Where There Be Dragons

Chapter 2

When I awoke the next morning, I had been separated from my plane, I had no idea what had happened and no idea where I was. Dad was still waiting for me to call him back, but there was no signal and my phone was full of sea water. I hoped he didn't think that I'd forgotten about him?

I had washed up on a mysterious island. The island was just like any other island on Earth and I guess I was still able to breathe the air? I could taste the salt in the sea, so, I could only summarise that I was still on Earth. But where did this island come from? It wasn't visible on any maps?

As I walked along the beach, parts of the puzzle started to fall into place, or so I thought. The sand was scattered with broken pieces of a shipwreck, but not just any ship. The design was not from this time, it looked like something Columbus would have sailed in. It was very old and very beaten by the elements. Away from the shore, there was a man-made shelter. It looked like it hadn't been used for many, many years, but I could clearly see from the style of clothing and armour that lay around it that this was the Tudor age and that I must have travelled back in time. That's what this portal must have been, it was a gateway through time. Sure, the armour had been replaced and adapted, I'm not sure how many times, but it still had that underlying style.

I cautiously combed the rest of the island looking for inhabitants, but found none. Fresh fruit grew on the trees, so I took the opportunity to fill up.

I very carefully searched around inside the shelter for more clues on who these settlers were, but it was pretty clear early on that none of them knew how to read or write. The only documentation I was able to find was a parchment with a strange symbol on it. It would be hard for me to describe as it was quite an abstract shape. All I could say was it was a very, very complex 2 dimensional polyhedron, a solid shape with many, many intricate flat edges all the way around. And when I say many, many edges, I really mean it.

There was all this evidence of habitation, but where had they all gone? There were no bones, no graves. Did they leave the island? And if so, where did they go and why?

The night was drawing in and the temperature was dropping. I started to gather wood to build a fire. The fire could be seen from out at sea. I was in two minds about whether this was a good idea or not. On the one hand, a rescuer might see it, but on the other so might a hostile inhabitant or something worse.

I rested for a few hours, sleeping by the fire with a sword that I had found by one of the suits of armour. I had no concept of time for when it happened, but I was awoken by a blaring of horn off in the distance. I grabbed my sword and very cautiously peered out above the flames. On the horizon was a boat. It was very hard to make out what type of boat it was in the darkness. Was it friend or foe? I was startled when the fog horn blew a second time.

A man jumped off the boat into the water, the ocean coming up around his ankles. He too was hard to see in the dark, but I caught a glimmer of what he was holding, it was a harpoon.

"WHO GOES THERE!?" demanded the man.

"Please, I'm a pilot, I just got caught in the storm and I don't know where I am".

"Pilot? You're the sea plane?"

"Yeah, that's right" I said with a degree of confusion as to how he knew me.

"I'm the cabin cruiser" he said.

"On its way to Puerto Rico." I continued as we finally had a mutual understanding of our history together.

"My name is Hank and this is my daughter Keira".

"Hi there" she said.

"I'm Connor, Connor Hudson" I said as I introduced myself.

"What it this place?" I asked.

"We're still trying to figure that one out, Connor" replied Keira.

We all agreed that it was probably best to sleep on the questions and hope that we might find some answers the following day.

The next morning, we headed towards the centre of the island and gathered supplies. Like me, they were worried how long their food would last, so wanted to stock up. After we had foraged for a few hours, Hank and Keira invited me back onto their cruiser.
Hank was a retired financial advisor in his 70s, he had a warmth and sense of adventure that reminded me of my Grandfather. And, by extension, reminded me, in a weird sort of way, that this nightmare was everything I had been wishing for up until now. It was a path that not many had walked for whatever reason, it was a new frontier.

We took it in shifts to watch the boat. First Hank, then Keira, then me. Keira was in her 30s, an elementary school teacher. Hank had bought the boat after Keira's mother had passed away and they just wanted to do something together to distract themselves from the tragedy.

Keira showed me a gold locket that her mother had given her and told me how her mother used to be her best friend. She then told me how her Dad wasn't always like this and that after her mother's death, Hank had become extra protective out of a sense of responsibility.

The hours passed and it was time to start my shift. As silly as it seemed, I felt safer doing my watch while holding a sword. Somehow, I had managed to convince Hank to let me drag it aboard, along with some of that old armour for each of us. I told him that we didn't know what dangers would lie ahead and that we might need it later. I think Hank was very worried about the weight problem, but I kept reassuring him that everything would be fine.

The following day, we continued on our quest by boat across these mysterious, uncharted waters.

"Where are we going, Dad?" said Keira.

"We're going to show Connor the castle wall, hun" Hank replied.

"The what!?"

Hank explained that they didn't even remember going through any gateway. The storm was so choppy and the mist so thick that they only realised they weren't in Kansas anymore on the following day when the fog had finally cleared.

"When we looked back, there was just this massive wall behind us. It looked medieval but -"

"But what?" I cried, desperate to squeeze out any more information about this place.

"The material. It looked like stone at first, but as we got closer, it was like no material we'd ever seen before. The pattern looked like it a collection of wires, like a circuit board." said Hank.

"Do you think that's where they're keeping this gateway? Behind the castle wall?".

"Maybe" said Hank.

As our boat cut through the sea mist, I got my first glimpse of this wall that they spoke of. Hank wasn't exaggerating, it was huge. But, of course, it had to be, as the gateway was so huge.

"But where's the doorway!? How do we get back!?" I shouted in my frustration.

"Just calm down, Connor. Let's follow it round and see where it takes us, OK?" suggested Keira as she became a voice of reason for me.

So that's what we did, for ten whole days! This was a big wall and there was no way we were going to climb over it, so what other choice did we have?

It was ten whole days before we finally saw something off in the distance. It was a vessel. It looked like a naval ship, something that had no place in Tudor times. So, maybe we hadn't travelled through time after all. Maybe I'd jumped to conclusions? Maybe this place was more like a graveyard for ships than some age of the conquistador. So if this wasn't about time travel, then what was the connection? What did we have in common with these ships? And then I thought back to Hank's original distress call and his co-ordinates and where we were at the time. Of course! Like so many before us, we'd got lost in the Bermuda Triangle!