A pod of dahlphins joined the Calamity for a while, jumping back and forth in front of the keel as it rode along. They turned back when the water grew choppier and tiny droplets of rain created a fine mist, which turned into a light shower.
On shore, the land climbed higher and higher up into the foothills of the Aelioanei Mountains before eventually disappearing completely into low-hanging clouds, leaving only flat-faced rock cliffs visible to the passengers at sea. Hid fixed the sail for trolling so that the Calamity could better move with the stormy water’s swells and surges, forces that he explained could throw less experienced sailors up onto the rock like flotsam.
As the boat trolled through the rolling blue-gray, Slate was surprised by a blast of water that shot up from the sea. It was followed by a slick, shining black form that rose up like a wheel, then rotated to display a snubbed top fin and a long, orange-and-purple tail fin that smacked the water’s surface with a splash before it disappeared back down into the abyss.
“What on Alm was that?” Slate gasped.
“What’d you see there?” asked Hid, furrowing his bushy eyebrows as he crossed to where Slate was standing.
“I don't know, a thing! A huge, black, thing! With a bright orange fin,” Slate explained.
“That was probably a sirrk, son,” said Hid, scratching his ear. “Strange that they’d be north this early in the year, but I suppose our winters have been different than they used to be.”
“A sirrk? Is that like a fish? How big is a sirrk?” asked Slate. “Are we going to die?”
“No. Maybe. Yes, actually. Everyone is going to die. But we probably won’t die today. There are a coupla kinds of sirrks, but you prolly saw a ployback,” noted Hid. The creature reappeared ten feet off in the distance, again heralded by a blast of water. “Yes, ployback,” Hid confirmed. “That’s its blowhole shooting water. Sirrks are the biggest creatures on Alm. Absolutely huge. And they eat plankton! Tiny plankton. The waters up here have the highest plankton concentrations in the world, that’s what brings them. And the dahlphins and the itchy fish, too. It’s a good place to be a fish. But a better place to be a fisherman.”
“What do they look like under the ocean, the sirrks?” asked Slate.
“Well, kind of like a really big malnos, but with a noad’s face... tell you what, I’ll show you one when we get to Airyel,” promised Hid.
As the boat continued its way through the fjords, Slate saw creatures stretched out on the rocky islands that rose from the sea, all piled on top of each other and barking at the nerrs that flew in a frenzy around them. Pilotte barked along with the strange creatures, which stopped silent to stare at the wulf as he went by.
A low island, different from the others and covered with plant growth, soon came into view through the rain.
“There’s a place up ahead where we can get out and stretch a bit,” said Hid, as he began to steer the Calamity into the tiny island’s bay.
The Calamity met the grade of the island's beach, and the tide helped to push it far enough up the sand for the three passengers to be able to hop out.
Slate was thrilled to be back on land. He helped Hid tied the boat to a tree, shivering, and said, “I’m really cold.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Hid said. “There’s a sweater and some wind pants in the cabin, go ahead and grab ‘em. Also, grab the bretton root, this is gonna be a long night!”
Pilotte followed Hid along a tiny stream into a small pine stand to collect fresh water as Slate pulled on the woolen sweater and the wind pants he had been offered. They were far too large, but he felt immeasurably warmer with them on.
Slate stuck a squib of Bretton root into his mouth, lodging it firmly between his back teeth and his cheek, where it could slowly dispense its stimulant over the course of the night. He went back out onto the boat’s deck to find Hid and Pilotte had returned.
“If you gotta make water or take water, this is the time to do it,” Hid snickered. The old sailor started double-checking the rigging, while Slate made his way to the cold-water spring amidst the pines with Pilotte in tow.
Once the crew was all back on board, the Calamity opened her sail once more. The craft slid down the beach back into the water as a deep rumble of thunder from off in the far distance volleyed around the rock faces in the fjord in an ominous echo, and then the sky could hold no longer and the rain began to pour down.
An ocean swell grabbed the Calamity and pulled it into the confusion. The force was so great that it knocked Hid off his feet and sent the ship’s boom swinging wildly around. The boom nearly knocked Slate off the edge of the boat, as the craft went careening toward one of the rock-slab islands.
“Grab the boom!” Hid screamed.
Slate threw his right arm at the boom as it came swinging back at him. He missed catching it with his hands, instead meeting it with his jaw as his feet slid across the slippery deck. Slate got a hold of the boom the next time it swung back around, but a huge gust of wind caught the sail just as he did so. The wind’s pull lifted Slate up from the deck and clear across the left side of the boat, and then swung him out over the prow and around to the right side. The Calamity broke into a free-fall from the crest of a collapsing wave while Slate was spinning, and for a moment, all three passengers floated about the deck as if weightless.
The vessel smacked back down into the water and Hid and Pilotte fell, hard. The boom swung around again, loose in the raging wind, dragging Slate along with it. He caught the banister that rimmed the boat with his foot, and his body snapped taught when the pull of the sail back over the front of the boat was arrested. A blast of lightning startled Slate and caused him to lose his foothold, and he began to ride the boom over the prow again. This time, Hid was there to grab him around the waist and pull him back onto the boat. The boom came back around one last time, and Hid seized and tied it down.
The flat-bottomed boat road up high and fast on the crest of a peaking wave, so near to one of the rock-faced islands that Slate could see the rain cutting little waterfalls down its mossy surface. With a grace that belied his age, Hid brought down the sail in perfect synchronicity with the wave, and then the Calamity was still, for only a second, before it banked ever-so-slowly to the right and eventually came to rest on the surface of the sea with the back-roll of the wave.
Slate had forgotten to breathe during the confusion, and gasped hard when he realized it.
“What’s wrong, son?” Hid asked.
“That was terrifying,” Slate answered, trembling. “I thought I was going to die!”
“But you didn’t, didja? That wasn’t nothin’! Welcome to itchy fishin'!” Hid said with a hearty laugh that somehow managed to warm Slate’s spirits.
Slate tried to wring out his clothes, which was futile, as the rain just kept coming down. Hid got the pilot light for the boat’s small furnace started back up, then adjusted the sails once more, and the Calamity carved its way back into deeper waters.
The sky strobed with lightning off to the north. The time between the flashes and the bellowing thunder following after was growing shorter and shorter, meaning the heart of the storm was following the little boat through the fjord. As Slate counted the duration between one particularly bright flash of lightning and its thunder, a long, green fish with a sharp snout and a fan-like dorsal fin breached the face of the water just in front of the boat. It glistened in the rain for a moment before jumping, turning around in mid-air, and torpedoing back down into the depths.
“Itchy fish!” cried Hid, throwing his arms up to the pouring skies. "Itchy fish, itchy fish!"
“That's an itchy fish? They’re huge! We have to catch one?” asked Slate.
“Yup. But we don’t try for them here in the fjord,” answered Hid. “They’re diving hundreds and hundreds of feet here, we’d lose them for certain. What we’re gonna do is head just a little east of here, closer to Harson’s Island. The waters around Harson’s aren’t more than forty feet deep at best, so if we get
one of the bastards, we might actually be able to hold on to it.”
After passing four more rock islands, a second, flatter, greener island revealed itself.
“It’s Harson’s,” hollered Hid. “Here, take over for a while.”
Slate took the wheel and kept the boat steady while Hid unpacked a huge harpoon gun from its bag, a four-foot metal rod with a three-pronged hook at its front end. Hid mounted the harpoon gun into its fittings on the right side of the boat.
“Here, you come over here now,” he said once the harpoon was in place. “I have to position the boat just right to trick one of these clever bastards, so I’m gonna need you to shoot the thing.”
“But I haven’t ever shot anything before,” Slate said.
“That’s okay. You see that little bump on top of the harpoon there?” Hid asked.
“Yes, sir,” answered Slate.
“You just have to line up the fish with that little bump, use just one eye, like this, so you get a real clear line, then you release that crank there. Just pull out the pin. And don’t miss!
Got it," Slate said.
Two itchy fish breached together, this time more horizontally, due to the shallower water around Harson’s. Their torpedo-noses sliced back into the water with almost no spray, and then they re-appeared twenty feet away, leaping back in the other direction. It seemed that they were making parallel dives, back and forth along the ocean floor, in figure-eight patterns. Hid maneuvered the Calamity near to the middle of the fishes’ loops.
“If we just set here, and you target one of these sons-a-bitches, well, we may actually catch one,” Hid said with an air of great enjoyment. “I should have brought you along sooner, Slate! You’re good luck.”
Slate set the harpoon's sight on the spot where the fish would appear next. He waited for them to jump four more times, to get their rhythm just right, and then he knew it was time to take his shot.
A shock of lightning illuminated the sea, followed almost immediately by an ear-shattering blow of thunder. Slate’s eyes were just readjusting when he made out the nose of one of the fish. He aimed with a hard squint and pulled the pin out of the harpoon crank. The heavy weapon released with a ‘thwap’ that sounded loudly despite the storm, and sent the harpoon flying through the downpour. It struck one of the fish dead center, right below its huge dorsal fin. The fish dove back into the water, and then the harpoon rope began unfurling into the sea after it.
The fish popped up again on the other side of the boat, while Hid spun around to keep pace.
“Tie down the line, Slate!” Hid yelled.
Slate wound the harpoon rope around a stopper and tied it, finishing just as the line snapped. The strength of the itchy fish pulled the side of the boat down for a moment, and then the line went slack. Slate was terrified to see the fish’s fin slicing through the water toward the boat itself. The fish broke from the surface of the water and soared clear over the prow of the Calamity, wrapping the line over and across the deck as it went. When it dove down again on the other side, the little boat groaned and sank down deeper into the sea.
“If we don’t match his moves, he’ll drown us! Sucker’s tryin’ to drown us, Slate!” yelled Hid.
The eye of the storm had made its way down and over Harson’s Island. The rain relented momentarily.
“If we can just keep up with it, he’s as good as ours,” Hid said. “So let’s stay sharp. Keep the line tight but not too tight, and give if you have to give, but not too much.”
The eye of the storm passed quickly and the storm began to gain intensity again. The itchy fish on the end of Slate's line began surfacing closer and closer to the island, which meant that it was getting tired. The Calamity followed its every move for some two and half hours, slowly dowsing the seemingly unquenchable fire that drove the creature through the freezing waters. In the end, the fish’s fin surfaced for good, this time up near the island’s sandy beach.
“It’s time,” Hid announced.
He sailed the boat up slowly on the prey to where it was within five feet of the bloodied water where it struggled. Hid and Slate pulled the heavy fish up and out of the water, using all of their strength to hoist it onto the deck. It stretched across the entire boat, and flopped with a dull thud against the wooden boards.
“Poor thing,” Slate said. “Can’t we put it out of its misery?”
“Best way to go,” said Hid as he procured a flask from his pocket. He poured its contents into the fish’s gills. The fish flopped a few more times before coming to rest with its huge, bulging eyes staring motionlessly skyward.
“Drunk and dead happy. Saints alive, we caught an itchy fish, son!” screamed Hid, his eyebrows pulling halfway up his forehead and his smile reaching nearly as far. He danced around the deck of the Calamity, clapping his hands and laughing. “Do you have any idea how amazing this is?”
“That was one heck of a ride, Hid,” Slate said. “I know that much.”
“You are telling me, son, you are telling me,” Hid said with a huge sigh, staring down at the fish in disbelief. “See, that’s what you do when you’re scared, Slate. You bite down hard on it. You own the fear, you conquer it. You catch the itchyfish! Let’s take harbor here until the storm passes. Looks like it’ll clear up soon.”
The storm clouds dissipated over the far edge of the horizon, the thunder roared its last howl, and the moon reappeared, graced with a halo.
“We’ll set up camp at Breakers for the night, about ten miles or so from North Airyel,” Hid said. “That way we won’t have to go through the hassle of registering the wulf, the fish, the boat, all of that junk. It’s real nearby.”
The Calamity radiated a lazy green wake toward the shore where Mount Ange, the tallest in the Aeolian chain, rose up high and proud from the surrounding peaks. Once Hid brought the flat bottom of the boat to rest at Breakers camp, Slate helped him string a line of hemp cord between two trees, and then the two draped a canvas over it, to form an a-frame tent. Slate broke off a tree branch and used the fronds as a broom, sweeping out the cones and small sticks from the floor of the tent while Hid collected rocks to build a fire pit.
By the time Slate had the tent ready for sleep, after transporting a few wet blankets from the boat to the fire pit for drying out, Hid had a large conflagration spewing smoke off into the chilly breeze and some small fish roasting over it. Before dinner was through, Pilotte crawled into the tent and took up most of the space inside, and so Hid and Slate each chose a side of the animal to curl up to, where they slept warmly and comfortably until the gulls cried out to announce the morning.
When Slate reemerged from the tent, wiping his sleep-swollen eyes, Hid was already re-packing the boat.
“Got some glint going on the fire there, help yourself,” he said.
Slate stumbled over to the fire pit, which had kept hot coals all night. He poured a cup of glint for himself and sipped slowly at the steaming beverage as he watched Hid work.
“Leaving soon, Mr. Hidli?” he asked.
“Yup. Once the water heats up the winds make it damn hard to sail north, so I’m already a few minutes behind,” Hid said. “I know I said I’d show you the sirrk in town, but I’ve got to get the itchy fish on ice, so you’re on your own. Give me a hand with the tent, Slate.”
Slate gulped down his glint and then helped Hid fold up the canvas, take down the cords, and load them onto the boat. After Hid threw a couple of buckets of seawater into the fire pit, it was time to say goodbye.
"Guess that's it then, Slate," Hid said.
“Alright. Hey, I really appreciate the ride down, and the company, Mr. Hidli,” Slate said.
“It’s Hid. And don’t you worry, it was my gain. Turns out I needed a helper all these years. Who knew? So, what’ll you do now?”
“Well, I have a book to deliver to North Airyel,” Slate said, “And then I’ll ask around to see where my father is at.”
“And if you find him?”
“
Well, I’ll see what he’s been up to. See if he needs my help.”
Hid could see that Slate was uncertain. “Son, I don’t like to preach but, if you’re staring in the face of proof, well… I want to tell you what: I know you are looking for your father, and that’s noble. But here’s how life is: You find something, whatever it is, something for you, just for you, Slate. Whatever you can find that you care about. And you love that thing so much that it drives you wild. Think about it all the time. Go to it when you can’t find anything else to believe in. Remember it when you think you’re satisfied. And it can be anything, can be an idea, doesn’t have to be a thing even. When you get to be my age, and you get to have that dream you’ve dreamt your whole life come true... you’ll see what I mean. Always remember that you have all you’re seeking within yourself. And that you’ve got nothing to be scared of but bein’ scared.”
“Okay. I appreciate it, Mr. Hidli,” Slate said, though he didn’t quite understand.
With a sniffle, Hid said, “Truly sorry I can’t stay and help you more, son. But I certainly will never forget the young man who helped me catch an itchy fish. Now, I want you to come see me up in Nowhere, after you find your father, okay? And make it soon, because I don’t have too many days left.” He took out the goldquartz pieces that Slate had given him for his journey the day before and handed them back. “And I can’t take this, because you helped me so much with the catch. Wish I had something more to give you, in fact. But I don’t. Money, anyways, I don’t have any of that with me. So I thought maybe this’ll work for ya.” He reached over the side of his boat to retrieve a pointed jawbone, and presented it to Slate. “Itchy fish jaw. Found it diving a few years ago. Figure you should take it, as a means to remember our catch.”
“Oh, wow,” Slate exclaimed half-heartedly as he took the bone. It seemed to glow like a pearl, smooth and glossy in the morning light. “Thanks, Mr. Hidli.”
“Mr. Hidli was my father, Slate. You got to call me Hid.”
“Right. I really appreciate it, Hid.”
“Least I could do. Now remember, once you find your dad and get all that squared away, the two of you come visit me,” Hid said. He gave Slate a pat on the back.
The last remnants of morning mist finally dissipated and the beach grew at once brighter and warmer.
“That’s the cue for me to go!” Hid said.
The sailor climbed up into his boat, and then Slate gave the vessel a push back into the sea. Hid unfurled half of the mainsail, riding the wind in a spin toward the north, and then he dropped the other sail, which pulled the boat off into the distance.
Slate waved goodbye. He stood watching until the Calamity became a speck on the horizon, indistinguishable from the crests of the innumerable waves.
“Well, I guess we keep on then, huh, Pilotte?” Slate asked the wulf, as he scratched its hairy chest. Pilotte confirmed with a wet wash of his enormous tongue.
Before leaving the campsite, Slate decided to catch a few more crabs for the day’s journey, using a trick that Hid taught him to set up a trap: he dug out a pit near where the tidewater was reaching its farthest up the shore, and lined it with the rocks from the fire pit. Then, it was just a matter of waiting for high tide to bring in some sea life, and waiting for the tide to go out again, leaving the sea life trapped and exposed to snatch up.
Once the tide had begun to move back out, hours later, Slate was eager to resume travel. He speared up four trapped crabs, stowed them in his sack next to his delivery, and then destroyed the trap, before Pilotte rejoined him and the two strode out of the salty sea air into the sweet-smelling Red Forest.
The forest along the eastern shore was thick with tall, spindly trees, and the light green moss of the stony floor was dotted with clusters of orange mushrooms that Slate learned were probably poisonous when he attempted to pick some and Pilotte whimpered warning. Squat bushes began to appear along the path, bursting with berries, as did bright yellow sunblazes, their seeds naturally baked by the sun. Slate ate of the fruits and seeds as he passed among the gently sloping hills that stretched on a winding path down from the Aeolian Mountains.
After not too long, Slate saw the towering city wall of North Airyel rise up before him, so huge that it seemed much closer than it actually was. He realized this walking for an hour or so, over and across two rivers and through vast wildflower patches buzzing with insects, with the wall always looming ahead. The remnants of many watchtowers, buildings, and cabins sat empty along the banks of the ox-bowing rivers that straked across the plain, vestiges of the time before the city limits were cut short by the wall.
Slate was so completely transfixed by the enormity of Airyel's gated wall that he didn’t even notice when he came to a guard station. The station was occupied and in operation, which Slate found out when a woman appeared from the station door. Whisking a notebook from her pocket, the guard started a routine that it seemed she'd gone through far too many times.
“What is your name, place of origin, and business within the city today?” she asked without raising her eyes.
Pilotte seemed unfazed, so Slate swallowed his anxiety and answered, “I am Slate Ahn. I have travelled a long way from Alleste to find my father.”
The guard’s cold, blue eyes warmed, and she retreated to her booth. She soon reappeared with a small piece of paper.
“You’ll need a license for your wulf,” the guard said. “Hard times in Alleste these days, aren’t they?” she asked as she began filling in the forms. “Spell your name, please.”
“S-L-A-T-E A-H-N. Yes, very hard times, ma’am.”
“My father was actually from Alleste, too,” the guard said with a tinge of sentimentality. “I even visited there a few times, when I was very young. Spell the snarlingwulf’s name please.”
“P-I-L-O-T-T-E. Who was your father?”
“Grif Nim. Age?”
“I’m fifteen. I know the Nims,” Slate enthused.
“Really? Huh.”
“Well, I knew them, anyways.” Looking over the form the woman was filling in, Slate asked, “Why do I need a license for Pilotte?”
The woman answered, “These are strange days, Slate. There is confusion everywhere; life itself seems to be breaking down. Many fear another end to be near, and are severely distrustful of others. Even distrustful of animals. It's madness. I’m sure Pilotte will protect you, but still, be on guard. Here’s your permit. You may enter into the city now. Good luck.”
Slate took the permit and shrugged off the guard’s ominous warning. He watched as she pulled a large, red flag from a box hanging off the side of her station, then waved it back and forth to someone high above in one of the watchtowers. At this, a set of huge, wooden doors in the wall began to glide open. They moved in perfect, floating synchronicity, filling Slate’s entire field of vision. Here was his whole world literally shifting form before him. Slate and Pilotte walked through the massive gateway, which groaned shut behind them with an echoing thud.
Chapter 9