I'm sorry it's been so long - I haven't been on here much because of a) school and b) my computer is slowly dying soooo....
(Very) Basic Planning
When Janner opened his eyes this time, it was dark. He couldn’t see much of anything, but he could hear the gentle lap of waves on a sandy shore and a teenager’s soft breathing. In his heart, Janner knew they were neither at Castle Rysen nor in Anniera. He had a feeling that Sara was somewhere far away from him, and that it was Kal’s sleeping form that lay near him, slumbering peacefully.
Janner sat up slowly, ready for what happened last time to occur again. The pain came, but he rested the right side of his forehead — the side that didn’t hurt as badly as the other — on the back of his hand. His palms were sticky with what had to be dried blood, and Janner didn’t want to risk putting pressure on them that would cause him to cry out in pain and Kal to wake up. His brother needed to sleep, and if Janner’s hunch was right, Kal hadn’t had much of that in the past day or so.
He inched his way into a sitting position and risked a glance up at the ceiling. It was rock and it looked as though he would knock his head on the top if he stretched to his full height. With the way his head was already throbbing, that was the last thing Janner wanted to do.
He scooted out of the shallow cave and leaned his back against the outer wall. Janner gingerly rested his head on it and received a pleasant surprise when it didn't hurt. Though it didn't hurt when I was laying on it, he realized. So that should have been obvious.
Janner shrugged. Small victory or not, it was an achievement. He looked ahead, surprised to see the sea so close. They really weren't that far inland. Janner wondered whether or not walking along the shoreline was a good idea. More than likely it wasn't. He sighed. He didn't want to go back into the cave just yet. It was shallow and open, but oddly stuffy and uncomfortable.
Janner glanced up at the night sky that was slowly changing into dawn. The stars still visible were beautiful and shimmering. He wondered whether or not he could guess how far away they were from Anniera, judging from the stars' position.
That was when Janner realized he wasn't sure why he and Kal were even on the little island or how they had gotten there. He thought Kal had said they'd been swept off deck in the middle of a storm, but why had they been out in a storm? And if they had been swept off deck, where was the ship? Surely it couldn't have been a large ship, especially since it was just the two of them who had been on it.
Janner picked up sand in his fingers and let it sift through them carefully, being sure to avoid the gash in his palm. He closed his eyes and hummed thoughtfully. Sara was probably terrified. Who knew what ridiculous excuse Kal had given her when they left Anniera, but surely she was beginning to worry by now.
He was pretty sure the storm had set upon them at about sunset. Something worrisome tugged at the edges of his memory, but try as he might, he couldn't figure out what it was.
If the storm had come in the evening and Kal said it was evening when he had woken up last time, it stood to reason that they hadn't been missing for long. Wait, no, Janner thought, remembering something else Kalmar had said. Didn't he say that I'd been unconscious for hours? That means we've been missing for over a day!
Janner shook his head in shock at the realization and regretted it immediately afterward. He whimpered lightly and groaned inwardly when he heard rustlings from inside the cave. Kal was awake.
"Janner?" Kalmar asked, worry evident in his voice.
"Out here," Janner responded quietly, knowing that his head wouldn't appreciate the loud noises.
There was a little sand flew up in the air as Kal scrambled out of the cave and came into Janner's view.
Janner looked up at his brother, who for some reason had not chosen to sit down. "Kal, do you want to join me?" He gestured to a spot on his left. Kal nodded and plopped down in the sand, sitting crossed-legged and drawing nothing in particular in the sand near him.
They sat there saying nothing for a few minutes before Kalmar finally spoke. "You're acting weird."
Janner chuckled a bit. "We're washed up on an island in the middle of nowhere and I can't remember the majority of what happened in the past two days. Are you really surprised that I'm acting weird?"
Kal shrugged. "I guess not. I'm just waiting for you to get back to normal, so you can start telling me what to do to help you with your plan to get off the island."
Janner remembered to not shake his head at the last second and instead continued looking out at the dark water and listening to the low whistle of wind as it moved through what had to be a forest behind them. Janner hadn’t seen it, but the wind told him more than his eyes did. It made him think of the nights he and Sara had spent on the Annieran beaches, just sitting there and listening to the waves crashing and lapping and the breeze rustling through the grasses and trees.
“Sara’s probably terrified,” Janner said quietly, his heart aching at the thought of her pacing their room in franticness. He hoped Nia would tell her to sit and calm down before she stressed herself too much.
Kal stiffened beside him. “Wha— What do you mean?”
Janner glanced at his brother. “I mean, we’ve been missing for a day and a half as far as I can figure. She’s probably scared to death.”
“Right, right,” Kal said, a nervous laugh embedded in his words.
Janner whipped his head around to glare at his brother, but it didn’t end well.
“Ow,” he groaned, holding his head against the tips of his fingers tentatively. When the stabbing pain died away into an aching throb, he shifted his gaze toward his brother and asked, “Why were you laughing?”
“I-I wasn’t laughing,” Kal said quickly, avoid ing his eyes.
“Sure,” Janner said under his breath. And he thinks I’m acting weird. “Let’s just look at what we have and what we obviously need to try doing.”
Kal glanced at him. “Shouldn’t we wait until morning? It’s kind of dark and sleeping for a few more hours would be nice.”
“We could,” Janner admitted. “But the sun will be up in an hour or so anyway.” He pointed directly in front of them at the horizon, where the sky was beginning to distinguish itself from the open sea in ribbons of pink, purple, and red. “Sleeping in the bright sunlight doesn’t exactly sound pleasant to me. Speaking of the bright sunlight, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to think, much less plan with you how we’re going to get back home if I’m being blinded. If the dimmed light of the sunset was painful —”
“It’ll be even worse when the sun is up.” Kal finished for him.
Janner nodded as much as he dared. “But back to the planning. There are only two ways off this island: one, we build some sort of makeshift boat or raft or two, Hulwen comes and flies us off.”
“Wait,” Kal interrupted, turning to look at Janner. “The dragons are all migrating. Besides, how would they even know how to find us?”
“I was getting to that,” Janner said patiently. “What I was going to say is that the latter option — where Hulwen comes — will only work once the dragons get back from their migration. When they do, you know Leeli will be waiting on the beach with her whistleharp.”
“And how long will that take?” Kalmar asked him.
Janner looked at him. “You already know the answer to that one. They left a month ago. They’ll probably be back in two months, tops. Maybe less, if we’re lucky.”
Kal groaned and held his head in his hands, shaking it. “What a time to get stranded here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Janner sighed, grimacing at the truth in Kalmar’s muffled words. He looked down at his hands and winced. They were clearer now and in the muted sunlight he could see the dark blood caked in the wounds across his palms, the shape and size of rope. Smaller lacerations were peppered across his fingers, and they stung like fire when he tried to move them. What bothered him was not so much the searing pain — though that did hurt dreadfully — but the fact that he had no idea how he had gotten them. He opened his mouth, about to ask Kal when and how it had happened, but his younger brother was already speaking about something else.
“We can’t just wait to be rescued,” Kal suddenly said, standing up abruptly. He brushed the sand that clung to his pants away and looked around.
“Well what do you expect us to do? I didn’t say much of anything about the first idea for a reason.” Janner said, knowing in the pit of his stomach that Kalmar would insist on making their own way off the island, even though it probably wouldn’t work.
Kal pointed toward the forest behind them. “There’s plenty of wood in there. I’m sure there are vines. If we collect enough, we should be able to put it together and make some sort of raft.”
Kalmar began walking over to the trees, and Janner looked at him in dismay. For one thing, the chances of a raft they built out of some island trees and rope actually staying afloat with two full-grown boys on it were ridiculously low. That, coupled with the fact that they had no idea what was in the forest spelled out disaster.
“Kal, wait!” Janner called after him, scrambling up from the sand. By the time he realized his mistake, he couldn’t turn back.
The wave of dizziness and nausea hit him instantly, and Janner staggered. His ears were ringing like bells at the highest tone, but constant and unceasing. As darkness crept in on the edges of his vision, Janner felt himself falling and knew he was about to crash into the sand below and maybe into the rock wall he had been sitting against a moment before.
“Should’a stayed there,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, I know,” Kal’s voice was close to his ear, and Janner felt his brother’s arm around him. Kal had come back? “But I should’ve stayed, too.”
Janner was dimly aware of Kal half dragging, half carrying him. He felt the soft sand beneath his back and knew they were in the cave again.
“D’n’t leave,” he slurred through the sharp jabs in his skull.
“I won’t,” was Kal’s quiet response.
“‘Member, ‘m the Throne Warden. How ‘m I s’pposed to pr’tect you if you run off?”
Kal laughed a bit. “Take a break, Janner. I’m protecting you right now.”
“If th’ Throne W’rden ‘tects the High King, who ‘tects th’ Throne W’rden?” He murmured as he slipped into a fitful sleep, dreaming of the quarry in Anniera where they never seemed to stop smashing rocks.
Notes:
Hmm, so Kal is choosing to keep Sara and Galya's "death" a secret. Well that doesn't bode well.
And what a sweet interaction between the boys at the end.....^^
😭😭
But just what does Janner think they're going to eat for two months while they wait for Hulwen?
I think Kal might be right to not mention anything yet. Worrying about his wife and child is NOT going to help Janner recover, and setting out on a raft would not help save the girls if they were still out there. Probably. Maybe. Janner will be mad, yes, but he'll also be more likely to stay alive.
I really hope Janner doesn't over-react when Kalmar has to tell him about Galya and Sara's "deaths".