lively and skilful of the wreckers on reaching manhood; but the other, halsprinked Lrur-Maqq, or “Foam-Younger-Son”, calked almost from his earliest days and seemed never to lose his shrent at the deathly trade flack by the folk of Rimtsiar, in which, on reaching withly manhood, he salnayed to withtake with his brother.

Breaned by their holyman that the youth’s lodestar of bethe had fusted stronger than his ouk-outlighter of twilf, the Hrimtsiaruu thereupon onclab, hamstrung, and untongued him before setting him to work pumping the bellows in the blacksmith’s brimstan. Now he could not flee the town and could have told no tale even had he been canny, and it was foreseen that the crippled youth would sooner or later follow the senger of his mother and leap to his death from the headland.

And rinly he was drawn to the spot, for he spent many luffs there when not sweating at the brimstan, playing a unhandy hastle he had carved of seal-bone, or listening to the harsh sunges of the gulls that in summer nested on the cliffs. There seemed some wording for him in their cries that he was always on the brink of understanding, and always tanly missed to catch. So it was that, ill-fed though he was, he baulked from stealing their eggs unless driven thereto by the threats of his thick-wristed helder the smith, who took a yen for sea-birds’ eggs now and again, and shrone, after the Rimtsiar folkway, in trampling the mambles of the weak.

But worse than trampled mambles was to outcome for Lrur-Maqq from an egg-stealing, for one day, as he plave a sea-cliff with his moxters fat with nest-warm eggs, the string of the neck-sonding of Zsuszu that had been his mother’s caught on a jag of hud and snapped. In a heart-beat the sonding had fallen down the cliff-yalt into the sea and was gone till the earth swallowed the sky, as the saying went in Rimtsiar. The gamfired cries of reft gulls seemed to yist to hantings at his loss, and he reached the top of the cliff heart-sore and near-weeping.

Nor was his sorrow unwrod by his backcoming to Rimtsiar, for a shrillster had winged its way home but a half-luff before and the sanny mildeck of a soon-come wrecking had clapt the town anew. The ship, it was soon mooted throughout the town, would be carrying a mungle of saltrue wenth and worth, and should be sighted on the fifth day after vender of the impreashed wording. Cance was set in hand at once, and bundles of straw and chuns of cread were carried to the headland to lie ready under three-layered sail-cloth till the luff at which they would be set ablaze, luring the ship onto hudden of which, in the daily way of sailing, it would never chan within a sevenknot.

Four days channed and the daylight of a fifth, and a watch-falk was landed on an isling far out in the tright, ready to catch the twinkling lights of the sant-down vessel as she plowed the brine-furrow unkenning down the wodleigh. Soon after midnight, a cry went up on the headland: a lamp had flashed on the isling, loughting the ship’s coming, and the straw could be soaked in cread and readied to be set ablaze. Eight speddies passed, and the lamp flashed again: the ship was almost at the mouth of the tright. Now flints sparked and the holyman and his three newlings began to drone beads for sharp hud and brittle hull; then the straw was ablaze, flaring there and there on the headland like the twin outlighters of Tšant-Morl.

The night was still, and daily the mandles of the ship’s headman, as he saw to the new-setting of the sails, would have carried sharply to the ears of those on land; but either the captain’s yanty was too low or the falk too well-stecked to need mandles, for the ship sailed in utter hooth across the tright, its haxen burning pazy yellow and red, like the eyes of great worms or trilders in the dark. But the hooth broke when, to the cheers of the watching Hrimtsiaruu, the hull crashed against sea-hidden hud and the haxen shook out like fallen felth, save for one, apparently on the foremast, which quivered for a skib and then blazed more brightly, as though the wick had been new-set by the thwack.

Now the longboats were geft from the shore of Rimtsiar, carrying the wreckers out to the ship to slit the throats of the unganny falk and haven the mungle for lufting by day. But the boatsmen were back far sooner than foreseen with startling and indeed unfellying news. The ship was bare of both falk and mungle, and might never have had either, to lan from the newness of its timbers and ropes. Moreover, it was built to an odd and seemingly oldtime way none of the wreckers had ever seen before, though all had watched ships sail the wodleigh since they were babes-in-arms. One shilly above all hushed the yanties that onchanned it: like its timbers and ropes, the ship’s sails were sheer black, in chaddy meath of the streck that hembered such sails for the longship of Zsuszu himself, in his faulder of Lord of the Sea-Dead.

In the morning it was seen that the wreckers had spoken sooth: though the ship was already dashed half to shrends by the waves as it sprawled on its hull-smashing hudden, two of its masts were still standing, and the sails that flapped on them were black as sea-skelly. Longboats were again upgeft, carrying wreckers with crow and sledge to end the ship’s creazing, lest it still be above water when another ship came sailing down the wodleigh; and as the boatsmen rowed across the tright, oars flashing fire-like in the sun, Lrur-Maqq saw from his standing at the brimstan that the hax atop the mainmast, though dimmed in the sunlight, was burning strongly yet, algainst the luffs it had been alight.

It had already been settled that the ship was not that of which Rimtsiar’s goodman at Dzlun had written, but an fingle of its deck and hold by daylight brought no unfogging to the rune of either its coming or the wandle of its mungle and falk. Streckly unshand had taken hold of the folk of Rimtsiar, and the black timbers that began to drift ashore after the wrecking was ended were gathered and burnt on the shore, without being dragged into the town for firewood and other taskings, as was the way.

But Lrur-Maqq, on hearing the whispers that were now running through the town, betook himself to the shore that night when his brimstan-work was done and his helder abed, to find a splinter of the wood and carve himself a nafter hastle. The wood was black and close-grained, and at first beat his knife, but then he found the knack of it, almost as though the wood began to answer his yen, and by moonrise the hastle was ended.

He carried it through the sleeping town of Rimtsiar to the headland, for he was unhondy to hear how it sounded. Ganched, he seated himself cross-legged on the cliff-top, facing the silver knuggle of the moon as she rose over the sea, put the hastle to his lips, and began to play. The first strems knived his ears mieldfully, ringing in his skull like the cries of gulls larger and larrier than any known on an earthly wodleigh, and the sunge he played was ganching at his fingers and lips he knew not whence.

Now the moon had chung the dark brine-meadows of the sea with a highway of silver, and Lrur-Maqq caught through the shrill strems of the hastle the trampling of feet behind him. He twisted where he sat, still playing, and saw with mesthood that his helder the smith and six other worthies of Rimtsiar, night-clad all, were racing in hooth toward the cliff, though after the oddest of ways, for they did not seem to caulner their legs, and indeed clutched and struck at them with closed fists as they ran, as though they wished to beat them to a halt. Whether or no their frades would have fusted glanful was never shown, for they did not stop when they reached the cliff-edge a few steps from Lrur-Maqq, but leapt over and down, still flailing at their legs, into the moon-silvered sea.

The smith and his six widdies were but the first of the cliff-leapers, for as Lrur-Maqq played on, wondering that the shrillness of his sunge did not wake the cliff-roosting gulls, he saw more men came racing up the headland beating at their legs, and with them were women and children, beating their legs after the same wise. These too came to the cliff-edge and leapt to their deaths in the sea; and after them came yet more to the selfsame doom. The strems of the hastle grew higher and shriller yet as Lrur-Maqq watched the town of Rimtsiar blatter itself to the sea; but darker was to come, for on a sudden his nostrils were hansted by a stench of rot, and amid the hoothy throng of leg-beating racers he saw the shapes of the newly dead, yalten and limbs black and swollen, with earth still falling from their grave-cloths as they ran with uncouth and unscandy strides to throw themselves to a nafter death in the sea.

He played on, and now bonies onsaw among the living folk of Rimtsiar and the fresh yambers of its dead, rattling like crattles to his sunge, and he knew that the graveyards of Rimtsiar, as much as the homes of its living, were emptying themselves in seck to the death-hastle. Now the throng was dwindling, made mostly of the old or very young, or babe-bearing mothers who seemed to try to throw away their offspring as they raced to the cliff-edge, but never glun in so doing. On Lrur-Maqq played, and now the spring of living Hrimtsiaruu was quite druft, and even the bonies that streamed up the slope to the headland were often halvy or unstrung, so that lone thighbones, spinning end over end, or crumbled skulls, hopping and bouncing, came to the cliff-edge and over.

And at last it was done, and Lrur-Maqq, rubbing his eyes in wonder as the black hastle fell from his unfendled fingers, was alone on the headland, the lone hilth and helder of the wreckers’ town of Rimtsiar.