by Kara Timmins
The animal opened its cage of sharp yellow teeth and screamed, a horrible battle cry of its own.
The creature wasn’t human, but its body was similar enough that Eloy hoped he could predict its movements with similar accuracy. He saw a twitch in the creature’s left shoulder. Eloy shifted his sword and let his body move with the template of experience. The sharp edge of his blade met the soft skin of the thing’s attacking arm. Eloy saw the blur of the right arm swipe at his other side. With both hands on the hilt, Eloy continued the momentum of the first strike in a low swing to meet the other arm. This time, his cut was better. The extra force cut right through the thing’s thin arm at the elbow.
Eloy dropped low in a crouch and shuffled backward. The animal lunged forward with its best weapon: its teeth. Eloy’s back-step put him just out of range of the gnashing bite. The attack was close enough for the stench of rotting flesh—whether that was from the fetid patches of the thing’s own gums or from something trapped in between the layers of teeth was unclear—to assault his nose.
Eloy attacked, the point of his sword leading the way. He buried his blade into the creature all the way to the hilt. His body pressed against the thing’s sticky, reeking body until he was sure the movement he felt was only the final twitches of death. Once he was sure, Eloy heaved the thing forward, the small dome of its head hitting the padded forest floor with a thud.
Eloy spun around to find Neasa and Malatic. The second creature was at their feet. These things were top predators, there was no doubt, but they were older and hungry, besides the fact that they were hunters who made the most of sneaking up on their prey. Not only had Eloy been given fair warning, Neasa and Malatic were fighters more than the sailors.
Neasa stood on the creature’s back, which was now face down in the ground, her blade secured with the sharp edge under its chin. She buried the tip of her sword in the ground and pulled up on it like a lever, cutting off the creature’s head at the base of its thin neck.
The three looked around at each other, panting.
“Are there more?” Neasa asked.
“I don’t know,” Eloy said. “I don’t think so.”
“How did you know where to find us?” Neasa asked. “How did you know to come at all? I heard you before I saw them.”
Eloy opened his mouth, hoping the right words would find their way out. His mind was still too frantic, still too focused on surviving, for any semblance of complex thought.
“We need to get out of here,” Malatic said, cutting in.
“And go where?” Neasa asked.
“Back to the canyon,” Eloy said.
Eloy turned and started running the way he had come, and he heard Neasa and Malatic running too. The forest was dark now, full night. Every shadow or rounded shape seemed dangerous. He kept his sword readied in front of him for anything that made a move.
He ran toward the glowing light. He ran toward safety.
Eloy broke through the trees and slowed to a stop at the lip of the canyon, the light wrapped around him like a safe embrace.
“That’s incredible,” Malatic said between breaths.
Eloy was bent over trying to catch his breath. “You have no idea.”
The gnats floated and bobbed in free form. They weren’t trying to show anything, not anymore.
The three sat on the rocks at the edge of the cliff. Neasa rummaged through her bag and found the leaves and tools she needed to sew up the bleeding scratch on Malatic’s shoulder, and Eloy explained what he had seen and how he’d known they were in trouble. He was starting to wonder if the whole thing had been an illusion; that his intuition had somehow triggered a hallucination, but the gnats shifted again soon after he finished his story.
He was equal parts grateful that the wonder was real and nervous about what they were going to show. The last time, after all, had been a dire warning. But as the image came together, his anxiety slipped away. The gnats were showing the moths, flapping their velvety wings around each other. The gnats couldn’t show the wonder of the moths’ colors, but the golden image they made was beautiful in its own way.
Neasa gasped in wonder. “They have collective thought,” she said. “They communicate with one another.”
“And they watch and remember,” Eloy added. “I wonder how much.”
“Why would they help us?” Malatic asked.
“I don’t know.” Eloy looked at the puckered skin of the wound on Malatic’s shoulder. “But I’m glad they did.”
“You’re not kidding.” Malatic looked down at the wound too. “We were careless. We should’ve been watching.”
“At least now we know what to look out for,” Eloy said.
“We know one thing to look out for,” Neasa corrected. “Who knows what else lives in this forest. What are we going to do now?”
Eloy knew what she meant. The storm was still too far away. They were out of time, and their new knowledge meant they would have to move even slower than before. Not to mention, they still didn’t have a solution for crossing the canyon.
“We have to go back,” Eloy said. “I have to ask Captain Kern for more time.” The words were almost physically painful to say. “Maybe I’ll ask if any of the crew want to come with us. More eyes will help.”
“Are you going to tell him what you’re looking for?” Malatic asked.
“I’m going to have to,” Eloy said. “We’ll start heading back at first morning light. We’ll get better sleep here than we did last night, so that’ll help, like Neasa said.” Eloy pointed into the canyon. “They helped us once. I’m sure they will again if something comes up.”
Neasa and Malatic gave somber nods, their eyes tinged with something close to pity.
The three lit a small fire and ate a meal of fruit and grubs. Neasa fell asleep first.
“You go ahead,” Eloy said to Malatic, “I’ll wake you up for the next lookout. She’s going to wake up early, anyways.”
“Wake me up as soon as you start to drift.” Malatic lowered himself down to lay next to Neasa. “And thanks for that back there. That could have been a lot worse.” Malatic looked down at Neasa.
“I can’t think about that.” But the thoughts of Goodwin, and reliving those feelings again, were already at the surface of his thoughts. “Get some sleep.”
Eloy looked back across the canyon, but this time he looked through the dancing lights to the shadows on the other side. The way forward was so much closer than the beach behind him. Every step over there would be slow, but it would be progress. Still, he didn’t have a choice. He was out of time.
17
The gnats were gone when Neasa toed Eloy’s side the next morning. Rather, they weren’t gone, but they were no longer emitting any kind of glow.
Eloy smiled at the little bugs. Strange to have such affection for things that were so small, but this was a strange new world.
“We should be able to make it back faster since we know the area better,” Neasa said as she looped her bag over her shoulder. “And we can follow the path that we’ve already carved through the forest. We’ll make it back in time.”
“We’ll move as fast as we can,” Eloy agreed. “Safe and quick.”
“Safe and quick,” Neasa repeated. “Let’s go.”
Keeping to the same path, led by Neasa and her knowing and observant eye, did make the trip back a little faster. What had taken them two days before took them a day and a half on the way back. Eloy didn’t see any more signs of the strange humanlike creatures, but he kept his senses keen to any shift around them. He started to know the different sounds around him that weren’t anything to worry about to the point where he eventually stopped hearing them. He focused on the things that could mean danger. He was learning the tempo of the forest.
By the latter half of the second day, the smell in the air shifted to something lighter and saltier
. They were still behind the curtain on the foliage, but Eloy was so attuned to the forest that their approach to the beach was undeniable.
“This isn’t where we came in,” Malatic said. “It’s still dense here. I don’t see where we cut a path.”
“We’re close enough,” Neasa said. “It’ll be faster if we cut another path and then follow the beach until we find the others.”
“Your desire is my treasure to find,” Malatic said.
Neasa shook her head. “Save it, dream talker.”
Malatic walked past her and started cutting at the vines with his sword. “Oh, I have a whole bunch of promises saved up.”
18
The fresh air of the beach was so sweet that Eloy took a few moments to close his eyes and breathe it in. He still didn’t feel affection toward the rolling ocean in front of him, but he did have a renewed appreciation for it.
Malatic had been right: they weren’t at all close to where they had gone into the forest.
“Which way?” Eloy asked.
Neasa looked up the beach, and then down. Both directions looked the same to Eloy.
“Down,” Neasa said, pointing to the right.
“Are we close?” Eloy asked.
“Should be.” Neasa started down the beach.
The shoreline curved ahead of them, breaking their line of view from what was beyond. Eloy thought back to the last time he’d been there. He trusted that Neasa was right. She usually was.
Eloy expected to see the crew of the Siobhan lounging in the sand as soon as they rounded the other side of the jutting section of the beach, but there wasn’t anyone there. Eloy looked back toward the way they had come. Maybe they’d gone the wrong way.
Neasa didn’t look back.
Instead, she quickened her pace to a jog. Eloy and Malatic followed her. Then Eloy saw it: the front of the Merrow sticking out of the sand like a tombstone. There were holes all around the sand, signs of where the crew had tried to find remains to take back to Oppo, and blackened patches of charred wood and ash. Fish bones scattered the area, picked clean and discarded.
Neasa looked down the beach toward where they had left the Siobhan. There wasn’t anyone there. They were the only ones on the beach.
“Maybe they went in the forest,” Malatic said, his tone still hopeful.
“Nah,” a voice said from the shadows of the path in the trees. “They all went back to the ship the day after you left.”
Eloy recognized the voice.
Niall stepped out from the shadows first, and Oisin followed close behind him. What Niall had said didn’t make any sense, and Eloy was having a hard time connecting the idea to reality. Having Niall and Oisin standing in front of him didn’t help make things clearer.
“Then we should meet them back at the ship,” Eloy said.
“Sorry.” Niall tapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I didn’t say that right. They went back to the ship and then they sailed away on it.”
Things were making less sense.
“Why would they do that?” Neasa asked.
“Because they found what they were looking for,” Oisin said. “No need to stick around, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Niall said, “no need to stick around. Captain Kern didn’t care much for you anyhow, grand stories or no.”
“But he wouldn’t just leave us here,” Neasa said, her voice rising.
“If that were true,” Eloy said, “why would the two of you still be here?”
“We didn’t like what he was doin’ to the three of you,” Oisin said.
“We didn’t like him leaving the three of yous, and we told him as much,” Naill said.
“We told him as much,” Oisin said, “and he didn’t like that. Lots of not likin’ happened. Anyhow, he told us if we tried to follow them back to the Siobhan he would use our guts for chum. After what we said.”
“We may have said some unkind things,” Niall said. “But it just didn’t seem right leaving the three of you stranded.”
“You don’t seem concerned,” Eloy said.
“We’re not,” Oisin said.
“We’re not concerned because the only thing that makes a captain a captain is a ship,” Niall said, “and we have no problem making a ship.”
“You can make a ship that can get us back across that?” Malatic pointed out to the ocean.
“We practically made the Siobhan,” Oisin said.
“Made most of it,” Niall said, “and maintained the rest. We grew up on those ships.”
“You think you can make another ship from the stuff here?” Neasa said. “The materials that grow here are very different than what grows around Oppo.”
“Eh,” Oisin said. “It’s not so different.”
“Not so different at all,” Niall agreed. “We’ve been looking around just close to here, and it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Eloy looked out into the ocean and scanned its empty horizon. He had wanted more time, lusted for it, but he didn’t want it like this. The prospect of the trip back being more undesirable than it had been before was hard to imagine, but the idea of going over it with something made in a hurry made it so much worse. There would be even less of a barrier between them and the water—and what lay underneath the ocean’s surface.
But there wasn’t any other choice. Eloy had trusted Captain Kern at his word, which turned out to have been a foolish thing to do.
“How long will it take you to build a new ship? Can you build something that big?” Eloy asked.
Oisin and Niall looked at each other.
“Months,” Niall said. “Doesn’t have to be that big for just the five of us.”
“Not so big,” Oisin said. “But no way to say how many months.”
“Okay,” Eloy said. “If that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is. There isn’t any other choice. The five of us can do this.”
He wanted to be as okay as his words sounded, that he wasn’t angry or worried, but everything that had seemed so clear and straightforward when they’d first arrived was gone. Everything was in upheaval. More than anything, he hated the familiarity of difficulty.
He sat down on the sand and faced the ocean. The lack of a ship transformed the large body of water from a challenge into a barrier. With the exception of Neasa and Malatic, everything that mattered was on the other side. The world at his back was wild and dangerous.
But there was something else at his back too: the place set aside just for him. And now he had more than enough time to get to it.
19
Eloy narrowed his gaze and stared into the forest, its dark green shadows shifting in the beach breeze.
“Keep an eye out,” Eloy said. “There was a skull on the beach for a reason. Those things can easily make it out here.”
Night was almost on them, and the five were finishing up their meal of fish and fruit.
“At least those creatures will be a lot easier to see out here,” Malatic said.
“Maybe,” Eloy said. But he still didn’t feel comfortable.
While they built their camp for the night, Neasa and Eloy had explained what they’d seen in the last few days to Oisin and Niall. Malatic didn’t contribute to the conversation, and he kept his distance from the brothers.
The story that Niall and Oisin had told about their standoff with Captain Kern seemed odd, and there were a few things that didn’t make sense, like why they would risk themselves in a wild land for three people they didn’t know, but Eloy was grateful they were there all the same. He didn’t want to think about their chances if they weren’t. He didn’t know how to build a ship, let alone one strong enough to handle weeks at sea, and he knew Malatic and Neasa didn’t either.
The brothers were strange, but they were a part of the group now, whether Malatic, Neasa, or Eloy liked it or not.
“You said there were only two of these things?” Oisin asked.
“Yeah,” Eloy answered. “Just two.”
“And there were only two in the light thing?” Niall asked while crunching on a charred fish bone.
“Yeah,” Eloy said.
“Were they the same two?” Oisin asked.
“It’s hard to say,” Eloy said. “But I don’t think they were. The two we killed looked smaller. But it’s hard to know.”
“No way to know for sure, I guess,” Oisin said.
The story didn’t elicit any concern in the two brothers. If anything, they seemed bored.
“Are you going back in?” Niall asked. “Or did you find what you were looking for?”
Eloy looked at Malatic and Neasa, their faces lit by the warm glow of the fire.
“We didn’t,” Eloy said.
“So are you going to go back?” Oisin asked.
Eloy looked at Neasa. “I guess that depends.”
“On?” Niall asked.
“On how much extra time we want to be here,” Eloy said. “It’s going to take a while to build the ship, unless you two are okay working on it while we go back in.” Eloy looked from Oisin to Niall.
“I don’t know,” Niall said. “It sounds a bit shaky in there.”
“Sounds like you could use the extra eyes,” Oisin said.
“Then we have to ask ourselves if we want to delay getting the ship built.” Eloy directed the question at Neasa and Malatic.
Malatic looked to Neasa, deferring the response.
She looked into the fire for a moment. “Of course we’ll go back in and look. It’ll be easier now that we don’t have to rush.”
Eloy looked back at the brothers. “And you’re sure you want to go? Can you fight?”
“Oh, we can fight,” Oisin said.
“We can fight,” Niall agreed. “Don’t even remember when we learned. Always been here.” He tapped his finger against his forehead.
Eloy looked across the fire just in time to see Malatic shake his head.
“Since we have more time,” Neasa said, “we can prepare, spend a few days catching fish, boiling saltwater, and using the salt to dry and preserve what we catch. That way, we won’t have to spend time looking for food. We now know which fruits around here are okay to eat, so we’ll dry and pack those too.”