AFLOAT

Having been born and raised on an island, my new guardian and I did not have to struggle to survive at sea. We were comfortable in our wanderings. For a while anyway. We traveled eastward toward the end of the archipelago, paddling between the islands at night to stay out of the hot sun and avoid the ship that had destroyed our village. We were able to gather more than enough provisions during our idle daytime hours.

However, with each stopover on land, I found myself growing more and more restless. What if the "freebooters" — that is what my guardian called them — found us as we hunted for fresh water among the rocks, or dozed under the trees at noon? We would always drag our canoe far ashore and hide our passing by dragging a palm branch over our footsteps. We did not light any cooking fires, instead eating our fish and fruits raw so as not to attract attention with smoke. We used hand signals rather than speaking aloud. It was tedious.

While land became a place of danger and irritation for me, the sea became a healer. At night we would crisscross the calm water under a bright blanket of stars. Rappa, my guardian, passed the time by quietly singing songs and telling stories about our ancestors and the loa. I refused to speak to him for the first few days, somehow blaming him for what had befallen us. But as time went by it seemed that a peaceful aura would descend with nightfall, and my guardian and I began to open up to one another.

I learned that Rappa had been a hunter-priest of our people, which interested me. My own father had been a boat builder and a man of little faith. Among other things, my guardian told me how Loa Ixnextli had created the twinkling Night Rainbow in honor of her mother, Aida-Wedo, by flinging the teeth of her defeated foes into the black heavens. He explained to me that, like it or not, we were now under the care of Agwe, destined to live or die depending on His moods and tides. After asking Rappa all he knew about the Sovereign of the Seas and learning of the god's volatile nature, I did not dare to grumble about our situation.

I also learned that Rappa had been far away in the jungle on a vision quest during the pirate attack on our village, and this is why he was not killed with the rest of our people. Our chief had commanded him to take the potion that caused prophetic dreams, and though it greatly weakened Rappa mentally and physically, he could not refuse. The chief's newest and youngest wife had become pregnant, you see, and the old troll wished to know if she would give him a son to carry on the nearly dried-up bloodline.

Instead, Rappa saw in his hallucinations the death of our entire tribe at the hands of pink-skinned men that lived in a massive floating house that spewed fire and metal. This part of his prophecy, we both understood, had come to pass. But Rappa told me that he had also seen a vision that revealed a thousand green-and-gold banners topping a thousand huts in which lived a thousand jungle frogs. The huts stretched along a sandy beach that was familiar yet different from any that he had ever seen before.

Rappa believed that the dream referred to our Darkspear cousins, who had crossed the sea years before and who were destined to flourish on new shores. From that point on we both knew that it was now our quest to find and join these trolls, Agwe willing.

* * * * *

By this time we had been paddling up the island chain for several weeks, farther than either of us had ever been. In truth, it was farther than either of us had ever heard of anyone from our tribe traveling before. Our island and the waters around it had always provided enough sustenance for all of our people, so few felt the need to explore beyond our closest neighboring landmasses. We had been happy, and ignorant, in our isolation.

Unbeknownst to Rappa and me, we were now approaching the far edge of a large barrier reef that bordered the mainland to the east. It was called the Vile Reef, and later in my life I would come to know this name in a very intimate way, because I would experience many great and terrible things upon its borders. But at the time we knew only that our lonesome journey had come to an end because we began to see other boats plying the waters, some of them small canoes like ours and others the lumbering winged ships like those of the pirates who had destroyed our village.

We kept to ourselves until one day we spotted a fishing boat nearby that was manned by several trolls who were singing and joking while hauling their nets in the pre-dawn light. Encouraged by their manner, we paddled over to them and asked if they had come from the Darkspear village. They all looked at each other and laughed until one of them, a troll named Dagoo, told us that we were headed in the wrong direction. There was still an entire ocean dividing us from our cousins!

Seeing our disappointment, the trolls, most of whom we discovered to also be from one broken tribe or another, invited us to return with them to their mother ship. They explained that they were all deck hands on a merchant vessel that sailed between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, the land where the Darkspear had finally settled. They were in the process of provisioning their ship before heading out on a three-year voyage that would take them not too far from the Echo Isles and Sen'jin, the new home of the Darkspear tribe.

Though Rappa and I had no real experience on large sailing vessels, the other trolls assured us that they could find jobs for us on board the merchant ship. It turned out that followers of Agwe were always a welcome boon on a long voyage. And, the sailors teased, the captain would no doubt enjoy having a young cabin boy to abuse and run his errands for him. So began my life at sea.