James West - Crown of the Setting Sun

He pondered the water, the obstacle to his next meal. Until he had splashed into the river, he had never seen so much water. But this pool was not the river, and other than being wet, it was different in all other regards. The water in the pools was warmer, it did not move, and was nowhere near as deep and treacherous as the river.

Without thinking, he sat down at the edge and slipped his legs into the pool. Its sides were slick with moss and silt, and shaped like a shallow bowl. If something went wrong, he could easily climb out. The river might be dangerous, but the pool was not. He eased himself into the water, and while it was far warmer than the river, it stole his breath as it climbed above his waist, then to his midsection, and finally all the way up to his neck.

Leitos stood still for a time, marveling at the peculiar sensation of buoyancy. It was not weightlessness, but close. He took a step, pushing off with his toes, and seemed to soar before settling back. Forgetting about the fish, he walked around the pool, gliding through the water. After two circuits, an idea came to him.

With an unconscious grin, he cautiously dunked his face, eyelids and lips firmly pressed together. After a moment, he opened his eyes. All was blurry but recognizable. He exhaled through his nose, and a blast of tickly bubbles rolled over his cheeks and past his temples. When he needed air, he raised his head, took a breath, then bent again to look under the water. He did this over and over, never growing weary of the bubbles, or the floating sensation.

After a time, he grew emboldened. Taking the deepest breath he could, he leaned forward and lifted his legs. For a brief but terrifying moment, he sank. Only the knowledge that he could stand whenever he needed to kept him calm. With his heartbeat thumping in his ears, he floated to the surface and hung there. Looking down at the bottom of the pool, alive with flashes of blurry silver, his arms spread wide, he felt as if he were flying. Marveling, he forgot himself and laughed. Water gushed into his throat, and then he was splashing about, coughing and gagging. Only when his toes scraped bottom did he remember that he could stand.

Eyes bulging in panic, he scrambled out of the pool as if it were a bath of poison, and flung himself onto the rocks. After he cleared his lungs, his fright passed. He lay panting, naming himself a fool. Nevertheless, it was a good while before he mustered the courage to return to the water, but return he did. He simply could not resist.

Much of the day passed in the pools, and in that time he discovered that he could control himself imitating the movements of the surface-skimming waterbugs. He began slowly at first, swishing his hands back and forth, and propelling himself forward by tentatively kicking his legs. Over time, he found that if he did both, in just the right way, he could raise his head to draw a breath without having to put his feet on the bottom.

Soon after, his thoughts turned to the waterbugs that maneuvered below the water. With his confidence higher than ever, he dove under, then let buoyancy take him to the surface. He did this again and again, assuring himself that he would always rise. Once he had convinced himself of that, he went under, pressed his hands together, pushed them forward, then spread them and swept them back toward his hips. Arrow-straight, he glided on one breath to the far side of the pool.

He stood up, looking around, smiling broadly, and feeling like all the world had changed. He knew it had not, not really, but it felt different, and that difference swelled his heart with a sense of expectancy and hope. Leitos set his mind on the fish he had observed while he taught himself to swim.

At first he chased them, diving and swimming after, but they were far too swift. Next he stood still, trying to snatch them when they came near, but that proved futile as well. When his belly began to rumble, he gave up on delicacy and thrashed his arms and legs wildly, driving the fish into the shallowest end of the pool. From there, he used his hands to push them, one at a time, onto the rocks.

By the end of the day, he had managed to collect a dozen fish. He ate them raw, washing them down with frequent drinks. Afterward, with the gorge lost in deepening shadow, he sprawled out on his back until darkness fell, then watched the stars long into the night.

When he awoke, the sun was shining in his face.

After making a quick meal of waterbugs the third morning, he climbed to the highest point of his refuge, looking for an easy path to dry land but finding none. The river rushed by, splashing and spraying over submerged rocks, or parting around larger boulders and islands similar to his. As he tried to convince himself to plunge into the river, he remembered the way the powerful currents had dragged him deep below the surface. Swimming the river would be nothing like the pool. It was not lost on him that he had to make the attempt at some point, for he could not live the rest of his days on a rock. Moreover, he had made his silent vow to Adham to seek out the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. And because Adham was the only kin he had ever known, he meant to hold to his word … just not this day.

So he swam again throughout the morning, ate and drank his fill, and rested under the sun.

In a peaceful drowse, he found himself considering the true vastness of the world. After fleeing leagues across the desert and seemingly getting nowhere, then dropping into the river and having it sweep him miles downstream, he knew that the world was far wider than all his previous conceptions. So wide, in truth, that just thinking on it made his rocky sanctuary, with its small pools and the river’s protective surge, feel all the safer. How could he possibly traverse such dangerous and broken territories inhabited by hunting Alon’mahk’lar and worse, if even a fraction of the stories Adham had told him were true?

Beyond the river and the gorge waited lands that had been torn apart by the Upheaval, a cataclysm so powerful that his grandfather claimed it had destroyed two of three moons, upset the balance of the world in the heavens, changed the seasons and the placement of the stars in the firmament, and reshaped all former kingdoms.

Usually when his grandfather recounted this tale, Leitos could get no further than trying to imagine a night sky with three moons, the faces of gods, instead of the one that remained, and gave virtually no light. Adham said a handful of years before his birth the remaining moon, the face of the goddess Hiphkos the Contemplator, had shone a pale blue, bathing the world in a cool, comforting glow. Before their demise, Adham told that her brothers had followed after her every evening-first the middling Memokk, with his amber radiance, then the diminutive Attandaeus, who burned like an ember in the night. Now the Sleeping Widow, as Hiphkos was sometimes called, wore a veil of dark gray shot through with threads of black.

Under an unsettling sense of loss for a world he had never known, Leitos spent the rest of the day watching the river flow by, pondering what awaited him once he dared leave his island. Nothing good, he concluded with a shudder, as darkness fell over the gorge.

Later, as his eyes slipped shut for the night, a stray thought, like a whisper on the wind, suggested that it might be better if he never left his secluded refuge.

The next morning, he awoke to find a slate gray sky, with heavy clouds piling up to the north. Summer storms were often the fiercest, but he disregarded the potential danger of being caught out in the open. After all, summer storms were short-lived affairs. He remained calm, even when lightning began flashing in the distance, followed by low, steady peals of thunder echoing through the gorge.