The Stowaway

Title: The Stowaway
Age Rating: U
Realm: Uncreated
BETA: Wikkid.x, who is awesome, by the way.
Summary: Based on the song 'The Stowaway' from the Doctor Who Series 3 Soundtrack. It's kinda long, so I apologize, most things on here are probably going to be shorter.

When summer ends on the Lilai coast, the sunsets are amazing. The setting sun sets the sky and the water on fire, and the clouds are turned the same pink as the flowers for which the island was named. It is both a blessing and a tragedy that many never see this sight; at that time the harvest has just begun, and communities have better things to do than to admire the beautiful scenery. It is a time of peace, when the chaos of normal life can be put on hold and nature can take centre-stage. If it became an event, a social occasion, I believe that the aura of wonder and serenity would be lost forever.

It was this sight, this amazing beauty, which drew me to the North, so late in the year. It was the first time in years that I had sailed north of the Dark Forests, so I planned to be there for a while. I dropped anchor on the first of September, and planned to stay through the autumn, just off the coast of the island, before sailing south again for the winter.

I arrived in the capital, coming onto land for the first time in weeks, and stopped to take it all in. The castle, ancient and sandstone, shines on the hill, on the inland side of the town, where the great Kings and Queens of The Uncreated Realm have ruled for eons. Of course, after my day of sightseeing and buying supplies from the famous markets and shopping halls, I found my way to a tavern. I reckon it’s something in the blood of all sailors that somehow, we always end up in taverns and bars. And you can’t fight nature, can you?

Most of the men in there were really rather surprised to see a southern woman drinking in the bar. It’s understandable, I suppose, southerners are rare this far North, although, Tarwyn being the capital, they aren’t as rare here as they are in the East. My appearance probably shocked them as much as anything. Southern women often wear long linen scarves around their heads, as there is a lot of sand from the desert in the south, and they keep our eyes and hair safe. Years at sea, however, had prompted me to abandon the long, linen dresses I had grown up with, as well as the traditional scarves. I wore my hair short around my shoulders, in defiance of the traditions that forbade a woman to cut her hair, cotton trousers, black boots and a white shirt. Generally male clothing but fitted enough that I looked feminine. I was always terrified of forgetting my gender at sea, with no conventions to follow.

Of course, as I explained to my friend Chalia when we had met up earlier that day, (because I don’t come inland very often, I wanted to get all my business sorted in one go) I really started wearing more flattering clothing after an incident in the midwinter. I first met Chalia a few years back, when I moored on Lilai for the first time. She told me about the sunsets, and since then, she has become my only real, close friend. We see each other whenever we can, and she fills me in on her life up at the palace (she’s Lady-in-waiting to Lady Sunshine, the Queen Mother no less), while I tell her about my travels. We had got together that afternoon in a café off one of the market streets, which is one reason why I had found my way to the tavern. Chalia was my best friend, but she was far too genteel for me to be knocking back ale around her. I needed a stronger drink than tea.

We talked of many things, that late winter afternoon. Chalia was expecting her second child with her husband Ganyar, a stable hand up at the palace. She says that if it’s a girl she'll name it after me, although Dorindah is an odd name for a Northern woman. She told me about the new Queen’s Other Side friends, and how the world was to change dramatically. She showed off the new, light-blue trousers that one of the Queen's friends had designed for the maids and ladies to wear under their dresses, which apparently made work far easier. I told her about the stowaway.

************************************************************************

It was midwinter, I had moved from the Lilai coast about three weeks ago, and was sailing my way down to the capital. I had stopped for the night near the Light Woods, as the weather was almost always fine there, just as you were almost guaranteed storms if you stopped near the Dark Forests. The night was as clear as it had ever been, albeit somewhat chilled. I was checking up on the supply status; for some reason my stocks of drinking water and vegetables were depleting rapidly. I dearly hoped it wasn’t rats; rodents are so hard to get rid of on board a ship, and although most sailors generally ignored them, there was something I found menacing about their yellowed teeth and rough, matted fur.

I entered the room quietly, intending to ensure that I had enough food to last me a few wore weeks. I walked further and further into the storeroom, and realized how long it had been since I had properly gone through my inventory. Most of this stuff was rope and wood and spare barrels; the ship had been stocked enough to serve a crew of at least thirty adults when I first started my travels. As I got further and further inside, holding the lantern higher in the darkness, I tripped on a loose plank and I fell, only just catching myself on a barrel of ale. I looked up and saw a cleared area in one of the back corners. I picked up the lantern -which in my fall, I had dropped- and shifted over to investigate.

The sight that met my eyes surprised me. In the corner, lay the remains of what looked like a meal, with rats and mice chewing on the crumbs and gnawing on the small amounts of gristle from the meat. Their cold, beady eyes stared back at me accusingly, before they scattered to the corners of the dark room. I observed the few objects that were there, found a few books, a lantern, obviously only recently extinguished, a rather expensive-looking velvet bag and some man's clothing. Burlap sacks had been rolled into a pitiful approximation of a bed, and, reaching down, I felt that they were still warm. Realization hit like a lightning bolt.

I was not alone on my ship. I had a stowaway.

The thought intrigued me more than anything. I should have been angry or scared, but instead I was just amused at the fact that he had gone so long undetected. These feelings made me worry slightly about my sanity, but this was nothing new. I picked up the bag from the floor. It contained some rather expensive-looking jewelery, some strange gold coins, a small compass and some unfamiliar maps. A traveller, it seemed.

Finally, I shook the bag even harder, and a small, leather-bound book fell out. I recognized it; it was an old copy of 'Taisteali's Compendium'. I was, still am, hardly a veracious reader, but even I know that that book could be found in any library or educated household. It was all that most people knew of the world beyond the Realm borders. Part travel guide, part fairy-tale. So I flicked through it, looking for some clue of who had snuck aboard, and found that there were notes and annotations scribbled in the margins and around the sides of the pages. I pocketed the book, and promised myself I'd read it later: Now, I had a job to do.

My final search concluded that there were no blades or heavy items, or really anything that could be classed as a weapon within the bag, which set my mind further at ease. Unless he had a weapon on his person, my stowaway wasn’t looking for a fight. I stood, and left the room to investigate further.

I didn’t have to search for him for very long. I was walking down the corridor beside the main common room, and there he was, walking towards me, comically trying to make no noise. He tried to run when he saw me, into the common room. Unfortunately for him, the common room has only one door… and I was blocking it.

“You shouldn’t be here, you know.” I said, mildly, leaning against the door frame. His startled expression almost made me laugh, but I clamped down on that urge. He was a rather tall man, taller than me at any rate, with brown hair and dark eyes. His clothing was simple, a loose white shirt and dark trousers, with heavy black boots poking out of the ends. I should have been searching for places where a knife could be concealed, but instead I was looking at his face. He was really rather handsome, I decided, especially with the expression of innocent bewilderment and confusion he wore at the moment. He saw the amusement on my face, and his expression became more guarded and wary.

“What are you going to do?” He sounded suspicious, stepping back a bit from my poorly concealed smile.

“Well, tell you what, seeing as how I’ve already found your belongings, and you don’t seem to have any weapons on you, I’ll give you a chance.”

He smiled at that, his stance relaxed slightly and his response, when it came, seemed slightly mocking, but pleased all the same. “That’s very generous of you, more than most captains would give me. What’s in it for you?”

“Well, tell me why you’re here. What made you stowaway on my ship, when you have more than enough gold in that bag of yours to buy a boat of your own? Why would a man risk stowing away on a ship when the crew could have killed him on the spot?”

“It’s complicated.”

“My position isn’t. I ought to have thrown you overboard by now, still could, for that matter. So, answer my question, why are you here?”

He didn’t answer at first. Instead, he looked about the room. It was a large, domed space, the largest room on the ship, and easily the most formal. I loved this room. The ceiling was painted with scenes of pirates and sea-monsters, mermaids and dolphins. Sometimes, I dragged my bedclothes in here just to stare up at those paintings all night. There was a bar over at one side, further evidence that this ship was meant for a large crew, but I’d cleared the chairs to the side, leaving a large empty space in the centre. He finished his assessment of our surroundings quickly and then turned back to me. He smiled, held out his hand, and said one thing I was most definitely not expecting:

“Let’s dance.”

“What?” Now I was confused and not a little suspicious.

“As you said earlier, I have no weapons amongst my possessions, and nowhere to hide them on my person. If I intended to hurt you, I would have done it already, so where’s the harm in one dance?”

“There’s no music.” I was in shock now, so the most obvious objection came to my lips. He laughed slightly and took my hand in his, placing my other on his shoulder, and his own at my hip. He swept us around the room a few times, without saying a word, allowing me to process what was happening. He looked down, straight into my eyes, and I found my heartbeat accelerating. Finally he slowed, simply moving us in a small circle in the centre of the room, swaying to a silent beat, and began his tale.

“I’m on my way home, which is still a long way from here, on the East side of the country. I have money, as you saw, but it is from a land on the other side of the ocean, so useless here. That’s why I have to borrow, or steal, to get home” His eyes lit up with determination, and he stared into a space for a moment, before his attention returned to me. “I will find a way to get back. I promised Acacia that I would return by her twentieth birthday, and that’s what I’ll do.”

“Who's Acacia?”

“She is my bride, the most beautiful girl in the whole world. She’s waiting for me, back home.” He sighed, and closed his eyes, “I miss her, so much. I can still see her beautiful face, her golden, sunlit hair, the way her green eyes sparkled when she laughed, how she felt I my arms…” he trailed off with a sigh, and while his eyes were closed, I felt a small tear of jealousy and sympathy trail down my cheek. The distracted, peaceful look on his face gave me the belief that he wasn’t really dancing with me at all, in this darkened room, the ocean placid outside. No, he was in a town in the country, with a beautiful blonde smiling up at him, blossoms on the trees.

He straightened, after a moment, and smiled down at me. “I’ve roamed all over this land and the next, and now it’s time for me to go home.” He let go of me, and stepped back. “That is my tale, my fair captain, now, are you going to feed me to the local marine life?” His eyes held a teasing gleam, as I pretended to consider the matter.

“Hmmmm, a story and a dance, in exchange for food and safe passage to the mainland…hmmmm,” I put on a thoughtful expression and tapped my chin with my finger. “Well,” I said after a few seconds, “I do have a few bedrooms to spare, and someone needs to help me navigate the estuary to the Natinah River up to the capital… So, okay, you have a deal.”

“Really?!” His grin could have lit up all of Tarwyn, my heart felt like it would burst. I felt myself answering his grin with one of my own, and I can’t say how long we stood there, just smiling and smiling, before, finally, I yawned and said “Right, I’m hauling up the anchor at first light, so I’d better show you to your room.” I turned and walked from the room, down the corridor, to the room two -large- rooms down from mine.

Well, I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea, did I?

***

With two people to help with the sailing and navigation, my ship reached the estuary within two weeks; as opposed to the month it would have taken me alone. We got to know each other very well over those weeks, and by the time we sailed into the river harbour in the capital, I was beginning to dread our final parting. It made my old life seem so much lonelier, to see it compared to this life of companionship and conversation, it made my heart ache to think about it. But the day drew closer and closer, until, finally, it dawned, bright and clear, and we could see the castle at Tarwyn silhouetted against the sunrise.

“Well,” I sighed, “There it is; the capital.”

“Uh huh,” he replied, leaning his arms against the railings on the deck, “There it is, in all its glory.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Do you want to crash into the docks? Come on!” I hurried hum to the rigging, while I brushed away the few tears that had come to my eyes.

We parted on the wharf. He’d done the capital on his way west, at the start of his journey, and was anxious to get home. We hugged, for a long time, and when we separated, he held on to my arms and looked me full in the face, mahogany brown boring into my blue. He smiled his heartbreaking smile, and said, “Thank you.”

I was so afraid that he was going to leave at that, so I said “For what?”

“For the food, for the nice comfy bed, for the company, for not using me as shark-bait.” He kept smiling, and then his expression turned serious. “Can you promise me something, Dorindah? Just one little thing?”

“Of course.”

He sighed, “Don’t carry on alone. I understand the need for solitude and travel, I’ve done enough of it myself, but I don’t think you understand how lonely, how soul-destroying the dark times can be without someone beside you. So, find someone. If anything, it’ll mean you have an extra set of hands!” He tried for a joke, but I knew he was deadly serious. “Okay? By the next time we meet, and we will meet again, I want you to have found yourself a permanent shipmate. Okay?

And although I knew that I would never be able to keep it, and that, in all likelihood, we would never see each other again, I agreed.

And then we hugged, one last time, before he walked off the pier, without looking back.

I watched him leave, tears in my eyes, and I reached into my pocket for a tissue. Instead, I found a small, black book. His book, his scribbled-in copy of Taisteali's Compendium.


So now, I sit here in this tavern, months later, drinking to forget unarguably the best two weeks of my life. Every laugh, every smile, every time he got something wrong and we almost crashed, every memory of an evening spent dancing on the deck or in the common room, it all burned, the feeling of loneliness and dread for the coming lifetime of solitude almost too much to bear. But hey, that’s what ale’s for, right?

But I wonder how his journey ended. As I sail on, travelling my lonesome sea, his face still haunts my dreams, in amongst the usual dreams of sea monsters and my old home, those eyes are still there, in the background, watching and smiling. He’s still a stranger, sometimes it’s hard to believe he was even here. He left no trace, nothing; I might as well have dreamed it all. Except for the book. His book, that I will keep until I we meet again... if we meet again.

But even though I may constuct elabroate ideas of where he ended up, in my heart I am certain of the truth. He’s home, under the blossoms, lying in the grass with his love beside him, and all is right in his world.