“Oh Father!” Isabella wailed, bouncing and writhing on his lap as she had since she was a child. There was, however, some recent additional bounce. “Poor, poor Valeria! I miss her SO.”
“She used to put ants in your bed then tighten the sheets so you could not escape.”
“But she was my beloved sister!”
“She once fed you a quart of castor oil, telling you it would reveal your soul.”
“But she was my sister!”
“When you were six, she taught you to sing a quite raunchy song then locked you in the guard’s barracks all night. It’s only the gods to thank that they weren’t the current crop of guards.”
“All right,” Isabella said, flopping onto his lap and sighing. “She was a witch and I was secretly cheering when she got slurped. But in five years the serpent will demand your last daughter. That would be, in case you hadn’t noticed, me. And who shall bounce on your lap and writhe and giggle for you then?”
“You’ll be seventeen. Hopefully, someone to whom I am not related.”
“I also have been studying massage, act as your food taster and am your FAVORITE DAUGHTER,” she screamed, grabbing his chain of office and pulling her face up to his. “You have to DO SOMETHING!”
“We’ve tried heroes…”
“Try harder! The WHOLE kingdom and MY hand in marriage. I’ll make sure you get a nice apartment with a view. Throw the massage part into the advertisement. I bounce even better these days in all sorts of places and I’m getting REALLY good at the writhing…”
“Noted. Okay, I’ll put out the ads. Again. And in the meantime, I’ll try to work something out with the serpent.”
“Nope,” the serpent said, nudging the last of the blue fin into the shoals. They were meeting at their usual spot, the end of the rocky spit protecting the harbor. The king carefully failed to note the remaining blood stains from the latest would-be hero.
“You get all the fishshsh in the sea, or sssomething resembling it. More than your boatsss can catch that’sss for sssure. I keep having to herd the tuna back in again and again and again. Got any idea how hard it isss to herd tuna? You provide one daughter of royal blood every five yearsss. All you got to do isss keep on pumpin’. Losssing the lead in your pencccil?”
“Pencil’s fine,” the king said. “Wife’s not so up on the whole having her progeny eaten. And her biological clock seems to have wrung the last bell.”
“Your problem, not mine. If you don’t, I get to lay wassste to the whole island and eat everybody. Ssso if you hold out on the lassst daughter… Don’t. I’ll just eat the boat you try to sssail her off in. And if ssshe’s on the island, I’ll ssseek her out and eat her firssst as an appetizzzer.”
“It seems like an unfair agreement.”
“You sssigned.”
“We were starving.”
“Dotted line.”
“Because, as it turns out, you were driving all the fish away from the island.”
“Sssigned contract. Read it and weep.”
“King Borger of Lonky has a number of daughters he hasn’t been able to shift…”
“Because they’re fat and ugly. Got to hand it to you, you breed high quality ssstock. Even that lassst one, rode hard and put up wet asss ssshe was for her age, wasss pretty tasssty.”
“Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome. And keep the heroessss coming. Lots of meat on those bonesss.”
“I’ll do my level best.”
#
“Beware, Serpent! I am Amawulf, Son of Beawulf, slayer of the Dread Beast of Angor! Holder of the sword…”
SSSLURP.
“Sssorry? The sssword…? Blast, he’s gone.”
#
“Behold Throgcrusher, Dwarven…”
SSSLURP!
“Uff, pak! Dwarvesss! You can NEVER get the beard out of your teeth!”
#
“Behold…!”
SSSLURP!
#
“Beware…!”
SSSLURP!
#
“I am…!”
SSSLURP!
“Agatean? Buhani? Slurp…slurp… No… No… Tomaran, right? Was that one Tomaran? South end of the island… About twenty… eight years old. I’m right, arent’ I…? Gods I’m good…”
#
CHAPTER TWO
ENTER THE VIXEN
Five lithe, muscular and naked young men hauled the lines of the sloop while behind them, holding a whip made of twine the exact length of his inordinately short penis, capered an ancient mariner, his skin wizened and crinkled into sun-blackened leather.
“Haul the jib!” he croaked, flailing the useless whip. “Cap’n said haul the jib for the sake of the gods!”