Atilan

     Aloysia only looked up from her book to roll her eyes at Roxton. “If I didn’t know before, the last ten times you told me would’ve been informative enough. Now leave me alone.”

     “...”

     “...”

     “Aloysia?”

     “If you tell me that Papa’s coming home today I will lock you in your room.”

     “...”

     “...”

     “Papa’s coming home today.”

     Aloysia locked him in his room.

     This wasn’t too much of a bother to Roxton, who quickly tied together his bedsheets to make a rope and clambered out of the window. There was a section of roof he could easily climb onto, but if he wanted to reach the ground he’d need the rope.

     He was still tying the rope to a tree branch — Roxton had been practising fancy boat knots — when Papa landed. Papa could’ve easily taken a carriage, but he preferred flying, and always travelled light to accommodate that. He seemed to emerge from nowhere in the hazy Neovian sky.

     “Ah. Home sweet home,” the white Eyrie muttered, cracking his back.

     He was about to go inside. It was now or never!

     “Papa!” shouted Roxton.

     “Huh?”

     Roxton jumped off the roof holding the rope, followed by a loud CRACK and a loud THUMP.

     …The strength of the branch is more important than the knot, as it turns out.

     “You’re home,” Roxton said, face-down in the dirt. “Ow.”

     Papa tsked. “Yep. That’s my son, alright.”

     He scooped Roxton up and brought him inside.

     “Aloysia? Any reason why your brother just fell off the roof?”

     “No idea,” Aloysia lied.

     “She locked me in my room,” said Roxton.

     “Lies and slander.”

     Roxton stuck out his tongue at her. Aloysia tried to do it back, but it didn’t really work with a beak.

     For something as serious as falling off the roof, Roxton had gotten out of it quite well, with just a scraped knee and a bruised ego. Still, he howled when Papa went to disinfect it.

     “Adventurers don’t cry, son,” Papa said, nonplussed. “Do you want to be an adventurer?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Then get it together, big man.”

     Roxton sniffled. Papa pulled out a bottle of glowing water.

     “Remember when I took you to Faerieland?”

     Roxton nodded. It had been Christmas; Papa was between voyages. Aloysia had complained the whole time that most people did Christmas at home. “Mm-hm.”

     “You remember the Healing Springs?”

     “Mm-hm.” They’d looked like any other babbling springs, save for the faerie that guarded them.

     “Well, this is from the Atimuku on Lutari Island — the fluorescent pools. They’re lakes full of bioluminescent bacteria.”

     “What’s biolum-biolumina—”

     “It means ‘glowing.’ The long and short of it is that this is special healing water.”

     Papa handed him the bottle to look at. The specks of light inside it were moving.

     “Bacteria’s alive, right?” said Roxton.

     “Yes, it is. And if you put it on your scrape, it’ll get right in there and make you feel all better.”

     “What’ll happen to the bacteria?”

     Papa scratched his feathery head like he’d never considered that before. “I assume it’ll do its healing doohickey, and then it’ll die.”

     “It’ll die?”

     “Well, yes. If it survives in your body, it’ll make you sick.”

     Roxton contemplated the bottle. Suddenly, his scrape didn’t feel so urgent.

     “Can I just keep this?”

     “You don’t want to heal your knee?”

     “I don’t want to hurt something for a dumb reason.”

     Papa snorted. “Maybe I raised you a little too well — there are some things you shouldn’t feel bad about using. It’ll probably die on its own in a few days, so don’t come crying to me then.”

     Roxton kept that fluorescent water alive for years, feeding it flour with a spoon. When its light went out and it died, he didn’t cry, because adventurers didn’t cry, and even if he did, he couldn’t very well come crying to Lutari Island, could he?

     ———

     They were getting close to Lutari Island. The boat was beginning to rock so violently that Lillian’s bag zoomed across the floor and hit the wall with a crack.

     “Shoot!” she said, unzipping it.

     “You took something fragile on a boat you knew was going to run aground?” said Roxton, holding onto the ceiling beams.

     Lillian scowled and showed him the culprit — a framed picture of her father, now broken.

     “Oh. I — I’m sorry.”

     “It’s fine,” she muttered, picking the picture out of the broken frame. “He spent his entire life trying to prove an island existed, and he never did. The least I can do is give him this.”

     “‘This’ being?”

     “I don’t know. A better legacy, I suppose.”

     Lillian tucked the folded picture into a pocket right above her heart.

     If you’re looking for an exact moment when Roxton’s relationship with his father went south, you won’t find it. This is how most relationships are.

     ———

     “I hope you remember how to put a boat back together!” Roxton shouted over the cacophony of the waves. “Also, sorry in advance about the boat!” he added, even though Lillian had warned him about the weather in advance.

     “It’s okay! I’m gonna use this for insurance fraud when we get back!” Scrap said, equally loud, fighting the wheel for control.

     “That’s the spirit!”

     They took on the next wave at a bad angle, throwing Roxton to the floor to hang onto the railing next to Lillian.

     “Are you sure this is the island and not just a random storm?”

     “I wish I could give a straight answer,” she gritted out, “but all I can say is, ‘It better be.’”

     No turning back now.

     A wave swallowed the ship, and everything went black.

     ———

     /TWEE-coo-tot/

      noun

     Daughter.

      —Lutari Dictionary Vol. I

     ———

     “Yumulu…! Yumulululu…!”

     Roxton woke up to the sound of animal noises and the faint roar of distant rain. He felt like he was made of lead — in other words, the same way he’d woken up every morning since he turned thirty. He felt gross, too, like he was covered in sand and crusty salt. He opened one eye. He was covered in sand and crusty salt.

     “Ugh.”

     “HELLO!”

     “AUGH!”

     A small pink Lutari had popped into his direct line of vision.

     “You sleep so long, like a baby! You need it to recover — you got knocked around so bad that the little bone on top of your knee popped out of place and my papa stuck it back in there! It was crazy!”

     “Uh-huh, it does that sometimes,” Roxton said, wondering where his potions went. “Hey, I didn’t come here alone. Where is everybody?”

     “At the Atimuku.”

     “Right. Can I talk to your papa?”

     The Lutari raced out. “Papaaa! Atilan’a uluka!”

     Roxton took a second to look around. There wasn’t much to see — he was lying on a bedroll on the floor of a small, squat wooden home. Something that looked like a first aid kit was by his side. It was, in fact, the only room in the house. A folding table, two chairs, and two more bedrolls were tucked neatly against the wall.

     Somebody had cut the leg of his pants off above the knee to treat his injury. Better than the alternative, he guessed, but he already wasn’t sure about this journey and being forced to wear cut-off shorts wasn’t helping his confidence.

     In addition to relocating his knee, his benefactor had painted a blue symbol on it, something like a fork, with a semicircle that curved under his kneecap. Some kind of ritual.

     A Bori entered the house. He was a brilliant shade of green, save for the greying around his muzzle, and still had cyan paint down his nose and around his eyes on top of that. The Lutari followed quickly. “Araa? U tilt rii wa’a uluka!”

     “Good job, Tuikutat. But only speak Neopian around our guests, ikur? Our language confuses them.”

     The Lutari, Tuikutat, made an X over her lips with her claws. The Bori turned to Roxton. “How are you feeling, sir?”

     Bad. “Normal,” said Roxton, moving to stand. “I don't need to keep bothering you. Just point me towards the pools and — hhh!”

     His knee gave out. The Bori managed to catch him before he could do anything worse to it.

     “My bag,” he gasped.

     Tuikutat retrieved it for him. He fished out a healing potion and chugged the whole thing. It barely made a dent; he drank another, bringing himself to the very edge of the safe limit. He was shaking now, but the pain was managed.

     The Bori raised an eyebrow. “You do that often, Atilan?”

     “You've seen my knee,” Roxton said, wiping his mouth.

     “I mean the part where you try to drown yourself with potions.”

     “We call that ‘chasing the pain,’ and no, because I don't usually get shipwrecked. The name’s Roxton Colchester, by the way. The third,” he added.

     The Bori’s eyes widened. Tuikutat said, “Luka Ataulat?”

     “Tuikutat, go play with Ain.”

     “But I don't like Ain.”

     “Then go play with no one, just let me work.”

     Tuikutat stuck out her tongue and left.

     “I am the doctor here,” said the Bori. “You can call me Matuk.”

     “Is that your full name?”

     “It's the part you won't butcher.”

     “Hit me.”

     “Matukunamun Iyatimuku.”

     “...I will call you Matuk.”

     “A fine choice. Do you need help putting the contraption back on your leg?”

     ———

     Matuk’s house was far-flung from any others, but close to the Fluorescent Pools. Thank goodness for that; it was pitch black outside. If Roxton wasn't raised in the foggy dusk of Neovia he'd trip and fall in an instant.

     He felt… suspiciously good. Even overdoing the healing potions didn't feel good, it felt numb, at best. He glanced at his knee. The blue paint glowed gently in the dark.

     “What’s in this stuff?”

     “Water from the Atimuku,” said Matuk. “All of the paints have some of this water in them, but the blue kind is the most potent for healing.”

     Roxton made a wordless noise of assent, though he didn’t have a lot of confidence. If magic couldn’t help him, he doubted a few lines of paint would.

     The Fluorescent Pools were fed by rushing water from a peak below, crashing into a lake with glowing spots like stars. Scrap and Jordie were fooling around, and Lillian was sitting on a big rock, holding a lutango and intently studying a swirl of bacteria in a puddle.

     “Good morning, beautiful,” said Roxton, lowering himself carefully onto the rock. “Or night, as it would have it. Nobody got hurt too badly?”

     “...What? Oh, yes, we’re fine — look at this.”

     Lillian tore off a chunk of the lutango and placed it at the puddle’s edge. The pinpoints of light clustered at its flesh, and as it fizzed, the light turned yellow.

     “Certain things chemically alter the bacteria’s pigments.”

     Roxton looked at the pool — red light was starting to congregate around Scrap’s waist. “What makes it turn red?”

     “I’m not sure.”

     “It means the water is trying to eat you!” Tuikutat shouted.

     Scrap screamed and got out.

     “Tuikutat,” Matuk said disapprovingly as she scampered away again.

     Lillian raised her eyebrows. “Is that true?”

     “Yes, but not quickly. You would have to try very hard to be eaten. It takes perhaps an hour just to make your hair fall out, and it’s harmless in paint.”

     Roxton stretched his leg out cautiously, but it provoked no pain. “Alright. Lutari Island: found. Now what?”

     “Well, I’ve heard many interesting things about the Survival Academy—”

     “Forbidden,” said Matuk.

     Lillian blinked. “Okay,” she said, destabilised. “Then what about the village square?”

     “Also forbidden.”

     “The Bog of—”

     “No.”

     “What do you mean, ‘no?’ We’re not prisoners, are we?”

     “Not any more than the rest of us,” Matuk muttered.

     “Huh?”

     “That side of the island is battered by the storm. Not safe.”

     “Okay? When will the storm clear?”

     “It won’t,” Matuk said gravely. “That storm has been there for forty years, and every year, it gets bigger.”

To be continued…