by Doug Kelly
An unusually large wave rolled by the ship. The breaker raised the vessel from the sand and knocked it into the boulders that had trapped it on the shallow beach. The graveyard of hammocks began to swing side to side and a discarded handful of glass marbles rolled across the floor, into the darkness.
“Aton, it’s time to go. Take what you want.”
“We can use the cooking pot.”
Aton removed it from the pile of discarded items, and inspected it for imperfections using the slanted column of sunlight to do so. With the exception of a few scratches, it was perfectly constructed. He saw no indication of where a blacksmith had struck it with a hammer, or any seams from the casting of molten metal. It was perfect American craftsmanship.
To carry the few items that they decided to take with them, Aton tugged at the leather sack at the bottom of the trunk to remove it. He was going to dump its contents, so they could use the satchel to hold what they had salvaged. Cinched tightly shut, the bag’s top was wrapped securely with a thin leather thong and tied with a knot. He had to use two hands and all his strength to budge the sack because it was much heavier than he had expected.
They had spent so long below deck that the once nearly vertical column of light through the hatch was now slanting at an angle, and the amount of light had dimmed considerably as the afternoon sun had declined. He dragged the leather sack to the rectangle of waning yellow light on the floor, untied the knot, and spilled the bag’s contents.
Each man drew in a gasp of breath, and then sighed with astonished moans, as if possessing spirits had just escaped through their throats. A wave of gold and silver coins and jewelry had surged out of the leather satchel, like a waterfall of liquid fortune. The coins and jewelry, although some of the silver was tarnished, were unmistakably precious. It was a pile of riches, sprinkled with solitary gemstones, and from it, countless dots of reflected light seemed to stare back at them with gold and jeweled eyes.
Hauk dropped to his knees, mouth agape, and kept whispering to himself, “Treasure.”
The same weakness overcame Aton, and he went to the floor, legs paralyzed with greedy lust.
The glowing pile of wealth pulled their hands toward it like magnets to steel. They caressed the mound of fortune with exploring fingers. Their hands danced across the heap like manic spiders. When Aton’s mind emerged from the treasure’s hypnotic thrall, he realized the actual danger of what they possessed. People would want to kill them for it. He quickly removed the rings he had slid onto his fingers.
“Put it back,” Aton said like a warning.
“What do you mean? There’s enough for both of us.”
“Yes, this could rival the richest warlord’s treasury, but it’s useless to us if we’re dead.” He pointed to the glittering mound with his shaking fingers, now denuded of gold rings. “Put it all back onto the pile. We should take it, but we can’t let anybody know what we have.”
Aton’s dose of truth crushed Hauk’s elated state of being, but he understood the harsh reality of their situation. Two slit throats in the night and someone else could walk away with their fortune. He sadly dropped each jewel back into the bag, scooped up what remained on the floor, and tied the leather sack tightly shut. It was time to leave. Hauk went up the ladder first. Aton brought the sack halfway up the rungs, Hauk reached down to pull it up and out of the hatch, and the ship gave birth to a treasure.
After Aton retrieved his bow from the dry sand, they scurried away from the ship with their loot and hid it in their boat. They had left smudges of footprints on the ship, a trail of footprints in the sand, and glowing embers at the campfire Hauk had lit earlier in the day. They stayed the night farther down the beach, a good distance away from the mysterious black ship.
In the morning, Aton was able to shoot a nutria. Because the rodents were not mindful of humans in that remote area, he was able to sneak up close behind one and shoot it with an arrow. It was plenty of meat for both of them, and with the plants and bird hatchlings Hauk had gathered during Aton’s hunt, they had enough to eat for breakfast. Hauk’s injured shoulder was improving quickly, and using his strong arms, back, and legs, he rowed them through the channel and back into open water. Aton unfurled the sail and a gentle breeze pushed them forward.
A while later, the wind increased significantly, and going so much more quickly now, Aton found that it required all his skill to steer past the islands and clear the sandbanks around which they were floating. Once or twice, they grazed the willows and branches of other water-loving trees that overhung the shore, and heard the keel of the boat drag the muddy bottom. As much as possible he headed away from the mainland, thinking to find deeper water, and to be free of the small rocky islands. He succeeded in finding deeper water, but the islands were now so numerous that he could not tell where the open lake was.
Long, long, ago, after a series of massive earthquakes had thrust bedrock from deep under the earth, which had made it project upward at an acute angle at various locations throughout the region, these subterranean convulsions had formed a jagged range of low hills. These hills changed to islands after the post-impact flood, and Aton was navigating them now as if they were a maze. The further the afternoon advanced, the more the breeze quickened, until occasionally, as it blew between the islands, it struck their sail with the force of a stiff wind. Aton welcomed the gusts of air, which would enable them to make good progress before evening. He thought that if these quick breezes continued, they could circumnavigate the lake.
The waves could not rise between these islands, which intercepted them before they could travel far enough to gather much force, giving them all the advantage of the strong current of air without its risks on the open water. Except for a light haze all around the horizon, the sky was perfectly clear, and it was pleasant now that the lovely breeze cooled the sun's heat, but the humidity remained high, making the air sticky and uncomfortable. As they came around the islands, they constantly met and disturbed flocks of ducks and geese. Sometimes the waterfowl sought the cover of weeds. Sometimes they flew away, and when they did, the boat and the birds went in opposite directions.
CHAPTER FOUR
As they sailed past several groups of ducks, Aton could not help noticing the uniform and unchanging direction that they had flown after the presence of the boat had startled them. The migration continued, and he saw that there was a ceaseless stream of ducks, egrets, seagulls, and herons coming toward them, going toward the west. As the boat met them, the birds either parted and let them through, or rose and went over.
Next, he noticed that the small birds on the islands were also traveling in the same direction, which was against the wind. They did not seem in a hurry, but flew from island to island, bush to tree, feeding and singing as they went. The unified movement and direction was obvious, but more so to Aton because Hauk was distracted. Hauk had secretly kept a large gold ring, with a spectacularly faceted ruby, hidden in his pocket with the glow-in-the-dark key chain. The soft green glow of the keychain that spilled from the depths of his pocket, after exposure to sunlight or to the light of a campfire, had seemed to fascinate him as much as the prospect of unparalleled wealth from scavenged treasure. He stared into that pocket, as if he were hypnotized, enthralled with the reflection of the glowing keychain off the ruby’s facets. His two trinkets distracted him from carefully observing his surroundings.
Finches, blackbirds, scarlet tanagers, wrens, and many other species were all going in the opposite direction that they were, and Aton could see the same thing happening to his right and left. He became concerned with that strange migration. It seemed as if the birds were hurrying away, as a terrified herd of deer would flee from a pack of hungry wolves. What made this even more unusual was the fact that it was still nesting time for some of them, and these birds must have left behind their nests with eggs or young hatchlings in them, completely unattended. Aton knew this to be true because he had no difficulty finding eggs or newly hatched birds in all the nests he
had discovered in his quest for food on the islands, but the adult birds had usually stayed in close proximity to their nest, especially when eggs or hatchlings were present. Nothing that he could think of offered an adequate explanation. He imagined that he saw schools of fish going the same way, but the surface of the dark water was choppy, and with the boat sailing rapidly, he could only wonder. A while after he first observed the migration, the exodus suddenly ceased, as if the population of birds had been exhausted.
As the boat continued cutting across the lake, impelled by the stiff breeze, there were no ducks or geese on the water, and no birds in the bushes or trees and certainly not in the air. It appeared as though they had all passed. The birds at the front of all those flocks would have been scattered and thinly distributed; he had actually witnessed the migration earlier than he realized what it was. The closer they had approached the center of the flocks, the thicker the birds had become, and after getting through that, they had found peaceful isolation. The waterweeds were denser than ever, so that he constantly had to steer away from where he thought the mainland was, but still, there were no birds on the water, and no birds on the islands.
Suddenly, as they went around a large island, he saw what he imagined to be a dark cloud hovering over the water, but the next instant he recognized that it was an undulating mass of insects buzzing just over the surface of the lake and heading straight toward their boat. He had no time to notice how far they extended before the bugs had gone over their heads with a rushing sound. Turning to look back, he saw them continue directly west, into the wind.
Like the water and the islands, the sky was clear of birds; not one remained. Aton asked himself if he was heading into some unknown danger, but he could only think of two perils from the stories he had heard of the lake. The first was the warning to avoid the ruins of the ancient city of Baton Rouge. He had heard stories, or had thought they were fables at the time, of certain death for anyone who traveled there. He wondered if that was just a ploy for the treasure hunters to keep their competition away, but it also occurred to him that he had seen two maps of the lake and they both indicated grave danger at the site of that ancient city’s ruins. The first map, which a nomad slave had transcribed, was at the warlord Olar Regalyon’s estate, and the second he had just seen on the deserted ship. The stranded black ship had met a mysterious fate and carried a hefty treasure hidden below deck, which Aton and Hauk now so gladly possessed. He knew that desperate people were capable of risking their lives in the pursuit of riches, so he accepted all the warnings he had heard of ancient ruins and danger. The crew of the black ship must have been treasure hunters that had found their wealth, and their death, in their pursuit of riches. Aton thought that given those very truths, he should seriously heed the warnings on the maps, or they would also end up like the mysterious ship’s crew, dead.
The only other thing that came to him was the possibility of storm winds rising to the force of a hurricane, but that did not concern him much because the various islands could provide shelter. Shelter from waves was so ample in some places that, as they passed along, the sail swelled with the breeze, while the surface of the water, almost surrounded with bushes and willows, was smooth. No matter what direction the gale might blow, they could still find refuge on the side of an island opposite the tempestuous wind.
The sky remained without clouds; no hurricane was lingering past the horizon. There was nothing but a slight haze. The air was heavy with humidity around this large body of water. The weather was clear, and there was not even a cloud to cause the least bit of uneasiness to a couple of men on a small boat. Aton’s curious nature was aroused and he could not stop speculating as to the cause of what had startled the birds. After a while, the water became more open. He could see around the lake for a considerable distance, because now there were sandbanks instead of rocky jutting islands. Looking directly forward, he saw a low wave advancing toward them, and moving against the wind. Others followed it at short intervals, and as they went by, he could see schools of fish as they passed, bumping the boat. The numerous fish had raised the rolling undulations of water as they sped away.
The wiregrass at the edge of the water appeared brown and withered, as if it were autumn already. The lilies were brown at the edges, and the aquatic grasses had dwindled. They had only reached half of their normal height. Disease appeared to have inflicted them with illness by the look of their dwindled state. From the stunted trees, the leaves were dropping, faded and yellow. The bushes were shriveled and covered with brown leaves. The farther they sailed, the more desolate the banks seemed, and trees gradually disappeared. Even the water-loving willows were fewer and stunted, and the tallest shrub was not above his chest. Their present location exposed their boat more to the wind, so that he could steer past the banks and scattered islands swiftly, and he noticed that there was not so much as a crow on them. Upturned mussel shells, glittering in the sunshine, showed where hungry birds had been at work, but none was visible now.
Aton thought that the water had become thicker and cloudier, which he attributed to the action of the wavelets disturbing the sand and mud in the shallows. Ahead, the hazy air was much thicker and getting closer, like a fog rising from the surface of the water. It hid the islands, and concealed everything. He expected to enter it, but it receded as they approached. Along the leeward shore of an island that they passed, there was a dark line like a stain, and in the still water, a floating scum covered the surface. After seeing that and remembering the warning from both maps, Aton became greatly concerned with their current location and the direction in which they were headed. He cupped his hand to taste the water and swallowed a strange bitterness unlike what he had previously drunk from the lake. His next guess was that they were at the delta of a river pushing dark muddy water down its path.
They kept a sharp lookout, expecting every moment to see the mouth of a large river toward which he thought they might be sailing. The wind gradually increased until it blew with a fury, but the numerous sandbars broke up the waves so that they found no problem with them. One solitary gull passed over at a great height, flying steadily westwards against the wind. The boat began to overtake fragments of scum drifting before the wind, and rising up and down on the ripples. Once he saw a large piece of black sludge rise to the surface with an enormous quantity of bubbles and a foul odor. A large chunk of Styrofoam, stained black and covered with dark slime, floated gloomily on the water as they passed beside it. A small alligator, stained the same dark color as the Styrofoam, seemed to be sunning itself, as it lay motionless on the floating piece of trash. The young alligator was as still as it was black, because it was dead, poisoned while in the forbidden section of the lake. None of the sandbanks rose very far above the water, and they were entirely bare, just gray sand and gravel.
The mist ahead seemed to be coming closer, but it never arrived. It was translucent yellow, and although thin, the haze obscured everything where it floated. A vast stretch of weeds appeared from out of the mist. A mass of distressed vegetation floated on the surface and undulated with the ripples of water. It was a pale yellow-green expanse of aquatic flora that had wilted. Aton hesitated in his decision as to whether he should continue sailing or attempt to have Hauk row over the floating mass; they continued sailing. As they advanced and the haze retreated, they saw open water beyond. The weeds extended on either side, but they were only a narrow band, so he kept the sail unfurled and continued with the wind. He felt the boat graze the bottom once as they went over the weeds. The water was free of sandbanks beyond them, but he could see large islands looming in several directions.
Glancing behind himself, he observed that the faint yellow mist had closed in, and now encircled the boat, as if it were rising from the surface of the cloudy water, but the wind did not affect it, although it blew briskly. Suddenly, he noticed that the water was turning black. The wavelets that rolled alongside were black, and the slight spray that occasionally flew onboard was also black, and sta
ined the side of the boat. That dumbfounded him because it was so contrary to all of his knowledge of the lake. He leaned over, and dipped up a little in the palm of his hand; it did not appear black in such a small quantity, it seemed a rusty brown, but he became aware of an unpleasant odor. The stench clung to his hand and he could not remove it, to his great disgust. It was like nothing he had ever smelled before, and not in the least like the vapor of marshes that he had experienced when hunting alligators. It was most similar to the scent of rancid oil.
As they gained distance from all the islands, the waves increased in size, and spray flew onboard, staining everything the dark liquid touched. Instead of finding marshes and the banks of a great and mysterious river, it appeared as if the water was getting deeper. Exposed to the full force of the wind, Aton began to fear that they would not be able to return very easily against it. He did not know what to do. The vile black water motivated him to turn around and tack out, but they were leaving the unpleasantness from where fate had brought them, so in the spirit of discovery and escape, they decided not to retreat. They sailed on, thinking they might quickly pass these abhorrent waters.
They were both very hungry and very thirsty, but were unable to drink because they had no container of water. No vessel sailing on the lake ever carried a barrel to store water, since potable water always surrounded them. Sitting near the rear of the boat so long had cramped Aton’s body, and the sun was visibly sloping in the western sky. The lateness of the day brought a determination upon them to land and rest, and with this purpose in mind, he steered to the right, which was the leeward side of a large island. It was so large that he was not certain if it was part of the mainland. Maybe it was a peninsula. He thought the water was very deep close to the shore. As they approached, the surface of the beach appeared black, as if soaking in the murky water had stained it. He skirted somewhat farther along, and found a ledge of low rocks stretching out into the lake. Because of this, they did not want to encounter the stones and possibly strand themselves at that location, so they returned to the gloomy shore.
