Heart of Dorkness

Terror Thirty-Two - Butterbutt

“This is it,” I say as I walk up to the edge of the tar pit.

The pit isn’t all that big, not like the huge ones back home where no one’s ever tried to reduce their size. This one’s maybe a pace across at the widest, and it’s shaped like a rough-edged teardrop.

The black ooze shifts slowly, like a slow-motion video of the surface of boiling water. There’s motion, but a lot of it’s hard to spot, especially since there’s a layer of fallen leaves and branches over the top of the pit.

If someone were to dig a tunnel under the hole, they’d likely find that it’s only a few centimetres deep. But if they were to stick a pole into the pit, it’d go far deeper than that. There’s a strange quality to these things. They’re both there and not.

“It just looks like the ground to me,” Felix says.

I pout. “Well, I guess. But trust me, there’s a tar pit there.”

My friend shrugs, obviously not impressed by the tar pit. I guess that’s fair. I kneel down next to the black ooze, then realize that kneeling hurts, so I spin around so that I’m sitting on my butt next to it.

“What are we doing now?” Felix asks.

“I’m going to make some friends. The problem is I’m not entirely sure what sort of friend we’ll need. I have a skill—well, it’s my only skill, really—that lets me make monsters as long as there are souls in the pit I’m using.”

“Like, people souls?”

“Animals too, and I guess insects and other living things. Usually you need a proportional soul though.”

“What’s that mean?” Felix asks.

“It means the soul of a person can make a bigger monster than, say, the soul of a bug. Unless it’s a really big and powerful bug, I guess. It’s not an exact science. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. Soul stuff is mostly the domain of the gods, and Mom said that if I touched her books on the subject, she’d spank me... again.”

“She spanked you?”

“Anyway,” I say, my face absolutely not flaming. “I know we’ll need some combat friends, at least one that can break locks, and... uh, well, some communication friends wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Can you make just anything?” Felix asks.

I nod. “Yup, but it’s probably better not to experiment too much. Most of the time my experiments don’t work at all. It can take days to figure out one new type of friend, and weeks to perfect the design. Most of those I use a lot of aren’t even as good as I wish they were.”

“Is it like that for every monster?”

“No no, most monsters are just... born. They’re not in the most effective form they could be, not unless they’re lucky or something. I think they’re generally shaped like monsters that have come before, though there’s definitely some sort of... pattern going on. I never really spent that much time thinking about it, actually.”

“Alright,” Felix agrees. I think she agrees to anything I say when she doesn’t really get it. When she gets some eyes, one of the first things I’m going to do is teach her how to read.

I shuck off my cloak, then roll up my sleeves until they’re bunched up near my shoulder. Then, finally, I dip my hand into the goop, the black tar moulding around my fingers and wrist and tugging at me. I feel it shift, grasping and sucking. It’s a bit like sticking my hand in a dog’s mouth—if dogs had more tongues.

“We’ll start with stealthy fighters,” I say, my voice sounding like a distant mumble. There’s something about the black tar that makes it feel as if everything is becoming muted and distant. It takes a little while for me to get used to it and for me to clear my head enough to focus.

I can imagine someone inexperienced just... falling in, the tar clawing into their mouth and up their nose, thick and viscous and impossible to breath through.

It’s not hard for me to reach into my core and capture some disgust. Then I send that magic crawling down my arm and into the tar.

There’s a reaction, a gurgle in the surface of the pool.

Then the first of my new friends claws its way to the surface. It’s the size of my closed fist, with delicate, dragonfly-like wings and a fat little body that has four long, sharp limbs beneath it. Its rear ends in something like a scorpion’s stinger, though it’s pointed in the opposite direction. The creature is hard to see against the black tar, being so dark it looks like nothing so much as a moving shadow.

“Come on, little guy,” I say as I move my arm closer.

It grabs onto my arm with its wee little claws and uses it as a ramp, only stopping when it’s near my elbow. Its little wings beat hard, flicking off the rest of the goop.

Splitting my attention a little, I tell it not to eat Felix, then watch as the little bug flies up and away. I lose sight of it almost right away.

“What’s that one?” Felix asks.

“I call them butterbutts.”

“... Why?”

“Oh, because when I went to show Mom what I made, it flew crooked and it landed butt-first in the butter Mom was using. I didn’t know how to make wings right back then, so they used to be real clumsy.”

Felix tilts her head to the side. “I guess that makes sense?”

“Mom doesn’t like my names either,” I say. “Anyway, butterbutts are great. See, their skin is covered in these small rods that are wrapped in ridges. They’re actually really shiny up close, but the way they're positioned makes them hard to see. It’s based on light diffraction which—you know how light works? Physically, I mean?”

“I’m blind.”

“Right... well, uh... basically, they’re hard to see?”

“Okay,” Felix agrees.

I roll my eyes--which she can’t see, fortunately--and wiggle my hand in the muck again. I focus more on my disgust and the way it roils around in my core. It’s not easy, but it’s manageable. A second, third, and fourth butterbutt come out of the black tar. I squeeze my eyes shut and push, creating more and more of them until I have a full dozen.

I yank my hand back and pant for a bit. “Whoa,” I say.

“What happened?” Felix asks. She’s close, squatting next to me with a hand on my back. I didn’t even notice her coming closer.

“Just... it’s a lot of focus and a lot of magic.”

She starts rubbing circles over my back. “Can I do anything?”

“No, no, but... thanks, that feels good.”

She chuckles. “No problem. Do you have enough?”

“Monsters? Not even a third of the amount I want or need,” I admit. This is going to take a bit more effort.

“Are you sure you can do it?”

I nod. “I’ll be fine,” I say. I’ve summoned more monsters before, and while it tuckered me out, I’m a bigger, stronger girl now. I can do it.

Still, maybe a teeny tiny break wouldn’t hurt. I lean back into Felix’s rubs and close my eyes, letting myself enjoy them and the peaceful quiet of the forest.

“Alright,” I say a few minutes later. It was enough of a break that I’m feeling better. “We need a friend that can pick locks. Then the communication friends.”

I plunge my hand back into the muck and focus once more. It’s easier this time.

“This one is called a squirter,” I say as a new friend wiggles its way out of the muck. It’s a spider-looking friend, with ten legs that each end in differently shaped spikes. It has a proboscis, like a mosquito, and one of its abdominal sections is basically a small sac filled with black goop.

“Weird looking,” Felix says.

“Squirters are designed to pick locks, and they can squirt acid. It’s not super strong acid, but it works really well on metals.”

“Why do you know how to make those? Don’t they take a while to figure out?”

“Because Mom can be real mean sometimes, and she started hiding some books away in these rooms with locks on them.”

“Forbidden books?”

“I guess? Mostly they’re just yucky romance books about guys with big muscles and princess-y girls who are useless. I never get far in them. There’s nothing forbidden there, just a lot of boring romance stuff.”

“Why would she lock that away?” Felix asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m hardly going to ask her.” I set my squirter next to me, then wiggle my shoulder blades. “Okay, next!”

***