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The next morning, the rain subsided, and blue skies brought a freshness that would have lifted his spirits had Kaempie not experienced such a loss. He wasn’t sure why he was returning to his skiff. Nor was he certain that if the boat were still there, he would row away from these lands and spend the rest of his life at sea?
As he followed the creek into the gulch, he heard voices behind him. Kaempie slipped into the brush and held his breath as the three foreigners approached.
“Well, at least you’re good for something, Jacques.” Armel said, as they passed Kaempie’s hiding place. “Beach combing can pay off, that’s for certain. Good eye, boy.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Jacques asked.
“You saw how that serpent flew into the sky, didn’t you?” Armel answered.
“You’re going to draw serpents from the deep? Aren’t you afraid they’ll turn against us? We don’t know any magic words.”
Armel laughed. “I don’t care about serpents. But if it can open the sea, I’m betting this little dagger can open up the heavens, too.”
“It could,” Hermaz agreed. “If we sail to the right location. What do you bet?”
“You have the sextant, the compass?” Jacques asked, his voice anxious.
“I even have the charts. We’ll navigate where the ship was before we dove into this snake pit, and then we’ll see if we can’t get this thing to get us back.”
“Home!”
They laughed. “Yeah. Home with a magic dagger! I bet it brings a pretty penny!”
Something about the three men taking off to sea with the Taikan dagger seemed amiss to Kaempie. But he wasn’t thinking as clearly as he used to and sensed no urgency concerning the magic of his island. He watched the three renegades as they rowed his skiff out to their ship, boarded and hoisted sail.
It wasn’t until sunset that the sky lit up with an explosion. Kaempie wondered if indeed they had traveled home through a portal.
After that, Kaempie retreated to the woods. He built a yurt and stayed to himself. Sometimes the dragon-serpent would appear overhead, flying from the mountain eastward, leaving flames and destruction in its path. Sometimes those flames would come from the village. Though he was remorseful of the natives’ plight, after the death of Meneka, Kaempie no long felt capable of saving anyone. Without his gifts, he couldn’t heal a single wound, nor trust himself to make a wise decision. He simply did not interfere.
As the years passed, Kaempie slowly made friends with a certain group of hunters that ventured into his woods. It was through them that Kaempie learned about their village, that the natives remembered Meneka and had taken Meneka’s name as their own, calling themselves Meneks. Kaempie would hunt with the men and, with his keen eye and steady bow, sent them home with enough meat to feed the entire village.
One night, after a horrendous dragon attack, Kaempie was surprised to see his friends wandering aimlessly in the forest.
“Didn’t you come to hunt? Where are your weapons? Your bows and arrows?”
“We’ve been banished,” a strong young man stepped forward.
“Banished?”
“We’ve been cast out of our village to survive on our own in the wilderness. The elders believe that our hunting has caused the dragon’s wrath. They say we compromised its sovereignty. I, my young child Vilfred, and these other men and women have been exiled.”
So remorseful was Kaempie to hear this news that he took the people to his hiding place and together, they built a village of their own. The people loved Kaempie and took his name as theirs, calling themselves Kaemperns.
Kaempie lived with his people until he grew old. One day, a great wind picked up, shaking the trees, stirring dirt and leaves into the heavens. Then Kaempie heard something familiar—the same voice he heard so many years ago. It whispered a song in the wind, and when it was over, it spoke his name. Kaempie lay down his bow by the campfire, nodded a fond farewell to his friends, and walked into the woods. He was never seen again.
