The Halfling

Chapter 11

The brine, like any other brine before, now shimmered as if a million silverbacks were flickering just below surface. The water itself cleared, the ancient swirl of darkness and night now lightened, cleared, given meaning.

There was the tottering of feet, the yanking of wood, and the flitting of a breeze that, humming, helped the sailor travail the waters. He stood, his cloak a gray cloak like those woven, printed, in the stories of Nerest's inhabitants.

From afar, there came the sounds of thumping and bumping and falling, leaves crunching, boughs snapping and loams howling.

Samuel looked grim, eyes like gray scarab beetles that mulled, as if regretting something. His gaze shifted to survey the two figures floating on sea. His staff he raised, inlayed with yew and oak and gilded with gold, silver, clay and iron, crepuscular beings that intertwined and united.

The waves carried the figures near the boat.

He pulled them from the sea's cold. The boat groaned. Droplets of water lapped the floor, sounding like rain slapping loam and ground. He knew all those very well.

"It is a pity to see my friends like this," said Samuel. "I'm quite glad I returned."

He bent over and touched their faces. From his fingers emerged a warmth, a shoal that covered his frail companions' bodies.

Shivering in the ice-cold were they, embracing themselves. They stirred but did not wake.

Samuel quivered. His hairs stood on end, as if they too knit their arms around themselves and shook. He looked at the Lonely Isle.

Far away it loomed, small but a terrifying sight. The road towards it was shrouded in the swirling mist of the night's fury, smog that flittered, perhaps, from the dragon's nose, wafting around the land. Its sides were speckled with ruined blocks of stone and scorched earth, once thought enough protection against invaders.

"They didn't think of a dragon, that's for sure," he muttered.

The castle resembled an olden chair. The turrets and steeples missed large chunks of stone, creating patterns like teeth. Much, quite torn down and rickety, struggled to stay upright in that place.

And they were heading straight for it.

The boy was afraid. As any sensible person would be when facing a dragon.

Samuel fondled his staff. His mind flitted to Nerest. He shook his head. "It does not do to dwell on the past. Must I repeat it again and again?" He looked up at the castle; his stomach fell. "But speculating on the future is not mirthful, either. Perhaps, one should," he said, looking at his companions, "live only in the present."

Color had returned to their cheeks. The light touching them dissipated as the boy stood up.

Night once more wrapped its tendrils, the monsters within nooks and crannies eager to prance in glee, knowing they ruled the darkness. The sea rippled, twirling here and there.

Samuel studied the water closely. If it moved, he sent whisks of light, small rays that glittered upon the murk to purify it. Like a fisherman he was, waiting for the wagging of a fish's fins and their muffled bubbling in order to cast his net over it.

Either way, they both had to master the chaos.

All night long did the boy watch, as a guard standing for duty without so much as a nap or a blink. A few sighs here, a few yawns there, but he did not allow himself so much as a wink.

He ate from what Merena provided, the last reminder, aside from the cloak, that she was not just a dream, an illusion, a hallucination conjured up from some poisonous plant he had eaten.