Before the Sky Fell

[ 5 ] Coliasus

-5- 

Coliasus

Whik leaned against the splintered rail of the ship. The waves rolled up and down like lazy caterpillars on their trudge to the next leaf. It was all lies. He wouldn't grow old with Sonora, or explore the northern mountains like Thomas had done. He wouldn't hike with his father or ever spot a rock eater. He had been on the ship for four days now, but he would rather have stayed in the water.

Whik had no memory of being pulled from the sea. He slept through the first night on the ship, after he fell from the cliff and landed in the ocean. Jasper, one of the ship's deckhands, was the first person Whik saw after he woke. When Jasper told him that they were already a day's sail from Hemonstalia, Whik screamed, telling him to turn the ship back, that his brother and mother and friend were waiting for him on the cliff.

"We can't turn back," Jasper told him. "Not ever."

Jasper said that the captain of the Royal Guard had saved Whik. Geoffrey Marg was the man's name, though Whik had not yet spoken to him. Jasper said that when Marg picked up him from the sea, a red woman breathed air into him by pressing her lips to his, and putting her fingers on his chest. "She had the hair of an evening sun," Jasper told Whik. "And she brought you back with her lips. A real woman." Whik wasn't sure if that meant he had kissed a girl for the first time, but he didn't want to ask. Jasper said that Whik must be important if the captain of the Royal Fleet saved him, but Whik told Jasper that he wasn't important and that Geoffrey Marg had made a mistake.

Jasper's skin was a yellow that Whik had never seen before, but there were many new colors on Geoffrey Marg's ship. Most of the crew had pale skin dotted with freckles. Some were dark though, like Sonora was, while others were the color of Jasper: like sand, maybe, or his mother's chicken soup. Some men were the size of a horse and Whik wondered how they didn't sink the ship. There were women in the crew, too. Three of them looked like sisters. They had the same round faces, the same muscular arms and long, thick braids, the same torn shirts. They never stopped moving. One would climb up the mast and tug at the sail, while another would shout from the cabin, telling the other to do this, then do that.

Jasper was taller than all of them, with thick eyebrows and a pointed nose, though he only had one hand. Whik couldn't help staring at it, but it made him feel less sad, that Jasper had lost something too. Jasper's voice was thick as honey and sometimes his words blended together and Whik had no idea what he was saying. Jasper told him that it was because they came from different places and that to him, Whik's voice was strange as well.

On the second day, a storm hit. Whik had never seen bodies thrown around the inside of a cabin before, but when the swells hit the ship and water rushed in the room, people couldn't hold on. Whik had crouched in one of the chests, pulling his knees around him and bracing himself on the boards. When a wave pushed the ship a certain way, it felt like his stomach was dropping out from underneath him. He sat like that for hours until he fell asleep from exhaustion.

On the third, the clouds left them. Jasper sat in the crow's nest for most of the day with a pole up to his eye, staring out to sea. Whik sat alone. He had lost his cape when he fell from the cliff, so he tried to make a new one out of bandages he found in the ship's hold. They fell apart though, and now Whik had nothing to remind him of his mother. Near sundown, Jasper came to Whik with dice in his hand. They played a game into the night hours, where they would try to match symbols on each die. Jasper won most of the games in the beginning, but Whik was quick to learn, and soon he won some of his own. Whik asked about the woman who kissed him, but Jasper didn't know much. He said her name was Charlotte and that she was a healer from Hemonstalia.

Whik saw her that night, replacing bandages and making wounded soldiers drink from cloudy water. She caught him staring once, and smiled, but Whik just walked away. He didn't need any friends. Someone would take them from him.