The day before this disease took the lives of more than half the people, a few children had been playing a game called danger.
The days were long, and with no toys to play with or stories to pretend, several of the children-released from their daily lesson with their families- would race to the beach to fill the day with fun before the sun slept and it was time to return to the forest. Their favorite game to play was to jump into the waters and all grab a hold of a wooden raft. The last to let go would be the winner.
As simple as the rules were, this was no easy competition. Especially on this particular afternoon, the waves were rough and cold- the sun hidden behind a mist of grey clouds. When the eldest of the children, Eevia, felt the dampness of the sand under her feet, she paused to look up.
"We shouldn't play in the ocean today," Eevia determined, "the skies advise us not to."
No one would argue with Eevia- after all, she was the eldest. But after roaming on the safety of the shore, the eldest of the boys- named Agus- felt bored. He nudged shoulders with his best friend Jasi, who had been walking right beside him. He didn't have to say a word for Jasi to know to follow him away from the group.
The water felt like ice around his toes. Jasi paused to double-check that the others had not watched them depart from the group. No one had, but he still waited timidly before going deeper.
Agus was trying to hide that he was shivering. "What, are you scared?" he taunted his friend with a cheesy grin. Both of them took a few steps closer to the ocean.
Now knee deep with goosebumps all over their arms and legs, their absence had caught the attention of a younger girl, who notified Eevia immediately.
"Get out of there," Eevia halted right where the fizzy foam divided the waters from the sand.
"Of course you would be scared," Agus stuck out his chin and tongue and glazed over the crowd behind her. "The weather is no match for heroes. Let's play."
Agus's words had encouraged a few more proud children to enter the water. "The clouds aren't too thick, sister," Jasi persuaded Eevia.
With a grimace and a grunt, Eevia retrieved the large plank. All the children started to cheer. There would be a game of danger today after all.
Clothes were left on the shore, but the winds were so fierce that the children had to stack rocks on the cloth to keep them from flying away.
They swam out to a distance where no one's feet could touch the ocean floor. "All hands on the perimeter!" shouted Agus,who's voice was barely heard against the crashing of distant waves.
There was no countdown to the start- the children had begun to tire as soon as they submerged. It didn't take long for twenty hands to drop to six. Eevia, Agus and Jasi were the only ones remaining.
Eevia dropped her arms to tread water for a moment so she could look out to the shore. "We're starting to drift away!" she cried worriedly.
Agus was more preoccupied with what she'd done than what she'd said. "You're out!"
"How am I out?" she snapped.
"You let go with both hands," Agus nearly swallowed a cup of the sea on his last word.
"We should go back anyways."
"You're just saying that because you lost!"
Eevia looked at Jasi gravely. "Come on brother, lets go. Let him win so we can all swim back safely."
Agus's eyes shifted to glare at Jasi. "Go ahead, do it Jasi! You knew I was going to win anyways."
Jasi wanted nothing more than to get out of the freezing water, but Agus had messed with his pride for the last time.
"I can still win!" he bellowed.
Eevia tried once more to convince her brother, but at the first crack of lightning she grew too afraid to stick around any longer. Agus and Jasi spent many more minutes on the raft. When the sky turned dark blue, Agus finally said,
"Just give up! You can't win!"
"You give up!" exclaimed Jasi, angered by the idea that Agus expected him to let himself lose.
The storm grew fiercer and a large wave tossed the boys underwater. Jasi managed to keep one hand linked to the boat, while Agus reappeared fairly distant.
"I win!" Jasi cried triumphantly. When the game was over, it was customary to have the runner-up carry the winner back while he rested on the raft- but with another massive wave, Agus was nowhere in sight. Jasi could not even spot out the shore.
Suddenly immersed in fear, Jasi's heart beat rapidly in his chest and his head grew dizzy. He abandoned the raft and swam as fast as he could, unsure of where he was heading. The waves were crashing in all different directions.
Exhausted, he tried to float on his back for just a moment to catch his breath- but the sea was relentless. His face sunk beneath the trembling surface.
He felt a hand drag him underneath the blue.
"Little land animal," a voice asked him, "what are you doing at the heart of the ocean?"
Jasi could not respond. He was sure he was drowning. He opened his eyes and saw what had dragged him under the current, to where the water was calmer. A pair of bright glowing eyes lit the man's pale, ethereal features.
A beam of light dangling from his finger, the man touched Jasi's lips. The young boy gasped; his lungs filled with water.
Somehow he felt like he could breathe again.
"There," the man spoke once Jasi seemed a little more comfortable. "Now answer me," he prodded.
"I don't know," Jasi stuttered, "I just want to go back to the shore."
"Your body will surely suffer on the surface, now that I've saved you."
Jasi did not fully understand, but he knew there was something wrong. How could he be alive without breathing air for all these minutes, much less be able to talk? "What have you done to me!?" he cried in panic.
The man's eyebrows furrowed in disgust. He gripped the boy's neck and dragged him deeper, screwing downwards in an underwater tornado. "How dare you raise your voice at me! You were just a mortal, a doomed one at that! Is this how you repay your maker?"
Jasi was vibrating in terror, but the powerful man could no longer sympathize. "Go ahead! Get washed up on the shore and dry out like a dead fish. Maybe then you and your greedy species will learn the consequences of your foolish pride."
The stream of water unraveled, and spat Jasi's body away. Limp and confused, he was returned to the sand on the back of the indignant waves that same night.
A group of adults had been pacing the shores in search for the missing boy. Still barely alive, his weakened body was taken to the lodge in the center of the village.
He was awake, but his skin was hot and pale- his breathing quick and staggered. It looked very much like the end.
This tribe did not have a doctor; the wisdom of the chief was all Jasi's grieving family could look to for an answer to whether or not the boy would survive.
"It was the son of the earth and the stars who has laid a curse upon this boy," the Chief explained, "his days are numbered."
A tear splitting from her eyes, Eevia pointed her finger at Agus in rage. "It's his fault!"
Agus had made it back to the shore safely just minutes after he'd lost sight of the raft, but he too felt somewhat sickened by the events. Ashamed, he turned away and shied his face between the bodies of his parents, who'd been part of the search team.
An argument commenced between the families, but the chief silenced everyone with a smack of his walking stick on the dark oak floor.
"There can be lots of discussion on who is at fault, but words of blame will not save the child! We will try to help him, and becoming pitted against one another will ruin our odds."
Everyone's lips were pressed together tightly as the chief led a march of his people with the boy wrapped in a thick blanket carried in his arms. They journeyed back to the shore, where the thunder was booming and the rain was pouring like a violent mist.
"Rage, God of the Seas! We accept you here on our shore. Please explain your reasons for harming this innocent boy, so we can accept if fate leaves him passed too soon!"
A whirlwind of water swept across and the man emerged, his feed locked into the waves beneath him. He stared downward upon all the people-gathered around the body of the boy he'd sent back.
"You are mistaken," the god speaks righteously, "I have gifted the boy, not harmed him! Your kind is rude... selfish! The other animals only care to survive, and they would have thanked me for what I did. I spared him, and he showed no gratitude."
The wise chief understood what had occurred now. The god had discovered Jasi when he was drowning and did all he could to save him, which meant converting him into a creature of the sea. The child was too young to acknowledge the terminal consequence of playing the danger game, and yet he was too old to cluelessly accept this wild sentence. Poor Jasi had only been too afraid to express gratitude.
"He's just a child," the chief tried to reason with the god, "it is too soon for him to leave his family and adapt to a life at sea."
The god pondered this for a moment, then gazed deep into the wide eyes of Eevia and then the face of her distraught parents.
"Very well," he determined, "I see here a loving family. A caring community. A just leader. But-!" He raised his arm, and thunder struck all around them, "humans! Your kind keeps me suspicious."
"Worry not!" the chief called out victoriously, "if a rational leader and a righteous community is what you desire from out people, that is what we will continue to be."
The god turned away without a further word. The tribe was not sure what that meant- for both the fate of the boy and for their own lives.
The chief assured everyone that all would end well.
But that night, Jasi's sleeping body rose from its slumber. His eyes were rolled backwards; only the white parts with their vessel-stained underbellies showed through his cold, crusted eyelids. He mindlessly roamed through the village, terrorizing the people with a hunger for their insides.
At sunrise, the chief woke to discover what had become of his tribe. Avoiding the twitching bodies of the other children who had been infected as well, he took off for the sea, begging the god to return once more and undo what had become of his village. But even if he did had the power to reverse events and return lives, which is beyond the ability of even the divine, the god would not have taken this tragedy back. He had intended it.
Why had the god allowed such an undeserving thing to a village he even claimed himself was rightful...? One can't truly know. The chief knew perfectly well, however, that the god he'd asked for mercy from goes by the name of Rage. And though the god did not emerge, from the water he heard a voice, "What use is a warning with no experience of the consequence?"
And that was the day humanity was warned:
If we lose the justice in our leadership and the empathy of our people, the sea will come back to steal our children.
What do you think happened next?
~
begin Jace's journal:
THESE CONTENTS, PLUS ALL OF THE IMAGES TO FOLLOW, WERE ARTIFACTS FOUND TAPED INSIDE AN OLD THREAD-BOUND NOTEBOOK WITH "PROPERTY OF JACE ORION" WRITTEN ON THE INNER FRONT COVER.
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