Chapter Twenty-Nine: Among the Waves

 

In the end, they passed through the mountains to the other side and stood over the Ben Sea. In the distance, far away, they spied a dark shape that might be Chithoobra.

“Give it a week or two,” Anglorae said confidently, “and we’ll be sleeping in real beds instead of the ground.” She groaned and rotated her spine.

Kyosti rolled his eyes. “You’re sixteen. What kind of back aches could you be experiencing?”

He and Sanji, locked arm in arm as usual, heckled her mercilessly all the way down the rest of the mountain. At the shore of the Ben Sea, they came upon a camp of falcon trainers with young birds on their first serious training trip. In the south, falcons and other birds of prey were used to sight game in the open spaces, either by the sea or in the vast grasslands to the west of Chithoobra. They could lead their human handlers to herds of big animals for food, or to other solitary hunters if the handlers were looking for a trophy hunt. In the north, of course, birds were seen as more sacred, kept more as pets, temple priests, or simply allowed to run wild. No northerner, according to Sanji, would dare put a veil over a bird’s eyes to make it more docile.

The falconers were all Chith, so they greeted the four travelers with some reluctance and suspicion. Two Inniss, a Kenjian, and a mute Easterner? It was too strange. Kyosti showed his identification card at least five times before everyone was satisfied, and Sanji endured a barrage of questioning about her origin, family, customs, religion, and purpose for visiting the south. 

Anglorae they left mostly alone once she proved she was a Seer, and she snapped at anyone who dared to speak to John.

At least the food was better---a collection of fish, roots and winter berries. It was very similar to what Kyosti ate every day in Chithoobra, and his heart thought for a moment of the city they were drawing near to.

That night, after everyone else had gone to bed, he slipped out of his bed, grabbed his pack, and went down to the Ben Sea. In the dark of the night, where---he knew this because Sanji had been grumbling about it---not even the light of the Moon or a passing comet lit the sky, he drew out the knife for the first time since finding it.

Doubts pressed down in his mind. They were so close to the city, he didn’t know how to get it back to the Innis. He hesitated at the side of the water, wondering if he should throw it in. There was no inlet for it to reach the south here, but at least it would remain away from the Chith Empire. Was there some way to keep it in the ocean forever?

If he did not decide soon, the knife would fall back into Galveston’s hand.

Considering, Kyosti pulled the knife from the old sheath, running his hands over the carvings, the nicks and indentations. The waves of the Ben Sea lapped against his toes, the freezing water on the edge of freezing in the dark of the night. He dropped his pack on the shore and strode into the water, braving the cold and the slapping waves until he was up to his neck. His chest felt tight, and it was hard to breathe.

When Kyosti was very young, his older brother Romali had cut a hole in the ice and jumped in during the middle of winter. He had gone alone, and the ice had sealed up again almost immediately, trapping him. They had never found his body. It was an honorable death, in the dark and the cold, forever to rest with the Leopard Queen. Before he was even born, Kyosti’s sister Synell had died an even better death: leopard seal attack. What better way was there to go, then by a sibling of the Leopard Queen herself? 

Perhaps he could only sacrifice himself, a heavy weight to drag the knife down to the bottom of the sea. Would that be an honorable death? He’d have to swim out far, though.

He was a strong swimmer, even in the cold. He tucked the knife into his shirt and began.

The waves splashed around him, and a strong winter wind blew across the surface. He didn’t hear the person coming up behind him until arms had wrapped around his chest, pulling at his arms and legs, drawing him back.

Kyosti struggled, yelling to be released, but his rescuer was silent. It wasn’t until he’d been dragged all the way to the shore that he realized it was John.

For a long time after that, Kyosti didn’t say anything. John tried to take him back to camp to warm by the fire, tried to peel off his wet clothes, tried to get him to speak. Finally, he desperately wrapped a dry cloak over both of them, hugging Kyosti and chaffing his skin to warm it.

In all their weeks of travel, Kyosti had made no attempt to try and communicate with John. He couldn’t see the sign language John shared with Anglorae, nor could he read anything John wrote down for Sanji.

So, they sat in silence.

After a while, John shook him insistently and made an inquiring noise.

Kyosti took out the knife and showed it to John. He took it from Kyosti’s shaking hands and looked it over. His next noise was of someone trying to pretend they understood.

“Every Innis knife tells a story,” Kyosti said. “The carvings. The animals on them. This one tells a story too. But I don’t know the story; it’s been lost. We lost so much of ourselves when the Chith came. I can’t even tell you what the story on this knife is. Who made it. Where they lived. What they wanted. It’s all been lost.”

John seemed to understand that sentence.

The next morning, they took their leave from the falconers’ camp, Sanji speaking a few respectful words to the birds and the handlers, Anglorae throwing a few biting words at them, John tugging on her arm, Kyosti silent.

“You feel cold,” Sanji said, touching his cheek.

“It’s freezing outside, of course I’m cold,” he responded, trying not to pull away.

She hmmed, and gave him an extra cloak.

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Photo by June Hanabi on Unsplash