Sand scrunched between Arn’s toes and wind whipped at his stiff black hair. His parched lips parted uncomfortably. All he could see, on any side of the sandy bluff, was a bleak, straight horizon. His left foot was lifted, set on top of the beached log—one of the only things Arn had left of Razaad. He had dragged it out of reach of the tide.
“This one is ready.” The other inhabitant of the island spoke with a gruff voice. Arn turned around.
Gamden was pointing up to the water bag, his wiry arm straining. They had made three such bags out of the remains of Arn’s leather pack and a tattered tunic the other stranded man had long since given up on. Each bag was fastened to one of the island’s four trees, stuffed full with chilled leaves for condensation.
Arn had taught the weak man the trick. For the last three Moons, Gamden had lived off rainwater and fish. “I’ll get it down,” he said, and limped across the dry dirt above the beach. Gamden was weaker than him, despite the storm and Arn’s time sailing on the Deep.
Gamden pushed the lump of driftwood into place for Arn, and Arn climbed up on his tiptoes to yank the stone peg out of the tree. As they shared their total harvest of four mouthfuls, they sat in the shade of wide, bright green leaves, and passed the time with questions. “Where are you from?” Arn asked, quietly.
Gamden shrugged. “You’ve never heard of it. What happened to your nose?”
“This isn’t the first island I have wrecked upon,” Arn told him. The man raised his bushy eyebrows and glanced at Arn with red-webbed eyes. Arn explained, “It was a larger island, with more resources. I survived it.”
“You left it?” Gamden questioned.
Arn nodded. “I did,” he said. The four trees of his new home would not provide enough wood for another raft.
They grew big brown nuts, Gamden told him, though the storm that delivered Arn to his shore had blown many of them into the Deep. “What happened to your finger?” Arn asked.
Gamden held up his four-fingered left hand and grinned manically. “A friend of mine cut it off,” he said. “It got infected after a particularly nasty crab bite. He did me a service, but I didn’t recognize it at the time.”
My ‘friends’ told me to give up on crossing the Deep, Arn thought. Even Shar had had the right idea back at the start. Gamden interrupted the thought by nudging Arn’s hand for the water back. He took his second mouthful and then turned back to Arn. “We should work on your fishing,” he said.
They had made thin spears from driftwood branches and secured scrappy shells to each. Arn was not as good as Gamden, who had worked as an experienced fisherman before being lost at sea. “Have you seen anything out there?” he asked Gamden. “Anything else?”
“Once,” Gamden said. “I saw a big one sailing by. Looked like a crescent moon close to the horizon, but I know there were people on it.”
Arn nodded. “My people thought they were omens,” he shared.
A jutted lip and a shake of the head disproved it. “They’re not.”
I wasn’t all wrong, then, Arn decided. He lifted the sunburnt leather to his lips and let the last few drops of water slide down his tongue and into his throat. Resting for a moment seemed necessary, to absorb the liquid, but he soon shambled to his feet. Gamden waved him to sit back down for a few moments, but Arn stumbled onward, past the fourth tree, to the oblong point of the island. They had planted leaves in little holes here, to cool them from the sun’s heat.
“Rest a moment, Arn,” the other castaway called. “You’ll work yourself too hard.”
Arn dug with his fingers, turning up tiny shells that looked like lost teeth and thick, sticky sand. Soon enough he fished out the chilled vegetation and wiped it clean on the outside of the leather sack. He paused, remembering something.
“You were talking in your sleep again,” Gamden called. “Talking to people from your home, I think.”
Arn nodded. “Do you see it too? The dreamworld?”
Gamden smiled again. He smiled a lot more than Arn. “Never heard it called that, but aye, I dream too.”
“Vivid dreams? Where the world isn’t as it should be?” Arn asked. He deposited the leaves into the water sack and, legs groaning, hobbled back toward his friend. He spoke quietly, not caring what Gamden heard of his disturbed sleep. “The rules don’t apply, the people know things they shouldn’t. More often than not, they spite or challenge. I wouldn’t pay them any mind.”
“Nor me,” Gamden said. “We’re stuck here together, friend, and there’s no challenge except the elements.”
Arn nodded. Gamden had survived for three moons, he claimed, so Arn was sure he could survive longer. He was most troubled by that persistent question that a water scale had first posed to him, speaking all reptile-like in his nightmares: ‘how to leave?’
The stone pin fit into its familiar nook, suspending the cool leaves in the view of the blistering sun. With a sigh, Arn picked up his reed-like spear, and looked at Gamden. The survivor was whittling away at a little design on a tree near him with their single, stone knife. He drew wildcat faces or shapes of the moon, though Arn had already asked him not to dull their only weapon. Arn tapped Gamden’s knee with the flat end of his fishing spear. “Coming?” he asked.
Gamden groaned and rose to his feet. The three scars on his shoulders stretched as he contorted; he claimed they were from hauling ropes, but one looked like a blade wound. He looked Arn in the eye and nodded. “Beware fish, Arn likes to kill things.”
They walked down the sunny, salty beach, while Arn frowned. He told Gamden he just wanted to get better at lasting on their island. He had never liked killing, but it was always necessary. Gamden’s words stirred him, like the swishing water, but he put his shell-spear to work in no time. Supper was necessary.