by Mark Dame
“Did the storm carry us to the other side of the island?” Flyn asked after a minute.
“That must be it.” Kel started kicking again. “Guess we made it quicker than we thought we would.” He laughed.
Flyn grinned, but he didn’t feel like laughing. He was cold and sore. He just wanted to curl up in his bed and sleep for about two days. His grand plan wasn’t working out like he’d hoped.
They kicked for what felt like hours before the shore seemed to get any closer. By then, the sun was falling behind a thick veil of clouds. Without the sun, the water chilled them even more.
Ahead of them lay a wide swath of beach, beyond which stood a forest of dark trees. As they got closer, the faint roar of waves crashing on the beach reached Flyn’s ears. Even so, it was almost fully dark before he finally felt the tug of the tide start to pull them into shore.
Unable to kick anymore, they rested and let the waves carry them toward the beach. Flyn almost cheered when he felt his feet touch the sand.
There was no time to celebrate, though. They still had at least thirty yards to go to what looked like a rock-lined shore. The next wave confirmed Flyn’s fears as it crashed into the rocks and sent a spray of water into the air.
“Look out!” Kel called out, but it was too late. The surf picked them up and hurled them toward the rocks.
Flyn pulled his head down and braced himself behind the boat just as it crashed into the rocks. Water surged up around him, tumbling him over the remains of the boat and into the sand on the other side of the rocks. The impact knocked the air out of him. Seawater rushed to fill his empty lungs.
The wave retreated, pulling Flyn with it and smashing his body against the rocks again before flowing back out to sea. For a brief moment, Flyn lay in the wet sand, coughing up the salty seawater. Then the next wave came crashing down, sending him tumbling again.
This time, Flyn was able to dig his fingers into the sand to keep from being pulled back into the rocks. He lay still for a moment, then pulled himself up to his hands and knees before the next wave surged in. Still coughing and spitting, he crawled out of the surf and collapsed on the beach.
After catching his breath, he looked around for Kel. His friend was lying in the sand a few yards away, not moving.
“Kel?” Flyn’s voice was hoarse, barely audible above the sound of the surf.
“Yeah?” Kel’s voice wasn’t much better.
“Let’s not do that again,” Flyn said, then rolled onto his back.
They didn’t move for a while, recovering from their ordeal. Flyn felt he could have slept right where he fell.
“Well, look on the bright side. We don’t have to take the boat apart now,” Flyn said after a few minutes. “I think the surf took care of it for us.”
“I would have rather done it myself,” Kel replied. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get in a boat again as long as I live.”
After hours in the icy water, the cool evening air, and their wet clothes, they were both shivering.
“We need to build a fire,” Flyn said through chattering teeth.
“I’m sure we’ll find plenty of wood in the trees, but how are we going to light it?”
“I had flint and steel in my pack. I don’t suppose it survived. It was in the storage box.”
“I doubt anything survived that,” Kel said.
Without much hope, Flyn struggled to his feet. Kel followed him back down to the water where the boat had been demolished. A few pieces of wood floated in the eddies of the surf.
“Not much left,” Flyn said.
Kel didn’t reply. He was looking around the rocks in between waves.
“Hey,” he called out. “I found it!”
Flyn rushed over, dodging an incoming wave. Wedged between the rocks was the metal strongbox that had been bolted into the bottom of the boat.
“Help me lift it,” Flyn said.
They had to wait for the next wave to pass, but between the two of them, they wrestled it free and carried it onto the beach.
It was dented and scraped, but still closed. Flyn’s heart quickened as his numb fingers fumbled with the latch. Finally unlocking it, he opened the cover and reached into the dark compartment. He let out a small whoop of excitement when his hand closed around one of the packs.
“It’s still here!”
“This must be our lucky day,” Kel said, leaning over the side of the box trying to see.
“I don’t even think it’s wet.” He had sealed the strongbox to keep supplies dry, but after everything it had gone through that day, he was surprised to find it had worked. The packs themselves were made from oiled cloth to make them waterproof, though that would be of little help if they were submerged. There was no way to keep water from getting in through the opening.
“Does that mean the food is still good?” Kel asked.
Flyn’s numb hands struggled to undo the straps that held the pack closed, but he finally unbuckled them. As he opened the pack, the smell of oranges and ham and wheat cakes filled his nostrils and made his stomach growl. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.
“Tonight, we eat like kings,” Flyn said, grinning in the dark. “But let’s get that fire going first.”
He closed the pack and slung it onto his back. Kel pulled his own pack out of the box. His spirits lifted, Flyn led the way back to the tree line to find a spot to spend the night. Beside him, Kel hummed to himself as they walked, no longer complaining about their situation.
Closer to the woods, the ground transitioned from sand to hard-packed dirt. They selected a level spot close to the first trees and cleared a space to build a fire.
Flyn looked into the trees. In the dim light, he could only see a few feet into the forest. But it wasn’t what he couldn’t see that bothered him. It was what he couldn’t hear. No birds, no bugs. Not even a frog. From the look on his face, Flyn guessed Kel was sensing it too.
“What kind of trees are these?” Kel asked, apparently not wanting to talk about the eerie quiet.
“I don’t know. They’re not like any trees I’ve ever seen.”
The trees grew almost perfectly straight. Even though he couldn’t see the tops in the dark, they seemed to be incredibly tall. But the strangest thing about them was their leaves. They were unlike any leaves Flyn had ever seen or heard about. They were thin, only a fraction of an inch at their widest, and only an inch or two long. The ground was covered in them, making a soft blanket over the hard dirt. The air was filled with a thick, almost minty scent.
“The wood is sticky, too.”
Flyn picked up a fallen branch. Kel was right. It was sticky.
“I hope it burns,” Kel said.
They spent the next half hour stumbling around in the dark, gathering enough wood to last through the night. The exercise took off some of the chill, but Flyn was glad once the fire was going.
The sticky wood burned bright and hot. They stripped out of their wet clothes and hung them on sticks near the fire to dry, then sat down to their late-night picnic.
They each had two cakes, a small slab of ham, and an orange. They finished off the berry wine Flyn had brought. Not a feast, by normal standards, but under the circumstances, the meal rivaled the best Harvest Day dinner.
“How did that storm sneak up on us?” Kel asked between bites.
Flyn shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The sun was shining when I laid down to take a nap.”
“I know. It was a perfect day. Then I woke up to thunder. And when it was over, it just seemed to evaporate.”
“I must have missed that part,” Flyn said.
“Just like you to sleep through the whole thing.”
Flyn grunted. He wouldn’t call almost drowning, then spending the next several hours unconscious, sleeping, but Kel was trying to lighten the mood, so he kept the thought to himself.
“It’s just a good thing I built the boat so strong or we’d be dead right now.”
“Luck
y, like I said.” Kel stuffed the last of a wheat cake into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of berry wine.
“Yeah, lucky.” Flyn wasn’t feeling very lucky, though he supposed it could be worse. At least they were back on land.
“Now will you listen to sense and not play with boats?”
“Four years and we never flipped it once. Whenever a storm came along, we always had plenty of time to get back to shore. I don’t think that storm was natural.”
“A demon storm?” Kel laughed. Neither of them believed the old tales about demons and magic.
“You know what I mean. It wasn’t normal.”
Kel took another swig of wine and passed it to Flyn.
“Maybe it just seemed that way because we were so far out from shore,” Kel said. “We must’ve been at least half a league out.”
“Maybe.”
“And being out that far was pretty stupid.”
Flyn chewed on a piece of ham, but didn’t respond. Kel was just making excuses. He knew as well as Flyn why they had been that far out.
“No,” Flyn replied after a bit. “What was stupid was both of us falling asleep while we were that far out.”
Kel shrugged and shifted his focus back to peeling his orange. They ate in silence for a while, staring at the fire.
“Too bad about the boat, though,” Flyn said after a while.
“Really? After everything we’ve been through today? You still want to go back out on the water?”
“Sure.” Now that he was warm and had food in his belly, he wasn’t as shaken up as he had been earlier. “We were just careless, that’s all.”
“What about all the rumors? About people finding out about the boat? And what about all that talk of getting married and raising a family?”
“I know. We can’t build another one, but I can dream.”
“Not me. My only dream is of a hot meal and a soft bed.”
“Well, you at least have to admit that it’s been an adventure.”
“I, for one, have had enough adventure to last me a lifetime. I’ll just be glad to be home.”
“It’ll be a story we’ll tell our grandkids.” Flyn laughed, but he too was thinking of home.
Kel changed the subject and they talked a while longer about which girls they were going to try to ask out when they got home and who would win the annual fall tournament. When their clothes were dry, they got dressed and spread out their bedrolls on opposite sides of the fire.
As they lay down, Flyn wondered if he would be able to sleep after spending most of the day unconscious, but he was asleep within minutes, Kel still talking about his plans for the summer.
Chapter 3
Flyn and Kel woke before dawn. The fire had died and an early morning fog had rolled in, leaving them cold and damp. Flyn cleaned up in the surf before breakfast, though washing off the dried salt with salt water didn’t really help much. Kel opted to stay dry until they could find some fresh water.
Breakfast consisted of a wheat cake each, more dried meat, and another orange.
“When we get to some fresh water, we’ll need to fill up the skins too,” Flyn said. They had emptied two of their four waterskins already.
“So which way do we go?”
They looked up and down the beach, then into the forest.
“We have three options,” Flyn said, stating the obvious. “Around to the north, around to the south, or straight through to the west.”
“I vote south, to Osthorp.”
“We may already be south of Osthorp,” Flyn reminded him. “We don't know how far the storm blew us.”
“Worst case, we get to Karnot, then we can take the road back to Drogave. Maybe we’ll come across another village before we get to Karnot.”
Karnot was at the southernmost tip of the island. Except for Osthorp, neither of them knew any of the villages along the western or northern coasts, so Karnot might be the first one they’d reach if they went south.
“That might take six or seven days. We'll need food and water before then and we might not find anything on the coast. I lost my fishing pole, so we won't have the fish we were counting on. I think we should cut straight across. Eventually we’ll hit a road and we’re more likely to find fresh water in the woods than on the beach.”
“But all the rivers eventually flow to the ocean,” Kel argued.
They debated for several minutes. The fog prevented them from seeing very far along the beach, which didn’t help their decision process. Eventually, though, it came down to food.
“Going inland we’ll have a better chance of finding fruits or nuts to eat,” Flyn said. “I still have my knife, so we could even make a spear to kill a squirrel or maybe even a wild pig.”
Kel grumbled some more, but finally agreed with Flyn that their chances for food were better going inland.
They kicked out the remains of their fire and covered it with sand, then shouldered their nearly empty packs and set off into the woods.
The fog wasn’t limited to the coast. It drifted through the trees, dampening what little sound there was. Even as the morning grew brighter, they still didn’t hear any birds or animals. Just an occasional drip of water as the fog condensed on the trees.
The strange trees grew bigger as they went deeper into the forest, some as big as twenty-five feet across. The tops were lost in the mist, though Flyn suspected that he had underestimated their height the previous night.
“They look even stranger in the daylight,” Kel remarked at one point. “Look at the bark.” The reddish, stringy bark was intermingled with moss, making it look almost like hair, though not like the hair of any creature Flyn had ever seen.
The other thing they noticed was the change in the ground. It grew rockier as they went and seemed to be sloping upward, though they couldn’t be certain. Rocks began to appear scattered around the ground. Soon the rocks became boulders, forcing them to detour off their track. By the time they stopped for a break, they weren’t even sure they were headed in the right direction anymore.
“We should have gone around,” Kel said, taking off his boots to rub his feet.
“Then you’d just be griping about sand in your boots,” Flyn said, but he was wondering the same thing himself. “Besides, we’re committed now. No point in complaining about it.”
While they rested, Flyn tried to listen for running water. The fog was thinning, but he still didn’t hear anything. Even wildlife.
“Have you noticed that there’s no birds?” Kel asked as if reading his mind.
“Yeah. I haven’t heard any animals.” Flyn looked around, not sure what he was looking for. “There’s something else not right, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Not right how?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.” He looked up at the giant tree they were sitting next to. It looked to be as old as the rocks and boulders strewn about the area. “Come on. Put your boots back on. I want to keep moving.”
Flyn tried to work out their direction while Kel laced up his boots.
“I think that’s the way we need to go,” he said, pointing toward a slight rise littered with loose rock and small boulders.
“That way’s much easier.” Kel pointed in another direction.
“If we pick the easiest path all the time, we’ll never get anywhere. I’m pretty sure we’ve been going uphill for the last hour, so we should keep going that way. Without the sun, that’s our only clue about what direction to go.”
“We could always go back,” Kel said, almost to himself.
“You can go back if you want,” Flyn said. “I’m going that way.” He started walking toward the top of the rise.
“Hey, wait for me!” Kel jumped up and hurried after Flyn.
At the top of the rise, the ground leveled off, making their trek easier for a while and allowing them to stretch their sore legs. As the morning drew on, the fog burned off and they were able to catch glimpses of blue sky between the branches o
f the massive trees. And yet the tops were still out of their sight, towering higher than Flyn could have guessed.
Shortly before noon, by Flyn’s estimate, they came to a stream running fast and clear. Rejoicing, they clambered down the bank and into the cool water.
“That’s just what I needed,” Kel said, rinsing the crusty salt from his skin and hair.
“Refreshing,” Flyn agreed, splashing the cool water on his chapped face. “And it tastes better than the water from the well at home.”
They drank and bathed for several minutes before refilling their waterskins and continuing on their journey.
“The air is warming. We have water. Now if we could find a bite to eat, this might turn out to be a decent day after all.”
Finding water had greatly improved Kel’s mood.
“I’m just hoping we come to a road soon,” Flyn said. He was relieved they had water now, but he would feel much better once they had a bearing on where they were going. He was about to say as much when he heard voices in the distance.
“Road or no, we need to find—”
“Shh!” Flyn held up a hand in front of Kel. He listened for a moment. He couldn’t make out distinct words, but there were definitely people talking somewhere up ahead.
“Someone’s up there,” Kel said, jumping to his feet.
“Hold on,” Flyn whispered. He put a hand on Kel’s shoulder to stop him from rushing toward the voices.
They listened some more, but Flyn still couldn’t make out words.
“What?” Kel whispered.
“I don’t like the sound of those voices.”
“We’re lost in the woods and there’s people up ahead somewhere. What’s not to like?”
“I just think we should try to keep quiet and get closer to see who it is before we start yelling for help. Just in case.”
“What are you talking about? Just in case of what?”
“I’ve had a bad feeling all day. I don’t know why, but I just think we need to be careful.”
“Fine, but I think the knock on the head you took is messing with your thinking.”
