The spar between Basil and Sage was more than just a common fight between friends, or even a dispute between two men whose words have lost their power. Apparently, while I slept off the pain Sage had given me from our first training session, him and Basil had come to a decision.

“Basil is gone,” Sage said, looking rather serious our first morning at sea. I didn’t say anything, confused by it all, so he sat at the end of the bed and continued, “We talked it over, and he decided that he could trust me with training you on my own after seeing that I had held back.”

“Really? Was that all, or were you two just tired of being near each other?” I asked, a little angry about it. I’d never admit I liked Basil, not back then. But the first thing I thought was who’s going to cook all the food if he’s gone?

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t like that,” he said. “No, we were just strategizing and it made sense to send one of us back to Persea to check everything more thoroughly, including your mother.”

I jolted up. “Really?”

“Yes. I figured you would appreciate it, since you seem to be worried about her a lot. On top of that, it will give us some perspective on things, what their move is, whether or not your mother needs help. It just seemed like the right thing to do, so we called Hammy before we set sail and had her take him back to Avocado. By now, he’s probably outside the city.”

“Is he the right man for this job though?” I asked, worried. “He’s not going to get caught? Security is probably tight right now.”

Patting my leg, Sage gave me a reassuring look. “Don’t worry about Basil. He might not be the strongest man alive, but his skills are more subtle than that. He’s second to none when it comes to infiltration, as a spy he’s invaluable.”

I didn’t argue, not just because I had no basis for one despite my doubts, but because I was desperate to believe in the mission. Mother’s situation was on my mind all the time. I didn’t want her to be in trouble without me.

After that meeting, though, my days on the boat blur together. Let me explain:

The next few weeks were difficult for all of us, but the only one who’s pain I remember was my own because it was constant and visceral. It still is; I associate most memories of that boat and Sage with bruises and trauma.

For the most part, each day proceeded as follows:

I’d be woken up with force by Sage, who would flip my bed so I was sprawled out on the floor and agitated, then I’d go up to the deck where Sage would hand me a plate and a cup of water. Most days my breakfast was a vegetable roll with an oil dip and some bacon on the side if he cared. He usually didn’t care, though. Lucky for him, the vegetable rolls were fantastic, as expected from a boat stocked by Arsene.

After I was finished, he’d ask if I was okay to get started. Regardless of my answer, he’d attack me anyway and dodging practice would begin. I gave up answering after the first two days, and honestly it was stupid of me to even try that second day. The first day he made it very clear that the question was rhetorical. He had hit me before he was even finished asking his question.

Dodging training was exhausting. Most fights last only a minute or two at most in the real world, and even more end in mere seconds. Confrontations are typically a series of reactions, thoughtless and primal, resulting in situations where people aren’t even sure what happened despite themselves being participants. So why Sage insisted on having me dodge his onslaught for an hour every single morning was beyond me.

“It’s for muscle memory,” he said, while tossing fists at me with a laziness that felt disrespectful even though I knew he wasn’t being so on purpose. “When the time comes and you are attacked by someone with the intent of hurting or killing you, you’ll be able to dodge without thinking about it. And that’s important. Thinking will be the last thing you’ll be doing in a fight, trust me.”

This was also his reasoning behind the next bit of training he’d have me do. After maybe ten minutes of resting and rehydrating, he would take me to the center of the deck and have me hit a plank of wood which he finagled into a makeshift shield of sorts. He would move it to different locations on his body—the face, the liver, the lungs, the clavicle—having me hit them all in quick succession so that after a while I got to the point where it was target practice, and I was getting good at it. In a fight, quick hits to spots that matter would end things fast, and in situations where I would probably be fighting more than just one person, this was extremely important.

Then I’d rehydrate, get some food if things had gone longer than they should have, and we’d finish the day with sparring until sunset began. That was the real meat and potatoes of it all. It was practical knowledge, things that he couldn’t teach using words, just examples. And in that two weeks, my confidence didn’t grow at all. My skills may have gone up, but I would say that it only brought me to where I was when I was training daily in my even younger years, maybe a little better due to the training coming from Sage, the only man who seemed to believe in me without a doubt.

Every single day, he’d end it by saying, “That’s enough, good. You’re getting better, just remember what we did here today and I think you’ll be able to improve tomorrow.” He might have added something like, “Remember to guard and hit at the same time when you can, so you don’t leave yourself open when you hit someone,” or, “Keep in mind your body. It’s not always as painful as your face, but if your lungs aren’t working you can’t move well.” But either way, our sessions would end on as high a note as he could make it, and though I never really appreciated it at the time, I appreciate it hindsight. It might not have worked then, but his attempt at constructive criticism with a positive spin was much better than him just yelling at me and telling me to get better.

What really killed all of this, however, was what came next at sundown.

My days ended with a battle for dinner. Sage would stand by the door and drive me back with small movements that would send me sprawling, reeling, and in general turn the act of standing into an art. The sunsetting below the horizon meant the match was over, and either I ate dinner or I watched while Sage ate, nursed my wounds, drank some water to keep hydrated, then went to bed.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Guess how many times I ate dinner. Go on, I’ll wait. Have a number? Well, you’re wrong if you have a number. Try the absence of numbers, otherwise known as zero. Not once did I get to eat any of that succulent steak, or any of that dessert they had, those sugary cinnamon pasties. I just got water and an early bedtime. Rinse, repeat, fourteen times. Or fifteen? Somewhere around there.

Some nights I could hear Sage talking to himself in the captain’s roomThe boat would rock, the walls would echo with the ramblings of Sage and creaking boards, and I would lay in bed, eyes bloodshot, staring into the darkness and wishing on invisible stars, hoping for a way to go back to before.

Had things panned out as they should have, I’d have become a scholarly prince, well respected in Avocado. A life without bruises and decent food.

Now my arms were permanently a mishmash of blacks, blues, and yellows from all the blocking and dodging, and my eyes were shadowed and gross. It hurt to blink.

One night I sat out on the upper deck, before Sage went to bed, and I stared out at the ocean and the sky and thought about how mom was doing. I was scared for her; Cashew could be ruthless, especially in my imagination. While I was lost in my thoughts, I heard the door shut behind me. It was Sage, wearing his cloak tightly to keep warm in the windchill.

“You should be in bed,” he said, walking over to me with a stern look on his face. I hated that look; it reminded me of a father I never saw.

“You should be sleeping,” I mumbled, watching the moon ripple in the waves.

“I would, but I heard something out here and decided to check it out,” he said, glancing at the steering wheel like he wasn’t sure he should be there. He gazed out, surveying the sky to make sure we were on the right track. Assumedly we were. “What are you doing out here?” He stepped down over to me, arms crossed to keep the windchill at bay. “Just trying to get some air?” he suggested.

I nodded. “Yeah, plus the scenery here is pretty amazing.” Taking a deep breath, I sighed and rested my chin on my hands on the railing. “Never really get a chance to enjoy it since when I’m out here I’m busy focusing on not getting dilly-whipped into the ground.”

Grunting, Sage nodded and said, “True enough. Well enjoy for a little while, then go to bed. If you’re tired tomorrow you’ll only get hurt.”

“I know,” I said, and I stared out in silence for a while, waiting to see if any fish might pop out of the water as they sometimes did. Seeing them fly through the air wasn’t breathtaking or amazing, but it was relaxing in a way. Something about the sound of them splashing into the water made my breathing slow down, and I was able to just sit there as a blank slate, unperturbed by the world outside or the thoughts recklessly smashing into one another in my head like behemoths butting heads.

Right as two fish leapt out of the water, Sage scared me by speaking and ruined the moment.

“Sorry,” he said, noticing me jump.

“It’s fine,” I breathed, shaking my head. “What is it?”

“You seem sad,” he said, his cadence awkward and unpracticed. “Obviously you are, and it makes sense… Are you homesick?” It was a surprise for me that he’d get that personal, but it shouldn’t have been that surprising. After all, we were alone together on that ship, and it was always apparent that he wanted us to have a friendly relationship, not one of distance and venom. I should have been happy he asked at all and gave it a shot. Instead, I lashed out.

“Good of you, my kidnapper, to notice I miss the place you stole me from. Impeccable eyes you have, Sage.”

A wave splashed against the boat, and it was almost louder than the silence between us.

“I know you must feel like…” he struggled, making a noise I would have expected from an exasperated four year old, not a full grown adult. “You must feel like I did this to you on purpose, I know. But you must understand it—”

“What, you gonna say it was Cashew again?” I scoffed, shaking my head and moving away, showing him my back. “No, there’s more wrong here than just that.”

When he didn’t answer, I continued. “My mother is all alone there in that castle, presumably everyone that was on our side is being held captive and her power has been snuffed to smolder. My father is still nowhere to be seen, and he couldn’t even show up on an important day like the solstice. He’s busy gallivanting around, probably siring a bunch of bastards off in some no-name town in the southern hemisphere of Longan, pretending to be a god when he’s a king. And my mother, she doesn’t even know where I am. She must be worried sick about me. Meanwhile you’re here teaching me fighting that I shouldn’t need, won’t need.” I sighed, feeling my mouth tremble. “Can’t use. I’m a pisspoor fighter. I was a worse son.”

“You want to go back and help your mom and let her know you care? Is that it?” My sobbing was the only answer I gave him. He placed a hand on my shoulder, albeit awkwardly, using more force than needed.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not going to pretend what we’ve done didn’t hurt you. But you’ve got to understand, there was no way you were going to have a good experience back in that castle. Not right now.” He hesitated, gripped tighter. “Maybe not ever. But from outside, we can try our best to fix things. We can attack Cashew’s capital city if we gather some proper intel, and that can force them to send their troops back to their homeland.”

I turned and stared at him hard through my tears. “Really? Is that what this trip is about?”

Looking ragged, he shrugged. “That was my plan. I always figured we would hit Cashew hard with a makeshift army and force their hand away from Avocado.”

Though he came off as awkward and hard, a strange man to deal with, someone who had little in the way of tact and was beneath me, there was a genuineness to him that was palpable, and in that one conversation he made me… well he didn't make me like him. Tolerate him, maybe. Accept him, sure. But I didn’t like him.

Not yet.

“What are you to Avocado?” I asked him, curious. “You seem so devoted to our country, but I’ve never heard of you or seen you before. Who are you, really?”

His face crumpled like a rolled up scroll, and he shook his head. “I can’t say exactly what I am, boy. I’ll just say that I am an old friend of your father’s.”

When I pressed further, he just told me to go to bed. But I stayed up a while longer, staring out at the sea, waiting on the fish to pop out for a moment of relaxation. The wheel creaked while Sage spun it. I imagined what mother would think of the plan, and tried to figure if she even had a plan himself with how haphazard everything was going. In my head, I couldn’t see her having some master plan, no matter how much I loved her and thought her to be perfect.

By the time I got back inside, Sage was already snoring, shaking the boat. Before I fell asleep, though, I heard something weird above and went to look. The sight was confusing; I blinked, rubbed my eyes, then went to bed with a shrug. My sleepiness was getting to me; I thought I had seen something on the horizon.

Then Sage woke me up a few hours later, as dawn overtook night.

“Wake up! But be quiet. Cashew is here.”