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.A Traveling Show	By : keithcompany Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Gulliver's Travels Views: 1837 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work fiction, based on Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift.

Chapter List
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Mamma always said, no matter what it looks like, you never really profit from another person's misery. Mamma nailed it.

It seemed, at the time, that the Argelethump Sister's, Balance Dancers, gained from tragedy. The Royal Company's dancer act lost half their members to the minnow flu. A message was flagged across the strait and across Blefuscu to invite the four of us to join them in mid-season.

There wasn’t much to discuss. Another summer of children's parties or, if we hurried, a chance to perform before the Crown. Well, I didn't think there was much to discuss.

"It's in Lilliput!" Zulifaefaefae whined. "It wouldn't be patriotic for Blefuscuns to perform in Lilliput."

"It's the same nation," I replied. "Has been for 20 generations."

"We'd have to travel," Sillipatter pointed out. "To get there, to get back, any time we're with them."

"That's the point of a traveling circus," I answered her.

"They only want us," Mayendellia finished, "because someone else died."

"We auditioned. The only reason they didn't hire us THEN was because they already had a Balance Dancing act."

They argued. They whined, they cried, they flinched. It was fear. We weren't working our way up to the Royal Company, we were leapfrogging years of chances.

As oldest sister, I decided to put it to a vote. "The act leaves in two days. Anyone wants to be IN the act, be on the pier when we go." I've always tried to be democratic in the family business.

There was a ship in Garefullud Harbor bound for Lilliput once they finished loading cargo. The Company's agent had arranged our passage. We were going to be on it if I had to kidnap my own family. I felt we could argue on the way, but we couldn't miss the ship.

In the end, everyone was excited to be going. The four of us were literally walking on the rails until the sailors chased us below.

There, we found our fellow passengers. A silversmith from Carcosaila and his daughter, who was of an age to be apprenticed, were going to try their luck selling Fuscan designed jewelry in Lilliput. A timber merchant who owned most of the cargo in the hold was supervising the shipping and sale of his goods.

We got along well with the smiths, but the merchant was a bit standoffish. Two days out to sea, though, little Groedelipid mentioned that she wanted to see where the ManMountain had lived. The merchant's eyes lit up. He was something of a fanatic on the subject of the Englishman.

He told several tales, some we'd never heard before. We passed many a meal listening to him describe the giant's size, habits, tools and crimes.

"So where did he come from?" Groedelipid asked one day.

"He came," and the man leaned close to the center of the table, "from beyond the Veil."

"Oh, there's no such thing," I said.

"Careful, Andernancilla," my youngest sibling warned, "there are more things on sea and island..."

"Than can be afforded on your budget," I finished the quote. "It's a sailor's fancy. A magic wall that protects the Isles from monsters? Why not from storm or sea? How do sharks get through? We've plenty of dangers to face every day, no sign of a magical protecting hand laid over them."

"Pray, Miss Argelethump," the man whispered, "that you never see the dangers it DOES prevent."

Like Mamma, Master Uerdellend pretty well nailed the moment. A storm blew up the next evening. The sailors toiled through the night, but couldn't find their way out of the tempest.

By morning, or what should have been morning, we were a bedraggled bunch, gathered together in the galley, trying to sip water and keep bits of toast down. Mayendellia comforted Groedelipid on her lap, the rest of us braced as buttresses to keep the two of them from sliding around the room. Her father and the timberman had gone topside to spell one sailor at a time for a rest and a bite.

They wouldn't look us in the eye as they grabbed something and stumbled back to the deck. By the evening, they stopped coming in all together. When the darkness outside was as complete as my own despair, the captain and two sailors rushed in and rushed us out.

Without a word of explanation, they lashed us into a rowboat hanging over the side. Groedelipid's shouts for her father were unheard over the wind and water. Someone tossed a barrel of food and a cask of water in and we were swung out into the water.

A bolt of lightning showed that half the masts were missing. Dead men hung tangled in the rigging and the profile of the back end of the ship was...wrong, somehow. The ship was going down.

I think a sailor meant to join us, to navigate, but there was a pitching wave and we were separated from the vessel. We never saw it again. Lightning spotlit the world from moment to moment, showing monstrous waves and mountains of foam.

We pitched and rolled, hanging on to rope and each other for dear life, for an eternity.

I woke to sunlight. A pitiless sun boiled down upon us. I woke my sisters, our new ward, and shared a small sip of the water with each.

"Where are we?" Zulifaefaefae asked.

Sillipatter pointed. We all looked to see a shark fin. Such things were easily recognizable for us, from our seaside upbringing. So there was no arguing that it wasn't a shark fin, for all that it was nearly three times the size that any single sail on our ship had been.

It sailed majestically past, followed by an even greater tail fin. If monster sharks had the same proportions as our familiar ones, this beast was three times the length of a frigate.

"We're beyond the Veil," Groedelipid whispered. No one argued.

---

For several days, we tried to hide from the sun, we tried to make the water and food last, and we tried to pretend there was hope.

"Maybe we'll find Gulliver," Mayendellia suggested one day.

"Oh, please," Sillipatter argued condescendingly. "He'd be, what, three hundred and thirty by now?"

"Well, maybe manmountains live four hundred years," Mayendellia replied. Sillipatter was only older by a matter of minutes, her condescension wasn't too effective.

"Maybe we'll find his clan?" Groedelipid asked.

"He can't have a clan," Zulifaefaefae said. "Philosophers have proven that the resources of the entire world couldn't support more than two or three individuals like Gulliver." The little girl's face fell at that, so I countered the scientific opinion.

"Gulliver himself kept insisting that our philosophers were wrong," I said. "Great Egg Above, he kept saying that beings of his order were spread across the Earth liberally."

"Yeah," Mayendellia joined in. "To hear him tell it, you couldn't swing a tree without hitting one. We're probably in a major shipping lane, or a popular fishing ground right now."

Groedelipid felt a bit better at that. A glare from me ensured that no one would suggest anything to diminish her mood again.

---

One morning, two days after the food and water ran out, we drifted into some sort of marsh. Sillipatter woke me up to a sun filtered through some sort of leafless trees growing up through the water. Land was around here somewhere.

We tried to row, but made little headway, mostly because we were rather weak. But we kept at it. Desperation does tend to limit one's choices. A few hours into it, Groedelipid, who sat at the tiller, pointed over our shoulders and screamed.

There was a ship. A huge ship, with a freeboard like a castle wall, sat some distance away. I stood carefully in the well of the boat. "Ahoy! Ahoy the ship? Anyone? Help?"

"What if they're giants?" Mayendellia hissed.

"If the cage has shade," I said, "and water dish, I don't really care at the moment."

We rowed closer, right up to the side of the vessel, and I banged on the hull with an oar.

A face leaned over the side, looking down in surprise. A giant face, of course. Groedelipid and Mayendellia screamed. Because she did, Sillipatter immediately decided that it was good news. Twins, by the Egg.

After staring down for a while, the man in the boat reached slowly down to us. We were too tired to try to escape, and had nowhere to go anyway. He scooped the entire craft up in his hands and took it aboard.

It was a rowboat, similar to what we had, if twelve sizes bigger. He settled the boat in some coiled rope and stared at us. I tried to ask for water, for shade, for directions to the nearest Lilliput embassy, but he didn't speak any of the tongues of the Isles.

Groedelipid was the first to step from the rowboat. Standing on the bench, she held both hand up to block the sun and cried. Not tearfully, but huge, cartoonish sobs of terror and dismay.

The man laughed and swept off his hat. He propped it up on the bench as a pavilion. It smelled of sweat, but it was the best shade we'd ever had. We stumbled down and spread out.

"How do we ask for water?" Mayendellia asked. But by then, the man had figured out we were castaways. He had produced a great, shiny cylinder the size of a grain silo. One end of it was a cup, and out of it he poured water. To our amazement, it was icy cold.

"Just a little bit," I warned the others, "your body isn't ready for this." We dipped our hands and sipped daintily. It was like being reborn.

Finally I could look the man over. He was middling-aged, it seemed. Not too old to start a family, Mamma would have said. Not too young to have some sense, Dadda would have judged, I think. He was staring down at us with a face of wonder. You'd think he never saw Real People before.

When Sillipatter had recovered, she shouted a few words that Gulliver had been known to use. The man cocked his head as if they almost made sense.

"Maybe the language has changed since the Englishman's time," Sillipatter mused.

"Maybe your accent is as bad as your penmanship," Mayendellia muttered.

"Fuck off," her twin told her. THAT one the man understood. He pointed at the two girls and laughed.

"Of course," I said with a laugh. "The one word a man would understand would be an obscene one."

"But it's an Englishman word," Zulifaefaefae said with a smile. "We DID find the ManMountain's clan." That cheered us up. We all shouted "fuck" to the giant, who laughed and offered us all a big "fucking" salute.

"Can we ask for food?" Sillipatter asked.

"I don't see anything that might be food," Zulifaefaefae pointed out.

"Maybe he's fishing FOR food," Groedelipid said hopefully. We looked, but didn't see any fishing gear. We did hear a strange, musical sound. It made the giant look at his wrist. The sound was coming from that.

He offered a blessing, holding his finger up to his lips in the classic gesture, and started to row. The ship's movement knocked us all to our knees or butt, but was pretty steady after that. He rowed for a bit, then stopped.

From our angle, we couldn't see anything outside of the ship. Boat. Whatever. He did. He reached over the side and brought up a brightly painted float. Rope attached to the float brought a large box into the boat. We stared as he opened it and drew out some bundles of paper. He set those to the side of the bench and put a black bag in the box where the paper had been. Then box and float went back over the side.

"He's a smuggler," Mayendellia whispered as he started to row away, hopefully towards shore.

"You read too many Travel stories," Sillipatter said.

"No, no, he's out here in the water, not fishing, hiding things under the water." I thought she had a point.

"So," I said, "either the paper, there, or the bag he put in the water is their money. The other would be...?"

"Drugs. Jewels. Teeth of a recently vanquished ruler sent as proof that an exiled prince can safely return to claim his throne...."

"You read too many Travel stories," Groedelipid said with finality.
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