On the Isle of Sound and Wonder (12 page)

“He doesn’t know any better,” said the fool.

“He doesn’t at that,” agreed Stephen. “And if he’ll keep us healthy by bringing us water and food, why, who are we to not be lords?”

“The philosophers say a man must have a master,” Truffo recited in a weary voice. “A man is wont to kneel before his betters, and allow another man to be his ruler. That is how the Great Wall of Chineh started. Or the Great Chain of Being, one of the two.”

“Then perhaps we are the answer to this thing’s prayers,” whispered Stephen. “Perhaps our afterlife is meant to be here, on this desert place, cared for by a monster that will love us as his lords and one of us, his king.” An island paradise, a willing but hideous slave—it seemed a likely enough afterlife.
The only thing missing is a woman, really,
mused Stephen.

“King?” protested Truffo. “You mean kings, plural! There are two of us after all, Stephen Montanto.”

“Yes, and I am your better, Truffo. And your elder. You are a fool, and I am a valet. Was. These were our past lives. Now,
et in Arcadia ego
.”

Truffo gaped at him for a moment, slightly boggle-eyed. “You mean you get to be the king now because you used to be the valet?” He screwed up his face, one eye closing altogether. “What does it make me, then?”

“My valet,” he chuckled, amused at Truffo’s expression.

“And the monster?”

“Our slave,” answered Stephen Montanto, and a smile began to creep across his face.

* * *

Karaburan had gathered more coconuts into the canvas sack and was on his way into the forest at the center of the island in search of other nuts and fruits to offer his guests. He had crossed over to the place where the soft sandy soil became hard packed dirt, but stopped as a strange sound like clinking glasses drifted to him on a cool and slender breeze.

The sound clutched at his heart, though he could not understand why, and he found it hard to breathe, or even move. Karaburan stood still as a stone, listening with the whole of his body, and after several minutes more, the sound faded, seemingly without consequence, and he relaxed. He let out his breath slowly, shaking himself like a wet dog.

It was a funny thing, that feeling; it happened from time to time. There would be a cold shift in the air and an odd, musical sound, and then it always made him feel as though he were squeezed into a narrow space between two unyielding rocks, claustrophobia creeping into the edges of his mind and paralyzing him. No matter how hard he tried to pass through the strange pressure, it would not budge, and he found himself frozen in place until the peculiar thing passed.

Karaburan paused, sniffing the breeze that fluttered through the stray, dry dune grass nearby, his hands and toes tingling as though they’d been numb a moment ago. Then he took a step toward the forest, resuming his previous mission of foraging for his guests.

The invisible barrier took him completely by surprise. His momentum brought him face first against an unseen wall and flung him unceremoniously backward. Karaburan grabbed at his head in agony, howling in surprise and anger. As he fell to the ground, staggered by the uneven earth and the shock of the obstacle, he heard laughter like wind chimes, delicate and irksome.

“Leave me be!” cried Karaburan, scooting backward from the wall. “I’ve done nothing wrong!” His heart pounded, anxiety clouding his mind as he looked about for the source of the laughter. The island made strange noises sometimes, and stranger things had happened on his walks than an invisible wall springing up out of nowhere; but in general, Karaburan did not fear the island that was his home. Now, though, dread bubbled in the pit of his stomach like tar, slowing his speech and constricting his breath.

“Say ‘please,’ ” a lazy voice trilled from a nearby tree. Karaburan swung about, searching for the owner of the voice, but saw no one. “Go on then,” the voice prompted. “Say ‘pretty please.’ ”

“Please,” murmured Karaburan, frantically looking for the face that matched the voice.
I’ve heard this voice before,
he thought, his heart pounding like cannons in his chest.
I don’t know who it is, but I’ve heard it before.

“No,” giggled the voice daintily. “You didn’t say ‘pretty.’ It’s ‘pretty please,’ these days.” It erupted into peals of laughter, which echoed back at Karaburan from off the barrier before him, cutting him off from the rest of the forest.

Karaburan tried to catch his breath, but panic rose in his mind, and it became difficult to focus. “Who’s there? What do you want?”

“It’s me,” answered the voice, “I’m here. And I want to make you suffer.”

A great gust of air rushed at him, and he found himself completely bowled over backward, the sand and grasses whipping at his skin as the wind raged about him. Karaburan cried out in pain as rocks and sticks flew at his body, bouncing off of him and scattering across the ground. He crouched, covering his head with his arms, and waited for the whirlwind to pass, praying that it would not carry him away. The voice on the air roared about him, its chiming laughter echoing in his ears, until at last the rushing air faded away, dust settling on Karaburan where he lay on the ground.

His heart pounded. He had never been attacked like this before. He had heard strange things and seen peculiar visions, but he had never physically been harmed. It almost frightened him more than his nightmares the eve before: that endless, horrifying loop of hunting, finding, and ravishing the struggling girl in the dark.

Karaburan banished the memory from his mind, his skin prickling with uncertainty and revulsion as he sat up on his knees and tried not to weep at the vision. He had a light welt on his arm where a branch had struck him, and his body stung in fifty places where small stones had bit him as they passed by. Karaburan felt the terror trembling in his hands and face, and every nerve in his body screamed to run back to his hovel in the rocks, but he hesitated, recalling his guests who waited, who depended on him for coconuts and other sustenance.

Karaburan looked about, his large eyes watery, and sniffed. The bag of coconuts was on the ground a little ways off, so he got to his feet and lumbered over to them. As he reached for the canvas bag, it slid across the dirt several feet so that it was just out of his grasp. Not understanding, Karaburan moved forward to reach again, and again the sack slid a few feet out of reach. The third time, Karaburan bellowed in frustration, slamming his hands against the hard earth. That infuriating laugh danced through the leaves, mocking his anger and hurt as easily as a fish mocks the clumsy fisherman’s bait.

“What do you want?” roared Karaburan. His heart thumped in distress; he only wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible. There was a rustle to his left, and he turned to look, sniffling.

Mira came walking out of the trees, her expression pitying and somber. Karaburan’s heart caught in his throat, and he felt as if he might never breathe again. Dante’s daughter was lean and long-legged, but her hips sloped with the early touch of Nature’s growth, and she wore a man’s old tunic wrapped tight at her waist with rope. Her long hair flowed and shone in the sun, dark honey-colored locks laced through with paler gold. Everything about her seemed bright and newly washed, her lips parting in a shy expression of apology as she looked down at him with her cool green eyes. She moved slowly, as though she did not want to frighten him, and he trembled in her presence.

“Karaburan, my poor friend,” Mira murmured, her voice like downy feathers on a baby bird. “It’s been so long since I last saw you.”

“M-m-mistress,” stammered the monster as he shivered, “your father bade me never look on you again, and never have I seen you ‘til now.” He hesitated, lingering between covering his eyes with his hands and not wanting to look away from her radiance.

“My father is an evil man. He separated us when we were meant to be together always.” Mira knelt near him, peering into his face with her bright eyes and concerned brow. “You and I were such friends once, and now we are strangers. Would you rather it remain so?”

“No,” croaked Karaburan, reaching out to her with one hand. “I long to serve you and be near you again. Please, please forgive me, Mistress.”

“Forgive you? You are already forgiven.” She took his hand in hers and squeezed it gently. Karaburan’s eyelids fluttered shut for a moment, so gratifying was the feeling that swept through him.

“I did not mean to hurt you,” he whispered, large tears swelling in the corners of his pale eyes.

Mira tipped her head at him. “Do I seem injured to you?”

He shook his head fervently. “No, Mistress, you are perfect and well and very beautiful.”

Mira gave him a little smile. “Then you have nothing to be sorry for.” She leaned in a little more. “That night when everything went wrong . . . I was young and not ready. Now I am ready. What you dreamed of will be yours—if it is what you still wish,” she added with a rosy blush creeping over her cheeks.

Karaburan thought his heart would burst. “I do, I do wish it,” he confessed, voice barely above a whisper.

“There is only one thing that must be done before we are together at last,” Mira breathed, inching closer.

“Say what is to be done, Mistress, and your Karaburan will do it!”

“My father must die, and then his spells will break. You and I will have the island to ourselves. It will no more be a prison to us both, but a paradise for our joys combined. Kill my father, and we shall both be rewarded.”

Karaburan’s heart skipped a beat. He did not wish to kill anyone, for he believed, as his mother had, that all life was precious and should at least be respected, if not actively defended. But Dante was a cruel ruler of the island. Karaburan thought on how his childhood had been saved by the sudden arrival of Dante and Mira, but then how, a mere few years later, Dante had begun to treat him as a lesser creature to his own daughter. Then, when Mira was fourteen, Karaburan had made the big mistake, and Dante had banished him to servitude, forcing him to gather food and firewood for them and act as their slave. Since the night of that mistake, he had not seen Mira face to face ‘til now. To kill Dante and be free—his own man—would be a blessing.

“Your servant shall do this,” Karaburan growled softly. Mira smiled brightly and squeezed his hand.

“After he is dead, we will be free to do as we please,” she promised him, and leaned forward. Karaburan closed his eyes hopefully, and waited for her lips to brush his own pebbled skin.

The next thing he knew, he was flying through the air, thrown by a blast of heat as though from the mouth of a volcano. He landed hard, the wind expelled from his lungs so roughly that he gasped for air, and scrabbled his hands and feet at the ground to try and right himself. His ears rang from the impact and he struggled to sit up; as his mind cleared he could hear the glass-shattering laughter from before, echoing all around him.

“Mira!” Karaburan choked, trying to get up, to protect her from the wicked thing that tortured him. “Run! Run away!”

The laughter sputtered and guffawed. “That wasn’t her, you shell-scraped primordial sandwich,” sneered the voice. “That was me! I am sent to torture you so long as you are a slave, Karaburan, and you are still a slave.”

“I will kill him and be free!” he bellowed. He was outraged and heartsick and tired. Little stones began to rain down on him, thrown by unseen hands, as the voice cackled and giggled. Karaburan’s anger flushed hot on his face, his body almost numb to the rocks, so great was his distraction. “I will kill him, and I will be free of you, of all of you!” He slammed his hands on the ground in frustration, then hobbled to the coconut bag and snatched it up before it could run away again.

I will feed these men, and I will tell them the sadness of my story, and they will help me kill Dante.
Karaburan turned and ran toward the woods, determined to gather as much food as he could to better woo his guests to his purpose.
When he is dead, I will find Mira and tell her I love her. And I will be free.

* * *

As the monster lumbered off into the woods, his mission fresh and furious in his mind, Aurael let his laughter dull to a smug chuckle. He smiled as he landed on the spot where Karaburan had howled with anguish, pleased at how well that had gone and how refreshed he felt.

It’s been ages since I made him hallucinate like that,
he realized fondly.
Lovely to finally stretch that muscle again.

The monster would plot a horrible murder, Aurael suspected; not horrible in the sense of being gruesome, but horrible in that Karaburan would probably not be very good at scheming. But he’d found some castaways, and perhaps he would be all the better for their help.

Need to stay busy, in case his nibs calls me again,
thought Aurael with a scowl. Then the spirit stretched and yawned, sated from the encounter, and took to the air again to continue his search for survivors.

Ferran felt sunlight on his face and opened his eyes. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, but it felt like it had been years. He inhaled slowly, feeling his joints creak. Birds sang in the trees above him, strange calls that he’d never heard before. The sun was warm, but he lay beneath a particularly shady set of trees, and although the light fell dappled from above, he was mostly protected from the heat. It was somewhat muggy, and the occasional strange insect buzzed by his head as he lay there, but for the greater part, he felt quite alone and unbothered by nature.