The Nominal Hero, chapter 5: Verbing Weirds Everything
The second Noun had a duck’s head, rather than its head being an entire duck the way Fish’s head was an entire fish. A small part of Caden’s mind wondered why, while the rest of his thoughts spun frantically, trying to figure out a way to tell them both to get behind the racks that wasn’t also another noun. Down was a type of feathers. Hide was a type of skin.
You had to say the words by themselves, Bookshelf had told him. Caden took a deep breath. “Please-get-down-here-where-nobody-can-see-you,” he said all in a rush.
This was a success in the sense that no more Nouns appeared, but a failure as far as getting them to listen to him went. “Would you please get down here!” he repeated, louder.
“Humans!” the fish-headed one exclaimed, sounding delighted. “I thought they were a myth!”
“Nah, my cousin’s met a bunch of them,” the duck Noun said loftily. Their voice was a sort of nasal honk. “They’re not so much.”
“Your cousin the farmer? What do they have to do with humans?” Fish was peering around the room in evident fascination, ignoring Caden’s frantic gestures.
“No, my other cousin, the detective. I didn’t realize they’d be so little, though.”
Desperately, Caden grabbed Duck’s arm and yanked them downward. It wasn’t so much an arm, he realized, as a wing with an elbow, jammed into the sleeve of a hoodie. Duck’s hands were covered in feathers that overhung their fingertips, and they flapped awkwardly to regain their balance, their other wing smacking one of the tray racks with a loud metallic clatter.
“Oh, look at you,” Fish scoffed, bending to retrieve a couple of dropped napkins.
Thankfully, this meant both Nouns were hidden from sight when one of the cafeteria workers stuck her head out the door of the kitchen. “No fooling around out there!” she ordered.
“We’re not! We’re just going to class now!” Masami called back, quick on his feet as he usually was. “Caden, what is going on? What is going on, Caden?”
“They’re called Nouns,” Caden said. “Like, words, but also people, and they can do weird stuff, and I’ll bet Fish can save the fish.”
“That doesn’t really explain much,” Hunter pointed out.
Caden looked at Fish. “You can save the fish, right? With your fish powers?” He realized he didn’t have any clear idea what the limits of the Nouns’ powers were. So far he’d seen instant hair styling and interdimensional furniture transport. Hopefully fish rescue fit in somewhere between the two.
“Maybe?” Fish said, not sounding at all sure. “They’re pretty far gone, you know.”
“What about me?” asked Duck.
“Um. You were an accident,” Caden admitted. Belatedly, he realized that he could have just taken the glasses off. He hurriedly did so, and stuffed them into his pocket.
Fish snickered. “Hah! Glorious sea creatures one, loser warm-bloods zero!”
“I will have you know that my ancestors were dinosaurs!” Duck growled.
“Um, Caden?” Hunter poked Caden’s shoulder. “The bell’s going to ring soon. Visitors can’t be in the halls after the bell unless they sign in at the office. It’s a rule.”
Caden looked incredulously at his friend, then at the fish-headed person and the duck-headed person, then back at Hunter. “Do you think they should go to the office and get a hall pass?”
“I’m just saying,” Hunter muttered.
“I want to see the magic,” Masami said.
Oddly enough, that seemed to distract the bickering Nouns. “It’s not magic,” Fish snapped, sounding annoyed.
“So it’s super-advanced science?” Masami asked eagerly. He generally read the same sort of books Caden did.
“Certainly not,” Duck snorted. “Science. Hah.”
“Well, I want to see it,” Masami insisted.
“Science,” Fish said, glaring at Duck, “is as good a word as any.”
“So you say,” Duck sniffed. “Hah. Cold-bloods. No poetry in your souls, that’s your problem. Wouldn’t know magic if it kicked you in the beak. Those of you that even have beaks.”
“Please,” Caden said quickly, trying to head off the argument. “We just want to save the fish.” His friends nodded.
Fish sighed, a stream of bubbles floating up through the rippling air around their head. “Human, I have to say, I’m not sure these fish can be saved.” They brightened. “You know what, though, I could make you some new fish. That’s a lot easier.”
“Okay,” Caden said. That sounded pretty good.
“And a habitat,” Hunter added. “That means enough food for them to eat and, um, enough clean water, and things they like, like little plastic castles to hide in. My brother had a fish one time and it had a little castle in the tank but then he forgot to feed it and it died.”
“Right,” Fish said. “Not a problem. New fish with habitat, coming right up.” They cracked their knuckles theatrically.
There was a rumbling, gurgling, rushing sound, like a snowblower being sucked into a drain. Caden realized that he ought to have said where the fish should go, an instant before the shouting started.
One of the cafeteria workers came running out of the kitchen. “Everyone out!” he ordered. “The cafeteria is closed!”
“What’s going on?” Masami piped up, squeezing out from behind the racks.
“Just a little bit of flooding,” the worker said. “Go to your classroom, please.”
“I want to see!” Masami exclaimed, and ducked past the worker and into the kitchen. “Guys! Guys!” he shouted back. “This is amazing!”
Caden and Hunter grinned at each other and followed.
The kitchen was in chaos. All the sinks were overfilled and spilling onto the floor, and water was jetting from every faucent and fountaining from every drain. Little fish swam in the sinks and flopped on the drainboards and in the rivers of water forming on the floor. The big steam tray station, where the food was normally kept hot until it was ready to serve, was empty of food and filled instead with water, and bigger fish swam back and forth in it as though they were doing laps in a pool. Seaweed grew on the sides of the steam table and floated in matted clumps on the water’s surface. At each end of the table, Caden noticed in wonder, was a little pink plastic castle.
“Call the janitor and get the water shut off!” someone was shouting. “A pipe must have burst!”
“The intercom’s shorted out,” someone else said.
“Well, run down to the office and tell them! And get them to shut the power off too, it can’t be safe.” The worker glared around the room, hands on her hips. “And how did all these fish get in here?”
“Why are the fish in here?” Caden asked. The Nouns had followed the boys in, but fortunately no-one seemed to be paying them any attention.
Fish looked confused, which was a very strange expression on a fish. “That’s where the old fish were.”
“The ones you couldn’t save,” Caden said slowly. “What was wrong with them exactly?”
“They’d been chopped into pieces,” Fish said. “And cooked. And covered in little bits of bread.”
Masami started giggling. Caden groaned. “Those,” he said, “were fish sticks.”
“Oh?” said Fish. “Well, I can’t imagine they were very happy. These ones are much better off.” They looked around critically at their handiwork. There were a few centimetres of water on the floor now, but some of the little fish in it were flopping in evident distress. “Hm, these faucets aren’t quite enough, though, are they? Just a second.” They concentrated.
There was a clanking sound from above, and water began spraying from the ceiling sprinklers. The fire alarm began to wail. “There!” Fish exclaimed, clapping their hands. “That should do it!”
“All of you get out of here!” the woman in charge ordered. “Let’s go, people!” She seemed to notice the little group of kids and Nouns for the first time. “You too. Come on. You students get out and find your class, and you--ah--sports mascots, is it? You’d better go out to your bus or whatever.”
Duck started to say something, but Caden interrupted firmly, “Yes, thank you, ma’am, we’re going right now, come on, guys!”
The halls were full of people now, as the fire alarm sent students and staff hurrying for the exits. Fish beamed. “Well, that went swimmingly!” they exclaimed. “I’d say my work here is done. Thank you for the opportunity, humans, and please call me again any time!” They gave a little bow, and vanished in a whirlpool of bubbles and light.
“That was awesome!” Masami crowed.
“We need to get outside,” Hunter said worriedly. Water was starting to flow out from under the cafeteria doors.
“What about me?” Duck asked Caden. “Don’t you have any work for me to do? I’ll bet I can do even better than this.”
“I--uh--I kind of called you up by accident,” Caden admitted.
“Oh,” said Duck.
“Guys,” Hunter insisted. “There’s a fire alarm. We need to walk calmly and safely to the nearest exit.”
“I’m getting my coat first,” Masami said. “It’s not like there’s an actual fire.”
They hurried back toward the classroom where their coats and boots were stowed. “So nothing at all?” Duck pressed.
Caden thought about it. Bookshelf had said Nouns would always fit well into the world if he called them when he had something for them to do. Caden wished now that he’d asked what would happen if he called them without having something for them to do. He didn’t want to mess this up. “Well, um,” he said. “I don’t know. What can you--what are your duck powers?”
“Swimming?” Masami suggested. “Quacking? Wiggling your tail feathers in the air when you eat?”
None of those sounded terribly useful. “What else do ducks do?” Caden asked.
“Well,” Duck said thoughtfully, as the group reached the coathooks, “we migrate.” They grinned beakily. “Want to go find an adventure?”
Comments
Post a Comment