Josef awoke in a bubbling goo-sac. He stared at his hands and blinked, swished them in front of his face. It was that slow, strange moment just before reality makes its first demand. And its demand for young Josef was quite simple: try your best, in the next few moments, to survive.
Josef's arms, like misfiring pistons, shot to his throat in panic and horror as he realized he was choking. The goo-plasm in which he floated was in his mouth, his throat, and even his lungs.
His heartbeat went into overdrive as he twisted and turned in every direction. Everything he could see was tinted a subdued pink: his arms, his wrists, his hands, even the surrounding space.
He could barely think while his body begged for air. He did his best to tap into that deep, instinctual drive for survival — call it his amygdala, call it his soul, whatever it was, he engaged it fully by banging his fists furiously against the translucent membrane enclosing him.
Nearby, and at that precise moment, Malark, the Chief Watcher of the Ba'ha Grotto, was busy reading an ancient text. A cup of wust juice (licorice and fernplop) was balanced on his gyrating knee. He'd just taken his first sip when he heard the decisive, thunderous banging of a new arrival clamouring back to life.
"A goo-drinker!" Malark cried out, spewing wust juice all over his most prized tome. "Josef to boot, and he hasn't even been prophesied. The gall!"
Leaping to his feet and slandering at least two gods, Malark spun on his one good leg towards a silver knife. The cup of wust juice fell behind him, crashing to the cave floor and exploding into a spiderweb of shards.
Seconds later, Josef watched as that same silver knife plunged into his goo-sac prison. He flinched as its blade sawed back and forth in front of his retracted face.
The last morsels of air left his lungs just as the knife finished carving an oval hole into the barrier's skin. His eyelids wavered; everything tipped towards a foggy black.
Josef didn't see it, but he heard it: the glug glug glug of the goo emptying from his goo-sac. Air rushed in to fill its place. Josef felt a coolness on his face as two sets of hands reached in and gripped him. The arms yanked him out of the goo-sac as Josef's body celebrated by beginning to heave. And then it heaved again, forcing the goo out from his throat and onto the red sandstone floor.
In his own vomit, he glimpsed himself for what felt like the first time. He saw his slathered black hair slicking down past his eyebrows. He saw his eyes of hazel (the hazel of spring, when it still has a thing or two to learn) and he saw five brazen hairs poking out from his chin like wild gorse.
There was also a strand of drool dripping from his lower lip. He smiled at himself, just to try it out. 'Dashing' was not the first word that came to his mind but neither was 'repugnant'. He settled on 'easy on the eyes' and then burped.
Looking about, he realized he in some kind of well-supplied cave. He could hear water. There were diagrams and lists plastered on the walls. In every nook and cranny there were more goo-sacs, each containing creatures, human and otherwise, with their knees tucked deep into their chests like sweet-dreaming infants.
He'd just been one of them. And he was now mildly angry that he was shivering and awake while they were still blissfully warm and cocooned in complete unconsciousness.
Out of nowhere two webbed hands suddenly gripped him by his cheeks. "Your name is Josef. You're in immediate danger. I'm going to help you get out of here, okey-dokey friend?"
Josef stared at the face of a humanoid fish as teal fingers slicked goo-plasm from his eyelids. He felt like a newborn calf being gussied up for its first photo shoot.
"My name is Claudius, that gentleman over there is Malark. We are the watchers for these goo-sacs."
Josef didn't know what to say. The strange creature was completely teal in colour with pulsating gills on either side of its throat. Its eyes were cautious, but enlivened, brimming with a joy that seemed somehow both motherly and diabolical.
Josef's eyes shifted. He watched as Malark, a squat, orange-skinned man, crept behind Claudius and towards a dust-ridden silver bell, which was connected to a rope, which was itself connected to all manner of places in the Ba'ha Grotto through an abstruse and ornate pulley system (yes, there was a diagram).
A mere tug would elicit a wave of tinkles throughout the watery cave network as if a new holiday were being announced and to which everyone was invited. This invitation extended especially to Josef, who was now officially the latest goo-drinker to awaken from his septujinnys-long slumber.
Claudius followed Josef's gaze and saw Malark creeping along. "Don't you dare touch that bell, Malark!" Claudius yelled, dropping Josef's skull from his webbed hands like a discarded melon.
"You had your chance, Claudius!" replied Malark, yelling over his shoulder as he began to hobble and dash towards the silver bell. Malark was only seconds away from giving it a good shaking when Claudius intercepted his ambitions.
"I know how hard it is for you to let bygones be bygones, Malark," said Claudius, "but we have a brand new opportunity here that we'll never figure out if you ring that bell over there."
Josef watched as Malark's orange skin deepened to the colour of flaming coals. He was a full two heads shorter than Claudius, but he stood ferociously on the balls of his feet. "You had your chance last time to dabble in your little mysteries! This one will be accounted for! The bell must be rung. I shall tell no more lies on your behalf, you devious, gill-fibbing—"
"Don't use words you'll later regret, Malark," said Claudius, somehow both sweetly and sternly. "You need to come with us this time. You'll see how much fun it is!"
"Fun!" screamed Malark. "Fun?! Do you even remember last time? How far did you make it? I still remember the gujai fish. Do you? I had to lie through my teeth so that you wouldn't be depropagated, you gimble-bellied—"
Claudius raised his hands, closed his eyes. "Malark, I told you already," explained Claudius. "I've learned my limits — and I've even made a few contacts. I don't like to talk about sure bets but this could be one of them!"
"Remember Lupe III?" Malark pleaded.
"That wasn't even me."
"What? I thought that was you."
"Nope. That was Ba'ha default programming. He double-downed on juniper berries while passing through The Crow Meadow. Everyone knows that's a major no-no." While informing Malark of his mistaken judgement, Claudius skillfully leaned to the side and grabbed a cloth sack from a nearby table. He then chucked it at Josef's face. "Put this on, pronto." He then mimed slipping the sack over his own head.
But Malark seized the moment and leapt by Claudius with improbable agility. Claudius gasped as he watched Malark grip and yank on the silver bell's rope, giving it its first pitiful warble and then a second time, less resolutely.
Claudius, Malark, and Josef listened in silence as a clanking orchestra of tolling bells sounded out in every direction. The off-kilter music was almost sickening and everyone felt their bodies becoming loose, slackening as if ten days had passed in a instant.
As the last onerous bell clang whimpered out, Josef watched as Malark's and Claudius's eyes met and a silent exchange passed between them. Malark's head tipped down, loose strands of greying hair falling down his face.
"Malark," began Claudius, his voice catching.
"I won't lie for you again, Claudius. As I said, this goo-drinker will be accounted for."
"I see how it is," Claudius said carefully. He then turned to Josef, who was still struggling with the cloth sack, and helped him shimmy it down to his knees. As he did so, he spoke quickly and efficiently. "There's no time to waste, Josef. In about five minutes, a regiment of dull-witted but persistent brainsnakes and machos are going swoop into this room and pepper our good friend Malark here with ten thousand questions."
"You have less than that," Malark said, pointing through a stained glass window. Josef followed his finger and saw a group of five walking along a torch-lit cave ledge in the distance.
Claudius shrieked and began to madly rummage about the room. Josef watched as Claudius collected supplies from cupboards and secret cubbyholes from all over the room while Malark raised an eyebrow or two.
Claudius stuffed the acquired supplies into his rucksack and spoke swiftly to Josef. "Whatever you do, Josef, please don't think too much. Your brain is like wilted cabbage. Your neocortex is still booting up and until it does so you're going to be looping in a pre-infantile thinkspace. If you get too excited, your brain go melty."
Claudius removed a bright red vial and a wad of pale green lichen from one of his side pouches. "Merrycherry and gormulch. One second."
Josef looked on as Claudius shredded the gormulch into his open palm and then tipped out a single droplet of the red liquid. It started to fizz.
He pushed the concoction up to Josef's nose. "Breathe."
Josef hesitated, and then sniffled. His eyes suddenly went wide and spun about like two newborn stars settling into orbit. Then he puked, again, coating the red sandstone floor in another round of belly acid and goo.
Claudius made a face. "Needed to clear out the system before take-off. Sorry, young Josef." Claudius patted him on the back and then began to yank on a floor grate.
Malark sighed. "So what should I tell them, Claudius?"
"I don't expect you to lie, Malark," replied Claudius as the grate gave way and scraped against the sandstone floor, "but please do." A square hole with a rusted iron ladder now loomed open on the floor where the grate had once been.
Malark was too sad to be mad. "Just go, Claudius. Or even better, stop while you still have a chance."
But Claudius puffed out his chest. "You listen here, Malark. I'm not sticking around at this brain-dead outpost for another septujinny while we watch more goo-drinkers get demolished at the hands of the Ba'ha Company and their dumb, narf-chugging brainsnakes. You think Metzger and the Ba'ha Company give two hoots about these little guppies?" Claudius said, placing his webbed hands on Josef's shoulders. "They don't, and you know it. Josef here is just another slick youth they're going instruct and speedball into their cloistered version of calculated freedom. Tell me, Malark, what's the Ba'ha Grotto's current record for a goo-drinker?"
Malark sighed. "I know you know what it is Claudius."
"Just say it."
"164 hours. There. Are you happy? I'm guessing you think you can do better."
"Damn right I can," said Claudius, beaming. "I can tell already that Josef here is a fighter. Have you ever seen someone bang at their goo-sac like that? He's got jive, he's got spirit!"
Josef nodded weakly. He felt like he was in a fog made of stardust. Whatever concoction Claudius had shovelled towards his face was causing him vast amounts of wooziness and mental disregulation. He wondered briefly if he was being abducted, but then visions of ducks pecking at each other's tailfeathers started to loom up in his mind. Then his brain did a backflip and he started to fall to the floor.
Claudius caught him between his webbed hands, his gills hyperventilating. "Don't worry, Josef. This is the most underfunded outpost in the Southern Plate. We only recruit the Lush Heap's laziest and most disreputable woebegones. I've had more free-time to study, train, and learn than a pack of pre-teen sorcerers from Yuki-Yam at summer camp. You're in good hands, my friend."
Malark coughed. "They're almost here, Claudius, a full pack of mouth-breathers arriving with haste. Kipfish is leading them and he looks rather perturbed."
"Ok, Josef, time to descend," Claudius said while grabbing Josef by the hand and guiding him over to the hole. "Down," he said, pointing. "Yep, just like that. First one foot and then the other. Perfect. And now let's both wave goodbye to Malark." Claudius turned and spit out his forked tongue.
"Josef," Malark began. Josef turned and looked at him, pausing his descent, his head wobbling just above the hole. "I know your brain is complete mush right now, but I want you to know that I've tried before. When they catch you, please remember that."
"Save it, Malark," said Claudius, pushing Josef's head down the hole and clambering in after him. "You rang the bell. You get the guilt. If it comes to it, I give you permission to write my obit. Goodbye, my dear sweet friend."
And with that, Josef began his escape from the Ba'ha Grotto. His hands shook as he descended rung after rung. He had no idea who he was, where he was going, but a certain Sea Gwell named Claudius was intent on saving his life. He could barely speak, let alone think, but he was moving and he was alive. It was something.
"Josef," Claudius called out in the darkness, "make sure your hands don't get too slippery! Grip each rung firmly!"