AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This isn't working.” Merritt pinched the bridge of his nose. “We need to try something else. Remis, what…what can you do with your abilities?”
Remis felt both his friend’s stares, eager and hopeful. It was his turn to be the hero but what if he wasn’t capable? He stepped closer into the alleyway letting the shadows cover his face. This was a subject they didn’t often broach. They knew he practiced magic and that he longed to go to school to be trained to hone his abilities, but it was still so culturally taboo they’d always skirted around the specifics.
“Only things that are elementally based. Wind. Water. Earth. Fire, if it already exists. And all of it takes a great deal of concentration.”
“So what? You can shoot water from your hands or call down rain?” Merritt pressed.
“No.” He shook his head. “No, I can’t produce the elements, I can only bend them to my will and again…only with immense concentration. I can tell the water to rise in a wave or flow in a certain direction if it’s not too much. Fire must already exist for me to tell it to do anything.”
Remis scrubbed at his face. This was exactly why he needed to attend school in the fall. With help, he might be a mage who could bend the elements with little thought, someone who could be something more than a charming heir to a business he didn’t want.
Merritt was nodding now, pacing up and down. People passed them on the street sending weary glances but never stopping to question them. Merritt ran a hand down the straining buttons of his shirt and came to an abrupt stop. “Isn’t there a body of water near here? The Mitus River?”
The fuzzy recollection of the map lingered and was pulled from the back of his mind. It was all blurry words and terribly illustrated treelines, but there was water that cut through the empire, rivers, and tributaries that fed into lakes.
“I think so. Yes.” Remis kept his eyes closed, willing his fogged memory to clear, but the words and images remained a blur to him.
“If we were to make a raft could you use your abilities to speed us down the river toward Croughton?” Merritt had that gleam in his eyes now. The healthy joy that came with every solution he might conjure up. If hope was a person, it would be him. Merritt was a fountain of it, an ever-flowing river of ideas and resolutions. Nothing was beyond him because he simply wouldn’t allow it to be. Everything had an answer. Every problem had a fix.
Admittedly, Remis thought this could potentially have the makings of a good idea. If he could sit in the quiet peace of flowing water, he could encourage the river to carry them along. It would be faster, much faster, but during dragonis season there would always still be risk.
“Do you know how to make a raft?” Remis asked.
Percy perked at the question. When Merritt shrugged and said, “How hard can it be?” Percy jumped in and said, “I know how to make a raft.”
It was his turn to watch his friend now. Though Percy seemed unaware or uncaring of the speculation he and Merritt wore. His thin lips split into a grin.
“Remember when I read all those books about tsunamis and natural disasters?”
Remis scratched at his chin. “Yes, you were convinced the next rainfall would cause a flood. Kept rambling about preparing?”
“Yes! Well, part of those preparations was teaching myself how to make a raft using only materials I could find and not purchase…assuming my home was flooding and I didn’t have access to my father's coin.”
Desperation made it easier to see this plan working. The three of them, never having made a raft before, could put one together, and Remis could use his connection to the magic of this world and send them promptly to where they needed to be. Less time spent traveling meant fewer chances of an encounter with the dragonis and hopefully greater distance between himself and the witch.
Remis shook his head and laughed. “Are we crazy for this?”
“I think we’d be crazy not to try this. Keeps our coin and we won’t be walking through miles and miles of dragonis haunted woods.” Merritt started laughing too.
Perhaps they’d all lost a little bit of their mind yesterday as the three of them held their stomachs, chuckled, and considered the absurdity of it all.
What other choice did they have? No one wanted to sell them horses, at least not for the price they could offer. They certainly couldn’t afford a carriage and no wagons were traveling through the woods during the dragonis season.
It was refreshing to have some semblance of a plan instead of wandering aimlessly in hopes that something or someone might help them. Building a raft was actionable. Using his gifts was productive.
So with renewed determination, Remis stepped from the alleyway with his friends beside him and set off to find the river.
No one was keen to sell a horse but the first person they’d met had been happy to tell them all about the river, the Mitus River as they’d guessed. Remis tried to scribble the name onto the mental map he carried so that at least one small spec of information might be helpful.
It was about an hour's walk from Olden which they’d used as an opportunity to gather supplies for their raft. They dragged several lightweight tree limbs leaving several crooked lines of broken brush behind them. Percy had taken to using his small knife to cut thin strips off of several of the long tree trunks. There was a fibrous layer between the good wood and the outer bark that Percy happily gathered as a means for rope.
Sweat dripped off the tip of Remis’ nose as he pulled the fully crafted raft toward the edge of the Mitus River. The day was cold but under their cloaks, they'd grown uncomfortably warm after dragging so many bits of wood together. They’d removed any knots and protruding branches using their weapons like axes.
He walked knee-deep into the river, the current a lazy pull against him, while Merritt and Percy pushed the raft from behind. The water felt like a thousand pinpricks against their skin. Icy fingers lapped against their clothes and soaked through to their prickled flesh. They paused to watch the wood bob against the coursing water. When it stayed afloat, they threw their arms over their heads in celebration.
“Percy, you're brilliant!” Remis shouted.
The day was well on its way to ending and they’d only have a few safe hours before the sun went down and the threat of the dragonis returned, but the damn thing floated. The final test would be to fit all their weight on it and not capsize. They’d purposefully taken longer and built a larger raft, thinking that if it held them all they could make up for lost time with Remis’ gifts.
