Traveler of the Blue Road
Part 3 - Chagum and the Hawk
Chapter 6 - A Brief Flash of Light
After the ship left Manon, Chagum asked Senna if he could help with any of the work on the ship.
“Huh? You really want to help with cleaning and drawing water and stuff?”
Chagum nodded. “Whatever I can do, I will. I really just want to move around more.”
Senna hesitated. Chagum was a prince; from her perspective, he was a high and lofty personage who sat above the clouds. Manual labor of any kind was not appropriate for someone of his status.
Chagum plucked the cleaning cloth from her hand and dipped it in a basin of water and lye, then started scrubbing the deck with a group of other sailors. He moved stiffly to protect his left shoulder at first, but loosened up as he moved, allowing him to work faster.
Senna was shocked, but she didn’t think she could talk him out of working, even if she wanted to in the first place.
When Chagum started sweating and removed his shirt, his white skin was practically blinding. Senna didn’t know what to think as watched him working to the limit of his physical abilities. He was definitely weird for a Crown Prince, right?
The other sailors excluded Chagum as the prisoner he was at first, but after a few days of working among them, Chagum started making friends. The work got easier for him as he grew more practiced at it, so the sailors gradually gave him more and more to do.
The sailors were rough and crude in their manners, but not unfriendly. After a few weeks of work, Chagum was treated more or less like the hopeless little brother of the Sangalese sailors who needed a lot of help to get caught up with everyone else.
Whenever the ship dropped anchor near an island with fresh water, the sailors took Chagum to the beach and taught him how to dive. They also showed him how to identify the larger currents so that he wouldn’t endanger himself while swimming.
Many of the sailors praised him for his diving skill. “You know, you’re not too bad at this. For a Yogoese person, anyway.” Their praise was usually accompanied by a companionable slap to his back or good shoulder.
Chagum wasn’t comfortable being touched by the sailors at first, but he grew accustomed to their casual friendliness as the weeks passed. Living and working among the sailors was completely different from his life in the imperial palace, where no one had dared to touch him at all.
When Chagum could dive to the same depths as the other sailors, Senna took him by the hand and guided him on the sea floor, pointing out shellfish and huge crabs scuttling around in the sand.
She also taught him how to communicate underwater in the same way as the other sailors. The basic method was a series of finger-taps into the shoulder; the number and rhythm of taps represented individual letters. Senna taught Chagum the letters by swimming up behind him and tapping messages into his shoulder. She was so patient in teaching him that he wondered sometimes if she was a friend or an enemy.
“If you hear someone coming up behind you and they don’t tap your shoulder, don’t turn around,” Senna warned him. “You’ll get a short sword in your gut if you do. People like that don’t want to talk.”
There were several types of pirate communication that varied between nations, and even between islands. The style of communication that Chagum was learning was called oar language, since it matched the rowing patterns of many Sangalese oarsmen.
“Tapping a greeting to someone in our language is the same way as telling someone your name,” she said. “They’ll know right away that you’re a friend.”
The first thing Senna taught Chagum how to do was tap his name. Chagum remembered the taps easily, then used his understanding of those letters to spell words and guess at how other letters were tapped.
“I think I get it, kind of,” he said.
Senna’s expression was dubious. “All right, then, prove it. Turn around.”
Chagum turned around.
Senna tapped a message into his right shoulder.
“Senna...swims...fast.”
Senna’s eyes widened in surprise. “Amazing! How did you learn that so fast?”
Chagum laughed and turned around. “It’s easy! But kind of ticklish. I prefer tapping underwater.” Then he smiled, turned away from Senna again, and jumped into the sea.
Chagum and Senna splashed and swam in the ocean like young children until sunset. Senna floated on the surface of the water with her hair fanned out and her face to the sky.
This won’t last.
The thought pierced Chagum’s heart suddenly and without warning. He felt like he would never have an experience like this again. This day was a brief flash of light in the darkness. When the light went out, he would never see it again.
Sodok stared out at Chagum swimming from a place on the beach. “That is the weirdest Crown Prince I’ve ever seen,” he muttered.
Hugo was standing next to him; he laughed. “You’re telling me. My heart almost stopped when he started cleaning.”
Sodok looked at him with a puzzled expression, so Hugo mimed cleaning the deck.
“He’s actually pretty good at it,” Hugo said. “He can also braid rope. He does it like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The sailors were pretty strict with him at first, but now he pretty much knows what he’s doing.” He looked out at Chagum. “I think those songs about him leaving the palace to save the water spirit in New Yogo are true.”
“Songs? Oh, you mean ‘The Water Spirit and the Brave Prince,’ from Sangal? The one where he supposedly traveled all over New Yogo with a bodyguard?”
Hugo nodded.
“I thought it was mostly made up by the people to make an interesting tale, but maybe some parts of it are true. He’s certainly acting like he’s been out of the palace before.” Sodok snorted in contempt.
Chagum dove as gracefully as any of the Sangalese sailors. As he watched him swim from the beach, he remembered their first meeting.
It was just after the ship left Manon. Chagum’s face had betrayed nothing as he’d listened to Hugo’s explanation and introduction of Sodok, but his eyes had been sharp and alert. When Hugo had told Chagum that Sodok was a magic weaver, he’d appeared slightly surprised, but not in the least repulsed. This had surprised Sodok greatly; the royal family of New Yogo had always scorned and despised magic weavers. Rasugu had told him that Crown Prince Chagum knew a bit of magic weaving himself; it seemed that this claim was true.
Sodok sat down on a stone on the beach and rested his chin on his hand. He didn’t understand why Hugo thought Crown Prince Chagum was so valuable, but his charisma was undeniable. Even Sodok found himself liking some of his qualities.
Hugo waved to Chagum as he came out of the water. He wasn’t paying attention to Sodok at all.
Just after dinner, Chagum found a clear spot near the prow of the ship and sat down. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of sunsets at sea. Red and purple clouds nestled thickly along the horizon line; overhead, there was a narrow strip of clear sky.
Chagum heard Senna’s footsteps behind him; he recognized her gait.
“I brought something good,” she said, holding out a wine jar.
She undid the stopper and poured the wine into two cups. Although the boat was rocking, she didn’t spill a single drop.
“What is it?” Chagum asked.
“Red wine,” she said. “It’s sweet. You’ll like it.”
Chagum brought the cup to his lips with trepidation. When he inhaled, he was a little surprised. “This smells like fruit juice,” he said.
“Isn’t it nice?” Senna asked.
Her white mouse, Poi, poked his head out of Senna’s clothes. Senna brought her cup close to his face; he leaned forward and rested his front paws in the rim of the cup. Then he stuck his face into the wine and started lapping it up eagerly with a contented expression.
Chagum’s eyes widened. “Poi drinks?”
“He loves it. I always give him a little of whatever I’m drinking,” Senna said. She lifted one finger and patted Poi fondly on the head. “There now. You’re too small to drink much more than that. The rest is mine.”
Senna tilted her cup into her own mouth, then drained the wine in one long gulp. She drank wine as casually as drinking water.
“You must be used to drinking,” Chagum muttered.
“I’ve had a drink--at least one, I mean--every day since I was eight. My dad Rakui had the best tolerance of anyone in the family, but I’ve built up mine quite a lot, too. By my thirties or so, I should be able to drink him under the table.” She laughed and topped off Chagum’s wine.
“Seems like you don’t drink much at all,” she said. “Are noble families really that strict?”
Chagum smiled sadly. “My parents didn’t really teach me much about anything themselves, and I didn’t eat or drink with them very often.”
Senna’s expression mixed surprise and confusion. “I was taught by the older men and women in my family from a very young age. I’ve never even heard of anyone who wasn’t raised the same way.”
Chagum looked up at the wisps of cloud drifting across the sky. “My mom hugged me sometimes, but I have no memories of my father giving me a hug, ever.”
Chagum and Senna sat in companionable silence for a while. Senna looked up at the star-bright sky and said, "I don't think I would have liked being a prince."
Chagum looked at Senna with his mouth and eyes wide open in shock.
"You're a prince, aren't you?" she asked. "Of New Yogo."
Chagum didn't say anything; Senna didn't wait for his reply.
"It's been a long voyage. I guessed who you were based on things you and Hugo said. It's a good thing I'm not blinded by greed and that Hugo knows he can trust me, or I might have sold you off to someone else long ago." She laughed. "But a contract's a contract. It's like I told you before. If you were nothing but a proud, self-serving prince, I would have shipped you off as soon as I could without a second thought."
Senna's face was lost in the shadows of the enveloping night. Wind flapped the sails. After a long silence, Senna said, "If you want to run away, I'll let you."
Chagum stared at the sea. He knew that Senna was serious. He thought about all the things he might be able to do with his freedom, but all his thoughts led to the same conclusion. "Thank you," Chagum said, "but I'm going to Talsh."
The bell signaling the sailors to go to bed rang out into the darkness and echoed over the water before finally fading away.
As the ship neared the southern continent, the sun was less hot; it was chilly in the mornings and evenings. The color of the ocean water deepened to a rich, dark blue. Chagum knew that places equidistant from the equator were about equally hot or cold, with the tropical countries like Sangal being the warmest. It was one thing to read about weather patterns in a book; it was quite another to experience them firsthand. He had left his own homeland in the middle of spring, but it was almost the end of winter here; soon it would be spring again.
It's like the seasons are upside-down, Chagum thought.
They sailed through a few small storms and were sometimes becalmed for a few hours at a time, but the first storm the ship had sailed through was by far the worst.
The ship finally docked safely at the port of Hoshiro in Yogo at the very beginning of Yogo's spring. They were able to stop there instead of the nearer port in the Orm territory thanks to favorable winds. The cliffs surrounding the port were a greenish white; vegetation clung to them in patches.
"Do you see the ruins on top of that cliff?" Hugo asked while pointing above the harbor town.
When Chagum looked where Hugo was pointing, he could clearly see a Yogo-style building with white plastered walls and gleaming black roof tiles. It looked like an old palace, though half the walls had crumbled to ruin and it was clearly overgrown by tall, withered grass.
"That was Prince Torugal's palace," Hugo said. "My people call it the northern palace."
Chagum leaned forward and squinted to get a closer look. Torugal and Kainan Nanai, a Master Star Reader, had led many of the people of Yogo north to settle on the Nayoro peninsula. Chagum never dreamed that his palace would still be standing--or that he would be allowed to actually see it. He remembered seeing the vividly colored royal palace of Sangal during his first visit there, standing on the Hill of the Full Moon with Shuga.
Yogo wasn't as visually arresting at first glance; its details were far more muted and subtle. Hoshiro seemed to be a poorer city than Manon; there were fewer buildings and merchants close to the docks. Most of the architecture was Yogoese, with only a few large Talsh stone structures spaced far apart. The harbor felt familiar, but the feeling was eerie, uncanny: he couldn't trust it.
"It doesn't seem as lively as Manon," Chagum said as he surveyed the city from the ship's deck. "My ancestors came from this place. I thought it must have a rich history and culture, but..."
"Yogo does have all of that, but your image of it seems to be stuck in the past," Hugo said. "Yogo conquered Horam and Orm and became the largest nation on the continent--before the Talsh came along. Internal strife among the imperial family weakened Yogo before that. Then Horam and Orm rose up in revolt, which stretched the country's resources thin. Talsh swept in and finished Yogo off."
There was a cold light in Hugo's eyes. "The winters have gotten longer and colder over the past few years. The summers are shorter and Yogo gets a lot less rain than it used to. Because of that, there are fewer farmers and sparser harvests. There's no reason to come this far south just to fish; Sangal is better suited for that. The people suffer in poverty, but the current Mikado can't do much about that. He fought hard to keep the country free, but his pride prevents him from helping the nation prosper under Talsh rule."
Chagum was stunned: Hugo criticized the Mikado so casually and easily; he had no respect for him at all.
Hugo surveyed his homeland with a stern expression and didn't look at Chagum. All the trees that Chagum could see growing on top of the cliffs were only just starting to sprout new spring leaves after the long winter. It was a lonely and comfortless view.
It doesn't look like the beginning of spring. It looks like the end of autumn.
There wasn't a single spark of life in the land or the harbor city, or even in the ocean surrounding it. This was Chagum's first time seeing Yogo, but he understood at a glance that the country had been struck by some kind of terrible disaster. The atmosphere was thick and oppressive; it was like the air was sucking away the country's essential vitality.
Harsher, longer winters, short summers and no rain.
That was the complete opposite of New Yogo. The winters had gotten progressively warmer over the years; summer was the longest season. There had also been no issues with rain since the water spirit matured. Chagum remembered standing with his grandfather on the deck of New Yogo's flagship with sandworms glowing all around them in the light of the moon. The ocean near his home teemed with life. The Yona Ro Gai had been migrating from the south to the north in a long line like a river of light.
It's spring.
The water dwellers had told him that. They'd seemed happy about it, but he didn't know why. He only realized now that Nayugu was colder in the south than it was in the north. When Hugo had pulled him back from Nayugu after the terrible storm, it had been so much colder than what he was used to. He hadn't seen many water dwellers swimming around in Nayugu's ocean, either.
If it was spring in Nayugu on the northern continent, maybe it was more like autumn on the southern continent. Sagu and Nayugu often mirrored one another. Hadn't anyone on the southern continent noticed? Rasugu and Sodok were magic weavers, weren't they? It would be strange if they hadn't seen or felt anything. Even if the entire southern continent was dominated by the Talsh--
--But wait. Maybe that was the reason: maybe the Talsh knew that their continent was dying. That was why they wanted to conquer the northern continent: for survival.
Chagum wanted to ask Hugo about Nayugu, but if no one but magic weavers knew about the change in seasons and what the effects of that were, then he might be giving away valuable information to a spy. He didn't want to take that risk.
As Chagum took in the view, a young boy employed as a harbor watcher called out something while waving his hands frantically. Hugo faced the boy and asked, "What's wrong?"
The boy pointed to the eastern edge of the harbor. Hugo frowned severely and smacked his lips together. "Forgive me, Your Majesty," he said.
"For what?" Chagum asked.
"I promised that I would show you Yogo, but it seems that won't be possible." He turned toward Sodok, who was leaning with his back against the mast.
"What's going on?" Sodok asked.
Chagum looked back and forth between Hugo and Sodok.
"Prince Raul's soldiers are coming," Hugo said.
Chagum felt chills down his spine. Prince Raul--the Second Prince of the Talsh empire.
Ten dark riders appeared in the far distance, moving along the edges of the cliffs. Behind them were two black horse-drawn carts flying flags patterned with the design of a hawk's wings.
"It's the Hokuyoku--the northern army. They take their orders directly from Prince Raul."
Chagum frowned at Sodok. "It looks like he betrayed you," he said to Hugo.
Hugo shook his head. "He only reported my activities because he was worried. I came to Yogo without Prince Raul's permission, so I really shouldn't be surprised that this happened. Sodok didn't betray me; we've worked together for years."
Hugo paused, then said, "I must ask you again to forgive me, Your Majesty. I'm required to report to Prince Raul immediately in the Talsh capital. Please accompany me there."
Chagum nodded. His lips were pale and drained of blood. His apprehension was obvious in his eyes. When Hugo saw his emotions so clearly displayed on his face, he was reminded of Chagum's youth and inexperience.
Chagum closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he was steadier. His eyes flashed like the light of sun on steel.
"Your Majesty," Hugo said hoarsely. "Please. Save your people." He bowed and walked away without saying another word.
Senna came up from belowdecks and looked around. When she saw Chagum, she ran over to him at top speed. "Are Talsh soldiers really headed for the harbor?" she asked.
Chagum repressed his fear enough to smile. "It looks like it."
Senna stared directly at him. "So...does that mean you're getting off here?"
Chagum nodded.
Senna looked down, then glanced up in the direction of the harbor. Neither Chagum nor Senna had expected they would have to say goodbye so suddenly.
Senna kept her eyes on the harbor. "Strange. I'm usually happy at the end of a job, but...not this time."
Chagum rested his hand on Senna's shoulder. "Senna. You really are lucky. Can you try to help me, too, and lend me your luck for the future?"
She looked at him in surprise and frowned slightly. "Of course I can." She took Chagum's hand and said, "I give to you the blessing of the sea. If you're anywhere in the Yaltash ocean, nothing bad will happen to you.”
This chapter is a great one, talking about Chagum's growth by learning with the pirates and Yogo's decline, but also how Chagum is able to move others with his actions and more open-minded view of the world. Will continue to look forward to more chapters and thanks as always for the lovely translation. I always look forward to new chapters every week.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much! I'm glad you're enjoying it,and I always appreciate your comments. :)
DeleteThis chapter was a lot of fun to translate. Chagum makes friends wherever he goes, whether he wants to or not, seemingly. And seeing Yogo(!) always makes me a little breathless, and a little sad. I wish we were allowed to see more of it, but the story heads to Talsh next. If you're eager to see more of Yogo, occupied/at war Yogo is the setting of "Those Who Walk the Flame Road," which I'll be translating later this year.