Once Upon A Time, part IV

At the zoo, they had to break into the rhinoceros building where the animals were put away for the night. The witch found one that was still awake and started to chat it up. To the Does, it sounded like a lot of grunting and snorting, but apparently they could both understand each other.

“You think they teach Rhinocerish at Witch University?” John whispered to Jane as the witch started laughing at something the rhino was telling her. Jane giggled behind her hand.

Hearing the unexpected noise, the rhino looked sharply in their direction. He didn’t look in the least bit happy to see them. The witch was trying to explain something, but the rhino looked more and more infuriated at every passing moment.

Abruptly, the witch turned and shouted, “Run!”

The Does didn’t need a second invitation. They took off just as the rhino started to charge.
They ran outside and managed to scramble up a tree in the habitat. John was pretty sure rhinos couldn’t climb trees, so it seemed like a safe place.

However, they still can charge.

The rhino must have rammed the tree with his enormous head ten times when Jane finally started to slip. She screamed at John to save her, but everytime he reached out for her, the rhino would hit the tree again and she would slip some more. At last, she was sure that one more hit would do her in. The rhino was backing up for a fifteenth charge. John made one final desperate lunge to save his wife, and both tumbled out of the tree.

They landed right next to the rhino. But, it didn’t move. It had passed out from all the excitement.

With the rhino unconscious, it was a simple matter to remove its horn. The witch apologized for not informing them that rhinoceroses (rhinoceri?) were very short tempered and would only deal with one intrusion at a time without going berserk. She heaped praises upon them for holding him off until he collapsed from adrenaline shock. The Does didn’t hear a word she said. They were still trembling from head to toe.
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The sun was peeking over the eastern horizon when the Does and the witch arrived at Penelope’s Inlet, the best place to find a mermaid at this time of year, according to the witch.
She picked up a strange looking shell that was lying nearby and blew into one end. The Does couldn’t hear anything except escaping air, but there was a sudden commotion in the inlet. Three heads popped out from under the water and stared at the trio on land for what seemed like an eternity. Then, they ducked back beneath the waves.

“Good, we’re lucky,” the witch sighed with obvious relief. “They didn’t acknowledge our presence.”

John looked at her quizzically.

She shook her head. “Later,” she said, as another head popped out of the water and headed their way.

The figure now emerging from the water was obviously female, though the Does were surprised to see that she looked like a normal human being, except for the gills in the side of her neck. They couldn’t see any scales on her at all.

The mermaid took the shell from the witch and blew into the other end. Expecting to hear the rushing air again, the Does were shocked to her a beautiful and silky voice saying, “Welcome to Penelope’s. How may I help you?”

The witch blew into her side again, and only rushing air could be heard. The mermaid nodded, and replied, via the shell, “Of course. One moment.” She turned back to the water, but paused and addressed the Does. “Would you like to come and inspect the merchandise?”

That sounded reasonable to the Does, but before they could answer, the witch blew sharply into her end of the shell. The mermaid smiled coyly, and dove beneath the surface of the water.

“NEVER take a Mer up on an offer to go underwater,” the witch said. “I don’t care what you’ve seen in movies, you won’t last more than three minutes.”

“Obviously, there’s a lot that movies aren’t telling us,” John commented.

The witch laughed. “Oh, you mean the lack of a tail? An unfortunate misconception. The only thing the Mers have in common with fish is the gills.”

“Then how are we going to get a scale?” Jane exclaimed, a bit hysterically.

The witch smiled knowingly, and watched as the mermaid emerged from the inlet, carrying a bag.

“What form of payment do you have?” the mermaid asked. The witch removed from her bag the dark chocolate she had gotten at Which Witch. The mermaid nodded approvingly, and they traded packages. The two shook hands, and, after waving cheerfully at the Does, the mermaid disappeared into the sea.

As they were loading onto the broomstick, the witch hurriedly explained everything. “If those three heads had acknowledged us, it would have meant that they were going to play around with us, try and kill us somehow, and definitely not get us what we want. The shell I used is a translator. Since Mermish is an exclusive language, no one except Mers can speak it. Consequently, the Mers can’t speak any human language, so we have to use artificial means of communication.”

John was looking at the bag. It was moving. “What’s going on?” he asked.

The witch glanced over. “Oh, that’s the squid,” she replied. “Don’t look in there, unless you want to get squirted.”

“What about the mermaid scale? How do we know it’s in there too?” Jane demanded.

“Listen, Mers may be killers, but they’re not swindlers,” the witch answered. “When you shake hands with a Mer, it’s an ironclad contract that the merchandise is exactly what you requested.”

Jane still felt a bit uneasy, but she let it pass. The witch seemed to know what she was doing.

NEXT: Decision Time