Leap of Faith IP5

Chapter Five of Island People

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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.

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Once past the Great Ford the Heroiini turned and led them due south. Seth immediately understood why. The area along the cliff, probably for physiological reasons, was not a popular thoroughfare, so there would be little chance of their meeting anyone there.

The Great Cliff ran most of the island’s length: the island that was the Kingdom Seth’s Father ruled. The cliff began thirty miles west of the capital city as a small break in the landscape and then continued, growing higher and higher, all along the centre of the island until it reached the western coast of the island, where it disappeared among a mass of broken rocks.

They were heading south now, but Seth knew that they would have to turn west soon when they reached the cliff itself. Dawn was just breaking when Seth first smelled and then saw, towering over the Cliff, the great forest of the Elves. Seth remembered, from his geography lesson, that the Great Cliff was fully 300 feet tall here at the Small Waterfall, but the Elves trees were so tall that even here, many of them towered fifty feet above the cliff.

As they got closer to the cliff, they rode into mist, a mist that was a constant in this area. For most of the year, on both sides of the cliff, there was a mist.

The sight of these mists triggered in Seth’s mind the memory of his position and his duty. Surely, now that he was in Heroiini form and with these mists, he could find a way to escape!

They turned and rode along the cliff edge in silence, his captor’s mind somnolent with the strange half-sleep of the Heroiini while Seth’s was frantically busy. As they rode in and out of the mists, he considered his chances. He was sure that he could slip his bounds and race away from his captor, but he would probably be caught if he had to go more than a mile or so. And finding a Farmer to help him within a mile was impossible here. And if he found a Heroiini… would they help him or his captor?

Seth stared ahead, frustrated, thinking, and almost missed what he was looking for! Growing right up to the cliff edge, was one of the trees of the Elves. Suddenly, it came to him that the plain was not the only avenue of escape. And a patch of fog was just about to cover him and his captor.

Seth waited, his heart pounding, while the mist covered them. Keeping the direction to the tree firmly fixed in his mind, he reached forward and gently but quickly cut the rope that bound him to his captor.

Before the rope had a chance to hit the ground, Seth’s horse shot forward, heading toward the spot he kept fixed in his memory, the spot where he remembered the tree. Listening intently behind him, he heard his captor startle and, after a moment’s confusion, start to ride after him, but slowly and carefully through the mist, not having Seth’s specific knowledge of the distance to the edge and probably not being worried about Seth being able to actually escape.

The tree was only one hundred yards in front of him, but at the end of seventy-five yards, the mist betrayed him, petering out in all directions. His captor, still confused but now with a better view, sped up. Seth stopped his horse several yards short of the edge and (the first time he had actually left his horse since the transition) leapt off the far side. His captor, having now seen the tree and made the connection in his head, raced after him.

He would have preferred, as he reached the edge of the cliff, to stop and take his bearings. But the hooves behind him panicked him into, instead, merely racing toward the tree, arms outstretched, and, at the last moment, launching himself in a leap toward the tree.

As he leapt, Seth realised two things. The first was that his eyes had deceived him, and the tree, while ‘close’ to the edge, was still several yards away from it. The second was that the Heroiini body was considerably less suited to jumping than his Farmer body had been.

Thus it was that instead of the graceful leap that Seth had pictured in his mind, with an easy land and grasp at the end, he found himself instead hurtling downward in mid-air. After a few feet, he did begin hitting branches, but he hit these so quickly that his hands grasped at them fruitlessly and painfully. He hit one branch hard enough to spin him completely around in mid-air. While he spun, seemingly in slow motion, he noticed two things, one after the other. The first was the startled face of a young Fashgen (Elf boy) peering out from the leaves; the second was a very large branch directly below his face.

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