Arn was not superstitious enough to leave the ruins altogether, but he never descended into that horrid abyss a second time. His skin was covered in bumps and standing hairs whenever he touched the cold, shiny handle of the blade he’d brought up from down there, but he kept it nonetheless. If he survived Scoa, no one need know the potential evil that anchored the mysterious weapon.
A crackling fire illuminated the evening shadows of the broken city he lived in. As he watched oils burning away from a gull’s wing, he assured himself that the blade was not sinister. It held such potential, that he denied its origin. He had cut wood with it, far faster than he could with a stone axe, which meant it would hew flesh like teeth in its prey’s flesh.
He did his best to enjoy the tough sinew he chewed, and watched the setting sun. Did Thalla watch it too? After weeks had passed on Scoa, he had finally begun to thrive here. And he was starting to consider his future—tomorrow he would begin building a new boat. If he returned to Razaad, bearing a slain creature and shiny sharp blade…
Arn chomped another bite from the dead bird and wiped grease away from his mouth with his forearm.
Thirty-four. There were thirty-four dots on the flap of Arn’s old leather pack. Each morning he added another one. After Arn had survived the first few days with scattered hours of wakefulness and hours of pain, he wasn’t positive his count was accurate. On Razaad, no one kept track of days beyond the month and the year, but Arn wanted to know how much time he spent here, speechless and alone.
He leaned back, glaring at the rest of the bird. Arn couldn’t smell a thing. He missed it—the aroma of grilled meat, the scent of fresh rain in the woodland, the whiff of blood. He stared at the last gleam of grease on his fingers and inhaled deeply, through his mouth. He carefully licked his fingers clean and wiped them off on the fur hem of his pants. Satisfied he wouldn’t leave any infectants, he timidly touched the ridges of cartilage that were left above and below the scab that covered his face. Where his nostrils had once been was a tiny nub, while a bump of raw flesh near his eye could still feel the breeze. He winced and used his palms to feel how far the scabs went across his cheek.
If he sailed back across to Razaad… would his enemies and his friends even recognize him? In his stone room, several hundred feet from that pit he’d climbed out of, he’d already started to make two piles. Strong beams for the raft lay horizontal to his makeshift bed mat, while a brambling pile of twigs and fiber had begun to grow in one of the corners.
Finding a spot to build the raft would be tricky. Arn couldn’t launch from the cliff side where he had wrecked, so he needed to find a place he could defend from the ever-hunting screechers. He foresaw a few days of scouting in his near future.
Later that evening, as his eyelids drooped, he clenched the hilt of the shiny blade and thought, I’ll make them recognize me…