Atilan

     This is a story* and part of other stories. Pay attention to it!

      *Technically correct, but better translated as “warning.”

     Telling this story was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful tribe*. No highly esteemed dead is remembered here. What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This story is about danger.

      *I’ll allow it, but that’s actually “nation.”

     It was a bad year. It was the rotting season, and we were weak, but we could survive it as we had survived many bad years. That year a monstrous white bird arrived on the shore. This bird would be called the Ataulat*.

      *?

     The Ataulat was friendly at first. He gave us clinking coins and sheets of fine cloth. When he left, he said that he would find Makwala again. We laughed, because we thought that could not be true.

     The next year was a very, very bad year. It had rained too much, and the banks had swollen and overflowed, and a strange disease* was spreading, and fruit rotted on the vine before it became ripe. That was the year that the Ataulat returned. Now he brought a beautiful woman, who we called Priana.

      *Unsure why you said this when the original text specifies NeoPox. Maybe the context made you think it was something else — we know it as a minor childhood disease, but it’s particularly severe for this population because they were never exposed to it before.

     The Ataulat showed us how Priana could make the clouds ebb and flow, and she made the floods retreat. He said that Priana could make Makwala a paradise, and we would never have a bad year again, if we were willing to sacrifice for it.

     The Ataulat said that his wife could not have children. If we gave him a child for her, he would harness the sky.

     We offered him a baby. His name was Ranaka, and he was very ill, but the outsiders had medicine. He had to leave to survive, said the Honored Mother. Better to survive far away than to die at home.

     She would regret saying this.

     The Ataulat left, and Priana stayed. Then the Ataulat returned, with more outsiders. The outsiders would give us coins if we would show them our beautiful island, he said. He did not mention that they were giving him coins, too.

     We had many coins, then, but that did not matter because our children were still ill. “Give them to me,” the Ataulat said. “They will survive if you give them to me. There are many who cannot have children, who will take them in.”

     When we tried to buy medicine, the ships dashed on the rocks. We asked Priana why. She said the magic was unpredictable, but we could predict very well. Every time, the tourist ships could pass, yet all the medicine ships dashed on the rocks.

     So our children passed into the great maw of the swooping Ataulat, and there was nothing we could do.

     If you are hearing this, it is because you are one of the children we have left. Soon, there will be no one left to hear this.

     Do not follow trails of white feathers. The Ataulat is best left shunned.

      An interesting translation. There’s nothing wrong with it, but you made a number of odd choices — in particular, your choice to leave the monster’s title untranslated.

           Most students translated “Ataulat” as “the One Who Stole.”

           A few of them seemed to think it was a name, but you clearly didn’t do that, so I don’t know. An attempt to create narrative tension, perhaps?

           In any case, you’re the only student who managed to get to the end before time ran out, so I’ll give you a 90. Good job.

           —The written portion of Lillian Fairweather’s Advanced Lutari final exam

     ———

     Roxton woke up to the sound of animal noises and the faint roar of distant rain.

     “Ugh.”

     He tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Someone had tied him up. He struggled, but his extremities were numb, and moving sent a shooting pain between his shoulders—

      His father’s hand rested on his back.

     Oh.

     He opened one eye. He was lying on his father’s kitchen table.

     “Oh dear, he’s awake,” said his father. “And I’m all out of Floobix spurs. I’m afraid the operation has just gotten much more difficult, Miss Fairweather.”

     His father stood there, as calm as anything, with Lillian next to him holding a scalpel.

     “Good morning, Roxton. I was just explaining your illness to Miss Fairweather here.”

     “Illness?”

     “An exotic parasite that deprives the organs of blood. Bones, heart, brain. It can drive someone to madness.”

     His father touched a place in his leg.

     “You need to cut here, and take the parasite out.”

     Roxton had seen enough medical imaging of that leg to know what he was actually pointing at.

     “Lillian,” he said. “Lillian, listen to me. That’s not a parasite. That’s a tendon. If you do that, I won’t be able to walk.”

     His father narrowed his eyes. It occurred to Roxton suddenly that both father and son expressed displeasure in the exact same way. “Why would I lie about that?”

     “Shut up!” Roxton screamed, jerking against the rope that tied him to the kitchen table. “You lied about everything! You lied to this island, and then you lied to everyone else about their children, and now you want the truth to die with us! Do the other Lutari in the world even know what their own names were? Because I HAVE TO GUESS!”

     His father spun his talon around his temple.

     “Ramblings. It must be getting to him,” he said, putting on his coat.

     “Where are you going?!”

     “To find that medicine man that did this to you. I suspect it’s not a coincidence that it’s the same leg he has been… ‘treating.’”

     Roxton’s father unsheathed his saber.

     “A breach of trust,” he said evenly, “cannot go unpunished.”

     “Father—!” Roxton started.

     His father closed the door behind him. Now it was only Lillian standing over him, white-knuckling the scalpel, eyes wide.

     “Well?” said Roxton quietly. “What are you waiting for? Betray me, already.”

     “I’m — I’m steeling myself. I’m not a medical doctor,” Lillian said. She sounded faint. She wiped sweat from her brow.

     “Because that would qualify you to do this.”

     “Can you please just be quiet?”

     “Oh, sure, I’ll be quiet. I’ll be quiet while my father goes out there and does who-knows-what to an innocent man to cover up the fact that he stole thousands of children. I’m sorry that I’m being too loud. That sounds hard. For you.”

     Lillian put the point of the scalpel to his skin.

     “T’tiat.”

     She stopped. “What?”

     “Trust. That’s part of the joke, right? About Baby Pteris?”

     “Lur auyiltn’t rii t’tiat pupu P’Tatua,” Lillian said. She had an accent, Roxton realized now. She over-articulated. Saying “ta-tea-at” instead of “ta-chat.” He’d dropped that vowel because it seemed like what Matuk would do. “Why shouldn’t you trust Baby Pteris? That’s the joke.”

     “You told me I’m a man you t’tiat. Has that changed?”

     Lillian swallowed. “I don’t know. You told my father that you could save the Fairweather name from being a laughingstock, and then you didn’t.”

     “Yeah. Yeah, I did fail you.”

     He wasn’t looking at Lillian — he was looking at the pocket above her heart.

     “So you want your name to be a curse. Alright.”

     He closed his eyes.

     “Go on.”

     There was the sound of something snapping, but no pain.

     He opened them. The ropes binding him to the table had been cut.

     “You saved his life. I’m saving yours,” said Lillian. “Get out before I change my mind.”

     ———

     /kee/

      verb

     To go, to fight, to live.

      —Lutari Dictionary Vol. I

     ———

     The storm was here.

     Neovia had storms — storms with lethargic, cold rain. Even running through the storm to reach the archives, the rain had been a warm, steady drum.

     Now it had stopped raining. It was only storming.

     The water was white with motion, the trees bent in ways that you would never think trees could bend without snapping, the sky howled and screamed, and everything shook so hard that it felt like the very ground beneath his feet was about to break in half. A wave hit, and it felt like it was trying to drag him into the sea by the ankles.

     It was an explosion of sound. It was imminent peril. It was familiar. It would’ve killed him if he wasn’t Roxton Colchester III, and a Lutari.

     His conscious brain was bypassed entirely. His body dropped to all fours and ran.

     He found the Atimuku, its starry waters roiling and churning like an empty stomach, and then he found Matuk’s hut.

     “Matuk!”

     He wasn’t there, and neither was Jordie or Tui, but Briana was.

     “Ick,” she said, digging through Matuk’s pantry. “Bleh. Don’t these people eat anything other than eggs and fruit?”

     Roxton pointed the knife at her, and, keeping his distance, inched towards his bag of healing potions. Faeries were dangerous, even the gray ones. “You.”

     Briana yelped in surprise.

     “What are you doing here?”

     “Tch. Is it so unbelievable that a faerie would want to enjoy the company of the people of her domain?”

     “...”

     “Okay, fine, my house fell into the ocean.”

     “Where’s the others?”

     “Oh, you want to know where your little man friend went?”

     “My—? He’s not,” Roxton stammered.

     “C’mon! He let you paint his face. You should be bad!” she said gigglingly. “It’s Y25, nobody’s gonna judge you.”

     “What? How do you know about that?”

     “Sometimes I lurk around the woods and—”

     “I’m going to stop you before you get any more creepy and ask again, where’s the others?”

     “Evacuated to the village, I guess?”

     “Uh-huh. And where’s my father?”

     “How would I know that?”

     “You did work for that scam of a man.”

     “Oh, so you’re up to speed now? Yeah, I worked for him, and then I lost my magic and we got stuck here, so our jobs have been a moot point for a while.”

     “He hired you to threaten the island,” Roxton said, suddenly struck by the urge to put her wings back on so he could personally rip them off.

     “Mm-hm,” said Briana girlishly. “You know, they called me the worst in my class at the Academy? Most Air faeries stop storms, and I would if I wanted to, but breaking up a weather pattern is easy. It’s an underappreciated art to get everything just right to form a hurricane where there isn’t supposed to be a hurricane, y’know? I mean, your job title is ‘adventurer,’ I’m sure you’ve heard people get all judgemental before. Get a real job, this. Stop committing war crimes, that. Accelerating climate change is wrong, they say! You just can’t let the haters get you down, right, Roxton? …Roxton?”

     Roxton had taken the healing potions and left already.

     “If the Lutari wanted people to stop being mean to them, maybe they should stop being so rude,” Briana huffed.

     To be continued…