Neuvos doesn’t get lost. By virtue of his upbringing, waddling on sandy paths from beach to dock to village, and his trade –carpentry– his existence hinges on the fact that he does not, and can not get lost.
Little comfort it is in this storm.
Rain beats the canoe and lashes his hair against his shoulders; trees groan and crash along the coastline, across the water. Neuvos digs the oars fast and deep, and his shoulders burn, but the wind and water buffets the boat like a willful net of eels, and it’s twice as frigid. The elders terrorized him as a youth with stories about men who ventured too far past the reef, or around the cliffs in the west, and he regrets not taking them to heart. He didn’t try to go out before a storm.
A wall of water slaps over his head and rips the oar from his left hand. He gasps and flings his arm out for it, but the water is black and the sky is on fire and the only thing his fingers close around is cold beyond those both.
He shouts and wails and curses the gods and then, when his arms are numb and the other oar is gone, he holds himself and pants like an animal in a snare.
It’s nearly dawn when he washes into an inlet, the canoe splintered and half-swamped, and the storm rages still. Neuvos yanks his right leg up, but the canoe collides with some rock or wood because it flips and takes him under. His left foot twists. Pain shoots into his numb calf. Bubbles erupt from his lips.
With a surge of effort, he pulls his foot free and breaks the surface of the water. Willow strands slash at his face and arms, and the wind howls; cliffs loom to one side of the inlet, and lava streams from the jutted face, hissing as it turns rain to steam. Through the leaves, he makes out a hillside.
Crack! The canoe splinters. Neuvos splutters when it pulls him under again, and claws for the rocks, the willow strands, anything– his hand curls around a branch just as the canoe rolls away, and he hauls himself onto the dirt.
Distantly, a bell tolls.
It’s a village, and it’s empty. Grains sprout the cleared ground around houses and oaks, and a worn strip of earth runs up the hills to the cliffs on one side; and to the beach on the other. Altars and wells litter the rest. Neuvos stumbles from door to door, but every bed is empty and every table is messy.
Eventually, he circles back to the first two structures– stone forts, small and moss-covered. One of them has a chest and a cauldron, but nothing else, so he limps into the other, struggles to shut the door, and collapses against the wall, breathing hard.
It has a bed, at least, and a wool carpet, like it was once a fort but had served its purpose, and had been domesticated. A table crowds the corner, and a ladder stretches past a hole in the ceiling.
Neuvos falls into the bed, wraps the thin cotton around himself, and listens to the wind scream. The pillow smells like fir pines.
He wakes and the village is still empty. The sun streaks a gray sky, but the clouds are high and thin, and the breeze warms Neuvos’s skin where it blows in from the water. After a thorough search of the hillside, he trudges along the inlet to find the canoe.
Mud sucks at his bare feet, cool and silty. The willows and oaks that crowd the bank grow thicker than the birch that he grew up with, but he’s had to clear enough land beside rivers to know how to get through; the canoe appears behind a ruined lantern cove, an ugly support beam in the middle of some holy place, and Neuvos’s arms strain as he pulls it loose.
Splish! The wood rolls and water slaps his chin and soaks his shirt. He swears but hauls the canoe onto the bank. The weight feels off. Its bow crests the surface and he realizes why; only half the damn thing survived.
“Shit,” Neuvos breathes, and sags against the nearest tree.
There goes his way home.
He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. Yellow light dances off the water, into his eyes and against the crumpled paper that floats near his ankles, and the various glass shards that dangle from the branches. Neuvos lifts his fingers to one and rubs the smooth piece between his forefinger and thumb. How afraid were these people of a storm that they left their tribute behind?
Another nagging voice says in the back of his mind: how bad are these storms that they have no boats in their harbor?
Neuvos props the fragment of the canoe against the tree and returns to the village.
Two days pass before there’s any sign of life from the surrounding terrain. Neuvos makes a quick chart of the interior and what lies past the fences, then clears debris and hauls fallen logs toward the fort to craft a new canoe. It’s as he hefts one of the wheat plots that voices drift down the hills.
Neuvos’s head snaps up. Light glints off a canopy of steel-tipped wood above the villagers’ heads, and his mother’s stories about distant lands without tolerance for outsiders flash through his head, all at once; he drops the log and breaks into a run, shoves open the door to the domesticated fort and throws himself up the ladder.
The door creaks open again just as he wedges himself between the bed and the wall.
“--no, careful, not so fast,” a man says, muffled through the floor. “The wind could have broken anything. See those pieces, there? I don’t want you to step on them.” The sound of armor clattering on the table. Neuvos takes a deep breath. “What? What is it?”
“Mud, mud! Someone put mud on the floor!” a child says, and there’s a stomp like they’re imitating a footprint. Neuvos’s neck tightens.
“What, where?”
A short silence. Then–
“Outside, now– I need you to find Marnee, okay? Go quickly,” the man says, and a blade scrapes from a sheath. Neuvos swears and stretches his arm under the bed, and pushes up at the slats. His fingers close around a hilt. He pulls the dagger to his chest and forces himself to breathe through his nose when steps climbs the stairs and steps onto the floor, then pauses. The man seems to scan the room.
He says, “I know you’re here. Show yourself, we can talk.”
Neuvos, having more common sense than an idiot, braces his back against the wall and shoves the bed with his legs. The man stumbles to avoid it enough that Neuvos has time to vault over the post and toward the ladder, but a spear crosses his path. He grabs it, unthinking, and pushes it down. The end whacks/ the man upside the chin. He grunts and Neuvos kicks between his legs, wrenches the spear free, and throws it across the bed.
He makes for the ladder, but instead of going for the spear, the man tackles him around the waist, and they hit the floor. Pain explodes across the back of his head. Neuvos struggles, but the man grabs his wrists and knocks the knife from his hand, then pins him with a knee to his chest.
“Stop– enough!” the man barks, when Neuvos attempts to wiggle loose. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it!”
Neuvos shakes his head to clear the black spots from his eyes, but another pair of voices join the child downstairs, and he’s weak already from the burst of energy it took just making a dash for the exit. He thumps his head back against the floor and grimaces. The voices downstairs argue over something, loud and harried.
“I didn’t take anything,” he says, to the man.
The man turns, distracted by the voices, his dark hair falling over his shoulders like a river. “What?”
Neuvos repeats, “I didn’t take anything. I’m no thief– please.”
“I can think of a few things you’ve stolen,” the man scoffs and turns back to him. “My peace of mind, for one.”
“Then let me go,” Neuvos pants. “You’ll never see me again. Please– I just want to get home."
The man leans in an inch. "Then why were you hiding?"
Neuvos’s head is still swimming, and the ankle he’d caught on the canoe starts to ache again; the effects of his haste to get out of sight, then just out must’ve caught up to him. He blinks and then the pressure comes off his chest, and the man pulls him up to his feet, the grip on his arms still tight, but without that bone-crushing intensity. Neuvos shakily backs away, just to put a foot of space between them.
“Have you got him?” calls someone from downstairs. The man answers with an affirmative, and two pairs of steps ascend the ladder. An old woman and middle-aged man in robes block the exit and survey Neuvos, whose eyes go first to their scythes and swords, then to their jewels.
“An Oversear,” says the robed man.
“No,” the woman says and pinches the fabric of Neuvos’s sleeve between her fingers. “This cloth is not made in the Isles. You come from the East, don’t you, boy?” When Neuvos hesitates, she adds, “Be at ease. We have no ill blood with your people. They are not the ones that come with swords and spells and a thirst for land.”
Neuvos concedes, “I don’t know exactly– I think it’s to the East.”
The robed man’s brows pinch together; his already hawkish features sharpen. “You don’t know?”
“The storm,” says the man holding Neuvos’s wrists. “Were you lost?”
Neuvos nods.
The robed man adjusts his grip on his sword, subtly. “Are you a scout?”
“No! I’m a carpenter, I–” The maps he scrawled onto spare papyrus and left downstairs spring to mind, and his stomach plummets to their side; he turns to the man beside him with wide eyes. If they don’t believe him– if they think he’s from a warmongering people, there’s any number of tortures they’ll put him through to extinguish a threat–
“You could lie,” the woman says.
“Not very well,” sneers the robed man. “What carpenter travels by boat for work? One so poor as to find none in his own village?”
“He might speak the truth. There’s a patch in the wall and those trees across the path were split,” says the man holding his wrists; he turns over Neuvos’s thumbs and touches his palms. His eyes flit to Neuvos’s, and Neuvos sends him a silent plea. His jaw relaxes. He says, “look at his hands.”
“A learned spy, then,” the robed man says.
“Hmm,” the woman says.
For a moment, they both deliberate, silent.
Neuvos says, “please, I just– I just want to get home.”
Finally, the woman gestures to the man at his side. “It is your Fort, Daniel.”
“Marnee, perhaps we should–” the robed man starts, but she silences him with a stern look. Another silence, this time as the other man –Daniel– stiffens and glances between the three, jaw flexing again. Such an odd place, Neuvos thinks, where elders defer to young men– but he’s more concerned with where exactly he’ll go if he does get released. Without a means to travel back the way he came, he’ll have to rely on overland navigation, and it’s his worst skill.
“I’ll consult the Stone Ones,” Daniel says, with an air of finality.
The child stares at Neuvos with a distrust that belongs to someone older than him. Neuvos was taken outside, and much like a rogue sheep, cornered into a pen and tied to one of the posts, albeit with slack. The elders glance his way periodically, but they’re a meter away and their eyes are on the empty tower, where Daniel had disappeared half an hour ago.
“What?” Neuvos asks, when the boy’s glare becomes unbearable.
“You moved my blocks,” the boy accuses.
“They’re meant to be moved. Otherwise they’d be heavier.”
“You’re meant to be quiet,” the boy says, “otherwise you’d be with elder Marnee.”
“Gods,” Neuvos mutters. “You take after your father, don’t you?”
The boy crosses his arms and puffs his chest.
A few minutes later, Daniel emerges from the tower, crosses the field, and joins the elders. They speak quietly. Daniel gestures between the tower and the inlet, harried. Marnee squeezes his shoulder and says something, and he falls silent, then nods. Neuvos swallows. If the Stone Ones are these villagers’ gods, then he suddenly regrets leaving the lantern cove in its state of disarray.
“Da, are we keeping him?” asks the boy, when Daniel approaches the pen– like Neuvos is a stray cat they pulled from a tree.
“We don’t keep people, Uri,” Daniel says and unlatches the gate. “We aren’t steppe villagers.” The boy shrinks and kicks the ground, and Neuvos mentally recants his comment. Daniel unties his hands and pulls him to his feet. Neuvos rubs his wrists as he hooks the rope back onto his belt.
After a pause, Daniel says, “You can stay as long as you need. We have the bed and there’s plenty of wood for a canoe.”
Neuvos lets out a breath. “Thank you.”
“But,” says Daniel, and steps closer. “If you do anything to threaten this village, I will make you build a box, and I will bind you in it, and it will be with something far stronger than rope.”
Neuvos swallows and nods.
When Daniel leans back, he catches a whiff of fir pines.