On the Isle of Sound and Wonder by Alyson Grauer Page B

shifted, veering into pitch darkness from that light-filled clearing in the woods, and Karaburan cried out in the dark. His hands splayed wide to protect himself, but he could see nothing. His heart pounded and thundered inside his chest, but for several moments more, nothing happened. He dropped to all fours, no longer a child, and began to crawl forward. He crawled slowly, bit by bit, trying to get a better sense of his surroundings.
    He caught a whiff of something on the air. Man! No, he thought, sniffling in the shadows, a woman. A queen.
    Karaburan moved forward, slowly as any predator bearing down on his prey, and inhaled the smell of the woman somewhere up ahead.
    * * *
    Aurael released his grip on the monster’s head and smiled to himself. It was the one delight he took in his life these days, creating new and terrible nightmares for Karaburan. The monster didn’t even know he existed, poor simple soul; all he knew was that there were some strange foul forces at work that pinched him and prodded him and beset him with visions. Aurael enjoyed it overall, as it reminded him of his early days in the world, mocking the superstitious men of ancient times.
    Nowadays, men of the modern world were more likely to press through uncertainty with scientific thought and reasoning than explain things with supernatural phenomena; but here on the island, Aurael found great success in delivering torments to the simplest fish-skinned monster imaginable.
      Round and round and round we go , he thought, and with a chill gust of wind, he vanished from the shelter, soaring out over the beach toward the wreck of the ship.
    * * *
    1858
    Aurael was not certain what happened to Corvina’s corpse.
    Her son, the deformity she called Karaburan, did not come looking for her. Stupid thing , Aurael seethed to himself, pressing angrily against the bark of the tree. He probably hasn’t even realized she’s gone. Or if he has, he’s too stupid to leave their cave, pathetic child. If only I’d finished my work before Ouberan arrived.
    His sore and angry heart beat out the words, ‘Oh, if only!’ a thousand times over those days that crept by like snails on the sand, and his misery never abated. He began to think he should not have tried to take advantage of her forgiving nature; now, he did not even have a soul to speak to.
    After several days, she vanished, and he had no idea how. There were no footprints nor drag marks in the earth where she had been, and it frightened him to see the unbothered ground where she had lain.
    After the tenth day passed, Aurael presumed the child Karaburan had died from lack of food and water. How long does it take for a child to decompose? wondered the airy spirit. He had no context for the matter, and indeed was robbed of his ability to observe the afterlife first hand, as Corvina’s body had been politely removed from sight. It spooked Aurael right to his core, not knowing where it had gone, and the peculiar noises that sometimes came from the woods punctuated his thoughts with primal utterances and unusual song.
    Aurael began a sort of hibernation, then, drifting in and out of consciousness as the tide does. It felt like years had passed as easily as hours, when a new voice interrupted the endless summer quiet of the island.
    “There’s a face!”
    The little voice emerged from Aurael’s dark and dreamless slumber, tickling his ears. He stirred restlessly, wanting to return to the darkness, but there was a replying shout from further off—a man’s darker tone.
    “Don’t wander, Mira. Stay close to me. I have to bring up the rest of my books from the shipwreck. It will take a while, but I need you to stay close.”
    Shipwreck? Aurael thought. I didn’t hear anything crash.
    “Father, there’s a face in this tree!”
    Aurael cracked one eye open like a cat checking to see who was creeping up on its napping place. There was a child, a little girl, sauntering up the sandy hill toward his tree, her eyes