Chapter 4
(Plot 3)Calufray stayed with the Sisseton tribe for some time. He went on regular patrols with the scouts, comparing his time aboard the Trawler with what he learned of the undersea topography to gain a thorough knowledge of what was both above and below the surface of the Siren’s Sea. The Sisseton introduced him to several troves of supplies and safeguarded treasures kept within the bellies of underwater caverns far below islands that would have been considered unimportant to passing ships. He painstakingly documented everything on waterproof maps—with the promise that he would never divulge the information to any surface-dweller, of course.
During communal time with the tribe, he learned to play a sort of underwater shawm, a haunting instrument he wished he had known those many months earlier, when his father had left the world. He tried and failed many times to compose a dirge in his father’s memory, but nothing he came up with seemed to fit. The music of the Sisseton was far too cheerful for his purposes, and he settled on playing low drones that changed only slightly for minutes at a time. Like his father’s later life, he thought; dull and hardly changing.
“You play like a blobfish,” said Len, one of his scouting partners, poking fun at him. “Cheer up, our watch starts soon.”
“Wakuwa,” said Calufray, which—as he had learned—meant “I follow.”
He was learning the Sisseton language, too. He didn’t know enough to understand everything, but he could get by in simple conversations. He even learned a prayer to Yayauhqui or “Black Smoking Mirror,” the spirit of the first black manta that swam in the Sisseton ancestral waters. The Sisseton worshipped the Primal Spirits—especially Yayauhqui—whom they would invoke when they went scouting.
With their fishbone spears in hand, Calufray and Len spread their arms wide in an arc reciting: “Yayauhqui kipan, wakuwa. To’kiya Yayauhqui he? Sisseton ded ti ye. Yayauhqui hde.”
And then, in the common tongue, they repeated: “Black Smoking Mirror calls, I follow. Where does Black Smoking Mirror live? She lives here with the People of the Fish Village. Black Smoking Mirror journeys home.”
That day they encountered a black manta near Aviqming Reef. Seeing it as a favorable omen and a gift from Yayauhqui, they hunted it down to the sheer slope of an island where Len said there was a Temple to the Metal Aspect. At last, Calufray speared the manta against the sheer slope with his fishbone weapon. That night the Sisseton shared the catch with the village, their young ones being given the honor of taking in the strength of Yayauhqui before any others.
After the feast, Calufray chewed a morsel of manta meat as he watched the young ones. Some of them were dramatizing the hunt from earlier in the day.
“I am Calufray!” one shouted in the Sisseton language. “No, I am Calufray!” argued another.
Calufray smiled, then grew solemn. He withdrew the Wonderful Pitcher from where he kept it fastened to his belt and looked at its glossy surface. With one final passive glance at the children, he willed it to take him up, away from the feast.
He never went back to Sisseton. As quickly as he and his father had arrived, he had departed, leaving behind his maps and fishbone spear, leaving behind Len, and the children who even now acted out the daring hunt that had brought them their sacred feast that night. As he rose through the sea toward the Aviqming Reef, he realized how little he had belonged there. He was human...or at least mostly human, as his mother had said. He suddenly yearned to be back among his people, the ones he had grown up with. The friends he had left behind in Cadfelham.
But he had burned it to the ground, he reasoned. Anyone who knew him would be dead...or hate him. Nevertheless, the Wonderful Pitcher drew him home. Was it by his will or, he wondered, the will of his mother? He thought little about it, simply resigning himself to go where it led him.
He had little to eat, and without his fishbone spear he could not hunt. After appeasing his hunger with whatever weeds and snails he could gather, he settled on a small island to find what wild fruits might be there. He had nothing to build a fire with, so he was forced to eat some under-ripe bananas and a raw fish he managed to catch with his hands. The fish wasn’t unlike what he ate back in Sisseton, but his human belly longed for something grilled or fried.
No matter, he thought, and ate and slept, and woke, and journeyed home, like Yayauhqui.
It took him many days, even with the help of the Wonderful Pitcher. But after the third day, he caught sight of the mountain over the horizon. After the next day, he saw the shores of Cadfelham. And that afternoon he was climbing out of the waters of Cadfel Cove, sinking his toes into the sands of his home beach.
He looked around. There was the fairy ring. There was where his father had been captured. Nothing much had changed from months previous; his father was gone, and the hamlet was quiet. He still had nothing.
Why had he come here? What did he expect to find? He threw the Pitcher to the beach in frustration. What had his mother intended for him to gain by rescuing his father if it was all to turn out the same? No matter whether he had rescued him or not, his father would have perished by Chang’s hand. At least he would still be on his island with crab boiling over the fire and the prospect of a ray or two for supper. And here he stood, on the beach of the home he burnt to the ground, all so he could find out it had made no difference?
He slumped to the beach, pounding he sand over and over, ignoring the sting when some of it sprayed into his eye. He cried all the same, adding his salty tears to the lapping waves just as he had done all those months ago.
But only after his sobs quieted did he hear it: the sound of wood pounding on wood. Several strikes in a row, then silence. His head jerked up, throwing sand into the air. He waited. There they were again: several strikes in a row, then silence.
He ran.
Inland, where the hamlet once was, across the chilly air, he saw the beginnings of a new hamlet, built over the half-burnt skeleton of the previous one. It was Cadfelham, alive and healing. He had never bothered to see just how far the fire had spread before he ran away the first time. He assumed it had all been destroyed. But here it was, surviving in spite of the evil he had done that day.
He approached cautiously, afraid that someone might recognize him. With an outcropping of rock between him and the nearest rebuilt house, he waited to see if anyone would pass by. He could see nothing. And if he stuck his head out any farther, he would be seen. His time among the sirens had gotten him used to being able to move up whenever he pleased, a luxury he could make use of now. And so, he climbed the mountain-side, hoping to get a higher view of the hamlet.
“Calufray?” came a familiar voice.
It was one of the halfling villagers. The baker’s wife, Tonya, specifically.
Calufray paused where he was, looking over his shoulder sheepishly. “Hello.”
“What are you doing up there?” asked Tonya with mild amusement. “And where have you been all this time? We all thought you dead in the fire!”
Calufray half-slid half-jumped down from where he was. When he reached the ground he stood and turned, clapping the dust and earth from his hands.
“Tonya, you look very well this afternoon,” he said as if the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened. “Is that a new bonnet?”
“It is actually,” said Tonya, flattered. “My other one was lost in the fire.”
“Well, this one looks quite fine—even better than the last.” This was going well, he thought. “And how is your husband?” he ventured.
Tonya’s eyes became wet and she put on a forced smile. “Oh, you know, he…” She pulled her basket of loaves up to her hip so she could use one hand to wipe the tears from her face. “You’d think it’d be easier after all this time, but…”
Calufray felt the shock of realization. His gaze faltered and he cleared his throat nervously. “Here, let me help you with that,” he offered reaching out to take the basket of loaves. “Where, er...?”
Tonya led him wordlessly into the hamlet, past all the newly-built homes and the charred remains of less-important buildings. He recognized some of the halfling children wandering the dirt paths with buckets of nails and wooden pegs. Pairs of older halfling youths carried planks of wood on their heads. All were walking the same direction he and Tonya had been—toward the sheriff’s quarters.
Buckets and planks were deposited in their places out front, and several adults—mostly halflings joined by a few of the taller races—were huddled over a makeshift table formed of several planks thrown over a pair of barrels. Everyone listened while two or three of the adults were talking to each other, referring to large diagrams on the tables and pointing off toward the beach.
“Just break these in half and give one to each of them.” Tonya offered Calufray one of the loaves from the basket he was carrying. “We all do what we can, and now the work might just go a little faster with you being back.” She took the basket from him again and thanked him with a squeeze to the arm. Her hand lingered just long enough for Calufray to notice, and Tonya immediately looked away and offered him another loaf. “Half to everyone, that’s all there is to go around.” She gave him a sheepish smile.
Calufray helped distribute the loaves, oblivious to Tonya’s attention; he was more nervous that one of the adults might notice who he was. One of them, a swan-folk, looked up at him briefly, but gave no sign of recognition. He must have been a newcomer, maybe a contractor or merchant tasked with coordinating the renovations. The swan-folk fluffed his wings, grateful for the loaf of bread, and craned his neck back over the diagrams.
Calufray let out a sigh.
“Calufray,” came a high, hoarse voice. Calufray froze. “Haven’t seen you in some time.”
Coming up the dirt path from the beach was Nizhoni, a siren man who walked on two webbed feet with fluid movements. He was dressed in his unique costume, common for his performances as an escape artist, but not for day-to-day. Calufray guessed it was all Nizhoni had after the fire. But the detail that caught Calufray’s attention the most was the small clay pitcher that Nizhoni held in his hands.
Calufray silently cursed himself; he had left the pitcher behind when he ran to the hamlet! His face burned—not at being recognized, but at the thought of anyone holding the clay pitcher except himself. The way Nizhoni casually tossed the pitcher from one hand to another as if it were some common water vessel made Calufray want to snatch it away from him. That was his mother’s.
Nizhoni must have noticed Calufray’s restrained look. “You alright?” he asked smoothly, as if nothing at all was the matter. When Calufray didn’t answer, he spun the pitcher in the air one more time and set it down on the table of planks, looking over the diagrams with the rest of the adults.
“I hope you’re here to work,” said Nizhoni without looking up. “I don’t know how long you’ve been gone on that Crawler ship, but we’ve got our own problems to deal with. There’s been a fire, if you didn’t know.”
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