Short Story: The Tavern at the Edge of the Galaxy

On Friday, I had the privilege of doing Friday Introductions and taking over the stories on the Art Stew 52 Instagram account. The prompt for that week was 'Ship/Boat', so as a group activity, I asked everyone to send me whatever popped into their heads when they thought about boats and ships, and I'd take all of the ideas and write a piece of flash fiction from them. 

Well, there were a lot of ideas, and the flash fiction turned into more of a short story. I think the whole thing, from concept to finished first draft (which I then proceeded to read aloud on a live video) took me about three hours. It was such an interesting experience to write a short story based on other people's interpretations of a prompt, and within a time limit. Definitely something I'd like to do again sometime!

Here's the story (after some editing).

Image: Unsplash

Darrion stumbled into the Tavern at the Edge of the Galaxy. His boots were clumsy and heavy after so many barefooted days in the riggings, and he wished that the ground would stop trying to knock him down. Perhaps it was only another side effect of having firm planet beneath his feet for the first time in so long, but the tavern felt unsettling to him. A place of, well, he'd of said magic...if he didn't know that believing in magic was silly.

"Steady lad!" Karns' huge hand rested on his should, anchoring him. "You'll find your planet legs soon enough."

Darrion blinked through the hazy atmosphere and felt suddenly small as he took stock of the tavern's other occupants. They were big and strong and sure-looking. Hardened and roughened by voyaging among the furthest stars. He glanced down at his own spindly body - knocking knees and thin arms protruding from the sleeves of a too-big shirt - and heard again his father's words. 

"You'll never make a sailor, son. So stop your foolish dreamin' an' settle on an honest trade. There's good money to be made as a shipwright."

Aye, Darrion thought, that there was. Good money, but precious little adventure. 

Darrion shook his head, realizing that his shipmates had moved on and left him gawking at the door. A few of the sailors at nearby tables had turned to look at him, knowing grins on their faces. 

"Always a jolt to the first-timers."

"Oi! Lad! I hope you've come prepared! They'll chuck you out if you haven't a story good enough for them."

Darrion squared his shoulders and scanned the room for Karns. Even in this motley crowd, it wasn't hard to spot her. She stood at least a head taller than everyone else. He pushed his way toward her, observing that the crew had not dispersed, as they normally would upon entering a tavern, each hand to the drink and table of their choice. Instead, they were all clustered around the Captain, who was identifiable by the impertinent monkey perched on his head. It made him almost as conspicuous as Karns. The Captain seemed to be arguing with someone that Darrion couldn't quite see. 

Karns glanced at Darrion as he rejoined the group. "Chin up!" She encouraged.

"What kind of a place is this?" Darrion asked.

"Why, it's The Tavern, lad, The Tavern! Didn't you hear the hands talkin'?"

"Aye, but I thought it was, you know, a normal tavern. Those sailors by the door, they said something about stories and getting chucked out."

Karns chuckled. "Oh, that's just talk! Captain'll get us through, you'll see. Folks don't get chucked out so very often. Only if their tales get too wild."

"But, Karns..." Darrion trailed off as he realized that Karns wasn't listening anymore. She was grinning across the heads of the crowd. 

"Well, I'll be!" She shouted. "If it isn't that scalawag star-rover of a Martin! Martin, get your rascally hide over here and greet an old shipmate!"

A short, squareish man came hobbling through the press of sailors.

"Eh, Karns!" He rasped, "It has been a time. How're ye keepin'?"

"Better than you, by the looks of things. How'd you lose the leg?"

"Oh, that's a story! Come sit w' me and I'll tell ye."

"'Twill have to wait a bit. The Captain's not yet done his telling."

"Well, the story'll keep." Martin turned his sharp eyes on Darrion. "Shipmate o' yers, Karns?"

"Aye." Karns nodded.  "Darrion. A new hand, but a likely lad an' learnin' fast."

"His first time here, by the way he's lookin'!" Martin observed. He was not much taller than Darrion, and when he leaned in close enough for Darrion to smell the beer on his breath, they were nearly eye to eye. "Keep yer eyes an' ears open, boy. Ye'll hear an' see things in this place that ye'd not believe had ye encountered them anywhere else." He laughed explosively. "Close yer mouth, boy, or ye'll catch flies in it."

Darrion felt his face going red. He edged a little away from Martin. 

Martin, mercifully, shifted his attention. "Well, Karns, I'll catch ye in a bit. Looks like yer captain's got himself an audience. Good luck, an' may yer tales be true." He grinned and, turning, was lost in the shifting crowd. 

The Captain headed toward a quieter corner of the tavern in the wake of a slender woman in faded red. The crew trailed after them.

"Karns!" Darrion hissed, "What're we doing?"

"The Captain'll do his telling now, and of course, we all have to help him."

Darrion was beginning to feel desperate. "But what is the telling?"

"It's his story, y'know. The story of Moonlight and her crew. All that's happened since the last time he's been here."

"But why's he telling it?" Darrion persisted.

Karns stopped and turned to face him. "You really don't know, do you, lad?"

"No." He said, feeling stupider and smaller than ever.

"Hmm, well, I'll have to explain it to you, then." Karns rubbed her forehead thoughtfully. "It's like this: some places trade in gold an' gems an' stardust. But the real treasure of the Galaxy, as every good sailor knows, is information. An' that's the trade-good here. Every captain who enters must tell his story, and tell it right and true if he wants no trouble. And, if the story's good enough, well...then he can buy things. D'you see that woman there?" Karns gestured at the woman in red. "She's the richest woman alive. She's got all the stories an' happenin's of the Galaxy stored right here in this place, an' she pieces all the little bits together. Give her a story she likes, an' mayhap she'll tell you somethin' that you've a hankering to know."

Karns turned abruptly. "C'mon or we'll be delayin' the Captain"

Darrion followed her in a daze. The Tavern at the Edge of the Galaxy. A place of tales. He imagined all the lore and stories of the starfarers lying piled in the dusky corners, like untold treasure. What would Father say could he see me now? 

He grimaced, answering his own question. "Your place is right here, son. Not traipsin' away to some planet on the edge of the unknown. Stay where you belong."

Darrion couldn't help thinking that his father would be right. He'd had such little time among the stars. How could he ever have a story good enough for this place?

The woman seated them all around a large table. The Captain's monkey was at ease, capering and scolding as usual, but the crew stirred nervously in their seats. Darrion shyly studied the tabletop. It was worn and stained with years of use and he ran his fingers across it, wondering what wild tales had been told across its surface.

A glass of beer appeared before him, and he glanced up to see the woman in red moving on, placing more glasses for the rest of the crew. 

"Storytelling can be long, dry work." She said.

"Not my stories." The Captain rumbled. "And I prefer wine. I'll be sure to pay."

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Confidence! And what else are you planning to buy with this great story of yours?"

"A location." The Captain said, calmly, "The location of the Dream Whale."

The woman looked surprised. The crew murmured. Darrion elbowed Karns. "What's the Dream Whale?" He whispered. 

"The rarest creature of all." Karns sounded awed. "'Tis said it'll give you your heart's desire if you can catch it. But no-one I've heard of ever has."

"Well, best get started." The woman said, and passed the Captain a glowing pipe.

The Captain closed his eyes. He took a deep pull on the pipe and slowly breathed out a cloud of bluish smoke.

"What's that for?" Darrion asked Karns.

"Helps with the memory. Most sailors tell so many star-stories that fact and fiction get swapped end for end and tangled like a new hand in the ratlines. Whatever's in that pipe helps sort things out a bit."

"And what if a sailor decides to lie?" Darrion asked, trying not to remember his first time in the rat lines. 

Karns grinned. "That woman can spot a lie comin' from leagues away. Anyone tries lyin' to her gets chucked out an' never comes back again. Sh! The Captain's starting!"

"When I left here after my last visit, I set sail for Aldebaran, but was driven off course when the star-monster attacked us..."

The Captain's voice, steady and measured, beat a counterpoint to the sounds of a fiddle that came from somewhere on the other side of the room. Darrion leaned forward, entranced, and listened to the Captain's tale of daring and danger and the far-flung stars that Darrion had always dreamed of seeing someday. Occasionally, the Captain would pause and call on some member of the crew for help in recounting a detail. Darrion drank it in, oblivious of passing time. 

"Directly afterward, the lookout spotted a castaway, adrift on an asteroid."

The Captain had come, at length, to the recounting of events in which Darrion had taken part. The boy sighed, knowing that the story was nearly over and that there would be no more exciting bits. Realizing that he was thirsty, he looked around for his beer, only to discover that the Captain's monkey had already drunk it all. Little scalawag! At least the Captain's story had been a good one. Hopefully enough to buy them all another round of beer and maybe something to eat.

The Captain finished his telling. "And then, we came to port here." He leaned back in his chair and drained his glass.

The woman in red rose from her seat at the Captain's side. "Well," she said, "it was a good story. Better than some." She looked around the table. "Any of you have something to add?"

The crew members shifted in their chairs, shaking their heads. "Nay, nay. The Captain's said it all."

The woman's gaze came to rest on Darrion. "You. You have the look of an untold story."

Darrion squirmed, hands clenching around the seat of his chair. "Nay...uh, ma'am. I haven't been long among the stars. My story is...well...'tisn't very long."

"Long or short, it's worth the telling, I think."

"Go ahead, boy." The Captain said. "Give the lady her tale."

The woman passed Darrion the pipe and he took a hesitant puff, expecting to be overwhelmed by a powerful fume. Instead, the savor was sweet and spicy, like the scent of the timbers from the shipyards where he'd grown up. 

The smoke swirled through his  senses, steadying the beat of his racing heart. He let it trickle from his nostrils as he'd seen his shipmates do. The monkey sat up on the table and chattered at him mockingly. Darrion tried to ignore the monkey, the voice of his father, "A shipwright's work is the best chance you'll ever have, my boy", and listen only to the strains of that distant fiddle, the rhythm of his own heart. 

He closed his eyes to shut out the expectant faces watching him and began.

"I ran away to sail the stars on the night of Marduk's first full moon..."

Darrion resisted the urge to embellish and stuck to the unromantic facts. It had been an ill-fated voyage. Even Darrion, with no voyaging experience, had soon come to realize that he'd picked the wrong ship to stow away on. The crew were undisciplined and lazy, the captain little better, and Darrion so star-sick that the first thing he knew about the sirens' song was the crash when the spellbound crew sailed their ship into a wandering asteroid. It was probably his sickness that had saved him in the end. The sirens' song was drowned out by the nauseated rushing in his ears as he'd floundered up on a rocky shore. And there he'd been. Stranded. Puking his guts out on a wandering asteroid until the Captain of the Moonlight had spotted him and taken him aboard. 

"An' that's all, ma'am." Darrion looked around apologetically.

Karns clapped him on the back. "Don't worry. It'll be a lot more exciting next time."

The woman didn't seem as disappointed as Darrion had expected. Instead, she asked him a number of questions about the size of the asteroid and the color and texture of the rock, and had it seemed to be moving at all, other than the normal movement of the planetary currents?

Darrion wondered if she was asking out of pity, trying to make his story seem more important than it was. Venturing a glance up into her face, though, he didn't think she looked like a pitying sort of woman. More the type for hard facts and tough decisions. Anyway, Darrion had lain, facedown, on that rock for star-gods-knew how long. He had little trouble answering the questions. The color: brownish grey. Movement? Hard to tell, really, as he'd been sick the whole time. Everything had been churning, but especially his insides. The texture...

"Come to think of it, ma'am, the texture was kind of funny. Not as hard as rock. More like...hide."

The woman cracked a smile. "I expect that some of you may have heard of the habits of the Dream Whale. But I will summarize them for you. It's a shy creature, master of disguise, and the reason so few sailors have ever seen it is simply that they didn't know how to look. Captain, have you your charts?"

"Oh, aye." The Captain fumbled in his satchel and unrolled a chart on the tabletop, shooing the inquisitive monkey out of the way.

The woman leaned over the chart, pointing. "You found the boy about here, right?"

The Captain nodded.

"Well, then, planetary pull being what it is right now, I expect you'll find your Dream Whale around here." She tapped a spot on the far edge of the Galaxy. 

The entire crew strained forward to look.

"Wait a moment." Karns said. "D'you mean that the boy was ridin' the Dream Whale?"

The woman nodded. "Perhaps the only person in Galactic history to have done so."

"Well, I never!" The Captain exclaimed. "To think I was that close and never knew it."

Karns, still intent on the chart, absentmindedly tousled Darrion's hair. "Lucky thing we picked him up, eh, Captain?"

The Captain grunted.

"Lucky, indeed." The woman in red straightened and began gathering the empty beer glasses. As she came around to Darrion's side of the table, she let one hand fall on the back of his chair.

"Remember, boy, that it's not always the grandest tales that are the most useful. Of course, those sirens were a dead giveaway. They should have been all the way over by Daveron at this time of the galactic cycle. As a side note, I recommend good, old-fashioned cotton wool as the best way of avoiding future troubles with them. That's a piece of advice given for free, which isn't so easily come by. Use it wisely."

Darrion felt like jumping, yelling. What he said was, "Thanks."

"What's your name?" The woman asked.

"Darrion."

"Well, Darrion, it looks as if you are for the stars."

THE END

THE PROMPTS: 
- a giant fish made of stars and dreams
- Winken, Blinken, and Nod/lullaby
- live band/string band/ violin
- giant sea monster attacking pirates
- contrasts of water: calm, glassy water, rolling waves
- monkey
- starlight
- pirate queen
- deserted island
- shipwreck
- Robinson Crusoe
- pirates
- sky for a sea
- ship silhouetted by the moon
- scary sirens