Though I was only a small boy at the time, I will never
forget the night of that storm. I’d
spent most of my 6 years on my family’s merchant ships but the storm was like
nothing I’d seen before, or since, and to this day it astounds me that
something so ferocious could spring so suddenly from the patterns of nature
without forewarning or precedent.
It started with winds that threw us far off course, grew to
swelling seas that rose around the small boat like mountains of brine and ended
with us dashing against unseen rocks, somewhere far off anywhere charted on my
parents’ many maps. The cycles of life
turn always and for all those aboard the ship except for me their part in the cycle
as living, breathing beings came to an end.
When the tribespeople found me washed up on that beach they
said it was the will of Jah that I should serve them through the forces of
nature, and while I don’t agree with the way they attribute such mundane human
motives to the forces of nature that rule us I believe the events of that night
had always been my destiny. However I was
not the only one on that island (a place called Jamaica that I’d never heard of
before and that I still have trouble locating on a map) whose destiny was
shaped that night.
A girl was born into the tribe as my family died, a girl
with vivid blue eyes, despite everyone else in the tribe having skin and eyes
as dark as fertile jungle soil. Grand
Matron Guintalla said that the power of the storm had gone into this girl, and
like me she was favoured by Jah to wield the power of nature. They started training me in the ways of the
druid and from as soon as the girl, whom they named Kruin, was able to speak
they gave the same training to her.
It became quickly apparent that while the storm had given her
the power to manipulate elemental forces, its unexpected and unpredictable
nature had also become a part of her. I
know Guintalla found teaching her hard, with her tendency to violent outbursts
and frustratingly short attention span, but she persisted over the years,
feeling that it was the will of Jah that she continue.
I can’t remember when it became assumed that Kruin and I
would one day be married. Into her
adolescence she became all the more unpredictable and I can only wonder now if
the tribe became so keen to marry her to me in order to make controlling her my
responsibility and to leave the rest of them in peace. She’d taken to carrying around a large wooden
staff into which she’d carved the words ‘hitting stik’ and would thump anything
that angered her, which could be anything or anyone. After dozens of run ins with the end of the
stick I often wondered whether it might be better to meet one of her jolts of
lighting instead.
Despite my misgivings it was my destiny to marry her and 16
years to the day of the fateful storm that bought us both to the island we were
united. Our first night as husband and
wife was not what I had been led to expect and by the time I fled our hut I had
the letters ‘ittin’ permanently embossed onto my upper arm and to this day have
not managed to have them removed through healing. This set the tone for the next two years of
our married life.
Things changed one day when a group of pirates arrived on
our island. While my early years as a
child of merchant sailors had taught me to despise pirates the people of the
tribe, my people, were rather ambivalent to them, often trading with them for
things that couldn’t be produced on our island and giving them safe harbour
when it was requested. This group
contained a particularly obnoxious young fellow named Guilliame, who wore an outrageous
blue coat and overly fancy trousers that must have been stolen from some
decadent noble somewhere and seemed to me to be a complete waste of so much
good cotton and wool.
Kruin sadly took an interest in him at once and each night
they remained she returned to our hut later and later, smelling of rum when she
did and leading me to fear that our she may have compromised our marriage. The night before the pirates were due to
leave she failed to return at all. I
rose with the dawn furious, having not slept at all. I completed my daily meditations in the
uncharacteristic silence of our hut then marched out wanting to give my
cheating wife and this wretched villain a peace of my mind.
Sadly I was too late.
The pirates had gone during the night and Kruin with them, all that
remained was the corpse of Guilliame, stripped of his gaudy blue jacket and
pants. What happened between him and my
wife that drove her to kill him, and why his comrades allowed her to leave with
them, seemingly in peace, I do not know.
All I do know is that Kruin was gravely mistaken to leave our home, and
her destiny, in this way. I vowed to
find her and took passage on the next ship that passed by.
I returned to the lands where I was born as a grown man (and
found that no one seemed to have ever heard of the island of Jamaica, which
confused me) and searched high and low for my wife. My quest took me through strange cities and
amazing landscapes and bought me into contact with many mysterious people.
Over the course of a year many people I asked told me stories
of someone that could be her but each time they turned out to be false
leads. It was not until I reached the
city of Tarrens Junction that people spoke about someone who could be none
other than my dear distracted wife. They
spoke of a woman filled with anger, who threw lighting bolts and summoned waves
but was cursed with misfortune (the last surely being the effect of her denying
her destiny). It made me sad to hear
that she still maintained her uncontrolled ways, but my heart was filled with
joy that I would be reunited with her so soon.
I headed to the docks to seek passage to the village of
Zelkor’s Ferry, the nearest settlement to the crumbling castle I was told she resided
in. Whilst awaiting a ferry I was
approached by a gaudily dressed naval captain who asked me if I’d like to join
him in a game of cards whilst his men finished loading their ship. I don’t usually enjoy things that are left so
much to chance but I didn’t want to say no on an auspicious day such as this,
so sat down to a game.
As we played I explained to the captain and the others
involved the nature of my quest. “Your
wife is Kruin, of the Great Downwards Engineering Company?” he asked. “Why yes” said I, “do you know her?” “Know her?
We fought side by side in the fight against one of the most vicious
pirates of these waters!”
My heart leapt. I’d
heard she’d joined an adventuring party, but I’d also heard they were mostly
just interested in plundering gold from underground ruins. Was she truly fighting pirates? Perhaps she had learned inner calm and had
dedicated her energy to pursuing some noble cause after all. But then the captain continued to speak.
“Most disturbing fight I ever had, that one.” He said.
“I was sure I’d dealt the blackguard a killing blow and his body had
crumbled on the ground, but then out of nowhere I felt a blow that turned the
whole world red, then black. Turns out I
died somehow and it was only by the good graces of my employers that I’m sitting
hear to tell the tale.” He lifted up his
shirt to show me the pink scar that bisected his body from left shoulder to
right hip. “Weirdest thing about it was
this looks like a wound from some kind of great big axe, and the pirate didn’t
even have an axe. Only person with an
axe was…”
As his unfinished sentence settled awkwardly on my brain I
finally saw the clarity that had eluded me so long. Kruin was never going to meet her destiny,
was never going to get her passions under control and was never going to be the
steward of nature or the loving wife that she’d never wanted to be anyway. I didn’t board the boat to Zelkors Ferry,
instead getting passage to as near as anyone was going to where I guessed Jamaica. My destiny was my own and I was best without
Kruin making a mess of it.
Halliman
