Someone Else's Kingdom, BOOK I - Chapter 59

As the others manned the ship Acalee headed down below to once again chart the course. He unlocked the wooden box he kept all his charts in, and reached for the latest. Pinning it to the table he then sat down to add his latest observations, his wounded face throbbing in the repressive heat. He stared at the map, trying to focus his eyes, but an aching sleep overcame him. Losing consciousness, he passed out, head down on the table. The blood from his face smearing across the precious paper. Later, when Essen found him, he was still in this feverish state. Essen lifted him from the chair and carried him to his bunk. He then shouted the young boy to bring water to wash the wound.

Essen too was struggling with the heat, as were all the remaining crewmen, and as he headed back out onto deck he pondered turning the ship around. Just as this thought crossed his mind though yet another Tunida Bird travelled overhead. As Essen watched on, the bird briefly looked back in his general direction, as if acknowledging he was straying too far. It then headed heat-wards, into the south. As Essen watched the bird soar he thought of Acalee below, and his will to follow these birds, omen-like, to their point of genesis. So he pushed on. The Arbowlan gliding effortlessly across the water as he looked out at the desert's edge, to the far side of the channel.

"How much hotter will it get?"

The sight of the desert only heightening his sense of heat and exhaustion. All the stories about the world he'd been told as a child streamed through his thoughts. Boiling oceans. The fiery edge. Steaming cauldrons. The ring of fire.

As these visions gushed through his mind they seemed to blur and merge with the watery desert itself. The shimmering heat and currents of air, along with his fatigue, playing tricks on his consciousness. The colours beyond the wood brown of his crib-like ship, blinding him in their increasingly abstract fury. Flourishes of desert yellows and ocean blues. A flicker of green against the azure blue sky. He steadied himself as he gripped the ship's wheel and tried to bring his world back into focus. Scared reality was disappearing altogether, as he slipped into this unknown river void on the edge of nature. The feeling of fire warming all these colourful tones with a deathly orange glow. As he battled back towards realness he brought all these rivulets of colour back into something nearing focus. The ship seeming to steady beneath his feet, as he steadied his vision and held back the dizzy spell. The panic and disorientation subsiding, his pulse slowed a little and he regained his grip on the world ..but still the small dancing flicker of green remained pinned in his eyeline. Coruscating on the horizon.

He looked down at the deck to re-centre his vision fully. The crispness of the wooden deck pulled sharply into view. With renewed confidence in his material senses he looked back up and watched across the waters. In the far southern distance the vivid green remained. He fetched Acalee's looking glass. The lens of which was now scratched and marked due to the battering it had taken during the long voyage. As he scrolled along the topography a small wedge of green came into view on the banks of the ocean channel. As the boat crept further on it finally widened into view. Trees.

By now the other crew members, with the exception of Acalee, were out on the hot deck, straining their eyes. The battered telescope passed around so each could get a better view.

"Is this where you were heading?" asked Essen of the ship's pilot, with undisguised glee. Now fully sure of his senses, and breathing with renewed life thanks to the lush vision that whet his appetite.

"Will I be assaulted for speaking this time?"

Essen glanced back at him, but didn't reply.

"Given you've made it this far I may as well be truthful. Though now you'll surely disbelieve me anyway. Especially given what I'm about to tell you."

The ship's pilot then paused with needless effect, as the other crew members pricked their ears.

"At this end of this channel, there is an island - not unlike Tunida, though smaller. Here lives the king's second brother. The one you believe is dead. When the king ascends to the throne, he sends his brother here. To rule this island, along with the strips of land that adorn the two sides of this channel. He takes over from his uncle, who ruled before him. Just as the king takes over from his father. The king doesn't execute his own brother. Obviously. That's just a ruse to keep your world sane."

As he explained all this the vegetation on the side of the channel came more fully into view. Birds, including more Tunida Birds, clearly visible as they swooped and flitted about the tree branches. The desert in their wake equally diminishing behind them.

"More lies, surely," noted Essen, plainly.

"No lies," expressed the pilot, with equal plainness, "This is the final truth. It's why I can tell you this now. The king's brother, Prince Twayen, who rules this island - that we call Outer Tunida - patrols this channel, along with the wider perimeter. As is his duty. Soon, his ships will capture this vessel. Very soon, I would imagine. That's if we don't starve, thirst or get wrecked in storms first. So, as I said before - as I've always said - it would be wise to just head to the island and hand yourselves in."

Essen gave the outward impression that he was just ignoring the ship's pilot, and looked on.

"You'll be given mercy. You'll be able to live out the rest of your life here, in relative peace. You might even get to marry and have children - if you don't rebel too much. However, you can't return home. Not now you've come this far and seen what you've seen.

"Saying you are correct. What gives you the right to decide who knows these things, and who doesn't?" interjected one of the crew members, a slight disbelief etched on his cracked and tired face.

"There will be reasons. The king is a good man, and he will have his. There are things I don't know too. I'm not hugely different to you, but I know what the king orders is a lesser evil."

"What reasons could there be for such lies? Other than sheer duplicitousness and theft," quipped Essen dismissively, unwilling to proffer any goodwill; gripping the ship's wheel ever more sternly.

"Again, I don't know the reasons," reaffirmed the ship's pilot, passively, "Perhaps it's little different to a father keeping his children within the garden gate to keep them safe. Or a shepherd protecting his flock from the steep cliffs and river valleys."

"We don't need protection. Certainly not from lying kings and brigands."

Essen found a renewed sense of purpose as he uttered aloud his opinion. His simple values giving him a moral rooting in the ground as he traversed this strange world.

"Maybe ..but, then again, maybe you're naïve. You can't deny that your people, like most people, are wild, unruly and childlike."

"Free ..free." Essen stated it twice, as if to emphasise the importance.

"No, child-like," returned the pilot, "..and emotional. Too honest, and too impulsive."

"Yes, honest."

"Child-like."

"I think it's fairly clear that your people are the dangerous ones."

As the conversation unfolded the young boy approached Essen and handed him back the looking glass. "To the left," he pointed out discreetly. Essen pulled the glass to his eye. Far in the distance, on the port side of the ship, were what looked like two Tunidan vessels. Their dim outlines blurring gently on the calm sea. "We'll make a course further out," briefed Essen, with quiet concern.

The ship's pilot shook his head in disapproval. "It's pointless trying to evade them. You have no idea where you're going. We're simply heading to our deaths."