Manny's Revenge

Manny ate his soggy bread the same way that Austini Cappeli, the famous Italian mallard and goose slayer of the Days Before the Pond Cooperative, had slogged down his last meal of soppy spinach and red algae.   The rye tasted loads better than the spinach must have, but flavor came from the circumstances, not from the food itself.  Mallard Austini knew he was going to die after his supper -- the algae that stained his greens a rusty red was harvested particularly for executions and was one of the deadliest pond-scum pollutants known to fowl-kind.  The Mallard must have loved every bitter bite.
Even though Manny wasn't sure his time was up, he gulped his bread chunks as though it was.  Those tourboats and their horrible human drivers would pay. Tonight.
Slowly, Manny swam under a bridge that crossed the Regent's Canal near Camden Town.  The sky-blocker wasn't ancient; it was metal, functional, and very dirty.  He slid along its rusted pilings as they passed, and soon he was quite black and invisible.
His target, the Titania, was moored near the Lock Market.
How he had dreamt of this day! Manny paddled very quietly, even for ducks, toward his brother's murderer.  The boat that actually sent Eustice into the deep, eddying abyss of the Regent's Canal, to be torn to bits by the bottom lurkers, so many fowl-years ago-- that boat would soon be fodder for the beasts of the bottom.
Manny took a deep breath and prepared to go under water.  He hated going under.  The ghost of his little brother made him shudder every second he was in the dark swirling of the middle waters.  At any moment, Manny could be overtaken by the vivid memory of that lunchtime, that day, and he'd be forced to fly from the surface of the water and quack a sorry lament.  If he was overwhelmed this time, it would have to be a quiet quacking.
But if this works, Manny thought, Eustice's memory will finally be able to rest . . . and so will I.
He dove.  The world was dark above the water, in the valley of the canals, where the only light came from the Camden Lock Market, always beating with life so far above.  But beneath the surface, the world was empty.  A duck's eyes began to see many things in the absence of light.
Manny saw monsters.  Manny saw their greed, and just as the great market in the air seemed to radiate life, the confusion beneath the surface was a vastness of death.
"Quack!" Manny cried.  He splashed away from the water and his bill hit the Titania.  No one noticed.
Manny had seen the memory again.   His business with the boat's propeller would just have to wait: he had to finish his thoughts before he could dive.
---

"Mommy! Mommy! look at the cute little duckies!"
Oh, a little girl! Manny thinks.  You're cute, too! Throw us some bread! A large chunk of sourdough sends a shockwave through the beautiful blue canal waters.  Eustice seizes the roll and begins to paddle for another floating piece.  Yay!
Manny is overjoyed. There aren't any ducks for this entire stretch of canal, and a little girl with a breadbasket for a mother! How lucky can they get?
Not that they don't deserve just a little luck, Manny allows himself to think.  They are orphaned ducks --Eustice still a duckling, really-- in a wide world.  Manny is threatened by the memory of their mother, caught on a fishing line . . .  But he pushes that thought away and grabs an expanding piece of sourdough for himself, quacking happily.
Finally, the girl's mother runs out of bread, but only because she and her cute little daughter have distributed the entire loaf to the equally cute and quackling ducklings, Manny and Eustice!
In three minutes, the brothers have devoured half the loaf, and Manny is feeling full.  He hasn't felt full for a while, but he hasn't felt entirely hungry, either.  Eustice, though, is a growing duckling, and he is always hungry.  Now, with a feast floating around him in the middle of the canal, Eustice is swallowing the chunks too large for him too quickly.
That's fine, Manny thinks, he'll live.  Let him have his food.
Then Manny hears the boat approaching.  A medium sized tour boat rounds the bend of the canal, pushing a small wave in front of it.
Manny swims to the side to let the boat pass.  Eustice is still inhaling sourdough as big as his head.
"Eustice." Manny quacks.  Eustice flutters a wing at his brother and continues to worry the bread down his throat.  "Eustice, come here!"
Eustice swims to his brother, carrying the bread.  But it falls from his mouth, and he wants it, so he paddles back to the middle of the canal, as the tour boat bears down on him.
"Eustice, get out of the way!"  The little duckling does, but only just in time.  He is clobbered by the wake of the medium tour boat and is forced under the cool water for a couple seconds, Bread, head and all.  He surfaces, sputtering, triumphantly still trying to swallow his bread chunk.
A horribleness grabs Manny when he sees the second boat.  This one is much larger than the first tour boat, and it was traveling right behind it.  The forward swell and wake are massive.
"Eustice!" Manny cries.  But his little brother is still dizzy from the first wake-dive and heady from too  much bread.  He notices the bigger boat only seconds before it rolls next to him, and his quacks are muffled in the soggy bread.
Manny is slammed into the canal wall by the wake, but he blasts away from it in time to see Eustice tumble down the push-wave and fall under the wake.  He goes under.
"Eustice?!"
But the duckling doesn't pop out of the water, triumphant and hungry, this time.  Manny quacks: "Nooooo!"
---

Manny opened his eyes and steadied his breath.  The memories had come less frequently in the past weeks, but this was the worst.  His resolve to take out the second ship, the big Titania, was strengthened, and he dove once more into the depths.  Behind him, trailed out along the water, black against the black surface, a cable connected to a vendor's stall danced with the eddies.
In the swirling death-laden middle waters, Manny found the big boat's propeller, and he swam around the propeller guard, wrapping the cable about it until he couldn't hold his breath any longer.  Then, he came sputtering from the dark cold, triumphant and nervous.
He began to quack, rhythmically.  Quacking at night near boats was the usual way for ducks to get the drivers to wake up and give them their food.  Or to get them to leave.  Usually, the second result was the one less favored, but this was an unusual time.
After five minutes of quacking more frequently than a cricket chirps, Manny heard the terrible drivers wake and move about.  Five minutes after that, Manny heard a gruff voice say "bloody ducks" and he knew that he was close.
Finally, the engine fired.  Manny removed himself to the giant metal bridge, still quacking.
The boat lingered for a while, and Manny worried that he'd been discovered in his plot, but it did start to move.  And the cable tightened and lifted from the water with slow ease.  A jarring metallic tearing noise filled the valley of the Regent's Canal near Camden Lock, followed by boat-driver curses and market vendor screams.  A small food stall slid down the steps toward the water, pulled by the cable Manny had connected to it, and got caught on the guard  rail.  A brief tug-of-war between the boat's propeller guard and the thick railing, and something cracked in the Titania.  The propeller housing fell into the deep of the canal (hopefully succeeding in chopping some demon of the darkness to bits), and the rest of the Titania, with its new, massive hole, followed it.
Manny cried.  He had just pulled off the greatest crime against humans since his hero, Mallard Austini, had single-wingedly managed the flooding of a new waterfront restaurant called Marshes (specialty Wednesdays? Duck).  He felt certain that Eustice would be satisfied.
"Goodbye, Eustice," Manny said, through the ducktears.