Festival Day 2: Fire Hazard Soulmates

…

Link and Line were the only crewmembers capable of returning to the Grand Sails the previous night. They met Captain Alfonzo and Lieutenant Luke on the deck the next morning. Which turned out to have been a mistake, because Captain Alfonzo asked them to take an hour to check the ship for anyone else that might have decided to spend the night on the ship. It struck the boys as strange because it was the first time they had heard Captain Alfonzo use the word "please" without cursing. The only person they found was Gilbert, the ship's surgeon, passed out in the galley. They woke him, and he explained that he had been suffering from insomnia lately and had taken a tranquilizer to help him with it. Sometime after taking the tranquilizer and downing a small ration of grog, he had become hungry. He had stepped into the galley looking for something to snack on and, having forgotten about the tranquilizer, had passed out on the ration packs stashed in the back of the room. He thanked the boys for waking him and decided to return to the sickbay to make sure his stores were still secure.

They finished their search around noon and ventured out into the town again. Link was weary of what he was eating this time, and Line was equally as sensible, although that was mostly because he did not have as much money. They made a small lunch out of some of the food they found as they were stepping onto the main street. The crowd was just as jaunty and excited as last night. The only signs of the excitement last night were the drunks and airmen (also just as likely to be drunks) passed out in some of the alleys and side streets.

"Hey, Link," Line said after spotting his fourth Zephyr Sails airman in a row, winning the impromptu game they had started. "You know those musicians we brought here?"

"Yeah?"

"Where'd they go? We haven't seen them at all since the captain decided to let us hang around."

Link shrugged. "Maybe they're not playing right now."

"Yeah, but you can't tell me all anyone ever does at one of these things is pig out. I can only eat so much."

"Really? That's not what your stomach said last night."

"Last night, I puked only because that idiot bartender put grog in my drink."

"Whiskey."

"Whatever, it still made me gag."

Link jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "There were game booths back there."

"Games are for kids. We're airmen."

Link pointed out a booth, his arm crossing Line's vision. "There's an airman over there playing a game now."

Line shoved Link's arm out of the way and watched for a moment. "Big deal; the guy's trying to win a wooden pony for his little girl," he told Link, thrusting out an arm to indicate his counterpoint.

"What is wrong with you?"

"There's nothing to do!" Line said at the same time as Link. Then he continued, "There's nothing to do. No one ever thinks about us airmen!"

"Line, we've only seen the main street. There's probably more down one of these side roads."

"Hey, boys," a man's voice spoke up. Both of them immediately froze when a hand clamped to either of their shoulders. "I gotta been callin' for ya both."

They turned their heads to look at the strange man addressing them. A white dress suit over a pink shirt, a straw boater hat with a square piece clipped out of the brim, sunken features on a pale face decorated with scraggly, blond hair and stubble… The boys almost did not recognize one of the musicians that they had brought to Castle Island.

"Uh…" Link droned, realizing that he had not heard any of their names.

"Lukka," the man replied. "Remember? You boys dropped us off."

"Yeah, we remember you," Line said. "We just… we never heard any of your names."

"You didn't?" Lukka looked up at the brim of his hat with bloodshot brown eyes. He chuckled. "Oh, yeah. Forgodda tell peoples."

"Did you need something?" Link asked.

"Yeah, I saw ya boys walkin' alon', so I felt I'd invite ya boyzza han'."

"'Hang'?" Link asked.

"Yeeeeah," Lukka said with a nodding motion. "You guys bought us a good laugh; we told the whole gang about ya two."

"Wait, wait a minute," Line said. "You're inviting us to spend time with you… because I set myself on fire?"

"It sounded more interesting before you said that," Link told him.

"No, no, no, little dudes," Lukka chuckled. "Trikky, she sang her strings, Spakky gave us a beat, and before you know it, we scribbled a smooth note! You two… you two bought us some inspiration! We want ya botha come buy us some more!"

"We're broke," Line told him.

"Huh?" Lukka gave him a comical look of confusion, eyes wide and lower lip crooked to one side. Then he chuckled again. "No, not like that. You two come alon', spill us a story, and we scribble out a few more notes. Nothin' bonkers." Link and Line looked at each other. "Oh, c'mon, boys. You guys ain't doin' anythin' else, right?"

Link's expression was troubled, mostly because half of what Lukka had said did not make sense to him. He exchanged another look with Line, signaling that it was his call. It was probably not a good idea due to Line's impulsiveness.

"Sure," Line told him.

Lukka nodded his approval. "Smooth, little dude."

They followed Lukka down one of the side roads heading toward the east side of the island. After an hour, they came across a housing district. People here used their yards to host other families and even a few games, signs for which appeared on their fences as invitations to outdoor cooking. Entertainers wandered the streets, some of them lone musicians looking for a bit of kindness or weirdoes using their talents just to show off. At one point, Link and Line were amazed by a man walking on a pair of stilts in a manner which made it look like they were his real legs; they only discovered they were stilts when Line spotted a hole in the leg of the trousers exposing a skinny, wooden form.

Lukka brought them to an amphitheatre built into the ground. The seats formed a half-circle of stairs down until ending in a flat area, which was currently inhabited by children bouncing balls against the seats. The far side was a large, shell-like structure built over a wide stage. Two other buildings framed the stage on either side.

And smoke was spewing through the windows of one of them.

"What's that?" Link asked.

"Whuh-oh," Lukka uttered before he and the boys started jogging in that direction. He led them to a door on the outside of the closer building, which he wrenched aside. "Kookka!" He coughed and started waving away the thinning wisps of smoke. "Kookka! You doin' the rocks again!? You smokin' again!"

"Yeah, dude, I'm smokin' again!" a male's voice, lower compared to Lukka's, called up.

"Rocks?" Link asked Line. Line responded with a shrug.

"Kill the rocks!" Lukka shouted. "We gotta company!"

"I'm tryin'!" the other man, Kookka, called back. "It's in my pipe, man; I don't know how it got out!"

"I told ya you did too much," another man's voice called out.

"Stop barkin' and find me a bucket!" Kookka shouted. A round of drums beat through the smoke for a moment. "I don't gotta buy that tone from you!"

"Here, Kookka!" a woman's voice called out.

Rattling sounded for a moment, and then a loud, angry hiss filled the air. Thicker smoke billowed upward for a moment, and then the room cleared enough to see. The door opened to stairs leading down into a pit-like area. Link and Line saw an assortment of instruments arranged around a smoking pile of black in the center. Most of the room's occupants were scrambling about; the only one not moving sat at a full set of drums, sticks in hand as if to start playing at any moment.

As Link and Line descended behind Lukka, a door from the stage burst open. "What the hell's goin' on in here!?" a man shouted.

"Sorry, Boss!" Kookka called, splashing water on the pile in the middle of the room.

"We were just cookin' some grub," a portly woman under the stairs explained.

"Kookka just cooked it goodbye," the second man's voice, coming from the tall, lanky man now sitting near the drummer, joked. The drummer, with a grin on his face, played a sting, ba bum, tshhh.

"Is it out?" the "Boss" asked.

Kookka, waving a small stack of papers so that the smoke would rise, told him, "Just about. Little more fannin'." Ba bum, tshhh.

"Well, stop clownin' around," their boss told them. "You note-heads gotta six hourzza work out a playlist. Hurry up!"

"Boss, Boss!" Lukka called out, taking the last few steps faster. "Any jazz about our duds?"

The boss, which Link and Line could now see was a large, round man wearing a black suit similar to Lukka (down to a pink shirt underneath), held up his pointer and pinky fingers. "Two hours, and they'll be delivered."

"Who's tippin' the delivery boy?" the portly woman asked. Ba bum, tshhh.

The drummer started a roll as the boss told her, "You guys gotta get your heads together." He was about to close the door. Then he looked over at the drummer, who was still doing the roll. "Shut up, Spakky; no one asked your opinion." The boss then slammed the door, although its sound may have been emphasized by the drummer, Spakky, striking the bass drum and two of his cymbals at the same time.

Lukka, standing next to Spakky's friend, crossed his arms and asked, "What's his trip, dude?"

"Same as always," the man next to Spakky answered with a shrug. Spakky responded with a bum bum on his bass drum, which caused Link and Line to jump in surprise at the loud sound. The man then leaned back to get a look at Link and Line standing behind Lukka. "Who'd you bring?" Before Lukka could answer, Spakky suddenly created a whirl of sound with his drums. It was a fast beat which reminded Link of the sound of running boots made on a ship's deck. He finished it by striking the bass drum and one cymbal in unison, two slow strikes followed by three faster ones which he ended with the addition of a second cymbal.

"That's them, all right." The voice was the first woman's voice they had heard before the smoke cleared. Link and Line located the woman as she sat up from a cot on the far side of the room from them. She had a slender frame, over which she had draped a stretch of cloth like a robe from one shoulder, across her chest, and covering her until her knees. Her skin looked deathly pale in the brightening light as the smoke finally cleared. Her smile looked weak, and she stood up carefully. "It's lovely to see you boys again."

Link thought he could hear his heart beating in his chest as he stared. Then both he and Line glared at Spakky, who gave them a grin before he stopped tapping on the bass drum. "Yeah," Link said as he recognized the harp player that had taken the Grand Sails. "We were a little surprised."

"Trikky, honey, you can't be movin' around like that," Kookka told her, rushing to her side to take her hand.

"I'm fine, Kookka," she replied.

Link saw Spakky raise one of his drumsticks only for it to be intercepted by the man sitting next to him. "Don't," the man told Spakky. Spakky shrugged, and the man released his drumstick. So Spakky rapped on a cymbal a couple of times, then smacked his drumsticks together and pointed at the boys, who looked at each other in confusion. The man sitting next to Spakky turned and said, "Spakky wants to know your guys's names."

"I'm Line," Line told them. He gave Link a side-nod. "He's Link."

The man looked back at Spakky, who opened his mouth and nodded his understanding. Then he played a quick round of drums. The man next to him said, "Spakky welcomes ya boys. I do, too." He held out a hand to Link. "Name's Pokka." Link, and then Line, shook hands with him.

Lukka strode over to the black pile in the middle of the floor, looking down at it. "What'd you do, man?" he asked Kookka.

Ta-tam tam tshhh, Spakky played. Pokka held up his hands in surrender. "I told him the same thing," Pokka said.

"Kookka, dude…" Lukka said.

Kookka, after helping Trikky sit back in her cot, held his hands up. "That's how I always cook things! I don't know what happened!"

"Why not just get some food from the festival?" Link asked.

"Oh, we will," Pokka told him. "We gotta now; we're out of good rocks."

"Rocks," Line repeated. "Like coal?"

Pokka nodded. "Rocks."

"Let me tell ya boys about the band," Lukka said. "Don't know if you gotta heard about us. We're the Sokkarokka Band." He indicated the two closest members. "You gotta already met the brothers, Spakky and Pokka. They gotta been with the band the longest."

"Not the oldest members, though," Pokka said, receiving an agreeing nod from Spakky.

"That's Kanowanotakka," Lukka said, pointing to a cot under the stairs next to them.

"Someone say my name?" asked the lump under a thick, wool blanket in the voice of an old man.

"Intros, dude," Pokka told him.

"Not in my drink, please," the lump, Kanowanotakka, said.

This prompted confused looks from Link and Line, to which Lukka replied, "He's a little spacey, but he's got a steady beat." He indicated the portly woman wearing a dress made of blue feathers and thick, white silk further along the wall. "That's Talukka."

"Pleasure," Talukka said with a smile and a bow.

Lukka next point to a pair of men sitting against the far wall, cleaning out trumpets. The one on the left was taller, a little portly, and sturdy-looking, making Link think he had been an airman at some point in his life. The man on the right was shorter, just a little taller than either boy, with a bald head. "The left one's Pea, the right one's Gorkka," Lukka told them.

"Yo," Pea greeted in an amazingly deep voice.

"Cool seein' ya two again," Gorkka said.

Lukka held out a hand to the sickly-looking woman in the corner. "You gotta met Trikky."

Line nodded. "Yeah, the harp player, right?"

Trikky smiled at him. "Yes, thank you."

"Kookka's our cook," Lukka said. Then he glanced down at the black pile in the middle of the floor again. "And our occasional arsonist." Ba bum, tshhh. Lukka waved them over with a hand. "C'mon, guys, pull up a slab. We wanna hear your songs."