After a day or two of pouring rain, Scoa Isle was swamped by an ether of white fog. The silence, interrupted only occasionally by the island’s ear-piercing screeches, seemed overbearing. Wordlessly, Arn brushed through wide foliage leaves and quietly dragged his spear-butt through the moss. It was drenched with water, like his hair, like the blossoms in the trees, like the entire island seemed to be.
Another branch of foliage shook with movement, as a leaf-eater glided between the trees with barely a whisper. It was gone before Arn could give chase. He cursed—his food stores were constantly dwindling as he slaved over the raft. He had never seen anything that could move as silently as the herbivores of Scoa. Even their pelts, patterned grey and tan colours, made their movement across the island nearly impossible for Arn’s eyes to spot.
He’d built another small shelter in a dense copse of wide-leaf trees, which he’d discovered made excellent beams for his boat-building efforts. His raft’s outer frame was done, and he’d been working to fill it in with clay mud and wooden planks, but his stomach delayed his progress. And the problem he had encountered last time—controlling the raft on the Deep. He still needed to build something better than a guiding pole.
Arn kept walking. A few small rodents lived on Scoa, but they weren’t worth Arn’s time. He was looking for more leaf-eaters. He put his hand on the next mathhar tree—a little piece of home—and strode into the next glade. If a screecher spotted him, Arn knew exactly which of his traps was nearest to him. So far, he had survived their attacks and killed a few, though not without a few more scratches and gashes. The shore was up ahead, and Arn stepped through the bushes to look out upon the Deep.
The fog seemed a little thinner where the humidity wasn’t grouped between soaked, sweating trees, and Arn could gaze along the beach on Scoa’s east coast all the way to the ruins on the north edge. To his right, south along the shore, were the rocky cliffs that lined that entire face of the isle, as well as someone fishing.
Arn froze. It was a child, no older than ten years of age. Shirtless, the youngster stood knee-deep in the lapping waves with a reed-like spear in one hand. After a moment of stillness, the youth jabbed down into the water and pulled out two thrashing minnows. Arn stepped closer as the child slid the dying fish into a cloth satchel bound at the waist.
Before Arn called out, he noticed the small wall in the water, a U-shape that caught the waves and a whole school of fish near the shore. It was a clever strategy for the child to easily jab at the shore swimmers, but that wasn’t what caught Arn’s attention. That shape… held the water easily and stayed a portion of the current every time the waves receded. It was wide and curved and could force the Deep to follow its order, like a cupped hand. Arn could make a guiding pole like that, a rowing pole perhaps. He stared at the shape, imagining how he might build such a thing…
“Ay!” a man’s voice cried. A man wielding a spear broke the underbrush and glided across the beach toward Arn. The child shrieked, with a girl’s voice, and splashed out, behind the charging warrior. The man shouted, “Stay away from her!” With skin as pale as Arn’s and a few marks of white and blue paint on his cheeks, he appeared a fearsome fighter.
Arn pointed his spear and planted his feet. “I don’t intend either of you harm,” he said, with a rough voice.
The man had fruit juice in his beard; Arn’s arrival on the beach had interrupted his lunch, it seemed. The warrior looked back at his daughter; the girl crouched behind him, clutching her twig-spear. Turning back to Arn, the man licked his lips. “Then go the other way.”
Arn blinked. Just like that? Had they not just discovered that one another lived here? “Do you live here?”
The man’s eyes shifted back and forth. “Sorca Isle is our home,” he said. “There are more—they will know if you hurt us.”
With a gentle wave of his hands, Arn lowered his spear point, but kept his grip on it tight. He smiled, without showing his teeth, but the man didn’t relieve his tense position. “I’ve been here for weeks,” he said. “I’ve looked for your tribe.”
“We know. Our scouts have seen you. You are the lost one, you live in the dark place, with your hideous face,” the man said.
Arn rubbed his molars with his tongue. “I only want peace for us both. My tribe lives on Razaad, across the Deep.”
“So said the last man who came from that isle. He went into the dark place and never returned,” the warrior said, still pointing his spear toward Arn. He was shirtless, save a few leather straps, and covered in sharp muscles. Arn could not bargain on which of them would win in a duel. “You will leave or face the same fate, but my people will have no part of it.”
“Please. Tell your people I will not die in the ruins. I want only friendship and prosperity.” Arn took a step back, tipping his head. He kept his face down then… the man had called him hideous. The child had shrieked. If Arn was a monster, so be it—but for now he had to hide that face. He had to play the part of a leaf-eater, for the advantages it would gain him.
“Take your lies and your corrupting tongue from my daughter’s presence,” the man said.
Arn tipped his head deeper and stepped back a pace. The man and girl did not move until long after he returned to the cover of the forest. He laid in wait until they cautiously left the beach. They travelled southward, up the hill where Arn had first lived on Scoa.
The hunter from Razaad gave silent pursuit, gently picking his way through the foliage. Their movements were as silent as the leaf-eaters, it seemed, and Arn could not follow them long. In the hills, Arn lost sight of them. He paused to listen for them, but heard only the cracking of twigs under the feet of other wildland creatures, the drops of water in swamp streams, the echo of bird cries overhead. Arn had once been the greatest hunter on Razaad—but this was not Razaad.
If there was a tribe on Scoa, they were like spirits, drifting through the trees. They had survived here, with the screechers, for generations, and had become as quiet as the fog. Arn stood in the shrouded woodland wordless again and chilled to the bone.