Chapter Five: The River to Sealoch Ⅰ

It was a Friday, and I had no babysitting job arranged for that night, so as I got on the bus to go home, I pulled out my latest blank notebook. I went to a fresh page and started writing out my plans for the day.

I wrote down my plans for the afternoon. First, I'd make myself a snack of popcorn and chocolate milk when I got home. Then I planned to curl up in bed and read Evander's book.

That was as far as I got before I slipped back into thinking about what happened in the school library. I was still battling the idea that what happened was a hallucination. It didn’t feel like I’d fallen asleep—though it looked that way to the librarian. Then when I reread the last line of chapter one, I was positive it had been my own idea to make that comment about becoming a widow. Evander’s book had to be magical. Maybe it was bad, an evil book that would turn out like a horror movie with me running away from a maniac with a knife. Maybe I shouldn't read the second chapter. I didn't know enough about what happened when my consciousness entered the book, but I really wanted to find out what happened next.

Back at home, I pulled my pitiful little bed curtains closed, shoved a handful of popcorn in my mouth, and started reading. Chapter two began with a letter.

My Dearest Princess,

On the evening of the thirteenth of Millend, there will be a boat docked at the river Uliss. Onboard is everything you will need to travel freely and lightly down the river to where it empties—Sealoch. As the craft is not designed to carry much weight, please do not over-pack. I assure you I have made meticulous preparations for your journey and once you arrive, you will want for nothing. Please do not fear because I have asked you to travel alone to meet me. It is my belief that if a princess cannot handle the journey to Sealoch, she cannot handle life on the battlefront. Nevertheless, the boat will be watched and if you should decide that the unpleasantness of the voyage makes marrying me less desirable, simply call out. You will immediately be met, escorted to civilization and my offer of marriage shall be retracted.

I look forward to meeting you in person and hearing you recount your voyage since it will likely be an eventful one.

Your Loving Fiancé,

Tremor Halfheart

Looking up from the book, I thought about the letter. It sounded like something Evander would write—short and threatening. It was as if he was daring me to ride the boat alone.

As I looked around my bed, I saw I hadn’t gone anywhere, so I took a swig of chocolate milk and reached for the popcorn.

It was then that I heard a man’s voice outside my bed curtains. A shiver ran up my spine. He sounded like he was standing right beside my bed. Totally paralyzed, I sat still and listened.

“He wants her to do this on her own?” a low voice asked. “Is Prince Tremor trying to kill her? Doesn’t he know that she was practically raised in a glass box? There’s no way she can go down the length of the river by herself. She’ll die.”

The skin on the back of my neck prickled. It sounded like dialogue from the book. I opened the curtain and didn’t see the bedroom, but a stretching prairie dotted with leafy trees. Then the bed started bumping and swaying. My legs fell through the bed and my feet hit the floor. The bed became a bench. Suddenly, I was in a padded carriage that was being led by two white horses. There was a coachman driving my carriage and there were two other men in green and black army tunics riding alongside on brown mounts.

Somehow I was inside Evander's book and I was Princess Sarafina again. That meant it must have been one of the army men I heard whispering about me. I felt cross at the man I heard talking about me. A glass box! Well, maybe Princess Sarafina had grown up in a glass box, but I hadn't. I could handle a little boat ride. Thinking about the bloodstain in my apartment building, I knew I could.

I leaned back, forgetting momentarily about the impending trial, and immediately started praising whoever invented shocks in modern vehicles. Not even Edmonton city buses bumped as much as the carriage did. I didn’t even realize the irony of placing those two thoughts right beside each other. I could handle anything—except ancient carriages with no shocks.

Then I saw the sparkling river and the boat that had been sent for me. It looked like an oversized canoe with a white tent on it. When I got closer, I saw that it had runners that extended on either side to make it more stable. No matter how wild the river water got, it probably wouldn’t capsize. There was no mast, no sails, and from what I could see—no paddles. It looked to have enough room for a person to lie down in it. Other than that, the boat was empty. Whoever Tremor had sent to watch me, I wasn’t going to get to meet them before setting out.

As I got out of the carriage with my one little bag, I was met by as many people as had been at the ball. The King and Queen stood tall off to one side in their green attire and watched the crowd. One of the Lilikeen soldiers got on board the little boat to check it. When he came back his report was gloomy. “There’s enough food and water for you to make the trip, my Princess, but nothing to steer the boat with. There are no weapons, no compass, and no anchor. The only thing I found was this note.”

I took it. It read; “You can still marry Murmur if you want to—Tremor.” I crumpled it up angrily in my fist and straightened my back. Who would want to marry Murmur? He might look kind of like Evander, but from my meeting with him, I could already tell his insides were rotten. Not only that, but he had told me all that garbage about monsters in the river. Then it dawned on me, he had called the monsters capricorns and the story was called The Lord of the Capricorns. Crap! What Murmur said was probably true and I didn't know how to stop reading.

Looking into the river, I knew I was unprepared for whatever lay ahead. I had always lived in a city where you simply looked at the river, you didn’t swim in it or sail on it. I was trying to be tough, but I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop reading the book, and I couldn’t go back to the castle or back to my room. There was only one thing I could do. I had to banish my fears and get aboard the boat.

With the dignity of a princess, I stepped into the boat. The bottom swayed under my feet. It was more like a canoe than I thought. One of the soldiers hefted my bag to me and I nearly fell in the water trying to catch it. Then with remarkable little ceremony, they untied the rope and sent me on my way.

“How long will it take to get there?” I called to the soldier who then threw me the rope.

He shook his head like there was a weight attached to his chin. “We don’t know exactly, Highness. None of us has ever gone that far down the river before.”

I waved goodbye to the tense cluster of citizens that had come to see me on my way. The King covered his eyes with his hand in pain and the Queen stroked the side of his arm, comforting him. Triumph glowed in her face. She waved to me and shook her fist once. I supposed that was her cheering for me in her own way. I watched them all pack up and leave with not even one soul staying until I drifted out of sight. When I saw how quickly they all left, I had to do something to pick myself up, otherwise, I might have started to cry.

I sat down and started pawing through my bag for something more appropriate to wear. I was dressed in princess finery similar to the yellow gown I had found myself wearing when I came into the book before. The dress I was wearing was light green, but I couldn’t move around in it. In my bag, I found three more dresses (one of them was clearly my wedding gown), two nightgowns, and some unfortunate looking underclothes. What was there looked the same as what I was wearing, so I opted to spoil the dress I already had on, closed the bag, and set it inside the tent.

The weather was quite nice, and I watched the water and the lush green prairie slip by on either side of the boat.

Then I started thinking about what Tremor said in his letter. If a princess couldn’t handle the journey, then she couldn’t handle life there… or something like that. What was life there going to be like? I suddenly got the shivers. It was clearly a fantasy novel Evander had written. Who knew what sorts of monsters and evils lurked under that quiet facade of his? To start with, there was a war waging in Sealoch. Was I going to the front? I shivered. Who knew what kinds of inhumanity I might witness when I got there? After all, the novel seemed pretty real. There could be fields of blood-soaked men and stinking hospitals. Those fears were more real to me than what Murmur said about sea creatures.

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to think about capricorns or monsters, and instead I went to see what food Tremor had sent me. The packages were really simple. I looked inside the first bundle. It had a small loaf of bread and three smoked fish with the bones still inside. I counted out three meals for each day and saw that he had sent me enough food to last five days.

Was the voyage really going to take five days? I was shocked. Was I really supposed to stay passed out on my bed for five days! I had a babysitting job the next day, and I really needed the money. If I didn’t show up, I might not get hired again.

I thought about screaming out, but if I did that, Sarafina might lose her chance to marry Tremor and screaming hadn’t worked to get me out of the book the last time.

I told myself to calm down. I just needed to think about it logically. Argh! Why had I jumped back into the book again so recklessly? Stop. Logically. Think logically. The last time I woke up when the librarian woke me, so all I needed was for my mother to wake me up in the morning, which she would probably do. I just needed to calm down.

I picked a strip of meat off one of the fishes and gave it a taste. Wow. Not bad. Practicing eating around the bones was a good exercise… in calming down.

I ate the bread, drank some water, and watched the sunset. It was pretty in Evander’s book. The sky was bright orange and the sun shone through the river grasses and cattails. I waited until the last second to close the tent flaps, work my way out of my corset, and settle down for the night. It was getting cold, but Tremor had left me a softish mattress to rest on and plenty of blankets.

I let myself get rocked to sleep to the swaying beat of the river.

When I woke up in the morning, I expected to wake up in my bedroom awake and alert and ready to watch someone's kids, but I was still in Evander’s book. Couldn’t my mom wake me up?

I pulled back the tent flap and looked out at the world. I had traveled a long way during the night. I woke up in a completely different place. The river ran through a forest, except there were no leaves or needles on the trees. There were only burnt skeletons of trees. It looked like a forest fire had ruined the place ages ago and nothing had been able to grow since.

Later that morning I passed a city. The buildings were made of logs and mud, and looked quite different from the castle. The greenness of Lilikeen had disappeared overnight and been replaced with only the occasional patch of grass and wild clusters of trees.

That whole day, I sat nibbling on loaves of bread and wondering what would happen if no one woke me up in my room. What if they couldn’t wake me up? What if my mother had tried and tried and eventually she hadn’t known what to do, so she called for an ambulance and I was in some rarely visited wing of the hospital on life support because I was actually in a coma?

What if my mom woke up, but didn’t look in on me and just went about her day thinking I had already gone to my job?

I didn’t know and I drove myself crazy until the sun went down for the second time.

That time, however, when I was poking around in the supplies Tremor had left me, I found a different looking package with Sarafina’s name on it. I opened it up and found a dress. It was white with a drawstring neckline, short sleeves, a light billowing skirt, and what looked like half a corset sewn into the dress, but it allowed me to do it up in the front. The weave of the fabric was like one of those ancient flour sacks my mother still used to mop up spills. I pried myself out of my dress and replaced it with Tremor’s gift. It was far more practical since it was getting hotter as I traveled further south.

Then I remembered what the Queen had said about men saluting me while I wore a black and red gown. Life in Sealoch probably wasn’t anything like she imagined. No one from Lilikeen had been there before. Most likely, she had no idea to what circumstances she was sending her daughter.

On the third day, I saw only one person and he motioned for me not to go any further. The whole exchange really freaked me out—no exaggeration.

The man paddled up to me in his rowboat and said, “Girl, don’t go that way. There is nothing that way. Come with me. I will guide you to shore.”

I felt like caving in and going with him, but I had to stick with the plan. That was how the story went. “I can’t,” I said regretfully.

“You must. That way only leads to Sealoch, the water monsters, and the war. Come with me.”

“That’s where I’m going,” I insisted.

He didn’t listen to me and prepared to throw a rope over to my helm when something under the water caught his attention. “Don’t move! A capricorn is under your boat.”

I wanted to dispel my ignorance as quickly as possible since the monsters could be like sea lions or something else I understood. I closed my eyes for a moment in preparation. Then I opened them up again and stuck my head over the water even though I was afraid. I didn’t see anything at all.

“What’s a monster like that doing this far north?” the man gasped. “It’s not natural.”

“I don’t see anything,” I said, staring into the water.

“You see the black?” the man questioned.

“It all looks black to me,” I scoffed. I still couldn’t see anything. I gave the man a dirty look, withdrew into the tent, and closed the flap.

“Girl, catch my rope!” I heard the man yell.

“I’m going to see Prince Tremor. Leave me alone.”

After I said that, I didn’t hear anything else. I guessed the man was leaving me alone since I didn’t stick my head out of the tent again that day. I was hungry because I was bored and lying in the rocking boat made me sleepy.

I thought of my body in the hospital. Surely I wouldn’t get fired from a babysitting job for being in a coma. That thought cheered me up and soon I was sleeping again.