you all know what day it is!
SUBMISSIONS for the sho birthday contest closed last night and we have a total of eight entries for the contest. you guys. you're all amazing! so i won't blab on here any longer! on to the fic! :D
ENTRY 01
TITLE: Roanoke's Curse (1/2)
RATING: NC-17
WORDCOUNT: 11,581
NOTES: 1) I apologize for the anachronistic contractions I used throughout the fic- the rest of the dialogue should be largely correct. 2) Some huge, major liberties were taken with history here, though I stuck to the timeline of actual events; should you be interested in the long and short of things here, there are some really excellent websites with information on the Lost Colony of Roanoke that are fascinating. 3) Thanks to my beta for reading over this and capslock flailing about it with me. ♥
History has many great men- they are remember through stories, songs and legends. Their names are whispered with reverence, their lives are recalled with pride. There will always be great men in the past, and there will always be great men in the future. Sometimes they change a city, other times a country; sometimes they change the world.
There have only ever been two great men in my life. And though history has already forgotten their names, lost to the ever-moving tide of living and dying, they have meant more to me than any of the great men from the past, whose ideas have shaped generations and whose inventions have altered the course of tomorrow.
I want someone to know their story, even if it is just you.
--
It was not like the Caribbean, where the air had been sickly sweet and hot, hard to breathe in. The island just beyond the rail of the ship was covered in dense forests and not the swaying palm trees he'd seen last time they'd made port, but he thought he would prefer the woods to the fine sand of the beaches. Sho let his hands fall onto the smooth wood of the ship's side and watched as a small boat was prepared to go ashore. The Lyon was rising and falling gracefully with the tide.
Sho still didn't know why they had left England to go to such a forsaken spit of land across the ocean, but his father was an Assistant, and Sho knew that one day he, too, would be expected to lead the rag-tag group of colonists assembled behind him, waiting to hear the verdict on the island they would now call home. He didn't mind having power and responsibility thrown at him; he cared about leaving everything he knew and uprooting himself in order to start a new life.
Still, it would be nice to get off the ship and onto land once more.
There was a hand on his shoulder. "Go ashore with the other assistants and their men. We have to find Grenville's men at the settlement."
"Very well," Sho said. It would have been impossible to fight with his father, anyway. His father handed him a rifle and a long, smooth dagger that Sho slid into his belt, and waited by the boat slowly being lowered with the others. Ananias Dare was there- John White's son-in-law, which apparently made him the second in charge through no merit at all, and Dyonis Harvie, another Assistant like Sho's father. They had their hired men there, a few servants, and then a couple of iron-clad soldiers who had made the journey with the colonists.
Everyone carried a firearm, and Sho was not sure why this was making him feel more nervous than safe. If they were to fear the Natives so much, why were they claiming this land as their final destination along the shore?
Eventually they loaded the boat, and the ride towards the island was smooth. Sho stared down at the water lapping at the underside of the craft, gazing through the white-capped waves at the rocks that littered the expanse of blue. The faces of the men around him looked equally anxious- there was something in the air, a hint of something Sho couldn't identify.
Nothing but silence awaited them as the boat pushed in through the mounds of sand at the beach and their boots hit the grains. Sho wasn't sure what he had been expecting- a welcome, perhaps, from the soldiers left only a year ago by Grenville? There was no sign of human life, not even the smoke from cooking fires.
The men were silent as they tromped through the trees, looking for signs of Grenville's men. When the underbrush cleared into a grassy opening, with remnants of sign posts and wooden walls still standing, Sho thought perhaps they had found what they were looking for. But for all that they'd found the former settlement, there was no sign of any of the soldiers Grenville had left behind to wait.
Sho swallowed down his worries.
"Split up," Ananias Dare ordered. "Find the soldiers. They did not know when we were to arrive; perhaps they did not see our ship."
Or hear our calls and trumpets? Sho thought, but didn't voice aloud. He didn't like the feeling he was getting from the darkness of the woods. It felt like there were eyes watching him from between the trunks of the closely-knit trees, just waiting for him to step away from the others. He fell in step behind Ananias, keeping his fingers firmly on the trigger of his rifle.
His father would think him a coward if he admitted his fear.
Ananias led them around the backside of the clearing, where the grass once again gave way to the thick bark of trees and the quiet din of insect calls. It was when the group split that Sho had a chance to examine the other men traveling with him- Ananias, who seemed proud and stubborn and willful, perhaps more than his father-in-law enjoyed. A carpenter named Brown who had a red beard and matching mustache belaying his Irish roots. A younger boy with callused hands who was no doubt training to be a blacksmith. And then a man around Sho's own age with tussled dark hair, who was Ananias' indentured servant.
Sho was lost in his own thoughts before he recognized that the ground he was walking on was snapping beneath his soles in a way that was decidedly not twigs. He looked down and then recoiled, dropping his rifle completely as he struggled to throw himself as far away from the scene as he could.
Not twigs, indeed- bones.
There was a body there, mostly decayed and eaten-away, but a body all the same.
"Jesus," Brown whispered, and Ananias knelt to pick up what appeared to be part of the former man's arm.
"Killed years ago, most like," Ananias declared, and Sho couldn't tear his eyes away from the skeleton half-buried in the dirt. It seemed the matter was closed, and they moved on, but it took the rest of the afternoon for Sho to right his heartbeat once more. When the groups met back up, it appeared no one else had found even a trace of the soldiers- leaving the skeleton as the only clue they had.
"It was just one," Ananias' servant said, as Sho waited uneasily at the back of the group as Ananias and Dyonis discussed what to do next.
"What?" Sho asked.
The other man looked at him through dark wisps of bangs, displaying none of the usual traits of those who have lived their lives in servitude for others. "One skeleton. Fifteen soldiers were left. What happened to the other fourteen?"
Sho stared at him. "I- maybe they died, too."
"Maybe," the servant said, and then added nothing else.
Sho had trouble sleeping that night, back on the relative safety of the Lyon floating just past the shoals.
--
The men worked hard the next few days to repair the dwellings left in the settlement and complete the new ones- within the week they had habitable houses built and several larger structures for the arms and food stores, but Sho's muscles were screaming from exertion that they were unused to. He had been raised as a noble, not a common servant; he wasn't used to the toil like the others were.
With the settlement in working order, they no longer had to sleep on the ship anymore, but Sho found it even more disquieting on Roanoke island itself. Despite his weariness, he could not seem to find sleep.
And then he heard someone speaking outside, out in the all-encompassing darkness that stretched across the land.
He took a candle, hoping it would help, but the moon did more than the flickering bit of fire did and Sho quickly blew it out, finding it useless. He moved around the structure he and his father inhabited, trying to find the source of the noise- and then there it was, standing at the edge of the clearing like a ghost trying to find its way home.
Elinor Dare- Ananias' pregnant wife, in nothing more than her shift.
"Ma'am?" Sho tried, after several shocked seconds of struggling to find his voice.
"They're waiting," she said. Her voice was very low, and Sho had to strain to hear it- she was staring off into the trees with an unblinking gaze, hair waving around her head in the night breeze like spirits were playing with the long tresses. "They're waiting for us."
"Who is waiting?" Sho whispered, because against all his better judgment, he wanted to know what she was talking about. He took a step closer, and then thought wildly that perhaps she didn't know either- she hadn't moved or blinked or acknowledged him at all since he'd arrived, and she'd been speaking loud enough before he'd left his dwelling that he'd heard her within the walls. "Elinor?"
And then there was a quick flash of movement, a figure running from behind him and catching Sho off-guard. It was Ananias' servant, the one that had spoken to Sho at the meeting. The other man was next to Elinor in an instant, hands on her shoulders. "Elinor! Elinor!"
"They're waiting," she said again, louder this time and more insistent. She gestured towards the trees with one finger outstretched. "They're waiting! They're watching us! Wait and see, they're coming- they're coming!"
Then she slumped forward, and when she righted herself, her eyes were clear, and her gaze was self-aware. She looked at the servant and then at Sho, panic-stricken, and the servant led her back towards her dwelling with hushed murmurs of sleep-walking and dreams.
Sho couldn't quite find a way to move. He hadn't been expecting the servant to come back, but he did.
"What was that?" Sho asked. He wanted to tear his eyes away from the spot she'd been gesturing to, but he was wholly unable to do so. He scanned the darkness, both hoping and fearing that he would see movement within its depths.
"I don't know," came the other man's answer. Then there was a touch at Sho's arm, fingertips grazing against his undershirt. "We shouldn't tell anyone."
No one would believe them, anyway- and the truth was, Sho wasn't sure he'd be able to explain what had happened if he had tried to. There weren't words to describe the shivers running down his spine or the way his hair was standing straight up. There was something in the woods, alright, and no one would take him seriously.
"Can you feel it?" he asked.
"Yes," the servant answered, without asking what Sho meant, or even what he was speaking of. Maybe Sho didn't need to elaborate; maybe the other man felt the same unease, the same disquiet just waiting to build and build and then erupt.
Sho swallowed hard. "I'm Sho."
"Jun," the other man said.
Sho didn't sleep well that night, either. It was rapidly becoming a trend.
--
With the structures largely completed, the men began fishing along the coastline of the island to better their stores. Sho hadn't fished since he was very young and had done so with his grandfather on his family's estates.
He found Jun further down from the rest of them, throwing a line into the tide. Sho would rather fish beside someone who wouldn't mock him for his life than by the others; Jun didn't seem to care that Sho was an Assistant-in-Training, and treated him no differently, and the change was incredibly refreshing.
"You're good at this," Sho remarked, because it was true. Jun's slender fingers seemed at ease with the line and the casting.
"Used to do it a lot, growing up."
It was the way Jun held himself, the tilt to his head, the bow to his neck- none of it struck Sho as that of a servant. He'd never met an indentured servant who spoke back at him like an equal, even though he knew Jun did it mostly out of stubbornness.
"Can I ask you something?" he inquired.
"Can ask whatever you want," Jun shot back, never taking his eyes from the small piece of bark tied to the end of his line. "I might not answer."
Sho stared at him in wonderment. "How is it that someone like you became a servant?"
"Don't I seem the type?" Jun asked.
"In my father's house," Sho said, and shook his head, knowing he should be offended by the other man's manner towards him and instead finding it fascinating, "you would be whipped for insubordination immediately."
Jun was silent for awhile, fingers tapping against the leather of his doublet, and then he glanced over at Sho again. His expression was slightly more open, more relaxed- Sho got the impression that Jun held everyone of higher status than him in disgust until proven otherwise. And to be quite honest, Sho didn't think that particular assumption of Jun's was necessarily wrong.
"I grew up with a lot of younger siblings," Jun explained. "And we didn't have any money. My father's family was Protestant, and were stripped of everything they had in Queen Mary's bloody assault on the country. I resorted to stealing to feed the younger ones, and Ananias caught me."
"Why didn't he just turn you in?" Sho wondered aloud.
Jun shrugged. "I wager he thought I would be more useful as a servant. Hard to disobey when your family will suffer for it."
Sho stared out at the water lapping up against the island's rocky fingers. He couldn't imagine life like that- not having food, having to steal for it. In the smaller provinces the village took care of the poor within their bounds, but in the cities like London- well, there were simply too many of them.
"I'm sorry," he said simply, for lack of anything else to offer.
And Jun shrugged again, but didn't seem quite so tense anymore. The two sat in companionable silence for awhile in the sunlight, until the sun started to dip down in the sky and paint the clouds with reds and purples.
That's when Sho first heard it. The snuffling, shuffling noise behind him, in the woods. He spun, heart in his throat, but couldn't see anything in the long shadows left by the setting sun. There was the breaking of a twig, and then Sho was on his feet.
Something was there.
Something was watching them.
Jun was up and on his feet behind him, fingers on Sho's upper arm like a steadying weight. "What is that?"
There was another snap, like footsteps on old leaves, rattling and echoing. Sho's breath was catching in his throat, his heart falling to his stomach; he felt like he wanted to run, but he couldn't move, and he would have no where to go. They were on an island, surrounded by water, with nowhere to turn should something come out from the darkness.
Jun's fingers closed down tighter around Sho's arm, and he thought the skin might purple by morning from the pressure. And then there was a growl that sounded vaguely human.
There was an anguished scream from down the beach. It shattered the stillness of the dusk falling around them and pierced the air; whatever it was that was in the woods fled, perhaps towards the sound, Sho couldn't tell. All at once there was a commotion within the brush, leaves rustling and branches snapping, and then there was nothing- but another of the horrible, gut-wrenching screams.
Jun started towards the sound and Sho made a mad grab for him, desperate to hold him back. "Stop, stop! Whatever is there, you can't fight it! What are you going to do, strangle it with your fishing line?"
Jun looked murderous for a second, and then nodded, face clearing. And Sho didn't bother to let his hands fall away from the man's sleeves, because if he let go, he might fall over. His heart was beating so fast it was shrieking against his ears, resonating in his temples, and he could hear little else.
They waited for a very long moment.
There was nothing more but the sound of the waves lapping up against the dirt.
"Oh god," Sho finally choked out. The absence of screams meant something far worse, and he knew; he knew in his gut what it truly meant. "Oh god- oh god-"
"We have to go and see what happened," Jun whispered, but he didn't seem to be moving. Neither of them did, until they heard voices of others from the settlement, some calling out for anyone nearby. Sho managed to raise a shaky response that he was unharmed, and the group of men moved past them, tromping through the trees towards where the cries had come from.
Sho didn't want to see. He didn't want to know what had happened once the screams had been stifled, but Jun started moving to follow the group and Sho didn't want to be left alone. He followed, feeling as if his legs had been cut open and filled with sand, making them hard to move and lift.
It wasn't hard to find what they were looking for, even with only the light of the lanterns by the time they reached the destination. There was blood splattered on the trunks of the trees that Sho didn't see until he'd reached a hand up against it and found the bark wet; when he pulled his fingers away to inspect them, they were stained crimson.
He recoiled in horror.
"Jesus," Jun whispered, and that was all Sho needed to hear to know he didn't want to look. He tried to move back instead and nearly fell over an old log, and Jun's hand was around his wrist to catch him before his knees hit the mud. "Jesus, Jesus, what the hell-"
"What is it?" Sho asked- he had to know, but wasn't sure he wanted to. "What happened?"
Jun pushed him backwards, away from the scene, and all at once Sho could hear the disgusted cries of the other men in the search party, mumbled prayers and shaking explanations. "There's not much left to see. Just... pieces."
Sho thought maybe Jun would mock him for being a delicate noble, for being raised for power and unable to stand the sight of blood before him. Maybe it made him weak; Sho's father would certainly think so. But Jun didn't say anything, and his presence was comforting, and as they made their way back towards the settlement, Sho thought perhaps he'd found a friend.
--
The man who'd been killed was an Assistant by the name of George Howe. Sho's father said little on the subject until the meeting came about with the others and Governor White about what to do about it. Sho sat to the side- he wasn't technically a part of the meeting, but as his father's son, he was allowed to be there to sit in and watch.
"It was the Savages," Ananias Dare said. His voice was hard and rough. "The Savages killed him!"
The statement rocked Sho- he might not have seen the body, but from what Jun and the others had said... well, there was no way that Savages could simply rip a grown man apart in that little time, unless they had super human strength.
"Then we must strike back," Dyonis Harvie said. "This is our land- the Queen's land! They will not intrude upon our lives here, we cannot allow it!"
Sho left the meeting feeling shaken. It wasn't Savages that they were dealing with- at least not in the matter of George Howe. There was something else in the woods of Roanoke Island, something darker, something that made Sho's skin crawl.
His father stayed out with the Assistants deciding what must be done about it- about retribution and revenge and 'an eye for an eye' that Sho wanted no part of, not when it was really about innocents who had been on the island first.
His mattress was warm with the heat of the sticky summer air, and he laid on it for a long time lost in his own thoughts before there was a rapping against the door of the dwelling. It wasn't his father- his father wouldn't knock at his own house. Sho rose and opened the door to reveal Jun, who slunk inside as if he were paranoid something was following behind him.
"What did they say?" the servant asked without preamble, and it was only then that Sho realized he'd been privy to more information than the majority of the others in the settlement.
"They blame it on Savages," Sho answered.
Jun's hair was sticky from the humidity and sticking to his forehead, and Jun angrily brushed it away to clear his vision. "You know it's a lie. It was no Savage attack- something else killed George Howe."
"Yes," Sho said. "But what?"
Jun didn't seem to have an answer for that. But he looked angry, more than Sho had ever seen from him. "We have to decipher what's really happening. We have to; more people may die."
To go against the Assistants was dangerous.
"What did you have in mind?" Sho asked, unable to stop the words from tumbling out.
"We have to find what is really haunting this island," Jun said, and his eyes were very bright as he leaned in. "It's somewhere in the trees, you know this. We have to find it, and tell the others before it's too late."
Sho didn't like the way it sounded like a death knoll. But he had little choice; he knew, same as Jun did, that it hadn't been Natives who had torn a man limb from limb on the beach. The others might not be willing to suspend disbelief enough to realize it, but Sho wasn't simple.
"Very well," he said. "I agree."
--
There was no time for them to escape in the next week, no way to get away from the tasks that required their help on the island. Gathering food, hunting, cleaning the arms- the ship still needed to be unloaded, and there was never time for idleness.
But one particularly hot night Sho found himself unable to slip away into dreams, kept anxious by an odd heaviness to the air. His father was snoring on the other side of the dwelling, and he tossed and turned, trying to find his own fitful rest.
Something was going on outside.
He didn't even bother to put on his doublet, just grabbed the nearest candle and ran. It provided less light than a torch would have but it was enough- he stumbled out of the dwelling and into the sweltering heat, still high even with the absence of the sun.
Elinor Dare was there, standing at the edge of the woods once more, arms outstretched like she was going to take flight at any moment.
"First, they come for you," she said. "They wait until the dead of night and take you in your beds."
"Elinor?" Sho tried. He took a step towards her and there was an arm against his chest, preventing him from continuing- Jun. Jun put a finger to his lips, and they both turned back towards the woman.
"They take you to their caves and they keep you there, until your bellies are screaming for food and your head has grown heavy with sickness," Elinor said, as if she had not registered them behind her at all. "Then, they loosen one, like a hare in a coursing match. You turn on them, driven mad with hunger and thirst, knowing only your own misery. They watch as the chase ends, and you rip your fellow apart to feast on his entrails."
Jun pressed in closer, and his heat was the only part of the night Sho didn't find frightening. He was terrified, gut clenched tightly, watching the woman spout nonsense that made both no sense and far, far too much.
A chill went up Sho's spine- when had it gotten cold?
When had the insects stopped their songs?
"Once their blood hits your veins, you become like them," Elinor continued, and her voice was growing louder in the sudden silence, wind whipping at her hair. "Twisted and corrupted from the inside out. They do not hunger for each other, only to create more. They cannot see anything but their own rage and misery, a blight upon the earth."
She suddenly raised her hands over her head and started screaming, and in unison Sho and Jun shot forward to grab for her. She twisted against their holds, shrieking and biting at their fingers, spitting in their faces. Her eyes were wild and wide and whiter than the moon above their heads. "They will watch you rip each other's faces off and feast on the flesh!"
"Stop!" Sho tried weakly, but she was flailing too much, with too much strength- inhuman strength.
"Elinor!" Jun cried, and got whacked in the face by her hand, nails digging into his skin. Jun exclaimed in pain and dropped his hold on Elinor's wrist, and without the other stabilizing force, Sho couldn't hold on. He fell as she bolted, towards the center of the settlement again, screaming something about blood and waiting and darkness.
He didn't wait to see where she went- he wasn't sure he could follow anyway, and Jun was still on the ground, one hand pressed to his face where she had smacked him. He crawled over to Jun's side, palms digging into the dirt. "Jun?"
He got only garbled groans as a response. Sho reached forward to gently pull Jun's hand away from his cheek. The offending skin was red and would likely swell, but there didn't seem to be much blood, which meant her nails had not done as much damage as he had been fearful of. Jun winced, looking up at Sho through heavy-lidded eyes.
"It doesn't look bad," Sho said.
"Why do you care?" Jun laughed, the sound devoid of mirth. "I'm just a servant."
Elinor's voice was still ringing in Sho's ears, and distantly, across the clearing, he could hear other voices; she'd woken the others, it seemed, and at least she would be taken care of. "No," he said. "You're not like them."
Jun just stared up at him for a very long moment, and then whatever was between them was broken by William Brown, the carpenter, running over to them with a lantern held high.
"It is the Dare wife," he said. "She's in labor."
--
The settlement didn't know what to do when Elinor went into labor a month too early- there were few women who had come over with the colonists, and all that were available were helping in the dwelling, but there was a nervous edge to the rest of the interactions.
With the Dare dwelling being used for the women, Jun didn't really have anywhere to go- Ananias was staying with Governor White, but there was simply no further room for the servants. Sho volunteered to let Jun stay with him in his father's house, and he knew it would go over well; Ananias clearly didn't trust Jun, but Sho's father was an Assistant, and the idea was credible.
Jun seemed pleased when informed of the new arrangement as well.
"I'm sorry I can't offer you more than a blanket," Sho said, apologetically, as he led the other man into the small dwelling he shared with his father. His father was out, again, with Governor White- and Sho had not been invited to sit in on this meeting. He wondered what they were discussing. Perhaps White's return to England, for there had been whispers all over the settlement about it for days. "We don't have any more mattresses."
"I did not sleep on a mattress in the Dare household," Jun said.
"Do you think White will return to England?" Sho asked. "With his granddaughter born and a man killed?"
There was a hard edge to Jun's eyes when he replied. "I think White is a coward who will run the first chance he gets."
Sho shifted on the straw. "You don't think very highly of them."
"Trying living under the Dare estate and thinking differently," Jun replied. He pulled his knees up to his chest and looped his arms around them, as if he was trying to make himself as small as physically possible. "Ananias does not treat his servants as if they are people- and neither does Governor White. To them, we are insects, things to be squashed when we are no longer of use anymore."
It was one of the most horrible things Sho had ever heard, and only because he knew finally Jun personally. His father and grandfather had always had servants, as did all of the estates with money and land to their name back in England. But he'd never identified a person with the station, and suddenly, his own blind eye to the treatment they received felt shameful.
"I- you aren't," he managed to grind out. "I mean, you aren't worth that little."
The look Jun gave him then was unreadable- or maybe just to Sho. He wanted Jun to believe his words. They were trapped on an island with something hunting them down, something evil and hiding in the darkness; they were stuck with men who led but did not believe, who saw but did not comprehend. There was so little that they could cling to in order to remain strong. If nothing else, Jun had to believe him.
He had to believe in Sho.
"You are not like the others," Sho told him again. "To them, I am just my father's son, the next name on the family line. I have nothing beside my blood and my tie to the fortune. They speak to me because they must, because of the title I will hold."
"What would you rather be?" Jun asked, and it didn't seem antagonizing, but merely curious.
Sho thought about the question for awhile, staring down at the lines in his palm. "I don't know. Something more."
"I think you already are," Jun said, and then looked anywhere but Sho as Sho tried in vain to figure out what the other man had meant by that.
--
He woke the next morning with the others to find that Elinor Dare had given birth to a baby girl, and the ground was covered in a layer of frost in August.
--
There was something wrong, and Sho could not fathom why not a single other person would speak of it. The colonists went about their business as if they could ignore what was happening around them, and Sho felt as if he was trapped in a maze he could not find the exit of. He heard only that the baby girl was to be christened, in what seemed to be a wild attempt to retain normalcy at the settlement.
It wasn't working. He could feel everything in the tiny pin-pricks that trickled down his spine whenever he moved.
Jun was a good source of information because he still worked by Ananias' side during the days, and had access to Governor White's plans. He came back late one night when Sho was already almost asleep, staying silent as not to wake Sho's father across the dwelling. Sho awoke to Jun's finger poking at the fleshy side of his arm. "Sho."
Sho stirred. It was cold inside the structure- it shouldn't have been cold at all, because Sho remembered the mugginess of the weather before everything had shifted alignment, but it was. Outside, the island was cool by day and colder yet by night. Jun looked to be trembling slightly in the light blanket that Ananias had allowed him to take from his household.
"Men have gone missing," he whispered. "Five of them- and then another three today. The Assistants do not know where they went, but it's been said that they went to join the Savages."
"You mean they have succumbed to the evil in this place," Sho translated.
Jun looked at him with an expression Sho couldn't place. "You think they are following the lines in Elinor's story."
"She could have been just rambling," Sho tried, but it lacked resolve. If what Elinor had been babbling about was true, they had been taken by whatever was haunting them all, looming just out of sight.
"I don't think she was," Jun said.
Sho sighed. "I don't either."
Jun was silent for awhile, hunched over on himself like a child who'd been punished for acting out, and once again, Sho could see the bunches of his shirt shaking. Sho reached a hand out of the blanket towards him, finger pads skimming over his shirt-sleeve. "You're cold."
"Been through worse," Jun said, as if by answer, though Sho knew it wasn't one. Sho's hands clamped down around Jun's wrist with more force.
"Come on," he said, and didn't give Jun time to fight him. He just dragged the other man onto the straw as he scooted over. He had several blankets on his mattress, and he wasn't about to let Jun shiver on the floor all night with the one Ananias had 'gifted' him. Jun's limbs ended up awkwardly hitting the floor and Jun's thigh, all gangly and bent, until Jun shifted and curved himself up on the packed straw.
It had been close quarters on the ship on the journey over, but it had been necessary for the trip. This- well, Sho wasn't stupid. There was a difference between being a coward and being fearful of something larger and more powerful than one's self. The Assistants might not be able to recognize the subtle edges, but Sho could, and he was afraid. Having Jun closer made it seem a little more bearable.
Because Jun believed him. Jun had faith in him, and Jun accepted his ideas without immediately discrediting him.
Sho didn't feel strange when he reached down to tangle their fingers together. Jun didn't pull away- his hand closed around Sho's own, warm and steady.
"We have to find where it's coming from," Sho whispered to the darkness overhead, lingering in the corners of the roof. "It's somewhere in the woods."
"Yes," Jun agreed.
Sho was lulled to sleep by the easy, rhythmic breathing of the man lying beside him. And when he woke the next morning, Jun's arms were wrapped around his waist like an anchor to reality.
onto Part 2
ENTRY 01
TITLE: Roanoke's Curse (1/2)
RATING: NC-17
WORDCOUNT: 11,581
NOTES: 1) I apologize for the anachronistic contractions I used throughout the fic- the rest of the dialogue should be largely correct. 2) Some huge, major liberties were taken with history here, though I stuck to the timeline of actual events; should you be interested in the long and short of things here, there are some really excellent websites with information on the Lost Colony of Roanoke that are fascinating. 3) Thanks to my beta for reading over this and capslock flailing about it with me. ♥
History has many great men- they are remember through stories, songs and legends. Their names are whispered with reverence, their lives are recalled with pride. There will always be great men in the past, and there will always be great men in the future. Sometimes they change a city, other times a country; sometimes they change the world.
There have only ever been two great men in my life. And though history has already forgotten their names, lost to the ever-moving tide of living and dying, they have meant more to me than any of the great men from the past, whose ideas have shaped generations and whose inventions have altered the course of tomorrow.
I want someone to know their story, even if it is just you.
--
It was not like the Caribbean, where the air had been sickly sweet and hot, hard to breathe in. The island just beyond the rail of the ship was covered in dense forests and not the swaying palm trees he'd seen last time they'd made port, but he thought he would prefer the woods to the fine sand of the beaches. Sho let his hands fall onto the smooth wood of the ship's side and watched as a small boat was prepared to go ashore. The Lyon was rising and falling gracefully with the tide.
Sho still didn't know why they had left England to go to such a forsaken spit of land across the ocean, but his father was an Assistant, and Sho knew that one day he, too, would be expected to lead the rag-tag group of colonists assembled behind him, waiting to hear the verdict on the island they would now call home. He didn't mind having power and responsibility thrown at him; he cared about leaving everything he knew and uprooting himself in order to start a new life.
Still, it would be nice to get off the ship and onto land once more.
There was a hand on his shoulder. "Go ashore with the other assistants and their men. We have to find Grenville's men at the settlement."
"Very well," Sho said. It would have been impossible to fight with his father, anyway. His father handed him a rifle and a long, smooth dagger that Sho slid into his belt, and waited by the boat slowly being lowered with the others. Ananias Dare was there- John White's son-in-law, which apparently made him the second in charge through no merit at all, and Dyonis Harvie, another Assistant like Sho's father. They had their hired men there, a few servants, and then a couple of iron-clad soldiers who had made the journey with the colonists.
Everyone carried a firearm, and Sho was not sure why this was making him feel more nervous than safe. If they were to fear the Natives so much, why were they claiming this land as their final destination along the shore?
Eventually they loaded the boat, and the ride towards the island was smooth. Sho stared down at the water lapping at the underside of the craft, gazing through the white-capped waves at the rocks that littered the expanse of blue. The faces of the men around him looked equally anxious- there was something in the air, a hint of something Sho couldn't identify.
Nothing but silence awaited them as the boat pushed in through the mounds of sand at the beach and their boots hit the grains. Sho wasn't sure what he had been expecting- a welcome, perhaps, from the soldiers left only a year ago by Grenville? There was no sign of human life, not even the smoke from cooking fires.
The men were silent as they tromped through the trees, looking for signs of Grenville's men. When the underbrush cleared into a grassy opening, with remnants of sign posts and wooden walls still standing, Sho thought perhaps they had found what they were looking for. But for all that they'd found the former settlement, there was no sign of any of the soldiers Grenville had left behind to wait.
Sho swallowed down his worries.
"Split up," Ananias Dare ordered. "Find the soldiers. They did not know when we were to arrive; perhaps they did not see our ship."
Or hear our calls and trumpets? Sho thought, but didn't voice aloud. He didn't like the feeling he was getting from the darkness of the woods. It felt like there were eyes watching him from between the trunks of the closely-knit trees, just waiting for him to step away from the others. He fell in step behind Ananias, keeping his fingers firmly on the trigger of his rifle.
His father would think him a coward if he admitted his fear.
Ananias led them around the backside of the clearing, where the grass once again gave way to the thick bark of trees and the quiet din of insect calls. It was when the group split that Sho had a chance to examine the other men traveling with him- Ananias, who seemed proud and stubborn and willful, perhaps more than his father-in-law enjoyed. A carpenter named Brown who had a red beard and matching mustache belaying his Irish roots. A younger boy with callused hands who was no doubt training to be a blacksmith. And then a man around Sho's own age with tussled dark hair, who was Ananias' indentured servant.
Sho was lost in his own thoughts before he recognized that the ground he was walking on was snapping beneath his soles in a way that was decidedly not twigs. He looked down and then recoiled, dropping his rifle completely as he struggled to throw himself as far away from the scene as he could.
Not twigs, indeed- bones.
There was a body there, mostly decayed and eaten-away, but a body all the same.
"Jesus," Brown whispered, and Ananias knelt to pick up what appeared to be part of the former man's arm.
"Killed years ago, most like," Ananias declared, and Sho couldn't tear his eyes away from the skeleton half-buried in the dirt. It seemed the matter was closed, and they moved on, but it took the rest of the afternoon for Sho to right his heartbeat once more. When the groups met back up, it appeared no one else had found even a trace of the soldiers- leaving the skeleton as the only clue they had.
"It was just one," Ananias' servant said, as Sho waited uneasily at the back of the group as Ananias and Dyonis discussed what to do next.
"What?" Sho asked.
The other man looked at him through dark wisps of bangs, displaying none of the usual traits of those who have lived their lives in servitude for others. "One skeleton. Fifteen soldiers were left. What happened to the other fourteen?"
Sho stared at him. "I- maybe they died, too."
"Maybe," the servant said, and then added nothing else.
Sho had trouble sleeping that night, back on the relative safety of the Lyon floating just past the shoals.
--
The men worked hard the next few days to repair the dwellings left in the settlement and complete the new ones- within the week they had habitable houses built and several larger structures for the arms and food stores, but Sho's muscles were screaming from exertion that they were unused to. He had been raised as a noble, not a common servant; he wasn't used to the toil like the others were.
With the settlement in working order, they no longer had to sleep on the ship anymore, but Sho found it even more disquieting on Roanoke island itself. Despite his weariness, he could not seem to find sleep.
And then he heard someone speaking outside, out in the all-encompassing darkness that stretched across the land.
He took a candle, hoping it would help, but the moon did more than the flickering bit of fire did and Sho quickly blew it out, finding it useless. He moved around the structure he and his father inhabited, trying to find the source of the noise- and then there it was, standing at the edge of the clearing like a ghost trying to find its way home.
Elinor Dare- Ananias' pregnant wife, in nothing more than her shift.
"Ma'am?" Sho tried, after several shocked seconds of struggling to find his voice.
"They're waiting," she said. Her voice was very low, and Sho had to strain to hear it- she was staring off into the trees with an unblinking gaze, hair waving around her head in the night breeze like spirits were playing with the long tresses. "They're waiting for us."
"Who is waiting?" Sho whispered, because against all his better judgment, he wanted to know what she was talking about. He took a step closer, and then thought wildly that perhaps she didn't know either- she hadn't moved or blinked or acknowledged him at all since he'd arrived, and she'd been speaking loud enough before he'd left his dwelling that he'd heard her within the walls. "Elinor?"
And then there was a quick flash of movement, a figure running from behind him and catching Sho off-guard. It was Ananias' servant, the one that had spoken to Sho at the meeting. The other man was next to Elinor in an instant, hands on her shoulders. "Elinor! Elinor!"
"They're waiting," she said again, louder this time and more insistent. She gestured towards the trees with one finger outstretched. "They're waiting! They're watching us! Wait and see, they're coming- they're coming!"
Then she slumped forward, and when she righted herself, her eyes were clear, and her gaze was self-aware. She looked at the servant and then at Sho, panic-stricken, and the servant led her back towards her dwelling with hushed murmurs of sleep-walking and dreams.
Sho couldn't quite find a way to move. He hadn't been expecting the servant to come back, but he did.
"What was that?" Sho asked. He wanted to tear his eyes away from the spot she'd been gesturing to, but he was wholly unable to do so. He scanned the darkness, both hoping and fearing that he would see movement within its depths.
"I don't know," came the other man's answer. Then there was a touch at Sho's arm, fingertips grazing against his undershirt. "We shouldn't tell anyone."
No one would believe them, anyway- and the truth was, Sho wasn't sure he'd be able to explain what had happened if he had tried to. There weren't words to describe the shivers running down his spine or the way his hair was standing straight up. There was something in the woods, alright, and no one would take him seriously.
"Can you feel it?" he asked.
"Yes," the servant answered, without asking what Sho meant, or even what he was speaking of. Maybe Sho didn't need to elaborate; maybe the other man felt the same unease, the same disquiet just waiting to build and build and then erupt.
Sho swallowed hard. "I'm Sho."
"Jun," the other man said.
Sho didn't sleep well that night, either. It was rapidly becoming a trend.
--
With the structures largely completed, the men began fishing along the coastline of the island to better their stores. Sho hadn't fished since he was very young and had done so with his grandfather on his family's estates.
He found Jun further down from the rest of them, throwing a line into the tide. Sho would rather fish beside someone who wouldn't mock him for his life than by the others; Jun didn't seem to care that Sho was an Assistant-in-Training, and treated him no differently, and the change was incredibly refreshing.
"You're good at this," Sho remarked, because it was true. Jun's slender fingers seemed at ease with the line and the casting.
"Used to do it a lot, growing up."
It was the way Jun held himself, the tilt to his head, the bow to his neck- none of it struck Sho as that of a servant. He'd never met an indentured servant who spoke back at him like an equal, even though he knew Jun did it mostly out of stubbornness.
"Can I ask you something?" he inquired.
"Can ask whatever you want," Jun shot back, never taking his eyes from the small piece of bark tied to the end of his line. "I might not answer."
Sho stared at him in wonderment. "How is it that someone like you became a servant?"
"Don't I seem the type?" Jun asked.
"In my father's house," Sho said, and shook his head, knowing he should be offended by the other man's manner towards him and instead finding it fascinating, "you would be whipped for insubordination immediately."
Jun was silent for awhile, fingers tapping against the leather of his doublet, and then he glanced over at Sho again. His expression was slightly more open, more relaxed- Sho got the impression that Jun held everyone of higher status than him in disgust until proven otherwise. And to be quite honest, Sho didn't think that particular assumption of Jun's was necessarily wrong.
"I grew up with a lot of younger siblings," Jun explained. "And we didn't have any money. My father's family was Protestant, and were stripped of everything they had in Queen Mary's bloody assault on the country. I resorted to stealing to feed the younger ones, and Ananias caught me."
"Why didn't he just turn you in?" Sho wondered aloud.
Jun shrugged. "I wager he thought I would be more useful as a servant. Hard to disobey when your family will suffer for it."
Sho stared out at the water lapping up against the island's rocky fingers. He couldn't imagine life like that- not having food, having to steal for it. In the smaller provinces the village took care of the poor within their bounds, but in the cities like London- well, there were simply too many of them.
"I'm sorry," he said simply, for lack of anything else to offer.
And Jun shrugged again, but didn't seem quite so tense anymore. The two sat in companionable silence for awhile in the sunlight, until the sun started to dip down in the sky and paint the clouds with reds and purples.
That's when Sho first heard it. The snuffling, shuffling noise behind him, in the woods. He spun, heart in his throat, but couldn't see anything in the long shadows left by the setting sun. There was the breaking of a twig, and then Sho was on his feet.
Something was there.
Something was watching them.
Jun was up and on his feet behind him, fingers on Sho's upper arm like a steadying weight. "What is that?"
There was another snap, like footsteps on old leaves, rattling and echoing. Sho's breath was catching in his throat, his heart falling to his stomach; he felt like he wanted to run, but he couldn't move, and he would have no where to go. They were on an island, surrounded by water, with nowhere to turn should something come out from the darkness.
Jun's fingers closed down tighter around Sho's arm, and he thought the skin might purple by morning from the pressure. And then there was a growl that sounded vaguely human.
There was an anguished scream from down the beach. It shattered the stillness of the dusk falling around them and pierced the air; whatever it was that was in the woods fled, perhaps towards the sound, Sho couldn't tell. All at once there was a commotion within the brush, leaves rustling and branches snapping, and then there was nothing- but another of the horrible, gut-wrenching screams.
Jun started towards the sound and Sho made a mad grab for him, desperate to hold him back. "Stop, stop! Whatever is there, you can't fight it! What are you going to do, strangle it with your fishing line?"
Jun looked murderous for a second, and then nodded, face clearing. And Sho didn't bother to let his hands fall away from the man's sleeves, because if he let go, he might fall over. His heart was beating so fast it was shrieking against his ears, resonating in his temples, and he could hear little else.
They waited for a very long moment.
There was nothing more but the sound of the waves lapping up against the dirt.
"Oh god," Sho finally choked out. The absence of screams meant something far worse, and he knew; he knew in his gut what it truly meant. "Oh god- oh god-"
"We have to go and see what happened," Jun whispered, but he didn't seem to be moving. Neither of them did, until they heard voices of others from the settlement, some calling out for anyone nearby. Sho managed to raise a shaky response that he was unharmed, and the group of men moved past them, tromping through the trees towards where the cries had come from.
Sho didn't want to see. He didn't want to know what had happened once the screams had been stifled, but Jun started moving to follow the group and Sho didn't want to be left alone. He followed, feeling as if his legs had been cut open and filled with sand, making them hard to move and lift.
It wasn't hard to find what they were looking for, even with only the light of the lanterns by the time they reached the destination. There was blood splattered on the trunks of the trees that Sho didn't see until he'd reached a hand up against it and found the bark wet; when he pulled his fingers away to inspect them, they were stained crimson.
He recoiled in horror.
"Jesus," Jun whispered, and that was all Sho needed to hear to know he didn't want to look. He tried to move back instead and nearly fell over an old log, and Jun's hand was around his wrist to catch him before his knees hit the mud. "Jesus, Jesus, what the hell-"
"What is it?" Sho asked- he had to know, but wasn't sure he wanted to. "What happened?"
Jun pushed him backwards, away from the scene, and all at once Sho could hear the disgusted cries of the other men in the search party, mumbled prayers and shaking explanations. "There's not much left to see. Just... pieces."
Sho thought maybe Jun would mock him for being a delicate noble, for being raised for power and unable to stand the sight of blood before him. Maybe it made him weak; Sho's father would certainly think so. But Jun didn't say anything, and his presence was comforting, and as they made their way back towards the settlement, Sho thought perhaps he'd found a friend.
--
The man who'd been killed was an Assistant by the name of George Howe. Sho's father said little on the subject until the meeting came about with the others and Governor White about what to do about it. Sho sat to the side- he wasn't technically a part of the meeting, but as his father's son, he was allowed to be there to sit in and watch.
"It was the Savages," Ananias Dare said. His voice was hard and rough. "The Savages killed him!"
The statement rocked Sho- he might not have seen the body, but from what Jun and the others had said... well, there was no way that Savages could simply rip a grown man apart in that little time, unless they had super human strength.
"Then we must strike back," Dyonis Harvie said. "This is our land- the Queen's land! They will not intrude upon our lives here, we cannot allow it!"
Sho left the meeting feeling shaken. It wasn't Savages that they were dealing with- at least not in the matter of George Howe. There was something else in the woods of Roanoke Island, something darker, something that made Sho's skin crawl.
His father stayed out with the Assistants deciding what must be done about it- about retribution and revenge and 'an eye for an eye' that Sho wanted no part of, not when it was really about innocents who had been on the island first.
His mattress was warm with the heat of the sticky summer air, and he laid on it for a long time lost in his own thoughts before there was a rapping against the door of the dwelling. It wasn't his father- his father wouldn't knock at his own house. Sho rose and opened the door to reveal Jun, who slunk inside as if he were paranoid something was following behind him.
"What did they say?" the servant asked without preamble, and it was only then that Sho realized he'd been privy to more information than the majority of the others in the settlement.
"They blame it on Savages," Sho answered.
Jun's hair was sticky from the humidity and sticking to his forehead, and Jun angrily brushed it away to clear his vision. "You know it's a lie. It was no Savage attack- something else killed George Howe."
"Yes," Sho said. "But what?"
Jun didn't seem to have an answer for that. But he looked angry, more than Sho had ever seen from him. "We have to decipher what's really happening. We have to; more people may die."
To go against the Assistants was dangerous.
"What did you have in mind?" Sho asked, unable to stop the words from tumbling out.
"We have to find what is really haunting this island," Jun said, and his eyes were very bright as he leaned in. "It's somewhere in the trees, you know this. We have to find it, and tell the others before it's too late."
Sho didn't like the way it sounded like a death knoll. But he had little choice; he knew, same as Jun did, that it hadn't been Natives who had torn a man limb from limb on the beach. The others might not be willing to suspend disbelief enough to realize it, but Sho wasn't simple.
"Very well," he said. "I agree."
--
There was no time for them to escape in the next week, no way to get away from the tasks that required their help on the island. Gathering food, hunting, cleaning the arms- the ship still needed to be unloaded, and there was never time for idleness.
But one particularly hot night Sho found himself unable to slip away into dreams, kept anxious by an odd heaviness to the air. His father was snoring on the other side of the dwelling, and he tossed and turned, trying to find his own fitful rest.
Something was going on outside.
He didn't even bother to put on his doublet, just grabbed the nearest candle and ran. It provided less light than a torch would have but it was enough- he stumbled out of the dwelling and into the sweltering heat, still high even with the absence of the sun.
Elinor Dare was there, standing at the edge of the woods once more, arms outstretched like she was going to take flight at any moment.
"First, they come for you," she said. "They wait until the dead of night and take you in your beds."
"Elinor?" Sho tried. He took a step towards her and there was an arm against his chest, preventing him from continuing- Jun. Jun put a finger to his lips, and they both turned back towards the woman.
"They take you to their caves and they keep you there, until your bellies are screaming for food and your head has grown heavy with sickness," Elinor said, as if she had not registered them behind her at all. "Then, they loosen one, like a hare in a coursing match. You turn on them, driven mad with hunger and thirst, knowing only your own misery. They watch as the chase ends, and you rip your fellow apart to feast on his entrails."
Jun pressed in closer, and his heat was the only part of the night Sho didn't find frightening. He was terrified, gut clenched tightly, watching the woman spout nonsense that made both no sense and far, far too much.
A chill went up Sho's spine- when had it gotten cold?
When had the insects stopped their songs?
"Once their blood hits your veins, you become like them," Elinor continued, and her voice was growing louder in the sudden silence, wind whipping at her hair. "Twisted and corrupted from the inside out. They do not hunger for each other, only to create more. They cannot see anything but their own rage and misery, a blight upon the earth."
She suddenly raised her hands over her head and started screaming, and in unison Sho and Jun shot forward to grab for her. She twisted against their holds, shrieking and biting at their fingers, spitting in their faces. Her eyes were wild and wide and whiter than the moon above their heads. "They will watch you rip each other's faces off and feast on the flesh!"
"Stop!" Sho tried weakly, but she was flailing too much, with too much strength- inhuman strength.
"Elinor!" Jun cried, and got whacked in the face by her hand, nails digging into his skin. Jun exclaimed in pain and dropped his hold on Elinor's wrist, and without the other stabilizing force, Sho couldn't hold on. He fell as she bolted, towards the center of the settlement again, screaming something about blood and waiting and darkness.
He didn't wait to see where she went- he wasn't sure he could follow anyway, and Jun was still on the ground, one hand pressed to his face where she had smacked him. He crawled over to Jun's side, palms digging into the dirt. "Jun?"
He got only garbled groans as a response. Sho reached forward to gently pull Jun's hand away from his cheek. The offending skin was red and would likely swell, but there didn't seem to be much blood, which meant her nails had not done as much damage as he had been fearful of. Jun winced, looking up at Sho through heavy-lidded eyes.
"It doesn't look bad," Sho said.
"Why do you care?" Jun laughed, the sound devoid of mirth. "I'm just a servant."
Elinor's voice was still ringing in Sho's ears, and distantly, across the clearing, he could hear other voices; she'd woken the others, it seemed, and at least she would be taken care of. "No," he said. "You're not like them."
Jun just stared up at him for a very long moment, and then whatever was between them was broken by William Brown, the carpenter, running over to them with a lantern held high.
"It is the Dare wife," he said. "She's in labor."
--
The settlement didn't know what to do when Elinor went into labor a month too early- there were few women who had come over with the colonists, and all that were available were helping in the dwelling, but there was a nervous edge to the rest of the interactions.
With the Dare dwelling being used for the women, Jun didn't really have anywhere to go- Ananias was staying with Governor White, but there was simply no further room for the servants. Sho volunteered to let Jun stay with him in his father's house, and he knew it would go over well; Ananias clearly didn't trust Jun, but Sho's father was an Assistant, and the idea was credible.
Jun seemed pleased when informed of the new arrangement as well.
"I'm sorry I can't offer you more than a blanket," Sho said, apologetically, as he led the other man into the small dwelling he shared with his father. His father was out, again, with Governor White- and Sho had not been invited to sit in on this meeting. He wondered what they were discussing. Perhaps White's return to England, for there had been whispers all over the settlement about it for days. "We don't have any more mattresses."
"I did not sleep on a mattress in the Dare household," Jun said.
"Do you think White will return to England?" Sho asked. "With his granddaughter born and a man killed?"
There was a hard edge to Jun's eyes when he replied. "I think White is a coward who will run the first chance he gets."
Sho shifted on the straw. "You don't think very highly of them."
"Trying living under the Dare estate and thinking differently," Jun replied. He pulled his knees up to his chest and looped his arms around them, as if he was trying to make himself as small as physically possible. "Ananias does not treat his servants as if they are people- and neither does Governor White. To them, we are insects, things to be squashed when we are no longer of use anymore."
It was one of the most horrible things Sho had ever heard, and only because he knew finally Jun personally. His father and grandfather had always had servants, as did all of the estates with money and land to their name back in England. But he'd never identified a person with the station, and suddenly, his own blind eye to the treatment they received felt shameful.
"I- you aren't," he managed to grind out. "I mean, you aren't worth that little."
The look Jun gave him then was unreadable- or maybe just to Sho. He wanted Jun to believe his words. They were trapped on an island with something hunting them down, something evil and hiding in the darkness; they were stuck with men who led but did not believe, who saw but did not comprehend. There was so little that they could cling to in order to remain strong. If nothing else, Jun had to believe him.
He had to believe in Sho.
"You are not like the others," Sho told him again. "To them, I am just my father's son, the next name on the family line. I have nothing beside my blood and my tie to the fortune. They speak to me because they must, because of the title I will hold."
"What would you rather be?" Jun asked, and it didn't seem antagonizing, but merely curious.
Sho thought about the question for awhile, staring down at the lines in his palm. "I don't know. Something more."
"I think you already are," Jun said, and then looked anywhere but Sho as Sho tried in vain to figure out what the other man had meant by that.
--
He woke the next morning with the others to find that Elinor Dare had given birth to a baby girl, and the ground was covered in a layer of frost in August.
--
There was something wrong, and Sho could not fathom why not a single other person would speak of it. The colonists went about their business as if they could ignore what was happening around them, and Sho felt as if he was trapped in a maze he could not find the exit of. He heard only that the baby girl was to be christened, in what seemed to be a wild attempt to retain normalcy at the settlement.
It wasn't working. He could feel everything in the tiny pin-pricks that trickled down his spine whenever he moved.
Jun was a good source of information because he still worked by Ananias' side during the days, and had access to Governor White's plans. He came back late one night when Sho was already almost asleep, staying silent as not to wake Sho's father across the dwelling. Sho awoke to Jun's finger poking at the fleshy side of his arm. "Sho."
Sho stirred. It was cold inside the structure- it shouldn't have been cold at all, because Sho remembered the mugginess of the weather before everything had shifted alignment, but it was. Outside, the island was cool by day and colder yet by night. Jun looked to be trembling slightly in the light blanket that Ananias had allowed him to take from his household.
"Men have gone missing," he whispered. "Five of them- and then another three today. The Assistants do not know where they went, but it's been said that they went to join the Savages."
"You mean they have succumbed to the evil in this place," Sho translated.
Jun looked at him with an expression Sho couldn't place. "You think they are following the lines in Elinor's story."
"She could have been just rambling," Sho tried, but it lacked resolve. If what Elinor had been babbling about was true, they had been taken by whatever was haunting them all, looming just out of sight.
"I don't think she was," Jun said.
Sho sighed. "I don't either."
Jun was silent for awhile, hunched over on himself like a child who'd been punished for acting out, and once again, Sho could see the bunches of his shirt shaking. Sho reached a hand out of the blanket towards him, finger pads skimming over his shirt-sleeve. "You're cold."
"Been through worse," Jun said, as if by answer, though Sho knew it wasn't one. Sho's hands clamped down around Jun's wrist with more force.
"Come on," he said, and didn't give Jun time to fight him. He just dragged the other man onto the straw as he scooted over. He had several blankets on his mattress, and he wasn't about to let Jun shiver on the floor all night with the one Ananias had 'gifted' him. Jun's limbs ended up awkwardly hitting the floor and Jun's thigh, all gangly and bent, until Jun shifted and curved himself up on the packed straw.
It had been close quarters on the ship on the journey over, but it had been necessary for the trip. This- well, Sho wasn't stupid. There was a difference between being a coward and being fearful of something larger and more powerful than one's self. The Assistants might not be able to recognize the subtle edges, but Sho could, and he was afraid. Having Jun closer made it seem a little more bearable.
Because Jun believed him. Jun had faith in him, and Jun accepted his ideas without immediately discrediting him.
Sho didn't feel strange when he reached down to tangle their fingers together. Jun didn't pull away- his hand closed around Sho's own, warm and steady.
"We have to find where it's coming from," Sho whispered to the darkness overhead, lingering in the corners of the roof. "It's somewhere in the woods."
"Yes," Jun agreed.
Sho was lulled to sleep by the easy, rhythmic breathing of the man lying beside him. And when he woke the next morning, Jun's arms were wrapped around his waist like an anchor to reality.
onto Part 2