An Unapproved Exploration Begins
“Do you think you can hit that?” Janner whispered.
Kal did not respond and instead kept his gaze and arrow trained on the cave blat sitting a little more than a stone’s throw away from them. Janner felt his brother inhale slowly, then exhale, and just as the cave blat twitched its wings to fly away, the arrow struck its mark. The cave blat flew and hit the ground, but of Kal’s accord rather than its own.
Kalmar jumped up and was about to let out a loud cry of victory, but Janner shot up right after him and clamped his hand over his brother’s mouth. “Don’t even think about it,” he whispered through gritted teeth.
“Sorry,” Kal whispered, and by the look in his brother’s eyes, Janner knew that Kalmar’s apology was both for nearly scaring off every bit of prey in the forest and for the pain that shot through his hand.
Kal quietly walked over to the blat and picked it up, removing his arrow from the body. “Now that,” he said. “Is something I’m willing to eat.”
Janner crossed his arms and smiled as Kalmar made his way back toward him. “And I’m still telling Mama that you refused to eat food out here.”
Kal rolled his eyes, but the grin stayed on his face. He tossed the blat up in the air and caught it again. “I bet this cave blat wishes it were safely tucked away in its cave right now.”
“Cave blats don’t actually live in caves. They’re only called cave blats because when you see them, you wish they were in a cave instead of right in front of you,” Janner noted.
Kalmar snorted. “Then I guess this guy isn’t a cave blat, because I’m certainly glad he wasn’t hiding in some cave. Then I wouldn’t have been able to shoot him. Although,” he turned to look at Janner, his eyes wide with hopefulness. “If there is a cave around here, we should totally explore it.”
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. What we need to do is get off this island. “No,” Janner said firmly, abruptly taking the lead to head back to their camp.
“No? Why ‘no’?” Kal demanded, running after him. “Hey, Janner, where are you going? I thought we were going to hunt more!”
“Kal, you got a chance to hunt. Be content with that. You killed that blat and another one. I’d say that’s decent, considering our knowledge of the territory — nonexistent — and the time we put into it.”
“Yeah, exactly. We didn’t put much time into it. And you don’t want to.”
Janner sighed and turned to face his brother. “Look, Kal, we can’t keep doing this. We can’t pretend like everything is fine and we’re on some sort of pleasurable vacation. We are lost and stuck on an island in the middle of the sea. Nobody — including us — knows where we are. Everyone at home is terrified and thinks we’re dead. Knowing Uncle Artham, he’s probably killing himself trying to find us. We can’t just play.”
Kal toed the dirt awkwardly at the words.
“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Janner said quickly. “I mean that we have to help them find us.”
Kal stared at him, blinking. He looked around at the forest and the dead blats he held by their tails. “How should we?” he finally asked.
“We could always try building some sort of boat,” Janner suggested.
Kal tapped his finger to his chin as though he was thinking. Then he cocked his head and looked at Janner. “Didn’t I try that a few days ago? If I recall correctly, you protested and then passed out on me.”
“Okay, that’s fair,” Janner admitted, feeling guilty about adamantly telling his brother no at the time. “In my defense, I thought there could be some sort of dangerous creatures lurking in the jungle. Now we know that there aren’t, at least, not around here.”
“That sounds great, but can we please eat lunch first? I’m starving.” Kal begged.
Janner laughed and walked away from his brother. “Oh, so now you’re hungry, is that it?”
“Well, I didn’t eat breakfast,” Kal protested. “Where are you going? I said I wanted to eat, not explore. Janner, get back here!”
Janner heard Kalmar’s grunts as he clambered around brush in the forest in an effort to stay near. “Calm down,” Janner said as he stooped to pick up a dead branch. “I’m collecting firewood. Unless you want to eat your blat raw.”
“Bleh,” Kal scrunched up his face in disgust. “I’m hungry, but not that hungry.”
“Well then, you work on collecting wood — dry wood, mind you; green wood will smoke, not burn — while I take these blats and skin one of them.”
Kal nodded quickly, and Janner could see that he was glad he didn’t have to gut and skin the food. Janner wasn’t particularly excited about it either, but someone had to do it.
“Make sure to stay within my sight,” he added as Kal walked away.
“Alright; I will,” came the somewhat irritated reply.
Janner laughed and set to work skinning one of the blats. He was going to have to make do with the point of his sword and it didn’t sound particularly pleasant. He wrinkled his nose and began working.
*****
Kalmar stepped into the woods and automatically felt relief wash over him. It wasn’t that he wanted to be away from Janner — certainly not, that would count as some sort of Annieran treason or something — but he relished the time alone.
Kal knew he and Janner needed each other if they had any hopes of getting off the island, but every second of every day he felt as though his tongue would slip and his thoughts would become careless and he would say: “Do you think Galya and Sara made it out of the storm alive?”
It had almost happened so many times that Kal couldn’t begin to count them all. And as much as he told himself that it’s for the better, or Janner doesn’t need to know, it’ll only upset him, and what’s the use of two people grieving and worrying when one can do it for them both, there was another side that said: tell him now, you and he will both regret it later if you don’t.
Kalmar knew which voice was the sensible one — the one that he should listen to — and which voice was the squirming little rat of fear, the rat that was afraid of confrontation. It was a devious little rat, too, and it kept telling him that it was better for things to stay the way they were.
“And what’s wrong with things the way they are right now, tell me that?” Kal said aloud to no one in particular, except perhaps to the fazzle dove that rested on a nearby branch. He glanced at it and walked away slowly, not wanting to smell anything resembling rotten beans. Then he remembered what he was in the woods for and glanced around, looking for a dead branch. He saw one, actually, a collection of them, and stooped to gather them in his arms.
Kal had almost more than he could carry, but when he looked back at Janner, whom he could just barely see through the trees, and then at the forest in front of him, he thought for a moment. Was there really any harm in going deeper into the forest? Surely not. He would get a little more time away from Janner, which was less time he had to worry about spilling the secret. Plus, it wasn’t as though they had seen anything dangerous on the island. The quill diggle that had pattered across their path the other day had been the worst of what they had seen.
Janner had told him to stay close, just like he had so many times before. They were the same words that had been hammered into his skull for years, but he wasn’t planning on going that far into the woods. Besides, the only reason Janner wanted Kal to stay in his line of sight was so he could act out his duties as a Throne Warden and watch over his “little” brother.
Kalmar snorted. He wasn’t little. He was eighteen. He was an expert with his bow and great with a sword. He had his bow and arrows with him, so even if he got into trouble, he could defend himself. Which, of course, I won’t. There’s nothing dangerous on this silly island that we’re “marooned” on like some people from one of Janner’s books.
Besides, he thought as he placed the branches in a neat pile on the ground where he could find them later before walking deeper into the forest. Maybe I’ll find some good building wood while I’m in here, and then we’ll be one step closer to getting home…and facing my guilt, Kalmar pushed that from his mind and he trekked into the shadows. He felt his pulse quicken as the lighting grew dimmer and dimmer. When he glanced back this time, he couldn’t even see the clearing in the distance. Kalmar smiled. This was going to be fun.
*****
Janner grimaced at the sight of his hands covered in an unpleasant amount of blood — not his own blood, of course, at least, he didn’t think it was his own blood — and worked to wipe them off on the grass. Shockingly, it failed to clean the cave blat’s blood. Janner glanced around, looking for any sort of stream close by so he could rinse them off. There was one, a small trickle running through the grass, about twenty feet away.
Janner walked over to it and knelt down by the stream’s edge. He pulled off the sailing gloves and winced, feeling the cloth pull dangerously at the semi-healed tissue they covered.
After all the blood was washed away, Janner headed for the woods to see what was taking Kalmar so long. He should’ve been back with the wood by now, he thought irritably. Where is he?
Janner stood at the edge of the forest and looked for his brother, but he saw no sign of him. “Kal?” he asked, raising his voice a bit. There was no answer. “Kal!” He shouted this time. It was loud enough that wherever Kalmar was, as long as he stayed in the near vicinity like he had told him to, he should have heard it.
Once again, Janner was met with silence. He ran back to where he had skinned the blat and picked up his sword, shoving it into his sheath with anything but carefulness. He had no idea where Kalmar had gone, but Janner was about to find him. He was the High King’s protector, and if he failed, he failed Anniera.
The blats and his growling stomach did not matter a bit now. All that mattered was finding Kalmar before he did something idiotic and got himself hurt or worse.
Notes: So. Not much happened except Kal kind of...ran away. Hehe. Janner's probably going to be irritated with him. tsk, tsk. Naughty, naughty Kalmar.
Kal had better not go crawling into any strange caves, with or without Janner. That's SUPER dangerous!