Mianuus

     Afternoon sunlight pulsed over gently moving water. It was two weeks since Harata’s fateful dream, and now he stood upon the docks of Min Harbor. The port was loaded with freight ships and liners, workers scuttling along like crabs over a drowned sailor. I have to get out of here.

     He’d spent his journey in the confines of a ship’s hold. It had been difficult to sneak on board, and even more of a challenge to escape discovery once the ship had left land. Crouched in the dark, he’d fought seasickness and fear until finally the cargo liner came to port. The last thing he wanted was to be caught now that he’d made it to land.

     That he was Diasminian was obvious. Despite his tan, his skin was far lighter than someone of the Otherlands. His eyes, though a rich, dark brown, were not quite dark enough to mark him as a foreigner. Even his hair betrayed him. While most of it was black, cropped fairly close to his head, the forelock was dazzling white- an eccentricity not found among Otherlanders. It would be impossible to slip by the crowds without being noticed. Harata cursed his bad luck. He’d always dreamed that his homecoming would be somewhat more triumphant, with his mother and sister waiting in the sun to wave him on. Sadly, this would prove to be far from possible.

     On the morning he’d awoken from his dream, he’d gone to the hut of his Shaen, his master. He pounded on the rough-hewn door, frantic for answers to more questions than he had voice for. When it opened, he practically fell through the doorway.

     “I have to go home,” he’d sputtered.

     The lined, weathered face of his Shaen showed shock and concern.

     “Harata, what’s the matter? You know I cannot let you leave here. What’s happened?”

     The older man led the younger to a chair and bade him sit. He listened quietly to Harata’s tale, dismay and disbelief welling at the sight of the ring- and the scars, which had remained as well.

     “What can I do?” the young man’s voice was soft, but there was fear beneath it. “This is wrong. I’m not it, not the One.”

     “Harata, my student, legends can’t always be taken literally. Perhaps you are Clanless in truth.”

     “You know that’s not right. You know I’m not.”

     The older man sighed softly. “Twenty-one years ago I was visited by a powerful man from your country. He came to me with a proposition. He wanted me to provide sanctuary for a boy who was not his son, but the son of Dauern woman to whom he was indebted. Knowing the policies of your homeland, I refused at first, but the man was persuasive. He made it well worth my while.

     “You arrived a few months later, and gave me a letter dictated by your mother. It explained that she’d had a vision- and that she knew, should she send you away, that you’d never return to a life of slavery. My instructions were simple: to keep you here with me until the day I die.”

     “That still doesn’t explain-“

     “A few years after your arrival, the Hall of Records in Mianuus caught fire. Many records were lost, but all were reclaimed after a census- all but yours, of course. Everyone involved in your disappearance denied you ever lived. In the mind of your homeland, you never existed. Should you return, it shall be without ties to kin or Clan.”

     Harata put his head in his hands. He wanted to say something, to deny this, to find some magic word to erase what he’d just heard. Nothing came to him. His mind instead turned to memory, running over his twenty years in the Otherlands.

     He lived in a training camp for martial artists. Most of the boys there were Diasminian, sent to learn the arts of war. It was obvious that most were Angemal, though the boys were forbidden to speak of Clan lines while living there.

     Like the other boys, Harata became homesick from time to time, but as years progressed it became obvious that his case was different. He received no packages, no letters, no family visits. While no other boy stayed past his fourteenth birthday, the young refugee remained year after year. Yet he always held onto the dream of seeing his family once more.

     As he grew older, he became less student and more assistant to his aging Shaen. Over time, the younger boys concocted story after story to explain their elder’s presence. The latest was that Harata was in truth an orphaned Corduran who had permission to move to the Otherlands for study. One of the littlest boys admitted to being Corduran himself, with just such permission. This led of course to a pummeling by the boys of the Angemal and a severe scolding by their Shaen. 

     Harata shook his mind back to the present. He had more pressing issues than nostalgia to deal with. He’d made a plan while hiding in the hold of the liner. Now, he had only to act on it and pray it worked.

     He quickly stashed his bag along the path leading away from the docks. He then returned to the ships and busied himself among the other workers, lifting crates and steadying boxes as they rolled along conveyors. In his mind, while forming the plan, he’d fit in perfectly with the rest. The reality was sadly different. His imitation and dress were flawless, and yet he stood in painful contrast to those he aped. They were Pantagruel.

     Anyone who’d spent a lifetime growing up in Diasminion would’ve taken this for granted. It was well known what jobs each Clan was responsible for. For Harata, however, finding the giants toiling busily away among the ships was another startling complication. While he was somewhat tall, well built and muscular, the workers all stood a head taller. They all had massive arms and legs, with torsos dense and rock-like. It was only an hour or so before the foreman, a grizzled, graying, weather-beaten man, pulled him aside.

     “You ain’t one a mine,” he said roughly, eyeing Harata closely. “Who ya with?”

     At this, the smaller gestured further down the docks, without a word.

     “Why ya wanderin’?” Still, Harata said nothing. The towering foreman was still looking at him critically. “Kind of a runt, ain’t ya?” Suddenly, his hand shot out and grabbed the arm of the imposter dockworker. He began to scrutinize the limb, carefully checking for something. “You on the Roller Coaster, boy? Shootin’ up? That why you so scrawny, huh?”

     Harata shook his head “no” frantically.

     “I’m callin’ the cops.”

     Shit!

     “Don’t go nowhere,” called the foreman over his shoulder as he headed off to his office.

     Yeah, right, thought Harata to himself. As soon as the man was out of sight, the Clanless snuck off toward the road away from the docks. He picked up his pack and started off toward the city limits. As soon as he felt no one was trailing him, he broke into a run. Any plans he might have had to enter Mianuus were now abandoned. He could thank the stupidity of the Pantagruel for escaping this time, but he realized that he’d have to be a lot more careful in the future.

     He followed a narrow trail onto a beach, quickly dashing under a boardwalk. Crouched in the shade, he pulled a battered tourist map out of his pack. He couldn’t stay there long, he knew, but he had to figure out where he was going. Upon studying the map, he realized with relief that the beach was part of a massive system of public parks that surrounded the southern side of the city. Perhaps the parks would offer a place to hide until later, when his thoughts were more collected and the adrenaline was no longer pulsing through his veins. Perhaps he would escape from there into the suburbs… leaving Mianuus for days when he had some idea how to get around in his former homeland.

     After catching his breath, feeling the soft, damp sand against his skin, he crawled out and looked around. The coast was clear, and so he made his way back up the path, breaking into a dash as soon as his feet hit asphalt.

     He wandered the parks until dusk. The cops were definitely after him. A few times they’d come near, but he’d been quicker, alerted by the crackling of their walkie-talkies. He began to feel with urgency that he needed to find a place to hide. The parks were off-limits at night, and the sounds of him thrashing through the underbrush would give him away for sure.  Harata moved by instinct only now, pushing himself along in whatever direction felt good. He could still feel the rolling of the ocean under his legs. He was getting tired, and would have to stop. But where?

     At one point, he wandered dangerously close to a parking lot, lit up yellow-orange by overhead lamps. He felt a nearly irresistible urge to jump into that light, chase down the last departing vehicle- a motorcycle, tearing off into the dark. What’s wrong with me? Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he walked back toward the deeper darkness.

     He trekked along for about another hour when he felt himself being pulled once more. He looked up from his feet, and saw that the path was beginning to rise. Soon, it became part of one lone hill, on the side of which stairs were carved. It was the entrance to a temple. Harata wanted nothing more than to climb those stairs, go into the safe, warm confines of that place. Why am I thinking this? He walked to the base of the stairs.

     There was someone at the top, descending at a leisurely pace, as though coming to greet a friend whose visits were as frequent as the sunrise. As the figure came closer, Harata felt warmer…

     The feeling of warmth grew until it was tingling on his skin. He felt as though he’d been sitting on a sweltering beach for eight hours. The warmth became heat, and next, pain. He felt on fire, and closing his eyes, he could sense his charred skin falling from his bones. Somehow, he pried his eyes open once more, dizzy and gripped by nausea. He’d fallen, he realized, clutching the cool stone step. Slowly, the pain and sickness began to subside, and he became aware that the figure who’d been descending was now at his side.

     “It’s always the worst the first time it happens to you,” the man said in a soothing voice. “It’ll be okay now. Let’s get you upstairs.”

     Harata allowed himself to be hoisted up by his newfound companion. Shock sent shivers up his spine.

     “You’ve felt this before?”

     “Yeah, it only happens around one of ‘Us’. We’ll talk about it later. C’mon, you look beat.”

     Harata only nodded. What the hell is going on?

     He wouldn’t wait long to find out.