The Dying Isle
Vrollek Isle was wheezing, if an island could wheeze, the dry brown vegetation blowing into Ozzan Bay, haphazardly decorating the webs of the Salt spiders that blocked any ships from shore.
The Kouncil would hold the cave tomes aloft, telling the populace, repeatedly, that it was a curse prophesied, but Unlaa knew differently.
She had studied the alchemies secretly since childhood, never being allowed to rise above academy because of her gender. But she knew. She didn’t need the Kouncil’s meaningless parchment degrees.
The knowledge was within her. The Kouncil had farmed their own land for export well beyond what the small island could sustain. The Kouncil was the curse, not some incantation scrawled by cave dwellers, improperly heeded or blasphemed.
A vangar strolled by, starving, confused. It looked at Unlaa and young Pondalo as if they were food.
Unlaa placed her tongue against her teeth, making the clicking noise of a lava gull. The vangar darted, its six legs propelling it through the shallow surf, down the beach. The mangy beast reminded Unlaa to sew faster. A patrol sentry happening by would certainly wonder what brought a peasant seamstress to the bay to sew.
It had taken her far too long to cobble together suitable cloth. If the mist signals she had received in the morn were accurate, Bilwar’s ship would be pulling around the Cape of Shrouded Eyes very soon.
Pondalo fussed with his cloth rockgator toy that Unlaa had made for him shortly after she found him abandoned in a puddle of nightsoil behind a miner’s tavern near the wharf.
She raised him as best she could, but it was clear that the Kouncil would soon enslave everyone to wring the last resources out of Vrollek before the tiny isle could no longer sustain life at all.
Unlaa made the sign of the wave across her chest to thank the Sea Goddess for giving her the gift of mist reading. She and Bilwar had corresponded by the mists for more mooncycles than either could count. When Pondalo came into Unlaa’s life they had formulated a plan. Today that plan would be realized.
Making the last stitch on the pale blue sailcloth, Unlaa set it aside and began to strap Pondalo into the rigging she had fashioned. Bilwar had assured Unlaa that the rope harpoon she had designed and fitted to her crayer would be a perfect match. Translating that information was no small feat through the language of the mists, but Unlaa believed Bilwar.
Unlaa had gotten lost looking at Pondalo’s big, expressive gray eyes when the hiss of the harpoon shot through the bay.
She wept as she strapped the small lad into the sail rigging, looking at Bilwar’s ship for the first time. She told the little boy to hold his rockgator tight, clasped him in, and gave the mist signal. The crayer heaved forward. Unlaa’s adopted little boy lifted on the sailcloth, headed for a fresh, new life away from the oppressive, dying island.
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