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43 - We're Safe Out Here

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Suni

It’d been hours, and the rain was still falling. The clouds had mostly dissipated, leaving the sky bright and hot—and yet, the rain still came in heavy, warm sheets. The Ancestors’ Tears, superstitious folks called it. Said it was an omen of ill-tidings, but that was just fear of the unknown. Naturalists had described and studied this phenomenon a hundred years before. They named it a “sun shower”, and rational people knew it had a logical explanation. High winds captured nearby falling rain and carried it to otherwise sunny areas. Still, just because there was an explanation didn’t mean people wanted to accept it.

Rain or shine, everyone took turns paddling the two wide, flat-bottomed canoes. I had to appreciate the engineering of them. The crafts seemed custom-built for the Evergrass, and their wide hulls provided good stability in the shallow water, while also allowing them to coast over the various floating islands of weeds.

One person paddled at the back of the canoe, one at the front, and the other two rested in the middle. In our canoe, Senesio was paddling at the back, while Elpida watched the prisoner. That’d left me at the front of the canoe for an hour or more. The rhythm of paddling had become as natural as the beating of my own heart.

Stab the paddle into the water, stroke it backward, lift it back out. Repeat.

Stab, stroke, lift. Stab, stroke, lift.

The muscles in my chest burned from the exertion, my lower back had already seized up twice, and my shoulders felt like they were about to fall off, but still, I paddled on.

Stab, stroke, lift. Stab, stroke, lift.

If the rain was good for something, at least it continually washed the stinging sweat from my eyes.

The Evergrass had long since given way to a river. Around us, the wide, flat expanse of sawgrass and weeds had slowly narrowed and deepened until a tree line had risen up in front. Now we were in a full-on river, maybe sixty paces across, but only one or two deep.

The water, as with all the water in the Far Wild, was silty and tannin-stained brown. Logs lined the banks, half-submerged and caught in the roots of still-living trees, which curled out like balls of gnarled fingers. Turtles rested on the logs, warming their bodies as their green, plant-crusted shells soaked up the wet sunlight. One panicked as the canoes drew near and dropped from its perch into the water, sinking out of sight.

Every so often, cypress knees rose from the shallower water, stabbing defiantly into the air. Some naturalists theorized the trees used the knees for breathing but, as much as the study of the natural world could tell us, some things still remained a mystery. Like this change Elpida was talking about. Claimed the Far Wild created in people. But that was superstitious nonsense, right?

Somewhere in the trees on the west bank, a bird called out. A long, croaking call that sounded like the world’s largest toad. I scanned the foliage until I found the source: a massive crane, almost the height of a man. I didn’t recognize it as any species in Professor Symeos’ reports. So, a potentially undescribed animal! I studied it closely, remembering every detail so I could record them in my journal later.

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The bird looked like an oversized heron, except for its bright, red-crested head. Its wings were highlighted with flourishes of ochre. It was proportioned more like a normal bird than the terror birds we’d encountered previously. Long, thin legs, and a narrow beak, no doubt for catching fish and insects.

Fish and insects and, thankfully, not people. The Far Wild was truly a wild and unique place, full of an amazing assortment of ecosystems and animals. It was undeniably beautiful. Especially when it wasn’t trying to kill us.

My eyes wandered, taking in the sights of the wilderness around us as my arms worked themselves toward a blissful numbness. In the sparse moments between strokes of the paddle, I could make out the muddy bottom of the river and a few shifting shapes there.

Mud, mostly. And the large, dark shapes of submerged tree trunks, interspersed with the swaying forms of some sort of aquatic grass. A small, streamlined shadow darted out of view, kicking away in a puff of silt. A fish, most likely. Several more followed it, running from the canoes probably.

An even larger shape emerged from the grass next. This one the size of a man, or bigger, stirring up a whole plume of silt as it darted after the fish.

On second thought, the fish were probably running from that. Whatever in the name of the ancestors that was. A gator, maybe? But, no, gators had large tails that kicked side to side—as we’d seen all too often crossing the Evergrass. Whatever the shape had been, its tail had moved up and down. And it’d had pectoral fins. Those had been fins, right?

I squinted into the water, trying to catch another glimpse of the thing, but to no avail. There hadn’t been much research done on the rivers out here yet. Kamil’s brief survey of the Solimikos River delta had been the extent of it so far, and that had primarily been focused on particulate matter in the water, not fauna. Whatever I’d seen wasn’t keen to be spotted again, though. I leaned back and let myself be lulled into the rhythm of my paddling.

“Make your death count for something, eh?” Elpida’s words from earlier floated to the forefront of my mind.

Dramatic words. They’d do well in a story, but this wasn’t a story. This was survival. And no matter what Elpida’s superstitions made her believe, I was changing for the better. The relief I’d felt since finding out Kamil was alive was only outweighed by my determination to rescue him, whatever it took.

“Looks like we’re popular,” Elpida growled from behind. I glanced over my shoulder, then followed her eyes to where she was looking on the east bank.

My heart jumped at the sight there. Terror birds. A small flock of them, maybe four or five. I spotted them immediately, though they were half-hidden behind a thin wall of foliage as they followed the canoes from the river’s edge. They were beautiful creatures, I had to admit. From afar, at least.

“What are we looking at?” Demetrias asked from the next canoe over. He raised a hand to his brow, shading his eyes from sun and rain alike.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Theo said, hand going to the sword on her hip.

Did they really not see them? I felt a frown crawl onto my face. Sure, the patterning on the bird’s feathers helped them blend into the background of trees and brush, but how hard was it to look for their movement? It betrayed them, broke their camouflage.

“Terror birds,” I finally said, pointing with my paddle when the others still hadn’t spotted them. “Pacing us on shore.” I looked back to Elpida. “Should we be worried?”

Maybe she was overly trusting in her superstitions, but there was no denying she was the expert in the Far Wild.

“Not yet,” she said, eyes still on the birds. “They can’t swim, so we’re safe out here.”

“We have to stop eventually,” Senesio said from where he was paddling at the rear of the canoe. I heard him rattle his sword. “Send Gabar and Theo with me and we can take care of them. Get a nice dinner out of it, too.”

That’d be a shame. Certainly the birds were predators, but it wasn’t anything personal. They just did what they did. Everything had to eat to survive, right?

“If we can avoid them, we should,” I said. We had enough food. There wasn’t a reason to kill anything. “Let’s camp on the opposite shore. That’s the safest solution.”

“We’re not camping on either shore,” Elpida replied with a huff. “We’re sleeping in the canoes. But it’s a long time yet till nightfall.” She turned back to face upriver, looking past the napping Agostos. “Keep paddling.”