A wrong turn at the seashore

Previously: After taking shelter from a storm, Mira and her companions wake to a new day and find that the structure they spent the night in is not an abandoned home or military outpost, at all. It was a ship: wrecked in the forest, miles from any large water source and empty...


At first I could only stare and wonder if my eyes deceived me. Could it indeed be some form of home whose exterior had sagged to give it the appearance of an upside-down vessel? I thought not, for the ends of it were indeed curved, not broken. The windows were indeed rounded, like portholes. And the shattered limbs nearby were indeed straight and had once been hewn by man into masts.

"Bones of Barnok."

"Indeed." Merrick stood beside me, his arms crossed. "Have you ever seen such a thing?"

"In the middle of a forest...? No. I have not." I whirled, scratching my head. Was there indeed a lake or a river nearby? It would have to be a wide one, deep of water and strong of current to handle such a vessel. This was no plainsman's skiff, this was a sea worthy craft, capable of handling large waves, strong winds and the temperamental creatures that made widows out of so many sailors' wives. "How can this be?"

"Perhaps the cap...tain...got lost," Broo-Fang Tane suggested in his usual, lilting speech.

"Lost? You could run a horse for three days in any direction and not find an ocean or a sea," I said.

Seyhmurh shrugged his massive shoulders. "I dunno. It could happen."

"It could HAPPEN?" I knew he was not the sharpest arrow in the quiver, but the man couldn't be that dense, could he? "How, pray tell, could that happen?"

Another shrug. "If it is possible for a man on a horse to lose his way and find the sea, why is it not possible for the opposite to be true? Why can't a sailor lose his way and find the forest?"

I closed my eyes and shook my head. "Usually, that's because there are a few obstacles along the way. Like a reef, perhaps. Shallow water, most likely. Barring that, a beach. In this case, several towns and two kingdoms?"

"It's still possible."

"Look, you stubborn...."

"Take ease," Tane said. His hand was calm and light on my shoulder. "Why argue the im...possibil...ity of something that is...right...before our........................eyes?"

I had to agree to that logic. Merrick and I walked around the structure, looking for clues. "Perhaps it was dragged to this place," he wondered. "On some kind of huge cart? Or rollers? Could a number of horses do such a thing?"

"Not without leaving a trail," I said. For if such an enormous thing had been hauled over land, it would have surely left some kind of destruction in its wake. but the trees all around it were of the same height. It looked for all purposes to have been dropped from the sky, like the feces of a giant bird. "And an enterprise such as that would require planning and attract attention. Surely, it would be known of and recorded somewhere. I've never heard of anything like this."

"Oh, well, then. It must not have happened," Seyhmurh said. "Odd for such a thing to appear in front of us and not let you know how it got there."

I probably deserved that, but I glared at him, anyway. As Tane had pointed out, the evidence was directly in front of our eyes, solid under our hands, unquestionably there. It only hadn't been recorded...yet. This tale would bring enough coin to have me living comfortably for a long time--perhaps it would even give me the security to turn in my historian's quills and earn a piece of land somewhere where ships would not fall out of the sky.

If, I told myself, I could determine the nature of the vessel and what had happened to its crew.

Epi-prologue

Previously: Esmiralda, a freelance historian and member of the Fulcuhn--a group commissioned by Queen Phedera to record the achievements and culture of the different people of the land--has discovered that one of her traveling companions is an agent of the crown in his own right. Merrick has confided in her, and her alone, that he is a member of the Ministry of Human Preservation, tasked with finding and weeding out evil wherever it appears...

"Esmiralda, come have a look at this!" Merrick shook me with enough force to rattle my teeth. I pushed him away, groggy, and looked up into a face nearly glowing with anticipation. My head pounded and my back ached from the rough ground. We were alone in the structure.

"What?" I asked, momentarily forgetting where we were. We had talked long into the night after his revelation and it was a bit surprising to see him not only awake, but energized.

"You must come outside." He shuffled away and disappeared through the opening.

I groaned and willed my stiff joints to follow him. They eventually agreed, but protested all the way. I found a bright new day beyond the ramshackle walls of the old cottage: a sky that was crisp and blue and unmarred by the clouds of the previous night's storm framed the majestic trees all around us. In the distance, I saw the faint purple peaks of some mountain range--I could not put my finger on which one it was. The sun was high in the sky and I had no sense of which direction I was looking in.

Merrick, Seymurh and Broo Fang Tane were standing some distance away.

"Behold!" Merrick shouted with some flourish.

"Yes, it's very nice today," I muttered, shielding my eyes from a ray of sunlight that reached unfiltered through the canopy.

"Indeed it is," he answered. "But that's not why I called you here. You know of the land near the village of Alt?"

"I do," I said, pointing at Seymuhr. "I had just mapped out the area when your brute there abducted me. As you know."

"And what of it?" He persisted. I wondered what he was getting at, but found no clue in Tane's bemused expression.

"Yes. What of it? I think perhaps you need some more rest. I suggest a later start to...to wherever we're going today..."

"You know of the forest, then, and the hills--the distant mountains, the grasslands...?"

"Indeed. It was all on my map, and depicted very accurately, and with an artists' flourish, I might add. Why?"

"What of the lake? Or the sea?"

I scowled. "There is no lake nearby. And the sea? A journey of 18 days would not bring the scent of it."

"Exactly." He gave me a single smug nod, then uncrossed his arms and pointed behind me. "Then how do you explain that?"

I turned, not knowing what to expect, and then a cold tingling sensation formed at the base of my neck and wiggled down my spine. For the structure we had sheltered in was not a square one and, indeed, had never been. We had been unable to see its shape in the dark. The full light of day showed that each end was curved with the points jammed into the ground. The sides were punctured, not with rectangular openings but round ones. What I had first taken for a fallen tree was much too straight and smooth. It was not an abandoned home, at all, nor a woodsman's retreat, hunter's cabin, fort or outpost of any kind.

It was a ship.

Next: The Lost Treasure of Thormun Zool