CHAPTER 2-4
Phoenix
It was late afternoon, after hours of hiking and finding one of Áthas' waypoints after another - Heinrich's sage advice to Olwen on how to find the remains of the road, which was, indeed, near-impossible to see beneath the dirt, flora, and leaf litter of the forest floor, had proven prescient when the little girl suddenly squealed excitedly about an hour later: "My foot! My foot!" - when their surroundings began lightening steadily as the trees thinned out.
And then the thick trees suddenly came to an end, and the six hikers emerged at the top of a plain sloping gently downwards to a narrow neck of land and another beach. But it was what was scattered haphazardly across the plain, almost like the boulders across the land bridge, that caused Fynn to pull up short, and Olwen to breathe, "Wow."
"What do you think?" Áthas asked them, beaming, immensely pleased with their reactions.
No one replied for a moment, as they took in the scene. For what they saw below were the ruins of dozens of lean-tos, shacks, and even a handful of rudimentary cottages.
"People once lived here," Phoenix murmured. Somehow, it had never occurred to him, or the other four hikers, apparently, that anyone might have ever called this island home. But why wouldn't they have?
"And not just any people," Áthas said.
"Who?" Olwen demanded.
"That, my dear, is to be the subject of the story I will be sharing tonight after dinner."
"No, they beat us!" the group suddenly heard from about a hundred feet to their right. Phoenix glanced over, to see the second group emerging from the trees. He couldn't help but chuckle, for Osian and Owain appeared nothing short of devastated.
"When we have to stop every ten feet for you to get a pebble out of your shoe," Emyr gently chided his sons, "this is the kind of thing that can happen."
"But they were really sharp pebbles!" one of the boys - Phoenix wasn't sure which - whined.
"They only won because they have Áthas with them to help," the other groused.
"Keep telling yourself that!" Olwen called.
Some time later, as night was falling properly and everyone was pleasantly full from dinner, Áthas waited for a lull in the mellow conversations around the beachside fire to announce, "So I promised curious Olwen here the story of who once lived in this place. You all have noticed what remains of people's homes on the plain?" Everyone nodded. "Tonight, you're going to be sleeping in them, should you wish, and if you don't want to, you're welcome to settle in on the beach again. Now, ordinarily I would have had everyone pick out their ruin of choice already, while it was still light out. There is a reason I did not."
Klara apparently couldn't contain herself, for she asked, "And that reason is?"
"It is tangentially related to the story I am going to tell now, and directly related to the story I'll tell on a different night. Hold on to your question for the time being, and all will soon become clear, I promise." People settled themselves in more comfortably atop or leaning against the logs arranged around the bonfire. "Long ago, Sidereal Isle was a prison."
"Really?" someone gasped.
"Like, for bad people?" one of the boys - Phoenix wasn't sure which - asked.
"For very bad people. In fact, only the very worst criminals were the ones who were sent here by the Republic to serve their lifelong sentences. Because of the rip currents that often ring the island, the land bridge, at any tide, is the only safe way to return to the Europan coast, and it was constantly patrolled by land and by sea. If you found yourself here, serving a sentence, there was no giving anyone the slip unless you were willing to risk near-certain drowning. But some of them were willing to take that risk, because of how badly they wanted to escape the terrible existences they had."
"What was life like as a prisoner here?" Acair asked.
"Very difficult. There is fresh water on this island, as you will soon see for yourself, and there are fruits, nuts, berries, and small game to be found in the woods. But this was all happening during a very old period of the Republic, when the governors and councilors were not especially concerned with Zoidian rights. How many people, consuming normal amounts of resources, can this island support? No one knows the answer to that question, but whatever it is, it's definitely fewer than the numbers that were actually living here, struggling to survive. The prisoners formed gangs, and fought each other for control of the resources. Many starved.
"The crude dwellings you saw on the plain were all made by the prisoners here, with no help from vehicles or Zoids. The Republic certainly wasn't going to make sure they had comfortable quarters for shelter. Imagine if you were put on this island, surrounded by hostile people who had tortured, murdered...and you didn't have your pack with you. And no one was feeding you meals, as I have, nor were there any caches of food around the island to provide for you. What do you think you would have felt, or done?"
The triplets were giving this hypothetical scenario serious thought, for the brows of all three were furrowed in concentration. Finally, Fynn volunteered, "Try and ally myself with someone who knew how to survive, I suppose. Hopefully I'd have a useful skill that would make them want to share their information and resources with me."
"Smart, and certainly a great many prisoners did just that."
"There were probably a lot of deaths here anyway, though," Emyr pointed out. "If the island can only support so many people, and the government kept dumping in more, it'd get ugly sooner or later."
"Exactly. Some would say that all of these people deserved such a difficult and probably brutally short remainder of their days, because of the nature of their crimes, but others would say a baseline of merciful treatment should be met, even for society's lowest of the low. This question is relevant to tonight's story."
Phoenix looked around the fire at the brightly lit faces, all turned towards Áthas and hanging on her every word. He knew his dear friend Willow had had some background in history, but he had never had the opportunity to sit down with her and truly listen to all of the stories of humanity's past that were surely stuffed into her brain. Perhaps, to hear her would have been something like this: an enraptured audience, shining eyes, and the storyteller's genuine enthusiasm for the subject. A pang of nostalgia and a powerful longing to see her again sliced through his gut.
"The criminals were, as I said, kind of scattered and only loosely affiliated with one another in the occasional gang," Áthas continued. "Largely, it was every person for themselves. That all changed with the arrival of one particular prisoner.
"His name has been lost to history, or perhaps convenient bureaucratic 'disappearance.' For purposes of this story, we'll call him Zero. He was accused of a terrible crime but denied it. In those days, there were no courts determining guilt or innocence, no trials by a jury of one's peers. If you were accused of something and the governor of your territory decided the accusations were true, that was it. You'd either serve your sentence in a prison on the mainland, or come here if the accusations against you were grave enough to merit lifetime imprisonment."
Fynn raised his hand. "Did the Republic pursue the death penalty at that time?"
"For the most part, no. Not officially, anyway. Those accused of conspiring with the Empire to commit treason against the government were put to death by firing squad, but they were the only ones. Everyone else would serve their sentence in a prison...or here. Marooning on Sidereal Isle was considered to be an unofficial death sentence, though, because of how difficult it was to survive. With low resources and a population consisting exclusively of murderous criminals - or allegedly murderous criminals, at any rate - you can see why being sentenced to this island seemed a fate worse than death.
"Zero told everyone from the governor who sentenced him, to the soldiers who brought him here to serve out his sentence, to the prisoners already present, that he was innocent. No one listened and no one believed him, because wouldn't you say or do anything you could to avoid marooning?" The triplets nodded, their eyes wide. "It was said that Zero began to lose his mind. He could not accept what had become of his life, and grew ever more deranged as he implored someone, anyone, to understand and accept the injustice he claimed had been done to him.
"Zero, like many before him, ultimately chose to attempt escape. One night, on the night of the full moons, he gave a rousing speech before taking to the water, speaking of freedom, autonomy, and the villainy of the Republican government, who had denied them all their basic rights in marooning them here. When he was done, the prisoners implored him not to go. They had been deeply moved by his brave and soaring words, and many of them, finally, believed him, and believed in his innocence. But he would not be dissuaded, and he dove into the sea." Áthas pointed behind her to the point of beach just barely visible beyond the firelight. "Some thought that swimming from this very spot gave the best possible chance of not only dodging the rip currents, but evading the Republican patrols on the mainland. It was night, but the moons were full, and the prisoners were able to watch him for awhile as he swam west towards the coast. But eventually they lost sight of him, for the channel is large and he was small, and they waited, watching and listening, wondering if he had been successful."
Áthas waited a beat in a dramatic pause, then barked, "When suddenly!" The triplets - and everyone else, Phoenix included - jumped. "Suddenly, across the channel, there were blaring alarms, and spotlights, and people shouting. A Glidoler hovered over the coast, and the prisoners saw its beam vulcan gun light up the night, firing into the water. And then...nothing. The spotlights turned off, the Glidoler resumed its north-south patrols, and the soldiers returned to their posts."
"Was...was he dead?" one of the boys - Phoenix wasn't sure which - asked fearfully.
Áthas smiled mysteriously. "No one knows. The Republican Army certainly thought he was, but rumors sprang up not long after that night that his body was never found.
"But I've skipped something very important: what happened here, on the island, after the prisoners witnessed what certainly looked like Zero's murder by the Republican Glidoler pilot. They were horrified by what they had seen. And they banded together, finally, for the very first time, and mutinied."
"What's 'mutinied'?" asked the other of the boys.
"Rebelled. Revolted against the authorities, whom they saw as their cruel and unjust oppressors. A bunch of ragtag, half-starved, weaponless criminals, facing off against the sheer might of the Republican Army." Áthas waited, allowing this to sink in.
"So what happened?" Emyr this time, though the entire group was unconsciously leaning forward and probably had the same question.
"Annihilation," Áthas replied slowly, coldly. "The next day, with every voice shouting 'For justice! For Zero!', every last prisoner swarmed the land bridge at once, hoping to overwhelm the few patrolling soldiers and their Zoids. But the Army responded swiftly, and with overwhelming violence. Every last prisoner was shot down where they stood." Another pause. "One man lived long enough to tell Zero's story, but he soon perished too. No one survived the massacre. And Sidereal Isle was never again used as a prison. Not one person has lived here ever since."
There was shocked silence, broken only by the whisper of gentle waves distant and the snaps and crackles of the bonfire, which was dying down. Beside it in the sand, the triplets were bunched together, clinging to one another with eyes like saucers.
Áthas broke the heavy mood with a grin. "And that was my tale for tonight. Any questions?" A cloud scudded across the fat crescents of the moons.
Siân raised her hand. "I was wondering...is there any evidence that what Zero said was true? That he was, in fact, innocent?"
Áthas shook her head. "None that has survived long enough to be found, anyway, and believe me, I've tried. I think, though, that that is part of what makes this story so interesting: how many questions still remain. Was he innocent? Did he survive and make his escape when so many before him had failed? What exactly did he say that night that finally brought all the other prisoners around to his side, that made them so loyal to him that they would go up against an entire army to avenge his seeming death? We have no answers."
"That was an amazing story," Heinrich murmured from beside Phoenix.
"I don't think I would even believe it if I hadn't seen their shanties here with my own eyes," Fynn agreed. "You can tell that whoever built them didn't have access to the materials, tools, and machines used to construct buildings on the mainland."
"While there are no official names for any aspects of this island's geography save one, which I am saving for another night," Áthas told them, "this neck of land containing the plain, the ruined dwellings, and the beach is known colloquially as 'Prisoners' Point.' I'm sure you can see why. There are the remnants of a handful of crude shelters to be found elsewhere on Sidereal Isle, because until the night that Zero swam off into the Drowned Channel, there wasn't much in the way of communal harmony amongst the prisoners. That there are even this many in one place indicates that one of the gangs was probably more prosperous, and larger in number, than the others."
Phoenix suddenly remembered something Áthas had mentioned prior to beginning the evening's story. "Wait. You said there was a reason we couldn't choose which of the ruins to stay in until it was dark out." Klara nodded, obviously still curious as to why. "So what was that reason?"
Áthas smiled deviously. "I'll tell you in the morning. For now, everyone pick out where you'd like to be sleeping tonight, or, as I said, you may sleep on the beach instead if you wish. Though...I wouldn't recommend it."
This got the triplets' attention. "Why?" one of the boys asked.
"Because you might miss out on the fun tomorrow," was her cryptic reply.
"Wait and what about the winner for today?" asked the other boy.
"Oh! Thank you for reminding me; I'd almost forgotten!" Áthas gasped in mock horror, though Phoenix suspected her friendly sarcasm was lost on the younger set. She rooted around for a moment in her pack, which was beside her in the sand leaning against the log, and retrieved one of the star-shaped pins, which she held up so that its sparkly silver surface caught the bonfire's light.
"Today's pin honors someone who voluntarily went outside their comfort zone, and furthermore proved to have some very keen-eyed...feet." A tiny shriek issued forth from somewhere within the clustered triplets. "Today's winner is Olwen."
"I can't believe I won!" Olwen squealed, her excitement and the clapping and congratulations of the other hikers drowning out the disappointed groans of her brothers. She took the offered pin from Áthas and immediately fastened it to her jacket, then looked to Heinrich, beaming. "Just like you!"
Phoenix did not so much hear as feel the warmth in Heinrich's pleased, chuckling response: "Just like me, yes." Which made Phoenix feel warm with happiness, too.
Author's Note, January 2024: My apologies for how long it took for me to post this chapter. As some of you may already know, this site has had a number of technical issues impacting both readers and authors. One of them was that the statistics function was broken for nearly four months. Without that, an author has absolutely no idea if anyone is even reading anything that they are posting. I'm not going to peg updates on when or whether I receive reviews, but I would like to take a moment to encourage you, dear reader, to leave a review for this or any story you're reading. Writing fanfiction is often a very lonely road, and reviews mean far more to authors than you probably know. I know they do to me.
Hopefully this site is at last back on its feet again, and if that turns out to be the case, then I will resume regular updates of this story. Thank you very much for reading.