Chapter One Revisited
A Prodigious Storm
Tara Whelan awoke from the first night of her fourteenth year to the sound of thunder. Her eyes burned as she blinked away the warm dreams of her birthday party and she squinted at the pale gray light that was too dim to be morning. Rain slapped angrily against the glass of her bedroom window, and a gust of wind boomed against the wall. The thunder clapped again, and she jumped at the sound. Storms can be frightening, even more so when you live on an island, but Tara had a particular fear of storms. Her father had been a sea captain, and storms sometimes meant that ships wouldn’t be coming home.
The wind whistled around the walls of the old house and drips of water plunked steadily into the large bucket in the corner beneath the leak in the roof. Tara’s brother said he had patched the leak, but now she was glad she hadn’t moved the bucket. She climbed out of bed and walked across the creaky wooden floor to look out the window. Tara’s bedroom was the highest room in the old house that stood at the end of a row of creaky old houses on the hill overlooking the port of Farswip on an island so small that it shared the name of the town. Her window looked down from one of the highest points in Farswip and, on a sunny day, she could have seen the whole town and every fishing boat in the harbor. Now all she could see was the night rain lashing at the nearby houses and the muddy lane below that looked more like a stream as the water ran down towards the bay.
Suddenly, a flash of lightning lit up the sky all the way from the harbor to the dark sea beyond, and Tara’s heart leapt. It was not a reaction of fear, but rather the painful experience of almost daring to hope something wonderful was about to happen and then, just as suddenly, realizing that it was not. She had seen, just for a moment, far out beyond the breaking waves of the barrier reef, a large ship. Just for a moment, Tara remembered what it was like to be the first one to spot her father’s ship when he returned from a voyage, but she had stopped looking for that ship a long time ago. Anyway, the ship she had seen tonight was bigger than her father’s ship had been, a real galleon with three masts maybe. Ships like that didn’t come to Farswip… not on purpose.
She watched a little longer, but the lightning revealed nothing more. After a while, the fury of the storm moved on. The night grew quiet but for the rain falling softly on the roof and the occasional drip of water in the leak-bucket. Tara did not see the mysterious ship again. She thought of waking her mother or brother, but now she wasn’t entirely certain that she had seen anything after all. She returned to bed, burrowed back under her blankets, and slept again, dreaming of happier times.
* * *
The following morning down in the kitchen, Tara’s mother made hot bread and honeymeal for breakfast which was Tara’s favorite. Tara sat in her place at the old, polished mahogany table and her mother set a full bowl before her. As Tara ate, she watched her brother Bill getting ready to leave for his week out at sea, fishing for bowfish with his friends on the small boat they had bought with their savings last summer. He always stuffed his canvas bag with as much of mother’s cooking as he could get his hands on before leaving on a trip, and she had made extra for him this time. Their mother hated it when Bill went on long fishing trips, but Farswip was a fishing town, and everybody fished. Tara considered telling them about the ship she had seen last night, but, just then, Bill’s friend Dane popped in at the door.
“Trip’s off, Bill!” Dane huffed, out of breath.
“What’s the matter?” Bill demanded, and his mother asked the same.
“We’ve got guests!” Dane laughed, “The Prince’s fleet is in the harbor for repairs! He’s coming ashore today!”
“Which Prince has come to Farswip?” Mother asked.
“Prince Corbin, the adventurous one.” Dane said, grinning.
“What’s he doing this far south?” Bill asked.
“I don’t know, let’s go find out!”
Bill and Dane ran off then to the harbor to see the royal fleet and learn what they could of the Prince’s visit to Farswip. Tara wanted to go too, but mother reminded her that they both had work to do. Tara sullenly finished getting dressed. She and her mother each picked up a pair of empty tin buckets and a spade before leaving the house to make their way down to the lee side of the island where they gathered shellfish every morning.
The path to the west beach was rocky, and few people used it. Not many people thought it was worth the trouble to climb down through the rocks to the sheltered cove where the best smokers lived. Smokers were what the islanders called the tiny little clams with smokey brown shells that lived in the sand on west beach. They were difficult to get at and laborious to harvest, but they were delicious and brought a good price at the market. Tara’s family needed all the extra money they could get, now that her father was gone.
Nearing the beach they had to climb down a narrow stairway of rock with high walls on both sides that twisted and turned all the way down, until they reached the yellow sand of the little beach in the sheltered cove. Tara had always felt like this was a secret, magical place, and it was special to her. The deep blue waters edged almost up to the high rock walls, leaving only a narrow strip of sand that always seemed to be in the shadow of the rocks. The wind blew strong and steady over the rocks above but, down in the hollow, it was only a sweet, gentle breeze that played with her hair. Tara kicked off her shoes and walked, barefoot, across cool, damp sand that squished up between her toes, looking for the little squirts of saltwater that marked a smoker’s burrow.
They gathered shells until about mid-morning when their buckets brimmed with tiny creatures with glossy brown shells. Tara bent to pick her buckets, the wooden spool handles biting into the crooks of her fingers as she cast a spiteful glance toward the rocky path leading back to town. She slipped her sandy feet back into her shoes and prepared for the long climb ahead.
“Hullo, Tara!” a friendly voice called out from somewhere nearby. It was a voice she was very glad to hear.
She turned to see a battered old longboat with a makeshift sail slicing through the rolling blue waves of the cove as it aimed for the beach. A boy of about 16 stood, balanced precariously at the helm, with one hand on the rudder and the other waving wildly.
“Ruk!” she cried out, waving back. Ruk was her best friend, and he spent most of his days fishing and exploring in the patched up old longboat that he had found smashed on the reef. He had named it the “Nixie” and thought it the finest boat in all of Farswip. As far as Tara was concerned, it was.
He was grinning widely as he drove the boat right up onto the beach beside her. His skin was darkly tanned like all the islanders, but, unlike Tara and most of the people of Farswip who had raven black hair, Ruk possessed a tangled shock of ash blonde hair that made him appear a little wild and unkempt. His eyes too seemed out of place for an islander, almond-shaped and fiery. Tara had long cultivated the cautious, narrow squint of a Farswipper, but Ruk’s eyes were always wide, taking in the world around him, good or bad, with equal enthusiasm. People said that as a baby he had washed ashore, the sole survivor from the wreck of a foreign ship, and no one could quite guess where he had come from. It didn’t matter to Tara. He was here now, and she needed help with the buckets.
As the longboat skidded to a halt on the beach, Ruk leapt over the side and ran, splashing in the wet sand up to Tara and her mother. His oil-stained canvas shorts and ragged fisherman’s vest contrasted starkly with the ladies’ white linen dresses, and, in their presence, he suddenly seemed to remember his manners. “Good day, Mrs. Whelan!”
“Good day to you, Ruk.” Tara’s mother answered with a crooked smile, brushing a wisp of gray hair from her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I was wondering if you ladies might need a ride back to town?” he offered with a quick glance at Tara.
“That’s very kind of you to offer,” mother replied, “but I was actually looking forward to the walk back,” Tara’s heart sank, and she started to protest before her mother cut her off, continuing, “…but you might take Tara with you. She needs help taking these smokers to market.”
“I’d be glad to help, Mrs. Whelan!” Ruk exclaimed, and he helped Tara load the four heavy buckets into the prow of the boat.
Tara had been aboard the Nixie often enough to know the routine. She wrapped her skirt a little higher and cinched it tight around her waist before tossing her shoes in next to the buckets. Then she helped Ruk push the Nixie back down the slope of the beach and into the water, both laughing as they clambered aboard, getting fairly splashed in the process. Ruk grabbed the oars and pulled hard, and soon they were back in the surf, waving goodbye to Tara’s mother as she made her way back to the rocky stairway leading from the beach. As they emerged from the shadow of the hillside, the wind caught the sail that now boomed full, blazing white in the sun, and the Nixie shot out across the waves of the inlet.
* * *
An islander would say that Market Square smelled of fish. A visitor would say that fish smelled faintly of Market Square. Every variety of gilled, finned, scaled, shelled, or tentacled creatures piled high the tables and spilled from the bins lining the narrow lanes of the market. Buyers from as far away as Zhad crowded together for the chance to purchase a share of the freshest catch or bid on a rare specimen of exotic sea creature hauled up by chance in a net. The warm flow of the great River Neshat met the cold depths of the Tyrrel Sea off the coast of Farswip, and no waters in the world could rival the bounty of the Farswip Sound. To this bounty was now added four heavy buckets of West Beach smokers that swung and bumped against Tara and Ruk’s shins as they carried them up the lane toward the market.
“Did you like the present I got you?” Ruk asked, looking back over his shoulder at Tara who followed him closely, weaving through the unusually dense crowds.
Tara had already told him that she liked it three times, and now made it four. Where he had found the silver filigreed bookmark, he wouldn’t say. Ruk had a knack for finding little treasures on the reefs where countless ships had broken and spilled their cargos. Every week he seemed to be playing with some new find, a chipped bottle of red Chadirian glass, a bronze dagger with the tip broken off, or the little brass dragon coin he had made into a pendant and wore around his neck.
Tara’s birthday present this year surpassed anything he’d ever found before. The tiny strands of silver looped and swirled, forming the scene of a single unicorn, rearing in defiance or joy, in the midst of a garden of silver leaves. It seemed very old and of uncertain make. How such a delicate treasure had survived, unscathed, on the reef for untold years, remained another mystery. It was all the more precious to her because it was a bookmark, and books were the only thing that Tara really had left of her father. Every time he had returned from a voyage, her father had brought her an armload of books from distant ports in strange lands. She had read them all, some of them many times over, and each time they swept her far away to distant places and ancient times. The memory of her father was the scent of a good book.
“Where did you find it?” Tara asked.
“Out on the reef.”
That was Ruk’s answer for everything. ‘Where have you been all week?’…’Out on the reef’, ‘Where did you cut your leg?’… ‘Out on the reef’, ‘Wherever did you find that purple silk parasol?’… ‘Out on the reef’. Sometimes Tara wanted to kick him.
“There’s Miss Sophie,” Ruk said with a nod of his head. He stood a good six inches taller than Tara, so he had an advantage in crowds. Miss Sophie was the lady who gathered wild motberries and sold them at market. The islanders called them berries, but the ones Miss Sophia found were nearly the size of plums. They had a crisp, reddish skin surrounding a juicy, if slightly bitter, pulp. The smaller ones were usually dusted with a little sugar or jellied first to make them fit for eating, but Miss Sophia’s motberries were sweet enough to eat straight from the bin.
“Hello, Ruk! Hello, Tara!” Miss Sophia greeted them as they approached the motberry booth that sat in the shade of a big yellow and green patchwork tent.
“Hello, Miss Sophia,” they said as they carefully set the smoker buckets down behind the wooden counter.
She straightened her back from lifting a basket of fruit, and smiled at them. The lines on her face told of a life more full of laughter than sorrow, but her short cropped hair was still coal black. One could not easily guess her age, and her regal bearing did not encourage such impertinent questions. She simply was Miss Sophia, and she had always been here in the market, selling motberries.
“I saved your corner for you, Tara. You should have a lot of customers today.”
“Thank you, Miss Sophia,” Tara said, lifting one of the buckets onto a low shelf at the end of the rows of motberry bins.
“What are all these people doing here?” Ruk asked, frowning as a burly sailor shouldered past him.
“You haven’t heard the news?” Miss Sophia asked, “The Prince is in port. He might be visiting the market today.”
Tara frowned. She had wanted to be the first to tell Ruk about the Prince and about the ship she had seen the night before, but instead she had forgotten all about it until now. Not wanting to be completely left out, she added, “My brother Bill and his friend went down this morning to find out why the Prince was here.”
“Huh,” Ruk said, in the way that meant he was thinking about something. That always worried Tara, and she gave him a narrow look, but he was looking out over the crowd and not at her.
“Thanks for helping Tara carry those buckets, Ruk,” Miss Sophia said, “I think I’ve got some pie left over from this morning, if you want it.”
Ruk’s head whipped back around at the prospect of a piece of motberry pie, and he had soon devoured a whole piece and on to seconds by the time Tara had sat down to enjoy the piece that Miss Sophia passed to her.
“I’m gonna head down to the docks and see what I can find out,” he said at last, handing the empty plate and fork back to Miss Sophia, “Thanks! I’ll see you later, Tara.”
“Bye, Ruk!” Tara said, waving, “Thanks again for helping me!”
He grinned at her and was gone, disappearing into the crowd. She worried a bit what he was up to, but now there were customers buying bags of motberries and one that wanted a scoop of smokers to take home.
By late afternoon, the wooden scoop was hitting the bottom of the last bucket of smokers. Tara was doing her best to hide a yawn when the murmur of the crowd grew louder in the direction of the auction house. Something was happening, and people were rushing past to see what it was. Tara stood up on the slats of her stool’s legs, but she still couldn’t see anything above the heads of the crowd. With a “humph” she sat back down and leaned on crossed arms on the rim of the bucket. The crowd moved away with the long shadows of evening creeping in behind them. The wind from the bay was cold now, and Miss Sophia draped a shawl over Tara’s shoulders when she shivered a little.
Then the crowd began to return, spilling back into the lane in front of the booth as the object of their interest moved towards it. Tara could make out the booming voice of Reeve Hinks speaking with a note of deference in his voice she’d never heard before. Several people backed up into Miss Sophia’s booth without much caution, and one man backed directly into Tara’s corner, spilling the last of the smokers and nearly toppling the girl off her stool. Tara cried out, and Miss Sophia shooed the man away with a broom handle before stooping to help pick up the scattered smokers.
“Some people should watch where they’re going!” Tara fumed as she clutched at handfuls of slippery little shells. Miss Sophia started to answer, but suddenly turned and rose to her feet instead. Tara looked up and saw a tall man step up to the booth, a man that could only be Prince Corbin.
Tara jumped to her feet and then froze, not knowing at all what to do. Prince Corbin stood well over six feet tall, apparently in his early twenties. His iron gray eyes darted quickly and keenly, taking in the whole booth in a glance. He was darker in complexion than the islanders, and his short hair was black and slightly curly. Dark, furrowed eyebrows lent him a fierce look, but the slight curve of his lips softened his expression. His rust-colored tunic appeared equally functional and elegant. Likewise, his knee-length black leather boots would seem no more out of place on marble floors than the dust of Market Lane. Indeed, were it not for the sword that hung at his side, Tara might easily have mistaken him for any of the wealthy merchants who visited the island’s markets, but this was a special sword, and only a King or a Prince could carry it.
Everyone in the kingdom of Nochwe knew about the ancient sword that bore the same name, and Tara knew more about it than most, thanks to her books. No one was quite certain if the sword had been named after the kingdom, or if it was the other way around. Perhaps they were both named by the First King who founded the kingdom from a loose alliance of tribes united against the armies of Chadir hundreds of years ago. The sword was older still than the First King, coming to him from his ancestors who fought with it against the dragons of old. No one really believed in dragons anymore, but it made a nice story, and certainly the black steel sword that hung at Prince Corbin’s hip was very old. Tara wondered why Prince Corbin wore the sword now instead of his father, King Verwe.
Miss Sophia bowed gracefully to the Prince and seemed about to welcome him to her shop when Reeve Hinks stepped between her and the Prince, and continued to speak. “These fruits are a local delicacy, Your Highness, we call them ‘motberries’,” he said, picking the largest berry from the bin and passing it to the Prince, “they’re nothing special really, but the islanders are quite fond of them, and they only grow here.”
Prince Corbin smiled as he accepted the motberry and took a bite, leaning forward a bit to spare his tunic as the dark red juice squirted out. “It’s very good!” he said, laughing as he wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand.
Reeve Hinks smiled nervously and began to usher the Prince back into the lane and on toward the next stall. Tara glanced up at Miss Sophia, and saw something sad in her expression which made Tara suddenly very angry.
“Hey!” Tara shouted, “You didn’t pay for that!”
The crowd froze, and Reeve Hinks spun on his heel to face the girl, his face going red and his big eyes bulging. He started to say something nasty, but the Prince cut him off by stepping back up to Miss Sophia’s booth and bowing deeply.
“I am terribly sorry, my dear ladies,” Prince Corbin said, with but a hint of a smile, “I am growing a bit forgetful in my old age.” The crowd laughed appreciatively, and Reeve Hinks seemed to relax a bit as well. “Please accept this as payment,” he said, producing a gold coin from his belt pouch and handing it to Miss Sophia.
Miss Sophia took the coin, bowing graciously in return before looking closely at it. “Ah,” she said, “I haven’t seen one of these since my days at court.”
Everyone, including the Prince, laughed at Miss Sophia’s little joke, but only Tara noticed that Miss Sophia wasn’t laughing at all.
The Prince nodded to Miss Sophia and grinned at Tara who was still not certain whether she liked or disliked the young Prince. He turned and left then, and Reeve Hinks shot one more stern glance at Tara before scuttling along behind him. Tara looked to Miss Sophia again and found her sitting behind the counter, rolling the little gold coin between the tips of two fingers, with a sad, faraway look in her eyes.
“What’s wrong, Miss Sophia?” Tara asked.
The woman sighed and slipped the coin in her pocket before answering. “It’s nothing, child. I think it’s about time to close up shop for the night.” Tara readily agreed, and she traded the last of her smokers to Miss Sophia for a bag of motberries before stacking her buckets for the walk home.
The wind blew cold by the time Tara made it home. Her nose was tingling and she was running with the buckets tucked up in her arms when she rounded the gate and stomped up the wooden steps to the front door of her house. The door banged shut behind her as she burst into the warm golden glow of the parlor. Bill was kneeling by the fireplace, pushing a long, cloth-wrapped bundle into his canvas bag. Her father’s old sword was no longer hanging above the mantle.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“I’m going away for a while, Tara.”
“I thought the fishing trip was off?”
“I’m sailing with the Prince’s fleet in the morning.”
posted by Wormius | 12:11 PM
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