Island of the Sun

Index

• Traveling

Traveling

From the grassy hills and fertile mountains, bordering the thousand-mile wide Crater, Simon Stewart and Caleb MacKay had booked passage on a ferry that followed the southern coast of the Farlands. The ferry carried them beyond the inhospitable and plague-ridden Wastelands, and stopped at several ports in the Middlelands, whose vast prairies rolled from the northerly polar region favored by the Undead to the southerly coast. At the conclusion of the ocean-leg of their voyage, Simon and Caleb located transient employment as foot guards with a merchant caravan traveling from the southern-most port of the Westlands to the northern border with the polar region. Their destination, North Island, lay thirty miles off the coast.

Simon Stewart and Caleb MacKay arrived at the North Island ferry launch an hour before dusk. The launch was a haphazard assortment of rotting planks extending from the bottom of an incline several meters into the water. The planks were bound in sinew and anchored to stone pylons.

Simon set down his rucksack on the ferry launch and turned to Caleb, who had stopped on the incline of high-grass and wet, rocky soil. He wiped his palms on his thick trousers, trying to clean the stench of the sweat-born mold cultured in his rucksack straps. "You sure this is the place? It doesn't look like anyone has caught a ferry here for some time. And this weather is uninviting." He felt a shiver cross the surface of his arms and back. "It's supposed to be deep summer, but it feels like late winter. "

Caleb gestured in the air with his hand. "I told you the island would be cold."

Caleb kicked his boots through the grass, the ankles of his trousers darkened by the moisture, descended the incline, and stepped up on the algae-slippery and worm-eaten launch. He dropped his rucksack beside Simon's and said in his thick Farlands accent, "North Island is inside the polar region, and a constant northerly wind makes it this far East before the current moves south. The currents block the ferries from running any significant distance up and down the coast."

Caleb pointed to a faded and barely legible signpost lying on the launch. "The sign says this is the place."

Simon stepped onto the launch to read the sign, and then nodded. He glanced up at Caleb, and although Simon was dressed in heavier travel clothes he felt slight standing next to Caleb's taller and larger build.

Caleb tipped his head down to look at his friend, put a broad palm on Simon's shoulder, and said, "It was good of you to come all this way with me. The island is not exactly brimming with opportunity and it won't make for a good vacation."

Simon nodded, and pushed his hand through his long locks of ocean-breeze-dampened hair. "I think we were both ready for a trip, even if the circumstances were unfortunate."

Caleb tucked his hands in the pockets and jerked his shoulders in the well-worn taupe-stained coat.

Simon laughed and clapped him on the back. "Good, I didn't want to be the only one who was already cold."

Caleb offered only a grim smile around his stained and cracked eyeteeth. "From my father's descriptions, North Island is much colder." Again, his shoulders twitched from the cool wind.

Caleb exhaled a deep sigh and looked out at the horizon where the rolling ocean met drab, gray clouds. Two suns had set and the third and smallest sun was close to the horizon behind him. It would be dark within an hour. "Did you ever believe in last rites, like what my father wants? Spreading ashes and burials, prayers, and such?"

"When I was younger," Simon responded after thinking about the question. "I don't believe, but I don't not believe, if that makes any sense. I figured you would know more about it having studied with the Undead."

Caleb gave Simon a cynical smile. "They think the only gods who watched over this world arrived after there were people on it and left a long time ago."

"I guess I never thought a god was needed for an existence after death," Simon replied.

"My father thought there were gods." Caleb took one hand from his pocket and set his palm on the leather-wrapped bone handle of the gyrais hanging from his belt. "He thought the gods wouldn't accept him unless he was buried properly."

"I never presumed to think people shouldn't believe in something if I didn't believe in it," Simon replied guardedly.

Bitterness and mild contempt crept into Caleb's tone. "He was a North Islander. I loved the man, but sometimes he could be a damned idiot."

"Then why come here?" Simon asked.

"Because I loved him." Caleb squinted, squeezing a tear from his eye.

Caleb wiped at his eyes and nodded to the horizon. "That looks like our ride."

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