The Duelist 7, page 24
It was an odd way of conversing, and I couldn’t really decide if he was being duplicitous in any way or not, so I just went with the flow.
“Okay, I want to know if there is any way you can help me return to my airship either by communicating with them en route, or by getting me to the Isle of Eng where we were heading before my son and I took our fall,” I said.
I didn’t know if anyone in the wheelhouse saw us fall, so the possibility that none of them knew where we were was a good one, and rather terrifying when it came to Aventoll’s limited means of communication.
“Yes, this is the question you are obligated to ask, aren’t you?” Elmer relayed with more complex hand signs. “Unfortunately, the answers to both of your questions are not ones that are useful to you. We do not have the level of sophistication you are accustomed to. But you are, of course, welcome to stay as long as you can lend a hand to our community. Now, go ahead and ask me what you really want to know.”
I tilted my head curiously at his strange phrasing, and I wondered what else I apparently was champing at the bit to ask him.
But my priorities were pretty clear: get back to the rest of my family hopefully in one piece, and as soon as possible.
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” I finally said, but instead of an answer, Elmer simply walked out of the tent with a wave in our direction that ostensibly meant we were supposed to follow.
And, of course, the man was too enigmatic not to see what he was up to next, so Rylan and I shuffled out behind him and followed him all the way to the edge of one of the majestic branches.
The sun was now sinking below the flat horizon and made the sky look like orange meringue whipped with hot-pink streaks of clouds. It was quite stunning in and of itself, but what made it even more magical was how the last of the sun’s rays hit all of the dewdrops in the canopy at once and threw the whole forest into a rainbow disco.
“Woah!” Rylan said as he looked down at all of the flickering rainbow patches on his shirt and turned slowly in place like he was a disco ball. “This is so amazing.”
The sloth-elder merely nodded and closed his eyes when he felt a breeze against his graying shaggy face.
Then, while he was enjoying himself, the grizzled old man began to hum.
His tune, it turned out, was immediately recognizable to both Rylan and me, because my son stopped mid-twirl and stared at Elmer with the same shocked expression that was no doubt on my own face.
The simple tune the Okoba leader was humming to himself consisted of only four painfully familiar notes. The first three notes were a sustained pitch until the last lilted up a whole step, and the whole tune reminded me of a pretty songbird.
Finally, Elmer ceased his humming and gestured with his hands. “Now, do you know the question you most want to ask me?”
“Yes,” I whispered when my voice seemingly decided to waiver. “I want to know who or what keeps haunting my nightmares.”
Chapter 20
After I asked my question, I knew the sloth-elder was correct. This really was the question that had been burning me up on the inside ever since I first heard that fateful scream in my subconscious mind.
Who did this voice belong to, and should Rylan and I be worried?
But apparently now that I’d asked the all-important question to Elmer the Leader of the Okoba, he seemed to have all the time in the world to do everything else but answer my question.
Madam Morta, who was still acting as his official translator, explained Elmer wanted to have tea with Rylan and me in the greenhouse before he would answer any more questions.
Typical.
So, off we went to the lower area of the branches where the greenhouse was located close enough to the sun, yet dappled by the mighty Okoba leaves overhead that were either clear or an opaque white that cast the perfect amount of shading. With the sheer size and the interesting ribbed pattern on the undersides, the leaves reminded me of the belly of a humpback whale, and the way they waved up and down in the gentle breeze reminded me of the great beasts’ graceful movements in the water.
The peacefulness of it all calmed me down and helped me to organize my mind. It also helped that a few of the sloth-folk who occasionally passed us kept giving me articles of clothing, as if all of them knew what I needed and decided to each give me something separately. It was a little funny, and for some reason really endearing, and if I already loved Arvid, I doubly loved his entire species simply for their kind eccentricities.
But despite the fresh comfy clothes, which consisted of a long open vest, harem pants, and socks with grippy things on the bottom, my brain was still gnawing on the burning question, and especially over the sloth-elder.
There was something about Elmer that I couldn’t put my finger on, but he definitely conducted himself like every other crafty old coot who had some knowledge hoarded away over everybody else. Distantly, part of me realized this was probably a lesson in patience, but another larger part of me couldn’t wait to become old and half-senile just so I could get away with antics such as these.
Indirectness really frustrated me, and by the time the greenhouses came into view, I was revved up again with anticipation and a little bit of irritation.
At least I wasn’t the only one crawling out of my skin with suspense because Rylan was just as bad as me, if not worse, and he was doubly awful at trying to hide it.
He jittered beside me the whole damn way down to the level where a veritable jungle of other plants were being grown under more sun glass. However, he kept his tongue from rambling or saying something rude, even though I knew his impatience was getting the best of him.
It was amusing enough that it distracted me from my own gnawing need to know just what the darkhell this guy was talking about.
“Leader Elmer would like you both to pour the tea,” Madam Morta said once we were all settled in the greenhouse under a tree that had blue palm-looking fronds sprouting from its branches.
What was interesting about this tree was despite how humid and close the greenhouse was when we walked in, when we sat under the blue branches of this tree, we were all treated with a gentle breeze.
“Is the tree doing that?” Rylan asked, and he pointed upward while I poured out some tea for him from the pot on the squat table.
Elmer only answered with a serene nod and glanced up at the blue palm. “Zeeeephyr Treeeee.”
“It’s nice,” I commented and handed the iron teapot to Rylan.
He took it and carefully doled out a portion for the sloth-elder.
When Elmer’s cup was full, he took the pot from Rylan and then served Madam Marta. Of course, he took the longest with his pouring, and after about the second or third time the wily coot glanced up at me, I had a suspicion he was purposefully being slower then he really needed to be. I wondered if that was some tactic to get people to underestimate him, and if so, it was no wonder he was the leader.
It was also a wonder nobody assassinated him just to speed things along.
Eventually, I gave up the ghost and decided to go with it no matter how impatient I was feeling, and I took a sip of the fragrant tea in my hands.
The light floral taste of the tea reminded me of hibiscus and mint, and the more I drank, the more serene I felt, but not in a way that made me feel doped or drugged. Whatever this tea was made out of, it seemed to inspire or manifest the actual patience I had abandoned along the way, potentially even before I crash-landed on this place.
When I finished the end of my cup, I breathed in a heavy sigh and let it out as if I was cleansing my body of any and all tension.
Then I looked at both Rylan and the bat-woman, and their expressions both told a similar story to what I was feeling, and as I set my cup back down on the low table, I met elder Elmer’s milky eyes once more.
No words needed to be exchanged between us, just a mutual understanding and a light conversation with eye contact. I got the feeling as I gazed into his warm eyes that I wasn’t the first brash young person to cross his path, but I was perhaps the most willing to listen.
If this was the case, I wanted to live up to whatever standard he saw in me, because it was clear he conveyed more through his gaze than any words or sign language.
“Ah,” the bat-woman said knowingly as she also put her cup down. “I have never seen someone outside of Om tack onto the particulars of Omish communication as fast as you have. The people of this island see time differently, in both infinitely fast and infinitely slow speeds simultaneously. Speaking is a task, but nonverbal conversations can occur lightning quick.”
“Is it a form of telepathy?” I asked in fascination.
“Not in the traditional sense, like when it comes to the augur-women,” Morta explained. “It is more a harmony or a resonance between two beings that transcends language altogether.”
“But how is that possible?” I questioned skeptically. Telepathy was already a stretch to some of my more pragmatic reasoning.
“It is not as uncommon as you think,” she chuckled and leaned back on her cushy pouf that matched both Rylan’s and my own. “Surely you have been in connection with someone close to you, where you can pick up on the subtleties of their body movements, they’re breathing, the flickering of their eyes, what have you?”
I sat back on my own pouf and thought for a moment. It was true I had people close to me now, so I knew exactly what she was talking about.
Often, Zoie and I especially could forgo the use of language whenever we were passionately connected, whether that was in making love or in fighting side by side. We knew each other so well inside and out that anticipating the other’s needs was like second nature.
Even Horus and I on occasion were able to finish each other’s sentences or make each other bust up laughing with just a glance.
“I suppose you’re right, it’s not so uncommon,” I conceded to the bat-woman. “But I’m not sure I’m operating on the same level of nuance as old Elmer here.”
“Haaaaaaaaaaa,” Elmer himself chose that moment to break in with a drawn-out laugh that had me and Rylan snickering into our own hands.
“For brevity sake, I will continue to translate for him,” Madam Morta said with her own chuckle. “Just until you get the hang of how the locals speak. Don’t worry, you’ll pick up on it a lot faster than you think.”
“I promise I’ll try my hardest to learn how to communicate with you guys,” I said with a smile, but my tone was sincere.
It made me wonder how many conversations I could have with Arvid in the future if I didn’t have to wait five minutes for every word to come out of his mouth.
“So, let us get down to the roots, shall we?” Madam Morta translated. “You both are wondering how to get back to where you came from, however, did you ever think to wonder how it is you came here in the first place?”
I frowned and exchanged glances with Rylan.
“I was sleepwalking, right?” Rylan piped up. “I tend to do that a lot, and Dad tried to stop me.”
“Yes, it is not uncommon for you to do that, but what is uncommon is for me to do so as well,” I added. “When I found Rylan, I’d just woken up myself and had no memory of walking out onto the balcony.”
“What do you remember?” Elmer signed.
“The woman was screaming,” Rylan answered immediately. “I have Traveler blood in me, and I can hear people who suffer in their nightmares if they are close by. I was trying to get to her because her sobs caused me pain.”
“I didn’t know it was still so painful for you,” I said as I regarded my son once more, and now that we were in a brighter part of the tree, I could see the deep bags under his eyes. “Are you still hearing her?”
“Every night since I got back to Nata,” he admitted and then cast his eyes back down to the table. “Lately, I wake up in random places, but after what just happened, I’ve been trying even harder to train myself out of it. It was going fine for a while until I came to Terr with Jenner.”
“You’re still sleepwalking from this even back home?” I asked as my alarm ratcheted up a few more notches.
“It started small, but it kept growing,” he said. “It’s only gotten louder since we’ve been here. And now I can even hear her singing sometimes when I’m awake. You heard her singing, too, right?”
I racked my brain as the tattered pieces attempted to align, and a memory I thought was a fantasy born out of the painful fever dreams bubbled to my mind’s eye. It was the image of a pale-green face, garnet gem-like eyes, and indigo hair that defied gravity.
“Not only can I hear her, but I think I actually saw her,” I said when the memory finished coalescing in my mind. Now that I was clearheaded and had evidence that she was in fact real, I was sure if she’d been calling out for help before, she would still be in need of help now.
“What do you mean you saw her?” Morta asked.
“She was singing to me in the Dark Realm.” I felt my brow wrinkle as I tried to keep hold of that hazy memory. “Ever since I was damaged from a botched augur-mage trial, it’s become increasingly easier to slip down into my unconsciousness farther than I want sometimes. I was struggling really hard to not land myself there when I was feeling so weak because I knew I would be a prime target for any of the creatures down there. But instead of waking up alone and exposed, I was being watched over by this beautiful woman. I thought she was a Dark Realm creature herself.”
“What did she look like?” Elmer asked through Morta.
“She looked unlike anything I’ve ever seen on Aventoll so far,” I said. “If I had to describe her as something from my world, I would have classified her as a mermaid or better yet, a siren.”
“What is a siren?” Rylan asked me.
“It’s a legendary species of only females, and they live in the ocean so they could tempt sailors to their deaths through their beautiful singing,” I explained.
“That doesn’t sound very nice,” the kid said with a frown.
“It’s really not, but those creatures are just a myth where I come from, so I don’t know what her motives were. It definitely didn’t seem harmful.” I pursed my lips as I remembered her gentle voice and soft hands in my hair. “Quite the opposite, actually. But when I tried to talk to this woman, she got scared and dove into the pool of water next to me. After that, I managed to pull myself out of the Dark Realm, and I haven’t heard her voice since.”
“Lucky,” Rylan grumbled and rested his chin on the top of his hand. “I haven’t been able to truly sleep since we got here.”
“We’ll work on your meditation,” I promised and squeezed his shoulder before I turned to the elder. “What do you know about this woman?”
“The woman you are describing is a very rare creature indeed,” Madam Morta said. “She is what the Okoba call a Lakuna child.”
“What’s that?” Rylan asked and then looked into his cup for more tea, but his was long empty like the rest of ours.
“In the forest, there are large wells interspersed throughout.” The bat-woman took up the teapot once more and poured a little in all of our cups as she went on. “These lake-like wells are giant reservoirs where the groundwater has puddled up through the earth. These are what the Omites call Lakunas. The Lakuna children were known for their ability to call forth the groundwater through song, which creates the mist that these people distill their drinking water from. If what you say is true, and a Lakuna child has been reaching out to you in distress, it is imperative that we figure out how you can save her.”
“But why?” I asked and took another sip of calming tea when I felt my adrenaline starting to spike. As intriguing as the encounter with the siren-woman was, I really didn’t need to be launched on a time-consuming side quest at the moment.
“The Lakuna children are blessed by Mercedes, and are even said to be the offspring of the Sacred Fish,” Morta said.
“There are people on Om who aren’t Omish?” I raised my eyebrows.
“There are people all over Aventoll who are manifested from magic and legends,” she continued. “If one has chosen you and manifested herself in front of you, then you are fated to help her or else suffer the consequences of a curse.”
Oh, great, more curses. What was it this time? Did I need to carry her on my back up a mountain like Madame Zeroni?
“I’m guessing this curse isn’t like regular curses, is it?” I asked with a fair amount of trepidation, and I figured I hit the nail on the head because Morta’s eyes got really big as she flickered them over to Rylan and back.
“This curse is something that tries to bring balance,” she explained. “In particular, if a fated person fails to help a Lakuna child, their own child might be taken as recompense. A child for a child. That is the way of this curse.”
Well, fuck me sideways. It seemed as if the side quest was no longer optional.
“Wow, I just love when my hand is forced like this,” I grumbled much to the amusement of Leader Elmer.
“Do you really not want to help her, Dad?” Rylan asked me, and it was almost like he hadn’t even heard the part about him being in Serious Jeopardy from this surprise curse.
I went to snap back something sarcastic, but I stopped at the look of innocent confusion on his young face.
“She sounds like she’s really in trouble,” he added.
“It’s not that I don’t want to help her,” I said as I dug my fingers into my brow where a headache was starting to bloom behind my eyes. “It’s just… I don’t even know where to start, and I don’t appreciate my family being threatened as a way to ensure my cooperation, no matter if it was the cosmos or the Goddess herself who designed the curse. But, of course, I’ll help her, especially because if she is a descendant of the Sacred Fish, I believe I owe them a favor anyway.”
That was putting it lightly, considering one of the large Leviathan creatures was the reason my Crew and I were able to escape the Endless Storm brewing off the eastern coast of Terr before we’d even arrived on the harsh island.
