Vince

Oddly bright sunlight shone in Vince’s eyes, waking him. He had never seen the sky so clear, so unpolluted by the factories burning coal day and night, not a single cloud above the trees… the trees? Vince looked around for the first time. The trees reached higher than his line of sight, but the grass floor of the forest wasn’t dark; streaks of sunlight slipped through the gaps in the leaves above. His gaze wandered. All around him scattered across the forest floor laid bits of furniture, ship pieces, and tools eaten by the greenery. 

“Where…” Vince said.

He sat up slowly. His back ached like he had fallen on it hard. Vince shivered as he twisted out of the sun’s glare. For some reason, his waistcoat and slacks were drenched and his ginger hair flattened against his forehead. He tried to shake the confusion out of his head, but he was met with more pain. It hurt everywhere.

Vince struggled to his feet, clutching the right side of his head as he winced. His eyes squeezed shut as he staggered. After a second of motionlessness, he managed to open his eyes again. A familiar golden pocket watch dangled in front of him. Stumbling forward, he snagged it from the branch. The cold metal rubbed against his fingertips. On the front he saw the familiar etching of the Girdwood’s family crest: a tree with six branches, a leaf hanging from each. His fingers traced the words on the back.

Vince,

Good luck.

Dore

Grass ruffled to his right. Vince slipped the watch into his pocket. A few feet away stood a toddler with big golden eyes. The boy’s clothing looked like someone sewed two pieces of random fabric together to make a shirt that was still too big. His skin was dark like coal and his hair overgrown, a cloud of black smoke. 

Horlance. Was he in Horlance? Only Horlançians had such dark skin.

The boy's head bobbed back and forth between staring at Vince and staring at something in the forest. Vince reached out. The kid shouldn't be alone in a forest much less a junkyard. That’s the only explanation he could think of. With all the loose parts it could only be a junkyard. He somehow ended up in an Horlançians junkyard. That made even less sense than the forest; Horlançians were too advanced to have a junkyard. They probably melted all their old metal works to reuse.

The little boy began screaming when Vince’s hand got close. “Calm down, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, leaning forward in a poor attempt to settle him down. Vince never interacted with children. Should he make a funny face or try a lullaby? No, that would make him scream more.

“Handi,” the boy yelled. A shadow flew out of the trees and scooped the boy up. It was a girl. She circled him, a few feet away keeping her distance. Her hair looked like cocoa, short and smooth, her skin like toffee, and eyes as deep a brown as the forest she flew out of. Her face was more delicate than the little boy’s. There's no way they were related, or even from the same country.

“Where…” he asked again to himself. Where could he possibly be?

The girl put the boy down but kept him behind her. Those deep brown eyes glare down at him. In the light, they were more of a golden brown. “Who are you?” she asked, in a voice that sounded more like a command.

Vince shuffled backward, falling into a rusted door frame, and replied automatically, “Vince Von Girdwood, th- the second.”

She took a step forward into the door frame standing above him. “Vince Von Girdwood the second, what are you doing on my island?”

Her island? Vince was on an island. Yes, that would make sense. He remembered something about a boat. There was a ship, a steamship. “I don’t know,” he said.

Vince looked around again confirming: it was an island. They were surrounded by tropical plants, big colorful flowers, trees of all sizes, and thick vines eating up the debris. There was even a nearly intact steam engine which might have worked just fine if it wasn’t for the vines of a large blue flower constricting its wheel. He guessed it had been there for at least a couple years. Sweat dripped down his cheek; it definitely had the thick humidity he associated with islands. 

“Where is this place,” he asked.

“My island,” the girl replied. 

Vince ran his long fingers through his hair. A crazy girl claiming he was on her island glaring at him with no mercy. This made less and less sense. If she and the boy lived on the island there must be civilization. “Where are the roads? And the buildings?”

He put his hand back down on the grass, waiting for a reply. The boy tugged at the girl’s shirt; she looked down at him. The boy asked, “The spouts?”

She turned back to Vince and sized him up. She shook her head and said, “No. He’s different. Too old.”

Vince wasn’t that old; he was sixteen, maybe just barely older than the girl. “What are the spouts? Do you know how I got here?” he asked.

She ignored him and spoke to the boy. A moment of uncertainty wavered over her delicate face. “Yeshua, go back to the Leviathan. I’ll meet you back home.” The little boy nodded and ran off into the forest alone. She watched him run off. His little feet pattered deeper into the forest. Then she gave her full attention to Vince. 

He tried to stand again. How could she let a toddler run off into the forest alone? “Wait, you shouldn’t let him go-” A large skinny bug crawled over his hand. Its hundred golden legs stepped over his knuckles one by one faster than he could react. Vince screeched and whipped his hand away. He stood as fast as he could to get off the grass floor.

“What in the world was that?” Vince opened and closed his hand a dozen times trying to forget the feeling of its tiny feet. 

“Calm down, it was only a centipede,” she said.

“A centipede?!” Vince stared at her; his blue eyes narrowed in disgust. He continued to wipe his hand repetitively on his trouser, over and over again. “How can there be a centipede?”

“They like to live in damp places, a forest suits them nicely.”

“Forest? There shouldn’t be a forest in Hadzat,” he said without thinking. Hadzat. He had been on his way to Hadzat. He stopped wiping his hand; he’s not in Hadzat. Vince was going to Hadzat to continue his education. His father paid heavily to enroll him in the university there. If he was even a day late he would be expelled.

That's right. His ship hit a storm; Vince remembered being on deck, the wind and rain spitting in his face, and something rough hitting his back. And he fell over the rail. He fell overboard. That was the last thing he remembered before waking up to this crazy girl. He needed to get to Hadzat. He needed to get his life back on track.

“So Handi was it?” He asked. He thought that’s what the little boy called her. She nodded. “I remember now. I was traveling to Hadzat. Where is Hadzat in relation to your island?”

She backed up from him again, staying close to the ground. She looked like one of the animals he saw at the zoo in his hometown, Riereng. A slender panther ready to pounce at her prey, or maybe run at the first sign of danger. Her clothing was ragged and at least a couple styles out of date, something the working class might have worn a couple years ago. Tank Tops and baggy pants with lots of pockets, but her’s were covered in patches. “Hadzat? Never heard of it,” she replied.

“That’s ridiculous, everyone's heard of Hadzat. It’s the capital of Zeri technology, the City of Steam. How…” He stopped mid-sentence. 

Her brown eyes glared at him with a growing hostility. None of this meant anything to her. “What are you doing on my island?” Handi asked again.

“As I said I was traveling to Hadzat,” he said as slowly and clearly as he could. Being asked the same question over and over was getting on his nerves. 

“And?”

“And, what?”

“And what does this Hadzat place have to do with my island? This isn’t Hadzat. What are you doing on my island?” With every word, her voice got louder and sharper.

“I don’t know.” This questioning exhausted him and the killer headache wasn’t helping, maybe he hit his head on the way overboard.

“I don’t believe you. People don’t just wander onto this island.” She was as firm in her belief as Vince was in his confusion of it.

“I was on a ship, on my way to Hadzat, and the next thing I know I wake up here,” Vince said, with a tinge of annoyance growing in his voice. “I should be asking you how I got here? What am I doing on your stupid island?”

She didn’t respond. She only glared at him as she opened and closed her hand into a fist repetitively. Suddenly she stopped glaring and instead rotated her head in a circle, around and around as if she were debating something. 

“Answer me! You know don’t you?” He walked towards her. “That kid, he said something weird about, what was it? Spots, sprouts, no spouts!” This time it was his turn to glare down at her.

“The spouts are none of your business,” she said. He didn’t seem to intimidate her in the slightest.

“But, the kid said I’m from the spouts.” Or at least that’s what Vince assumed he meant. He stared down at her small unmoving face trying to get a reaction, but she didn’t budge. He sighed, if she wasn’t going to help him he wasn’t going to waste his time. “Fine. I’ll find someone else.”

The little boy had to be running towards something, so Vince started walking. Handi immediately blocked his path. He groaned. Really, was she really going to do this? Instead of fighting this useless battle with her he turned around and walked in the other direction.