Day 20,
I gave in to a whim and chose not to go into the Village today. Perhaps it was a matter of getting caught up in the spirit of our upcoming outing but wanting a small piece of adventure to myself.
Whatever the impetus, I walked out to the stream in the woods behind my house and followed its path to the sea. It’s a small, rocky bottomed affair this stream; more brook or creek than river, rarely deeper than my waist, and often narrow enough to cross in two or three strides. I imagine someone more athletic than me might even be able to jump over portions of it with a running start.
None of which is an insult to this miniature waterway. It’s a gentle thing, pleasant to walk alongside as its companionable babbling mixes with the morning birdsong and its clear waters catch the colors of the flowering canopy shading it from the harshest parts of the sun.
Before long the stream and I reached the sandy border between trees and sea. At this point the stream began to flatten and spread out over the white sands for the last leg of its journey, making a broad triangle barely deeper than my ankles where the outgoing flow of freshwater mingled with the incoming waves of saltwater.
I stood there for a time in the shade at the edge of the trees, alternating between closing my eyes to focus on the feel of the breeze and the sound of the waves’ irregularly rhythmic crash-flood-gather, and then opening them to take in that blue-meets-blue horizon broken only by the scattered dark green of smaller islands.
With the current from the stream carrying things out, the water here was murkier than the rest of the coastline, so I turned north and walked, towards that impossible tower that I was already learning to tune out as a part of the background and away from the Village. As I walked at the edge of the waves’ reach I saw no other people, not even the fishers in their boats, only birds diving in the near distance, the occasional crab picking at some unseen food source in the sand, and tiny white fish darting about as they were carried in and out with the waves.
Eventually I encountered a near-flat topped black rock, large enough to have a visible tideline halfway up its side. This seemed as good a place as any to doff my sandals and leave them on the rock along with the satchel I’d found in the hidden study in which I was now carrying this journal and a light lunch for later.
Thus I waded into the shallowest part of the waves, staring out to sea as the push and pull of the sand around me slowly sank my feet into the ground. As I watched the waves it occurred to me that it wasn’t simply a matter of wave-in-wave-out-repeat. One wave would break while the previous wave was still stretching itself up the beach. So you’d get multiple distinct layers of water coming in forming visible terraces reaching you as multiple impacting walls, almost less flowing in as stacking as they hit first your ankles, then your shins, then your knees, before pulling back away, taking the sand from beneath your heels with them causing you to sink lower and reflexively wiggle your ankles to dig the fronts of your feet deeper as well until they reach a comfortable even level.
Eventually I’d sunk low enough, or perhaps the tide was coming in enough, that my reverie was broken by the now wet hem of my chiton sticking to my legs. Seeing no one else about, I took this as a cue to strip the garment off and place it on the rock with the rest of my things. Now down to my smallclothes and the probably sort of magic jewelry from the ruins, I indulged myself with wading out deep enough to swim. Those latter articles I’d considered leaving behind as well for fear of losing them but I had a theory I wanted to test with the ring and with my being alone out here it seemed prudent to have a safety mechanism to let someone know if something went unexpectedly wrong. And besides, both the ring and the bracelet (if I pushed it far enough up my arm at least) fit surprisingly snug for how comfortable they were to wear. While easy to take on and off intentionally, I’d tried some earlier tests with just shaking my arm around or trying to get them caught on things and they seemed remarkably resistant to falling off unintentionally. Further evidence that magic is a thing that exists here?
But back to the water. It’s a funny thing. I hadn’t swum ever since washing up here, and indeed that method of arrival didn’t do much to suggest I was good at it, yet on some level I knew it was a thing I could do. And indeed, once my feet were no longer in contact with the sandy floor, there was a freeing sense of elation. Of coming back to a place that you didn’t realize how much you missed. I found myself letting out an involuntary but jubilant laugh as I bobbed in the waves. Feeling an old forgotten instinct I took a breath, closed my eyes, dove underwater, and began to spin around until I could no longer hold my breath and was forced to surface. As I surfaced with my wet hair stuck to my face from the submarine spinning, it struck me that this sensation was an unfamiliar one, as if in whatever life I’d had before this it was a great deal shorter, but this sense of difference somehow felt right in the same way that the reassuring nostalgia of swimming was. I am no great swimmer, but still, there is something wonderful about reveling in the simple joy of movement untethered from the earthly pull of gravity.
Swimming back to the rock with my things I took off the pale ring and commenced my test. After a few trips in and out, taking the ring off and putting it back on, I became convinced that while wearing it pushing myself through the water was just noticeably easier and, more significantly noticeable, the waves pushed me around less. Whether this actually is indicative of paranormal properties of the ring or merely confirmation bias reinforcing a placebo I can’t truly say, but the former would track with other oddities I’d noticed since I started wearing the ring. The biggest of those being not getting as wet or muddy as I ought to when caught out in the rain, and the lesser one being making notably better time on my trips down the road to and from the Village. Although that latter one could be just as well attributed to me getting stronger from walking almost two hours every day. On the other hand, when there’s a miles-high tower, flying islands, glowing crystals, and a “nature sprite” that can vanish into thin air leaving behind a scattering of leaves, is it really so hard to believe that a ring that used to belong to a man with a reputation as an explorer might make travel a tiny bit easier for its wearer?
Such contemplations were among my reverie as my mind drifted along with my body, comfortable in the ocean’s warm waters. Up until I realized with a start that while the ring may or may not make waves less likely to push me under, I was still being gradually pulled northward by the tide. I had inadvertently gotten some distance away from my rock and was now beginning to round a bend in the coast. Curiosity being the mood of the day, I swam back closer to shore for safety’s sake, but continued to follow the direction of the current.
The bend in the coast turned into a small cove, and who should I find in there but the red woman I’d seen out in the rain before pushing off into a boat. This was the closest and best lighting in which I’d seen her, and this time I was able to confirm that she did indeed have a pair of horns protruding backwards and upwards from her forehead parting her unevenly cut grey hair. In further peculiarities, her ears were pointed and her shoulder blades (or maybe clavicle would be more accurate? Near the shoulder joint at any rate) extended upward in small spikes that didn’t break the skin. Despite the grey hair the rest of her features seemed to be of a woman no older than Lin, or maybe even a few years younger.
But still, between the horns and inhumanly red skin, words like “devil” and “oni” couldn’t help but come to mind and that reflexively put me on edge. Yet every time we’d seen one another it was her that acted skittish, and this encounter proved to be no exception.
Equally startled to see one another, she pulled out an oar once she saw me and began paddling her way out of the cove while I stared. But, as she passed me on her way out, her looking over the edge of the boat and me paddling with my legs to keep head and shoulders above water, she paused to look at me. For a long moment we floated there taking one another in until I broke the silence by saying something to the effect of stating that I’m harmless and friendly. Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, that only prompted her to jump with a small gasp and resume paddling, faster now.
I returned to the shore at that point and began walking back to my rock, letting myself air dry in the process. As I did so I kept an eye on the strange woman and her boat. She seemed to be making for one of the outlying islands. Is that where she lives, or is she just visiting it for some reason? Or was she just going that way to throw me off from her real destination?
At any rate, I lost sight of her by the time I reached my own destination, ate the food I’d packed, and got dressed again. I then made my way back up the stream towards the house, with a few minor detours to test trying to push through underbrush with the ring on versus off (once again, it seemed to have an effect, but could have been placebo) and a brief stop at one of the deeper parts of the stream to wash the salt off me.
In hindsight, it occurs to me that with the lack of sunscreen (do we even have that here) sunburn should have been a concern, but I’ve been back home several hours now and there’s no sign of it. Do I have the ring to thank for that, or is it simply another piece of this place’s strangeness?
