“You don’t have to see the whole staircase. You just have to take the first step.”
Martin Luther King Jr
Stairs. There were so many of them and they went on for so long. I may have spent most of my childhood so far, trying to escape from my swaddling, house, sister, as well as Ash Island in the center of the crater lake, but I would gain no joy from climbing these. Sometimes it truly was just better to be carried.
Better get started then. I wrapped my robe around me tighter and headed forward.
Night had fallen so I made my way up the stairs in complete darkness, having to climb them as much as walking the stairs since the individual steps had been made with adults in mind, not toddlers.
Still, it was a great full-body workout.
I was once more glad for my purple robe as it gave me extra padding on my knees as I hauled myself up each step.
Just keep climbing, climbing, what do we do? We climb.
Through my super senses I could still see the edges of the steps but what would take an adult an hour or two in ascending was going to take me a lot longer. I wondered if perhaps I should have weighed anchor in the cove and slept the night away before making the ascent in the morning. It would be well past midnight by the time I had made the climb then descended down into town.
The clouds cleared above the top of the chimney sending a shaft of moonlight down into the depths to light my way for a moment before the clouds shifted once more blocking the light.
Eventually, after what felt like days of climbing but was actually only 4 hours, judging by my time sense, I had finally made it to the top of the climb and now knew it was precisely 1,983 steps from top to bottom of the cliff. Why had I counted? Well, I had nothing else to do other than keep watch for anyone descending and it took my mind off my near-death experience.
After I had reached the top I worked my way across to where we had been when the day had taken such a disastrous turn.
There was no one there.
I had suspected as much but for there to be no mark to the landscape where something so momentous had happened seemed somehow wrong.
Lonely and alone, I turned to face downhill. It was time to make my way back home.
Caution was still my keyword as I headed down to the town.
With night fallen, no one noticed my descent.
In the dark, the town seemed somber and silent from outside.
As I made my way under the gate in the walls that surrounded the town I thought to myself that we really needed a better level of protection. What if an assassin wanted to break in? Why didn’t we have guards on the walls at night?
The truth was the town had never needed them before and would it really change anything for one child’s death. Who was I to them really? Other than short trips to the market following after my sister or trying to run ahead. I knew very few of the people outside my family who had visited and my cousins. Would they even notice if I was gone? What was the child mortality rate around these parts anyway?
Quietly, I made my way through the town. Easily avoiding the few people still moving around town, the majority of them squared away in their homes by now, maybe eating dinner or getting ready for bed. Most people would be up with the sun and go to bed earlier than in the modern world with its electricity and lightbulbs. Here staying up required fire or candles both of which offered poor lighting for thimble work or sewing and would quickly become prohibitively expensive if using them all the time. It was simpler to go to bed, get a good night's sleep and be up with the sun was cheaper too!
On the few occasions, someone walked close by I heard them coming in advance and had time to hide. Covered as I was in my purple robe, just a small lump at the edge of the road, in the darkness, I was practically invisible. Sneak and Stealth both leveled up as I hid from passers-by but generally, I made my way home with quiet confident steps as I toddled forward unafraid of the darkness and aware of anyone who came too close.
Truth be told animals would be of a greater threat to me than people but I didn't come across any larger, hungrier, or more dangerous than me on my way home.
Eventually, I arrived home to find my family destroyed, not literally but emotionally.
I had been listening into the houses as I passed checking each time as I made my way from street to street that the people were settled and unlikely to head out.
When I arrived on my street I did the same. As I listened in to my house, I heard through eavesdrop and saw through the combination of mana sense and echolocation, a sad scene.
Des and Sinis sat on the floor by the fire, bowls of food in their hands while my two grandfathers, mother, father, and sister sat around the table.
They weren’t eating or talking really. Their food sat cold and untouched on plates in front of them. They had clearly been there for a while but they were all processing things differently but together as a family.
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“I don’t understand though,” Kaius asked for an explanation probably for the umpteenth time while he held a shaking and sobbing Aliyah. “Why?”
“We don’t know why?” Grandfather explained he was still furious with Grandpa Smit but allowing his temper to run free in front of his heartbroken daughter would heal no wounds. “From what I have learned of how the day went it could have been the merchant reneging on his deal, a spy following the patent of nobility, or something completely unrelated. With the man dead we are unlikely to ever know who sent him or why. Or even if it was only Kai who was his target.”
“It all looked like it was coming together so well,” Grandpa added in disbelief probably thinking back to how his lifetimes' work had come to fruition only hours earlier suddenly to be thrown off a cliff.
“That is precisely the problem. It is what you can’t see coming that kills you.” Grandfather rebutted.
“What did you do with the body of the assassin?” Kaius asked.
“Wrapped him up in a cloth and put him in my boat to go bury him on my island. Might burn him first. Either way, it will be easier to cover it up there than here.”
“On Kai’s island.” Murmured Grandpa Smit.
“What use is the island to him if he is dead.” Grandfather harshly responded. "Thank you very much by the way for making my deceased grandson my landlord!" he crossly responded.
No one was shouting probably to keep the neighbours from hearing but you could hear the venom in his voice and the anger in the harsh tone of his sarcastic delivery.
“What are we to do with these two?” Aliyah asked raising her head from my father's shoulders.
“Raise them. We have no slavery on this island for good reason.” One of the grandfathers responded.
Des and Sinis ignorant of the conversation concerning them continued to eat their dinner.
“Is that the end of this though? Did Kai die for nothing? Don’t we want to make them pay?” Aleera asked from where she sat.
“To make who pay? For what? The order could have come from anyone from the Merchant to the Prince himself. We just don’t know. Do you really want to pitch our meager family against forces we don’t know and can’t fight?” Grandfather responded.
It seemed that they didn’t know any more than I did. The small sailboat had yielded no clues. Simply a small vessel to escape the island with. Probably incapable of making it any further than Wester Levante or Little Wester and even that would have been a nautical challenge in the dark. The enemy was dispatched probably by my Grandfather and everyone else was alive and well.
The house in front of me was my best bet at safety, security, and happiness.
Checking the coast was clear one last time I left the shadows and approached the front door.
Still defeated by door handles I was left with nothing to climb, my legs not yet long enough to reach between the two sides of the door frame I found it was impossible to shimmy up.
I raised my hand.
Knock, Knock.
Silence descended on those within. I heard my father stand up to open the door.
“I’m home.” Was all I had time to utter before I was swept up into his arms my mother crying out in delight as she rushed to us from the table. Aleera looked up in shock before she too jumped up to join us in a crushing family hug.
“You’re alive.” She whispered. “But you fell.” Aleera had only heard what had happened third hand but she couldn’t seem to believe that I could have possibly survived the fall.
I guess that is why they never came to look. They simply didn't believe it was possible for anyone, certainly not me to have survived a fall that far.
That or possibly having to hide the body and hurry home to tell my parents.
“I fell.” I smiled,
“but . . .”
I paused flexing my mana once more. I filled my purple robe with mana, shaping it until it formed two rudimentary wings behind me,
“I fell . . . but I fell with style.” I laughed, at myself, at the danger, at the ludicrousness of the whole situation.
“You little monster.” Aleera laughed. While the rest of the adults looked on in various degrees of shock or surprise.
“I love your demon wings.” She gave me big hug no longer shocked just happy to have me home safe and sound. She understood how I could have survived in the water as long as I survived the fall or rather the impact with the water. We had spent enough time trying to build boats to get off the island together out of ice.
“He . . .can . . . do . . . magic?” stuttered Grandpa Smit the only one not in the loop sitting back down in surprise from where he had stood at my entrance. "Since when?" He was probably the most shocked of the lot, the other adults at least knew that some form of magic had probably been the reason I had survived. While Des and Sinis had not known me long enough to form any opinions in particular and just took it as another outrageous event in a day filled with a long line of them. Perhaps things were just more exciting back on the compass continent and this was another normal day for them.
“Since when?” he asked again as no one responded to answer him. He frowned slowly connecting the dots in his head as he thought back on everything that had happened in the last couple of weeks.
I had for a moment considered lying and pretending it was all a fluke of luck. But even I would have found it difficult to come up with a sophisticated enough lie that was strong enough to stand up to the barrage of questions that would surely follow. Sometimes honesty truly is the best policy especially if it leaves your audience so speechless they are unable to ask any follow-up questions.
"Bedtime? I'm tired." I say as I close my eyes. Ready to ignore any questions that are about to come my way. Sue me I'm a baby, I'm exhausted and honestly, I just want to go to bed.
Despite being exhausted from my ordeal, the climbing more than the falling it still took a good half an hour to get the grandfathers out of the house and everyone into bed. They had made us all promise to stay in the house tomorrow morning and wait till they returned to discuss our options. Des and Sinis slept on roll mats in the main room. While I was tucked up in bed with my parents too tall and no longer able to fit in my little box. It had always been a small box and I had outgrown it in more ways than one.
I didn’t mind. It had been a truly terrifying day. I appreciated the warm arms of my mother wrapped around me holding me tight, keeping me warm, keeping me safe. Stats or not the adrenaline that had kept me going through the fall, the wait, and the climb, left me. Suddenly, the fear of the fall, the frantic attempts to stall, the highspeed glide, the desperate attempt to hit the water right and not break my neck, the wait at the bottom of the chimney for rescue or having to once more face the assassin, the arduous climb up the endless staircase, the caution creeping back into the town, all of that, hit me all at once and I found myself shaking and crying into my pillow while my mother held me tight.
However old I might have been in my head. My body was still that of a child. I might have been able to think my way out of my predicament but I also understood in detail the myriad ways in which it could have gone completely wrong. The emotions and chemicals my brain made flooded my body. A new body. A baby's body that was unused to the sheer terror it had faced today. I felt everything so strongly as if for the first time because for this body it was the first time. Everything up till now I had been able to look at a little distantly almost as if I was playing a game or it was happening to someone else. It was my second life, I would make the most of it, but I had never felt as connected to my situation and circumstances as I did when it all came crashing down on me. It hurt as my body was wracked with sobs and shivers.
Happy to be home.
I held my mother and cried.