Alex thought the pn to float a sunken barge was insanely risky. The townspeople gave up even using boats because they thought that the river was filled with horrible monsters. While that might not be true locally, doing any kind of task that required going underwater screamed danger. But staying here and waiting was also a terrible pn. A dozen small sailboats like Alex had taken here approached from upstream. They could take one or two people with them. But there were hundreds that needed evacuation. The capacity to get people out of here wasn’t good.
The mermaid-no-longer girl stared at Alex. She had her at a disadvantage, the dy knew Alex’s name but not the other way around. Also, Alex introduced herself as Alice to everyone in this town. It was awkward.
“I was looking to somehow float up a boat that got sunk not far from here. It would be nice to get some help. Miss…. Remind me of your name?” Alex smiled sheepishly.
“My name’s Marina.” The human woman gave a toothy smile. Though her teeth were not that clean, obviously a tribe woman. “I’m a scout. I can find wrecks with the mermaid belt but getting it up isn’t something I’m good at.”
A while back, Alex put two and two together, the people who jumped them and left them tied up in the middle of the night were scouts for the stone ax tribe. Was she one of them? Alex wasn’t sure. She seemed nice st
“Anyway yeah. Getting eyes on the boats would be a good first step. If they are water tight then they could be filled with air and floated to the surface.” Alex said. “I’m not exactly sure how we are going to pull that off though.”
“Okay, I’ll go tell the other people what is happening. I think most everyone was expecting to raid this town, kill some imps and head out the same day.” She headed back towards the docks.
Alex looked around the boardwalk and spotted Cecil. “Vice guild master. Do you know if there is anyone with sailing skills around here?” Alex doubted anyone from the tribe saw a need to get a sailor css. Well, they might want one now that there are boats but there haven’t been boats until just recently.
“I think there may be some older people that had that css. We had a rivermaster once but he passed away years ago.” The older man headed out to the crowd around the docks. “I’ll be back.”
Some of the people from Mignoneville nded on the dock and stuff started getting chaotic. People wanted to get out of here. The rumor had spread and the gathering crowd was anxious to get going. It took about an hour and the maids helped to get people to calm down enough to not talk over one another.
Three people with sailor csses agreed to take the boats up river with a couple of cssless children. Those with the sailing css, while not high level and out of practice considering they hadn’t used their css like it was meant to be used in years, agreed to help with the naval convoy. Apparently, an old sea superstition was that no cssless was destined to die at sea so having a cssless as a passenger was good luck.
Some of the tribe's people stayed to help float the boat. Obviously, the townspeople were not happy with the slow pace but agreed to wait and help out by gathering their belongings and helping how they could.
“It took you two days to make it downstream? I’ll be there and back in the same time.” One salty sea-dog of a man said to the tribesman that he entrusted the small boat to.
“We’ll have that barge that everyone is talking about by the time you come back so it won’t matter.” The cute-yet-burly man countered.
Great, no pressure.
A maid handed the old sailor some sack lunches and a waterskin filled with tea. It took about an hour to get the fleet loaded up and setting out. The watercraft, designed for one person, sailed low in the water but the wind was at their backs so they set out with their passengers at a brisk pace. The people with a sailor css quickly passed the group of sailing newbies. After a few minutes they couldn’t be seen from the docks. None of the boats flipped from the winds though a couple vessels listed enough to get some water on the passengers. One person embarrassingly had to use a bucket to get water out from the boat. Another inexperienced man turned the rudder too much and got the boom and sail in his face. Luckily he was able to duck under the sail, adjust the course and stop the sail from fpping in the wind. The departure reeked of amateurism but no one made any unrecoverable mistakes because the boats were small and nimble.
“Well, hopefully Marina is back.” Alex looked around for the scout that likely was power leveling her swimming skill.
The woman changed out of sight and came back to the boardwalk holding a rge anchor. “Look what I found!” She presented the rge rusted iron object to Alex.
The crowd of onlookers all had astonished expressions that showed they still thought that going underwater in the river was courting death. From their perspective maybe she just courted death with river monsters and came out alive.
Alex, thinking it was not as heavy as it looked, tried to accept it, but she didn’t have the strength to keep it up. The anchor fell to the boardwalk with a clunk.
“Sorry,” Alex grimaced. “Let me just clean this up for you.” She pulled out her feather duster and dusted off the rusted, soggy anchor, the rust and water evaporated like dust leaving a shiny like-new anchor in its pce.
Some of the onlookers saw this trick and their eyes widened. Alex guessed they were likely some kind of bcksmiths or other kind of metal-worker adjacent css. The magical girl likely would get pestered with the whole town’s rusty tools in the near future.
“Moving on, the closest barge is around a quarter mile away in the middle of the river. As for the condition, all the spools of rope have rotted away. The keel and hull are okay, just teaming with creatures that have attached themselves to it. I’m not sure if the thing is watertight or not but it is upside down.” The not-really-a-mermaid dy expined.
“Like barnacles or something?” Alex asked.
“No, barnacles don’t grow in freshwater.” Cecil interjected, apparently listening in.
“Sorry, I didn’t know.” Alex felt the ck of marine expertise she had at that moment. “Anyway, did you see anything that looked like a bilge pump?”
“What is a bilge?” The scout looked puzzled, “or a pump?”
Not feeling so stupid anymore, Alex continued. “The bilge I think is part of the boat that is supposed to be watertight, and I think maybe there is some kind of contraption that someone could move to get water out of it.” The magical girl really hoped that sort of thing was handled mechanically, and not through some kind of magical item in this world. She’d be a real jerk asking about something that didn’t exist. Not actually having ever operated a ship of that size, Alex had pause to think. “I’m thinking it should be at the lowest point, and have a pipe that goes out the side.”
“I couldn’t tell you, I could sorta get under it but the area is too crowded with debris to get inside that far.” The scout pointed at the river to the general direction where it was.
Alex considered the option and addressed the crowd of gawkers. “Are any of you a plumber? Who makes the pipes for the manor?”
Cecil answered and pointed to a middle-aged man. “He is our bcksmith. Though most of the time he just sharpens bdes or does repair work. Brin, you ever make pipes for the baron or baroness?”
“Aye, I have though not in a while. We get shipments of iron or other metals less and less.” The gruff man crossed his arms, apparently not happy with how bottlenecked the smithing industry had become tely.
“Do you think you could make pipe that is about fifty feet long?” Alex held up rose and the length of hose on the end of her water gun. “One end could fit onto the end of the gun and the other end on the hose?”
“I think so, but we are going to need some good metal.” Brin pointed to the anchor. “That’s a good start but not enough if you want something that long.”
“Marina. Do you think you could salvage anymore scrap metal from the river? I can clean it up and give it to Brin.” Alex shifted her gaze to the scout.
“I think so, I can check out the other wrecks as well.” Marina nodded.
A few hours ter they got things sorted out. They made a quick rope bridge across the river that went directly over the wreck. The pipe slotted into the gun nozzle and the hose attached to the end of the long iron pipe. Marina went down and worked on stuff under water. After signaling, Alex danced and Rose fulfilled her role as an air pump. Nothing happened at first that could be seen from the surface, but eventually bubbles started coming up from the river, a few at first, then a lot. Sadly, no ship floated to the surface.
Alex stopped dancing and waited for Marina to come to the surface.
Marina’s head popped out of the water. “The wooden pnks are rotten in a few spots. It is not bad but the water comes in as fast as it comes out.”
Alex frowned. “Darn it.”
“Hey, does your feather duster work under water? Maybe you could use that skill that fixed the anchor on the upturned barge?” Marina beamed. She had a look on her face like she’d just won.
“The water is really cold and I can’t hold my breath for that long.” Alex countered weakly, guessing where this was going.
“I think there might be a solution to both of those problems.” Marina smiled even wider.
“I don’t have a swimming skill. I don’t think I can get it with my css.” Alex gave an even weaker excuse.
Marina gave her a look of a mom listening to her child compin about having to do chores.
“Fine, don't look at me like that. I’ll do it just this once but I’m giving the girdle right back to you.” Alex headed to shore, securing the pipe to the rope with a knot.
Alex handed Rose to Marina in exchange for the mermaid girdle. They did the exchange discreetly, hiding under the pilings of the dock.
Marina held the doll and regarded Alex smugly.
In a few seconds, Alex’s legs transformed into a fish tail. It was weird, but swimming felt natural. Also, the water didn’t feel unbearably cold like it did before. Sticking her head under water, the magical girl expected to feel the unbearable need to head back to the surface and take a breath but it never came. Instead, gills on the bottom of her neck sucked water in and out, the air in her lungs emptied slowly, it felt natural and there was no feeling of drowning. Sticking her head up, Alex tried to speak, but it game out in a gurgle because she was forcing water out instead of air so the speech was gibberish.
“You have to suck in air first before talking.” Marina, still looked overly smug. It was like having two Fufis.
Not bothering with a response, Alex headed down into the river. Again, swimming with a tail was instinctual. It didn’t require learning. Maybe the item handled some of that aspect? After a short swim with the feather duster in her mouth she made it to the shipwreck. It looked like, well, a wreck. It could use some cleaning.
Alex wielded her trusty feather duster. In the water it moved a bit differently. The feathers swayed at a slower pace but moved more deliberately. She ran it over the hull of the ship and crusty pnks, dirt and weeds were washed away in the current. The gray pnks turned to a woodsy color of the oak they were made from. It took over an hour to dust off the keel and go over the hull. Luckily, nothing of the pnks were bad enough that they evaporated the entire thing. The bottom of the barge looked more like the actual bottom of a barge now. She spent another hour cleaning the rest of the ship off that she could get access to. Some parts of the deck that were not lodged in the mud got restored. She cleaned the opening to the hold and as far in as she dared to go without risking getting stuck in the debris. The pce where the hose could go was obvious.
Surfacing, Alex spotted Marina holding Rose, her squirt gun hooked up to the pipe.
The woman was standing on the rope bridge and spotted Alex easily. She fshed a toothy smile and gave a thumbs up with the hand not holding the doll.
“I guess underwater dancing it is.” Alex said and dove straight down, following the line of the pipe.
She made sure the bubbled from the hose would come up in the hold and went up a bit to stay clear in case the barge shifted instead of floated and danced. Her dance was like a ballet dance that she saw old dies doing in commercials for retirement homes that had pools.
Laughing and giggling could be heard from all around her. She could feel the water sloshing about in an odd direction. Apparently, the nereids decided to join in the dancing. How embarrassing.
Alex felt the channeled skill activate and air came out of the hose. At one point the hose started squirming around like a snake and dislodged itself from the ship, but unseen hands put it back so the air would fill up the ship. After several dancing sessions the bubbles were coming out of the top of the ship and it broke free from the bottom of the river. The ship kept trying to flip upright when it was ascending but the currents in the water were doing some weird things to keep it upside down. After a quick ascension the barge breached the surface and flipped right-side up.
