writing

Omen

Hun wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d ended up wherever it was that he lived now. It had taken time to get used to how small his world was, in some ways, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t need to wait for nightfall to go out sailing; he had a place to sleep and plenty of food. He could count all his neighbors on one hand, and—aside from the one obvious exception—they seemed to like him well enough, for reasons he didn’t understand but knew better than to question. Not much changed other than the weather and the rhythms of the sea.

That was why he knew, when he looked up from the ocean floor and saw the shadow of another boat next to his own, that it must be some kind of omen. Probably not a good one.

It couldn’t have belonged to anyone else he knew. He quickly ruled out pirates—he hadn’t seen a single one since arriving on the island, and the vessel was strangely shaped, hardly big enough for even a single passenger, let alone a whole crew. He put his tools in his belt, kicked off the seafloor, and swam towards it, cutting through the water at a cautious but steady pace. No sense in giving himself time to worry about whatever was going to happen. In the meantime, he focused on sizing up the vessel. It barely even looked seaworthy, he realized as he got closer. Really more of a raft.

Hun braced himself and surfaced. Nothing happened, which was somehow worse. He frantically looked back and forth between the strange vessel and his own boat. The sides were just high enough that he couldn’t see who or what was inside. They could be hiding.

“Who’s there?” he bellowed in his don’t-fuck-with-me voice. No answer. The strange vessel bobbed inertly, not moving any closer or further away. Small waves broke against the flat sides, sending water onto the deck. He suddenly realized that it didn’t have a sail or oars, not even a notch to rest them on. Almost as if it wasn’t meant to be sailed at all, just pushed out to sea and…

No. It couldn’t possibly be a funeral barge. But he didn’t know what else he could be looking at. It occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t be touching it, but not until he had already grasped the side. His hand closed around flower petals, releasing a faintly sweet smell into the air. The raft creaked loudly as Hun tilted it towards himself, craning his neck to peek inside.

Something cold brushed against his knuckles—another hand, pale and limp. Its fingers twitched against his.

He flinched, gripping the edge tighter. It took him a few moments of staring at the hand, heart pounding, frozen in place, for him to realize that it was still attached to its owner. He grasped the wrist and felt a slow, steady pulse under his fingers.

Hun got a better look at the inside of the raft after he tethered it to his own boat and got a chance to catch his breath. There was a young man inside—tied down, probably to keep him from rolling off—surrounded by large blue flowers that didn’t look like anything else he’d seen before. He tried to examine one of them more closely, but holding it too close to his face made his head spin. Water had come in over the low sides and washed most of the blossoms into a dull clump in the corner. Maybe he was right about the raft being a funeral barge, but it seemed a little premature. Its passenger was clearly alive, if unresponsive. He tried slapping him around the face a little bit to wake him up, but got no reaction. Weird. Was he drugged or something?

He rowed back to shore, checking over his shoulder every now and then to make sure the raft hadn’t drifted off somehow, or vanished into thin air. He dragged it onto the beach. He thought about going back to the boat and getting his knife to cut the ropes, but he didn’t really want to turn his back on it. Maybe it was some kind of trap, anyway. Making a fire while keeping his head awkwardly angled to keep the raft in his peripherals was a challenge, but he managed. Sometimes he saw the young man’s hand twitch again, or heard him murmur something unintelligible, but that was all.

Most of the water had drained out of the raft by now, but his clothes were still half-soaked through, and he was probably freezing. Hun supposed there wasn’t any harm in pushing him closer to the fire, even if he was some kind of fey creature. He leaned in and watched the man’s face cautiously. His brow was slightly furrowed, and his eyelids twitched as if he was dreaming. A lock of brown hair clung to the corner of his mouth. Hun reached out to brush it away, then realized what he was doing and jerked his hand back. What the hell was going on?

He jumped up and paced around the fire, trying to shake off the pounding in his chest. Why him? What was he even supposed to do in a situation like this? What would Camille do? What would Ronove do?

He glanced up, looking past the woods in the direction of the house. The sun was getting low, from what he could see of it behind the clouds. He hadn’t been planning to go back up to the house today—if he left now, there was a chance he’d have to find his way back through the forest after dark. He shuddered at the thought. There must be something else he could do.

He sighed heavily, dragging a hand down his face, fidgeting for a moment with a stray hair that poked out from his beard. The adrenaline was starting to wear off. Maybe he should just go ahead and make dinner. The smell of fire-grilled salmon might wake the both of them up—but he’d need to back to his cabin for ingredients. He cast a long, searching look at the raft and its passenger. At some point, the man’s head had lolled to one side, and Hun couldn’t see his face from where he was standing, but he was as still as ever. It would probably be fine. Just as long as he was quick about it.

His cabin was a short walk down the beach and on the other side of a sharp corner, just out of sight of the dock and the nearby fire pit. There was a larger, more permanent fire pit outside the front porch, with a grill and everything, but the cabin was where he slept most nights, and he was very careful about what he allowed in haunting distance of it. He automatically removed his sandals before ducking under the threshold.

The stove was unlit, obviously, but the afternoon sun trickling in weakly through the windows was enough light for him to see by. He checked to make sure the fish in the ice chest was still good. It might not be as fresh as when he’d caught it yesterday—that night, he’d just diced the flesh and eaten it raw, dressed in tangy citrus and topped with pickled ginger—but with some lemon, butter, and salt, it wouldn’t matter. Did he have any thyme left over? He rummaged around the pantry, collecting ingredients in a square of waxed cloth on the counter.

It was soothing to focus on something else for a moment, as if it were a day like any other. A small part of him started to hope that he’d dreamed it all up. Maybe he’d surfaced too quickly, and it was just a bout of diver’s madness. Maybe he’d wake up alone on the boat, cough up a lungful of seawater, limp back to shore, find nothing, and spend the rest of the evening nursing his pounding head.

Just as Hun finished tying the bundle of food, an unfamiliar voice tore across the beach, like a clap of thunder. Something—someone—was screaming, as if waking up from a nightmare. The sound faded quickly, but it sent a chill down the back of his neck. Moving slowly, as if through cold water, he slipped a knife out of the block on the counter and into one of the loops on his belt. Just in case.

He followed the smoke rising from the fire pit, playing the voice back in his head over and over, trying and failing to figure out what he could expect when he finally turned the corner. The man’s sleeping face, the water-darkened hair clinging to his lip, came easily to his mind’s eye. He pushed at the bounds of the memory, moving further down, trying to superimpose his own outstretched hand onto the man’s slender throat. He’d broken necks twice that size. Not that it had to come to that, of course. He was probably exhausted, probably knew better than to pick a fight. All that aside, he was still tied down and obviously couldn’t have gone far.

When he finally turned the corner, he found the raft on its side, a ring of ruined blue petals surrounding it. Empty. Curse his rotten luck! The ropes lay uselessly in the sand. They hadn’t been cut cleanly—the ends were jagged, as if they’d been sawed at by the dull edge of a rock. As if someone had struggled against them until they found a weak point and broke through, with the panic-fueled strength of a caged animal. He shuddered again and shook his head. That couldn’t be right, but even when he stooped down to investigate, he didn’t see anything else the man could have used to break free. Footprints led further down the beach in a jagged line. He swallowed thickly and followed the trail around another corner.

There was a figure folded over itself in the sand, a few dozen yards ahead. It was him. Hun could see the color of his shirt even from this distance. As he got closer, he thought he saw his shoulders tremble, but he didn’t make a sound.

Hun nearly called out to the figure, but thought better of it. Startling him was probably a bad idea. Maybe if he just—

The man bolted upright and looked over his shoulder, spotting Hun before he had time to react. He let out a raw, startled noise and tried to scramble backwards, but lost his footing and fell flat on his back. A bundle of waterlogged leather and something else that might have been paper at some point slipped out of his arms and onto the sand.

“What are you doing here?” Hun winced at the harsh tone of his own voice. He wasn’t trying to escalate.

The wild, glazed-over look in the man’s pale eyes froze him in place. Caged animal didn’t begin to cover it. His gaze flitted back and forth between Hun and some unknown point in the middle distance. A pit formed in Hun’s stomach. This was a look he knew well. At some point, his hand had come to rest on the hilt of his knife.

“I—” The man’s voice was raspy with disuse. He tried to clear his throat. Hun flinched at the sound. “I need to—” He picked up the leather bundle and clutched it to himself with shaking hands, as if he were trying to hold it together. There was a dark, rectangular outline of wet sand where it had fallen.

It was a journal, Hun realized. He wouldn’t be much help there, but Nohsov had something similar, likely more than one—as far as he remembered, at least. Maybe he’d lost interest in journal-keeping by now. But he could probably do something about the condition of this one, or at least give its owner one of the leftovers from his fleeting hobby.

He consciously unclenched his jaw, as he usually had to do whenever he thought about Nohsov for too long.

“You’ll need to deal with that at the house.” He pointed towards the forest in its general direction. If he looked hard enough, he could see a sliver of roof peeking up from the treetops. “But that can wait till later. You should—”

Hun turned back toward the man in time to watch him crest the hill leading up to the woods. He was moving toward the spot Hun had pointed to. Hun was stunned into silence. What was with this guy’s priorities?

He thought about just letting him go, then realized with a start that there was no way he would make it to the house before nightfall.

“Hey! Get back here!” he shouted after the man. Surprisingly, he was having a hard time keeping up. He was startlingly quick for someone in his condition. The man looked over his shoulder, and their eyes met one more time. He clutched the journal to his chest, mumbled a “thank you”, and disappeared into the woods.

Hun thought about following him, but his legs refused to take him any further. Not this late. He paced back and forth along the perimeter for a while, trying to catch a glimpse of him through the trees. Eventually, he stopped, and headed back to tend to the fire pit. He’d done all he could, he told himself. More than he needed to.

He found the bundle of food near the upturned raft, where it had slipped out of his hands earlier. Luckily, nothing inside was damaged. The fish wasn’t as good as it had been yesterday, but it wasn’t bad by a long shot. Had he been this hungry the whole time? It was gone before he really had a chance to taste it.

Hun thought about putting out the fire and heading back to the cabin, but couldn’t summon the energy to stand—no, he just didn’t feel like it yet. He’d had a long day, and he was still digesting. There was no harm in resting his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them again, he saw the Polestar overhead, flickering green in the night sky. When had he fallen asleep? The fire had burned down to embers, and seagulls had made off with the remnants of his dinner. Damn them. He was planning to make stock out of that.

He staggered to his feet and stumbled over to the moon-lit dock. Everything was in order—his boat was untouched, and so was the chest of artifacts inside. Seeing them quieted his nerves, but only a bit. Stray blue petals danced around the supports, caught between the push and pull of the tides. So it hadn’t been a dream. An omen, probably, and not a good one. But not a dream.

The raft was still on its side, somehow. Hun didn’t like the look of it, but he figured destroying it was a bad idea, too. He gritted his teeth and kicked it over with more force than was strictly necessary. It fell face-down onto the sand with a dull, unsatisfying thud. That would do for now.

As he packed his things up to head home and tossed sand over the remnants of the fire, he kept glancing back at the forest, as if he might see something that would put his mind at ease. He saw the occasional white flash of an owl’s wing, fireflies sending messages back and forth in pulses of soft green. No ghosts, though of course he couldn’t be sure. He’d probably hear about the aftermath within the next day or two, for better or for worse.

He finally arrived home with just enough energy to peel his shirt and trousers off before collapsing into bed. Images of the man’s face flitted through his mind. There was a pit in his stomach he couldn’t get rid of. For the first time in a long while, he hoped Nohsov would descend from his tower soon and come whining to him about some guy who wouldn’t leave him alone.