by Travis Smith
Laura Vaga stood with the warm waters midway up her bare torso. William lay contentedly in her arms as she rocked his naked body across the surface of the lake. He closed his eyes and cooed each time she drew a handful of water up and ran it through his thickening brown hair. Laura smiled at her son and hummed a relaxing melody to the silent day. In this tiny part of the nation, it was still easy to forget the malice and decadence that was swelling outward from the center of Krake just over the grassy hills in the distance. In this moment, there was only serenity.
The Stranger stood in awe at the shore. Water stood motionless about his ankles. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words could come out. For so long he had wondered if he would ever see his family again, and here they were, as beautiful as he’d ever remembered them.
“Laura?” he croaked. Little more than a hoarse whisper escaped. She turned to see him and smiled.
“Hello,” she said. She made no efforts to conceal her breasts, but she looked almost as though she didn’t recognize the man standing before her, the man for whom she had surely pined night after night for what seemed like a lifetime.
“My Laura,” The Stranger said again, this time breaking his dumbfounded paralysis and stumbling forward into the deeper waters. “And William!”
Laura smiled again and poured another handful of water into her son’s hair.
“I have travelled from the ends of the earth to find you again.”
“That’s nice,” she said, not unkindly, before turning back toward her son.
The Stranger reached her and took the both of them into his arms. He wrapped an arm around her neck and pulled her face close against his. Squinting his eyes against the bittersweet tears, he kissed Laura on the cheek and sobbed into her hair. “I feared I’d never see you again.”
Laura didn’t respond, but she reached around The Stranger’s shoulders with her arm that wasn’t holding William. She allowed them to stand that way in silence for some time until William began squirming between their embrace.
The Stranger pulled away and looked through his own tears into his wife’s face. She returned a noncommittal smile and looked off toward the flock of geese swimming slowly in their direction.
The Stranger’s knees buckled and he let himself fall into Laura’s arm, supported partly by the water in which they were standing.
“Oh, Laura,” he sighed, at a loss for words. He reached out and ran his calloused, dirty fingers along William’s soft hair.
Laura watched him until he looked back into her eyes. She offered another confused smile and tilt of the head.
“What ails you?” The Stranger asked.
“I’m sorry,” Laura said gently, “but I am not sure that I know who you are.”
The Stranger stared back at her, again at a loss for words, but this time for a different reason. “What do you mean?”
Laura shook her head. A goose honked from across the lake, as though to answer for her.
The Stranger stood back upright. “It is I …”
Still she gave no response.
“What have they done to you?” he asked, pulling her close again. “I am your husband, the father of your son.”
“I would marry such as you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” The Stranger demanded, fighting back tears anew.
Laura slowly put her hand on The Stranger’s shoulder and lowered him down into the water. He wrapped his arms around her waist and looked at William, who smiled at his father enthusiastically.
“Why are you doing this?” The Stranger begged.
Laura continued lowering the man into the water. He did not resist.
“You are black inside,” she whispered.
The Stranger’s head submerged at last, and salty water filled his open mouth.
7
The Stranger awoke on the floor of the ship’s cabin. He was face-down in the pooling seawater that had flooded in during the storm. He sputtered and choked up the mouthful he’d inhaled in his sleep. Only the faintest slivers of light spread throughout the room—just enough for him to see the wreckage strewn about the already unkempt cabin.
A sick, terrible knot settled into his stomach as he remembered the look on his wife’s face when she’d seen him in his dream—as though he were but a mere stranger to her.
He made his way up the stairs and pushed open the cabin door, not knowing what to expect. Dazzling sunlight blinded him at once. The sky was an inspirational shade of blue. The sun was at its apex, not a cloud in sight. A flock of gulls flew just overhead and cawed in greeting to The Stranger.
He was anguished and disoriented, and he couldn’t tell in what direction he was currently sailing. It wasn’t until the sun began descending to his left in the latter part of the day that he discerned he was headed due north. He adjusted the sails for an easterly course to Reprise and allowed himself to slump to the deck and lean against the mast.
Trying not to focus on his crippling dehydration, The Stranger closed his eyes. He saw immediately his Laura’s indifferent face. Could it be possible that she would regard him so? Should he ever find his wife and son again, was there a chance that they wouldn’t want him back? The things he’d done since he was left for dead on that beach had left a mark on him, but he’d done what was necessary to get back to his family. The ends had to justify the means.
You don’t deserve them, the old man whispered inside his head.
Maybe not. But they surely—
They are better off without you. They do not need you.
The Stranger swallowed back the thick lump rising in his throat and let a wave of self-pity wash over him briefly. He had time to spare, but he couldn’t afford to feel sorry for himself and wonder if he’d die alone and unwanted on this tiny ship in the middle of the Great Sea …
When The Stranger opened his eyes, he was greeted by a great sea bird perched at the bow of the ship. The bird gazed at the malnourished man with benign disinterest. It blinked slowly, as if to say, “Don’t lose your head. I simply need a respite from my flight.”
“Why would I be alarmed?” The Stranger asked softly, a delirious smile spreading beneath his beard. The albatross had long been a most favored omen among seafarers and mariners.
A blanket of calm unlike any The Stranger had felt since before leaving Reprise spread over him. He watched as the bird before him stood and spread its prodigious wings.
The Stranger wanted to thank the bird for such a timely foretoken. He felt remotely certain that when the feathered harbinger of hope took flight, he would see the haze of Reprise on the horizon ahead.
He would reach his old home, and his wife and son would be as tearfully overjoyed as he. He had been worrying for naught …
The bow of the boat tipped downward, and the albatross lifted off. The Stranger watched it for a moment longer before he realized the bow hadn’t tipped back up, but instead continued descending. A colossal shadow obscured the sunlight from behind The Stranger.
8
The Stranger’s naive grin faded as he turned to face the behemoth rising silently from the dark sea. The punisher dwarfed any that The Stranger had ever imagined. The timeless lore surrounding the existence of the eight punishers betrayed spectacularly the enormity of their true menace.
Djup, the most ancient of the eight beasts, rose from the depths with an almost casual grace and pace. The creature eclipsed first the bright afternoon sun, and then the entire cloudless sky. Everything that had occurred or would ever occur seemed insignificant in the face of the monster before him. If it were suggested to him, The Stranger would have believed the span of its tentacles could reach from shore to shore across the Great Sea. Its body wore a bell-shaped shell that looked simultaneously spongy and impenetrable. Djup could have been related to the much smaller punisher that inhabited Eugene’s island, but its size would surely encompass the entire island itself. Tentacles like oversized jungle serpents snaked their way out of the sea to sample the air for something to
extirpate. While The Stranger would never live to see the entirety of Djup’s form, he took on faith that the tentacles were indeed attached to the rest of the body at some point far below where the warm waters turned icy and unforgiving.
The Stranger gazed in helpless awe as one of the countless appendages swished by overhead. Its speed was sedate, but its momentum was doubtlessly unstoppable. The end of the limb, which tapered from the size of the trunk of a great oak to a lethal, barbed point, curled just overhead and lanced the tiny ship’s mainsail. Ropes snapped and frayed above The Stranger and cascaded down around him. The Stranger’s paralysis broke only when half of the mainsail, which had been sliced nearly down the middle, drifted down atop his head. The sail covered him in darkness like an oversized blanket in a baby’s crib. It was wet and weighty, and it pinned his body against the ship’s deck.
A claustrophobic knot twisted itself around The Stranger’s chest as he scrambled to claw his way out from under the confinement. The sound of waves and crashing water began to rise from the still sea’s silence. As the initial tidal wave that rose in Djup’s wake began to break and push the toppling craft farther and farther away from the beast, the sound of crashing waves and falling water crescendoed. A deluge poured forth from each of the punisher’s swishing tentacles. As several tiny waterfalls sailed through the air above the ship, splashes of water crashed down atop the cloth sail. Wet, heavy fabric wrapped itself around The Stranger’s face, and he struggled to take a full breath.
Before he could escape the suffocating snare, he felt as much as heard a dismal crunch, and the ship lurched violently to one side. It may very well have come wholly out of the water. At last he clawed his way out from beneath the sail just in time to see a colossal limb swing by and directly collide with the mast. The ship lurched minutely this time, and the thick, wooden mast gave way with negligible resistance. The Stranger turned his head away as splinters and fragments of shattered wood rained down atop him. As the mast fell, it brought with it a tangle of snapping ropes and jigs, and the second half of the mainsail collapsed directly on top of The Stranger.
He called out in frustration and fear as he flailed beneath the new barrier. Before he could free himself, he felt what he knew to be a fatal blow to the boat’s hull. His chest tightened and his breathing hitched. From his hands and knees, he collapsed onto his face as the boat pitched to the side and sent him sliding across the deck, still trapped beneath the smothering sail. The Stranger, in his disorientation, could almost feel the ship sinking and himself being dragged, gasping and choking, to the bottom of the Great Sea by the weight of this sail, still connected in part to what was left of the mast.
The beast voiced a victorious bellow, for it knew its victim had lost. A low-pitched moan began beneath the sea. The sound seemed to grow supersonic as it travelled through both water and air from some unimaginable orifice deep below the surface. It grew into a guttural howl that The Stranger was certain would have shattered his bones within his body if it had continued for a moment longer.
He finally crawled his way out from under the second half of the sail just in time to roll out of the way to avoid another tentacle as it descended from straight above him. The slick limb landed with a lethal thud and immediately began its ascent back into the sky. Its impact crushed the deck and nearly folded the vessel in half. An explosion of woodchips and splinters blasted across The Stranger’s exposed face.
As the tentacle swung back downward and swooped over the top of the sinking ship where the mast had stood moments before, The Stranger rolled out of the way and snatched up a large shard of splintered wood. He lunged it upward and into the colossal appendage. It sank into the beast’s thick flesh easily enough, but there was no discernible reaction from Djup. The Stranger’s arms dropped to his side, and he stared numbly as the weight of futility descended upon him like the mainsail moments before.
Djup dropped a tentacle alongside the ship and sent a massive wave crashing over its fractured deck and tipped it onto its side. The Stranger fell and tumbled across the deck, nearly falling through the gaping crack in its surface. Another tentacle came crashing down with thunderous force as the ship rolled nearly upside down. This blow sent more chips of wood flying through the air, and the hull of the ship finally split in two. The Stranger was bucked head over heels through the air and splashed painfully into the sea upon his back. He flailed and struggled to right himself underwater and swim back to the surface. Large chunks of wood rained down all around him as the beast continued battering and shattering the demolished craft.
Rolling waves continued spawning from the mayhem and pushed The Stranger father and farther away. When his disorientation resolved, he began swimming in the opposite direction in a laughable effort to escape the danger. Little time had passed before his head throbbed and his muscles cramped from dehydration. Tiny abrasions in his face from wood splinters stung in the salty sea. He pushed himself until he was incapable of going any farther, and then he pushed himself harder. Laura’s face swam before his fading vision.
“I’m sorry,” he sputtered through the water splashing over his mouth as he struggled to stay afloat. “I’m sorry for what I’ve become.”
A hunk of wood bumped The Stranger’s shoulder, and he turned and pulled his torso on top of it, allowing his eyes to close at last.
9
The Stranger awoke to blinding brightness and crippling heat. He glanced around frantically, his eyes absorbing no signals while his pupils struggled to constrict against the brilliant sunlight.
No, he thought. Not again …
I simply cannot be here again. Why is this happening?
He turned his head to see small piles of wood scattered along the shore. The remains of his small vessel. He blinked his eyes tightly as a dark figure came into focus, walking toward him on the beach.
“No,” The Stranger muttered. “I have to get off this island.”
He scrambled to dig his feet into the sand and stand up, but he felt as though he were moving within a dream. He could not pull himself upright fast enough.
A heavy hand fell upon his shoulder.
“Whoa, now.”
The Stranger bowed his head and pushed away the overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
“You’ve seen better times,” a gentle woman’s voice spoke.
“Laura?” The Stranger asked through his daze.
“No, dear. I’m afraid my name is Kinnae.”
The Stranger shook his head but struggled to shake free from the disorientation.
“Ye look to ’ave been through quite a spell of late,” she said.
He nodded slowly and recalled his ineffectual flight into the Great Sea. “Where am I?” he asked.
“Outside Sudere.” Her hand lay on his shoulder in a futile gift of comfort.
He shook his head, confused. “Where?”
“On the coast. Just south of Sudere,” she repeated.
“Fordar?” he asked, a weighty rock settling in his stomach. Farther from his family than ever.
“Well …” she hesitated, confused. “Yes. From where do ye hail?”
“Never you mind,” The Stranger sighed. He would never see his wife and son again.
And if ye did, t’ wouldn’t want ye anyhow, Eugene spat inside The Stranger’s mind.
“What is your name?” Kinnae asked.
The Stranger squeezed his eyes shut tightly. Why couldn’t he have just let the beast kill him at sea? If the punishers weren’t so confused by the global reversal of good and evil, Djup could surely have seen The Stranger for what he’d become and struck him down without hesitation.
“Are ye ill, sir?” She prodded his back gently with her palm.
He would never make it back to his family, and perhaps he didn’t deserve to. He focused on Laura’s apathetic face from his dream. “I’m not sure that I know who you are,” she had said to him.
“Sir?” She shook him harder this time in an effort to get him to respond.
I’m not sure that I know who I am either, The Stranger responded, hot tears burning behind his closed eyes.
“Sir, who are you?” Kinnae asked, raising her voice.
“I am a Stranger.”
10
“Well, Stranger, what brings ye to the lovely Sudere coast?” Kinnae asked. The two had walked in almost complete silence for much of the day. Kinnae led The Stranger off the beach. The sand turned to shore grass, and the shore grass turned to woodland underbrush. A lightly weathered footpath marked the way into the denser forest. The small trail wound its way through the trees, and soon the coastal ambience faded into a woodland locale. The calls of shorebirds turned to the skittering of small creatures through the brushwood.
Eventually they had reached Kinnae’s home and settled inside at the table.
“I don’t know,” The Stranger replied. “I did not mean to come here.”
“Well, judgin’ by the scraps of yer craft, I’d wager it was quite small.”
The Stranger made no reply.
“Musta been some kinda motivation to set ya out into the Great Sea in such a foolish little skiff?”
The Stranger nodded. “I was a fool.”
“Runnin’ from somethin’?”
“I thank you for your kindness, Kinnae—”
“Please, call me Kin.”
“Kin …” The Stranger resumed, “but I am in no state to chat.”
“Runnin’ to somethin’,” she said with a nod. This time it was not a question. She stood from the table. “Want some fare?”
“I would appreciate any you could offer. I can scarcely recall my last good meal.”
“Well, I can’t promise a good meal, but I won’t let ya waste away.”
The Stranger managed to smile. “I thank you, nonetheless.”
