One Man's Pot

A mundane, a magocrat and a mapmaker are fishing.

The mundane carefully ties his hook and sinker rig to his line, baits the hook and, wary of the other two people in the boat, casts the baited hook out into the water with a satisfying plop.

Bugs buzz through the hot, still air. Fish fail to bite.

The mundane reels in his line, finds the bait has escaped, rebaits the hook and casts again.

Fish, again, predictably, fail to bite.

"Fishing is an art only for the patient," he says, tiredly.

The magocrat carefully places his pole in the water off the side of the boat, where it proceeds to float away. Rolling up his sleeves, he closes his eyes and seems to meditate with nature. Finally, his eyes snap open and his hand shoots out. Lightning pours from his finger, and a dozen fish spring to the surface, electrocuted. None of them have much left on their bones.

"Fishing," he says, bitterly, "is nothing but sport."

The mapmaker carefully considers his pole and watches the mundane and magocrat fail to produce anything edible. He looks at the water, muddy and still. Waterspiders skitter across the surface, which seems to sweat oil. Sighing, he, too, tosses his pole in the water.

"Whose bright idea was this, anyway?" he asks, irritably.

The magocrat points at the mundane, who slaps a mosquito on his forehead.

"What?" says the mundane. "We haven't eaten in days. We need to find food."

"We wouldn't be hungry like this if you guys hadn't traded all your wild rice for these pots," the mapmaker says heatedly, gesturing to the dozen iron pots in the bottom of the boat.

"That presence of domiciles existed in drastic necessity of our plentiful harvest," says the magocrat.

"Yeah, and they might've starved, too," says the mundane.

"So we'll starve instead? I don't know why I hooked up with you guys."

"Let me see," says the mundane nastily. "It may be because we saved your skin from that trap the goblins set."

"Softly, Plin," the magocrat says loudly, to be heard over the mapmaker's sputtering retorts. "Our colleague, Carlos, is not as reflective as his predecessor, it would seem."

"He certainly doesn't shine one bit, that's for certain." Plin casts his line again.

"In the meantime, we starve," Carlos says, sulking.

"Fish will come a'leapin', soon as they fin' my hook."

"Sustenance does not leap from these rivers, though," says the magocrat. "I daresay, meals could be faster acquired from our excretions."

Plin and Carlos stare at each other.

"Did he just say what I think he just said?" Plin asks.

"I think he did," Carlos says.

"Look, Duk, I'm not eating your sh..."

"Hello there! Can we help you?"

The three in the boat turn to see a larger raft. On the raft are two buildings and about a dozen people. Plin casts his line again, pointedly ignoring this strange tribe. Duk shields his eyes and stares at them. Carlos waves dejectedly, reaching out over the side of the boat for his pole, which hasn't drifted far.

Several people are pushing the raft toward them with long poles.

"Can we help you? You seem lost," says an old man at the front of the raft.

"Can you help us? No, good people, the question you should be asking is, what can we three do for you ..." Duk makes a quick head count, "twelve?"

"Thirteen," the man says cheerfully, grinning. "My wife just gave birth today. The baby is inside, sleeping." He shakes his head. "Unless you have an excess of iron pots, however, I fear you cannot be of help to us. Our three were stolen, and we can't cook our abundance of food now."

Plin bumps into Carlos as they struggle to throw a blanket over their excess of iron pots.

"It would seem you are in luck," Duk says, rising to his feet. "We have but one iron pot, though it is a magic pot."

"A magic pot?" the man seems skeptical.

"Magic, yeah," Plin says, exchanging glances with Carlos, who says, "Pot, yeah."

"A magic pot," Duk declaims magnificently, "that can feed as many as fifteen upright citizens adequately, with extra nourishment for members of the female persuasion who have just ejected a squawling larva."

The man's eyes screw up as he tries to comprehend the magocrat.

Plin sighs." What he means is, it's good for new mothers."

"Larva?"

"Good. For. New. Mothers. Stick with us here, all right?"

"But I'm sure he ..."

"Hey, what's your name?" Carlos says brightly, stepping up onto their raft. The man opens his mouth to introduce himself, but Carlos shakes hands with someone else. "Nice to meet you. My, that's a lot of fish you've caught."

"Nets," says a young boy.

"Is that what they're called? I thought they were trout. My name is Carlos," he gestures vaguely behind him, "and these are Plin and Duk the magocrat."

"Duk?"

"Where?" Carlos whips around, looking for who cried fowl.

"Only we had duck for dinner last night."

"Good for you. Now, Duk, you said something about a ... our magic pot?"

Plin grabs Duk's arm as they start to cross from their boat to the raft.

"I think I know what you're thinking, but I hope you know what you're doing," he whispers.

"Good mundane, touch me not. What motives I contemplate you may never comprehend."

"Yah, but will we get dinner out of this?"

"Indeed," Duk answers, vaguely. He smiles at the tribe leader. "I did not receive your moniker." But as the man opens his mouth to introduce himself, Duk turns to Carlos. "Esteemed colleague, bring forthwith the magic pot unto this diverse vessel."

"Diverse, huh?" Carlos grumbles, but hops back into their boat and grabs a pot from under the blanket.

"Watcha doin', mister?" It's the boy who named the nets.

"Gettin' our magic pot," Carlos says.

"‘S there anythin' else under yer blanket?"

"Damnens," Plin says, causing the boy to turn. "Evil, foul-smelling beasts that'll jump up and eat you during the night." He makes vague, threatening gestures. "Rawr?"

The boy's gaze returns to the boat, where Carlos stands very still.

"Wow," says the boy. "Can I see one, mister?"

"No," Carlos says, getting out of the boat and hauling the boy behind him. "Where's your dad? Oh, there he is!"

"No, that's my nephew," the boy says. "That's my dad, over there." He points to the older man who consistently fails to introduce himself.

"You have a nephew who's three times your age?"

"Dad's virile. So's his sons. That means I'm virile."

"Do you know what virile means?"

"Nope," the boy says cheerfully. "You wanna meet my baby sister?"

"Not yet. Why don't you go to your dad now? I have to talk to Duk."

"Is he really named after a duck?" The boy's eyes are wide.

"No, his mom just couldn't spell." Carlos carries the pot over to Duk. "Well?"

"Well," Duk says, looking at the pot. "Everyone, gather around rapidly, to see our magic pot!"

Dutifully, everyone gathers around the pot.

"With this pot, filled with water ... Carlos, you can be so good as to ... Thank you, Carlos, and I didn"t need the extra splash for myself ... With this pot, brimming with vivacious water, and this rounded, polished, brilliant, and exceptionally tiny pebble ..."

"I can't see any pebble," someone says.

"Most noticeably minuscule ..."

"I don't think he's holding anything."

"Microscopically, metaphorically, utterly existant ..."

"Look, it's a small rock, all right?" Plin interrupts. "Look, he just dropped it in the pot. There you go. Look in the pot, heh? Can you see the pebble now?"

"No, cuz there's so much muck in it."

"Well, it's in there. Carry on, Duk."

Duk clears his throat and looks confident. "With this magic pot, overflowing with a wealth of viscous nutrients and proteins, and the smoothed, edge-free pebble which I verify is truthfully in the pot, and a source of heat ..." At this point, he touches the pot, and everyone watches as it starts to glow in the heat of his magic, and the water starts to simmer. "Ah! Our pebble stew is ready to brew."

"Pebble," says the raft's father. "Stew."

"Stew," Carlos says. "Tastiest food in Marrishland."

"Not, however, when made from pebbles."

"Duck pebbles, maybe," Plin says.

"But this is a magic pot," Duk says.

"I think I know where this is going," the man says.

"I think you don't," Plin says.

"He'll taste the water, and pronounce it not quite right, and say, hey, maybe it needs some salt! And we'll give you some. Then we'll watch it for a while, and he'll taste it again, and say, hey! maybe some meat'll spice this right up. And we'll give you some. And we'll watch it some more, and he'll taste it again, and say, hey! some vegetables to thicken it up, what do you think? And we'll give you some." He looks at Plin, Duk and Carlos. "Isn't that right?"

"You can't even say your name, and you said that?" Plin says.

"My name is ..."

"Look here,"Duk interrupts. "I cannot deny that what we seek is a full meal, for we have not eaten for multitudinous hours."

"We'll give you food. You just have to ask." He stares at the pot. "And we'll buy your pot, for more food."

"But it is our only device from with to cook food, and it is a magic pot. Surely, you cannot expect us to part with it for the price of several good meals." Duk waves aside the man's protests. "No, let us cook this meal, then, as friends, and discuss what methods of bargaining there are at a time upon which our bowels are largely satisfied."

Everyone looks at Plin, quite sure of what they heard but wishing to hear Plin's embarrassed reply.

"Er," Plin says, turning red. "Let's eat, and we'll talk about it later."

The pot proves large enough to provide enough stew for fifteen people, as Duk has suggested. The stew is not pebble stew, though the mineral content is quite high. It does involve a lot of fish and rice, however. There is even a little too much, and some must be saved for later.

Later as the sun sets, and the family raft sits in the cooling swelter of the day, and the youngest children are put to bed and supposedly asleep, Plin, Duk, Carlos and the parents of the raft sit around the mundane fire, the pot to one side.

"Your pot indeed seems bottomless,"says the father. "Mynameis ..."

"It's uses are infinite. This truth is irrevocable."

The man growls slightly. "Will you not let me introduce myself?"

"I believe, good mundane, that your name is, at this point, irrelevant to the context. What is of most import is what you would be willing to give for our magic pot."

"Well, what kind of magic does it do?"

Duk blinks, taken aback by the question. "Do my ears lie to me? Can you make yourself perform such an operation as to interrogate us thusly when you have just verified its power with your own sensing organs?"

"I think I know what you're saying, and the answer is, yes, I can ask the question, because what I think happened tonight was that an ordinary pot held enough stew to feed all of us. Now, that's a lot of people for one pot, I know, but this is nothing magical."

"Surely, quantity is only a small level of the functionality of the magic in this pot. You will discover, over time of use of this pot, that its repeated use provides extra strength and vitality. You will see your children grow whilst eating from it, and your family wax round with joy and vigor. Many friendly memories will be shared because of this pot, and never forgotten. More magic can come from this pot than even I am fully cognizant of, and I am its creator."

"You're saying ..."

"Skeptic," Carlos interrupts. "We're not even bargaining yet."

"Yeah," Plin says. "Look, you need a pot anyway, and we've got one. So what do you have that we can trade for it?"

"But, it is our only pot," Duk says.

"And we can part with it," Plin says. He turns to the skeptical father. "We can part with it, and what we'll need is enough food to get us back to Flasten Palus, you see, so we can get another pot there. We understand that you're not going to Flasten Palus. Luckily, you'll have this magic pot."

"Yes, but ..."

"What we need is one of your nets," Carlos says. "Because a net can provide food for us."

"And food, of course. Nothing vegetable, though. That has to be stewed, you know, and we won't have a pot."

"So plenty of fish, which you have in abundance."

"Maybe some training with the net, too."

"I think that would be good."

The skeptical, virile, nameless raft father's head whips back and forth between the two of them, as Duk stares into the middle distance, contemplating his magic pot.

"Is that all right with you?" Carlos says to Plin.

"I think we have a deal," Plin says to Carlos, and they shake.

They look at the raft father. "So you provide us with what we ask for, and we give you the pot."

"You're getting a deal, really, cuz we won't have a pot to eat out of until we get to Flasten Palus."

The man looks between them. "You made a deal with me ... without talking to me?"

"That's the long and short of it," Carlos says.

"Yes," Plin says. "This is where you say, all right, and we shake hands."

"All right," he says, and they shake hands.

The next afternoon, a mundane, a magocrat and a mapmaker are fishing.

The mundane carefully removes the net from one of the pots in the bottom of the boat. He holds it out over the water cautiously, looking through the murky, sun-reflected muck as though he could see a fish in it. Then he twists and tosses the net out into the water.

"Um, Plin," Carlos says.

"Quiet," Plin says. "You'll scare the fish away."

"Even should you have captured several aquatic beasts with your most exciting cast," Duk says, "how shall we reel them in, as there is no line attached to the net, and therefore it is lost?"

Plin stares at the water, where the net disappeared. "I was supposed to hang onto a corner, right?"

"Yes, gracious Plin."

"Ah. Well, this is a job for the mapmaker."

"What?" Carlos says, then light dawns. "Oh no, I'm not one of those mapmakers who just randomly jumps into the water without his boots on when someone comes calling for him to. Not me. I'm a smart mapmaker. Don't expect me to follow in the footsteps of your old guide through this mess." He looks at them like a burned apprentice. "Besides, I thought you liked me."

Plin and Duk make eye contact, then Duk shrugs.

"At least there's a few more pots to trade for food on our way back."

"Yes, but what shall we trade when we get there?"

"We'll cross that rice field when we come to it."

Copyright 2005-2006 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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