Worlds Away Book 1: Crucible

Chapter 2: Tides

Pa, myself, Shilos dad Fetu, and a man named Ezekial heft our wooden oars into our hands and begin rowing.

 

Foreigners amidst a sea of fish our wave travelers begin to slowly drift away from the only home we have ever known. Fausina's traveler floats several meters ahead, leading the flotilla of flat crafts like a mother duck and her ducklings. Obediently we follow. The motion of the sea rolls us up and down over and over as each wave grows and builds underneath us. All the while the sound of water crashing behind us echoes in an almost soothing pattern.

“How she aholding down thur,” Arthus shouts down from the falcons nest atop the sails as he scouts for the land ahead. He's a middle aged man with an eye sharper than any other in the tribe. When he was a youth and sent out on his Trial he had tracked and followed a bear for almost half the island in 2 days. When at last he put the bear between himself and the Ledge, leaving the bear with two options;fight or flight, stand it's ground and push through the man that blocks the path to freedom or turn and take the plunge downwards to an impending doom on the jagged rocks below. But, being a bear, he only had one option, kill, as suicide could never be an option to an animal with primal instincts.

The bear turned on Arthus and charged head on. Pa says his spear was split in two while blocking a downward thrust from the bear,  forcing him to abandon his shield and fight using the two much shorter broken spear ends, forcing him within a proximity that was unnatural for a spearman, putting him right within the bears reach. It was bloody and the bear put up one hell of a fight. Arthusd walked away with a ravaged right arm and 3 long cuts from forehead to chin diagonally across his face with his left eye plucked right from its socket by the beast's claws. Ever since, his right eye has grown stronger and adapted to seeing clearer on it's own. He claims it's gotten to a point that he can essentially see the currents that secretly flow beneath the surface of water, and the secret currents that flow in men.

“To be the truth of it,” Fetu, calls up,  “ not a wave larger than twice the height of these waves ,” opening his arms, gesturing to the waves around us,  “can fall upon us or we will be dining with our ancestors for an eternity at the bottom of the sea where their corpses lay.”  When a tribes member dies they are lain on a raft and cast asea, until flipped by the waves where theyre gently cradled to the bottom of Irroccieo.

Our water-travelers being flat and all made large waves a very difficult feat to overcome. The smaller waves that we are already riding rock and tip us up and down splashing on us pushing the raft underwater for ha’second before the wood pushes up out of the water. The only thing really keeping us afloat is the sheer size of our rafts. Multiple layers of branch thick, three and a half meters long and two and a half meters wide it glides on the water between waves before crashing into the next wave and dipping below surface tension.

On the last waves Fetu, Pa,  Ezekial, and myself give two good hard rows and break right through the wave without being tipped and turned around. We take a note. It looks we will make it out of the bay and through the waves that ambush us into deeper waters after all.

Our vaunting leader stands atop her falcon's nest with arms outstretched in power. Chorus of cheers erupts from the tribe, save me, sbilo, and a handful of others, as we are unaffected by this fanfornade. we have made it further then Elruke, whose raft got flipped and shredded just to wash ashore. A triumph it may be, but we have quite the journey ahead of us still and we are not as naive as the others. Who, may have forgotten momentarily what had happened to the Great Belhum. Whose raft came back with chunks the size of men bitten off, made by no fish or creature we have ever seen before. The Plutark of their time wrote that red had tainted the waters that day of the blood of 30 men who thought they could overcome the Farraige, that mutilated bodies and limbs didn't stop coming ashore for days, weeks even.  Things changed that day, no one dares to leave knowing what awaits us. At least they did, before we were left with no choice. Most cannot grasp the esoterica of the past as I do, as they​ have forgotten with this measly achievement.