Chapter 2 - Help, I’m Alive

  Karina - Age 5

  They had been wandering the fractured wastes for years, Abdul was jaded and world-weary. Adil and Anwar had grown into men that were spitting images of their father. To young Karin, they were giants, protectors from all the ill of the world. She found their strength and resourcefulness fascinating, throwing rocks, sticks, seashells, and other loose objects they collected from fish bladder pouches around the trails they travelled to find the safe routes. Occasionally they’d hit pockets of air that burst into vortexes of fire, or shot the objects back at them on impact. Other times they would see a small patch of grass that was uncharacteristically withered and decayed along the path, and that would tell them to find another way.

  They found an island floating in the sky, a massive chunk of soil and rock spinning slow and stationary in the sky above the crater it originated from. “Let’s check up there.” Abdul declared. They opened their bags of gear and broke out grappling hooks on spools that clamped onto their belts. Abdul, Adil, and Anwar all secured them in place before the father lifted Karina on his back, legs cradled in his arms-grasp. They threw their hooks up to the top of the island until they found a hold, and hit a button on the belt clips that reeled them up. When their feet hit the ground, before them lay a large forest of evergreen trees with anomalous snow falling all around.

  Abdul was a sturdy man, broad-shouldered with a barrel chest, weathered arms and calloused hands. Square-jawed with dark olive skin, burnt by the sun and wind with crows feet adorning his harsh, dark brown eyes with a chipped scar running through the middle of his right eyebrow from where crystal rainfall grazed his face. His torso was adorned with a tattered tunic of woven hemp, patched in spots with dear Karin’s kelp leather bindings, and topped with a heavy coat of fish hides and sailcloths with a high collar to shield from the wind and snow, sleeves beginning to fray at the ends. His steps were heavy and tired as he took in the surroundings, his trousers made of fish skins, his feet covered in whale-skin boots with corkwood soles laced in sinew. His coral bracelet seemed to gleam faintly in approval of what he was seeing, though he and Nereus didn’t speak much anymore. Perhaps this floating island forest would be good enough to camp… It seemed remote enough to be hard for others to reach. “Adil, Anwar- scout this place and find us some food.” He ordered as he let Karin down from his back. “Girl- collect some sticks for firewood, we will camp here tonight.” He continued, brandishing his axe to start chopping wood from the trees.

  “Yes, Papa!” Adil answered. He was becoming like a younger mirror of Abdul, burly like him, but leaner, dark olive skin, although smoother and less for wear. His nose has irreparably bent a bit to the left from a hard fall years ago, and slightly curled, short, black hair framed his face. He wore a long-sleeved sailcloth shirt with a fish-skin jacket like his father, but cut shorter to the hips so he could move with greater ease, and closed with fishbone toggles. He had to his back a bow of wood and sinew-string, ready to fire with bone arrows in a quiver at his side if he found some prize game. His coral necklace shined subtly near his neck as well. A good sign from Nereus, perhaps? He found a tall, thick tree, and sprinted to it after tossing a few rocks to ensure a clear path. He pulled out some fish-hide gloves and donned them. Affixed to the blades of the hands were fragments of shark ribs, whittled and ground into long, sharp spikes. Shark-skin shoes of curious design were his choice of footwear, sharp bone spikes, like those on the gloves, jutted out from the toes, allowing him to use his feet and hands to climb the tree with ease using the spikes to reach the treetop and scout for food and potential spots of refuge.

  Anwar was quick to their heels, his face was the same olive shade as Adil’s, although his face was deeply scarred from the ricochet of shells from being the main anomaly-checker of the group. His hair was long, black, and straight, tied back into a ponytail with a cloth which swayed as he moved, adorned with a coral cabochon circlet on his brows and forehead. He sported a seaweed fiber tunic under a shark skin coat with a fur-lined hood adorned with small shark teeth, his pants were fish hide with barracuda boots. He tested the path with shells as he followed Adil on ground level. “Here, little fish!” He turned back and threw little Karina a stick with a tease before returning to his mission.

  Karin was bundled in Adil’s old sailcloth tunic with the kelp-stitched heart patch, oversized for her, retrofitted to cinch tighter around her with kelp leather cord, still more like a dress than a shirt for her. Her fish-skin coat flapped at the knees as she galloped around, catching Anwar’s stick and looking for more, the seal furred hood becoming matted in snowfall. Her tiny wood-soled sharkskin boots left little prints in the snow, and she quickly found herself distracted by her first snowfall, giggling as she made her marks in its surface and paused to notice the smoke billowing from her breath in the cold air against the dark bark of the trees.

  “Help, you useless girl!” he barked, tossing logs onto the fire, embers sparking faint and brief. His patience, once quiet after Mother’s death, had curdled into anger, his eyes hard, his hands rough. “Grab sticks- move!” Karina flinched, squeaking, “Yes, Papa, I’m sorry,” and scrambled from my log perch, stubby arms gathering twigs from the snow-dusted ground. He grunted, hefting his makeshift ax, a chipped blade lashed to wood, and turned back to the trees.

  “Adil, Anwar, any food?” he called, pausing mid-swing. Karina’s brothers emerged from the forest, tall shadows in hide coats, bows slung over shoulders, satchels light. Adil, his curly beard catching snow, opened his bag- forty frostbitten berries, a handful of seeds. “Nothing alive here, Papa,” he said, voice flat. Anwar, scarf tight over his smooth face, nodded south. “A Voice glows ten miles off. No game, just dead woods.” Father’s jaw tightened. “Keep hunting- we eat before dark.” They vanished into the trees; he glared at Karina, frozen, watching. “Karina! Kindling, now!” His ax pointed directly at her, sharp enough to sting.

  Adil and Anwar returned to their task in earnest, kissing the coral centerpieces to their jewelry with a breath, they became engulfed in loose scales of pale white, grey, and brown coral and barnacles as a form of camouflage. Perhaps they could get a jump on some critters this way and catch something worth eating. The forest was odd, one of the first things they saw leaving camp in that direction was a circle of mushrooms on the ground surrounding a hole. Worse than a hole, an absolute void of nothing on closer inspection, the depth of which could not even be perceived, just a solid black spot where even in the air above, the snowflakes just fizzled and disappeared rather than fall beyond the barrier of fungi.

  “Ya think the mushrooms could be edible?” Anwar asked immediately to Adil. Adil shot back like an arrow, “Don’t touch ‘em! They must be some kind of anomaly or haunt… I think pa mentioned something like this to me once. He called them fairy rings. No telling what happens if you step inside or break them. Better to leave them alone in case they’re malicious.” Anwar stepped back instantly, as he was about ready to inspect it. “I see.” He acknowledged, as they moved forward.

  “I have an idea. Keep eyes on me and follow. Try your best to keep up on the ground, crabby.” Adil said with a smile, then turned to the thickest tree which sprouted through the husk of a lifeless automaton, climbing it with his spiked gloves and boots with ease. Near the top, he scanned for another thick tree, kissed the necklace again, slapped the tree bark, and built a bridge from one tree to the next in crawling layers of crawling barnacles and coral in subdued but obvious colors so they could follow it back. Then another, then another; Anwar tried to keep pace, the coral bridge structures at least made it easier to see where Adil was headed better than looking for his faint-faded camouflage against the forest surroundings, but Anwar also had to keep mindful of the ground, making and throwing the occasional snowball to check his path before following. This obviously slowed him a little as he would hit a few commonplace air lock anomalies in his way and need to reroute slightly.

  After a while of keeping this up, Anwar noticed the bridges stop. For a moment he was unsure if he was just missing one, scanning the treeline for the next leap. “Shh-!” He heard from above, clueing him into Adil’s location. Anwar stayed still and in an instant heard a series of arrows loose from Adil’s bow. “Jackpot!” Adil shouted in celebration before Anwar saw him jump down from the trees, a thick layer of coral around his feet and legs cracking to brace the impact of him hitting the ground and softening the landing. Adil released his camouflage, barnacles and coral molting off of him as he approached some brown masses on the ground about 20 feet away. Anwar followed. “More like jackalope-pot.” He quipped with a wry smirk as he helped Adil pick up the bodies, large rabbits, with dark, reddish brown pelts and antlers that resembled tree root systems.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Back at camp, sunset bled red over the ice. Karina stacked Abdul’s logs and her twigs into a low pyre, just big enough to cook scraps. He ringed it with four thick log benches for the family. She perched, hands full of sticks, gazing south. They gathered, sitting at the bench as they collected their findings. A small family of bloodroot jackalopes and snowberries. Abdul went to work butchering the bunnies, and cracking the antlers off produced a blood red sap, like red maple syrup. Abdul tasted it, it had a characteristic spicy bite to it. The meal would not be bland. “Using this as a sauce would be ideal.”

  “Fascinating catch, Adil.” Abdul appraised. “Should be good enough for the night. “Perhaps we should head towards the Voice in the morning?” Anwar suggested as he passed his berries and edible snow fruits over to the father. “They might give us shelter, if only for a while.” Abdul violently shook his head at the idea. “I’d like to not gamble on the hospitality of the Voices. They aren’t all friendly to outsiders, and what good was Nereus when we needed him most? He only went and got Karin killed and wrecked us.” He bit back at the thought, glaring down at his coral bracelet in judgement.

  The Voice monolith pierced the horizon. Once black, now streaked blue, purple, green, a glow painting the sky in watercolor ribbons. Its beauty held Karina’s gaze. It’s like she could imagine the people there. Were they friendly? Dangerous? Was their Voice like Nereus, quiet, only singing soothing songs?

  Abdul had the fire going, cookware at the ready. He started skinning and separating the meat from the bone, cutting the heads off for now to save the de-antlering of the rest of the jackalopes toward the end of the cooking process. The fur hides were set aside to use for clothing scrap material. “I wish you’d give it time to mull it over, pa. The Voices are powerful. If it weren’t for Nereus, we’d have scared these things off.” He gestured to the jackalopes. “We used the coral shields to blend in and build tree-bridges to track them from above.”

  Abdul sighed. “We left home four years ago for a reason. Not all the Voices have our best interests at heart. One encroached on Latakia, started converting our neighbors, and forced us out. We thought we could cohabitate. It became clear they had other ideas.” He finished separating the meat and began cracking open the antlers, draining the sap over the cutlets.

  Karina tapped Abdul on the shoulder. “Not too much on mine, papa! I don’t like the spicy stuff.” Adil and Anwar chuckled. “Too hot for you, fish? There’s plenty of snow around to wash it out.” Adil joked, which coaxed laughter from even Abdul. He set the pan to the flames as they sorted out the snowberries on plates in preparation for the meeting of the meats to the feast. Abdul flipped the meats in the sizzling grill a few moments, the air became invitingly pungent. The plating began, and everyone sampled a taste. It was like chicken, but with an earthy, slightly gamey taste, cut by the sap- which was like a emulsion of maple syrup and heavy chipotle pepper.

  Anwar turned to Karina, “Well, picky-pike? Is it something you like?” He grinned, enjoying another bite with a couple snowberries piled right on top. “It’s okay with the berries, I guess…” She rolled her eyes, but smiled, playing into the ribbing. “Picky-pike’s too fancy for sap, she craves sweet cream butter!” Adil added. “Good luck getting that around here!” Abdul chuckled, joining.

  “Spare some to share?” A coarse, unfamiliar voice chimed in from outside the circle. The family jumped to their feet and turned to see three men emerge from the forest. Their skin was dark and scaled like fish, faces characterized by eerie glowing eyes contrasting the black skies behind them. The firelight gleamed from their oversized fangs. The first had a dour face, like a hatchetfish. The second had a dangling bulbous growth hanging between his eyes like an anglerfish. The third, the speaker, had a jagged face with longer, sharper teeth, and a prominently snakelike jaw. They all had elongated necks with slits like gills lining them, which flapped open and closed occasionally as they each made slightly gasping breaths. They could clearly breathe air, but it was a more active process for them. Their hands were webbed, hands more like fins with spines at the fingertips.

  They lunged at the family and there was no time for thought, only to fight. Abdul pulled his axe from the ground instinctively and charged at the dragonfishman, releasing a breath on his bracelet, he tried generating a barnacle shield on his body, but it crumbled as fast as it appeared. The Dragon blocked the axe-swing with his arm toward the middle of the handle, holding it back and pushing Abdul onto his heel. “Your Voice getting weaker, or is it just you?” The fishman jabbed.

  At the same time, Adil and Anwar were being chased by the hatchetfish and angler man, Adil tried keeping his distance from Hatchet by climbing a tree up to his coral bridges, firing wildly at the gillman in a panic. To no avail, the fish man used his refined muscle strength to jump up to the bridge and kick him off, snapping his neck on the branch of a nearby tree before he fell about fifty feet to the snow below.

  Anwar had a long knife made from the shell of a giant abalone, and brandished it to keep the Angler at bay, threatening swipes as it got close to him. He instantly had a thought- the fairy ring! He divided his attention between retracing his steps, recognizing air-locks with familiar snowballs still stuck mid-air around him in airlocks, and watching Angler’s movements to make sure he couldn’t get close too soon. Eventually he got there, left heel brushing a mushroom cap. Too close, he thought. He let Angler get in real close and take a swipe at him, and in that instant, he struck! Like lightning, he stuck the fishman right in the neck and dragged his body weight in with the swing to pull the fishman into the fairy ring, but in the process, he lost his own footing and slipped into the mushroom barrier! They both vanished entirely.

  Abdul pushed Dragon back. “Karina, run for the Voice, and never look back!” he shouted while Dragon was still staggered on the ground. Dragon noticed the child for the first time in that moment as Karina ran south. Dragon took a large bite at Abdul’s leg and ripped a mass of flesh from his thigh with a backwards pull of his neck, exposing bone to the cold snowy air with a gush of blood and confetti of gore that would litter the ground.

  Karina flew as fast as her little legs could take her, not stopping, even for a thick cloud of snowy fog that made her blind to the path ahead. She ran headfirst into a man roughly her father’s age in red robes, knocking herself down from the impact. “Are you alright, small one?” He stooped low, speaking at her level and offering a hand to lift her back up to her feet. She could see him this close. His skin was paler than father’s, hair long and straw-colored, done back in a ponytail. His face was clean-shaven and smooth, overall, though, his build was much like Abdul’s.

  The man had two others in red robes behind him, the details were much harder to make out. “Help! Fish guys! They’re after me!” The man nodded to the others as he rose to his feet, holding Karina’s hand in his left to help her up while manifesting a longsword in his right. A bracelet adorned that wrist, glowing a bright maelstrom of green and red, which seemed to allow him to create the weapon from nothing. His compatriots created their own armaments, the man wielded a long tube held at an angle, the woman had a cylinder object with a similar grip.

  The blonde man motioned Karina to stay behind him to his left side and they proceeded to go forward the way Karina came from. “We can’t! Papa said go south to the Voice!” The man paused. “We’re from there. We’re here for you. The fishguys won’t get you. We’ll take care of them.” He reassured her before they all walked on. Once they cleared the fog, they saw the wretched scene. Hatchet and Dragon’s backs were to them, scavenging the corpses of Abdul and Adil against a tree by the campfire. “Take the shards! They had a pup who went south!” Dragon barked at Hatchet just as the other red-robed man pointed the barrel of the long tube at Dragon’s head pulled a trigger with his finger, firing something at Dragon’s head that made it explode and spilled his brains all over the tree and Abdul’s remains.

  Hatchet jumped to its feet from Adil’s body, and just as it turned to look at them, the woman stepped up and shot his head point blank with the manifested cylinder. Silence now. Heavy, and pregnant with mixed emotions of relief and loss. Karina was shocked by the brutal scene, but also the corpses of her beloved father and brother, mutilated and scattered on the snow in reddened piles. “It’s over, little one. You can cry.” And she did, wailing and sobbing in tears that dropped in pools upon the snow drifted ground. The blonde man knelt down to her, lifting the hem of his red robe, using it to clean and wipe her face clean of snow and tears as she let it all out. “What’s your name?” He asked her. “Karina.” She answered.

  “Rest in peace, Karina. Happy birthday, our Eleanor. Let the past die. It can’t be changed, little one.” He hugged her close and tight, comforting her. “You lost your family, but you’re ours now. We will keep you safe, child.” The woman with them, dark-skinned with tight braids, knelt over and joined them, having produced a small fur skin she wrapped over Eleanor’s shoulders, as the girl slowly nodded, still crying. “It will take time to find out who you are now, but we’ll be your family.” The man continued, lifting her in his arms and kissing her forehead as she slowly calmed down.

  “We’ll have to take and destroy the shards. They’re clearly compromised.” The other man with them remarked. “Possibly curse-marked.” The woman chimed in, theorizing. For now, Eleanor said nothing, still processing her thoughts as they went to work collecting the necessary remains of the scene. She was saved by new giants. A new family. A new home.