This is not the only story I've written since "The Lie," but it's the only good one.  I'm aiming to do one every day M-F, but I'm only going to post the ones that don't suck here.  I also didn't write this in five minutes.  It was closer to twenty.  If I get a good start and feel like the story will be worth the effort, I don't mind going over my time limit.

What I'm trying to learn to do is write on demand, and get stuff down quickly without agonizing over it.

A Small Boat on a Dark Night

By David Goodner

 

 

            Billy Todd pulled his hood lower, again.  Working the oars made his shoulders start rolling it back, again.  So the rain dripped in his eyes, again.  He tried to think more about the three silver pennies in his neck pouch and less about warm broth, fresh bread, and roast sea bass in his cozy, dry, cottage by the dockside.

            For three silver coins, he’d row further, and with much more cargo than a spindly old man with a bent back and a crooked staff.  His passenger was so old and wrinkled that his eyes were almost invisible beneath the lines of his face and the bushy eyebrows.  The rest of his hair was wispy, like something an artist had barely sketched in.  And his nearly toothless mouth lent a mushy sound and a bit of spittle to every word he said.  He wore no cloak against the chill or the rain, just a tattered robe in a style Billy didn’t know.

            “More to the right,” the man said.  “And faster.  If we’re not there, we’ll miss it.”

            “Starboard, Codger.  If you want to go faster, take an oar,” Billy said.

            “Bah!  Mind your elders.  If we get there on time, it’s another penny for you.  Hell, if we get there on time I’ll not be needing coins at all.”

            “On time for what?”

            “For the conjunction, of course.”  The old man said.  “The day and the hour, the place and the time.  Stars, moon, and sea are perfectly aligned, as they haven’t been for twenty years and won’t be for another twenty.  I missed the last one, but I won’t miss this one.

            He pointed with his stick, to something over Billy’s shoulder.  Billy half-turned to see, but there was only dark sky covered by thick clouds through which the moon barely shown as a slightly lighter smudge.

            “Moon and stars?  There are none.  Try not to make me feel like more of a damn fool than I already am for being out in this mess.”  But Billy knew those three silver pennies would see him in fish and ale for several days.  Hells, he might buy pork or mutton.

            “You can’t see them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there, stupid boy.  Just like the faeries, and the Isle of the Young.”

            “The Isle of… Satan’s shit!   You’ve dragged me out here to find the Isle of the Young!  It’s just a stupid legend, and anyway it’s supposed to appear on clear nights once each seven years off the coast of Mahnn.”

            “I went.  Legend was wrong.”  The old man spat off the side of the boat.  “But the Isle is real.  I lived there once.  Fell in love with a mortal girl and followed her here.”

            Convinced his passenger was crazy, Billy rolled his eyes.  He had the coins.  He could turn back.  “Did you?” he asked.  “So you was a fairy?  Then why don’t you just fly to the damn island?”

            “Idiot!  Nay.  I’m a man as true-born as you.  Stolen from my cradle as a child.  I stayed on the island and aged only a day every year.  But out here time took what it’d been robbed of.  And once I left the island, I knew no way back.

            “But I was smart, wasn’t I?  I listened.  I learned.  I read books.”

            Billy couldn’t even read his own name.  But he could see that the cold and the wet was doing the ancient man no good.

            “I learned to follow the stars and the moon.  I learned about conjunctions, like tonight, when the moon comes near to the earth and the ways open.  I’ll go back.  You’ll take me there.  And the faeries will restore my youth, and never again will I be so stupid as to touch mortal soil.  Never aga…”

            The old man didn’t finish.  He keeled straight over the side of the boat in the space of a word.  Billy reached for him, but the dark sea was hungry, and the light of their one lantern wasn’t even enough to reflect off the surface.

*          *          *

            So in the end, Billy’d rowed out past the harbor lights for naught but three pennies.  He wasn’t going swimming to find the rest.  But he had a story to tell.

            For true and sure, as he was rowing back for home and hearth, he saw an island appear out of the gloom, shining silver and bright.  He fancied that he might have seen a few people on the shore, but he didn’t look too close.  There were things a wise man didn’t poke at.  One was ant hills.  Another was sleeping bears.  A third was anything to do with faeries.

            Billy decided he’d spring for a meal of mutton and a bottle of good wine.