“Okay, when we are a safe distance away we will drop anchor, have dinner, and talk. After that there will be no more lies between us, deal?”

  Tic thought about this for a long time, wondering if he could actually tell her everything, but then finally he nodded. If he didn’t tell her, then there was nobody in the world that he could tell. Tia was not only his sister’ but she was his best friend. Possibly his only friend now that Lemure has been attacked.

  Could it have been destroyed? Judging by the armada attacking they certainly could have kill… He didn’t even want to finish the thought.

  * * *

  Tia hadn’t been lying when she said they were stocked and they feasted upon fresh ham and bread before sitting back to enjoy the clear night sky. Neither one of them could help but think of Lemure and what might be happening there. Had their family made it through unscathed? Somehow, they doubted it. None of them were soldiers other than minimum requirements, Lemure was a market place, commerce their only motivator, and the invasion force looked huge.

  “Let me see it,” Tia said and held out her hand.

  “I don’t think so, Tia, it’s mine and it won’t do you any good.”

  “It’s not yours, you stole it from that dusty old wizard’s stuff, so it is not yours. I can’t believe that you stole something, Tic, by the gods you have enough money to buy anything you want yet you stole it.”

  “I didn’t try to steal it, Tia, it just kind of happened.”

  “Stealing is stealing, Tic, now let me see it. Sleet, Tic, just think if mother was alive and knew you had stolen this.” Tia was exasperated and she held her hand out for Tic to place it in. He kept his eyes down feeling ashamed, he had never known his mother but that didn’t stop anyone from throwing her name into his face any time they liked. He dug the stone out of his pocket and placed it in her hand.

  “A rock? It’s just a rock with scribbles on it.”

  “That rock just saved us from an invading naval force, Tia. It is more than just a rock, it has power.”

  “I don’t feel any power, Tic, it is a rock…just a blasted rock that you stole,” she criticized and Tic looked down at the deck feeling ashamed. He didn’t really regret the theft, or at least he had never thought that he had but now, however, he was beginning to feel like he had been burying his guilt all along. He started to say something but the jerk of Tia’s body brought his head up with a snap to see her with her arm extended as if she had just thrown something. A heavy splash in the water behind him said that she had done just that.

  “What did you just do?” he said feeling his anger rise.

  “You don’t need it, Tic,” Tia said almost too calmly.

  “That wasn’t yours, how could you do that?” He jumped up and ran to the rail as if he could somehow save the rock from sinking to the bottom of the sea, but he knew that he couldn’t.

  “It wasn’t yours either, Tic. Easy come easy go.”

  “But it protected us and kept us safe.” His voice was rising and he approached her with his hands balled into fists. He wanted to throttle her, no…he wanted to throw her in and not let her back on board until she dove down and retrieved his stone. His most precious stone and she took it away from him as if it was her right.

  He stared at her wide eyed, his entire being filled with rage. He knew that if he started saying anything he was going to explode and only the gods knew where that would bring him.

  “It was not—” she started to say but Tic cut her off with a tone so deep it was growl.

  “You had better get away from me, Tia. I swear if I have to look at your smug face for another second, I’m going to break it.”

  Tia pulled back in surprise. She had never seen him like this. She had never even imagined that he could be this way. Without a word she stood up and gathered a few of her belongings and went below deck. Tic went back to the rail and stared into the depths where he thought the stone had disappeared. He tried reaching out for it but felt nothing. He kept trying but there was too much water or something was keeping him from feeling its energy. His body still shook with rage as he sunk to the deck. His woe was exponential, but eventually he slipped into an uncomfortable sleep that seemed to sap him of more energy than it restored.

  Down beneath the deck Tia pulled the rock out from her pocket and studied it. She had originally just meant it as a joke, but he had bought into it so fully and his rage was so great that she just couldn’t give it back to him. His attachment to it was unhealthy, regardless of what he thought it brought him. She would give it back to him at some point, after all it was just a rock, or at least to her it was just a rock. There was no energy flowing from it or into her, it was simply a chunk of granite, nothing more, nothing less.

  She studied the etchings for a bit longer, some of them looking familiar but nothing that she could fully place. Then she walked over to her chest of clothes and buried the stone at the very bottom. In the morning she walked back on deck and smiled at Tic who glared at her as he walked by and went below deck. He locked the door. It didn’t matter what she said or did, he stayed in the cabin with the door locked for two days. The weather was amenable and it wouldn’t have been so bad except all of the food and the chamber pot was down there. On the third day she was fit to be tied and was ready to break the door down when suddenly Tic was there. His eyes were blurry and his clothes were a mess but he was there on deck and completely ignoring her. Worse than ignoring her, he wouldn’t even look at her. It was bad; she almost broke down and told him right then and there that she didn’t really throw his stone overboard. It was the ham bone she threw, but she was pissed. It was a thing of no consequence and certainly no reason to treat her this way.

  She laid down and went to sleep, the little bit she had gotten on deck for the last two days wasn’t very restful so Tic could just screw himself, she was getting some shut eye.

  It was several hours later when she woke. She got up and cleaned herself, ate, and went back on deck to find the sails slack, the tiller unmanned and Tic laying listlessly in the bow with his head hung over the side staring at the sea. She walked up to him and kicked his boot hard. He spun on her with the rage in his eyes renewed but she didn’t falter.

  “You disappoint me, Tic.”

  “I disappoint you? Oh, that’s rich. You had no right to do what you did, Tia, no right at all.”

  “Yeah, well maybe I didn’t. It sure showed me what you’re made of though didn’t it?” Tia said it and held his gaze for a long moment before holding her hand straight out and dropping the stone at his feet. “I thought you were a man. More than that, I thought you were special. But you’re not, are you?” She turned and walked back to start working the sails back into place and man the tiller. She had to look up at the sun and gauge the time of day to figure out where they were and which way was north. She looked back at Tic and saw him sitting there staring at the stone, his face expressionless. She ignored him, he had truly disappointed her and she didn’t know if she wanted to even be on this journey with him, but there was no going back now.

  * * *

  Tic couldn’t take his eyes off the stone. She tricked him. She made him think that she threw away his stone just to make him act like a…fool. No, that isn’t right. It’s Tia, she never tried to make me look bad. I did that, all on my own.

  He thought back to that night remembering when she threw it into the sea, but she hadn’t. She had thrown something into the sea and he had assumed the rest. He remembered looking at her then going to the rail and looking into the water and feeling lost, feeling panicked. He remembered his rage and what he thought was pain and he turned on her, on the verge of attack while she said nothing. She sat there smugly with that annoying smirk and he had wanted to smash her face in. Tia, the one who was always there for him and he wanted to smash in her face. He wanted to smash…her…face… That wasn’t him. That isn’t how he thinks about things or believes the world should be. People should be respectful to each other especially when those people matter. Was it the stone turning him into something he didn’t want to be? Was it possessing him, filling him with some ancient evil? Was the spirit of the evil magi now taking over his soul? Tic knew this for a cop out as soon as he thought of it. The fault was his own and the flaw was within him.

  He didn’t want to admit it, but he did steal the stone. As circumstantial or accidental as it had occurred, the fact remained that he never returned it to its rightful place. Even the fact that no one would know wasn’t a factor, he stole it plain and simple and through that theft he had made it his own. For that, there was no excuse, so why had he felt so betrayed when it was stolen from him?

  He reached out and picked up the stone and turned it over to look at the etchings. It surely didn’t feel as if there was some cosmic power locked within it now. It was just a rock, nothing more, nothing less. So why had he thought it was so much more? Because through that stone I have energies with which I can change the world. He suddenly realized how maniacal that sounded. He could change the world, dum dum dum. What a fool I am. If the power is real, it is within me. If it isn’t within me and simply a result of this stone or talisman…do I really want it? The thought of what it was or what it could be was suddenly very frightening to Tic. He didn’t think that he could be a part of this, whatever this was any longer.

  He stood and walked over to Tia knowing that looking her in the eye would be one of the hardest things that he has ever done. He approached her slowly, knowing that she was watching his every move and not trusting him one bit. That was the hardest thing to deal with, they always trusted each other, no matter what.

  “I was a fool,” he said.

  “You ‘are’ an ass,” she spat back.

  “I know, I am an ass and I’m sorry. I could blame it on this, but this…is only a rock, so I blame myself. I hope that you can forgive me. I won’t treat you like that again,” he said, and in an underhanded casual manner, he lobbed the stone over the rail and into the sea. Strangely he felt a sense of relief and not the panicked anxiety that he thought he would feel. He turned to go clean himself up when he heard Tia say with a meek voice, “Tic.” He turned back to her.

  “Thank you,” she said and then added. “I can’t lose you right now.” The next thing he knew they were hugging and they both knew how much they meant to each other. They were siblings but they were more than just that, they were confidants and friends, they needed each other in a way that most sibling never experience, and he almost threw it all away for a rock.

  “You won’t lose me…ever.”

  * * *

  “Empty seas?” he responded without bothering to try and hide the fear in his voice. Tic was smart and studied a lot of subjects in his life, however the sea and travel were not one of them. He never expected to be much of a traveler, and the life that had been laid out for him wasn’t going to allow him much time to sail or hike anywhere so he had pretty much ignored things like tides and trade winds. He found that he was very uncomfortable being in a situation that his studies hadn’t covered and the sea was exactly that.

  “Relax, I have food for a couple weeks and I have heard of some really neat islands probably only four days north of here.”

  “Neat? What’s neat about them?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll find out in four days now won’t we and we will be able to acquire more food there even if we have to hunt. This is an adventure, Tic, an adventure I never thought we would be brave enough to take, yet here we are.”

  “Well, you know I never thought we would take it or any adventure at all for that matter. I was pretty comfortable with the way things were going for me until this whole chosen business came up.” Tic was starting to whine. “You know that we know nothing about hunting or processing game, don’t you?”

  “Yeah well, we’ll learn on the fly or we’ll figure it out, now won’t we. You’re stuck with me now because there is no going back, so quit your damn whining.”

  His father’s words came back to him. Your life is already written and you’re not even twenty. It suddenly dawned upon him. His father was right; Tic’s life would be no different twenty years from now than it was today if he didn’t make a change. The capital was an option but this…maybe an adventure would be what he needed.

  “Tia, this was our mobile factory, what did you do with all of the materials and stuff down below?”

  “Nothing, it’s still there. I couldn’t very well empty all of the tools and product off the boat without being noticed now could I.”

  “No, I guess you couldn’t. It might come in handy if we ever have to earn any money to get by. Uncle Rowen says that you often have to work with whatever the client brings you for leather, maybe we’ll get to work with some of that lokai stuff I have heard about,” Tic said while in the back of his mind there were some mysteries that Tia had yet to settle. “It’s called a lokai,” Tic said and then added. “Or at least it would be called lokai if it even existed.”

  “Ha, just a couple of months ago you didn’t believe that dwarves or elves existed,” Tia said sarcastically.

  “Still not sure about the elves, T, and when it comes to lokai, I know we were brought some of that blue leather that they claimed was lokai, but was it? Or was it dyed buckskin?”

  “It didn’t work like buckskin, in fact, it didn’t work like anything I’ve used before,” Tia replied and continued. “You don’t believe anything unless it comes up and bites you on the nose. I hope that someday you find out that everything you have discredited, like elves or gnomes and even trolls were actually real. There is more to life than just mathematics and science, Tic, trust me…you’ll see.”

  Tic wondered if he should be more accepting of the mythology that he had heard before, after all, he knew now that magic was real, so why couldn’t those creatures also be real?

  * * *

  Four days for the siblings came and went with no islands to show for it, but neither of them worried too much. They weren’t experienced sailors so it was bound to take them a little bit longer, right? By day seven Tic mentioned that they might want to head back as they hadn’t had any rain and their water supply was bordering on desperate. Tic and Tia were used to regular bathing so when they were reduced to sponge baths due to being on a ship it was quite an ordeal and affected them mentally more than they could have ever imagined. Neither one of them thought to conserve water by sharing their wash water or to even stop bathing for just a while, in fact the thought of it just seemed wrong on several levels. They also weren’t aware that a lot of sailors during this age simply didn’t bathe at all while at sea. Live and learn they said, but they never realized that live was truly the operative word when it came to ships and drinking water. Neither of them had ever sailed beyond the sight of land or more than a day’s outing so there were bound to be some mistakes. So many mistakes compounded together was a bit overwhelming for the duo.

  Tic remembered the stone he had thrown overboard and that with it he could have caused it to rain, at least a little. He had done it before and it was just a matter of condensing the water stored in the clouds, but what if like now…there weren’t any clouds?

  On day ten they smiled at each other in spite of having given up bathing two days before when the wind from the south picked up, pushing them north at a good clip. Soon the southern sky began to darken and the speed of their travel became alarming, especially considering the size of the waves that were starting to overtake them from behind. The stern started to fish tail with every wave and they were practically swamped by a particularly large swell, causing Tic to look worriedly at Tia. They both knew that they were taking on water and there was no one available to work the hand pump. She stopped meeting his gaze, preferring instead to keep the boat pointed north and east which was lucky as that was the direction the wind and waves wanted them to go.

  “So…what do we do if it really starts to blow?”

  “It’s blowing pretty good already, Tic.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t a storm, if a storm comes up, we are going to have to do something differently I would think.” Tic’s words caused Tia to look around her worriedly. Tia had heard about ocean storms and she knew that they were dangerous but she had never truly considered the magnitude of all that water becoming an enraged sea. She had always been told ‘once you got beyond the breakers the sea smoothed out.’ These waves and rolls they faced now were much more dangerous than the breaker waves that the children surfed and played upon in the summer months.

  “Yeah, well why don’t you think on that doom and gloom stuff some more and maybe you’ll come up with something okay.” Her tone was beyond tense and her gaze pierced him with a barely subdued rage, or maybe it was fear? So that is what he did.

  He watched how the waves were taking the boat and realized it might be better to turn into the wind, but if they tried to turn now it would probably come over the rails and swamp them or worse, capsize them, which would be certain death. He didn’t have to wonder about water temperature as he was completely soaked with spray already. The water was cold even in the middle of summer, in fact it was freezing cold and they would only survive for a few minutes if by chance they found themselves over board. He determined that hanging on to the rudder and keeping either the stern or bow with the waves was the best thing to do. Probably best with the stern as the bow, without any force behind it, could turn them broadside no matter what the rudder said. He looked at the keel rudder and pushed it the rest of the way down just to keep them from going sideways. He didn’t know if that was the right thing to do but it was a decision of some sort and that, in his mind, was being proactive.