A drooping, bloated moon hung close to the horizon as the tide began to drift off the long, sandy beach, casting a web of finger-like shadows across the gritty brown surface of Arn’s raft. The hunter stopped, leaning against the waist high boat to catch his breath. Sweat ran down arms and on either side of his eyes. He tilted his head up so it wouldn’t sting the corners of his sight, and peered up at the twisting branches of the last few trees.
With a groan, Arn arched his back to get a grip of the raft’s underside again. His face was brought low, close to the heavily laden sack that lay on the raft boards. He’d brought a lot more supplies this time. When Arn had lost control of his raft on the coast of Razaad, he’d not been planning to survive from his pack, but had been lost at sea until stopped by Scoa’s stony embrace. This evening, Arn had a bigger plan than to test a raft. He was going to return to Razaad.
The raft scraped over the last few clumps of graft, cracking twigs left and right. The evening tide would ensure his voyage didn’t get spun around to ram the rocks again. Or so he hoped, as he dragged it again, muscles blinding his senses. He ended up on sand, at last, and the raft slid more easily along the rolling pin he’d tied underneath. Half-dragging, half-rolling, the opposite edge of the raft didn’t struggle as much as Arn hauled with all of his own weight.
Half an hour later, he reached the water’s edge. He bent down and looked closely at the lapping waves. Each foamy line of saltwater surged up the dark, wet sand, and stopped shy of the line between wet and dry. The tide was still going out, thankfully.
Arn grabbed his newly designed pole from the top of the raft’s surface, a weighty length of tree trunk he’d carved into a functional shape, and tossed it heavily onto the wet sand. Then, with one shoulder shoved against the biting ends of wooden twigs and varnished planks, he forced his raft out into the waves. The waves pushed back for a few paces, until he reclaimed the water pole and used it to push the boat further into the saltwater. Once the reclining water finally seized the boat, Arn splashed through the five paces to clamber aboard.
The raft lurched as it hit a small rock under the surface of the shallows, but Arn only sank to one knee. He prodded the underwater ground with the wooden pole in his hands and made it around the undersized boulder. Now he was committed—his raft and he were going out onto the Deep together to survive or die together.
The wooden pole in his hands was as long as the guiding pole he’d made the first time, but was designed differently. Excluding a two-feet long grip for his hands, the entire length of the long pole was wide and cupped like a folded palm. He hoped his design would work, allowing him to lap the surface of the water and overpower the waves. For now, though, he pushed against the bottom like using a normal guiding pole.
The moon had risen notably, he realized, as he continued through increasingly deep water. He waited for that invisible cliff he’d encountered in Razaad, but didn’t encounter it this time. Instead, the water gradually deepened and Arn’s posture shifted. As the water grew deeper, movements with the pole grew harder.
It took close to an hour, heading south along the forested edge of Scoa, before he drifted far enough from land to lose track of the ground below the surface of the Deep. Arn’s muscles bulged as he tried to pull the curved surface of the pole through the water, and he didn’t accomplish much. The boat drifted onward without reacting to his small, strained movement. It was out of control again. Arn viciously dug into the waves of the Deep with his pole but it was impossible to move fifteen feet of wide wood through that much water.
Arn knew what to do—he pulled the pole out of the water and set it down across the varnished muddy deck of the raft. He would shorten it, he decided, rummaging through his pack for tools. He only hoped that shortening didn’t lessen its ability to control the water. Would he be able to steer his raft by simply scattering the saves at the surface of the Deep?
He brandished one of the shiny squares he’d broken from the wooden door covers in those ruins. He placed the edge of the hard little piece against a point on the guiding pole he judged to be about half of its length. With a loud clack, he brought a stone mallet down onto the sharp, shiny chunk. Wooden shavings sprung up around his fingers and the length of the pole shuddered. After a few hits, it finally splintered and he yanked his hand back to avoid being poked. He hit the makeshift chisel a few more times before twisting it out of the splayed wooden wound. He moved it over an inch to the right, and began a new hole in the wide surface of the ocean tool.
It took Arn over an hour to finish breaking the pole in half, and by then, Scoa had faded into a dark spot on the night horizon. Arn gazed up at the stars, before looking down at Razaad once more. He needed to get control of his raft again—he wasn’t drifting in the space between islands but was moving over the Deep adjacent to both. If he didn’t move closer, he would miss Razaad altogether, and be pulled out into the endless horizon.
Arn plunged his shorten pole into the ocean and pulled, forming eddies as it moved through the water. The raft lurched in the opposite direction, twisting in its spot. Arn blinked. It had taken a few seconds to complete the hefty action, so he tried again, ploughing the waves with his burly pole. The boat moved a little more in that direction, but continued to twist in place.
It’s no good, he thought. He’d just turn around. He couldn’t move this big thing fast enough to switch sides the raft or hold it straight using his core strength. He pulled the pole out, and drifted for a few more moments on the tail ends of his tidal momentum. Maybe if I make it shorter again?
By the time he finished halving the remnant of his pole again, the moon was approaching a position directly overhead. He’d been out here for hours. Razaad and Scoa were as far from him as they were from each other. He looked at his short pole: it was no more than six feet long now, with only a few feet of wide section and a few feet of grip left.
Arn stared at the unused half that he’d shaved off hours earlier, when he hadn’t been able to budge the pole in the Deep. It was just a big plank. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but he had an idea of it cutting through the water, like a blade through flesh. Not the way he was using the pole with the grip. He scratched his head, caked with dried sweat, and turned back to the edge of the raft with his handier tool.
Water splashed loudly as he jabbed the widened end in. Swirls of water spun away as he moved it swiftly through the saltwater. The raft turned, but Arn had moved it quickly enough, it seemed, that he also eased forward. He continued on this curve for a moment, thinking about his movements as he flailed around, a few miles from land. If he moved side to side, stepping shakily across the jerkily moving raft, he could account for the boat’s spiraling, but it was hardly an effective way to move…
And then it dawned on him. The plank. He tossed his effective pole down to the deck of the raft and yanked out his stone axe from his pack. His hand came away speared from salted meat, and his stomach churned hungrily, but he didn’t have time right now. He had an idea instead! He broke apart some of the varnish and twigs at the front of the watercraft until he found one of the enormous logs that framed the perimeter of the raft. He sank to his knees and raised the axe overhead. It took him three or four hits to build a furrow in the wood. He didn’t want to cut through the frame—that’d knock apart his entire raft. But instead, he dug a space in there, like the crease in a folded arm’s elbow.
Arn placed the wide, unused wooden plank into this space and hammered it further into place. The plank ran at an angle to the deck of the raft, extended several feet in front of the raft under the water. As the craft gently drifted forward, the plank cut through the water like a wide knife.
The makeshift sailor stood up, scarcely daring to breath as he waited to see if his idea would bear fruit. He reclaimed his short-handled tool and splashed it through the waves again. As he had hoped, the plank he’d shoved into the front of the raft held steady and decreased the rotation of the craft. He could paddle four times in a row, he decided, before needing to counter with a few steps to the other side of the raft and an awkward left paddle or two.
The moon started to sink as Arn finally began forcing his way across the Deep with purpose. He panted ecstatically as sweat ran down his temples and his muscles groaned—he could steer! His willpower, and his arms, guided him over the Deep. The fathomless surface of water was his to control now. The raft picked up a little speed as he dug the wooden pole back and forth through the ocean. Razaad waited, straight ahead.