Chapter Text
Isra wakes up in paradise.
She doesn't know how else to describe this place. The sun dances gently on her skin and the lush trees outside, the skies are cloudless and charmingly blue. Something straight out of a traveling agency ad.
She can even smell seawater, the heavy odour of iodine fills her nose as she takes a few grasping breaths, an action she has no control of.
A coughing fit interrupts her thoughts, and then she feels it, sharp pain spreading through her larynx and lungs. It's worse than any cold she ever had, she feels as if she is about to spit out her lungs.
A little boy appears in the doors, strangely dressed and barefooted. His eyes go big, but he disappears just as quickly as he appeared. Isra tries calling after him, but she finds herself unable to speak. No sound comes out of her mouth, save a weak moan.
She burrows deeper into the bed, a terribly uncomfortable thing, she can already feel the stiffness in her lower back. With one eye open, she surveys the room. It isn’t much. Bare white walls, dark wooden floor and a creaking window. It’s hard to look away from the landscape behind the window, it’s so idyllic, so peaceful, a stark difference from the hustle and bustle of the city.
How did I end up here? she wonders. She can taste the bile in her mouth, an aftermath of another long night, she reasons.
“Look who finally woke up,” says a voice behind her. Isra turns her head abruptly, it makes colors dance before her eyes. It’s a woman who spoke to her. She is old, but Isra has a hard time deciding just how old she is. Her face is weathered from the sun and the wind, but she has ruddy cheeks and lively sharp eyes. Her hair is covered by a simple green headscarf. She is dressed weirdly, in a long linen dress and a dirty apron. “You must thank the Gods for that, they made you out of some tougher stuff. We thought you wouldn’t survive the first night, but you look no worse than a deck hand after his first voyage. You got sick all over my husband's boots, but it's nothing to be embarrassed about, it happens to everyone.”
Isra opens her mouth to demand where she is, but no sound leaves her mouth. Frustrated and angry, she tries to clear her throat, but it changes little. Tears fill her eyes. She is alone with this stranger in a place she doesn’t know, and it is starting to sound like one of these true crime podcasts her roommate is obsessed with.
The older woman sees her struggle and sits on her bedside. “Don't worry, girl, everything will be back- will be alright in no time. I know a thing or two about these things, my lads got into trouble when they were at sea too,” she puts a warm hand on Isra’s shoulder. Strangely, it does calm her down a little. Isra nods and a tear slides down her check. “There is no reason to cry, my dear. You are safe now.”
They sit there awkwardly for a moment as Isra calms her breath.
“I will send someone up with some bone broth, yes?” the woman smiles when Isra nods at her. Her teeth are uneven and yellow, dark at the gum line.
She watches as the woman goes away, leaving the doors open. A few minutes later another person comes in, a woman in her early twenties, around Isra’s age. She is also wearing strange clothes, not something Isra ever saw on the streets of the city. The thought escapes her mind when she smells the food the girl carries over to her bedside. Embarrassingly, her stomach grumbles loudly.
The woman smiles at her with something akin to pity lingering behind her dark eyes. She tries to feed Isra with the spoon, but she turns her head away stubbornly. She still has her pride.
I can do it myself, she tries to say, but the only thing that leaves her lips is a pathetic little croak so she gestures at the woman to give her the bowl. She does as Isra asks, watching her warily.
“Careful,” she mutters. Her voice is soft and melodic, like that of a signer.
Isra smiles at her thankfully as she sits properly against the wall, a bowl of soup in her lap. It has some sort of batter noodles inside, so different in size and shape that Isra is sure that they were made by hand. There are also… chicken feet. Yuck.
With a shaking hand she drinks the first spoonful of the soup. It’s somewhat mild, sweet even. She would grind pepper and chilli into it if she could. But it’s warm so she sips it politely under this stranger’s gaze.
“Alright,” the other girl says, a strange look overtaking her face, as if she was trying to convince herself of something. “I trust you will be fine? If I leave you alone? I have to get back to work.”
Isra nods at her, tears of frustration filling her eyes again as she is reminded of her struggles with speaking.
The moment the woman disappears Isra tilts the bowl and lets the edge of the bowl connect with her mouth. She drinks it as if she was starving. With the broth gone, she starts to devour the noodles, chewing on them before they turn into a pulp inside her mouth. She is so hungry she even eats the chicken feets. They taste surprisingly good.
She puts the bowl down on the ground, suddenly exhausted, when she notices something familiar hanging from the chair in the corner of the room. It’s her leather messenger bag.
Isra takes a tentative step out of the bed, her legs shaking as if she was a newborn calf. Her muscles feel sore, her ankles weak. She takes a moment to steady herself. Her spine and tailbone ache as she moves, as if a car ran her over.
The leather is crackled in many places, looking worse than it ever has. She has had that bag for years, taking it everywhere with her, it was no surprise it would survive… whatever the hell happened to her.
Someone must have let it dry in the sun. Her other things are spread out on the small wooden table. An old notebook, some pens, a bottle of hand sanitizer, wet wipes, a nail clipper, cherry flavoured lipstick. Her jewelry is there too, a tangle of golden chains, colorful charms and plastic rings. She grabs her wallet the moment she notices it, instinct taking over. Her ID is still there, her driving license too and some gift cards and a loyalty card to the supermarket close to her home. A single banknote and a handful of coins are in their places too.
She goes for her phone next. Miraculously, it powers on. The lack of signal is the first thing she notices. None of the apps on her phone seem to work, so she has no luck texting her family or even checking where she is on Google Maps. Her contact list is next, she taps the handset icon next to MAMA. The call doesn’t go to the voicemail, there is no ringing, nothing. It’s silent.
Isra tries again and again and again. Ten minutes later her call history makes her look straight up desperate.
MAMA (23)
GRANDPA H (7)
ANN (4)
Taking a deep breath she dials the emergency telephone number. She read somewhere that it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a signal on your phone, the call will still go through.
But it doesn’t. Her phone remains stubbornly silent.
She forces herself to leave her phone on the table and comes back to bed. She prays that when she wakes up again she somehow will be back in her own home.
---
The sun is still up when she wakes up. It must be summer, she realizes, the day has far too many hours.
There are people behind her door, whispering furiously. She recognizes the kind old woman from earlier, but she sounds more nervous now. A man’s voice answers her, deep and rough.
“She deserves to know, Mina,” he grumbles. “We can’t keep her in ignorance forever. Better to get it over and done with.”
“I know,” Mina answers sadly. “It’s just… such a tragedy, to lose her… family? Servants? Mayhaps she knows someone on the mainland, she looked like she understood me this morning.”
“Did she?” the man sounds puzzled. “These men were from the East, it was clear as day.”
“She may be too, her hair is dyed to appear fairer.”
The man hums, as if that made any sense. They may as well speak in riddles when Isra is concerned.
She sits up just as they enter the room. He is old, maybe even older than his wife? Friend?
His skin is dark and weathered, unhealthily so, with angry red stripes lingering at the edge of his neck. It makes Isra feel a little sick, and she promises herself to never skip sunscreen again.
The man’s voice is grave when he explains that he was the one who found her this morning.
“A summer storm must have destroyed your boat,” he says. He is serious, but not unkind. “Parts of it drifted to the shore not far from where we spread our nets. There were dead bodies too, two young men and a greybeard. And you.”
That doesn't make any sense. Isra has never set a foot on a boat in her whole life. And now she was what? Apparently found among the drifting wood and dead bodies by this stranger who stank of fish oil?
She has trouble breathing. Small gasps leave her mouth, they soon turn into hiccups. It makes her sound pathetic.
It's only when the woman, Mina, cradles her face with her hands that Isra realizes that her face is covered in tears.
“Shhh,” the older woman hugs her just like her mother would, tucking Isra’s head below her own. It brings her little comfort. She wants her mom. “You are safe here. You are alive. You can stay here as long as you want.”
Isra doesn’t want to stay here, in this place she doesn’t know, with people she just met. Still, she puts on a brave face and nods at the pair, trying to communicate with her face that she is grateful for their help.
---
The isle she found herself on is no Númenor, that she is sure of. The people here live simple lives. The women work in the inn downstairs (it actually belongs to Mina, Isra has learned), while the men spend their days on the shore, catching fish. No TV, no internet, no electricity.
Isra is starting to think that they are trapped on an island that belongs to some religious order. She has heard about it, it’s totally a thing. The people that surround her are religious, they disappear somewhere in the mornings, Isra isn’t sure where as they seem to have made a choice not to involve her in their religious practices. They speak about Gods often though, either in prayer or in vain, a scandalized Gods slipping out of Mina’s mouth when her sons do something extremely stupid.
And stupid things they do.
Isra is in the kitchen when it happens. After she got better, she started following Mina downstairs, helping her in any way she could. She started to feel guilty about lazing around all day while everyone else was working, even when she was still bed ridden. They didn't have much, but Mina still brought her herbal teas and salves to speed up her recovery.
She got along well enough with the family. The woman who brought her soup that very first day turned out to be Mina’s daughter-in-law, the little boy was her son. She was named Alice or Alyse or Alyce, it was hard to tell. Her mother was probably one of these people who chose to spell their kid’s name in a weird way to make her suffer later in life.
“One of the salt pan boys was asking about you,” Moryn, the youngest of Mina’s sons, tells her one afternoon. They are standing side by side, preparing the eels for smoking. “Said you caught his eye at the market when you went there with my mother.”
Isra knows what she looks like, only a certain type of men was ever interested in her as she was never very feminine, her face and body not soft enough, all harsh lines and broad shoulders.
“Is he gay?” she asks without preamble while massaging salt into the fish.
“He is a jolly young lad, yes,” Moryn admits. “He isn’t aggressive or unkind, his father has a house by the shore. He only has sisters so they won’t make him leave to build his own home. It would be a good match for you.”
“Moryn,” Isra groans. She can’t believe that it’s happening. She is too young to be thinking about these things. “You can’t be serious.”
The sincere look in Moryn’s eyes disappears in a second.
“It’s you who needs to start taking things seriously,” he tells her sternly, his tone becoming so patronizing it makes Isra want to vomit. “How long do you think you can rely on our generosity? My mother’s pity won’t last forever. You are lucky we were the ones who found you and took you in. We aren’t savages, after all. The same can't be said about your kind, I fear to think what they would have done to a person in your position."
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” she hisses at him. She can’t remember the last time someone spoke to her so meanly and she has grown up playing every sport imaginable. There is nothing as cruel as teenage girls who view everyone around them as competition.
“You are not a child, no matter how much you enjoy clinging to my mother’s skirts,” Moryn continues. “Look at Alyce, she is younger than you and already a mother and a wife.”
Isra very much prefers not to think about it, especially about how old Alyce was when she got pregnant.
They finish their work in an uncomfortable silence, Moryn’s words stuck in her head.
But it gets her thinking.
He is right about one thing, she can't stay here forever.
Mina’s grandson is the one who gives her the idea of what to do next.
Simon is only four years old, but he never seems to stop talking, something he must have inherited from his grandmother. He starts almost every sentence with “Uncle Eustace said”.
“Who is he? You uncle, I mean. Since he seems to know everything,” Isra could use some help in figuring out how to leave this place.
“He lives on the mainland, in Oldtown,” Simon explains. “He knows every animal and plant and can heal every wound and name every star in the skies and-”
“Is Old Town a city?” Isra cuts the boy off. “A real city?”
There is no city on the island, only villages and port towns. Starfish Harbour is not so far away from the inn, Isra visited it a few times with Mina.
“Yes,” the boy nods solemnly. He reminds her of her little cousins, so bright and bold.
“And how does your uncle know all these things?”
“He studies there,” he answers easily. “Mother says that all of the brightest minds do.”
A university, Isra thinks with wonder. The city must have a university. It's a real city then, not some backwater island she is stuck on. If she goes there she will be able to find her way back home easily.
---
Surprisingly, Moryn is the one who helps her secure a passage to Old Town.
Her hosts haven't been surprised about her decision, but they weren't exactly supportive either. There was something almost proud in the old fisherman’s eyes as she shared her news.
Mina and Alyce were the ones who were the ones most distressed about it. She gave them all of her plastic rings, warning them not to melt them.
“Too good for us, huh?” Moryn teases her while they wait in line to the sailing ship going to Old Town. A friend of his is one of the sailors manning the ship and he promised to keep his eye on Isra.
“Shut up,” she says immediately. “You were the one who told me to do something.”
She pulls at her headscarf, praying that the heavy wind won't snag it away. Last night she used her nail clipper to chop off most of her hair.
“By doing something I meant marrying a decent enough man, not running away to that hellhole. How do you ever expect to survive there? You have no connections, no money, no one to protect you,” Moryn keeps going on at it, trying to dissuade her from her plans, not knowing that it only made her want to leave this place more.
“I will survive somehow,” Isra mutters, sparing one last glance at her companion while stepping into the ship, dark wood creaking under her boots.
What other choice does she have?