Sixteen Tons

“What’s got you in such a sour mood, Brandon? It’s payday!” my veteran colleague Vinson asked as the rusty freight elevator noisily rattled its way up towards the penthouse suite.

For the past year or two – I’m honestly not sure how long it’s been, actually – I’ve been under contract for an otherworldly masked Lord who calls himself Ignazio di Incognauta. He’s not a demon, exactly. He’s closer to Fae, I think, but I don’t fully understand what he is. I never sought him out. He came to me. I asked him how he even knew who I was, and he slapped me across the face for my insolence.

I still signed up though. That’s how desperate I was. He doesn’t waste his time offering deals to people who can say no.

He sends me and the rest of my crew out on what I can best describe as odd jobs. Half the time – hell, most of the time – I’m not even sure exactly what it is we’re doing. Most of the crew have been around longer than I have, and some of them aren’t human, but they all seem to have a better idea of what’s going on than me.

Our foreman Vothstag is technically the one in charge, but he’s not all there in the head; the top of his cranium’s been removed and a good chunk of his brain’s been scooped out. He mostly just barks guttural nonsense that none of us really understand, but somehow compels us to do what we’re supposed to, even when we don’t know what that is. He’s a hulking hunchback with an overgrown beard who usually wears an elk skull to cover up the hole in his head. If he was ever human, I don’t think he is now.

Vinson is our de facto leader, however, since he’s more or less a normal guy that we can relate to. Aside from Vothstag, he’s been working for Ignazio the longest. I won’t bother describing what he looks like, since the rest of us wear gas masks on duty. They’re partially to protect us from environmental and workplace hazards, partially to conceal our identities, but mainly to bring us more easily under Ignazio’s control.

That was why were all wearing our masks on the elevator, incidentally. We were on our way to see the big boss, and our contracts made it very clear we were never to remove our masks in his presence.

“Come on, Vinson. You know meetings with Iggy never go well,” I replied bluntly.

“Oh, it’s just bluster. You know that. He’s got to put the fear of God into us,” Vinson claimed. “If he wasn’t actually satisfied with our performance, we wouldn’t still be here.”

“No, Brandon’s right. Iggy wouldn’t have called all ten of us in just to hand us our scrip and call us lazy arses,” Loewald chimed in.

“There’s nine of us, now,” Klaus reminded him grimly.

“Right, sorry. Hard to keep track some days,” Loewald admitted. “Regardless; something’s up, and the odds are pretty slim it will be something we like.”

I cringed as Vothstag shouted some of his garbled nonsense back towards Loewald.

“Yes, I know we’re not being paid to have fun, but –”

“We’re not being paid at all!” Klaus interrupted. “None of us are getting any real money until our contracts are up, and have any of you actually known anyone who made it to the end of their contract?”

He recoiled as Vothstag spun around and began roaring at him, hot spittle flying out from beneath his mask of carved bone as he furiously waved his fist in his face.

“He’s right, Klaus. You’re being paranoid,” Vinson said in an eerily calm tone. “I’ve served out multiple contracts, and I’ve got the silver to prove it.”

He confidently reached into his pocket and held a troy-ounce coin of Seelie Silver between his fingers. Fish and Chips, the pair of three-foot-tall… somethings that work for us immediately crowded around him and began eyeing it greedily.

“That’s right boys, take a gander. That’s powerful magic right there, and you’ll get one of these for every moon you’ve worked at the end of your contracts,” he reminded us before quickly pocketing the coin away again. “Unless, of course, you do something to get your contract prematurely terminated; then you’ll have nothing to show for it but a fistful of expired scrip! So keep your heads down, mouths shut, and your eyes on the prize. You’ll have pockets jangling full of coins soon enough.”

As discreetly as I could, I slipped my hands into my pockets and rubbed my one Seelie coin for good luck. None of them knew I had it, because I didn’t want to explain how I got it, but that little bit of fortune it brought me had almost been enough to let me escape once.

If I could just muster up the skill to make the best use of my luck, it would be enough to get me out for good one day.

The freight elevator finally came to a stop, and the doors creaked open to reveal the spacious and sumptuous penthouse of our employer. Portraits, animal heads, shields, weapons, and most of all masquerade masks covered nearly every square inch of the walls. Amidst the suits of armour and porcelain vases, there were dozens of priceless ornaments strewn throughout the room. They were incredibly tempting to steal, which was their whole point. Stealing from the boss was a violation of your contract, and you did not want to break your contract.

The wide windows on the far wall offered a panoramic view of our decaying company town, nestled in a valley between sharp crimson mountains beneath a xanthous sky twinkling with a thousand black stars. You may have heard of such a place before, it has many names, but I will speak none of them here.

Ignazio was sitting on a reclining couch in front of the fireplace, some paperwork left out on the coffee table and a featureless mask like a silver spiderweb clutched in his hand. Ignazio himself always wore the top half of a golden Oni mask, which in and of itself wasn’t unusual for our company, but the odd thing was that several portraits in the penthouse showed that it had once been a full mask.

I’ve always wondered what happened to the bottom half.

Aside from that, Ignazio wasn’t too unusual looking. He was tall, skinny, and swarthy with a pronounced chin, tousled dark brown hair and always dressed in doublets of silk and velvet like he was performing Shakespeare or something.

Vothstag went into the room first, with Vinson almost, but not quite, at his side. Fish and Chips scamped after them, followed by Loewald, Klaus, and myself.

The last two members of our crew are called Hamm and Gristle, and they’re the two I know the least about. They keep to themselves, and I don’t think I’ve ever even seen them with their masks off. I have seen them without gloves on though, and both of their hands are white with pink-tinged fingers. I have no idea what that means, but for some reason, I always found it oddly unsettling.

The only thing I know for sure about them is that they’re the only survivors of another crew that tried to run out on their contract, and I know better than to ask for details about that.

“Gentlemen, Gentlemen, right on time,” Ignazio greeted us as he waved us over. He positioned himself on his couch to make it impossible for any of us to sit beside him, and none of us dared to take a seat at any of the clawfooted armchairs that were meant for guests with much higher stations in life. “I’ve got this moon’s scrip books all stamped and approved. You’ll notice they’re a bit light, seeing as how you were slightly behind quota on this assignment.”

None of us objected, and none of us were particularly surprised. I was grateful that the mask hid my expression, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. I still had to make an effort to mind my body language though. Being so accustomed to his employees and compatriots wearing masks, Ignazio was quite astute to body language.

Vinson accepted the stack of nine booklets and nodded gratefully.

“We appreciate your leniency, my lord, and look forward to earning back our privileges on our next assignment,” he said.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Ignazio grinned as he took a sip from his crystal chalice. He set it down on the coffee table and picked up a dossier. “Halloween is fast approaching, and that means we need costumes and candy. Costumes we have in abundance, obviously, but candy’s one vice I don’t usually keep well stocked.”

“So we’re actually stealing candy from babies on our next job?” Klaus asked.

“Nothing so quotidian,” Ignazio sneered. “Remind me; have any of you met Icky before?”

The name meant nothing to me, but I glanced from side to side to see if anyone else reacted to it. I could have sworn I saw Hamm and Gristle perk their heads up slightly.

“She’s that Clown woman, right? The one in charge of that god-awful circus?” Vinson asked.

“I beg your pardon? It’s an enchanted Circus that travels the worlds and offers sanctuary to paranormal vagabonds in need,” Ignazio claimed half-heartedly. “And I might be able to pawn a few of you off on them if it comes to that, so be careful you don’t fall any further behind on your quotas. But you’re right; she is a Clown, with a capital C, and Clowns love candy. She’ll be attending my All Hallows’ Ball this year, and I don’t want her to feel excluded, so we’ll need some real top-shelf candy on offer.”

“Ah… we’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop here, boss,” Vinson confessed as most of us shared nervous glances with one another. “You want us to get candy? Fancy candy? I… I don’t get it. What’s the catch?”

“Oh god, we’re not taking it from babies: we’re serving the babies with it!” Loewald balked in horror.

“No, but thank you for that highball to make the actual assignment seem more reasonable,” Ignazio said. “No, I’m sending you all down to the Taproots of the World Tree to collect some of the crystalized sap there.”

“The… The Taproots of the World Tree?” Vinson repeated softly. “The physical manifestation of the metaphysical network that binds all the worlds and planes of Creation, gnawed at by the Naught Things trying to break their way into reality? You’re sending us down there… for sweets?”

“Icky swears that Yggdrasil syrup pairs beautifully with French Toast,” he replied blithely. “This is an especially dangerous assignment, so I want you all to read that dossier in full. Emrys has been charting and forging new pathways through the planes from his spire in Adderwood, so thanks to him your trip down at least will be relatively easy.”

“Just… just there and back, right?” Vinson asked desperately, his voice wavering. “Just a handful of the stuff to wow Icky, and we’re done, right?”

A sadistic smirk slowly spread across Ignazio’s face before he told us how much crystalized sap we would need to retrieve.

***

“You mine sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older, and deeper in debt,” Loebald sang as he chipped away at the pulsing amber crystal emerging from the leviathan root.

The World Tree was cosmically colossal, though it’s meaningless to describe its size since I can only describe the parts of it that exist in three dimensions. The twin trunks of the tree snaked around each other like a double helix, each alight with an ever-shifting astral aura that perpetually waxed and waned in synchronicity with its twin. From its crown sprung a seemingly infinite mass of fractally dividing branches, shimmering with countless spherical ‘leaves’ which I knew to be individual universes. The base of the tree spawned an equally infinite mass of sprawling taproots, anchoring it in place and drawing precious sustenance from the edges of reality.

As dangerous as it was to be there, it was nonetheless a sublime experience. You think that looking upon all of existence like that would fill you with Lovecraftian madness at your own insignificance, but it was far more transcendental than that. On some fundamental level, I recognized that tree. It was Yggdrasil. It was the Biblical tree of Good and Evil. It was the Two Trees of Valinor. That tree was meant to be there, and so was everything inside of it. Sure, it was functionally infinite and everything in it was finite, but the tree wasn’t merely massive; it was intricate. In the grand scheme of things, nothing inside of it was superfluous. Everything, no matter its scale, was part of the ultimate design of the tree. You and I may not be any more important than anyone or anything else, but if we weren’t important, we wouldn’t be here.

I’m not entirely sure if any of my coworkers felt the same way though.

“Saint Peter don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go,” Loebald continued to sing, only to be interrupted by Vothstag’s irate howling, his eyes burning like coals as he dared him to finish the chorus.

Loebald bowed his head contritely as he awkwardly cleared his throat. When Vothstag was satisfied he had been cowed into silence, he turned around to resume his work.

“’Cause I owe my soul to the company store,” I finished for him, not too loudly, but loud enough that everyone heard me.

Vothstag immediately came charging at me, roaring in fury, but I didn’t flinch. I just let him chew me out for about a minute until I heard something that I was pretty sure was a question.

“That’s ridiculous. You’re making more noise than either of us,” I countered. “And wasting more time. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.”

Vothstag sneered at me, but since I had resumed my task, his job as taskmaster was complete, and he left to attend to other matters.

“What the hell are you doing, pushing your luck like that, Brandon?” Vinson whispered.

“He was out of line. Even chain gangs are allowed to sing,” I explained. “Besides, I’m right, aren’t I? If we attract any unwanted attention, it will be because of him.”

“This isn’t the place to cause trouble!” he hissed. “Fill the carts as fast as you can so we can get out of here!”

When we arrived at the Taproots, we saw that we weren’t the first beings to try to mine this deposit of sap. Someone, likely some clan of Unseelie Fae, had established a fairly complex operation with rails and hand carts. As convenient as this was for us, it did of course pose the uncomfortable question of why the site had been completely abandoned when it was obviously far from depleted.

Me, Vinson, Loebald, and Klaus were chipping away at the crystal sap, tossing what we could into a nearby trolley cart. When it was full, Hamm and Gristle would haul it off so that Fish and Chips could scoop it into twenty-kilogram bags, which Hamm and Gristle would then stack and secure onto skids.

And as always, Vothstag supervised.

“Sixteen bleedin’ tons of this bilge,” Vinson muttered as he took a swing at it with his pickaxe. “And he’s got the nerve to tell us it’s just an appetizer for a party guest. What do you suppose they’re going to do with it all.”

“Refine it into proper syrup, I imagine,” Loewald replied. “Make it into sweets and sodas, or just drizzle some of it straight onto flapjacks. Either way, they’ll make a killing. Sixteen tons will probably sell for millions.”

“Why though? Is it just exotic sugar?” I asked.

“What do you think?” Loewald asked rhetorically, gesturing at the source. “For reality benders, anything from the edges of reality is potent stuff. They put a lump of this in their morning coffee, and the Veil will seem as weak to them as it is here. There’s no telling what havoc they’ll get up to, so you better hope we’re not around to see.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous. Clowns don’t drink coffee,” Vinson joked.

I was about to ask him how he would know, when Vothstag put his hand on my shoulder and spun me around. Hamm and Gristle had returned with the empty cart, but only Gristle was getting ready to pull the full one. Vothstag spewed some of his usual gibberish, gesturing at me and then towards Hamm’s empty space at the cart.

“Because I sang one line? Seriously?” I asked. I was about to throw Loewald under the bus for singing in the first place, but Vothstag was already roaring incomprehensibly. “Alright, alright. I’ll pull the damn cart.”

I handed my pickaxe over to Hamm, who instantly began swinging at the sap with manic enthusiasm. Gristle gave me a slight nod of condolence before Vothstag yoked me up to the cart like an ox and then sent us on our way with an angry shout.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how come Hamm deserves a break and you don’t?” I asked Gristle as we made our way down the track, the dinging of our colleague’s pickaxes slowly fading into the background.

Gristle looked over his shoulder to confirm the Vothstag was well out of earshot, and then turned his head towards mine.

“Vinson’s wrong, you know,” he said in a soft, conspiratorial whisper.

“Ah… I’m sorry?” I asked.

“About Clowns and coffee,” he clarified. “Icky drinks coffee. I’ve seen her do it. She takes it with double cream and sugar to keep it Clown Kosher, of course. She’s a little too classy to indulge in stereotypical candy binges, but she’s still got a sweet tooth like the rest of us.”

“…Us?” I asked uneasily.

Gristle nodded, lifting up his gas mask by the filter and revealing his face to me for the first time. His poreless skin was a lustrous white, but his lips, nose, and the space around his eyes were all pitch black, and the eyes themselves sparkled with the light of a thousand dying stars. His mouth was spread into an unnaturally wide smile, revealing that his teeth were not only perfect but shiny to the point that I could see myself in them.

And I looked terrified.

“Loewald was right though, about what this stuff will do to us,” he went on. “Once everything’s fully loaded, Hamm and I are going to take a mouthful each and then take the whole haul for ourselves. We’ll stash some of it away somewhere safe, then use the rest to buy our way back into the Circus. The only problem is getting there. That’s where you come in.”

“What are you on about? How can I possibly help you get back to your Circus?” I asked.

“With that Seelie coin you got in your pocket,” he said, lowering his voice so that I only barely heard him. “These carts weren’t meant to be powered manually, you know. They run on Faerie magic, and that coin’s got enough that we can drive all sixteen tons of our loot to anywhere in the worlds we want.”

I briefly considered denying that I even had the coin, but if he was determined, he could find and take it easily enough, so there really wasn’t any point.

“Ignoring for the moment how you even know I have that, why not ask Vinson?” I suggested. “He’s got way more Seelie Silver than I do.”

“He doesn’t want out. You do,” Gristle responded. “You tried to escape once, and I know you’re just itching for a chance to try again.”

“But… Ignazio knows what you are, doesn’t he? He wouldn’t have let you around the sap if he wasn’t prepared for you to try to take some,” I said.

“He doesn’t know Hamm and I can take our masks off without his say-so,” Gristle explained. “We’ve been living off meagre rations of powdered milk to keep us in line, but we were able to get a hold of a bottle of the fresh stuff and chugged it before we came here. Ignazio and Vothstag have no power over us right now.”

“… I’m sorry, milk?” I asked confused.

“Not important at the moment. Are you in or not?” he asked.

I considered his proposition for a moment, deciding on one final question before answering.

“Why not just take the coin from me?”

“Because I’m a nice guy,” he said with a sickeningly wide grin. “And… stealing Seelie Silver tends not to end well. I don’t need an answer now. The load’s not full yet. Think about it, and when the time comes, do whatever you’ve got to do.”

He pulled his mask back down, and we finished hauling the cart over to Fish and Chips in silence.

He wasn’t wrong about me wanting to escape, but my plan had always been to quietly sneak off and be long gone before anyone noticed. A fight between Vothstag and a pair of superpowered Clowns followed by a daring getaway on an Unseelie mining cart was a bit riskier than anything I had envisioned. But at the same time, this was an unprecedented opportunity that would likely never come again.  From the Taproots of the World Tree, I could go literally anywhere, and never have to worry about Ignazio or his minions tracking me down.

All it would cost me was the single coin I had to my name.

I hauled the cart with Gristle for the rest of the shift. Eventually, we had a train of sixteen pallets, each loaded with fifty twenty-kilogram sacks of crystalized sap.

“That’s it then. Order’s full,” Vinson declared as he walked the length of the train, testing the chains to make sure the cargo was fully secured. “All of you hop in the front and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Vothstag roared in disagreement, standing between us and the cart and making a vaguely groping gesture.

“Right, right. Contraband check,” Vinson nodded with a weary sigh as he outstretched his arms. “Nothing too invasive now, you hear? If this stuff was inside of us, you’d already know it.”

Vothstag didn’t acknowledge his comment, but proceeded to pat him down and empty his pockets.

Hamm and Gristle each gave me a knowing look. If I did nothing, Vothstag would find my coin and it would all be over for me anyway. I nodded my assent, and braced myself for the worse.

With a single swift motion, Hamm and Gristle each pulled their masks off, and the visages of the two monstrous Clowns were enough to throw all of us into immediate pandemonium. Hamm’s hair, eyes, lips and nose were all a fiery red, and I saw now that the tips of their ears had a pink tinge, just like their fingers. The instant their masks were off, they wasted no time shovelling a handful of crystal sap into their mouths.

Vothstag howled and charged straight at them, and everyone else scattered as quickly as they could to avoid being bulldozed by the massive deer man. Hamm and Gristle stood their ground, each of them grabbing ahold of one of his antlers. Despite his size and speed, Vothstag was brought to a dead stop.

He snorted and bellowed as he tried to force himself forward, but he was completely unable to overpower the two Clowns. Hamm and Gristle exchanged sinister smiles and began to spin Vothstag around and around. Within seconds his feet were off the ground, and with each rotation, he gained more and more momentum until his attackers finally let go of his antlers and sent him flying into the distance.

“The rest of you, stay out of our way!” Gristle shouted as he marched towards the front cart, grabbing me by the scruff of my jacket and pulling me along with him.

“Wait, why? Why can’t they come? Why can’t we all go?” I protested.

“We don’t know what half these freaks are and we don’t trust them,” he said as he tossed me onto the cart. “Now drive. Go straight until I say otherwise.”

I looked out at my confused and frightened companions, and took a bit of solace in the fact that they weren’t entirely certain if I had betrayed them or if I was just being kidnapped. I hesitated for a moment, but Hamm’s sharp talons digging into my shoulder were enough to press me into action.

With my coin of Seelie Silver clutched in my right palm, I grabbed a firm hold of the driving shaft and pushed the train forward. It accelerated at a remarkable pace, and before I knew it, we were speeding away from our work site and towards freedom.

“It’s working. It’s actually working,” Gristle laughed in relief.

“Even Vothstag can’t run this fast!” Hamm declared triumphantly. “The whole haul is ours! We’re rich! We’re free!”

I wanted to celebrate with them. I really did. But deep down inside I knew we weren’t out of the woods yet.

“You guys read that dossier Iggy gave us, right?” I asked. “The Naught Things that gnaw the Taproots are attracted to ontological anchors – anything that’s more real than its surroundings. If you guys are reality benders, and you just ate a massive power-up, doesn’t that make you the realest things here?”

“Isn’t that cute? He thinks he knows more about ontodynamics than us because he read a dossier,” Hamm scoffed.

“This isn’t our first time on the fringes of the unreal, boy!” Gristle replied. “You just drive this train, and let us worry about –”

Without warning, the Taproot split open ahead of us into a fuming, festering chasm. The ground quake was enough to completely derail the train, and I ducked and rolled while I had the chance.

When I came out of the roll, I looked up to see a titanic, disfigured, and disembodied head rising out of the chasm. The size and proportions of the entity fluctuated wildly, as if I was only looking at the three-dimensional facets of it like the World Tree itself. It was encrusted with some kind of dark barnacles, and anything that wasn’t its face was covered in thousands of squirming and feathery tentacles of every conceivable length. It had no nose, but several mouths which chanted backwards-sounding words in synchronicity with each other, dropping rotting black teeth every time they opened and closed.

There were six randomly spaced and variously sized eyeballs darting around independently of each other, each glowing with a sickly yellow light. I was paralyzed in fear, terrified that the Naught Thing would see me, but all six of its eyes soon locked onto Hamm and Gristle.

As it slowly ascended upwards like a hot air balloon, a pair of flickering tongues shot out of two of its mouths with predatory intent. The Clowns were scooped up like flies, screaming as they were whisked back into the Naught Thing’s cavernous maws. I don’t know much about Clowns or what they’re capable of, only that Hamm and Gristle never got a chance to test their mettle against this behemoth. A few chomps of its black teeth, and it was all over.

I sat there in silence, watching as the Naught Thing continued to drift away, never daring to assume that it had forgotten about me.

“Brandon!” I heard a voice call from the distance.

I was finally able to pull my eyes off the Naught Thing, and when I looked down the track, I saw the rest of my crew hurrying towards me.

Which included a very angry Vothstag.

Grabbing me by the jacket and lifting me off the ground, he roared furiously in my face, demanding answers.

“Easy, Vothstag, easy!” Vinson insisted. “They just grabbed the kid. It wasn’t his idea.”

Vothstag growled skeptically, eyeing the toppled train beside us. He knew it could have only been driven like that by Seelie magic, and I still had my lucky coin clutched tightly in my right hand.

“…Hamm must have picked my pocket when he was working alongside us,” Vinson suggested.

I knew he didn’t really think that. He knew exactly how many coins he had, and he knew he wasn’t missing any. I don’t know why he covered for me, but I owe him big.

“Serves him right, too. Bloody idiot,” he said with a sad shake of his head as he surveyed the wreckage. “Let this be a lesson for all of you if you ever think about stealing my Seelie Silver! That’s right, Fish and Chips, I’m looking at you!”

Vothstag howled again, clearly unconvinced.

“They took me as a driver so that they could stay focused on defending the train!” I claimed. “If I hadn’t jumped when I did, they may have stood a chance against that giant floating head! I saved our haul!”

Vothstag snorted in contempt, but set me back on my feet. I don’t think he believed me, really, but he knew that Ignazio wouldn’t hold him blameless in this little debacle either, so it was in all of our best interests not to cast aspersions on one another’s stories.

“Listen up, everybody! We’re two men down and we’ve got to get this rig back on the track before some other unspeakable abomination comes along, so get moving!” Vinson ordered.

For once, Vothstag was doing most of the work, using his might to set the carts back on the tracks, while the rest of us just picked up any sacks of sap that had come loose.

“What a bloody joke,” Loewald grumbled as he threw a sack onto a cart. “Down from nine to seven, any of us could still die at any minute, and for what? We mined sixteen tons, and what do we get?”

“Another day older,” I agreed, throwing another sack next to his. “But some days, that’s enough.”