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BLACK SAND COVERED THE BEACH ENTIRELY, and foamy waves crashed on the shore. The tide was high, and cold winds blew in from the ocean. Large, dark clouds formed in the sky.
Aedyn pulled the boat from a separate shed and let it float in the water. It was as small as he’d described it, and Jasira was unsure the both of them would fit inside. The wood of the boat looked worn and in desperate need of maintenance. But there was no time for that.
“Are you sure this will hold out there?” she shouted over the loud winds as she pointed to the rough waters.
“I wasn’t expecting the water to be this bad. It looks like a storm is brewing. But trust me, the boat will hold.”
“How do you know it won’t break?”
“Because I built it. We have to leave now, before it gets worse,” he shouted.
Jasira helped Aedyn push the boat off the sandbank, and she jumped in. Her ankle had healed quickly overnight, but whenever she applied too much pressure on it, she felt the pain again. Aedyn moved the sword case out of the way to make space for Jasira and handed her a hefty leather belt.
“Tie this around your waist,” he said as he pulled out the daggers.
He held them close to the belt, and they magnetically stuck to it.
“Wow. That was cool,” Jasira said.
“It might take a few tries to get used to taking them off and putting them back on the belt, but once you do it the first time, you’ll get the hang of it,” he said, attaching the rest of the daggers.
He hung a leather scabbard over his shoulder and attached the sword magnetically to it like the daggers. The case was now empty, so he placed it in the water and pushed it to shore. Jasira moved the two oars out of the way to sit more comfortably and handed them to Aedyn.
“Let’s go save them,” he said, handing one back to Jasira.
Together, they rowed the boat closer to the mainland.
“Yesterday, why did you refer to Sirena as your sister’s mother?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Sirena took me in when I was young, since before I can even remember,” Jasira began.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. What happened to your mother?”
“I don’t know anything about my real mother. I never met her,” she continued. “I grew up with Vaika, Sirena’s daughter. She was basically my sister, and we treated each other like family. I never stop thinking about what my life would have been like if my biological mother raised me, what it would have been like if I never met Vaika.”
“Where’s your sister now?”
Jasira shook her head.
“She... died. A long time ago, before Adam was born.”
“Oh, I’m—”
“It’s okay,” she interjected. “Everywhere I’ve been, there’s death. Everyone who I come into contact with dies. Elaine, Sirena, Vaika.”
Aedyn gulped and widened his eyes.
“Don’t worry, Aedyn. We have your weapons to protect us. We’ll just be in and out of the citadel. We grab Adam and Prianaj, and we leave. My whole life I never thought I’d be doing something like this. I’m not sure Sirena would like the person I have become.”
“Sirena really cared for people. She took care of me, and she took you in as one of her own. She wouldn’t think that of you at all. I don’t think that of you.”
“You’ve known me for one day, and you think you know me? Aedyn, you don’t know me at all. I’ve done terrible things. I’ve killed people to get where I am, to keep my son safe,” she said, staring out to the ocean.
“Are you listening to yourself? To keep your son safe,” he repeated. “You protected him. And now, look, we’re on our way to save him.”
“Well, maybe there’s a darker part of me. A part of me I never knew existed, just like my life before Sirena took me in.”
“Just choose which life you want to live,” he said.
“It’s not that easy. You’ve lived alone. You haven’t had the same experiences as me.”
“For good reason. If the world is really that terrible, then Sirena was wise to keep me away from it. Yes, I’ve been alone since I was ten, but I’ve had choices to make too. When Sirena didn’t return, I could have lived my life on the beach or tried to make it to the mainland and probably drowned. And if I made it, then they might have killed me. I had to make that choice as a little boy. You’ve known me for one day as well, and you don’t know me either.”
The blanket of fog cleared up a bit, and they could see the water had settled down. There was a crack in the clouds that allowed the sun to break through, and the winds abated.
“The storm will return. This usually happens,” Aedyn said, taking Jasira’s oar and rowing a bit faster.
“Slow down for a second, I like this calm.”
The part of the water they had rowed into was dark blue. The sunlight didn’t travel far enough to reach the bottom.
“This water reminds me of a story Sirena once told me. It’s similar to the situation we’re heading into and also involves a boat,” he said as the dark clouds covered the sun again.
“I haven’t heard a story in a long time. Vaika used to love making up stories and telling them to me before bed. But there was always one story she never wanted to tell me. Apparently, I was too young and would be too scared,” she mimicked Vaika’s high-pitch voice.
“What was it called?” he asked.
“She called it ‘The Ferryman’.”
“The exact story I was thinking of.”
“Can you tell it to me?” she asked in excitement.
“I don’t know if you can handle it. Do you like ghost stories?” he asked.
Jasira stared at him, and he instantly knew that she wanted him to tell the story.
“Fine, but don’t complain when you get nightmares.”
“I don’t get scared easily,” she lied.
“There was once a woman who had a daughter who was eight years old,” he began as the swoosh of water accompanied his voice. “She loved her daughter with all her heart and would let nothing come between them. One day, as the woman was out, her home ignited into flames. Her daughter was inside. That very day, the woman lost her child, and her whole world fell apart. She began to lose her mind and fell into a dark place. She found a witch and begged her to bring her daughter back to life, but the witch would not. The witch forbade it. She did, however, direct the woman to somebody who could.”
“The ferryman?” Jasira asked.
“The ferryman,” he repeated. “The woman followed a path to a lake in the middle of a dark forest where nobody ever dared to enter. She rowed the boat into the very centre of the lake and waited. Time went by, and she lost hope. But right before she started to row back to shore, black smoke emerged into the shape of a hooded figure before her eyes. It was the ferryman. The woman pleaded for him to bring her daughter back from the dead. The ferryman agreed but asked for payment. He asked the woman to give up something she could never live without. The only thing the woman could offer was her daughter, the very thing she wanted the ferryman to bring back. So the woman told him to take whatever he wanted from her. But the ferryman was devious. If he brought somebody back from the dead, the other souls would become restless and see it as an unfair deed. His one and only job was to ferry souls from this world to the next. So the Ferryman took the woman’s eyes, gouging them out and swallowing them. He vanished, and the woman’s daughter appeared in the boat. The woman was so excited when she heard her daughters voice again but could not see her. She reached out to give her daughter a hug but couldn’t reach her. She leaned further forward with her arms out and fell into the lake. She fought to save herself but could not see the boat to pull herself up. And so she drowned, without her daughter and without her eyes.”
A chilling wind blew across Jasira’s skin and rocked the boat slightly.
“What happened to the woman’s daughter?” she asked.
“When the ferryman took out her eyes, he deceived her and implanted a memory of her daughter in her mind. The woman didn’t realise her daughter hadn’t returned from death.”
“Are you my ferryman? Are you going to take my eyes?” she asked.
“It fits the scene, doesn’t it? We’re on a boat, in the middle of, well, not a lake, but an ocean, and you want your child back.”
Jasira ate the nuts and berries they collected earlier in the morning. Aedyn had learned to grow produce the same way Prianaj, his mother, did. They had been rowing for a couple of hours, but the mainland was still out of sight.
Aedyn moved the oar up too hard and accidentally splashed water onto Jasira’s face. He laughed, but Jasira didn’t like it. She grabbed the other oar and splashed water onto Aedyn’s face as payback. Aedyn continued laughing and splashed Jasira again. Jasira swung the oar into the water once more but hit against something hard.
As Jasira looked over the side of the boat, she saw a hand poking out of the water. She jumped back and screamed.
“What? What’s it?” he asked.
Jasira covered her mouth and pointed. Aedyn used an oar to pull the body closer to the boat and flipped it over. Despite the pale skin, Jasira could recognise those red locks and freckles.
“Alixem.”
“You know her?” he asked.
“Knew her,” she answered. “She’s the reason we’re in this mess. She was an old friend of mine, but she turned me in and helped the Cerberi capture my son. I don’t know her anymore.”
Aedyn pushed Alixem’s body away and let it float across the ocean.
“You think you know some people, then they stab you in the back like that. I never had any friends, the only person I knew was Sirena. Hey, do you know what happened to her? Why she never came back?” he asked, warmly.
“She died when I was really young. She’s buried next to my sister.”
“Do you know how she died?”
“My sister said it was an infection called the night patch. It’s a horrible disease, not contagious, but some kind of genetic disorder. Vaika died from it as well.”
“I always wondered why she never returned. Maybe when this is over, you can take me to where she’s buried.”
“Definitely. I think she’d like that.”
A storm rolled in and rocked the boat with waves that increasingly grew stronger. Jasira held onto the sides of the boat as Aedyn fought against the winds, using all his energy to row. One of the oars snapped. It had it coming; the wood was terribly rotten.
“Look,” he said, pointing behind her.
Jasira turned her head and squinted her eyes.
“The mainland,” he said over the winds.
The waves grew stronger, splashing water into the boat and soaking them both.
“We have to swim the rest of the way.”
“What! No way. I can’t swim!” Jasira screamed.
“There’s no choice.”
One final wave crashed into the boat, breaking it apart into several pieces. They swirled around in the water, spinning as the current pushed them apart. Jasira struggled to stay afloat and noticed Aedyn clutching to a larger piece of the boat.
“Swim. Watch how I do it,” Aedyn commanded.
Jasira watched him as he kicked his feet and pushed the water with his arms. She copied him, putting pieces of the wood under her body to keep her afloat. Her body was thrown around, but she fought for her life, to see her son again. Aedyn manoeuvred through the rough waters powerfully, as he already knew how to swim.
Jasira coughed up the water that tried to force its way down her throat. After struggling for a while, her legs gave in to fatigue. She thought it was over for her, but somehow, her legs kept moving. The pain in her injured ankle felt unbearable, but she knew she was close. The water was up to her neck, except when the waves rolled over her head. She pushed towards the mainland, swinging her arms around to help her body move faster. Aedyn made it to the shore much sooner and watched as Jasira crawled up on the shore.
“We did it!” she said, puffing and trying to catch her breath.
It rained heavily, and mud slid down the side of the mountain into the ocean.
“Take a rest, you’re exhausted,” Aedyn said, stabbing his sword into the sand.
Jasira checked her body for the daggers. She thought the waves might have knocked them off her, but they remained intact on the belt.
“Strong magnets these are,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. I thought we would have lost the weapons out there.”
“We need to get to higher ground,” she insisted, handing Aedyn his sword.
They made their way up the mountain, slipping in mud and wet leaves. The rain was cold, but the wind had subsided. As they climbed to the other side, they saw the citadel hidden in the mountains. The waterfall close to the citadel was loud, and they could hear it over the drumming of the rain. It was hard to see the Cerberi at the edges of the citadel, as their black uniforms camouflaged with the blackstone walls.
“Let’s wait until night,” Aedyn said. “If we go now, we’ll be caught.”
Jasira moved some fallen branches and leaves out of the way so that the rainwater could pass freely. She sat down and squeezed the water out of her hair and jacket. They had soaked up more water than she thought possible. Aedyn sat next to her, his back against the tree and his legs outstretched in front of him. Jasira calmed herself with the song she always used to sing to her son.
‘Close your eyes and lay down,
Dream a very sweet dream.
I’ll be right here to stay,
You’ll be safe when you’re with me.’
Aedyn closed his eyes and continued the song.
“Close your eyes, my child,
In you, I’ll find my strength.
I love your beautiful smile,
I’ll be yours until the end.”
“You know that song?” Jasira asked.
“Sirena sang that to me every night,” Aedyn answered, wrapping his arms around Jasira’s shoulder.
“My sister did the same for me,” she said, resting her head on his chest.
They repeated the song over and over, swaying their bodies side to side in each other’s arms. Aedyn’s voice faded into a soft hum, and it wasn’t long before Jasira’s did too.
“I don’t like the sky like this, I can’t see the stars,” Aedyn whispered.
“You like stargazing?”
“Sirena taught me. She showed me all the important stars. She kept a notebook of all the incredible things she saw, even before I was born. She left it to me, I have it back at my beach shed.”
“I wish I knew how to stargaze,” Jasira said.
“I can teach you one day,” he smiled. “I went through her notebook, and she recorded so many amazing things. Like the day of my birth, the moon was dark crimson. Sirena always said it made me special.”
Jasira spun her head to face Aedyn and remembered the prophecy.
The prophecy isn’t mine, its Prianaj’s. She realised.
She pondered on it for a while and realised that Aedyn was not to blame for Prianaj hiding the truth about her child.
“Jasira,” she said.
“What?” Aedyn asked.
“My name. It’s Jasira.”
They were exhausted, but they only needed a few hours of sleep to replenish their bodies. They drifted off, ignoring the water that dripped on their heads.