“I’m eager to see your village,” I said. My voice mingled with the Omi River lapping quietly at the canoe, quiet enough that I could hear the old man’s breath puff out in a soft laugh. He had given his name as Nol.

“I’m not from Duku Village.” Nol smiled at me through his braided beard. “No, no. But, I go that way often. Up and down the river, up and down, in this little craft of mine. Back and forth. That is how I know the merchants there have medicine for your, ah, problem.”

“Blightlung, you mean. Might as well call it what it is. Not much point pretending it doesn’t exist.”

“Mmm,” the man nodded, then tilted his head toward the passing river. “It’s very calm, don’t you think?”

I nodded, letting my eyes unfocus in the slow waters of the Omi. The rain had stopped, and the treetops glowed from the sun’s touch in their canopies. The river now lay in evening’s shade. Nol and I let silence rest between us.

Elani and I had crossed half Kol Viri’s width together as near-strangers. Why would she not compromise? Why would she turn down the spirit after all she had gone through to help me? Why would she not trust me?

Because I didn’t give her a choice, I realized. Her fear of water – she had barely been able to enter Amaranza, but I was so busy ogling the city’s beauty I hadn’t noticed her discomfort until we crossed the canal with the Isvir woman. I had forgotten her fear of water, then made up my mind that I would take no other route.

But was that really all? Or was she so certain that I would never make it out of Duku Village?

Spellplague. It wasn’t her fault at all. I stole a glance at Nol, then snuck the back of my hand to my forehead. I was warmer than I thought I should be, but was that the blight or the spirit’s doing? Elani must have seen it happening. Had I been irrational in insisting on traveling to Duku Village?

Vala Makodo. I couldn’t even trust myself anymore.

My gaze drifted to shore, hopping frog-like along floating leaves and sticks until I was looking into the trees of Lorelai. The pines had thinned, replaced by broad-leafed breadfruit trees and expansive Keléri ficus and saman draped with vines and hanging aerial roots.

Taro, young palms, and dense pothos vines covered the forest floor. Small lanterns hung from low branches to mark easy entrances into the tangle of Keléri forests, though they were currently unlit. Bright-feathered jungle fowl meandered about in small families like traders seeking the best spot to set up their market tent.

I straightened. “I’m sorry, I just realized I can’t pay you. I only have a few shells I was saving for the medicine.” It wasn’t even my money.

“No, no, that’s okay,” Nol said. “I do not mean to profit from this. We must do our part to help one another, is that not so?”

“Oh. Sure.” I looked around, reminded of how much I leaned on others. “Well, were you in Udoro long, then? Away from home, I mean?”

Nol steered us around a mudbank full of sunning turtles. “Well, no, I suppose not. Went to meet someone is all. But I guess it feels longer when you don’t like the food. Durim mushrooms have never been quite to my liking.”

I let the conversation lapse again so I could watch a pack of kobo scavenging on the western bank. The small, rodent-like reptiles scoured the shallow, vine-choked shore, covered in orange and green feathers. Eiden’s kobo were brown, dull, but likely no less clever or greedy. Sometimes, during market days, adults paid me to scare them off with my slingshot.

Now I had a sword, a more fitting weapon for a person my age. Still, the absence of my slingshot felt like I’d lost a piece of myself.mAnd, suddenly, vulnerable.

From the corner of my eye, I studied the old man’s soft blue shawl, his unassuming robes fringed in coconut white. He didn’t look dangerous. Nor had he been anything but gentle and kind to me.

I had never learned to distrust strangers. Maybe that was part of life growing up at an inn, but roads in Kol Viri were never dangerous. Rangers patrolled in case of emergencies, not in case of violence.

Yet Dad’s warning was finally sinking in, it seemed, mixing with the paranoia of my spirit’s discovery.

No. That was the spellplague talking. The fever. Boro and Elani had taken me in – before I’d known of the spirit, but Dad’s warning had been a consideration even then. The apothecary had helped me, too, and now Nol. There had been no shortage of strangers on my side. Those men chasing us in Amaranza had only been investigating a curiosity, and not shown any intention of ill will.

Perhaps the only thing that had changed was Elani’s accusation that I depended too much on other people. She had shown a lantern on just how much I was at the mercy of others.

“Have you used that sword much yet?” Nol asked.

“I haven’t had it very long,” I shrugged.

“A happy belated birthday to you, then.” He paused, leaning back with the oars and sending us smoothly forward in the water. “I always thought a sword was a good thing to be proficient with, but maybe that’s just my old age remembering different times. Things are better now, in some ways. And anyway, I suppose just the sight of a blade like that is a good deterrent, eh?”

“Deterrent for what?”

“Oh, you know.” His hands were busy with the oars, but I imagined him waving them about ambiguously. “Brigands, I suppose. Highwaymen. Marauders, perhaps – I hear the scrublands in northern Or have seen many turn to lawlessness, these days. Red Moon Panic, as it were. Not so bad here in Eletha, of course.”

“Not so bad,” I murmured. Dad must have heard news from the southern end of the island, then. Eletha was as safe as ever. “My family and I run an inn north of the capitol. I guess we’re not in the center of the rumor mill, but we think the whole Red Moon thing will blow over once people get used to it.”

“Used to it? Now how do you go about getting used to a thing like that?”

“Well, it’s been around so long. It would have done something by now if it were as bad as people say it is.”

“One hundred years,” Nol agreed. “But you take my word for it young one. It’s getting closer.”

“Yeah, but so what? Why is that making people so upset?”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“You haven’t heard by now? There’s rumor going about that the evil kept below the island in abyssal Vala Makodo is not trapped there after all, but within the Red Moon.”

“So people think the temple murals are wrong – what difference does it make?”

“The Ancients etched those murals into the temples,” Nol said conspiratorially, “but what if the Ancients lied?”

I laughed, but Nol didn’t so much as smile. “Well, I guess I don’t really believe that. What, has the Stranger been to the Red Moon and seen for himself, or something? What proof do we even have?”

“Well, young Ren, you’ve seen for yourself the Ancients haven’t told us everything. After all, you’ve found the seventh spirit.”

My heart thumped. He had seen it after all.

“The seventh spirit, just as the Oracle – your ‘Masked Stranger’ – had said. That’s your proof. Why would the Ancients keep such a thing secret, when they shared with us so many other wonders? What else aren’t they telling us?”

I chose my words carefully. “If the Ancients are lying, then why does the Stranger want to wake them up?”

“To learn the truth, of course! Is that not reason enough?”

“But they could kill us!” I said. Even if the Stranger had known of the seventh spirit – had found one but been unable to capture it, only to share news of its existence – and then extrapolated the rest, how could he possibly wake them at all? What’s to say they wouldn’t destroy him for his hubris?

“Perhaps. Perhaps. Or, perhaps again, we were meant to awaken them. What if they were merely waiting until we were ready?”

“Look, even if I did buy into this crazy plot of yours, what am I supposed to do about it? I have more important things on my mind right now.”

“What could be more important than — “

“My life, that’s what! This blightlung will kill me if I don’t fix it!”

“But your spirit, used by a master, will change the world!” Nol cried. He stopped rowing. “Young Ren, whether you like it or not you now play a vital role in the island’s future.”

“It’s changing anyway,” I muttered. The blight scratched at my throat, straining my ability to talk as if reinforcing my meaning. “It’s been changing for years now. Before I was even born.”

“All according to script, just as the Oracle has been saying it would! As if he’s reading a few pages ahead of the rest of us.”

“Well, then he should have been there atop the mountain, not me. But I’m not taking the spirit to him. The Tribal Council says the man is unpredictable, and I agree.”

“Perhaps when you meet him – after we see to your health, of course – you will think otherwise,” Nol said. He took his oars back in hand and propelled us downriver once more.

“Wait. He knows I’m coming already? But… how? How did you –”

The old man smiled pleasantly as I connected the dots. Nol had been waiting for me in Udoro.

“Let me off,” I said.

Nol hesitated, oars poised above the water. “What?”

“I said let me off this boat. Pull it over to the western bank. I want off,” I demanded.

“But –”

“I’m not going to Duku Village with you. Let me off this boat. I want nothing to do with the Masked Stranger, and nothing more to do with you.”

I pulled my sword from the sheath at my lower back and held it in front of me, the bronze point a mere handspan from the old man. He carefully brought the oar back into the boat, set it down, and lifted his hands up. Distress seemed to age him further, revealing a frailty in the lines of his face.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he pleaded, “there’s no need to draw that! If you would just give him a chance to introduce himself –”

“No.”

“— I’m sure you’d find he’s a very reasonable fellow!”

“I said no. Let me off.”

“Don’t you want to get rid of your blightlung? We can help you!”

“I’ll find a way. Let me off,” I repeated, voice cracking.

“Look, lad, I can’t just –”

In one motion I sheathed the sword and launched myself into the water. The shore was only a stone’s throw away. I could make it there and start running well before the man brought the canoe around. En’s mercy, but I felt so much weaker than I did a mere week ago.

I kicked as hard as I could, but something was wrong. The languorous current now pulled me away from shore with the strength of the sea. I swam harder, teeth clenched from effort.

I craned my head around to check whether Nol pursued me, but to my horror I’d barely gone anywhere. A running leap would have taken me further. My dive alone should have –

Nol. He stood in the center of the watercraft, a palm extended, fingers flexed. His eyebrows were furrowed, and as I watched he pulled his reaching hand inward, fists clenching like he was pulling at a rope.

The water around me swelled, and I lurched backwards. Only then did I notice the ribbon of blue light darting in and out of the water around me like a crazed minnow. Where it swam, the water followed, pulling me slowly back to the boat.

Nol was using a blue kavi to manipulate the water.

“You lied to me!” I shouted, spitting water.

“I meant it when I said I would get you some medicine, lad,” the old man said. His expression was pained and disappointed, but resolute. I had seen my father make the same expression whenever I’d earned punishment for myself.

I bumped into the boat, and Nol reached down to pull me back aboard.

“Really, I want to help you,” he grunted, “but you’re going to have to help me. And the whole world, actually. I can’t simply let you go.”

The river surged around me, pushing me out of the water as the old man tugged. The blue light from the water spirit vanished into the water, its contract concluded. I fell into the canoe in a tangle, the floor slippery from my wet clothes.

The man turned to rummage through the items he’d stashed in the canoe’s storage. “Now, let’s get you dry.”

My limbs shook from adrenaline and exertion, and the canoe wobbled perilously, but I made it back to my feet. I readied my sword once more, placing its blade between me and the boatman.

Nol steadied himself on the tipping watercraft before turning back around, no doubt thinking I made to jump again. He straightened when he saw the weapon and raised his hands in front of himself in a placating gesture. “Now, listen –”

I slashed at him in a backhanded swing. The weapon sliced into his palms and opened a deep gash.

Nol yelped, toppled backwards, and then fell hard onto the bench. The boat teetered and an oar slid from a rowlock and into the water. Nol looked at me in shock, his eyes wide, then dropped his gaze to his palms as blood streamed onto his lap.

“You… you used your sword on me?” he asked, his voice quiet. It had that wavering quality again, the one I had noticed when I had first met him. He raised his eyes to look piteously at me.

“Yes,” I answered. “You used magic against me. It was self-defense. Now let me go.” I gripped my sword harder, if only to stop my hands from shaking.

“You’ll… you’ll have to swim,” the man muttered, dropping his eyes back to his hands. “You’ll have to swim,” he repeated. “I do not think I can row. I’m sorry.”

I dipped my sword into the clean river, staining the water for a moment before the current washed away the violence. Then I jumped.

The water was warmer than I remembered, but my hands and arms shivered. After an eternity my paddling hands slipped across algae and silt and I stood uneasily to lurch the rest of the way to shore. As soon as I was clear of the river, I ran, until all I could see were the trees of Lorelai.