This ongoing work in progress is entirely a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed within are entirely fictional and any resemblance to people, living or dead is coincidental.
No part of the work may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.
Copyright Ion Fyr 2022
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Pool came to rest on his side, his pistol digging into his hip and feeling like his legs were shattered. He spit salty grit from his mouth and rolled over on to his stomach with the intent of climbing to his feet, but a gust of wind caught his still half-inflated parachute and began to drag him.
First digging his fingers into the amalgam of the beach, then reaching in vain for his satchel as he was pulled past it, he was towed along the shore, parallel to the water’s edge.
Finding himself dragged over a two meter branching piece of driftwood, he grasped it tightly. With effort he lifted it and swung it down, embedding a horn-shaped limb into the damp ground.
Clinging with his left hand to the branch, while his torso was pulled westward and lifted centimeters off the barren surface, Pool managed with difficulty to unclasp, first the horizontal straps, then to slip his arms from the shoulder straps, first his right arm, then, letting go of the saving driftwood, he extended his left to release it from the pack as well.
Relieved to confirm that his legs were not in fact shattered by the landing, he rose to his feet and brushed the coarse sand from his clothes.
Retrieving his satchel, reattaching the strap as best he could, he considered his situation.
He stood on the southern shore of the island, rumored to be perhaps a breeding ground for the great sea-beasts, called leviathans, by numerous reports of passing airship captains and passengers over the years.
This scant island, barely large enough to be recorded on most navigation maps. It lay just south of the Arctic Circle and was subject to harsh winters and chaotic, frigid seas, the latter favored by both the invertebrate and vertebrate forms of leviathan.
Today, however, was a relatively sunny day on the tail end of an abnormally warm summer.
Pool looped the satchel over and across so its repaired strap rested on his right shoulder and it hung again by and slightly above his left hip, leaving his pistol accessible to his right hand.
He then unlatched its cover and withdrew his small but powerful Schott field glasses, the best made binoculars of the day, but modified with a pair of shallow cylinders of plastic clamped to the ends each with three brass screws. In addition to the standard adjusting mechanisms native to the field glasses, the attached matte black cylinders rotated and, impossibly for the latter days of the 19th century, automatically focused and adjusted to different levels of light.
They were undamaged by the fall, having been surrounded by Pool’s change of shirts and underwear. He hefted them to his eyes, feeling the weight of the multiple lenses and prisms within.
First, he scanned the sea, the entire length of the horizon visible to him on this side of the island.
It should be explained, at this point, that while the island was small, it was still between 25 and 30 kilometers in diameter, and thus occupied all of the visible northern view. The mountains at its center seemed much larger and imposing from the low level of the strand.
The forest of yellow-green birch beginning several hundred meters beyond the high tide mark and the shrubbery blown by salty winds swayed like an enormous field of wheat in the wind, casting silvery glints of leaf-bottoms here and there.
After realizing the low angle prevented him from seeing anything beneath the waves, even in the smoother waters out past the tumbling and rumbling surf, Pool turned his lenses inward, scanning the foothills in the foreground.
The sounds of the crashing waves now at his back drowned out the much fainter sounds of the wind in the boughs before him, though he immediately and unconsciously imagined the sound, a reflection of memories.
He would have to move to higher ground to observe anything of value.
With the glasses suspended from their cord around his neck and bouncing heavily as he walked, he fished another tool out from his satchel, this time re-latching the bag. The device was a kind of folding machete. Hinged at the end and with the blade entirely, safely concealed within the stout handle, when opened, it locked (with a simple release to close it again), revealing a smooth and sharp blade on one edge and a toothed saw blade on the other. The shaft was four centimeters thick along its length, though slightly wider at the base to better the user’s grip, and 40 centimeters long. Matching the handle, the blade was slight narrower, but widened at the blunt tip mostly for heft as a machete blade. Though it was hinged, when opened it was as stout and sturdy as a full-tanged blade.
Pool’s kit was intentionally minimal. Aside from his change of clothing, the field glasses and the folding machete, crammed into his satchel he had brought a simple fire-starting steel, two tins of hard tack, a small water bottle and tin of water purifying tablets, extra rounds for the pistol, a small pocket knife, a folded two meter square waxed canvas tarp, a compact hammock, which rolled easily into a small ball, a narrow cord and hooks for catching fish, and most importantly of all, a small brass case, merely 5 by 10 centimeters and only one thick. It contained his means to signal to his party the end of his mission.
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Ion Fyr 