Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology

by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler

  Mary: The trapper that goes out by himself, that’s a standard in pretty much every culture. Instead of just having him out by himself all the time, there is the outpost that he returns to. The trading post.

  Howard: There is also a dynamic to consider, since you only have one bird. If you give him a human companion who has a bird that does something completely different, you get to explore the differences between the ways they interact with their psychic creatures.

  Brandon: Or he meets a trapper from a rival company. They say, “Let’s work on this together because it’s for the good of the birds.” Since we’re following the process of brainstorming, at this point I am now kind of excited about the story. I’m saying, “Ooooh,” but now I’m looking for extra coolness. So then I say, “Let’s look at my setting.” How can I make the setting interesting and cool? What can be distinctive about it? I don’t want the setting to just be something generic. Even in a short story, I want it to be something that you read and say, “That’s a different take on this setting.” I want to be doing that with character also. The plot feels original to me, so where could we set this? What is this planet like? What can be interesting about it?

  Dan: Lots of cool and interesting birds suggests jungle to me, at least in part. Jungle or Pacific Islands. Which could be really fun, as this is almost an archipelago type of situation.

  Brandon: Ooooh, archipelago. That’s cool!

  Howard: Lots of little boats.

  Mary: This also raises the question, if the worms are something that can infect people and give them the same ability, then they would be able to do that to other creatures. So perhaps this archipelago is filled with poisonous creatures.

  Brandon: That comes back to the original concept that the bird keeps the predators from finding me, and that’s why we started using them. I would probably shoot even for an age of industry in this. We started colonizing this continent, and we just kept getting eaten by these big monster things, but they never ate the birds. We figured out that if we tamed the birds the monster things couldn’t find us.

  Dan: Or you take the symbiotic idea and say the local chimpanzees always kept pet birds, which we thought was really weird until we figured out what was going on.

  Brandon: Yeah, chimps with pet birds is awesome! I love the archipelago idea. Could I do bird/fish hybrid? Could they swim and fly?

  Mary: Well you know there is that whole BBC documentary about the flying penguins on April Fools’ Day, but I don’t see any reason you can’t. There are plenty of flying birds that are also divers.

  Brandon: I’m thinking about a bird of paradise that is like an amphibian, in this fantasy or science fiction world. Could we do that, or is that just too weird?

  Dan: No, you could do that. But why do you want to do that? What would you gain other than just “Hey, cool thing.”

  Brandon: I’m looking for neat.

  Dan: Which is totally a good reason to do it.

  Mary: If I were going to do that, I would probably look at doing a chameleon hybrid, because the psychic ability is all about camouflage.

  Brandon: The feathers change colors? That gets into “This is cute,” which is also good when you’re doing an animal story.

  Howard: The challenge with birds as also fish is that fish are effective as fish because of neutral buoyancy. If you’re neutrally buoyant in the water you fly like a brick, but ducks have ballast bags. There’s a way to do this.

  Brandon: Okay, let’s stop talking about that and think of other cool aspects for this story.

  Dan: What about other symbiotic pairings of animals? If the powers come from a worm on these islands, maybe it’s not just the birds. Maybe one species of deer always has psychic snakes living in its antlers or something. There are different pairings.

  Mary: Actually, there is a good reason to do the birds as fish, if the worms come from seafood. So you’ve got psychic fish, which are clearly not going to be useful as pets.

  Howard: Well, they don’t have to be fish birds, but aquatic birds that eat a lot of seafood.

  Dan: The problem there is that if the worms get into the ocean, it’s easier to spread them around and they could potentially be all over the world. If they’re land-based, they’re stuck on this series of islands.

  Brandon: Yeah, they’re stuck on the archipelago. The question is why didn’t humans figure out about the worms yet? The answer could be that the archipelago is really, really dangerous. So, we go in, we capture a bunch of birds and bring them back. They work, but the offspring don’t. I’m liking that. The cool monsters are also something I want to explore.

  Mary: If it’s not just an archipelago, but a volcanic one, then you have hot mud baths. You have swampy things and earthquakes, and that can be one of the things the birds warn you of.

  Howard: Birds warn you of earthquakes and volcanoes. You take the birds back to the mainland and the birds manage to predict the supercaldera volcano in time to save civilization— Sorry. The book has just gotten bigger.

  Dan: If this is an island empire here, a bunch of islands that are so dangerous. They’re full of earthquakes and volcanoes and predators. One of your cool elements could be that the civilization that has grown up around here is all water-based like the junk cities around Hong Kong. They all live on boats, and the cities can move around the weather. It’s only the trappers that can venture onto the island looking for more birds.

  Brandon: Okay, we’ve got a really cool story here. I’m very pleased with this.

  FIRST DRAFT: SIXTH OF THE DUSK

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  Death hunted beneath the waves. Sixth saw it approach, though its details were hidden by the waters. A shadow wider than six narrowboats tied together, an enormous deep blackness within the deep blue. Sixth’s hands tensed on his paddle, his heartbeat racing as he immediately sought out Kokerlii.

  Fortunately, the bird sat in his customary place on the prow of the boat, idly biting at one clawed foot raised to his beak. The colorful bird lowered his foot and puffed out his feathers, as if completely unmindful of the enormous shadow that approached.

  Sixth held his breath. He always did, even still, when unfortunate enough to run across one of these things in the open ocean. He did not know what they looked like beneath those waves. He hoped to never find out.

  The shadow drew closer, almost to the boat now. A school of thinfish passing nearby, jumped into the air in a silvery wave, spooked by the shadow’s approach. The terrified fish showered back to the water with a sound like rain. The shadow did not deviate. The thinfish were too small a meal to interest it.

  A boat’s occupants, however . . .

  It passed directly underneath. Sak chirped quietly from Sixth’s shoulder; the second bird seemed to have some sense of the danger. Creatures like the shadow did not hunt by smell or sight, but by sensing the minds of prey. Sixth glanced at Kokerlii again. There was a reason most sailors clipped their Aviar’s wings, or at least tied them down. Sixth spurned such practices. But at times like this, with a shadow passing directly beneath—so large that it could have swallowed his boat whole—he wondered.

  The boat rocked softly, the jumping slimfish stilled. Waves lapped against the sides of the vessel. Had the shadow stopped? Hesitated? Did it sense them? Kokerlii’s protective aura had always been enough before, but . . .

  The shadow slowly vanished beneath. It had turned to swim downward, Sixth realized. In moments, he could make out nothing through the waters. Just that endless deep. He hesitated, then forced himself to get out his mask. It was a new device he had acquired only two supply trips back: a glass faceplate with some kind of leather—perhaps a sheep’s bladder or stomach—on the sides. He placed it on the water’s top and leaned down, looking into the waters. They became as clear to him as the water of an undisturbed lagoon.

  Nothing. Just the blue deep. Fool man, he though, tucking away the mask and getting out his paddle. Didn’t you just think to yourself that you never wanted to see one of
those?

  Still, as he started paddling again, he knew that he’d spend the rest of this trip feeling as if the shadow were down there, following him. Lurking in those endless depths. That was the nature of the waters. You never knew what lurked there. You probably didn’t want to.

  He continued on his journey, paddling his outrigger canoe and reading the lapping of the waves to judge his position. Those waves were as good as a compass for any trained in wayfinding. Once, they would have been good enough for any of the Eelakin, his people. Anymore, just the trappers learned the old arts. Though, even he did carry one of the newest compasses, wrapped up in his pack with a set of sea maps from the latest surveys. You could not stop times from changing, his mother said, any more than you could stop the surf from rolling.

  It was not long, after the accounting of tides, before he caught sight of the first island. Sori was a small island in the pantheon, and the most commonly visited. Its name meant child; Sixth remembered well training on her shores with his uncle.

  It had been long since he’d burned an offering to Sori, despite how well she had treated him during his youth. Perhaps a small offering would not be out of line. Patji would not grow jealous. One could not be jealous of Sori, the least of the islands. Just as every trapper was welcome on Sori, every other island in the pantheon was said to be affectionate of her.

  Be that as it may, Sori did not contain much in the way of valuable game. Sixth continued rowing, moving down the archipelago his people knew as the pantheon. From a distance, this archipelago was not so different from the home islands of the Eelakin, now a three week trip behind him.

  From a distance. Up close, they were very, very different. Sixth rowed past Sori and then her three cousins, the first of the closed islands. He had never set foot on them. In fact, he had not landed on many of the forty-some islands in the pantheon. A trapper chose one island and worked there all his life. To do otherwise was foolhardy.

  He saw no other shadows beneath the waves, but he kept watch. Not that he could do much to protect himself. Kokerlii did all of that work as he roosted happily at the prow of the ship, eyes half-closed. Sixth had fed him seed before the approach. Kokerlii did like it so much more than dried fruit.

  Nobody knew why beasts like the shadows only lived here, in the waters near the pantheon. Why not travel across the seas to the Eelakin islands or the mainland, where food would be plentiful and Aviar like Kokerlii were far more rare? Once, these had not been questions men asked. The seas were what they were. Those days had passed. Now, men poked and prodded into everything. They asked, “Why?” They said, “we should explain it.”

  Sixth shook his head, dipping his paddle into the water. That sound—wood on water—had been his companion for most of his days. He understood it far better than he did the speech of men.

  After the cousins, most trappers would have turned north or south, continuing along the wings of the pantheon until reaching their chosen island. Sixth continued forward, into the heart of the archipelago, until a large shape loomed before. Patji, largest of the islands. It towered taller than any of the others, like a wedge rising from the sea. A place of inhospitable peaks, sharp cliffs, and deep jungle.

  Hello, old friend, he thought. Hello, father.

  Sixth raised his paddle and placed it in the boat. He sat for a time, chewing on fish from last night’s catch, feeding scraps to Sak. The black-plumed bird ate them with an air of solemnity. Kokerlii continued to sit on the prow, chirping occasionally, now that they had approached. He would be eager. Sak never seemed to grow eager about anything.

  Approaching Patji was not a simple task, even for one who trapped his shores. The boat continued its dance with the waves as Sixth considered which landing to make. Eventually, he put the fish away, then dipped his paddle back into the waters. Those waters were still deep and blue, despite the proximity to the island. Some members of the pantheon had sheltered bays and gradual beaches that one could wade in. Patji had no patience for such foolishness. His beaches were rocky, and the drop-offs from them were so steep that deep water began only a few steps out.

  You were never safe on his shores. In fact, the beaches were the most dangerous part of a very dangerous place. There, not only could the horrors of the land get to you, but you were still within reach of the deep’s creatures. Sixth’s uncle had cautioned him about this time and time again. Only a fool slept on the shores of Patji.

  The tide was with him, and he avoided being caught in any of the swells that would crush him against those stern rock faces. Sixth approached what passed for a beach on Patji’s shores, a partially-sheltered expanse of stone crags and outcroppings. Kokerlii immediately fluttered off, chirping and calling as he flew toward the trees.

  Sixth immediately glanced at the waters beneath. No shadows. Still, he felt naked as he hopped out of the ship and pulled it up onto the rocks, warm water washing against his legs. Sak remained in her place on Sixth’s shoulder.

  Nearby in the surf, Sixth saw a corpse bobbing in the water. Beginning your visions early, my friend? he thought, glancing at Sak. The Aviar usually waited until they’d fully landed before bestowing her blessing.

  The black-feathered bird just watched the waves.

  Sixth continued his work. The body he saw in the surf was his own. It told him to avoid that section of water. Perhaps there was a spiny anemone that would have trapped him, or perhaps a deceptive undercurrent. Sax’s visions did not always show such detail, they gave only warning.

  Sixth got the boat out of the water, then detached the floats, tying them more securely onto the main part of the canoe. Following that, he worked the vessel carefully up the shore, mindful not to scrape the hull on sharp rocks. He would need to hide the canoe in the jungle. If another trapper discovered it, Sixth would be trapped on the island for several extra weeks preparing his spare. That would—

  He stopped as his heel struck something soft as he backed up the shore. He glanced down, expecting a pile of seaweed. Instead he found a damp piece of cloth. A shirt? Sixth held it up, then noticed other, more subtle signs across the shore. Broken lengths of sanded wood. Bits of paper floating in an eddy.

  Those fools, he thought.

  He returned to moving his canoe. Rushing was never a good idea on a pantheon island. He did step more quickly, however.

  As he reached the tree line, he caught sight of his corpse hanging from a tree nearby. Those were cutaway vines lurking in the fern-like tree top. Sak squawked softly on his shoulder as he hefted a large stone from the beach, then tossed it at the tree. It thumped against the wood, and sure enough, the vines dropped like a net, full of stinging barbs.

  They would take a few hours to retract back up. Sixth pulled his canoe over and hid it in the underbrush near the tree. Hopefully, other trappers would be smart enough to stay away from the cutaway vines—and therefore wouldn’t stumble over his boat.

  Before placing the final camouflaging fronds, Sixth pulled out his pack. Though the centuries had changed a trapper’s duties very little, the modern world did offer its benefits. Instead of sandals, Sixth tied on sturdy boots. Instead of a simple wrap that left his legs and chest exposed, he wore thick trousers with pockets on the legs and a buttoning shirt to protect his skin against sharp branches or leaves. And, instead of a shark-toothed club, he bore a machete of the finest steel. His pack contained luxuries like a steel-hooked rope, a lantern, and a firestarter that created sparks simply by pressing the two handles together.

  He looked little like the trappers in the paintings back home. He didn’t mind. He’d rather stay alive. He left the canoe, shouldering his pack, machete sheathed at his side. Sak moved to his other shoulder. Before leaving the beach, Sixth paused, looking at the image of his translucent corpse, still hanging from unseen vines at the tree.

  Could he really have ever been foolish enough to be caught by cutaway vines? Near as he could tell, Sek only showed him plausible deaths. He liked to think that most were fairly unlikely—a visi
on of what could have happened if he’d been careless, or if his uncle’s training hadn’t been so extensive.

  Once, Sixth had stayed away from any place where he saw his corpse. It wasn’t bravery that drove him to do the opposite now. He just . . . needed to confront the possibilities. He needed to be able to walk away from this beach knowing that he could still deal with cutaway vines. If he avoided danger, he would soon lose his skills. He could not rely on Sek too much.

  Sixth turned and trudged across the rocks along the coast. Doing so went against his instincts—he normally wanted to get inland as soon as possible. Unfortunately, he could not leave without investigating the origin of the debris he had seen earlier. He had a strong suspicion of where he would find their source.

  He gave a whistle, and Kokerlii trilled above, flapping out of a tree nearby and winging over the beach. His protection would not be as strong as it would be if he were close, but that shouldn’t matter. The beasts that hunted minds on the island were not as large as the shadows of the ocean, and so long as Kokerlii remained somewhat close, Sixth and Sak would be invisible.

  About a half hour up the coast, he found the remnants of a large camp. Broken boxes, fraying ropes laying half submerged in tidal pools, ripped canvas, broken pieces of wood that might once have been walls. Kokerlii landed on a broken pole nearby.

  There were no signs of his corpse nearby. That could mean that the area wasn’t immediately dangerous. It could also mean that whatever might kill him here would swallow the corpse whole.

  Sixth trod lightly on wet stones, listening to the water lapping over the edges of the broken campsite. No. Larger than a campsite. Sixth ran his fingers over a broken chunk of wood, stenciled with the words Northern Interests Trading Company. A powerful mercantile force from his homeland.