“I caught one!” shrieked Gamden. He lifted a small grey fish over his head as he cheered incoherently and stumbled back toward the shore. He lost his footing twice on the way and Arn feared he would lose their first meat two days.
They had the fish gutted and half devoured in under ten minutes. They took turns nibbling on broken pieces of bone or sucking flesh out of the scaly membrane. Arn remembered one day, as a twelve-year-old, turning up his nose at the delicate innards of a fish his father had cut open. None of that disgust was left now, not even a little. Now there was only the hunger.
“Thank you,” Arn murmured as they lay back in the shade. It was painful to move. The sand was a thousand points like Arn’s long-drowned sword. The wind was Ratha’s hateful voice in Arn’s deafened ears.
Ratha. Thoughts of his tiny sister brought tears to Arn’s eyes. He would never see her again—even if he could, she would have spit upon him. She would have looked at his ribs jutting through his sun-blasted torso and told him this is what he deserved. Arn stood up. He couldn’t sit still when he was thinking like this.
“Not going to sleep?” Gamden asked, opening one eye. Red veins nearly obscured any white from being visible. The man’s tanned white skin looked deathly grey in the shade.
Arn grunted, “Can’t.” He lurched across the sand and into the sun. The blazing day was a reminder of Arn’s un-escaped failures.
He paced along the sandy beach, going nowhere in particular. For the thousandth time since landing on this sandy lump of an island, he wondered if he should have acted differently. But how would he have known? Stone Spear had told him, “This needs to be done.” Stone Spear had shown him the marks in the stone wall—the truth that Razaad would dwindle. Scoa was the only choice and fighting the only way. He wiggled his tongue behind one of his teeth, trying to loosen a piece of bone or cartilage from the fish. Then, freeing it at last, he lifted his head to spit it forward, toward the water, toward the… boat!
“Gamden,” Arn murmured. He blinked. One of those large boats they had watched drift past was cutting through the water a mile or two out from the shore. This was the first time Arn could see what looked like humans on board, beneath those strange white moon-like constructions. He rubbed his eyes with his grimy hands and blinked some more to clear the blurriness from them. “Gamden! Boat!” he hollered. “Help! Boat!”
Gamden kicked up a cloud of sand as he sprang to his feet. He fell forward, his body unable to handle such a sudden movement, and landed on one knee before finally balancing on his feet. “Ho! Boat! We’re stuck here!” he shouted.
Arn grew dizzy from his shouting. The wooden boat was like a building on the water, but it wasn’t travelling toward the isle. It was travelling beside. “Please!” he bellowed. “Help us!” By now he had shuffled into murky waves on the beach. He made it up to his ankles in the water before he collapsed to his knees. “Turn and see us!” he shrieked.
“Help!” Gamden roared behind Arn. He slammed the coconut shell pieces together, creating a clapping sound that didn’t seem any louder than their hoarse voices.
We’re dead, Arn thought, as he watched the ship drift on its way. He had known it already. Being rescued by a mythical contraption of the Deep was not part of that. He looked down at the waves for a moment. How easy it would be to fall face-down—would Gamden stop him? He looked up again, in an attempt to turn and see Gamden. But instead, he saw the watercraft turning. It was moving toward them now. Someone on board waved his arms overhead.
“Blind me,” Arn murmured. He rubbed his eyes. The boat really was moving toward them. Gamden grabbed Arn’s shoulder in hysteria. “They’re coming back,” Arn breathed, and slowly forced himself to stand up.
“We’re—we’re saved,” Gamden stammered. He whooped loud enough to deafen Arn’s sore ears.
The boat was full of strange contraptions, Arn realized as it neared them. Ropes ran between tree-like branches. The moon-shape he had seen was square, he realized, and caught in the branches like someone’s discarded shirt. Suddenly, the ropes moved, and the canvas square contracted like a folded garment. This revealed more of the people on board. How many were there? How could so many fit on one watercraft without sinking it or making it unsteady in the Deep?
Someone shouted from the top of the boat and Arn witnessed a huge block, like a hunter’s hook made of stone, plunged into the water. The boat began to slow, held down by the weight they had dropped. More shouting and waving followed, but Arn couldn’t make out any of it.
A second, smaller boat appeared behind the first. Arn could see four people sitting inside it’s curved edges. It was nothing like his large rafts, and Arn could see no reason it would stay afloat. He watched the craft cut sleekly across the water, propelled by oars very similar to the ones Logern had devised for the fishermen of Razaad. It was only as it neared the shore of their beach that Arn realized the people on board were not like humans he had seen before. He glanced at Gamden to make sure his friend was both still conscious and also observing this bizarre spectacle.
The palest of the men that disembarked from the small boat was as dark as Arn’s burnt skin. But two of the four were soft brown like the bark of the trees on Scoa, and the fourth was as dark as night. Arn had never seen such a… he found himself at lack of a word. They appeared human in other ways, but he was certain that Jorik the Embalmer and spiritual guide of Razaad would have called them devils or creatures of another world. Arn decided to wait and see if they acted like humans, for that would be the truest way to determine what they were.
Even the way the men dressed was peculiar to Arn. Two were shirtless, like Arn and Gamden, but wore loose pants like the texture of leaves. The other two wore shirts that were as bright as berries or the blue sky on a sunny day. As they walked down the beach toward Arn and his friend, they smiled and showed unarmed hands. Despite that, Arn noticed two were wearing a sort of intricate war-paint, swirling lines and angular shapes etched across their torsos and arms.
“Esaran, esaran,” said the largest of the men, placing his arms on his hips. “Matia ayemzo atoh?”
Arn blinked. He glanced hard to the side and raised an eyebrow at Gamden, but Gamden shrugged. Whatever the man was saying… it meant nothing to either of them. “Thank you for stopping,” Arn said. If the war paint was indicative of a fight, Arn would lose sorely. He had no weapon, and—though he once might have survived these four with his bare hands—he could barely stand up now.
The newcomer shrugged. “Mars ayem atoh kekira dōtu itoh zomith,” he blabbered.
Losing his strength, Arn fell down to one knee. He sighed, looking past the men at their ship, and then looked back to the speaker with a shrug.
The man scratched his shaved scalp and then pointed sunward across the water. He moved his hand eastward, then raised both inquisitively. “Ayemzo atoh matevs būg?” he asked.
Arn squeezed his eyes closed. What was the man asking? He had pointed off the isle… so Arn looked up again and said, “Razaad.”
The men on the beach looked at each other, but all shook their heads without recognition—of course. Why would these… strangers know of Razaad? They were clearly from an altogether different world.
“Ayemzo sam athalo reunalo sau sim tifo?” the man from the Deep asked, pointing down at the sand.
“No, this is not Razaad,” Gamden replied.
“This is nowhere,” Arn agreed.
The strange men muttered to one another, quick rolling vowels that made no sense to Arn. One stepped closer to the apparent leader and said, “Bo matta bo otharek thoe athala.” He waved his hand toward Arn. “Thoe axetam.”
The leader twitched, startling his subordinate back a step. A show of authority, to have his men so on edge. “Thoe fittaran dobes,” the man declared loudly. He turned to face his men. “Dub ri Starath thoe talzan, pladam thoe bo ya perriva en lendam thoe dō meditam.”
“What are you saying?!” Arn demanded. His head was weaving back and forth, his vision swimming. He needed to lie down.
“They’re discussing us,” Gamden said. “We might need to defend ourselves.”
Arn stared up at Gamden. The man looked dizzy as well. Did he even know what he was suggesting?
The leader of this strange group stepped away from his crew. He knelt down in front of Arn, showing his empty hands again. “Dobes var meditam ayem fittaran?” he asked quietly. He pointed back to the enormous wooden building that somehow rode the waves. “Axala būg sau?”
Arn nodded. “Yes,” he replied. “I will go on the boat with you.”
The leader smiled. He stood up and motioned fingers closing toward his mouth. “Ayem ith andam thirmek nib?”
“Food? Nib? Yes, please,” Arn asked. Tears filled his eyes as his stomach growled. “Please, food!” He blurted, using their word for sustenance.
The big man turned to his subordinates and held out his hand. One begrudgingly opened a pouch from his hip and tossed a lump of cheese to his leader. The captain handed it to Arn with a smile. One of his teeth was metal like the sword Arn had once found, in the devilish ruins of Scoa. This was not a good man, he decided. Nonetheless, he broke the cheese in half and tossed half to Gamden. The man who had thrown the cheese scoffed, but a hand from the leader stopped him from moving. Maybe Gamden had looked at him the wrong way?
The two survivors quickly devoured the moldy lumps. Arn’s stomach roared at him, but he had the strength to stand up. “Thank you,” he said to the leader.
The dark-skinned man waved his hand toward the small boat. They started across the sand toward the wooden craft. Arn pointed at the larger vessel and, using the word the burly boss had used before, he asked, “Sau?”
“Tu,” another of the strange men said, shaking his head. “Ship.”
Arn blinked. It was a strange word, with a long consonant in the middle.
“Sau atoh…” their leader began. “Sau atoh….” He pointed at the sandy beach. “Sau.” He said. Then he moved a few paces over, into the edge of the water. “Here,” he said, repeating the short word. He moved again. “Here,” he said again.
Arn rubbed his malnourished hair and glanced at Gamden. “Do you know any of their language?” he asked.
Gamden shook his head. “I’ve never heard it before,” he replied gruffly.
Some of the men smiled at Arn as they made space on the smaller boat for him. Soon, Arn had collapsed against the raised wooden edge of the watercraft while Gamden filled the space between him and one of the Deep-travellers. Altogether too late, Arn realized he would be going back onto the waves that had taken so much from him. He tried to push himself upright, but then a new wave of vertigo struck him. He slid back against the wooden edge and his vision rolled back until it was gone.
He awoke groggily. Gamden and one of the strangers were shaking him, and his face was soaked with fresh water. Gamden still looked shaky himself—he quickly settled down once he was sure Arn would be fine. “We did it,” he said to Arn quietly. “We did it.”
Arn glanced at the men that sat around him. They eyed him suspiciously. Even the leader had a strange smile on his face now. “We’re still surviving,” Arn replied.
The man who had argued with the leader—he was the one with lighter skin than his fellows—leaned toward the captain again. “Tikio tori ca ship dōtu itoh korsam,” he said.
The leader grabbed the lighter-skinned man by the scruff of his faded blue tunic and pulled his face closer. “Ca ship,” he growled. He released the man and leaned back with a metal-glinting smile. “Ugia atraxo vuma’b var tikio talzalo.”
Arn hung his head back against the smooth wood of the alien boat and wished he understood what was happening. He knew only that the insubordinate man hated him. Once, Arn could have protected himself. Now, he was at the mercy of arguing men the likes of which he had never seen. He looked at Gamden, who was looking back at him with a frown.
Their little vessel bobbed back and forth across the waves. The strong men pulled at the water with their oars as they navigated along the length of the ship. When they reached the back of the larger boat, their craft was secured with tethers and a rope ladder was rolled down for the travellers to climb into the larger vessel. Arn and Gamden were too weak to climb, so more ropes were thrown down. The man who didn’t like Arn gruffly knotted the rope under his arms and shouted up at his comrades on the ship. Arn was soon dangling in midair. He started to blackout again, but they quickly yanked him over a wooden railing. He landed on his backside when firm hands released their grip on him and watched as the crew of the ship stepped back to stare at him. There were ten—no, twenty of them! How did they all stay afloat?
“What about Gamden?” he asked and started to turn toward the side of the boat. He blinked—Gamden was sitting next to him, staring up at the huge white cloth that hung in the middle of the watercraft. They must have pulled him up at the same time.
In a burst of commotion, another dark-skinned man burst through the ring of onlookers. This man was older than the others, with silvery hair similar to the grey hair Arn’s own people grew when they aged. The man dropped to his knees beside Arn—before Arn could do anything, the old-timer was pulling at his hair, examining his fingertips, and grabbing his face. He peeled Arn’s lip apart and looked at his teeth.
Arn managed to shove the man away. “What are you doing?”
The old man stood up straight and looked to the broad-shouldered leader of the smaller boat. The captain still seemed respected here—he was their chief. He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow to the aged man. “Osh izu tu?” Arn had heard the last word a few times and thought it meant, “no.” Was the man asking, “Yes or no”?
The silver-haired man replied too quickly for Arn to make out the words. The captain shrugged and looked around. “Acagila nor shoro sam olave, ush ri Morlo edam.”
While the crew groaned at whatever order their leader had given, the silver-haired man lifted Arn bodily. With the world tilting around him, Arn found his weakness returning. His little stomach was like the rock they had dropped into the sea, but rolling around inside his guts. “Morlo dō atoh,” the man said. “Morlo.”
“Arn,” Arn replied. He tilted his head to try pointing back at Gamden, who still sat against the side of the ship, but all he managed was, “Gamden,” before his eyes rolled back. Morlo carried him down into the dark interior of the impossibly-large ship and Arn drifted out of consciousness once again.