Ovihr didn’t even stop to speak with them, running until she was almost within reach of them and then leaped, dragging Zhutu with her, up to a small, damaged boat to their right laying upon the docks on its side. They ran along the side of it while the fisherman stood in confusion. They reached the end and jumped down again, dodging around sails and posts and barrels to avoid being followed.
She brought them further down the pier about forty feet until they turned and walked down a few steps onto an extended, lone pier with a small, old boat with a weathered sail tied to the dock’s right side. Upon it stood Zhutu’s and Ovihr’s mother, Letun, adjusting the sails.
“Mother!” Ovihr called with low volume, hoping no one knew to find them here. “We made it.”
“Oh, Ovihr!” Letun said as she weakly climbed out of the fishing boat, their whole family’s livelihood. She wore only a small coat and cloak around her head, her beautiful face and caring eyes, but the bitter cold did not stifle her. “I heard the shouts,” she said as she hugged Ovihr tightly before seeing her wound and turning to grave concern. “What’s happened to you?” She saw Zhutu’s bloodied ear and added, “Both of you!”
She shook her head. “Zhutu needs to go now, Mama. The entire town knows about him. We have no time to talk.”
“I-I never got to say a real goodbye to Papa!” Zhutu realized with a sudden surge of overwhelming shame and sadness. He shrunk back. “I can’t leave now!”
Letun knelt down to his level with honest eyes that she brought parallel to his, seizing his shoulders in her gloved hands. Zhutu was lucky they had discovered the plague did not seem to spread through any physical touch or air transmission, although with the state of her health she had rarely hugged them or spoken to them lately anyway. This day, as cursed as it seemed to be, was not entirely bad.
She held his shoulders tight and said, “I am so sorry, Zhutu. Your father and I, we did not want things to turn out like this. But you have to go now, or the men will take you away from us forever.”
It seemed to Zhutu that he was being taken away forever whichever way he went, but his thoughts were overtaken again by the memory of his last moments with his father, Tunuzo, not an hour prior. They had hugged tightly and exchanged a few words.
“I heard my friends talking about the Shepherd. They said everyone is talking about him and cursing him…they said…he will destroy Scarath. They hate him. If they all find out it’s me…” Zhutu had said with head hung ashamedly.
Tunuzo answered, “It is not your fault, Zhutu. It is just the way our sad world is.”
“Why should you not fear me, too?” Zhutu asked with tears in his eyes.
“Even if the things they said about Shepherds are true, I could never fear you more than I love you. Never! Never! They don’t see it. I know. And I also know you’re scared of who you are. But I promise you that you will find someplace where the people will see you for who you truly are, even if you cannot. Where you are free to become whatever kind of man, Shepherd or not, that you decide to become. Somewhere where you will be safe. …Time is short. I’m going to lead the village council off your trail and tell them you took a boat to go fishing alone to the northeast. That will buy you enough time to leave.”
Tears burst through his eyes, and he could barely speak the words as he said, “I don’t want to leave.”
“You must leave here now. Tonight, Zhuturin! It must be tonight!”
And those fading words Papa had said as he ran off down the path into town: “I will see you again!”
In the present, kneeling on a frigid pier beside the endless, black ocean, Zhutu broke down. The tears flowed without restraint. Letun cried in turn, hugging him fiercely.
“I promise you, my son,” she said to him as she clutched his hands in hers, “You will be safe away from here. Follow the charts and go to the nearest land you can find. Make a life there. We will see you again one day, in life or in death.”
The prospect of going away forever still could barely register in his heart. Among those people in the place he would find, wherever that turned out to be, mingled in the throng of those seeking only to keep a simple living, Zhutu could live as a blank face, just a foreigner escaping some past he wasn’t obligated to share with anyone. It would be a life like they had wished and hoped he could live here before they began testing every young boy to discover the identity of the Shepherd a day ago.
“I want you to come with me,” he said. He could not think of being a strong man anymore, what little he may have succeeded at that before. He was only an infant in this moment. He wanted to be with his mama. In the bitter cold his face was wet and hot with tears.
Even as he pleaded, he could plainly see the frailty in her from her illness and knew why she could not come. She whispered, “No, love. I am so sorry. So, so sorry you must do this alone.”
Ovihr stooped down to him too. He could see increasing weakness from her shared illness. “They’ll kill you for using that sword,” he said to her. “You can come with me, Ovihr! Don’t stay here and die because of…because of me!”
“Zhutu,” she said with sullen eyes, “I have the plague. I’m going to die already. And if I go with you, you might get it too. No. You are going to live. You are going to live and bring all of us with you in your heart.”
He buried his face in his hands. She hugged him anyway, and he said as he sobbed, “I don’t want you in my heart.”
He did not look at her, but he heard her shedding tears too. “I will always miss you, Brother. I love you. You’re going to have a good life. You’ll be free.”
“I don’t understand!” he said loudly, pounding the boards below him with his gloved fists. “I don’t understand! I don’t understand why I am this way!”
The events of the past hour, and the days since his town-wide shared vision, all piled atop one another in his mind. Zhutu had caused all this, he thought. All these things his family had done for him, believing in him, endangering themselves to see him free. Why?
His chin was seized by Letun, who brought his head up to look at her. “I don’t understand it either. But I do not wonder, because I know that you are a good man, my Zhuturin. I love you!”
Sounds of men shouting and moving along the pier came in over the sound of wind. With a grave tone Letun said, “It is time to go.” She stood up and picked up Zhutu by his arms, setting him in the boat. Ovihr began to untie the rope of the boat from the pier.
“No! No!” Zhutu protested amidst tears, but he did not fight her. He let the bag of supplies across his back tumble to the surface of the boat.
With the sail raised, the wind began to catch, propelling it onward into the dark of the sea. Maybe Kosa’s winds weren’t against him after all, but at the present moment it seemed even more insulting that way.
He could only watch as the boat, free from its moorings, drifted away from his family. Ovihr stood and Letun knelt there on that pier solemnly but lovingly, each raising one palm towards him in a motionless wave of farewell. Zhutu felt at the rudder with thoughts of turning back, but knew that it was over.
Just before the figures of his mother and sister grew so far away that he couldn’t make out their features any longer, a few men with spears arrived and surrounded them. They did not struggle, and were taken into custody. Zhutu leaned weakly against the edge of the boat, his weeping growing gentler and gentler, unable to rip his gaze away from them. In less time than he could process, his hometown of Rulukan was faded into the darkness, the land of Scarath itself shrinking before his very eyes in a sea of black. He was utterly alone. Alive, but alone.
“Kosa…or…or whoever I may be speaking to…” he pleaded with a hushed voice, realizing halfway through that by leaving Scarath he had cut himself off from Kosa according to their doctrine. “If my life is spared,” he muttered, “let their lives be too. Please! …Let theirs be too.”
He fell back and slid on his rear until he leaned against the mast of the little fishing boat, feeling the winter wind upon his face as he looked up at the empty sky. He tried hard not to let that emptiness pour into him and overcome him. He could only find solace in the thought of hope of life for them—his sister and mother and father. That all this would not be at the expense of those who had protected him and sent him away to his new life, wherever it would lead him.
Amidst all that he had to ponder on, he repeated his prayer more than once that night before he went down into the tiny, cramped cabin to try and sleep, and again as he swaddled himself in warm blankets on a little cot to thaw himself from winter’s bitter night chill.
The words of his family were pulsating through his mind again and again.
“The people will see you for who you truly are, even if you cannot. Where you are free to become whatever kind of man, Shepherd or not, that you decide to become.” “You are going to live and bring all of us with you in your heart.” “I know that you are a good man.”
As he slept he thought he could feel the entire world trembling with anticipation, with commotion, with confusion, and with shallow hope in all corners of every land where there was life. The noise grew stronger, the collective cries and prayers of millions of souls. It all called out to him, crying in pain, half reflecting his own, pulling at him with its overwhelming cacophony until at last he woke.
It was before dawn. Gradually Zhutu stirred himself from sleep and then went up to check on the rudder and the sail.
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