Chapter 5: Barriers

Jake and I exited Miriam’s tent, the sun briefly blinding me. My head was still reeling from all the new information Miriam had relayed to us. All of the people here had been in the process of being sent to a penal colony, but they had instead been stranded here in this faraway land. They had come from a realm hitherto unknown to me, and they had customs and culture that I had never experienced before.

My stomach began to growl. I’d almost forgotten that it had been more than a day since last I’d eaten. I didn’t remember the last thing I’d had - the tuna salad sandwich I’d packed for lunch? Did coffee count as food? Those hardtack biscuits peeking out of the crates were looking real appetizing all of a sudden.

“Stella,” Jake said, gripping my arm, “let’s get food.”

“What do you know?” I grinned. “I was thinking the exact same thing.”

We walked over to the nearest box of hardtack. The biscuits were round, pale lumps that honestly didn’t look too appetizing if you weren’t hungry. I remember learning somewhere that soldiers in the American Civil War had beaten their hardtack against solid surfaces to get the weevils out, then dunked them in coffee for several minutes just to get them soft enough to eat. The food was designed for travel and durability, not edibility.

I bent down and attempted to pluck a biscuit from the top of the pile. “No,” a deep voice rang out. “Don’t touch that.”

Flinching, I turned and looked around. A tall man with pale skin and hair was standing over me. His beard was long, and he had the red streak in his hair marking him as an indigenous Abydan.

“This food belongs to our camp, friend,” he said in a tone that was audibly more aggressive. I really didn’t want to mess around with someone a good half foot taller than me, so I retracted my hand and stood up. I realized that the box was located scant feet from the campfire the Abydans all shared.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to disturb.”

“Scaleless noblemen,” he muttered under his breath as Jake and I walked away from the campfire.

Man, lots of the folks in this camp really have a bone to pick with me - that is, George, I thought. Miriam seemed nice, though. So did Isaac and Zufan.

“Do you want to go find Isaac or Zufan?” I asked.

“Sure,” Jake replied. “Maybe they can give us food.”

While Zufan was nowhere to be seen, it turned out that Isaac was sitting next to his campfire with seven other people who looked to be his relatives. They were drinking water out of a large, rusty bucket and passing around biscuits from a crate. They seemed to be chatting amiably, and their long dark hair bobbed in the faint sea breeze.

“Hey,” I said as I approached Isaac.

The ruddy-faced man looked up at me. He’d doffed his leather cap, and his hair blew freely around his face. “M’lord,” he said. “M’lady.”

“Don’t call us that,” Jake said. “We’re not nobles. We’re people, just like you.”

“If y’ say so,” Isaac said. “So, whatever brings you to our fire?”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “but do you have any food to spare? It’s been at least a day if not more since we’ve eaten.”

Isaac smiled. “Oh! Help yourself, you two.” Without further ado, I reached into the crate and withdrew two finger-sized pieces of hardtack. I handed one to Jake and began to sit down next to the fire.

“Y’ might want to dunk those in water before eatin’ them,” Isaac said, tossing a piece of driftwood on the fire. It crackled and sparked as it received its fuel. I heeded his words, and held my hardtack beneath the surface of the water in the barrel.

I took a sip of the water. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it tasted so much better than the muddy river-water I’d had a few hours before. I dropped my hardtack, scooped up a handful and brought it to my mouth. I sighed, letting whatever I hadn’t drunk drip down my face. It took me a few seconds to fish up the hardtack, but it was thoroughly soaked by the time I did so.

I brought it to my lips and took a bite. It was bland and somewhat stale, but didn’t taste offensively bad and the texture was agreeable, if a bit hard to chew. I finished the biscuit, dunked another and ate it too. After around ten minutes of dunking and eating, Jake and I had had our fill.

“So,” I said, reclining next to the fire. “Who are all these people?” I gestured to the raven-haired folks watching us intently.

“Hi,” the eldest woman said. She was in her late twenties and wore her hair tied back with a cord of gold-colored hemp. “I’m Jenna. Jenna Fisher. All of us are the Fishers. Siblings, we are.” She had the same accent as Isaac, but her voice was slightly deeper and more mature-sounding. She introduced the other Fisher siblings, in order of birth. It turned out that Isaac was a few years younger than her, and the second-oldest child of the Fisher brood.

“Nice to meet you,” said Garret, the third-eldest Fisher. He was a broad-shouldered man with chiseled features. Next up was Mia, a cheery-looking young woman whose smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. She muttered a cordial greeting and turned away.

“Three of my siblings - that is, Felix, Sheba and Ivan - don’t speak,” Jenna said. “Don’t know why. Never could find out. They ain’t slow or nothin’, just don’t speak.” Felix was sitting with his little sister Sheba and little brother Ivan, and the three of them were stacking boxes near the campfire. Sheba had deep blue eyes that seemed to be looking around wildly, and Ivan had excessively long hair and a downcast look.

“Our youngest is Piers,” Jenna said. She gestured to a boy who couldn’t have been more than sixteen staring intently at the fire. He didn’t seem to be focusing on much anything but the crackling orange blaze. “Unlike the others, he can speak, but he don’t speak much. He was the last kid Mama had before she died.”

“So,” I said, “What did you do before… this happened?”

“We lived in Tuaim,” Jenna said. “The largest city in the kingdom of the same name. Salazar is a bunch of tiny kingdoms that pay tribute to Thalys, the most powerful. Tuaim, bein’ near the Great Waste an’ all, ain’t exactly a resource-rich land.”

“The Great Waste?” I asked. “What’s that? Is that like a desert?”

“Nothin’ grows there, an’ wild dragons roam the land,” Jenna said. “Or so I’ve heard.”

Dragons. Best not to fuck with those guys, if the stories are at all true.

“Anyway,” Jenna continued, “Our Mama and Papa founded a tavern in Tuaim. The Drunken Whale, it was called. Seeing as we had been raised there, it was only fitting to take over once they were gone.”

She sighed. “‘Twas a good fifteen years. The sailors drunk like fish, and we made so much coin durin’ that time. I managed the whole business from the top, Isaac, Garret and Mia tended to the bar and tables, an’ the others worked in the back.”

She groaned. “Well, you know what, this drunken fool of a nobleman stumbled in. Reeked of drink an’ smells I can’t even describe, they were so foul. Ivan was cleaning glasses, an’ that man asked him for wine. Ivan didn’t answer, so he punched th’ poor kid’s head in. He didn’t wake up for hours.

“Well, one thing led to another, an’ Garret punched that man right in the gut. It quickly escalated into an all-out brawl. I think I got a punch in or two. Anyway, the judges found th’ entire family at fault for assaulting a member of th’ gentry, so on that boat we went.” She let out a shudder. “T’ be sold into slavery under those godsdamned Atholites.”

“That sounds horrible,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Felix, Sheba an’ Ivan wouldn’t last a month there,” Jenna said. “Especially th’ latter two. Had a few folks in the tavern who’d traveled to Athol, an’ I had nightmares from the stories they told ‘bout the place.”

“At least your whole family is safe now,” I said. “You’re all in one place.”

“Yeah,” Jenna said, “But we don’t know how to hunt. We don’t know how to fish. How can we get food, when th’ hardest thing we’ve ever done is throw rowdy patrons onto th’ street?” She wasn’t crying, but I could tell she felt great sorrow at her predicament.

It was at this moment when a sense of determination came over me. I looked around the camp and saw huddled people. They were terrified and confused. Somehow, I was neither. Despite the odd nature of the situation we were in, I felt confident and strong. In that moment, I felt like it was the duty of Jake and I to help these people to safety, security and reunite them with their families.

“We’ll find a way,” I said. I placed my hand on her shoulder, then kept it there when she didn’t shove it away. “We’re humans. We’re a crafty lot. We’ll figure it out.”

“I hope so,” Jenna said. I moved back and turned to Jake.

“What do we do no?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” Jake replied. “Let’s go see what’s happening around the other fires.”

We initially didn’t feel too confident with interacting with the Abydan camp, so we went to the third fire. Standing and sitting around it was definitely the most varied and populated of the groups. None of the ten or so people looked to be related to each other, although a few had similar skin and hair tones.

“Oh, it’s you,” a brown-haired white woman said. I recognized her as one of the people who had glared at me earlier.

“Hi,” I said. Let’s try to not be assholes. Can’t be that hard, right? “Nice to meet you. I didn’t quite catch your name.”

“Godsdamn nobles,” she muttered. “Can’t be bothered-”

“Don’t,” a black woman with long hair said, placing her hand on the brunette’s shoulder. She had a willowy build and a face wrinkled with age. “We don’t want to piss them off.” She turned to us. “Isaac informed me of the situation. He doesn’t think that you’re the original George and Eliza. Is this true?”

“It’s true,” Jake said.

The woman sighed. “That’s good. The originals were nothing but a waste of space, but we need every hand we can get to help us survive. My name is Bemnet.” She gestured to the brown-haired woman. “And this is Eris.”

Eris scowled. “What’s that you said, Bemnet? You said something about those nobles.”

Bemnet sighed. “Did you not hear anything I just said? These aren’t George and Eliza. They are new spirits inhabiting their bodies.”

Eris scoffed. “I don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you will,” Jake said. She raised her hands in a gesture of i-don’t-care.

“Hmm,” Eris said. “Well, you certainly don’t sound like Eliza. Tell you what, I’ll ask you a question and we’ll take it from there.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Fire away,” Jake said.

“What does that mean? Oh, never mind,” Eris sighed. “Anyway. What is the sigil of the house of Watney?”

“The what?” Jake asked, clearly confused. “Is that our sigil? I mean, George and Eliza’s?”

Eris sighed, her expression turning less hostile. “Well, I’ll be damned. You really aren’t Eliza, either that or you got conked real hard on the head. The sigil of Watney is a grey eel on a yellow-and-green striped background, not that you’d care.”

“Damn it, Eris,” Bemnet sighed. “You’re really paranoid. I mean, do you not trust the word of Miriam?”

“It’s irrelevant,” Eris said, standing up and walking to the other side of the fire. She plonked down in the sand and began nursing a tin cup of water, looking away from us.

“Once again, I’m sorry,” Bemnet said. “It’s just…”

“Don’t be,” I replied. “Clearly… Eliza and I were assholes in our previous life. I mean, if someone I hated claimed to not be that person, I’d be skeptical.”

“Well, you two certainly sound less callous than before,” the woman said. “Sit down, talk with us.” At this point, I’d noticed that the other people near the fire had began to move towards the area around us. None of them had the distinct hair of the Fisher brood, nor the red streak that marked them as Abydans. This must be where all the leftovers are staying.

Bemnet relayed the situation about our status to the remaining members of the group. Most of them looked skeptical at first, but their apprehensive looks quickly dissipated as she told them of what had happened in the jungle. She and Miriam seem to be the most trusted people in the camp, I thought. It’ll be good to have them as allies. Not that I plan on making enemies here… As the saying goes, ‘kill them with kindness’. Bah, that’s too cheesy…

The other survivors in the vicinity sat down next to us, taking out hardtack and dipping it in water. It must have been lunchtime or something, because they voraciously wolfed down their meals. Jake and I weren’t hungry, but we were more than welcome to engage in conversation. During the next hour or so, I got to know the people in this particular group.

Bemnet was the first one to speak with us. She went on and on about her grandchildren and her family’s small farm in a place called Adamawa, but she didn’t go into much detail about why she’d wound up on a prisoner ship.

“Mistakes, young ones,” she said when I asked her about it. “I did something I regretted, and that caught up to me.” I decided not to press further.

The next person we talked to was a short young woman named Summer. She was muscular despite her height, and she had silvery hair despite her age. Her face looked like she’d smiled a lot in her past, but her mouth was now downturned. She’d been living in the city of Navan, and she’d apparently been a renowned gem thief.

“Stole for the fun of it,” she said. “Didn’t need th’ gems. Shoulda just sold the first lot and made like a tree.”

After Summer, an aging Mediterranean-looking couple named Benjamin and Reginald relayed their plight. They’d lived in Tuaim, and had been commanders in the city’s garrison for decades before Reginald had lost his leg in an attack from the nearby Great Waste. Both of them had been discharged, but they couldn’t find decent jobs fast enough to pay their greedy landlord and the two of them had been schlepped onto the boat. Their whole situation reminded me of Miriam and her missing wife. I found out that her name was Gaby when I asked.

“It’s those damnable Abydans,” Benjamin grumbled. By now, I’d learned that significant Abydan populations resided in the Great Waste, and according to legend they lived alongside humans who could change into dragons at will. Nobody had corroborated that story yet, so I took it with a grain of salt.“My Reggie lost a leg to those dragon-fucking bloodheads. We’d still be living in the mayor’s manse had those barbarians not decided they wanted our grain, the greedy fucks.”

“That’s not very nice, Benjy,” Reginald said. He placed a wrinkled hand on the aging ex-commander’s shoulder. “You can’t say that about an entire population. Bloodheads? You sound like one of those young men from the farms who was raised on ghost stories. Hell, there’re Abydans here in this camp! Miriam’s an Abydan, and you trust her.” I guessed that that term was a slur against Abydans, and made a note to never utter it in anyone’s company.

The next person with whom we conversed was an aging man with medium-brown skin and blond hair named Laufey. He had a regretful, downcast look about him. When I asked him about what had happened to him, he had simply uttered, “Drink,” and looked back down. He didn’t seem to be the cheeriest fellow, so our conversation was short.

As Laufey was retreating, another man walked up to us. He was fair-skinned, tall, had flowing brown hair, a handsome face and a muscular frame. He looked almost as if he could have been a character in a Final Fantasy game. I normally was attracted to such guys, but my mind wasn’t really focused on that right now. Anyway, his eyes looked paranoid and appraising, as if he didn’t trust people.

“I’m Hancock,” he said in a smooth voice that sounded like it belonged on a surfer dude. “Nice to meet you… George.”

“Nice to meet you, Hancock,” I said.

“Greetings,” Jake said. “So, what’s your story?”

“I’ll tell you,” Hancock said in his smooth tone. “Come a little closer.” I could hear his seductive intent dripping off of his tounge. I didn’t know if the transformation had affected Jake’s sexuality at all, or even my own (that sort of thing was at the back of my mind with the current, potentially dangerous situation at hand), but I could see a blush appear on her face.

“Th, thank you, but I’ll remain with Stella,” she said, putting her arm around me. Honestly, I didn’t know what to feel about a man flirting with my now-girlfriend. Normally, I’d be appalled, but this time I felt… nothing. My mental state was certainly different in this new world.

I cleared my throat quite loudly. “Anyway,” I said, “what are you up to?”

Hancock answered us. He’d been an infamous outlaw in the northern kingdom of Derry within Salazar. He’d operated alone, and had successfully pillaged over a dozen caravans and countless travelers in his decade of banditry. He’d also been known as something of a heartbreak to the local villagers, who were the only ones he refrained from robbing. He had tried to never kill anyone, but he messed up on the last time and the government of Derry sent the full weight of their army after him. They’d imprisoned him nearby, but had managed to escape to Tuaim. He’d been planning to go to Athol afterwards, but had been caught. Surprisingly, he seemed almost jovial about being captured, imprisoned and stranded on this island, like his life was just a game. He smiled and laughed all throughout the telling, and I got the impression that he was trying to butter us like a piece of toast for some unseen goal.

“Anyway, that’s my story,” the man said. “I gotta go get some firewood, but I’d be more than happy to continue my story later this evening. Eliza.” He made to kiss her hand, but Jake retracted her hand before he could do so.

“That was…” Jake said as Hancock walked up the beach and into the nearby jungle. She was still blushing. I was flabbergasted. Jake had never really been attracted to men before, he’d said as much, but in this new world, had her sexuality changed? That was something I’d have to consider later

“Dude’s such a goddamn creep,” I muttered. “No wonder he got arrested.”

“Yeah…” Jake said. Her blush had faded by this point, but I swear that she was gazing at the trees where Hancock had disappeared.

The last remaining campers we hadn’t talked to were Eris and a non-descript looking man named Keith. He’d given his name, then went back to braiding some weeds together by the fire. I noticed that many of the people had taken to braiding weeds and grass and stuff to pass the time. They weren’t making anything useful, so I assumed that it was just a form of entertainment for them. Eris was even frostier, completely ignoring us when we spoke to her.

It was at this point when Zufan returned. The lithe hunter doffed her cap and dumped a load of sticks and branches next to the fire, so I assumed that she’d been gathering firewood. She gave us a cordial greeting and began to sort the wood by how long and thick each stick was.

It then hit me that the majority of people in this camp didn’t really know what to do. They were doing busywork like braiding reeds and gathering extra firewood. They weren’t hunting because there was no game in the forest, and they weren’t building shelters because they didn’t know what would happen next. I guessed that some of them believed that they would be rescued. Based on the fact that their own country had tried to sell them into slavery, I figured that there were no saviors on the horizon. We have to save each other. This island is the Dread Isle, not because it’s terrifying, but because it terrifies its occupants to the point where they can’t do anything about their plights.

“Well, I think that’s everyone,” Jake said, pushing herself off the ground. She brushed her dress off and looked around. “How about we go back to Miriam, see if she has any work for us.”

“She said that it would be a while…” I said. “What if we went over to the Abydan camp?” I gestured to the final campfire. Five individuals, three masculine and two feminine, huddled around it. They seemed oblivious to the goings-on around them.

“I don’t see why not,” Jake said. “What’s the worst that could happen? We were successful in these other groups, why not this one?” And with that, we began to walk across the sand to the Abydan fire.

The distance wasn’t very long, and we arrived in only a few seconds. I recognized two of the red-streaked men - the tan one who had scowled at us upon our arrival at camp and the blond one who had told us not to touch his food.

“You again?” The blond man said. “Go away, trash.”

Well, we’re off to a good start. “Nice to meet you,” I said in my friendliest voice.

“What he said,” the tan man said. He had a nasally voice I instantly found annoying. “Fuck off.”

“We don’t like people like you,” one of the women said. She had dark hair wrapped in a bun and fair skin, and she wore a long yellow cloak embroidered with a crude white depiction of a fish. “Outsider bastards who took all our stuff.” The other Abydan woman looked similar, save for slightly darker skin. She scowled at us, then went back to warming her hands. The only Abydan who ignored us was a young dark-skinned man with no hair. He was probably still in puberty. He sat wrapped in a cloak and just stared at the fire. He reminded me of the younger Fishers, and I noticed that the other Abydans were sitting far away from him. It was sad that, unlike the Fishers, he had nobody to take care of him.

I walked up to the adolescent man and introduced myself.

“I’m Okonkwo,” he said. I couldn’t place his accent at all. It sounded simultaneously British, Russian and from somewhere south of the Sahara. His voice carried a thoughtful yet ringing tone. “You’re the Watneys, I presume?”

“Just Eliza,” Jake said. Wait, Eliza? I was stunned. I pulled her aside.

“Jake, you’re calling yourself Eliza?” I asked incredulously.

“It felt right,” she said. “I feel like that it’s my real name.”

“But Eliza was an asshat!” I scream-whispered back.

“You’re right…” she said. “But I genuinely feel like it’s supposed to be my name.”

At this moment, a revelation came over me. Am I Stella? Or am I George? I think I’m a man… No, I am a man. Stella is a name unfitting for a man like me… I’m George! I’m George!

“Hmm. I guess you can call me George,” I said. “You’re right. These names just feel… more right, I’d say? ‘George’ feels like my actual name, Eliza.”

I could see her smile at being called that name. “I love you, George,” she said. We’d professed our love numerous times before, but we hadn’t been this close since that short-lived night in the jungle. Although it had been less than a day ago, it felt like a lifetime in all the fear and confusion of today.

“I love you too, Eliza,” I said. I leaned in to kiss her, and we shared a brief moment.

Okonkwo was staring at us incredulously. “What was that?” he asked us. “Did… Oh, it’s all right. People do things sometimes. So, is your name Stella or George?”

“George,” I said. “It’s just George now.”

Okonkwo was a friendly kid. His father had been a soldier in Muine, but had lost his life in the attack that had claimed Reginald’s leg. His mother had tried to maintain the family, but she’d taken ill and died a year later. Okonkwo, being barely thirteen at the time, had taken odd jobs in an attempt to earn some bread. One particularly hungry day, he’d seen coins jangling in a nobleman’s pocket and attempted to take just a few. Being not particularly proficient in pickpocketing, he’d been caught and thrown on this ship without so much as a trial.

“It’s because I’m Abydan,” he said. “And those cretins over there don’t do much to help the stereotypes. They wouldn’t know how to be friendly if they read every book in the world.” He gestured to his four Abydan companions. “Bastards slap my hands whenever I try to take hardtack.”

“Well, why do you remain around this fire?” Eliza asked. “These companions of yours, they don’t seem to be too helpful to you.”

“Like I said. I’m Abydan.”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“Everything,” Okonkwo answered. “For every friendly outsider, there are two who view us as nothing but savage monsters. And given that at least a few of those others are hardened criminals, I’d take my chances with people I know won’t kill me because of my hair.” I figured that the Fishers would take him in, but I knew from experience that it wasn’t wise to butt into problems I had no context and experience of.

Eliza and I stood up, and silently walked to Miriam’s tent. As we approached, I saw Miriam standing outside. She was standing just outside the reach of the waves, and was staring up at the sky.

“Hey, Miriam!” I said, stopping beside her. “We talked to everyone in camp.”

The elderly woman didn’t answer at first. “The sky looks funny…”

“What do you mean?” I asked. The sky looked blue with nary a cloud.

“Just my gut,” Miriam replied. “It’s telling me that a storm is coming?”

“A storm?” Eliza asked. “In this weather? It hasn’t rained a drop since we arrived in this world.”

“It always rains,” Miriam said. “The longer it’s been between rains, the more likelier one is to come. Or so my folks said. They haven’t proved me wrong so far.”

“I mean, we are in a jungle,” I offered. “These sorts of forests are usually quite wet, and all of the plants we saw probably grew plentiful from rain.”

“My instincts are telling me that there’s gonna be a storm tonight,” Miriam said. I felt uneasy, something in my gut telling me that she was right. Who’s to say she isn’t? What if there is a storm? We ought to prepare for one, we’re sitting ducks on this beach. No shelter or anything. As I looked at the blue horizon, my mind continued to race with confusion and anxiety despite the beautiful, pacifying vista. Well, if nothing else, these coming times will sure be interesting. I just hope Eliza and I will be able to do what it takes to help these people survive.