Sunflower shore

 Many years were spent in the homely room that overlooked the dockside. Many tiresome nights were worked through to get to that crisp morning, eased by the hot, bitter coffee that spilled over the lip of a tin cup. Many voices called from beyond a frosted window, muffled despite their intensity. In a snapshot there was Hugo, by himself in the darkness of sleep. 

“Get up boy,” a hoarse voice ordered from within the peeking light that fretted through his lashes.

He blinked away the grime in his eyes. His father was seated, mending a hole in a rough shirt with his gentle stitch.

“Get up I say,” The old man grunted from under his wiry beard that was lovesick for a razor.

“Father, you must let me rest,” he drew his hand, cooled by the morning air, over his face. Hugo pulled the last vestiges of his consciousness away from sleep and lurched into a slothful sitting position.

“I worked all night for Halmar, I'm sore and need my rest.”

“Hob Knuckle! Today's the day, we’ve been waiting and working for this for since you’ve been a child,” the sooty old man rose from his needlework and sloughed his gait through the mess of kitchen stuff on the floor to the bed of the young man set into the hollow of the wall. “Though a child you may be still.”

“What are you speaking of?” the boy said, ducking under the pass of a caressing hand.

“The Island, boy,” the words came out of the old man's mouth like steam from a kettle as he snapped his gnarled hand to grip the boy's jaw and turned his stumbling gaze to the window. ”It waits for us, who’s to know for how long.”

Hugo jerked his chin out of his father's grip but still looked out the window drinking in the hazy elixir of tea colored light crawling over the scooped out crater the city glittered in. He was drawn away at the sound of his father stepping away to drag a rucksack across the floor.

“Pace yourself old man, you’ve finally lost your mind.” The boy whipped off the handknit patchwork of blankets he’d been covered in and rushed into the cold air to grab the rucksack straps away from his father. The old man slapped the young one's dark hands away and grunted, sliding the bag closer to the front door. Hugo rubbed his chastised hands and stood baffled at the taciturn man. “What island do you speak of?”

The old man, called Festus for some years, though no one knew his true name, stopped heaving the bag and looked at the boy, blue eyes clouded with half blindness. He took a deep breath and sat down on his stool, his back hunching into the familiar shape of a workman. As he spoke he picked back up his needlework, showing the rag embroidered with a simple black mountain rising from blue, “The Dark island of Greyson, now is the time boy, we’ve waited for so long but she’s finally letting us back.”

“Greyson… Father, you’ve really gone mad.” He watched as the old man caressed the stitch, looking to the window, the deep lines of his face relaxing calmly.”Those were just stories, you would have said so yourself not long ago-,”

“Oe’r ‘nd deep the sea it sleeps.

Calling kingborn for it’s needs

Not all may enter who live as men

But children who are christened kin

Follow blood the raven keeps

And sail with virgo, chaste and meek.

The shore unnerved but home you will be

Dreaming of dark tranquility.”

 He sang almost tunelessly his voice catching where the melody rose high and crackling where it was low. His gaze was trained out the window, unblinking in the silence. 

“So what, we just pack up and leave? Because of a weak little song grandfather used to sing? It’s too early for a joke.”

“This is no joke Hugo, we sail an hour from now, pack your fine shirts, the Virgo awaits us.” with those words the calm veneer burned away to an unnamed fervor leading him to stand and grab Hugo by his upper arm. He hauled the boy over to the old driftwood dresser and dropped a sack similar to the rucksack but empty over his head. The dark skinned boy scrambled to remove the bag from his head, once he succeeded he crushed his brows together in a glare.

“What do you mean, all you speak is nonsense!”

Despite what he said, he began shoving all he owned into the sack. His father stepped back and sat down once again to finish sewing up the holes in his sons britches. It was not long before he stood up to grab an item from the cupboards hanging from the wall that faced the door. Festus tucked the item into his belt secretively but the boy caught a glance of it as it reflected a gleam of light into his eye. It was a pistol.

“Where did you get that?” Hugo asked as he watched his father hide the weapon. Guns had been outlawed for some time, since before Hugo had been born, though he still knew what one was when he saw it. Many sailors from the nation across the sea carried them with them off the boats, though they weren't really supposed to.

“Was grandfather’s,” he said curtly, wrapping bread and cheese in a cloth and stowing them in his sack. “Don't forget anything, we won't be returning to this place.”

The boy paused his hands and his thoughts, looking around the hovel like apartment they lived in. It had been his home for as long as he could remember but Festus had never called it as such. He had grown up somewhere else, somewhere less crowded and cleaner than a room carved from stone. That was what the whole of Exsto was like that; hard, dirty, and  In a perpetual state of novelty, as it was a dockside city, constantly introducing people from all over the world. The pervasiveness of poverty stood as the only familiarity as the people worked day and night in the docks and factories to afford to live in the crater scooped out between a mountain of stone and a relentless ocean. Hugo had never known anything but hard work and hard beds, he had never left the city in all his thirteen years. He liked it that way, or at least he thought he did, he was not sure. He had not felt very sure of anything recently.

He turned to the near empty dresser, pulling open the topmost drawer and shifting aside underclothes revealing a small box. He snatched the box hastily and almost left without a second glance before he paused for a moment. He brought back the simple wooden box slowly and opened it, delving his fingers into the crushed dried flowers that filled the inside of the box. First he pulled out a locket on a silver colored chain which he thumbed over without opening. Next he removed a two piece ornate brooch made of dark metal and crafted into the shape of a seashell. He glanced up to his father for a moment before fastening the chain around his neck, making sure the locket dangled under his shirt. After putting the brooch back in the box and placing the box in his bag, he called out to his father.

“I’ve packed what I can Father,” he said, pausing before voicing his doubts again. “I still don’t know where we are going or how we’ll get there.”

“If you’re done we should be off boy, while the streets are clear,” he grumbled by way of an answer, hefting his bag over his shoulder and ambling out the front door. 

Hugo sat in a moment of frustration before scurrying to pull the heavy bag over his scrawny shoulders and walk as quickly as possible after the older man. Upon exiting into the sunlit alley he paused again, feeling a burbling disgust looking at the zigzag of stairs that led alley to alley down out of the slums he lived in. His father had already hobbled three flights of the stone carved stairs, down the narrow passageways towards the docks. He once again took up his hurried pace, hopping a little to catch up. 

He noticed, once they were walking in step, that he was he same height as his father. When did that happen, he wondered remembering his father towering above him, a fortress of gentle strength, quick as a serpent with a cantankerous edge that left many thinking he was a careless old fool. His tendency to go against the grain of what served as a way of life for most people had only grown as he aged, leading many old friends to avoid him. Grandfather had been much the same, if not more so, and often chastised Hugo for his gentle easy going nature. He had often said the words ‘polluted’ and ‘soft’, ‘lazy’ and ‘confused’. The boy had only known him for six years before he died in a shipwreck. Once he was big enough to carry his weights worth in cargo he took after his grandfather and father in working at the docks. Not that Festus could work anymore, his body was deteriorating, he was half blind with cataracts, his bones broke too easily.

As they got closer to the docks Hugo was able to see something that had only appeared in shadows at the edges of his exhausted consciousness the night before. A white ship, tinted pink in the morning light, smaller than many of the ships lined up near it, only big enough for a small crew. A large crowd of people gathered around it, though the mass was split down the center by a barrier of large potted flowers. As they neared the port someone began walking down the aisle of flowers. The young man was dressed in a bright purple doublet with a flowing cape that was embroidered with gold and red sunflowers. His brown hair was gathered into a long braid that swung heavily with his gait and a simple silver circlet glistened on his head. He was followed by another young man in a knights pauldron and fine, but simple clothing, as well as an older gentleman wearing a white priest's tunic and a black hood with a silver colored faceplate.

“Is that...?” Hugo managed to whisper amongst the throng of cheering people before he noticed Festus shoving his way through the crowd towards the aisle with determination and more than a little yelling. ”Father?!”

Hugo pursued the old man shoving past all the people, as his father became lost in the crowd. The boy kept pushing forward his calls drowned by the cheering, people began pushing back, until he was being shoved from person to person, unable to hold his ground until he fell hitting his head so hard on the ground it bounced. He sat up slowly groaning, uttering the foulest words he knew until his vision cleared. Upon looking up he wished the blow had killed him.

No one spoke, the sound of the water below sloshed restlessly.

“I would ask for last words, but I may not want to hear them,” said a voice from beyond the thick blade that pointed between Hugo’s eyes.

The boy nearly wet himself, but instead he quickly assumed the posture of a cockroach, bowing with his ringing head pressing it into the planks of wood. He stared through a gap between the planks as he shivered stinging teardrops falling into the sea below.

“I beg of you, please forgive me, I knew not where I was. Please forgive me,” he begged, the shame that filled him was physically painful. A moment passed as whispers washed over him and dissolved at the metallic clinking of the sword that dangled above his head. He felt the blunt tip of the sword make contact with the closely cut curls on the crown of his head and the controlled push of the sword forced him to raise his head and look into the faceplate of the man.

“Oh lovely, he’s crying,” the man said from the other end of the sword, his voice slightly muffled from beyond the plate that served as a mask. “Whatever shall we do? You’ve made our little prance through this depraved little town all the more distasteful, groveling and weeping like a beetle in worse clothing.”

The man laughed and Hugo felt the pain of humiliation rise as he looked into the mask wearer’s eyes.

“Maybe I’ll start by plucking out those rotten eggs you call eyes. Or perhaps...”

“You will do no such thing, Abdel,” came a chiding voice that Hugo immediately recognised and caused him to almost groan in combination of relief and confusion.

The armed man in the mask whipped around, hitting the boy on the forehead with the dull blade causing him to fall back onto his rear end. He rubbed the spot on his forehead that came away only slightly bloody, but he had barely enough time to process that before he noticed his father holding the purple clad  youth at gunpoint.