Daisy in the Fringe

Dear Diary,

Great news!  We’re going to be flying out of here in a skyship after all!

At first, it seemed that we’d have to take horses.  There was no ships in town, and none expected for a while.  And we couldn’t just call up for a ship with a radio, because there is none – the harbor master broke his radio and skedaddled, and broke all the other ones in town too.

So we were going to have to get horses, which meant that we’d be going real slow and all, which was a problem because all those guys were after us.  But then I had an idea: I figured if anyone would have a radio, it would be that guy who bought all our guns.  He had just about everything in that shop – there must have been a radio there somewhere!

Well, it turned out that he didn’t have a radio after all.  But he knew somebody who did, and who would send out a call for a ship for us if we paid him enough money.  And so we’re going to be riding on a ship!  And all because of my idea!!!!

….

Later…

I’m on the ship now.  It’s called the Iron Falcon, and it’s owned by this slick looking guy who has a big hairy guy and a little bald guy working for him.  He says it’s really fast.  I don’t know if it’s fast, but it sure ain’t clean.  So while everyone else went back to the temple to get the money to pay for our ride, I stayed at the ship and cleaned it up a bit.  The captain seemed to like that.  At least, he asked if he could buy me.

Buy me!  I’m not a slave!  Isn’t that a hoot!

Of course, Dusty asked him how much he’d pay.  But she was just joking.

We’re flying through the air right now.  And it sure seems fast – we zipped out and away like a jackrabbit in the sky.  I really like flying in a skyship – I wonder if I can get the captain to let me trying steering it!

Dear Diary,

After I wrote that last entry, I still had some time before dinner.  So I tried out my new gun, the big one that fires all the bullets.  Hank said that we didn’t have too many bullets, so I only shot a little bit.  A bunch of bullets came out even when I held the trigger down only a bit, and I shot up a boot something fierce.  But I could easily figure out how to use the gun, so I didn’t waste no more bullets.  I did clean it up a bit after that, though – I always heard that you should keep your gun clean.  It wasn’t too hard, after I had shot it and all.

Dear Diary,

It sure is taking us forever to get out of this town! There always seems to be more to do – more guns to sell, more stuff to buy, even wizards to go see. But I hope we’ll get out of here soon.

This morning, first thing I did was to go to the temple and sacrifice to the God. I sure didn’t want him to get angry at me for killing someone in his backyard. Didn’t want him to get angry at Dusty neither. So I bought a pretty little rabbit, gave him a little pat, and then wrung his neck at the altar. I figure the god’s gotta like me now. At least, this time the Creep didn’t follow me around, so I guess that must mean I’m getting some divine favor.

After that, Dusty and me went out to sell the extra weapons we got off the guys who attacked us yesterday. We went to this little store in town that does a lot of trading. It was the neatest place I’ve ever been! They had so much neat stuff! Dusty sold him the guns, and said she’d even get a meal for the guy’s daughter, who is all hungry for some reason, and she ended up trading for various stuff. She got me a pretty bolt of cloth. I think I’ll use it to make her a nice dress – Dusty needs something pretty to wear, especially if we ever get to go to a hoedown or something. She also got me a pretty little pin. It has a green stone in the middle with some little white stones around it. I thought it was too nice for me, but she insisted.

After we got back, I sat a little with the Oracle girl. She seems real nervous and all. I guess that’s not too surprising, with all those guys trying to catch her so they could sacrifice her. So I braided her hair with a little twist of leather and helped make her look real pretty. She seemed more relaxed after.

But soon after that, she ended up getting nervous again. You see, those suicide-guys seem to have some device to track her. (Well, we have the device now, cause we took it from them after we killed some of them and the rest killed themselves. But we reckon they could make another one if they wanted.) So we went to a wizard to figure out some way to keep her from being tracked. It was so weird there! There was some weird-smelling stuff bubbling on the stove, and jars with dead things and weird looking roots in them and stuff.

The wizard himself didn’t look so strange, except he was wearing a bathrobe and it was the middle of the day. He took a look at the Oracle girl and he took a look at the tracker. Then he said some weird words and waved his hands around, and the whole room seemed to go still and he stared weirdly at the tracker. Then he took a deep breath and let it out, and then he says, Well, the tracker finds her because she’s an oracle and because she’s not been besmirched, and that ain’t true of most oracles, but apparently it makes it really powerful if they sacrifice her.

I don’t know what them oracles are generally up to, but he said that the best way to keep the suicide guys from finding her is to have someone besmirch her. (I’m not sure what he meant by that, but I think it means to do it with her. Apparently, that tracker likes the smell of virgins, just like demons do. What is it that guys do, to make girls smell so bad? I don’t know if I ever want to smell so bad, even if it does mean that demons won’t want to eat me!) Well, Hank and the Creep seemed to like that idea, and both of them started to get all excited. Hank said that the Oracle-girl would have to choose one of them, and the Creep just licked his lips.

But Mr Dutch said that there’d have to be some other way, so he paid the wizard extra to put a spell on her to make the tracker not work without besmirching her or anything. That Mr Dutch is a real gentleman.

Anyway, we’re back at the Temple now, and I’ve got a little time that I’m using to write this. The Oracle girl seems nervous again, which I can’t blame her. I think I’d be nervous if Hank and the Creep were thinking about besmirching me, even if that don’t mean what I think it means.

Dear Diary,

Another fight!!! And this time, I know that I killed someone – I shot him with my shotgun, and nobody else did.  In a temple yard too – I gotta make a sacrifice, I don’t want the gods to be mad at me for killing someone in their backyard.

We were all buttoned down for the night, and Dusty and me was on watch.  First these three guys came to try to get the Oracle girl, but they wasn’t tough at all, and Dusty and me managed to catch them good.  But they said that some other hired thugs was coming later, so we had to be real careful.

When those guys came, Dusty and me managed to shoot a couple of them.  That’s when I killed that one guy.  Then Mr Dutch and Mr B started shooting too, and before long the temple yard was all full of dead guys.

Some of the guys tried to come through holes in the roof.  But Mr Dutch and Doc scared them off.  Me too – I swung up to the roof (which was pretty cool – I didn’t know I could do that) and managed to shoot one of them as he ran away.

So now, we don’t know what’s going to happen next.  Mr Dutch says that we should probably leave soon.  And we don’t think these were the suicide-guys attacking this time, which means that bunches of people are out for the Oracle-girl.  Suicide guys, Inquisitors, and these thugs – she sure is popular, but that means it’s going to be really hard for us to make her safe.  We sure do have our work cut out for us – I hope that temple gives us a really big reward when we bring her there!

PS: The only one of us that got hurt in the fight was the Creep.  Doc fixed him up after, but I hope it hurt a lot!

PPS: The guy I killed had this big gun.  Mr Dutch says it shoots lots of bullets – even more than the pistols we got from the suicide-guys.  Nobody else wanted it, so I took it.  I’m not sure how it works, but I reckon I can figure it out.

Dear Diary,

It sounds like things are going to be harder then we thought.  They can’t take the Oracle girl here.  So we have to take her to the other temple, the one where we were originally going, even though it’s like hundreds of miles away.  (We moved hundreds of miles when we hit those gems.  I’m farther from home then I ever been, which is kind of weird.)

We’re not sure how we’re going to get there.  We could walk, or ride horses, or take an airship, or something.  (I hope it’s an airship.  I always wanted to ride in one of them!)

But Mr Dutch says that the suicide guys have some way they can find the Oracle-girl, so an airship might not be safe.  But nothing else would be safe either, so I don’t understand all that.  Maybe the priests here can help us hide the Oracle girl, but I don’t understand how.

And somehow, if the suicide-guys get the Oracle girl, they can destroy the world or something.  I don’t get that, but Dusty says it’s a real danger.  I don’t know.  But I like the Oracle-girl anyway, so I’ll do what I can to keep her safe.

But we got these new pistols that fire much faster then our old ones.  We got them from the suicide guys in the warehouse.  We spent a little time getting used to them – they shoot really fast.  I shot up a couple pairs of boots with mine – I’m really good with it.  Mr Blalock shot up this statue of a god.  I don’t think that’s a good idea – shooting a statue of a god, especially when you’re in a temple and all.  I hope he makes a good sacrifice, because I wouldn’t want the god to get mad at him and take it out on the people around him.

Dear Diary,

If I thought things were weird before, I didn’t have any idea!  We was heading around in the wilderness, trying to get to that temple, when these guys appeared in this mine.  And I mean appeared: it was like one minute there was nothing there, the next they were.  And they attacked us!  It seems like they wanted the oracle-girl, though I’m not sure quite why.  I don’t think they was Inkies.

Anyway, there was a big fight, and I managed to flip this guy who was coming at me on his back somehow, and caught him, even though everyone else mostly shot their guys.  But even though I caught mine alive, it didn’t matter.  Because he bit into some poison or something that he had kept in his mouth and killed himself.  Imagine that, killing yourself just so no one would catch you!  I don’t know why anyone would do a thing like that!

So then we was looking over the bodies and all, and they had a bunch of weapons that we took.  Mr Blalock says that we’ll be able to sell them to make some good money, once we’re in a town.  That’ll be good – it means that I’ll have some money to send to Mama.

But then things got really strange.  We found these jewels that the guys who was attacking us had.  Each one had a couple.  Mr Blalock took one, said I wonder what this will do, and smashed it.  Poof, there was a puff of smoke, and he disappeared.  We scratched our heads for a bit, and Dutch said that it must have made him go somewhere else.  He guessed that the guys who attacked us was going to use them to go home, and that was probably how they got into the cave in the first place.

So now we had a bunch of these jewel things, but no Mr B.  Dusty said she would take a couple, smash one, and go after Mr B to bring him a jewel to see if it could take him back.  That seemed pretty dangerous, and I didn’t want Dusty to get hurt, so I said I’d do it instead.  I got my shotgun ready, took a couple extra jewels, and smashed one.

The next thing I know, I’m in this room full of dead guys and covered with blood.  Mr Blalock is standing there in the middle of this, a real mess.  He says that these guys were going to kill him, but he got the drop on them.  That seemed pretty scary to me – him more then them.  I mean, there was a whole bunch of those guys, and he just killed them all like that!  I don’t ever want to make him mad at me!

I gave him a jewel, and took one myself, and we smashed them.  But all that happened is that we turned around like by magic, but still in that room.  I guess the jewels just sent people back to that room, and we had no way back to everyone else.

That was pretty upsetting.  I mean, here I was, Gods knows where, all alone with Mr B.  And he said there was someone up the stairs with a great big gun, and that was the only way out.   I didn’t know what to do.

But after a moment, Dusty and Mr Dutch and Doc and the oracle-girl and the Creep appeared.  They had broken other jewels to get here.  Which was good – I was missing Dusty, and I felt a lot better with her around.  But we still had no idea where we were, and no way to get back.

That was really bad, because all our stuff was back on the other side.  My extra clothes, and my project, and even Bob, my horse.  He wasn’t much of a horse, but I liked him – he was the first horse I ever owned myself.  I bought him with my caravan-guard bounty.  Thankfully, Dusty had remembered to bring me Mr Bubbles – I don’t know what I would have done without Mr Bubbles.  I can never sleep without him.

We got up those stairs – it turned out there wasn’t nobody waiting for us after all.  We got out of the place, which was some sort of big empty warehouse or something.  And we went out in the streets.

It was the biggest city I had ever seen!  There was hundreds of people, all dressed up real fancy, and all walking quickly from place to place looking real busy.  I just stared and stared, but Mr Dutch and Mr Blalock figured that we could find a local temple to drop off the oracle girl.

We found a temple, and we’re there now.  Dusty and Mr Dutch and Mr B are all in talking with the priest now.  I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think I’ll go out and get a rabbit to sacrifice, just in case.

PS: The Creep followed me when I got the bunny.  I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but I’m certainly not going to talk to him.  (That’s funny – I can’t talk to anybody except Dusty!  But I’m not even going to listen to the Creep!)

Dear Diary,

There’s this guy who’s traveling with us named Deaf Joe.  And it turns out that he’s a real creep.

Dusty told me that she was talking with DJ and asked him if he wanted to play some poker.  He said that he had heard of a game called strip poker, and he reckoned that he’d like to play some of that with her.  And then he said that he heard that sometimes twins liked to do some funny stuff with guys, and he seemed to want to do some of that too, with both of us.

What a creepy thing to say!  That’s too bad, ‘cause he seemed kind of quiet and not too scary, cause he’s another kid and all.  But I guess mama was right – you just can’t trust boys, they only have one thing on their mind.  And Deaf Joe is just a creep, plain and simple, and I’m going to do my best to keep away from him.

PS. Yes, I know.  I shouldn’t always believe all that I hear, especially if Dusty’s the one who’s saying it.  But she seemed real upset about DJ, and like she wanted to warn me and all.  So I don’t think she’s lying this time.  (And I did notice him giving me some funny looks sometimes, like he was trying to imagine what I’d look like after I had lost a couple of hands of that strip poker game he was talking about.  That made me feel all slimy – I think I’m going to stay away from him even if I shouldn’t always trust Dusty and all.)

Dear Diary,
Things is getting really weird now.  We got back out of the back beyond to the fringe, but we saw that the town was covered with Inquisitors.  I sure don’t want to mess with them!  They were looking for the girl we had with (who turns out to be an oracle or something.  Anyway, she can see what’s gonna happen and all.)  I was glad of that, because I was worried they was after Dusty.  But I guess that no one knows yet what she can do, so she’s still okay.  I won’t say more – I promised her I wouldn’t tell nobody about that anyway.

We decided we wasn’t going to let the Inkies get the Oracle-girl.  So this priestess that we rescued said that if we could get the Oracle girl to this temple somewhere, they’d take her in and keep her safe.  Not only that, but they’d give us a reward.  We decided we’d work our way through the wilds to get her there.  It’s going to be tricky keeping her from the Inkies, but I guess we’ll manage.

Meanwhile, I guess I’m not a caravan guard any more.  At least, nobody is paying me.  I gotta think of some way to get some money to send to Mama – maybe when we get our reward, I’ll be able to send some of it to mama.

Dear Diary,

There hasn’t been much time to write lately.  But a lot has happened.  We followed the guys who stole the slaves to a small village out beyond the fringe.  We had to attack the town.  Mr Blalock is just as scary in a fight as he says – he ends up killing everyone in sight.  But I held my own too, and so did Dusty.  Neither of us were hurt, thank the Gods, but even if we were, it turns out that Doc, one of the other guards, has some magical way of healing.  I saw him cast one of his healing spells on Mr Dutch, and the wounds just spit out the bullets and healed up on their own.  They didn’t even leave a scar!

Anyway, we followed the other people, who had taken the slaves into a cave.  They was having a ritual of some sort, and trying to call up some sort of evil spirit.  We managed to kill them all and take this girl-slave who they was trying to sacrifice, but they had killed this boy first.  And I guess that was enough, because when we got out of the cave, we heard a rumbling from behind us.  I went back in to see what was up, and it seemed like there was something big and evil in there.  I skedaddled pretty quickly, but it got a smell of me somehow.  It wanted more killing, and it seemed to want virgins, so it liked the smell of me.  (I didn’t know virgins had a special smell.  There must be something in what guys do that makes a girl smell, at least if you’re an evil spirit.)

But we ran away as quick as we could, leaving behind some horses for the spirit to eat if it managed to get out of the cave.  We hoped that would slow it down some and let us get away.  I don’t know if it worked, because we got out of there quick.  But no evil spirits attacked us later, so I guess it must of.

Dear Diary,

Last night we were attacked by strange men from out beyond the fringe.  We fought them off, but they got away with a bunch of our slaves.  We’re going to go after them – I’ve never been off in the real wild before.

In the fight, I shot someone.  I don’t think I killed him, but I’m still not sure what I think about that. I’m going to have to sacrifice for that, the next time I’m near a temple.