by M H Ryan
“What?” Cass said and then held onto the shack while trying to see over the bow. “That’s insane. We could break the boat or us!”
“We can fix the boat, but we can’t fix her if she dies,” I growled at Cass, and she seemed taken aback.
I didn’t have time for her shit right then.
We rushed toward the island with a steady wind at our backs.
Through the spaces between the sticks in the wall, I watched as we approached the shore. Wow, we were moving fast. As we got close to the beach, I glanced back at the girls and said, “Brace for impact.”
I lowered down and grabbed a rope on the deck with one hand. I leaned against the front wall with my shoulder. This was going to suck.
I heard the sound of sand grinding on the bottom of the boat and then we came to a complete stop in almost an instant. I slammed into the front wall and felt the pain go deep into my shoulder. I ignored that, grabbed a spear, and jumped over the front railing.
The front had been higher than I expected, as the craft had pushed a few feet up onto the sand, causing the front to jut into the air. It wouldn’t be easy to get the boat back in the water, but that was trivial compared to what was about to happen to Emma.
I ran toward her screams and their huts. Somehow, they hadn’t noticed the boat smashing into their shores. Emma kicked and screamed, but they now had her over their heads, carrying her like some crowd surfer. There was a cage near one of the huts, and one of the watchers held the door open. That’s when it saw me.
It made a squeaky sound, and the two carrying Emma dropped her. The leader of the three put her in a headlock, facing me. They looked scared and shocked to see me, and when I felt out to them, I realized they knew who I was.
The main one lowered his arm from around her throat. They were twenty feet away from me. I could throw my spear, but I had a better idea. I blinked and sent a thought that they would step back from Emma.
Their eyes went wide, and I knew the thought registered with them. The two took a step back and the third looked confused but the other two took her and pulled her back with them. That’s when I noticed the gender—one of them was female. Her skin was lighter in tone, ranging from light blue to a near white on different parts of her body. She wore a dark-colored bikini that wasn’t much different than what the girls wore. Her nipples showed through the light fabric, concealing little of her large breasts. She had big, green eyes with black, slick hair. She had a pointy nose and jawline but when she squeaked at the other two, she had bright, white teeth and small, vampire-like incisors. She was stunning, and I was taken aback for a second, shocked to find such beauty among the watchers.
“Emma, it’s us!” Benji yelled.
Emma glanced back at her three captors and growled at them, showing her teeth as if she had fangs just like them. She jumped at them and punched one in the face. I sent a quick thought that if they touched Emma again, they would all die. They got scared and tried to get away from her as she pummeled them with fists until one fell to the ground, and then she started kicking.
The girls and I ran to Emma and pulled her off the watchers. One watcher had blood pouring from his nose and looked as terrified as anyone I’d ever seen.
The two males had muscular arms and they seemed longer than a man’s. The female appeared unharmed and wasn’t as scared as the other two. In fact, I felt nothing from her. She had an unblinking stare at me.
With Emma behind me with the girls, I pushed my spear toward them. They flinched at my thrusts. My heart pounded, and I drove back my lust for blood.
“Is she okay?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the fish folk.
“I’m madder than a wet panther, and those nasty water people hurt my hands something fierce,” Emma said in her charming southern accent. I heard scuffling and grunting, and assumed the girls were holding her back from another go at the watchers.
“Get up,” I said, thinking of what to do with them. “And get in that cage.”
They didn’t respond at first, and I realized they wouldn’t be able to understand me. They were some missing link in an aquatic evolutionary path, tossed to these islands by nature.
I used my thoughts and gave them the urge to be in that cage. They scurried to their feet, kicking up the white sand, and dashed into the cage, pulling the female with them. All of us advanced toward the three in the cage with our weapons out. They didn’t appear to have any weapons, and I didn’t see any way to hide something on their nearly naked bodies.
“What are we going to do with them?” Benji asked.
“We’re going to ask them questions,” I said. “And hopefully get some answers about what the fuck this place is.”
Chapter 16
I wasn’t sure how well the stick cage could hold three muscular watchers. I imagined it wouldn’t. That just meant we had to be prepared to kill them. I had the leader at the end of my spear while the girls had the right and left side. If they tried anything, we’d stick them before one branch broke.
“Can you understand me?” I asked
The leader didn’t respond at first, but the other two looked at him.
“Yes,” it said in a low, garbled voice. “We been taught the language of the king.”
“Not well,” Aubrey said under her breath.
“Why are you watching us?” I asked.
The leader shook his head, and I compelled him to answer. Its eyes widened in fear and then said, “We watch you. You like king. You a prince. You can end him.” He spoke as if words cost money and he was broke.
Fresh blood poured from his nose, and the other two squeaked at the sight of it.
“We’re not far enough away,” the female said, holding her head. “It didn’t work.”
“What king?” I asked.
“The king,” he said. “He rules all. He…” The thing screeched out in pain, grabbing his head.
“Damn, Emma, how hard did you hit them?” Aubrey asked.
“Not hard enough. They’re still breathing,” Emma said. “And you all are a sight for sore eyes, I tell you. I about I thought I bought a ticket on the devil’s train with these sea folk.”
“We can have a proper meeting after this,” Benji said, holding an arrow back in her bow.
“Who is this king?” I asked with more force.
The other two watchers screeched and shook their head, pleading without words to him. The leader struggled and closed his mouth tightly. “If I speak, I die. We thought this was far enough away. We know there’s nowhere he can’t reach. Even end of world.” He looked to the sky.
I glanced around the island, searching for this person, this king. Yet, there wasn’t anyone else on this island.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know a king or his reach.” I gestured to Emma. “Why did you take her?”
The other two seemed to plead with him to not speak. He waved them off and made a pop sound with his mouth. The other two went silent, but I saw tears in the female’s big green eyes. The younger male scowled, staring straight ahead.
“My name is Du’rack. This is Shaya,” he gestured to the female, “and this is Du’tumey. We took your female here. We thought this be out of the king’s reach, that we could talk here, but we were wrong.”
Blood poured from his nose and ran down his chest. I could tell the other two were holding back from helping him. They both trembled and tears flowed from the female's green eyes and down her chin.
“Each word kills me. So please, listen. We need you. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time. You are the prince that can stop the king.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said, starting to feel bad for these three.
“You broke the seal of Anwok, from the cave. It has started.” Du’rack winced, slamming its big eyes closed.
“He’s dying,” Shaya said and then cringed as if wracked with pain.
“He has to know,” Du’rack said. “I can pass beyond this with honor.”
Shaya nodded but kept crying.
“What do I need to know?” I asked, feeling desperate to understand him.
“You can change world. We need your help.” Du’rack slapped the symbol on his chest and Shaya touched hers as well. Du’tumey sneered as he touched his symbol. “This means we are of Shultar, with a circle symbol. Remember it. If you see one like me with square here, they Crultar. They want to stop you. They kill you if they knew you existed. We’ve hidden you from them, but the king will know seal of Anwok is broken soon. They will come and you not yet ready.”
My mind reeled with this information. They were saying I was some prince, and that I was the only one that could stop a king that was now going to be coming for me? Yeah, that sounded insane as three fish people standing in a cage in front of me.
Du’rack coughed and blood dripped from his mouth.
“Why are you dying?” I asked.
“The king branded us with this,” he slapped his chest again. “If we speak of the business of the king, we die.”
“What the hell?” Aubrey asked.
“Can we get off these islands and get back home?” Cass interjected.
Du’rack looked at her, shocked, and then back to me.
“There is nowhere else but these islands. We are at the end of the world right here.”
Great, so they didn’t know how to get off these islands.
Du’rack fell to his knees and coughed up more blood.
“Where is this king?” I asked.
“He’s on the other side of the world. Very far from here,” he said, gargling with blood in his mouth.
“What about the big boat, Mario, and the black tree seeds?” I said in a rush, knowing he only had moments longer.
“Those are all his. The boat spread his seed over the islands. These are good islands. He hates good islands. He wants them…ripened. You need to stop him. We can help you. There isn’t much time. You need to be stronger.”
“How?”
“We can help you but you need to trust us. You might even be able to break this…”
Du’rack fell forward before finishing his sentence. The cage caught his fall and his bloody face pressed up against the branches.
Shaya screamed and got next to Du’rack. She pulled him back, crying while holding him in her arms. The other one, Du’tumey, glared at us. I had the sudden impression that this was a family. A father, son, and daughter trio, and these two had just lost their dad, just to tell me a few things that made little sense to me.
I had no words but plenty of more questions. Not the least of which was: what seal did I break in that cave, and what was an Anwok?
Shaya let her father go and looked up to Du’tumey. As much as I saw her sorrow, I felt his anger. He looked from her to me, glaring at me. Then he gestured to the door of the cage. I nodded and stepped back, ready to stick him if needed.
He stepped out, tears in his eyes. Shaya walked right behind him.
“Can you both speak?” I asked.
Shaya shook her head as Du’tumey continued to glare.
“But you can understand me?”
Shaya nodded a confirmation.
Du’tumey raised his hand at her as if to hit her, and Shaya brought up her webbed hands in defense. I put a stop to that thought with a thought of my own, sent right to Du’tumey. If he struck her, I’d be forced to do things I didn’t want to do.
He looked at his fist and then at me. Spitting on the ground, he walked away from me. Shaya glanced at her brother and then back to us.
“He’s upset,” Shaya said. “Leave Du’rack’s body here. We will take care of it. Now, get back to your island, quickly. I will see you there as soon as I can, and we can discuss the next steps for you. Stay alive. The mighty Anyck hunts you.”
She wiped her nose and blood smeared across the back of her hand. She looked at it for a second and then ran to her bother.
“What the fuck’s an Anyck?” Aubrey yelled.
Benji stepped forward, raising her bow and arrow.
“You want me to?” Benji asked, nodding to them with her bow. “You know?”
“No, let them go,” I said, letting out a long breath.
We stood there for a moment in silence as we watched the watchers jump into the water and disappear.
“Emma!” Sherri yelled, breaking the silence.
“Sherri! How in Hades did you guys get here?” Emma asked. “And Sir Prince, are you the deck boy from the ship?”
“That I am,” I said, agreeing at least with the deck boy part. The prince part seemed like a whimsical title for someone that had a tinfoil suit with a matching hat. “And we found you thanks to the young lady over there. Her name is Eliza Brown, and my name is Jack Sawyer.”
Chapter 17
Once the girls had mauled our new member for a bit, I got to take a good look at her. She had a wider build than the other girls, with broad shoulders and thick legs and ass. Her big blonde hair and feminine face were at odds with her proportions, but she made it work. It worked damn well, actually.
Her sparkly bikini reflected bits of light, making for a light show on her large breasts; it was quite a show. She had some of the largest natural-looking breasts I’d ever seen. Each time she laughed and jumped around with her sisters, I couldn’t help but watch the display. She also radiated charm, with a sweet as sugar smile with a wide mouth and a perfect set of teeth.
“She’s a softball player,” Benji said, getting up next me as Sherri, Aubrey, and Kara rattled off stories to each other.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “A ball player. I was into some little league back in the day.”
“She’s one of the best hitters in the world,” Benji said. “She had pro teams scouting her out all the time.”
“Impressive,” I said.
The group of girls moved closer to us, with Emma at the front, speaking.
“Yeah, I was the one on that island,” Emma said, as if answering a question from one of the girls. “Used my survivor skills to the fullest. After a few days, I decided to make like Cast Away—take my Wilson and build a raft to get up and out of there.”
Benji beamed at the reference. She seemed to categorize people into ones that understood movie quotes and ones that didn’t, or the worst, hated them.
“But I tell you,” Emma continued. “Those sea-people bastards were waiting for me the whole time. I wasn’t more than a couple throws offshore before those blue hands were on me. So I used the spear I made and killed one of them. The rest of them pinned me to that raft and took me all the way to this island.”
“Were there any more than the three we saw here?” I asked.
“No, just the three. They would argue about stuff, but I was about as lost as last year’s Easter egg, trying to figure out what they were saying,” Emma said.
I sighed. I thought coming face to face with the watchers would give me more answers, but really, it just brought up more questions.
“There’s still plenty of daylight,” I said, glancing at the sky. “I say we get what we can from this island and head out. If we can find some good wind, we can be back home by dark.”
“You still have that raft you made?” Aubrey asked.
“No, the fish-faces pushed it out into the water. It was a fine raft, too,” Emma said with a sigh.
“Damn,” Aubrey said. “We could use another barge behind this one.”
“Oh wait,” Benji said, stopping us all from walking toward the raft. “Emma, when did you get here? I mean, how long have you been here?”
Emma seemed confused. “This is my third day.”
Sherri gasped, and Aubrey took in a deep breath, looking at the sky.
“Why?” Emma asked. “How long have you guys been here?”
“Like two weeks,” Benji said.
“What?” Emma asked, looking even more confused. “That’s impossible.”
“I know,” Benji said.
“I’ve been here for only two days,” Cass sa
id. “Snakes put me in a coma and held me in a cave next to a capybara.”
“What?” Emma asked.
“We’ve all experienced some time differences,” I said, setting aside Cass’s story for another time. “We don’t know what it means, if it means anything. Cass here was being held unconscious when we found her, so we’re not sure how long she’s been on the islands.”
Emma stared at me and then to Cass. She took a deep breath, and her face smoothed out, the confusion and concern easing from her.
“When you’re lost as a blind cat in a ball pit it’s better to just go with it that fight and sink.”
“Ha, yeah, I guess,” I said, not sure I understood what that meant.
“Did you guys build that boat?” Emma asked, walking toward it.
“Oh my god, yes!” Sherri said. “You have to see it.”
An enthusiastic Sherri gave her a quick tour of Luna. Emma couldn’t believe how much we had done in such a short time. After the boat viewing, I eyed the island. We couldn’t carry everything I wanted but we could take some of it.
“We should take those huts down,” I said. “And check and see if there is anything edible on the island we can take.”
“The last island had pepper!” Benji said.
Emma picked up a spear and inspected it. She touched the stone end and felt the shaft of it.
“Nice to see you have weapons,” Emma said. “Because if I see those fish people again, I’m killing them.”
The group went silent and watched our new girl stab at the air with the spear.
“I dislike the watchers just as much as you, but they went to great effort to get my attention out here. They said they took you all the way to the end of the world to get away from the king’s influence. They must have known of Eliza’s ability and that we’d be coming for you.”
“Ability?” Emma asked. “You know what? Don’t answer. I say we just get off this island and get back home.”
“These islands are their home,” Cass said. I noticed she didn't include herself in our group.
“You guys are stuck on these islands, even with this boat?” Emma asked.
