BOOK 5: CHAPTER 22: A WHOLE PILE OF CLAMS

On the shore beside the headland, I smiled at the world, my hands held forward and palms facing the campfire, soaking in the warmth. A small breeze swept by, making the orange tongues dance. I was surrounded by friendly faces. Most stared at the flames while two lobsters, one big and one small, collected clams from the gathered pile and‌ placed them on the red-hot coals.

One might wonder why we’d chosen to start a gathering on the rocky shore, whose jagged and slick surface was much less inviting than soft sand, and whose proximity to the water made wind and ocean spray far more likely a prospect. The answer was simple: it just felt right.

Teddy and Borks looked like they could be brothers. They sat on their haunches, backs to the waves, noses twitching and gazes distant. Maria was to my left, using my body to shield most of the spray, delighting in the few droplets that reached her.

The clams hissed and bubbled as they cooked swiftly in the campfire’s incandescent heat. One popped open, and Maria skewered the morsel within. Rather than throw it into her mouth, she held it out to me.

“Does anybody object to our benevolent god-king having the first? I don’t want him growing violent with hunger, you see. He’s very abusive. Someone could die.”

Borks and Teddy let out assenting growls. The lobsters nodded their heads. And my pocket crab, who was clutched in Maria’s hand, one of her eyepatch’s spikes being used as a skewer, blew affirmative bubbles.

I reached out to grab it, but Snips slightly retracted the metal spike it hung from, her eye twinkling with mischief.

“With your mouth,” Maria ordered, emphasizing her point by jiggling Snips—and, by extension, the clam.

“The things I do for love…” I leaned over, grabbed it with my teeth, and forgot about everything else as its umami flavor exploded across my awareness, each bite flooding my body with warmth and—

Boooom!

The world shook, a wave of sound striking my chest with so much force it would have knocked the air from a regular human’s lungs. Even through my closed eyelids, I couldn’t miss its blinding glory. I tried to blink away the jagged lines of lightning burned into my retina, but the authentic version replaced them, crackling up from the being whose arrival had caused the explosion.

Corporal Claws looked like a furry reincarnation of Zeus, her brow enraged, body and eyes aglow. She cast an imperious look across all present. “You dare?”

“You dare?” repeated RPM, appearing from her pocket, mirroring her posture and ire.

“Fish is one thing,” continued Claws, lip twitching. “But clams? A whole pile of clams! You know they’re my favorite!”

I sighed. “You were invited, you peanut.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“No. Well, I mean yes, you are a liar, but—”

RPM let out a wordless squeal and tried to dash forward, but Claws caught him by the waist. “Master is right. Lying is fun. But that doesn’t change the facts!” One of her paws jabbed out in accusation. “I was left uninvited! To a feast of clams!”

The raccoon crossed his forearms and growled menacingly—but only succeeded in looking cute, his grumble squeaky, his body hanging limply from Claws’s arm like a restrained toddler.

“Claws… I invited you with the smell. You forbade me from bothering you, so I let the scents wash your way. If I didn’t want you coming, I wouldn’t have…” I trailed off mid-sentence as she released hold of her chi, all of it rushing back into her core.

“Why didn’t you say so?” She marched up, plucked two cooked mollusks from the fire—and a third after her familiar stole one of the first two—then raised both remaining shellfish to her mouth. She slurped them noisily, juices and all.

With the wildcard mammals satiated, I gazed over at the lady lobster, a plan days in the making finally coming to fruition. I said not a thing as she tried the cooked clam, clearly finding it to her liking. Only when everyone was on their second mouthful—or tenth, in Claws’s case—did I clear my throat to get their attention.

“So, do you want a name, Specialist Shell?”

You’d think I had just walked into a funeral and sucker-punched someone’s grandma. All eyes went wide, faces tinged with surprise and a hint of outrage, the latter more prevalent on one in particular.

“Among the sea of confusing, and, frankly, sometimes insulting names,” Maria said, “this might be the worst yet.”

“Don’t listen to her, Shelly! Close your—wait, you don’t have ears, do you? Damn, talk about inconvenient. Can’t even pop in some earplugs when your upstairs neighbor starts tapdancing on their hardwood floor—”

“Fischer!” Maria yelled, cutting me off.

“... What?”

“Explain yourself!”

“I mean, you know what hardwood is. The upstairs neighbour part is pretty self explan—”

“The name,” she interrupted again, more disappointed than upset. “You said Specialist Shell, then you said Shelly!”

“Well, yeah. Specialist Shell is a mouthful, so Shell for short, and Shelly for shorter.”

A shape emerged from the gloom just in time for Maria to redirect her confusion. “Barry! Thank the gods! I need someone sane to back me up. Did you catch all that?”

“Unfortunately.” He gave me an odd look from above his muscular jaw. “Shelly is longer than Shell.”

“But shorter than Specialist Shell. It’s a matter of perspective.”

Barry ignored me. “If anyone can explain how his brain works, Maria, it’s you. I thought your marriage would make you understand him more—weird names and all.”

“It only made it worse.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I could at least hold on to the hope that there was some greater meaning behind it before, but now I know the truth.”

“Which is…?”

“There isn’t one. He just goes with the first thing he thinks of. He pretends to consider it, feigns mulling it over for days, but always just ends up going with the original.”

“First off, how dare you reveal trade secrets? More importantly, I won’t apologize for being decisive and trusting myself. Isn’t that what’s needed from a leader? What Ellis specifically told me to work on?”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Maria groaned. “He’s right. I hate when he’s right.”

I grinned at her, knowing those weren’t her true feelings. She could protest all she wanted, but her trust was unconditional.

Barry, however, wasn’t ready to surrender. “Why not, I don’t know, ‘Major Michelle’ if you want to call her Shelly?”

“Dunno. I like Specialist Shell better.”

“But why?”

“I already told you—dunno. Why is Maria so beautiful? Why does your jaw look like it could crack stone? How does Claws keep sneaking sand into your bed without being noticed? Not every question has an answer, mate.”

“Okay, look,” he tried again. “I get the shell thing. Really, I do. It pairs well with Pistachio—” This made the mentioned leviathan jolt, and Claws’s eyes twitch in response. “—but Michelle follows your usual convention of title followed by an actual name.”

I snorted. “An actual name? Like Claws, Snips, Borks, Pistachio, and Lemony Thicket? Each suits them perfectly, but they’re absolutely not normal names.”

“You know what I mean. Those with nicknames—Warrant Officer Williams for Bill, Theodore Roosevelt for Teddy—they follow that convention.”

“Barry… They’re both blokes.”

“So?”

I leaned forward, giving him a measured look. “Are you implying that Shelly looks like a man?”

Snips let out an appalled hiss.

“What? No—I didn’t mean—” His jaw moved silently, searching for any way out. “RPM!” he yelled.

“What about him?”

“Abbreviation! You could do an abbreviation!”

“Of Specialist Shell? Heavens above, Barry. I didn’t take you for a racist.”

“What in Hades’s clammy thighs are you talking abou—”

Borks bolted upright, ears alert, head gazing over the river. Teddy did the same. My doggo pal opened a portal, leaped into it, and sealed it the moment Teddy was also through.

I threw my hands up. “Great! You offended Borks and Teddy so much that they left—are you happy with yourself, Barry?”

His stupidly muscular jaw chewed on that for a long moment. The look on his face suggested he’d realised I was messing with him and was now considering whether to swallow my words or spit them back at me.

Unaware or unsympathetic of Barry’s concerns, another hissed first. “Sergeant Shell… Shelly for short…”

“You like it?”

Shelly nodded, antennae waving, core radiating delight as a stream of contented bubbles spilled from her mouth.

“Another win for God-King Fischer. I can’t keep getting away with it.”

Maria patted my arm. “Yes, dear. All bend the knee before your mighty naming ability.”

Snips wiggled further into the nook of my elbow. She was the only other soul I’d shared it with, and she was as pleased as I was that the name had stuck. In a perfect world, I could sit and enjoy the rest of the evening, eating copious amounts of clams and dwelling on just how damned lucky I was to have so many friends—even if one of them might be a closeted racist. The world, however, was far from perfect. There were shenanigans brewing.

Corporal Claws, ever on the lookout for a screw to twist, had noticed Pistachio’s reaction earlier when Barry mentioned his name pairing with Shelly’s. From across the fire, the troublesome otter was doing well to conceal it, but I didn’t miss the twitching of her fuzzy little brows, a physical tell of the devious machinations forming behind them. One corner of her upper lip tugged into the beginning of a smile, but she swept it away, not yet wanting to reveal her hand.

I launched a preemptive strike. “What were you up to earlier, Claws? When we found you on the sand?”

Her brows flew up, her jaw unhinging in panic. I half expected her to respond violently—which was rather graceful of me, considering the actual chance of her responding with violence was far higher than fifty percent—but Claws surprised me.

“Who, me?” she chirped, shrugging and waving a paw dismissively. “Pshh. Nothin’.”

I’d normally have smirked and left it at that, but Pistachio’s happiness was on the line, and I was already shipping the idea of him and Shelly forming a power couple. I frowned at Claws, lips pursed, letting distrust flow from my core. “You’re acting a little too nonchalant there, missy. I’m starting to think you’re actually chalant.”

“Chalant…?” Maria asked.

“You don’t agree?”

“No, I mean, yes, it’s just… I don’t think that’s a word.”

“Dont be ridiculous. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.”

Wisely, she chose not to engage, pivoting instead. “So, what are you going to do about the kids, Barry?”

“The kids? How did you know?”

Maria and I shared a glance. Our feigned misdirection had worked more effectively than we could have hoped—we’d even managed to confuse ourselves. “Know what?” she asked.

“That I was looking for Paul. That’s why I came here before you distracted me with your…” He gestured in my general direction. “You-ness.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a compliment.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“I… You know what? Never mind. Have you seen Paul? The Buzzy Boys told me to come ask you.”

“They’re not at the forge?”

“No. I just came from there.”

“Ahhhh. They must still be there, then.”

Barry blinked. “Where is there?”

“Where all children yearn to go, mate.”

He rubbed his eyes. “It’s too late for riddles, Fischer. Where do all children yearn to go?”

“The mines, obviously.”

“... The mines?”

I barely managed to keep my face straight when confronted with the incredulity on his. “Yeah. Paul and the squad hit the old mine. Not to worry, though—they suited up first.”

“Ruby and Steven mad them suits?”

“What? No. They suited up in armor.”

“Where the frack did they get the armor?”

“The smithy, of course.”

“They made it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Barry. That’d be way too dangerous. They got their armor and weapons from Danny.”

“Weapons?”

“Well, yeah. One can hardly indulge their yearning for the mines without proper protection.”

A vein protruded from Barry’s neck, and I realized I might have gone too far. “Okay, mate, relax. I promise they’re not in danger.”

“That’s not the issue, Fischer. I don’t like that they have weapons, but I know they’re safe. You wouldn’t have let them go otherwise.”

“Oh. Good. Wait, then what’s the problem?”

“The mines!”

“What about them?”

“The—the yearning! That is absolutely not a thing here.”

“Sure it is.”

“Name a single time!”

“Ahhhh, your son and his new friends?” I checked the moon’s position in the sky above. “Like… eight hours ago. It was literally today, mate.”

“Right. And you didn’t put them up to it?”

“Nope.”

His frown drifted from confused and landed on suspicious. “You had someone else do it.”

“Barry, mate, I’ll swear an oath if it’s what you want. Tell him, Snips.”

She was dozing off in my arms, but she nodded slightly, blowing bubbles that confirmed the children did, in fact, yearn for the mines of their own accord. Claws chirped her agreement, and the top half of RPM rose from Claws’s pocket to roll his eyes and chitter mockingly, implying everyone knew that. Barry’s jaw started chewing again.

“You should drop it,” Maria suggested. “You know better than to engage with Fischer when he’s in this kind of mood. Besides, he’s telling the truth.”

“You swear as well?”

“Oh yeah. All the time.”

“No—I don’t—I mean you’d swear an oath! That it’s the truth!”

Maria frowned in thought. “I don’t know if I feel comfortable taking an oath on something so stupid.”

“Aha! So you also think it’s stupid?”

“Yes, Barry, I do think it’s stupid…” If he wasn’t so incensed, the muscleman would have seen it coming. “For you to have lived so long and not yet learned that all children yearn for the mines.”