It was a misty morning. Karl relished the warmth the sun’s rays offered against the morning chill as he did some stretching to warm up for a jog. As he came closer to the shore, he heard a wolf howl.

‘What a low, hauntingly beautiful howl… it feels as if it has a tinge of melancholy and loneliness to it,’ he thought as a smile graced his face.

On an islet across the water, Karl could make out the silhouette of a wolf who jumped into the water and swam towards him. Upon closer look, it was a coastal wolf with distinctive gold marks on his ears. He trotted along the beach and stopped a few meters away and looked into Karl’s eyes, staring. He didn’t break eye contact until Karl frowned and asked “Do you need something?”

As if he understood those words, the wolf turned around, took a few steps, then looked back at him again.

“So... uh... you want me to follow you, is that it?”

The wolf walked on.

“Gotcha. I’m coming.”

The wolf walked towards an empty kayak then swam back into the water. Karl hopped on the kayak and paddled, tailing the wolf.

“Amazing...! You’re just like him. You guys can really swim, huh,” he said in awe as they passed a few islands, thinking of his wolf friend back home.

The wolf headed for a small island with two trees near the shore with branches growing horizontally instead of upwards, as if they were reaching for each other. The wolf led him towards a path, but soon went off said path. Karl noticed a white rock a few steps away so he took note of that as a marker.

He followed the wolf through tall grass that reached up to his knees until they stopped in front of a little cabin. He raised his hand, fist closed, but before he could knock, he heard the sound of an axe hitting wood. Everything around him faded to black, only to turn into the blurry image of a ceiling fan as his eyes fluttered open.

*******

Finding his surroundings too bright, he rolled over, pulled the blanket over his head, and covered his eyes with his hands. But just when he was getting comfortable, there was that wood chopping sound again. Remembering where he was, he got up and stretched, then neatly folded up the thick blankets he was sleeping on and placed them on the couch, beside another neatly folded knitted blanket.

As the cabin did not have a guest room, Alawa could only offer the couch and a couple of comforters she stacked on the floor, letting the two decide who slept where. Naturally, Karl and Rywa went back and forth for five whole minutes on who took the couch, until Alawa settled it for them with a toss coin, saying they didn’t want to wake up Cross because the man could get very grumpy when anyone disturbed his nap. Karl took the spare toothbrush and towel Alawa left on the side table for them and headed for the bathroom.

He was still yawning as he made his way to the front door but the sight of Rywa chopping wood fully woke him up like a shot of espresso.

“Good morning, Karl!” Rywa looked his way, his smile was brighter than the morning sun.

“Good morning, Rywa! Good morning, Admiral!”

“I’ve never seen anyone so happy to be chopping wood. He was so curious when he saw me bring out the axe and was so eager to learn. You’ve got one odd friend,” Cross said as he tossed the kindling into a firewood bucket and tied up the rest that could no longer fit in it.

Rywa almost looked disappointed to part with the axe when Cross took it back from him when they were done. Alawa emerged from the woods, carrying a basket filled with herbs and mushrooms.

“Good morning! Did you sleep well?”

“Good morning, Alawa! I did, thank you,” Karl nodded.

“That’s good. Lemme put these away then we can get on with fixing your fighter.”

“I’ll go get it and take it to the hangar.” Admiral Cross came back out on his hoverbike and drove off.

Alawa led Karl and Rywa through a maze of towering trees to the foot of a hill, where an entrance was perfectly camouflaged. Alawa punched a code to unlock the door beside a much taller and wider iron gate.

“Welcome to our base,” Alawa said as they went inside a hangar where Cross was towing Rywa’s fighter with his hoverbike. There was one other vessel there, an escape pod marked with the insignia of the Pioneer Star Fleet.

“My job’s done here. See ya later, kiddos,” Cross left, waving without looking back before heading out the door.

After inspection, Alawa concluded that the damage wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be, so she should be done in a few hours. “Basically, what I did was fire a beam that messes up the signals your ship’s main control system sends to all its other parts in order to function. All it does is shock the passengers, so it’s pretty harmless.”

“Harmless? You consider knocking out the pilot of a fighter moving at least twenty times the speed of sound harmless?” Karl’s eyes drooped.

“Sorry! Oh but we always make sure the alien spacecrafts fall to the ocean,” Alawa stuck her tongue out. “But look, I’m trying to make it up to you guys, okay? It’ll be a simple fix, I just need to reverse what I did by making sure all the signals are reaching where they should, much like how trees in a forest communicate using an intricate fungal network— ” She cleared her throat then jumped down from the fighter. “I’ll go get my tools.”

“Do you need help?” Karl and Rywa tailed behind her.

“Sure! You can carry the heavier stuff for me.”

They went into a room filled with multiple monitors- most of them showing surveillance footage of the entire island, including a field of solar panels at the summit of the hill which they were in. Four of the screens showed the view from outside, which was nothing but water with rough currents and whirlpools, littered with sea stacks here and there, which Karl figured was what kept sea vessels from wandering into the area.

All of them were connected to a central computer on a small work desk with gadgets, spare parts, and even post it notes with scribbles scattered here and there. There was a framed picture with a group of people holding a banner that read ‘Save old growth.’  

“That’s my grandmother right there,” Alawa pointed to a woman with long braided hair wearing a shawl. “They were activists fighting to protect our ancient trees, and that’s also where she met her husband. Most of our old growth forests were cut down for commercial logging, despite all their efforts.

The island you’re standing on is the last intact ancient forest. She moved here and vowed to protect this place, until the time comes when people truly understood its importance.

She said that with the help of a man who came from the sky, they built this base and erected a barrier. It’s not as sophisticated as your fighter’s stealth system, but it does the job. She and her friends worked together to erase this island from every map in all the online servers they could hack into.”

“Man from the sky?”

Karl and Rywa looked at each other.

“Yep. Much like how I met Admiral Cross. Except while the Admiral fell to Earth in an escape pod, the man from the sky descended smoothly over the water. Grandmother said he was a quiet one, but brilliant. She also said he seemed very interested in Earth, particularly in how our ecosystem has managed to stay habitable despite all the damage humanity has done; and that he, too, was looking for a way to save his people from the destruction they’ve brought upon themselves. In return for their hospitality, he engineered all this and helped my grandmother and her friends build it.”

“Pardon me, Alawa, but did your grandmother ever mention what he looked like?” Rywa asked.

“Hmm, not really. Oh, but she did say something peculiar about him.”

“Peculiar?”

“Whenever he went out to explore the islands, she said my grandfather would offer weapons for the man to bring for self defense, but he would refuse. He had two floating balls the size of persimmons, and he said that was all he needed for protection.”

“Dark sword and bright shield…” Rywa mumbled under his breath.

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing. Sorry, carry on.”

“That was pretty much it. She said he didn’t really stay long and returned to his planet soon after they built this base.” 

One look at Rywa and Karl knew he was thinking the same thing. Or rather, of the same person. Alawa, who had missed their little unspoken conversation, asked them to load some parts, circuit boards, and diagnostic devices to a dolly before grabbing her tool box on the desk. Upon seeing a shawl underneath it, she put her toolbox back down and hung the shawl on the back rest of the computer chair.

Karl smiled a little when he recognized the pattern as the same one her grandmother wore in the picture, but it instantly faded and turned into a curious expression when he saw the wolf woven into the fabric at the back. “This wolf looks like the one in my dream.”

Alawa’s eyes widened at those words. “You dreamed about a wolf?”

“Yes. This wolf, actually.”

“If our sacred guardian visited you in your dream, perhaps it was a message,” Alawa uttered pensively, then added. “Perhaps you ended up here for a reason. He may have led you here.”

“Sacred guardian?” Karl frowned inquisitively.

“Yes. My grandmother, who passed this down to me, often told me the story of a lone wolf who once roamed their islands and swam their waters a hundred years ago. Like all apex predators, he was vital to their ecosystem, as their existence has cascading effects on their habitat and all creatures around them, big and small.

But above that, he was sacred to her people. His appearance on the islands coincided with the death of their chief, and they believed him to be the vessel of his spirit who came back to them, and so they regarded him as their protector.

However, one day, he wandered off to the mainland, where conservation officers captured and relocated him. My grandmother said the chief had asked for the wolf to be returned to them, to his home, but their request fell on deaf ears.” Alawa’s expression grew dark, anger smouldering in her usually gentle evergreen eyes. “That was where he met his end at the hands of a trophy hunter. The day he was finally able to come home, he was already dead. Stripped of his fur. And chopped into pieces.”

“Why…” Karl’s voice was soft, filled with heartrending pain and resentment.

“Karl, could you tell me more about your dream?”

“Um… He led me to an island with two trees near the shore. Their branches were growing sideways, towards each other.”

“I know where that is!”

Karl couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “So that island is also real?”

Alawa pulled up a map on one of the screens, then zoomed in on an island. The terrain was eerily similar to what he saw in his dream.

“This is definitely it.”

“It’s not that far from here, give or take about half an hour by kayak. I’ve been there before, there’s nothing in that island except for the old cabin the man from the sky stayed in.”

Suddenly, Karl had an idea. “Alawa, is it okay if we-”

“Say no more. It’ll take me a few hours to get repairs done on your fighter anyway, so go ahead and take a look. I’ll give you the coordinates. Our kayaks are on the shore, feel free to use them.”

“Thank you,” Karl said and Rywa added “I’ll trust you with my fighter then.” And the two of them left.