A Fisherman in Theramore

Chapter i

"Turtles?"

"Aye, turtles. And there's not much meat on these young 'uns"

"So, you want to make soup?"

"Aye. Still, borin' an' all that. Ye might wanna be sunnin' yerself a bit there lad. A bit pale ye seem. Must be too much of that time up in Witch."

I passed off the rest of the conversation with a few nods and flicks of the eyes to scan the horizon over the stout little dwarf's head. He got the message and thrust the flimsy wooden fishing pole in my hands. I asked him what for.

"Ye'll need to catch some fish first. The turtles are a bit smart round 'ere. Greedy gubbins too. They'll mostly ignore ye unless ye've a tasty morsel."

He reached into his pockets and took out a few brightly coloured balls. They smelled rank.

"Bright baubles, laddie. Give off a strange smell that fish are attracted to. Don't put 'em on yer hands or they'll stink fer a week!" He thrust them into my backpack. I gagged a little and closed the strap shut. I had a sickening feeling that they would make everything else in my

"I thought you were a stonemason, anyways?" He asked

"I was" I replied.

"Shame really. Noble art that, stonemasonin'. Now these turtles bite, and bite hard. Ye might lose a finger if ye're not careful, boy. Where's yer dirk?"

I took out my little blade. It was dull in colour but still as sharp as the day I bought it.

"Ye'll not kill nowt wi'that. Give us it 'ere."

He grabbed the knife and ran to the grindstone in the back room, sending pretty blue sparks off in all directions. I protested, but the damage was already done. He handed it back, and I could see the blade had been bent and was quite uneven now the silly dwarf had applied the wrong pressure against the spinning coarse stone. Parts of the blade were shiny, other parts were still dull. The knife looked useless.

"A fine dirk that'll make" The dwarf seemed pleased with his handiwork, or lack of it in my opinion. "Now off with yeh."

Perhaps I should explain a little. My father's off at war, far from here. We get a small amount of his earnings, but it's not enough to cover food for the four of us (mother, me, and two sisters.) With little money coming in, mother is always yelling at me to get a job. My sister's haven't finished schooling yet. The youngest one is quite talented with a bow and arrow. She has a pet wolf, stringy little thing, who she trained to collect the arrows for her. A regular little hunter, she is. I do bits here and there around the town. I'm good with my hands, and the castle in Theramore Isle regularly needs maintenance, so the soldiers shacked up there give me a few coins every week to replace the aging stone. Anyway, the cost of the war is so great now; they can't afford to keep me around as handyman. I tried cooking for the landlord at the Cleef's Locker, but I'm not too fond of the smell of devilled eggs and fish heads. The travellers love them though.

So I went foraging around the island deltas south of here. I accidentally stumbled onto Nagle's land, Nagle being an old hermit who lives on this remote little patch of sand in the middle of the crystal waters. At first he thought I was a Defias thief and dropped a net on me.

"Who are you and what are you doing on my land?" He cried, brandishing a pretty grisly mace. His teeth gritted on a gnarled pipe.

I told him my name.

"Sounds like trickery to me! Whose son are you?"

"I am son of Felstaff"

"Felstaff, the old rogue, eh? I wouldn't be going around boasting that if I were you. Some people don't like professional thieves and tricksters in their mix"

"My father is honourable." I said, slightly wounded by his barbed comment.

"I heard they dragged him off to war, kicking and screaming" Nagle taunted. What an old goat!

"You are ill-informed. He was approached by the ess eyes. From Stormwind."

"I know where the ess eyes are from, boy. And ess eyes don't approach you. You approach them, if you can find them, that is."

"Nevertheless" I said, "they did. And you should show a little respect for that."

Nagle chewed on his pipe, and lowered his mace. His mood lightened and he smiled a broad smile. His teeth were browned from the sungrass herbs in his pipe. He was a bizarre coot. "Now boy, I recognise you. Stonemason, right? Up in Theramore? Yes. Say, do you know how to fish?"

"No" I replied, "And can you get me out of this net?"

I started visiting Nagle often after that, and he taught me to fish. He was very good at it too. He wrote a book on it once, and sells a copy on to anyone passing through for the cost that would keep my whole family well-fed for an entire month. He let me read a few chapters. It was full of tips and techniques, and interspersed with wild stories about how he once caught a gleaming sword from an ancient civilisation. As he pulled it up, the water glowed with its radiance, as if the metal contained an invisible fire. Nagle would tell me that story again and again, over-elaborating more so each time, until the sword became the size of a man, and blinded all the fish around him with its burning light. The owner of the sword, by the fifth retelling, was now a demi-god from the underworld; an ancient being that wrought havoc upon the entire realm.

I was just interested in fishing. It meant we didn't have to pay for food, when I brought home a large satchel of wriggling oily blackmouth fish, my family was amazed and thanked me for the bounty. We had fish all the time. After a while, my sisters began to complain that only eating fish was making them feel ill a lot, and our house began to smell rotten. So, I decided to sell the fish for money, and that's where we are right now.

The dwarf, from a little hut near the tavern, is going to pay me quite a lot to catch turtles, even though I offered him my services for fishing.

I set out towards the edge of the island. After a while, the undergrowth became extremely thick, and I had to fight my way through it, occasionally using the dirk to swipe away a few rogue branches. I thought I heard something like a cow and looked up. Perhaps it was my eyes playing tricks on me. It was the middle of the day but quite dark when you were steeped in twelve-foot brambles. Ahead of me there was a shadow, making a strange grunting sound. It was larger than a man, and I was suddenly afraid. Whatever it was, I couldn't make it out, and it disappeared into the thicket. I proceeded with more caution.

By the time I reached the beach, my legs were scratched and bleeding. I rubbed some berry oil onto the lacerations, which stung horribly, making me bite down on my lower lip and gasp, and wrapped my legs in some linen cloth I had stolen from the armoury at Theramore. The pain subsided and I headed out onto the beach.

It was a bright day, perfect beach weather, although it was not safe for swimming in this part of the island. There was abundance of fish here, and as a result, predatory sharks. Old Tealy, a friend of my father's, had once swum over to the island I was now looking at. He had only got halfway there before something pulled him under the water. I was there that day, but I was too young to remember it. My father still tells fond stories of Old Tealy and vowed to one day kill the shark, or whatever it was, that pulled him under the water.

I sat down. The beach was deserted. Only the gentle sound of waves lapping against sand could be heard. I felt a desire to throw my things down and just lay there, lazily dozing until the sun went down. So I did. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the sun add colour to my pale cheeks.

I don't know how long I had been there, but I was awoken when a shadow passed over my face, robbing me of my sun and making me jump up, alerted. It was a turtle. It was huge; larger than me. I was suddenly very frightened and tensed my body, not daring to move. The turtle passed its windowless, beady eye over me, and decided I wasn't worth bothering about. It leaned its head slowly towards my rucksack and inspected it with its eyes, nose and beak. It was such a slow, weary character, I thought I could sit up, remove my dirk and slit its sagging throat at a leisurely pace before it even acknowledged my intentions. This is what I planned, anyway. I sat up; the turtle paused momentarily, as if assessing my threat level, before yawning its way back to the intriguing rucksack. I slid my hand to my pocket, where the dirk lay secure. I unbuttoned the holster, removed the blade and moved it up to a striking position. I was about to go for it, when the turtle did something unexpected. All this time, it had been bumbling slowly along, not looking like much of a threat but that all changed in an instant. It charged its head down onto my rucksack and ripped into it with its tremendously powerful beak. Once it had the pack in its vice-grip jaws it violently shook its head, sending all my belongings flying, and ripping the leather backpack to pieces.