Authors: Usman Ijaz
He returned to his desk certain that there was
more to the three strangers that had found their way aboard his ship than he
had at first thought.
4
Adrian leaned on the starboard railing and
watched the white water break away as the ship raced its way downriver. The
earlier revitalizing breeze had given way to chill winds, but he didn’t mind.
The sky overhead was cast gold from the setting sun. He found it hard to
believe that the same sun shone on Port Hope and the Golden Lilly. It all
seemed to be in another world now.
Behind him the crew went about their jobs,
shouting orders and tasks to one another, rigging the masts, keeping the ship
on course, and one man in the crow’s nest keeping a watch on what lay ahead. Smoke
billowed from one of the two smokestacks. Captain Lavos was somewhere below
decks, and Connor was still sleeping.
He had gone to check on Alexis before coming up
here, but there had been no change in the Legionnaire, aside from the lack of
an arrowhead sticking from his shoulder.
Adrian watched the river bellow, and thought of
all the time he had spent watching the ships back in Port Hope, fantasizing
about what it might be like to sail on them. Now he was traveling on one, a
steamboat to boot, and yet didn’t feel any of the joy he would have expected.
But he found that there was still something to
be glad about in their current run of misfortune; the nightmares were fading.
He didn’t know how he knew this, or if it was simply wishful thinking, but they
had not troubled him since leaving Milen and Rebecca. He hoped they would never
bother him again.
He remained there, leaning on the railing and
staring into the waters below, until Connor came up and stood beside him.
“Have you eaten yet?” His cousin asked.
“Yes. What about you?”
“No,” Connor said. “I don’t know where to go.”
Adrian smiled at him. “Come on, I‘ll show you.”
As Connor filled himself on ship’s biscuits and
fish soup, the two reminisced of Port Hope and what everyone might be doing, and
though the talk invoked painful nostalgia in them both, it was comforting to
talk of the old times. For that was what the memories seemed like, Adrian
realized. Old times.
5
They went above again. The air below decks was
simply too nauseating, the space too confining, and the light nearly
non-existent.
“It’s hard to believe that only this morning we
were running for our lives,” Connor remarked as they stood looking at the
passing woods.
“A lot has happened since this morning,” Adrian
said.
“Yes,” Connor agreed, remembering the fear that
had pulsed through his veins. He had never before felt anything like that
before, and hoped to never feel it again.
One of the crewmen walked over to them. He wore
a faded scarf around his head. “You lads want to see the view from the top?”
Connor and Adrian followed his gaze to the
tallest mast. At the top there was a round construction just big enough for a
man to move around in. Their jaws dropped.
“You mean that?” Adrian asked.
“Aye,” said the man. “I know. Looks like a
daunting height, but believe me, it’s quite worth it. You lads want to come
along?”
Adrian shook his head. Connor looked at the
sheer height of the mast and wondered what someone would look like if they fell
from such a height. But he imagined a person could look for miles around from
atop there. He looked at Adrian, and then at the man with the faded scarf. “All
right ....”
The man clapped him on the back, grinning, and
nearly sent him crashing to the deck. “‘Al right’ he says! Lad’s certainly got
courage!”
“Connor, are you sure?” Adrian asked him.
“I think so,” Connor said as he followed the
man.
Running up both sides of the main mast were long
stretches of rope nets. Some of the crew watched as Connor and the man began
climbing. Connor found the climb to be fairly simple, but after he got about
halfway up his arms began to ache and his palms began to sweat. He was suddenly
worried he would lose his grip. He glanced down once and saw some of the
crewmen and Adrian watching them make their way up.
“Not too far now!” the man shouted down.
He closed his eyes and continued to climb,
fearing that his every next step would send him flying off into thin air.
I
should have never done this!
I’m a bloody fool!
And then strong
hands were grabbing at him. Connor opened his eyes, and in his surprise nearly
let go of the net. He was right bellow the crow’s nest, and helping him up and
onto it was the man with the faded scarf.
“Don’t look down now, lad” the man advised.
He was pulled onto the lookout, an oversized
wooden pale hanging around the top of the mast, and dropped to his knees.
“Don’t you want to see the view?” the man asked.
Connor shook his head and breathed deeply. At
last he stood up, realizing that he hadn’t come so high to simply sit on the
floor. The rim of the nest came to his chest, and when he leaned over it to
look below he felt the entire world begin to shift. Again he was grabbed by
strong hands and pulled back.
“Easy there,” said the man. “You don’t want to
go falling off of here. Wouldn‘t be much left of you.”
Connor sunk to a sitting position. “What’s your
name?”
“Jasper,” said the man, grinning.
“You’re crazy, Jasper, you know that, don’t
you?”
“As crazy as they come,” Jasper admitted.
Connor at last forced himself to stand up again.
The view, he had to admit, really was breathtaking. To either side of them
spanned the green forest under the fading daylight, and before them and behind
them the river snaked away into the distance.
“Do you like it?” Jasper asked.
“Yes, I suppo--” and that was when he threw up.
Later in the evening, the boys checked on Alexis
before retiring to their own rooms. There appeared to be no visible change in
the Legionnaire.
1
“It’s poison.”
“Poison?” Adrian repeated dumbly, staring at
Nemoy.
“Aye, the arrowhead must have been coated with
it,” Nemoy said, frowning. “It’s attacking his heart.” He had removed the
bandages from Alexis’s wound, and they could all see the purple-red veins that
traveled down the left side of his chest. The wound seemed to be healing
slowly. The puckered flesh seeped yellow puss at times, filling the room with a
rotten stench.
“Can you help him, Nemoy?” Lavos asked. He stood
with his arms crossed over his large chest, watching it all with a quiet worry.
Adrian looked from the captain to the ship
doctor, hoping for an assenting answer. Lavos glanced towards him, and in his
eyes Adrian caught something he had seen much these past two days. He could
only place it as wary mistrust.
He has a right to be suspicious; we haven't
told him the truth
.
“I don’t know, captain. I can’t say I’m familiar
with the type of poison, but I’ll try whatever poison remedies I know, in the
hopes that one will work. In the end he may live, but ....” He didn’t need to
say anymore. The look he directed towards Connor and him told Adrian everything
he dreaded and feared.
Before them lay Alexis on what was likely his
deathbed, sweat glistening across his body and running down the sides of his
face. His eyes flickered behind the lids, and his chest rose and fell with
every slow pained breath he took. A few times he moaned aloud through a face
contorted in anguish.
“All right, do for him what you can, Nemoy,”
Lavos said and left the room.
Nemoy began to construct a poultice. Adrian and
Connor left the room as well. They found the captain waiting for them. They
looked at one another for a few moments in which the rest of the world ceased
to exist.
“All right, lads,” said Lavos in a grave voice.
“I don’t know exactly what is going on here, but I do know that something is
being kept from me. And I don’t like having secrets aboard my own ship. So out
with whatever it is you’re hiding.”
“Captain, I --” Adrian began, and was cut off.
“I want the truth, lad. I found the guns of the
fellow lying in there, and those are no ordinary guns.”
Adrian looked from the captain to the closed
door to Connor, and sighed. “Can we go to our room and talk there, then?”
Connor looked at him in surprise.
Lavos agreed, and they all headed down the
corridor and into the room the two boys shared. Adrian and Connor sat on their
cots while the captain stood waiting.
“Our sick friend is a Legionnaire.” He looked up
from his knotted hands and saw Lavos’s stunned face.
“A Legionnaire?” the captain stammered. “Aboard
my ship?”
“Yes.” Adrian watched the captain closely to see
how he took the news.
“I saw the guns, but I suspected that maybe he’d
stolen them, but that he could be a .... Are you sure, lad?”
“Yes. You can check the back of his hand if you
don’t believe me.”
“But he looks too young.”
Connor, who had been quiet until now, said, “I
don’t know about his age, but he
is
a Legionnaire.”
Lavos breathed heavily and placed a hand against
the wall to keep himself upright. “I still cannot believe it, lads. A
Legionnaire on my ship.”
“We have told you what you wanted to know,
captain,” Adrian said, “but I don’t think we can tell you much more.”
Lavos remained quiet, lost in an elated daze,
then he looked at them. “Tell me one thing, though; is this a mission?”
Adrian looked at Connor and then back at the
captain. “I suppose so.”
Lavos grinned, and in that moment he looked like
a child who’s gotten the most exquisite present for the Jubilee Feast. When he
managed to regain his composure he looked at them in earnest. “I hope he makes
it through his sickness, lads. For I myself am from the Capital, and nothing
would please me more than to see a native Legionnaire walking around my ship.”
“I hope he pulls through as well,” Adrian told
the man simply.
2
In his fevered dreams Alexis ran through the
dark forest, chased by unseen forms with malicious yellow eyes. The dreams and
nightmares came persistently, blending in and out of one another so that it all
felt a jumble of emotions and experiences. He dreamt that he was back in the
Forest of Trials, surrounded by harsh noises in the dark that he knew did not
belong there, and his token had been stolen and he failed to attain his guns.
He dreamt of a conversation with his father, where he was renounced and labeled
a failure. Other times Allyse turned away from him, and it was as though he had
never known her. But worse were the dreams where he watched Adrian and Connor
die before his own eyes, and could do nothing.
And then came to him the dream of the woman. She
came to him through the dark, surrounded by a brilliant white glow. She wore a
scenic white dress and her golden hair cascaded around her shoulders in
beautiful waves. Her bright gray eyes stared into his, studying him, weighing
him, judging him. He looked at her, and thought that she must be the Lady of
Shadows, come to guide him to the netherworld to be judged. Then she spoke in a
soft whisper, and all thought evaporated from his mind like dew under the
high-noon sun.
“You cannot not die. Not yet. You must live.”
9
When Connor went to check on Alexis the next
morning, he found the Legionnaire sleeping peacefully. His body was dry of
sweat, and his chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm. On his left shoulder
was Nemoy’s poultice held in place by bandages.
He stood in between the door and looked at
Alexis’s sleeping form with a small smile. Alexis was getting better, and that
meant that he and Adrian wouldn’t be left by themselves.
“Connor ...?” The Legionnaire croaked suddenly.
Connor jerked out of his thoughts and looked
into Alexis’s unblinking eyes. He went and knelt by the bed.
“Connor ... where are ... we?”
“We’re on a ship.”
“The ... woods .... the .... beasts?”
“Behind us,” Connor said. “We outran them.”
“Adrian ...?” Alexis asked, and his voice was
suddenly filled with an urgent need to know.
“Adrian is fine, he’s sleeping right now. How
are you feeling?”
“Dead ...,” Alexis said, and tried to smile.
“I’ll go fetch Nemoy, stay here,” Connor said,
and left the room.