T&A — The Keeper

The fish-man closes the distance between them inch by inch, still gripping his weapon. Tj looks at Adriane who tries to stand, but collapses the moment she puts weight on her foot with a grunt of pain. 

Tj changes her stance and steels herself, turning to face the creature. Staying low to the ground, she puts her hands up.

“Please wait.”

The eyes of the creatures widen; all three of them halt, looking around at each other as if they want to confirm they weren’t the only one who heard her speak. Tj is unsure if they understood her, but the leader has lowered his weapon slightly.

Swallowing, she continues. “I apologize if we seem threatening, but we mean no harm.”

With his yellow eyes still on Tj and Adriane, the one who had been advancing upon them walks backwards to confer with his tribe in harsh whispers.

“How did you get here?” One asks.

It’s Tj‘s turn to look surprised. She’d spoken only to demonstrate that she’s in a calm state of mind and has no intention of attacking them, but never expected to be able to understand their words. Adriane looks to Tj with her eyebrows raised, but doesn’t say anything.

“We don’t know where we are,” Tj says. “We woke up on this island with no idea how we got here.”

One of them points to Adriane. “What’s wrong with that one?”

“She got hurt while we were walking through the forest.” Tj gestures to the grotesque bump on Adriane’s leg grows by the second.

One of them approaches Adriane cautiously and squats beside her on one knee to assess the injury. Hovering his webbed fingers over the bite marks, he flaps the fins on either side of his head and turns to his comrades with a grave expression.

Adriane’s voice comes out strained. “Is it bad…?”

“You were bitten by a naer,” he says. “You will soon die if you leave it like this.”

When Adriane turns pale, Tj can’t tell if it’s because she’s scared or just getting worse.

“Is there any way you can help us?”

They hesitate for a moment, until the one nearest to Adriane shifts behind her.

“You two, come and grab her legs.”

A familiar scene unfolds before Tj as the fish-men lift Adriane and carry her along the beach. She sweats profusely, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists that dangle in the air.

“No outsiders come to this island,” one of them explains as they pad through the sand. “It’s impossible for anyone who isn’t an Olmeon to make it here without getting dragged down by the Kraken.”

Tj thinks back to the books she would read. Whenever she happened to choose a book in the fantasy genre from the shelves, she always skipped to the very back of the book, looking for a glossary of the fantastical creatures that would appear in the story before reading.

“You say you have no idea how you got here,” says the one with the trident. “How can we trust you?”

Before Tj can answer, someone interjects.

“Fereon! Do you forget that we found this one on sacred ground?” He chides, referring to Adriane. “Do not doubt the ancestors’ judgment, they must be here for a reason.”

They carefully deposit Adriane into one of their boats. It’s long enough to hold all five of them while two row towards the structures standing in the water. Tj pushes up her glasses, noting the trees covered in flowers that grow along the post holding up the houses.

Docking the boat, the Olmeons transfer a sallow-skinned Adriane up the double L-shaped stairs and onto a leaf-woven mat. ’Fereon’ gets to work plucking petals from strings of flowers that hang from the ceiling. 

After taking the pink, yellow, and blue petals and chewing them, he spits it into a shallow bowl and slathers the paste onto Adriane‘s ankle. The bump, which had doubled in size, instantly begins to shrink as a dark purple liquid oozes from her wound into a larger bowl that was placed under her foot.

She exhales rapturously, complexion already regaining a healthy color.

“That is the stuff…” she breathes.

“You know what this is?” The one holding the bowl under her asks.

“I think she’s just saying she’s relieved,” Tj clarifies.

The Olmeons flap their finned ears at one another.

“Thank you for helping us.” Tj watches as they dump the poisonous liquid into a clay jar and seal it.

“Yeah, thank you,” Adriane sighs.

“Of course.”

“Can you tell us a way to get off of this island? We don’t want to disturb you any longer.”

“That is not for us to decide,” Fereon announces, standing up. “Now that we’ve helped you, we must take you to the Keeper. She will be the one to determine your true fate. Since this one is still recovering, she can stay,” he says, pointing to Adriane. “But you must follow me.”

“Tj…” whispers Adriane.

“I’ll go see what he means,” Tj says.

Fereon mans the oars of the long boat alone. Tj realizes they must be heading towards the lighthouse she’d infiltrated earlier as they approach it.

Is she about to be punished for taking her things back?

It’s too late to speculate as they ascend the slick rocky steps, and he opens the door to the room looking just as messy as before. He has her walk before him. A hoard of various objects like empty bottles, driftwood, and crates among others sit upon the second floor. 

Tj’s first impression of the Keeper is the smell of burning leaves. When she pokes her head through the floor, she can see her sitting upon a backless sofa leaned against the wall under a window that overlooks the sea. Her dark flowing hair is spilling out from the red bandanna she wears, and her dress is decorated with glitter and jewels. Bringing a pipe to her lips, she inhales and puffs the smoke out through her walrus-like tusks.

“O, Keeper,” Fereon says, bowing his head, “I have brought to you one of the stragglers we found lain upon the sacred ground. Blodeon believes it may have been the will of the ancestors. What do you see for them?”

She turns to them with pink sclera void of pupils and looks at Tj with a curled lip.

“What have you come here for?” she asks in a husky voice.

Tj gives Fereon a chance to speak in case she wasn’t addressing her. “My companion and I need to get home.”

“You are from the mainland?”

Mainland? 

“I believe so.”

“First you must be tested.”

“May I ask what that entails?”

“No.”

“…”

“You may not ask, but I will tell you. Listen well...”

She takes another drag from her cigarette and exhales..

“In the beginning, when everything was chaos, fighting, killing, and stealing was the only way of life. There was no unity until the Great Awakening. And the first to trade not violence, but goodwill was our ancestor: Gradeon. Through our pact with the ocean dwellers, we have sustained our way of life in peace.”

She points at Tj with her pipe, dropping ashes onto the wooden floor.

“We will guide you across the sea, but first you must present a gift to our ancestors. If they deem your offering unworthy, we will present you as a gift by turning you into fish and offering you up to them instead.”

Fish…?

“Otherwise you are free to swim to the mainland yourselves. Do you accept?”

Tj looks to where the ashes have settled into the grain, then back to the Keeper. “Yes.”

With a wave, the Keeper dismisses them and returns to looking out the window.

“Freaking fish??” Adriane yells.

The two girls were permitted to stay in one of the floating houses under the watch of a guard who is currently out.

“How do we even know if the ancestors are going to like the gift?”

“I’m not sure,” says Tj.

Adriane picks at the leaf that was wrapped around her ankle. “So what’s the catch?”

“Catch?”

“Is it some kinda…’the real answer resides within you’ crap?”

“You mean is it a rhetorical issue? It’s hard to say.”

“Well, what was the Keeper like?”

“Very stern. I don’t think she’ll be giving us much leeway.”

“Was she a fish-person too?”

“Yes, but she was different. Her tusks made her look like a mythical creature called a Groac’h. I remember reading a story of one in a book of fairytales.”

Adriane leans forward. “So we’re seriously in fairytale land?”

“Probably something like that.”

“Maybe we can appease her somehow… Do you remember reading about what they like?”

Tj nods. “To turn people into fish.”

Adriane throws her hands up. “Figures.”

Tj remembers the weight on her back and takes off her knapsack. Carefully, she dumps out the mountain of items onto a mat so nothing falls through the thin cracks in the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for a gift.”

“Can I help?” Adriane sits up. “Maybe we can bribe her with something.”

They pick through each object, evaluating their potential value. For some reason whenever Tj picks something up, the memory of how she got it comes along with it. 

An encased cassette tape from a librarian she tracked down a lost book for, a scientific magazine from a young girl who’s pendant was left behind on accident, and even a drawing from little girl she’d told Adriane about was still in the folds of her bag.

Adriane crosses her arms. “Maybe we can escape on our own by writing SOS on the beach? You know, like they do in the movies? Someone will see it and pick us up before they have a chance to fillet us!”

“I doubt that would work.”

“Yeah, I was just joking.” Adriane picks up the aimlessly spinning compass, “what’s going on with this thing?”

“I can’t say for sure, but there might be something affecting the magnetic field here so it can’t work properly.”

“Huh.” Adriane returns it to the pile, chewing her lip and tapping her fingers against the floor.

Suddenly she gasps. Propping herself up, Adriane digs in her own pockets and pulls something out of the one stitched onto her thigh.

“Is that a mood ring?”

Adriane slips it onto her finger. “Yeah, I was hoping I’d have something more useful in here.”

Tj remembers receiving something similar from a child after guiding him back to his parents when she informed them that she didn’t take money in exchange for her services.

“Did you know that those rings were proven to be a gimmick that doesn’t actually understand emotions?”

“Really?” Adriane rubs it, watching it turn from blue to green at her touch. “Damn. I kind of wanted to believe in the Magic.”

By now, the pile is depleted with only five item left to be put back. An empty wallet, a pen, a pack of bird seed…

“What about this?”

Tj looks at the skeleton key in Adriane’s hand. Unlike the other items, she doesn’t recognize it at all. Even grasping the long, cold piece of metal in her own fingers sparks no memory. 

It’s crafted like a four-leaf clover with a large red jewel in the center. Despite its archaic look, the wards are in a shape Tj has never seen on a key with the hole it goes to possibly being crafted in the shape of an X.

“Think it’ll find us a way out of here?”

“Hm. Maybe.” Tj inspects the key at a different angle. “If we could find the door it went to.”