Isles of Miracles - Prologue

15th of Nkeju, 1008 quia ligamen

Ronak Beach, Vāyuveer District, Samarpore

Driko jolted awake.

Fear had stretched his aged eyes wide open, even though he could see little through the cataracts that cobwebbed the edges of his vision. The tough hemp rope of the woven bed over which he lay dug into his loose, leathery skin. The world was dark. There was no sound in the night that would not have been drowned by the rolling black sea. Even with his old eyes, Driko could see the foam of the waves as they crashed against white sand fifty feet or so away from his shanty. He thought of going back to sleep, but the thought of slipping back into another bitter dream was too unpleasant. The sea was not going to quiet down any bit either. Its siren call had become an alarming shriek to Driko in the past few years. No, sleep would elude him tonight.

He sat upright, leaning his legs down on the ground off the wooden frame of the woven bed - a charpai the locals called it. He preferred to sleep out in the open air despite the mosquitos. The shanty, he reasoned, got too stuffy from the humid night air. That, however, was a lie. A practiced lie his daughter never questioned, merely complaining as she woke up to mornings with tiny bumps and bite marks from the pesky insects roaming the dark air. If he ever managed to find the courage to utter the truth, Driko was afraid Smriti would laugh it away, thinking that her father was just trying to tell tall tales to entertain her. He stared out into the inky depths of the churning water. It was ironic - he had thought that he would be able to find a way to escape the sea after he reached Samarpore, but the sea was not done with him yet. Neither in the physical realm, nor the ethereal one. Since the last couple months or so, every other night, his dreams would twist into a record of a past life. A life spent smelling the salty spray of waters deep and shallow. Commanding a motley fleet of clippers, barques and the occasional repurposed galleon. Spending days strategizing, drinking, gambling and whoring in a sweaty, musty, humid cabin not dissimilar to the tattered shanty that was now his home. In another life, Driko had been Víbora Frederico - pirate extraordinaire, landless king, demon of the seas, and a bane to all things sailing from Baía de Potes to the Sea of Lances.

But that was twenty years ago. Twenty years since there was any blood spilled on the Golden Seas. Twenty years since the Varbhumi archipelago rose up into civil war. Twenty years since Frederico's fleet was crushed to a man. Twenty years since the Torre Branca was torn apart in the surrounding waters, and Pirate King Frederico was eaten by a Nāgrāj. The Mantrics searched for days, going on weeks, but found no survivors. Not so much as a piece of driftwood carrying anyone alive. Frederico did not know how, but he had managed to reach the shores of the kingdom of Samarpore. Half dead, with a brown-skinned baby clutched in his arms. On that sandy beach, under the palm trees, the cries of that tiny life kept him going. Catching goats for the child's milk, building a shelter from sticks, stones and banana leaves, cutting off two of his rotting fingers - on that sandy beach, the passage of time had lost all meaning to the dead man. On that sandy beach, fisherman Driko was born.

The village near the beach did not trust Driko at all. He had made the mistake of talking to them in Samari. Foreigners learned in many tongues did not come by their knowledge without some dishonesty in their profession. To say nothing of the deep dark lines carved into his neck. So suspiciously similar to a tribal tattoo...

No one bought his disguise, but barely anyone questioned him either. Some miracle had washed a fraction of his small fortune up to the Samari beach. With it, Driko had bought a shanty at the edge of Ronak village - as well as the silence of its people.

In that silence, with meals of herbs and fish, with toys of rocks and sand, the girl he had saved and named Smriti, grew up. Before long, his body started decaying and aging faster than that of a man his age. He was becoming the helpless one, and Smriti his caretaker. It seemed that the same mysterious force that was drying Driko's skin, weakening his muscles and wrinkling his face, was also eating away at his sanity. He had started to remember more - not just the life he had lived, but the man he had been. Sinful. Wrathful. To his friends, dominating. To his enemies, evil.

He had started to eye Smriti less and less as a daughter. A mysterious pale man living with a young, dusky beauty? The people who had forgotten Driko's passage all those years ago were sure in their convictions - Driko was a disgraced slaver, and Smriti his final merchandise. Taking over as the breadwinner of the house, Smriti hurried herself into her father's footsteps. She became a fisherwoman - besides other things. Recently, she had started to sell herbs, fresh fish and trinkets from the sea at the porch of the shanty. The village boys who waited at the porch for Smriti would spin salacious fantasies. They thought that the frail man inside the shanty was deaf - or they just did not care. They talked and talked. How they wanted to grab the fishergirl's dainty wrists. How they wanted to tear her hemp robes up with a knife. How they wanted to rip her muslin underclothes; grope her ripe, round breasts while she cried and squealed. How they wanted to rub their hands over her curly bush and plunge their callused fingers in her tight cunt. How they wanted to pinch and lick and bite her, if only to make her scream louder.

Often, Smriti would rush in with the items of purchase before the boys broached the more lurid parts of their fantasies. Driko watched with hooded eyes as she hid her blushing face and teary eyes, hurrying with the haul just to get the bastards away from the house. She had stopped caring to price everything fairly and judicially. The fish she caught seemed to be the villagers' favourite, and the trinkets she made were not what the boys came to the beach for. If she was going to get groped and harassed anyway, the least she could do was make some money out of the village boys. At least that was what Driko thought - he could not fathom why the girl wouldn't just vend at the village market square like all the rest. Something about being close to home. If only she knew that being close to home did not always equate to safety.

Driko turned his head sideways. On a nearby charpai was the sleeping honey-coloured figure of Smriti, her limbs splayed randomly. Her chest rose and fell, breasts sticking against the white fabric of the cotton tunic she had changed in for the night. Driko licked his dry, flaky lips. Sweat shone on her forehead, running in tiny beads down her comely face and her slender neck. Cloth turned transparent as the undercurve of her breasts clung to the flimsy cotton. The tunic wrapped itself tight around Smriti's stomach, toned from the labours of the years past. Driko's gaze followed down of its own accord as he felt the pangs of desire with a resurrected, overwhelming force. His loose briefs grew taut as he gazed at Smriti's thighs. The tunic had crumpled and crawled up as if to invite the aging man to leer at her dusky legs, sculpted with musculature. A shameful heat was thumping in his heart, stiffening his cock, bunching his jaw as if to contain the urge to roughly ravish the nubile woman on the bed next to him.

He tried to wrench his eyes away, but they went to rest at her heavy-lidded eyes and wavy black hair. Smriti's brows were knitted, as if watching a bad dream. He could curl up to her, hold her, wake her up and comfort her - but he would only be pretending. Driko had long tried to be a good father, but as he watched Smriti now, he could not see her as his daughter. He saw her like the village boys did. Under the cover of the dark, her brown skin only shot streams of rage across his mind, memories of the Varbhumi natives flooding back. Her tunic, which served to denude her more than nakedness, flushed his stomach with desires - how he had pillaged the island savages and taken his fill of their men and women.

His head pounded with anger, his heart thumped with shame. The father warred with the pirate as Driko looming over Smriti like a lion unsure of a kill. While his mind wrestled with itself, his body moved of its own accord, knees digging into the charpai as he placed his legs in the space between her splayed thighs. Hands at either side of her chest. The woven bed creaked. He waited. Smriti groaned in her sleep. This close, she smelled of sweat, of salt, of fish, but underneath the grimy smells of daily toil, wafted the scent of a woman. A pleasurable hint that no wear and tear could obfuscate from Driko's senses. Her wavy hair was strewn in a mess. He touched the side of her face - wiped away the sweat on her cheek. On her neck. Her skin feverish from the day's efforts. Thin lips quivering in a sleepy mumble.

He could take her.

No one was around.

Even if there was, they wouldn't hear them.

Even if they did, they wouldn't bother to stop him.

Even if they tried to, Frederico did not care.

He ventured from her neck to her collarbone. Glided his hand down over the slope of her breast. His fingers rested heavily against Smriti's soft, pillowy flesh. As if out of instinct, he squeezed his fingers all at once, and felt his fingertips sinking into tiny depths.

She winced.

Driko had to kill the moan that almost escaped him as his spine tingled with pleasure from that beautiful, erotic tune. But he loosened his grip. His hard member throbbed with anticipation, but he wanted to exercise restraint that night - for his conscience, if nothing else. He continued to knead Smriti's chest, rubbing the root of his thumb over her nipple while the other hand crept low, raising the hem of her drenched tunic even higher. He slipped his hand over her waist, fingers exploring the curve of the girl's hips. Smriti groaned unaware, and Driko's fingers trailed from her waist to the front, between her legs, angling down to feel her mons pubis.

His breath was fast. He could feel both the trails of sweat running down his face and a light wind picking up, spreading a cool dread over his cheeks. Hot flush. Cold fear. His fingers met light wiry resistance as they made contact with her bush. His patience with himself was wearing thin. He could be bolder than this quivering, fearful mess. Gritting his teeth, he ran his fingers across the short hair, crawling his digits down to press against Smriti's nether lips-

A sharp spasm burned through Driko's hand, like someone had lashed a whip across the back. It took all his strength to not scream out loud. His mind reeled. He had to wrench his palms away from Smriti's body to press against the hemp ropes of the bed. He panted. The spasm was probably just his body failing him. A trickle flowed over the back of his hand. Smriti's sweat? Not likely. The moisture of her skin had painted itself on his hairy arm and two of his fingers. The wetness of her pussy. He grinned, to his own disgust. Regardless, he raised his hand. To breathe her scent in.

And saw blood oozing from his skin.

Over the back of Driko's left hand, a tattoo was etched in black - a reminder from his time in Varbhumi. Two crescents, their broad middles opposite each other, their prongs facing away. The middle of the tattoo had flowered into an intricate pattern seemingly of its own will - and it was bleeding. Heavily.

Down the side of his hand. Over the edges of his palm. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Drops spilled over Smriti's lips. She woke, groggily, looked up, and as her vision cleared, she screamed.

Driko fled at the sudden shrill shout to take cover behind his charpai, and screamed back, "It's me! It's me, Smriti!"

The girl sat up, leaning against an arm. Taking heaving, panicked breaths, Smriti spoke in a shaking voice. "Baba?" Her tone relaxed considerably, instinctual fear replaced with an edge of suspicion. "What... what were you doing?"

Driko saw her wipe away his blood from her lips, probably mistaking it for sweat, or some critter's piss. A sense of foreboding crept into him. He spoke, reedy and hoarse. "I thought you were having a bad dream, bitiya. Thought I might wake you up."

The words stank of guilt to him, but he saw his daughter's face collapse into dejection. "I... I was, baba." Her eyes dropped to the sandy ground below the charpais. Without looking up, she asked, "Baba, have you ever gone out to the sea?"

"You know I have, beti."

"I've been dreaming of islands. On the other side of the sea." She looked up at him, eyes questing for something. "People I remember. Animals that I... remember. It sounds wrong, I know. All my life, I've known no one but you. And the people in Ronak, but..."

"It's..." He chuckled nervously. Driko was doing a bad job of containing his rising panic, but he crossed the distance between them, kneeling in the sand at the edge of her bed, and closed his hand over the one she was using to leean. "It was just a dream, darling-"

"It's the same dream, baba! Every day. These dreams, they seem like memories, feel like memories, but I know they're not. Somehow... it's hard to describe. It's like people are speaking to me through dreams. It's like they're... waiting. There's people waiting for me." Tears welled into Smriti's eyes as she looked at the man who had fathered her. "Who am I, baba?"

For a few moments, the man stared beyond Smriti. He had sworn to forget the past. He had sworn to burn all bridges. He had curbed all thoughts of vengeance against the savages of those damned isles. But Smriti's question - Smriti's simple question shook his world. Driko's - Frederico's - life was spent. His body wasting and his mind falling to some lustful madness he could not control. He did not know how much time he had, and while he decayed, Varbhumi bustled with life and luxury. Perhaps he could indeed fell it - do what a pirate army could not do. Poison the land with its own seed.

"I don't know much, my darling, but what I know is true. I only hope that you will forgive me after I am done..."

--

By the time Frederico was done, he knew that the glint he saw in his daughter's eyes was fury. It was the intended effect, but how much of it was directed at him, and how much at the Varmāns, that remained to be seen.

Smriti raised herself up from the charpai, swinging her legs around one edge, smoothening the crimps of her tunic and standing up to stare at the sea. Frederico watched her unerring gaze from his kneeling position. An ache was settling into his haunches.

Finally, after a short eternity, she spoke. "You were a monster."

Frederico hung his head down.

"But you raised me. Taught me. Fed me."

A shaky sigh escaped him.

"For all your crimes, you were... and are, my father."

The sands shifted and swam before Frederico's eyes as tears leaked down his face to wet the ground.

"I am going to Varbhumi."

"Why?" he croaked as he raised his head again. Frederico knew why. He just wanted to be sure that his daughter was walking into hell for the right reasons. What a disgrace he was.

"To return to my homeland? Take vengeance for my father? Just for the hell of it?" She spat on the ground. "Take whatever excuse you want to pick."

"Still-"

"Don't try to talk me out of this." Smriti finally turned to face him. Her tunic swayed in the light, pleasant inshore wind. It hugged her and accentuated her figure, but thoughts of bodily pleasure were far away from Frederico now. He looked up at the girl before him, now turned into a woman. "I will go to the Isles. I will do what you could not do. I will rule Varbhumi. And I will come back."