Down the river? IP 13

Island People is a young adult fantasy book centring on a young prince. The book starts with his kidnapping and follows his adventures as he not only escapes from his kidnapper but gains critical allies and friends. 

The entire book is scheduled on Substack, and there are several sequels. This is a book I wrote years ago, so it is in a bit of a rough form. Critiques and comments are more than welcome, they are requested.

← Previous Scene___________________________________________.. Next Scene →

Tristan was glad to see the thick jungle of the southern swamp finally approaching. Although he knew, intellectually, that the Farmers could catch them just as easily on the river through the swamp as they could in the farmlands… he still felt safer. His feelings had been engaged quite a lot this trip. It was the first time he had ever been outside the high forest, and, try as he might, he couldn’t quite emulate his elder’s spirit of detachment.

Nor could he be detached about his new position as ‘Expert’. True, being a firsthand knowledge ‘expert’ was not at all the same as being an ‘encyclopedic depth of information’ expert, but still. When he finally settled somewhere (and he wondered when that would be), he would be expected to consult others on his area of expertise. He couldn’t imagine that idea. He was only eighteen years old, an age equivalent to a Farmer at ten, and this placed him in an extremely odd position.

His musings were interrupted when Seth and Wynforr, who had been talking about something in the back of the boat, suddenly stopped, and Seth said, “We are going to be leaving the river here, going up a side branch, and proceeding by foot.”

“What? Why?” Tristan asked, appalled.

“We might well be being followed, and they will not be able to catch us in the jungle. They will not even know we have turned off.”

Tristan saw the logic of this but stared, with disgust, at the trees lining the river. Whereas the high forest trees had straight, horizontal branches fairly far apart, these trees were a mass of branches going in all directions. Walking in them would be appalling!

He was even more appalled when, after the boat stopped, he saw that Seth was not going to walk in the trees. Stripping off his pants, his long Elven shirt covering him almost to his knees, he stepped out of the boat. Then, to Tristan's total horror, he said, in Marshman, “We will use Marshman now.”

“Marshman…” he stammered out in that language, “I not speak Marshman.”

Seth and Wynforr both turned and stared at him, and he hurriedly explained, “Not yet… next year I learn.”

Wynforr, straightened up and replied, in Marshman, “Well, you will be learning it a little sooner than you had planned.”

And so Tristan, to his chagrin, found himself and Wynforr clambering awkwardly through the trees, with Wynforr alternating between lecturing Tristan, in Marshman, on Marshman; and conversing with Seth on the Marshman culture, about which he knew not a little, though not nearly as much as he knew of Farmers. Meanwhile, Seth slogged through the swamp, speaking to Wynforr, and then, when Wynforr was occupied talking to Tristan, mumbling continuously to himself, all in Marshman. Truly, Tristan was not enjoying this experience. And he couldn’t see how Seth could be… with the mud rising at times to his knees, then the thin layer of water over top, clambering over roots and such.

However, as his Elven nature required, Tristan (with one side of his brain, the other being occupied in his crash course in Marshman) watched Seth. After all, if he was the ‘expert’ on this boy who had been turned from Farmer into Heroiini and now into Elf, he needed to pay attention to his subject. And this attention, as the day wound on, caused him to remark on two things:

The first was that Seth seemed to be getting on much better in the swamp now than previously. While Tristan chalked some of this up to his accumulating experience, he could not reconcile all of it to that. Somehow, Seth's body seemed to be changing. The narrow, gripping feet of an Elf were softening and widening. His hips seemed to be broadening, giving him a wider stance… a stance that would not serve him well in the trees but was obviously made for the swamp, where the broader one’s base, the less one sank into the muck.

The other was that Seth seemed to be continually finding things to eat. While the Elves, particularly, it must be said, the Elf boy would supplement their diet with insects that they came across in the trees, rarely did that form a staple part of the Elf diet. Yet Seth seemed to be voraciously devouring almost anything he came across. If it were not for the incredible fecundity of the swamp, he would have been driving several species to the brink of extinction.

These various behaviors, Seth's continual mumbling to himself, his constant eating of swamp fare, and the changes which were already apparent caused Tristan to conclude that Seth was deliberately driving himself toward a transformation. Tristan wondered why. He wondered if Seth himself had actually reasoned it out or if he was operating on some kind of instinct. He would have liked to have quizzed him on it, but the requirement that they speak Marshman (which was, of course, part of the process) prevented him. Oh, that his parents had placed a higher priority on his learning Marshman! But who could have known?

The end of the day helped confirm his conclusion. Rather than retiring to the trees, as would have been logical, Seth insisted that they help him build a ground bower: that unique Marshman dwelling of sticks and vines. Designed to be easily made (as the Marshman moved frequently around the swamp), the three of them had it set up in a short time. Then Seth caught himself some eels and fish. After he roasted them, the three of them ate: Tristan and Wynforr eating their stored food, Seth the roast eels and fish. Tristan had to block some sensory sensations to ward off nausea. Marshman were known island-wide as the best of cooks… perhaps that was because they had to make do with such vile ingredients.

Tristan retired soon after dinner, tired as only a young boy can be after a hard physical day. But as he lay, his mind drifting away, in his bower, he heard Wynforr and Seth continuing to discuss Marshman habits and customs.

While he slept, Seth's body finished the change that it had started earlier in the day. It was becoming accustomed to these transformations now, and the active support of the conscious mind in triggering the changes had helped dramatically. The storage of the tail, the widening of the hips, and the widening and webbing of the feet it handled quickly and easily. The changes in the skin took longer, as the result would be almost directly opposed to that of the Elf. Whereas an Elf needed skin that would draw moisture from the air and anything that touched it, the skin of the Marshman was meant to be impervious to almost everything.

The other major change was in the brain. The gatekeeper organ was deactivated… not destroyed; that would take much longer, and indeed the body, with its frequent changes, was hesitant to destroy it. The excellent hearing of the Elf could be kept almost unchanged. But the other senses needed drastic augmentation. A Marshman lived its life by its senses. And the changes in the senses needed to be processed accurately by the brain. Seth slept on, and his body changed. But, as it was now practised, the result was almost pain-free, and his dreams were merely filled with overpowering sensations.

← Previous Scene___________________________________________.. Next Scene →