Atilan

     Papa graciously delayed his next voyage to look after him. This wasn’t particularly helpful. If anything, it was incredibly stressful to be encouraged over and over to be a strapping young lad and get back on his feet, comments backed by Papa quietly getting stir-crazy, pacing all over the house like he’d die if he stopped moving.

     “Cherry flavoured,” Papa scoffed, looking at the medicine bottle. “It’s medicine. It’s not supposed to taste good. Back in my day, we just drank vinegar. Cleared everything right up.” He regarded the glowing bottle on the nightstand. “I’d have you take a spoonful of that instead, but one of the sailors already tried drinking it, and let me tell you, it does not work internally.”

     “Papa?” Roxton was barely audible over the sound of rain pounding the roof.

     “Hm?”

     “Why don’t people like me?”

     Papa frowned. “Well, people are cruel to people who are different.”

     “No, I mean, why don’t people like me?”

     “I don’t follow.”

     “You get to talk about face paint and ancestors and people like you for it, but when I talk about those things, I get chased, or made fun of, or drowned? Why doesn’t that happen to you?”

     Papa brushed his sweaty hair back and gave him the medicine.

     “You’ll feel better in the morning,” he said without expectation or judgment.

     Roxton slept through the night, too feverish to realize his questions hadn’t been answered.

     He always slept perfectly when it rained.

     ———

     /RON-ah-ka-ta/

      noun

     Plural of

      ranakat, “voyager.” Also the Lutari name for the item known as the Lutari Talisman.

      —Lutari Dictionary Vol. I

     ———

     “Finally,” muttered Matuk as they came up on his hut. “I have had enough excitement for today.”

     There was a loud crash and a sound of “Yumulu! Yumulu!”

     “Ach! Why?!” he said, rushing into the hut.

     At first Roxton thought a bird or something got loose in there, but on approach, he saw something very different.

     The Honored Mother was crying and flailing in Matuk’s house, holding a knife.

     “Yumulu!”

     “Papa?” said Tui.

     Roxton pushed her back immediately. “Tui, stay back. Matuk, I’ll—”

     He was about to say, “I’ll save you,” but… how? Well, he knew one way, but he didn’t want to punch the elderly queen of a foreign country.

     “Is fine,” Matuk said, even though it clearly wasn’t, and he was holding his hands out like that was going to protect him from the knife. “The k’tiin is causing this.”

     The Honored Mother’s back was to him. “Then I’ll—”

     Roxton reached for the k’tiin.

     “No!”

     Matuk said that, but it was the Honoured Mother that swiped at him with the knife.

     “Ow!”

     “Atilan! Atilan!” she wailed, her arm jerking back for another swing.

     Matuk knocked the k’tiin off her head with a big stick. The Honoured Mother crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.

     “Papa!” Tui cried, and luckily Roxton still had the reflexes to grab her off the floor right before she could step on the k’tiin.

     “No one touch it!” Matuk said, eyes wide. “Do not move. Do not breathe.”

     Matuk carefully used the stick to maneuver the sacred headgear into a sack and, desperately trying not to touch it, tied it off.

     “You may come in now,” he said, still eyeing the sack warily.

     They gingerly entered. Roxton wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch the Honored Mother, but he was relieved to see she was breathing.

     “The k’tiin has been severed, but she will be fine.” Matuk moved her into the recovery position. “I should take her back to the village.”

     “I can do it,” Jordie said. “I grew up taking my laolao to the doctor. I know how to handle this kind of thing.”

     Matuk seemed skeptical, but he also didn’t seem thrilled by the idea of leaving Tui alone with a pair of near-strangers. “I am trusting you with our Honoured Mother.”

     Jordie nodded. “I understand.”

     “And do not touch the k’tiin. Handle like it could kill you.”

     Jordie nodded again, slower this time.

     ———

     “I’ve seen one of those before.”

     While the adults were wrapping up Roxton’s knife wound and fumbling with their living arrangements, Tui had busied herself by weaving a string around a hoop made of reeds. Roxton didn’t register what it was until she brought the beads out.

     “The ranakata

      — Lutari Talisman,” Tui confirmed. “They used to sell the frames to everyone, very cheap. Funny. It’s like if we sold, uh…”

     She frowned.

     “What do outsiders use to remember the dead?”

     “Oh. Oh no. Don’t tell me we’re selling people blank gravestones.”

     “Ah — is —”

     Tui seemed to think it wasn’t that bad, but couldn’t articulate it. She gave up and asked Matuk to explain it.

     “They are not our gravestones. They are everyone’s gravestones. The ranakata is a tribute to those who have left the island.”

     “If there’s a bead for every person, that seems like it would fill up quickly.”

     Matuk said, “People did not leave the island carelessly. It is unfindable to us, too. If someone left, they did not come back.”

     “If they didn’t come back, how did they teach you anything?” said Roxton.

     “When their waves returned to the ocean, their souls returned to us.”

     “The k’tiin,” Roxton said, for once not tripping over his Lutari.

     “Yes.”

     Tui picked up one more bead, frowning, and turned to Matuk.

     “Am I allowed to tell him about Ranaka?”

     “I… hm.” Matuk said, slowly and carefully: “It is difficult to talk about Ranaka without explaining the Ataul.”

     “Then I will not.”

     “Who’s Ranaka?” said Roxton, despite knowing that he wouldn’t get a straight answer.

     “Ranaka was the last person to leave the island before your father opened it to the outside world. We know little else about him — he has not died yet.”

     “We think,” Tui said, threading the beads.

     “Yes, I suppose we do. It is difficult to tell with a broken k’tiin.”

     Roxton straightened. “Broken?”

     Matuk waved his hands helplessly. “We did not know it could break until it did.”

     “When did it break? When the storm began?”

     “No. The storm began forty years ago,” said Matuk, deep in thought. “The k’tiin breaking, was more like fifteen. That was the year the storm began to consume the island, too.”

     He lowered his voice.

     “… the k’tiin reached its limit.”

     The Honoured Mother — the way she moved. The way she’d collapsed.

     “There are so many souls inside of it that it cannot contain them properly anymore. The Honoured Mother you saw is nothing more than an empty body without the k’tiin. Her mind was crushed by the weight of the souls.”

     “Is there a way to… get them out?” Roxton said. “Make the wave return to the ocean?”

     Matuk shook his head. “Normally, with time, they fade on their own. But they are too angry to fade.”

     “The island’s haunted.”

     Roxton knew hauntings very well — he had, after all, grown up in the Haunted Woods. The number of ghosts that haunted it might as well be infinite, every tree and corner hiding somebody that could jump out and yell “boo!”

     But this island had another kind of haunting. No one person could jump out. No one person could yell “boo.” This island was haunted by an unspeakable thing that had been done to it.

     “Haunted,” Matuk said, seeming to draw the word up from his memory. “Heh. Many tourist children thought that. I suppose it is now.”

     ———

     WINITAN MAMA’A AUNKTIM, MAKWALA

     At its height, Makwala, better known as Lutari Island, boasted a population of over one million citizens, most of them Lutari. Now, there are barely fifty thousand — not that you could tell, due to almost as many tourists perusing the shores. This is in spite of the fact that, in its natural state, Lutari Island is an extremely rainy and hostile locale, and its current picturesque-ness is the result of recent magical intervention.

     The Honoured Mother’s sanctum is, surprisingly, not completely off-limits to visitors. It’s far from a tourist attraction, but at times, the Mother will receive interviewers. It’s unclear if this is standard practice or merely the current Honoured Mother’s preference.

     Honoured Mother Erin sits serenely on the floor of the sanctum, her tail curled around her. She has no throne. There are no markers of her authority other than her regal bearing and the sacred k’tiin on her head.

     I ask her what her favorite word in her native language is. She says, “Pikkat yi k’tuppuaa.” I ask her what that means, even though that’s not a single word.

     “It means ‘bucket of Crabbies.’”

     I tell her that, coincidentally, there is a saying about a bucket of Crabbies in Neopian. I tell her about how it’s about people punishing each other’s success — how Crabbies will pull each other back into a bucket as they try to escape.

     She tells me that the meaning of pikkat yi k’tuppuaa is different. It describes people acting in violence and desperation. She says, “It is strange that you judge the Crabbies for fighting.”

     I ask her why.

     She says, “The Crabbies did not choose the bucket. They were put in a hole against their will, and now there is no kind way to climb out.”

      —An Oral History of the Lutari Language

     ———

     “It’s gotta be Briana, right?” said Scrap, sucking a lutango peel. “She’s an air faerie, there’s a magic storm overhead. Bing-bang-bong.”

     It was the next day, and they were meeting on the platform they had been welcomed on. It was abandoned — the island’s inhabitants were nocturnal.

     “That’s the easy explanation, not necessarily the right one. Also, she was an air faerie until someone changed that,” Roxton said, eyes closed, head in his hand.

     Lillian shook her head. “Another person didn’t have to be involved. It’s been documented that a faerie can lose her magic by expending all of it on one exceptionally powerful spell.”

     “My point still stands for another reason: why would she do that? She hates it here, she didn’t leave before the storm hit, and sooner or later it’s going to swallow her with the rest of the island.”

     “I wish we could make more headway — the island does have history archives in a cave somewhere, but it’s in the storm zone.”

     “We have to try reaching it. We’re clearly missing—” Roxton yawned. “—Something.”

     “A good night’s sleep, apparently,” said Jordie. “You alright?”

     “I’m fine.” Roxton had spent most of his childhood in a perpetually dark area, so, no issues then, but the hardest part of becoming an adventurer turned out to be jet lag. It was starting to sneak up on him again. He knew that drinking the magic water would make him sick, but maybe that blue paint could…

     “Wakey wakey.” Scrap snapped his fingers.

     Roxton’s head snapped up. “Atilan!”

     He blinked. Everyone was looking at him with concern.

     “Great. It’s in my dreams now,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Lillian, you know Lutari. Any idea why people keep calling me that?”

     Lillian’s eyes darted from him to the floor then back to him. “Your father said that it means ‘son.’”

     In isolation, maybe he would’ve believed that. Everyone said atilan in a nice enough tone — a little friendly, but almost a little sad. And then what would ataulat mean? “Father?” That couldn’t be right; Tui never called Matuk that. No one called his father that with anything other than venom.

     “What about the ancestors?” he said.

     “The what?”

     “The ancestors. Tui thinks the storm is because the ancestors are angry about something.”

     “Okay, our suspects are an air faerie with means but no motive, and… literal ghosts. That isn’t great.”

     “I feel like you’re not giving the ‘literal ghosts’ enough credit here.”

     “Roxton, you’re talking about ‘ancestral spirits,’ as related to you by a hyperactive little girl with a shaky grasp of Neopian.”

     “Excuse me?” said Roxton as Jordie winced.

     “I’m just saying, a ten year old is not the best source of information.”

     “That’s not what I’m upset about and you know it. Ghosts are real! We know ghosts are real! Why are you drawing the line—”

     “Roxton. Don’t move,” Lillian said. “There is a rare bird on your hat.”

     “Haha, funny. You’re changing the subject.”

     A Floobix swung its head down over the brim of Roxton’s hat.

     “AH—”

     ———

     Jordie, five hours later, said, “Mr. Colchester, I swear I just saw some more Floobixes in the trees.”

     Roxton, pacing, said, “Lillian is lying to us.”

     The sun was going down. Jordie was busy picking feathers out of his fur, but Roxton heavily suspected that he was the only person he could trust right now. “Okay,” he said. “Why?”

     “I don’t know, but she is. That can’t be what atilan means.”

     “You can’t still be thinking about that.”

     “I can and I am.”

     Jordie had the patience of a saint to try and follow him on this. Roxton could barely follow himself. “Okay, fine, you already said it’s a cursed word, but there has to be a dictionary somewhere.”

     “Yeah, with Lillian and my—”

     There was a loud crash from inside Matuk’s hut. Roxton pulled his knife. “Matuk?!”

     “Atilan, is that you? I am fine, I — I ran out of paint, and now I can’t see.”

     Roxton peeked inside. Matuk was fumbling along the wall. When Roxton moved to steady him, Matuk squinted at his face, but his paintless gaze darted around like he couldn’t even tell where to look to make eye contact.

     “My mistake. Should have mixed more,” he muttered. “One of you needs to go to the Atimuku and bring back water.”

     “I can just take you there,” said Roxton.

     So I don’t have to think about the storm for a second, thought Roxton.

     ———

     The Atimuku was weirdly warm. It was like a pool of soup. It kind of was — a soup of bacteria. Matuk dropped over the edge and rubbed the… water… in his eyes with no hesitation.

     “That is better,” he said, blinking, pupils dilating. “This will work until I finish the new batch. Are you coming in?”

     Bad news: Matuk getting his magical paint glasses back meant he could see Roxton awkwardly hovering by the shore.

     “I… don’t have anything to swim in?” Roxton said lamely.

     Matuk rested his chin in his hand. “I found you washed up on the beach. You already swam in your clothes.”

     “Point taken.”

     Really, he just didn’t want to think about swimming, or all the other ways his body was haunted. His knee hadn’t bothered him in some time. He didn’t know whether to feel good about that.

     “Would it be disrespectful to do a cannonball in the magic healing pool?” Roxton said, taking his hat off.

     “If it were, Tuikutat would be cursed a thousand times over.”

     “Good,” he said, and did that. He hit the water hard, breath bubbling out around him. It stung, but in a good way.

     When he came up, Matuk was grinding paint in a mortar and pestle.

     “What’s in the paint? Other than this,” Roxton said, the water sifting through his claws.

     “Chalk, mostly.”

     “Huh.”

     Matuk tapped the pestle on the mortar’s edge and produced a small brush that he handed to Roxton, handle side out.

     “You try,” said Matuk.

     “Really?”

     “If you do it too terribly, I will wash it off.”

     Matuk closed his eyes.

     Eye makeup always kind of freaked Roxton out. More than once, he’d woken up to Aloysia poking him in the eye with a new eyeliner pencil. It boggled him a little to see Matuk trust him like that.

     It wasn’t great. Roxton wasn’t a painter or anything. He couldn’t replicate the sharp edges, that was for sure, they came out round and soft and a little messy.

     “Heh,” Matuk said, regarding his reflection in the water. “That will do.”

     ———

     As Roxton pulled himself out of the pool, a blue shape raced past so quickly that he thought he was seeing things until Tui raced by too, smacking into a tree.

     “Owww,” Tui groaned.

     Matuk, knocking water out of his ears, said, “Tuikutat, are you alright?”

     “No.” She sniffed, tears in her eyes. “Ain took my ranakata.”

     “I’ll get it back for you,” Roxton said, before lowering his voice. “But first: what’s the Lutari word for son?”

     “Ain,” said Tui.

     Roxton frowned. “Your friend’s name is ‘son?’”

     “Yeah, and Tuikutat means ‘daughter.’”

     “That seems like it would get confusing.”

     Tui shrugged. “Yeah, yeah, is dumb. When me and Ain raise children, I want to name our first daughter something pretty, like Ililat.”

     “When you what? I thought you hated him!”

     “I do, but there is no one else.”

     Tui got up and continued her pursuit.

     “Atip, rii ataulat!” she shouted into the trees.

     Roxton began running too.

     “Where are you going?” said Matuk.

     “Home.”

     ———

     Roxton knocked on the vault door of his father’s house. Funny that this place, more than any other on the island, reminded him the most of Lutaritown. Dark. Close. His heart, a drum.

     His father opened the door. He was alone.

     “Roxton,” he said. “Are you alright? You’re soaking wet.”

     “Papa,” said Roxton, and immediately threw his arms around his father.

     His father’s hand rested on his back. Funny — most people with white feathers got dingy as they aged, but it seemed as though his father’s feathers had taken on a slight blueness that made them look even more stark.

     “You have to know what’s going on here. Please, just tell me.”

     “Oh, my son. Some things in this world are temporary. This island will pass into history soon, and there’s nothing that can stop the tide. Some people will thrash and struggle, but you can’t fight drowning.”

     Roxton closed his eyes, blotting the white feathers out of his vision. “Right.”

     “When you leave, you will be stronger than you’ve ever been.”

     His father was lying. Deep down, he had known his father would lie.

     “I’m proud of you, son.”

     Maybe that’s why, before he flung his arms around him, Roxton already had the knife in his hand.

     “Papa?”

     “Yes?”

     He turned the point to his father’s back.

     “I came here from the history archives.”

     ———

     ATILAN

     /ah-TEAL-an/

      noun

     Stolen.

     ———

     And then he attacked.

To be continued…