TREASURE AT THE WORLD’S EDGE
PART ONE
Nettle awoke beneath a blazing sun. He could hear waves lapping gently, and the salt tang of sea air filled his lungs. His body ached and his head thundered, but he was alive.
The young man rose up from the sand, tall and strong with black curls and tan skin. His green tunic had been torn almost entirely from his body, only scraps about his loincloth remaining, revealing the dark hair about his lean and muscled torso. In one hand he clutched a belt and scabbard, which held a bronze sword. There was nothing else he owned.
His stormy eyes narrowing against the light, he looked about worriedly for Thorn. Then he looked to his other hand, enough of his senses returning to notice it was already clenched around something small and soft. Gently, he opened his fingers to reveal his friend tightly curled up in his palm.
The fairy smiled up at him, bleary-eyed. “Not dead yet?”
She was tiny, a handful of inches or so. Where Nettle’s skin was bronzed by the sun hers shone like the metal itself, and where his curls were dark, her hair was as coils of copper. Her white dress had torn along the broad curve of her hip, and her wings were slightly crumpled beneath her, but she was otherwise unharmed.
Nettle laughed and Thorn fluttered up to kiss him on the cheek. At the spirit’s touch he felt his strength restored and his injuries begin to heal. Thorn, as always, seemed to spring back to life immediately, raising herself up into the air before his eyes with a whir of her wings.
The pair rejoiced silently for a moment, each heartened that their friend had survived. Then Nettle looked along the beach, past the jetsam that had been their vessel.
“Where are we?”
He recalled the tumult that had brought them here. A squall had taken their sailing boat in the dead of night, as they traversed the treacherous ocean known as the World’s Edge.
Wind and rain had come from nowhere, building quickly until soon they wer tossed by waves twice as high as their mast. Nettle had reached for Thorn in the maelstrom, protecting her from the gale, then clung to his scabbard and held his breath, able to do nothing but wait out the storm.
Then they had come all at once to a sudden stop, dashed upon unseen rocks and cast upon an unknown shore. There, exhausted from the trials of the storm, they had collapsed.
Thorn rose above Nettle’s head, her little hand shading her bright eyes, and scanned the horizon. “No land that I can see.”
She turned to look inland, and Nettle with her. “And no signs of civilisation here,” he said.
Before them the beach ended in a line of trees and dense undergrowth, a thick jungle which continued up to the distant peak of a hill. Indeed, they could see no port nor village, not even smoke from a hearth or bonfire. Only the great dim chattering of animals came from within, the strange cries and calls of a thousand beasts Nettle did not know.
“Ho!” said Thorn, and Nettle saw her pointing along the beach to a large dark shape, half in the water and partly buried in the sand.
At first he saw a jagged rock, then it looked to be a strange house, then finally he knew it for what it was – another shipwreck. This was larger, the prow of a great junk or galley, rising from the silent sand as if over the crest of an enormous wave.
Wordlessly the pair agreed and made their way along the sand. The beach was hot underfoot, and the sun rose ever higher in the clear, brilliant blue of the sky. Nettle felt sweat upon his brow and began to notice his rising thirst.
They travelled along the coast for nearly a league until they came upon the wreck. It was indeed the front of a ship, her stern nowhere to be seen. At what would have been the very front of the vessel was a figurehead, a buxom mermaid carved from wood, now gazing still and silent at the sky.
Amongst sea-smoothed boulders, grown with barnacles and plants of purple and deep green, were cast large and splintered pieces of driftwood, wet and not yet sun-bleached. “This is not some old relic,” said Thorn. “She has been here only a short while.”
“Perhaps this ship fell to the same storm that brought us here?” mused Nettle.
“Ahoy!” Thorn yelled at the ship through cupped hands. “Avast! Who goes there? Anyone aboard?”
There was no response, then a sudden stirring below the tilted deck. Nettle’s hand went to the burgundy hilt of his blade with its sun-shaped pommel, and he furrowed his brow.
A hatch opened, and from it emerged a figure, a woman, with deep amber skin and jet-black hair knotted behind her head. One eye was dark, upturned beneath a scowling brow, and where the other would be was a leather patch over a twisting pink scar.
She bore a wicked blade of some green crystal or stone, brandishing it at Nettle and Thorn, cold strength in her single, glaring eye.
“Back away!” Her voice was loud and hard. “I’ll strike you down if I must.”
“We mean no ill! A storm stranded us here, as it did you,” said Nettle, though he kept his hand tight on the haft of his sword.
The woman’s gaze darted between the two as she peered down from her ruined ship. “A man and a fairy? This is your crew?”
“And what of it?” Thorn pouted. “You’re even less of a crew, where are the rest of you?”
“Gone,” came the reply. The woman let her green stone sword lower just a little, and pointed it at the inland jungle. “One group after another went into the thicket to seek help, or else food and shelter, yet none have returned.”
Then the blade was up again, aimed down squarely at Nettle’s bare chest. He furrowed his brow and began to draw the bronze blade.
“Oi!” whispered Thorn to her companion. “Let’s not be hasty!”
“How do I know you are not spirits come out of the woods? The same evil that befell my crewmates, here to finish the last?” There was no fear in her words, but iron.
Nettle looked to Thorn, and took a breath. Slowly, he stowed his blade and held up his hands.
“I tell you the truth – we are travellers upon these waters. Our boat was caught in last night’s tempest, and sunk upon the rocks here. If you walk back along the beach you will see what remains of it, scattered in the sand.”
The woman did not sheathe her strange blade, but she listened.
“My friend is called Nettle,” said the fairy, “and I am Thorn. And yes, I am a spirit, but bound no evil purpose, nor any end but my own.”
“As am I,” said Nettle. “We seek only our freedom from this place.”
Atop the wreck, the woman paused, then slid her naked blade into a strap at her hip.
“...I see no deceit in you. Come aboard. We must talk.”
The cabin inside the shipwreck was surprisingly pleasant, though tilted up onto its side. There were furs and silks about the floor, which had been the wall, of many patterned hues. Maps and charts were spread about, and Nettle saw the outlines of islands he had never known, and diagrams of strange stars.
The woman was called Hira, and she had been captain of her ship the Moon Chaser until the same storm that brought Nettle and Thorn to the island had sunk it. Half the hull and crew were lost to the waves, but by some miracle she and a few others had washed up here.
“I’m sorry about your friends,” said Thorn.
“Friends? No,” said Hira. “Thieves and brigands all, though fine seafarers, and gone too soon. But these are the lives we lead in the Pirate Citadel.”
“Of what make is your sword?” Nettle asked. “I have not seen its like before.”
Hira regarded it fondly. “This blade is Foe Cutter, and it was blessed by a great spirit. It cuts nothing unless its master wills it, and will never lose its edge.”
The green edge glinted in what daylight filtered through from outside. “It is a wondrous thing,” said Nettle.
Hira smiled. “It was entrusted to me by a good friend, the wizard Salazeem, who has knowledge of many of the powerful items of this world. We had set sail to his tower, where he keeps his collection, before we were waylaid by the sudden storm.”
Thorn’s eyes lit up. “We must meet him! Nettle and I will sail with you, and see his treasures for ourselves.”
Hira laughed wryly. “You are welcome to try! He does not take kindly to strangers. But in any case, the Moon Chaser will never sail again.”
Nettle pondered. “Might we built a vessel from the wreck? A raft, at least?”
Hira nodded. “This was to be my course. I had been waiting for my crew, and was disheartened when they did not return. But between us we might fare better.”
She reached for a pile of papyrus and etched skins, rolling out a complex chart between the three of them.
“By my reckoning,” said the captain, “we are on the forsaken rock men call the Isle of Beasts. None dwell here, but the tower of Salazeem is not far to the south, just beyond the horizon.” She nodded. “If the weather remains fair, the voyage will be easy.”
“We won’t be struck by another storm?” asked Nettle with concern.
Hira shook her head. “The sky is clear, the winds are favourable. That storm... such things do not occur often, and it is unlikely to happen again for some time.”
Nettle did not seem convinced, but Thorn beamed. “Then let’s not delay!”
Hira led them out onto the sand. “I will begin preparations. If you need to eat, there is a clear pool not far from here, and the fruits growing there are good. But do not venture into the jungle.”
Thorn had no need for food, but Nettle’s stomach growled. Their only supplies had been lost in the wreck.
“I’ll return soon,” he said.
“Take your time,” said Hira. “Your pretty fairy can keep me company.”
“Oi! I am nobody’s fairy,” pouted Thorn, then she winked. “Pretty, however, I admit to.”
It was indeed a short walk to the water Hira had spoken of, but by the time he reached it Nettle was ravenous, and his throat was parched. He saw the wide, deep pool in the rock, fed by a stream from beyond the trees, and the ripe red fruits that grew from the bushes there.
“A feast!” said he. “And well-earned.”
His hands cupped, he drank until quenched, delighting in the water as if it were wine. Then hungrily he fell upon the fruit, gorging on their sweet flesh, juices flowing down his lips and chin and dripping upon his chest. Nettle could feel the sweat running along with that sticky sweetness down his skin.
The water looked like crystal. Once the notion struck him Nettle did not hesitate, tearing his loincloth and the last shreds of his tunic from his torso. Then, laying his sword and scabbard at the water’s edge, he lowered his lithe, naked body into the pool.
It was cold, too cold at first, but a blessed relief from the heat of the day. Nettle lay back against the hard stone and luxuriated in the stillness. Now that they had a way off this island, it didn’t seem so bad. Like some lost paradise where nature ruled, not mortal men.
“Surely, here is everything a man needs but companionship,” he told himself, smiling in contentment.
There was nary a rustling from the bushes, such was the stealth of the great black panther which had slipped out from the jungle like a shadow.
By chance or some animal instinct within him Nettle spied it from across the pool for only an instant, a mass of midnight fur and muscle, yellow eyes and fangs drawn, before it pounced.
TO BE CONTINUED...
