01
Oaka—the very name is adjoined with the cerebral image of an island known for its sheer beauty and tranquility. The ripples of the clear blue water that makes up its shore gently caress its bright tan coast, while its plantation, as seen from the firmament view of the highest of winged beasts, fills the island with an amazing emerald color from its coast to its center. Tis a magnificent tropical island that brings peace to the eyes of the beholder.
On the coast of Oaka dwelled a village made from the tropical trees and materials of the island. The small buildings were made from beautiful sandy wood, and each house was roofed with great tropical leaves. There wasn’t a large amount of these houses, but the few that were there were enough to define the area as, at the least, civilized. To be such a small village, many people seemed to reside within it. All of them, each with skin color of various shades of brown, enjoyed each other’s company. Children would run and play, as children do, while the adults of the village would cook, fish, and hunt, among other things.
Within one of the palm leaf-roofed houses, the clanging of a fallen tin pan could be heard. A woman was preparing food when she accidentally dropped the pan on the floor. She sighed, picked up the pan, threw out the food that she was making in it, and then went back into her kitchen area.
“Leah, will you be a sweetheart and get me a few yan berries?” the woman said over her shoulder as she cleaned the pan in the sink. To an onlooker, it would appear that she was talking to nothing but the house itself, but, alas, a girl dragged herself around the corner. She appeared to be in her late years of adolescence. She had beautiful reddish-brown skin, and there was not a single blemish on her. Her bright blue eyes, wide and slightly slanted, displayed an eagerness and vigor, and the contrast between her eyes and the color of her skin drew the attention of first looks. She wore a blue tunic, light brown pants, and a white and purple sash. Her dark brown hair was in a long split-in-two ponytail that went down to her lower back. She was an attractive, youthful, and vigorous girl, but the vigor was clearly lacking at the moment as her eyes portrayed a sense of languish.
“Yan berries again?” the girl said with a yawn. “We ate that yesterday. Isn’t there anything different? I don’t want to be woken from my nap for that.”
“It’s time for you to get up anyway,” her mother told her. “And regarding the food, I did have something else planned . . . until I dropped it. Now, be a sweetheart and get me some yans please, Leah. I don’t want to have to ask again.”
Leah sighed. With another yawn, she lethargically replied, “Alright,” and then stretched her back. She passed by her mother and left the canopy house. As she was rudely highlighted by the bright sun of the tropics, she squinted her eyes. She grabbed the straw basket laying on the sand next to the house entrance and then looked up at the weapons rack that was posted beside it.
All of the weapons on the rack seemed to be only useful for hunting and daily chore purposes . . . all except for a long-poled weapon, a glaive. However, this glaive was unique. There was a curved blade at the top of it, and on the other end of the pole was another curved blade. Leah grabbed it off of the rack, and then she made off. Her house, among others, separated the beach from the rainforest that she was venturing to.
“Yan berries,” she muttered with detest as she trotted across the sand and into the new green biome of the forest. Yan berries were Oaka’s pride and joy. They could only be found in the rainforest of that very island. However, the rarity of them did little to please Leah as Oaka was her native home. After eating so many over the years, if anything, those berries weren’t rare enough.
Moments passed as she moved through the sticks and leaves before she reached an enormous, moss-grown tree. On the tree were small orange fruits, yan berries, dangling in bundles from the edge of the branches that were comparable in size to the tree itself. As Leah placed her glaive against the tree, she looked up at its branches. Besides the enormous green leaves, she could see the bright orange fruit. From her vantage point, they appeared to be little orange stars in a greenish-yellow sky.
The bundle of yan berries that was closest to her was still too high for her to reach, even with her glaive, which caused her to let out an exasperating sigh of annoyance. She then took a few steps back from the tree. Taking in a deep breath and then letting it out, she zeroed in on a broken piece of bark near the tree’s center, and then she spun around and kicked it with as much force as she could. The tree appeared not to have moved at all, but the couple of yan bundles and leaves that fell to the ground next to her proved otherwise. She sighed again as she bent down and began to sort out the berries that she wanted.
Leah was choosing which ones were good and which ones were dire, until she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head to see what it was. A young man was running as fast as he could. He jumped over logs and dodged twigs and tree branches. In his hand was a hefty woolsack, and he had a long broadsword attached to his back. It looked to be quite heavy.
Many tourists came to Oaka, and all of them were different in their own way. So, witnessing a person running through the forest was not really something to grab her attention . . . unless that person was followed by a group of Auroites taking the same path. “He’s a bandit!” she told herself. She couldn’t stay put. She longed to see what the Auroites would do to him. She placed the basket down and started running down the same path.
Leah followed the sounds of the frantic Auroites, their voices echoing beneath the sound of the jungle. “Is that him?” “Find the thief!” “He went this way!” “Where did he go?”
As Leah neared their location, she hid behind a tree and watched them. The village Auroites all wore matching leather armor and carried different weapons such as pikes and swords. However, on Oaka, the most distinguishable trait about them was that they looked nothing like Leah, one of the dark-skinned natives of the island. Most of them were pale-skinned. A few of them shared the dark-skinned trait of the southern regions, but even they looked like they didn’t quite belong on Oaka. This was all the more evident by their irritation.
“How can you find anyone in this Sem-given jungle!” one cried out as he kicked a small log. It tumbled toward a small rodent that fled up a tree out of fear. He stood amongst five other village Auroites who all shared in his disgust. As he continued to anger, he stepped into some mud that slowly began to take his leg down deeper and deeper. “Hey!” he frantically shouted. “Don’t just stand there! Help me!”
Leah rolled her eyes as the Auroites all struggled to help their man out of the quicksand. Auroites, as everyone on Auroa knew, were the law enforcers of the world. All of them—almost all of them—were trained to deal with situations like a bandit, or even worse. Some Auroites were only minor watchmen who were given the authority of overseeing small villages, much like Leah’s, but even so, they too were trained to a point where they were at least skilled bladesmen.
Leah understood why such inexperienced trainees would be sent to protect her island. There was never a real threat on Oaka, the island of sunshine and peace. However, having them take the place of the strong working-age Oakan men was almost laughable. Unlike the fools in front of her, Oakan boys tended to grow up and become strong members of the actual Auroite Legion, but it was a double-edged sword. Though the Oakan people prided themselves in being so searched out, the men’s duties as Auroites would keep them away from their families more often than not. This was something that the Oakans were sadly quite used to. And that fact made it all the more annoying for Leah to witness these inexperienced mainlanders get bested by one of the most common elements on a tropical island, quicksand. She shook her head in disdain as they finally got their man out of the mud and continued their clumsy trek deeper into the jungle. It was quite clear that they had no idea how to catch that bandit.
“They have no idea how to catch me,” a voice echoed her thoughts from above her.
Startled, Leah quickly looked up at the trees, and there, sitting on a branch, was the young bandit. Leah widened her eyes out of shock. She looked back at the village Auroites who were quite far away now and then looked back at the bandit. A quick thought crossed her mind to yell out and warn them, but she let that thought go as her body seemed to instinctively walk to the tree. She put her hand above her eyes so the sunlight wouldn’t get in them as she gazed up. “How did you get away from the Auroites?” she asked the bandit.
He smirked. “I’ll ask the questions first,” he told her.
Leah really didn’t like this guy’s attitude.
The bandit sneered. “Why are you following me?”
“You know, you’re not making a very good first impression,” she told him. “I wanted to know why the Auroites were chasing you.”
The bandit looked at her and then looked at his bag. Leah got the idea. He stole something, as his notorious “occupation” demanded of him.
“Now, answer my question,” she exclaimed. “How did you get away from the Auroites?”
The bandit laughed. He spread his arms out and shrugged. “You’re looking at it. I just hid up in the trees. They did exactly what you did . . . run right past me.” The bandit let out another laugh. He was proud of his getaway.
Leah wasn’t planning to rejoice with an arrogant thief. “Whatever you stole you should give back to the rightful owners.”
The bandit jumped off the tree and got directly in her face. He had average-length, brown, wild, bristly hair. His tan skin was somewhat rugged and noticeably moist with sweat, with his red bandana damped from absorbing most of his perspiration. His dark-blue, sleeveless jacket coated his tattered burgundy shirt and his rough slacks met with his brown boots. His light brown, almost orange, eyes stared into Leah’s. The confidence in them seemed to overpower her, but there was still a hint of tenderness in them that allowed her to keep her assertive posture. She kept her eyes locked on his.
The bandit grinned. “And what if I don’t?” He snickered.
Leah gripped her two-ended glaive and put it between her and the bandit. She then raised an eyebrow and smirked.
The bandit laughed again. “Really?” He chuckled. “You think you can take me?”
“Try me.”
The bandit cocked his head and smiled, astonished by her boldness. It appeared that he was going to say something else, but before he could, he suddenly dropped the bag on the ground and ran off. She, then, picked it up. Did I really just scare him, Leah thought. Her answer came quickly.
“I found you, bandit!” someone yelled from behind her. Leah turned around, and when she saw the person, she grinned. It was an Auroite, with his brown leather armor showing off their symbol of a diamond.
She pointed in the direction the bandit ran. “He went that way,” she told the Auroite, but instead of him running past her, he lifted up his club and swung it at her. Leah ducked, and the club quickly went above her head. “Hey!” she cried. “What’s your problem?” The Auroite swung his club again, but this time Leah blocked it with her glaive.
“There is no way you’re going to get out of this one, bandit!” he growled.
Leah looked baffled. Why does he think I’m a bandit? she thought. Then she looked at the bag she was holding. “Sem-given caracaur sniffing . . .!” she cursed. The bandit dropped the bag purposefully. He saw the Auroite running after him, and now she had it in her hand. That’s why he thought she was the bandit. She had the stolen bag.
Leah looked up at the furious attacking Auroite. “I’m not the bandit!” she pleaded. She pointed to where the bandit ran. “He ran away!” She held the bag up to him. “You can have it if you want!”
“Shut up!” the Auroite cried. “I’m not after what you stole. I’m after you!” And he lifted his club again about to strike, but instead, Leah hit him on the head with her glaive. The pressure turned him around for a moment, and when he turned back, she was gone.
Leah was already on the move, quickly running down the path she saw the bandit take. “I’m not going to let you get away this time, bandit!” she snarled as she ran through the forest looking for the thief. Using her to escape—that was not going to be acceptable. Leah ran for as long as she could before she eventually slowed down to a stop. After glancing back to realize that the Auroite was no longer following her, she looked at her surroundings. The path that she was following had long turned from a path to an untouched jungle floor. Nothing around her looked familiar. Never before had she ventured this far from her coastal home.
Besides her retribution, what was it about that bandit that intrigued her so much? She thought about heading back until she saw something out of the ordinary. It was a stone pillar. Its white texture was an awkward sight amid the green rainforest that surrounded it. She walked closer to it and then realized that behind the pillar was a whole village.
“What?” She ducked behind the pillar so that the villagers wouldn’t see her. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing: a hidden village not even five mileseters away from her coastal home. However, she was bothered by what she saw in the village. Everyone who lived there was deprived. Her gaze followed the curvature of the village’s paths until she spotted the bandit talking to an elderly lady and giving her a bag that looked much like the one that she was carrying.
Leah quickly ducked behind the pillar to make sure she couldn’t be seen. Then she peeked at the bandit. He actually seemed to be a kind person. Leah couldn’t hear what the lady and the bandit were saying, but the lady did seem quite happy. The lady opened the bag and smiled. She nodded to the bandit, smiled at him, and then walked slowly off. Leah quickly shoved her back against the pillar so that the bandit wouldn’t see her, but it didn’t help.
“You can come out now, girl!” the bandit said.
So much for that, Leah thought. Then with a sigh, she slowly came from behind the pillar.
The bandit put his hands in his pockets and smirked. “Looks like I got myself a little spy.”
Leah untrustingly stared at him as she came closer. She didn’t know what to make of what she just witnessed. “What were you doing?” she asked.
“I don’t think that’s really any of your business, but if you really want to know . . .” He shrugged. “What do you think? I was giving the bag to that old lady.”
Leah was really confused now. She looked down at the bag she was holding. She was absolutely ready to shove it in his face and tell him off, but now, she had no idea what was going on. “I thought this was the bag,” Leah said.
The bandit smirked. “Did you even bother to see what was in there?” he asked her. Looking very silly now, Leah shook her head, no, which caused him to sigh. “Open it up,” he told her.
Leah did as she was told and looked inside. “Sticks and leaves?” she cried.
“A decoy,” the bandit said to her. He told her to come and see what he had given the old lady.
“What?” Leah exclaimed as she glanced at the green emeralds that were almost overflowing out of the lady’s bag. She had to be happy with the gift she had just received. Leah’s mouth stayed open in shock as she said, “That’s at least a thousand gleddies!” Gleddies were the currency on Auroa. They were flat, emerald-colored stones that each had decorative symbols. The large, dark stones had the lowest value, and the small, heavily decorative stones held the highest value.
Leah turned to the bandit. “I thought bandits were selfish and only cared about themselves.”
“I think the same way.”
Leah studied him. “Giving all those gleddies you stole to a poor elderly lady doesn’t seem all that self-centered, don’t you think? A bandit isn’t supposed to help others. It doesn’t fit the status quo.”
The bandit smiled. “You’re one to talk. Does a village girl hanging around with a bandit fit your so-called status quo?” Then he turned from her and started to walk off.
Leah, a little agitated by his sociophobic attitude, called out to him. “After all this, you’re just going to leave me here?”
The bandit waved his hand, signaling her to come with him. She smiled and did as she was told.
Leah and the bandit walked through the poor village. She looked around in both amazement and sadness. How did she not know that this place existed on her island? She watched as a child with damp and torn clothes run to his mother. He then stared at Leah as he habitually chewed on his collar, clearly the reason for the dampness. “What is this place?”
The bandit looked at her. “You’ve never been here?”
Leah shook her head.
“That’s odd,” he said. “Because this is the Oaka that I know.”
Leah looked up at him. “You’ve been here before?”
“A few times, actually. I’ve never really come to this island from the north shore, so I’ve always stumbled across this place.”
Leah studied him with a slight puzzlement. Who was this guy who seemed to know more about her home than her? She walked with him some more until they finally sat down next to a tree.
“So you aren’t a bandit?” Leah finally asked.
The bandit sighed. “I am one; I’m not one . . . Whatever you think of me, I could care less.”
“You steal things, but you do it for the benefit of others,” Leah noted. “I’m not sure whether to consider you some secret hero or a vigilante?” A bandit who steals for the benefit of the less fortunate, she thought. “That is a very unrealistic story, bandit.” She wasn’t sure whether to believe this preposterous story or just go with it. She chose the latter for the time being. What reason did he have to lie to her? Every reason, she answered her own question. Regardless, she let herself trust him for now. “If it’s true, that’s really sweet of you,” she said.
He put his head against the tree and looked at the sky. “I’m not doing it to be sweet. It’s just . . . it’s not right, you know? Life like this . . .” He motioned to the entirety of the village. “It’s not just. What have these people done to deserve so little?”
Leah looked out at the village, and a sense of sorrow overtook her. “Or what haven’t they done,” she added to his rhetoric. “This place is only a few mileseters away from my village. It feels like I was just blessed to be born on the other side.”
The bandit turned his head to her and snuffed a smirk. “You should be going home now,” he told her.
Leah stood up. Something about this guy interested her. “You know, even though you’re doing something good, you’re still a thief. The Auroites are going to chase you.”
The bandit grinned and said, “Then I’ll do what a bandit has to do . . . run.”
Leah smiled at his witty comeback. With that, she started to run off, but then she stopped and turned around. “Hey, you never told me your name.”
The bandit rubbed back his brown, bristly hair. “It’s Raal,” he said.
“Raal, huh? My name is Leah. I’ll come back to see you.”
Raal’s grin dropped. “Please, don’t,” he said sarcastically.
“Oh, now I’ll make sure that I come back. Bye!” she said, running home, leaving Raal alone. He watched her leave until she was out of sight. Then he put his head against the tree again, closed his eyes, and let the warmth and light of the sun graze his face.
Leah ran back to where she had been picking her yan berries, and fortunately, her basket was still there. There was no telling what little animal could have come by and snatched it up. She finished up her last bit of berry picking and went back to the straw house.
She started to walk through the door, however, she heard her mother near the kitchen talking to someone who had a familiar voice. Leah peered to the side to see who it was. It was the village Auroite that she had gotten the better of earlier. Leah gritted her teeth in nervousness as she backed away from the house so she wouldn’t be seen. Did that Auroite know who she was? Was he telling her mother that her only daughter just became a wanted criminal? Leah looked for someplace to hide and noticed the large, sandy rock that was beside her house. She ran behind it and hid there for the time being.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” the Auroite said as he exited the house with Leah’s mother following behind him. “Your Oakan tea is amazing.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Thank you for warning me about the bandit.”
Leah let out a sigh of relief. The Auroite didn’t know who she was. He was just warning her mother. She kept her back pinned against the rock.
The Auroite nodded to her mother. “I’m just doing my duty, ma’am.”
“And a fine job you’re doing at that. If you see my daughter, will you please tell her to hurry home? It’s dangerous out there, especially with a bandit on the loose.”
Leah peeked over the rock. She had a good view of the Auroite. He had a large bruise on his forehead where she had hit him. She couldn’t help but giggle at the sight of it. She quickly got back down so she wouldn’t be seen.
“Will do, ma’am,” the Auroite told her mother. “It certainly is not safe. That bandit is highly skilled.” He rubbed his bruised head to clarify it. “Though I’m sure your daughter is just as skilled, being that she is her father’s daughter as well.”
“Are you sure you don’t want any medicine for that?” Leah’s mother asked him as she gazed at the bruise. “It looks pretty bad.”
The Auroite shook his head. “I’ll be fine. Thank you again for your hospitality.” Then he turned around a walked off to the next nearest house.
When he was out of sight, Leah snuck around the rock and quickly ran into her house. “Mama! I’m back!”
“You certainly took your time,” her mother said as Leah walked into the house with the basket full of orange yan berries. “I was worried. An Auroite is going around the village warning each household that there’s a bandit out there somewhere. You could have been harmed or worse.” She put her hands on her hips. “What took so long? You could have hunted every animal in the forest by now.”
“Sorry, Mama, there weren’t a lot of ripened berries,” Leah lied. If her mother found out that she had been in the company of the very bandit that they were talking about, there wouldn’t be much peace in the house. Her mother wouldn’t even wait on an explanation. Leah propped the basket of yan berries on the kitchen counter. “Mama?” she asked.
Her mother turned her head to Leah, but kept her eyes on what she was cooking. “Yes?”
Leah leaned back on the counter. “Do you know of another village here on Oaka? Perhaps one that’s a little deeper into the forest?”
Leah’s mother put down her cooking spoon and looked at Leah. “So that’s where you were,” she said. “It’s dangerous to go that far into the wilderness, Leah. You know better.”
Leah’s eyes widened. “So you do know about that other village.” She pushed off the counter and folded her arms. “After seventeen years, why didn’t I know about it?”
“Because . . . we simply didn’t want you to,” her mother confessed.
“We?”
“Our villagers hid the truth . . . not hid . . . we just didn’t tell you young ones about the other village because we didn’t want you to go there.”
Leah raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“We are a people of help. The other village needs as much help as it can get. When one of our children reaches the age of twenty and is able to provide the necessary help needed, we let them know about the other village. We don’t want our people to go there without having a way to help them. It’s . . . well . . . it’s just quite arrogant and rude if I do say so myself.” She looked at Leah, who was beginning to understand. “You only had two more years,” she told her. “Just two years and we would have sent you there. But nothing can stop your adventurous spirit. You’re just like Leoran.”
Hearing her father’s name put a smile on Leah’s face. She was always told that she was like him in more ways than one. “Is there any word on his return?” she asked.
Her mother solemnly shook her head. “Not yet.”
Leah’s smile turned into a frown. “It’s been eight years,” she said. “He and the other men of the village have been gone for eight years now.” Concern began to show in her eyes.
Her mother noticed and walked to her. She wrapped her arms around her daughter and hugged her. “I miss him too,” she told her. “However, we must not lose faith.” She pulled away from Leah and looked into her eyes. She could see tears welling up in them. “You are the beautiful daughter of Leoran. You of all people should know that he is not one to break a promise.”
Leah wiped her eyes, nodded, and smiled. “It’s just been so long since I’ve seen him,” she said.
Her mother hugged her again and then returned to her cooking. “He’s a man of great things,” she told her daughter as she continued to cook. “Worrying about him is the same as worrying whether or not the sun will shine tomorrow.” Then she coyly looked at her daughter with a smirk. “This is Oaka. What do you expect? Snow?”
Leah chuckled at the witty quip. Her mother was always right and always calmed her.
“So,” her mother continued. “What caused you to pay a visit to the other village?”
Leah suddenly stopped giggling. “Uh . . .” she said, trying to think of a lie. “I . . . uh . . . um . . .”
Her mother sighed. “Never mind,” she told Leah. “Sometimes a cause isn’t needed for Leoran’s daughter to go on an adventure. You’re just like that man.”
Leah smiled again. Again, she didn’t have to let her mother know about the bandit that she met. Her mother let her get away with a lot of things, but her hanging around with a bandit was certainly not going to be one of them.