(Photo by Nafan Faizal)

Patience was not as wide or as swift as Fools Fall. The banks of the river were thick with tall grasses, willowy trees, and driftwood that lay concealed among the plants, all of which made for good materials to use in constructing a raft. From what Nis could remember, Mel would often build her own raft to get started on her journeys. She kept a few river boats stashed away at various points along the river for her longer trips downriver. Each riverboat had been handmade by Mel while in the Unexplored Wastes since it was too complicated and expensive to even try and bring a river boat over land to the Unexplored Wastes.

Sunrise was almost upon them and Nis figured it was a good bet that the trackers were already following the trail that she and Meric had left the night before. The boulder field might slow them down a bit but their trajectory would be pretty clear. If they fell for the deception then they would waste time searching Fools Fall while Nis and Meric got farther and farther away along Patience.

“Help me with some of these,” Nis instructed, bending down and lifting one end of a drier piece of driftwood.

Together, they pulled a good dozen or so logs from the river that looked to be about the right size and shape. Knot tying was another skill Nis had grown up with, as well as making rope out of reeds. It took some time for Meric to get the hang of it, splitting the reeds and working them until they were flat and malleable, but this was much simpler than basket weaving and didn’t take long for them to have a sizable bundle of rope.

“Have you ever made anything like this before?” Meric asked. “In this life, I mean,” she added hastily.

“Not really,” Nis admitted.

Meric’s expression darkened.

“I think the lashings are the same for making a fence,” Nis said, “and I’ve worked on those lots of times back home.”

Nis couldn’t help but notice how Meric’s eyes kept darting to the water’s surface and then back to their collection of driftwood. Her face was pale and the muscles on the sides of her jaw were clenched.

“We’ll take our time with this,” Nis assured her.

“But the trackers,” Meric replied, “what if they don’t fall for it? What if they find us?”

“Then we’ll be taken back to the archives.”

“What about me? I don’t want to get locked away in there too.”

“No one else knows you dream about your past lives and I”m not about to go telling them.”

“Do you think I’ll lose my apprenticeship?”

“You can tell them I captured you or something, forced you to go with me.”

Meric seemed to be convinced for now but her mood failed to improve much. It was a strange perspective, seeing Meric going through many of the same emotional highs and lows that Nis herself had experienced. In many instances she was still experiencing those feelings of inadequacy, the paranoia of being caught.

Understanding what Meric was going through didn’t make her sullen mood any less frustrating but it did give Nis the ability to not snap at Meric. Nis did the best she could to keep her own doubts and fears under control. At least one of them needed to keep them working and not allow them to become paralyzed by everything they were dealing with.

“Okay,” Nis said in a clear voice. “Let’s set the biggest log off to the side for now. The other big logs will form the base of the raft.”

Nis set to work and Meric followed suit and they began to lay out the framework of the raft. There was some swapping around with the logs until they found the best way to lay them all out and then Nis set about lashing them together.

“Next we need to make the deck so we can stand on it without slipping through the gaps between the logs.”

“What about the big log,” Meric asked, pointing to the one they’d set aside.

“We attach that one at the end,” Nis explained. “There’ll be an extra long pole at the front and back of the raft, sticking out to one side, and the big log will get lashed to those poles. It makes the raft more stable,” Nis added when Meric still looked confused.

“Okay,” Meric replied, looking uncertain.

“We’ll test the whole thing out before we actually try and use it,” Nis reminded her. “So if it doesn’t work we can try something else, but this is the most common type of raft Mel made.”

The deck of the raft took the most time to complete. First, they laid thinner branches cross-ways on the logs. Once those were secured in place, they wove willows through the branches until they’d formed a decent surface that they could walk on without risk of slipping through. As she’d said, the branches at both the front and the back of the raft were a few feet longer than the rest and overhung the side of the raft and the big log was subsequently lashed to them.

“Looks a bit flimsy,” Meric commented when they both stood back to appraise their work.

Nis rested her foot on the raft which flexed and creaked as she pressed down on it.

“I can add more lashings,” Nis said, thinking.

“And I don’t think those two branches will be enough to hold the big log. I think they’re one bump away from snapping off.”

“We can add more branches,” Nis agreed. “But not today.” She looked up at the sky, noting the shifting hues that heralded sunset. “We should eat something and then figure out where we’re going to sleep tonight.

“How have we not eaten all day?” Meric asked. “I didn’t even notice how late it was until you mentioned it.”

“It’s happened to me a lot out here,” Nis said as she began sorting through her bag for food. Everything was soaked from their swim across Fools Fall but her bag was made from an oiled leather that had managed to keep most of her things dry.

“Where’d I put my bag?” Meric asked as she looked around the riverbank where they’d been working.

Nis was about to join Meric in her search for her bag but then stopped, remembering her struggle with Meric in the river the night before.

“I don’t think you had your pack on when we got out of Fools Fall,” she told Meric. “I think it must have fallen off in the river.”

“Oh no, you’re right!” Meric exclaimed. “How’d I not notice?”

“There was a lot going on,” Nis said with a sigh. “Don’t worry about it, I’ve got enough to share for now and we can begin foraging once we get the raft working.”

Throughout the day Meric’s mood had been improving but this revelation that she’d lost her pack in the river really set her back. Nis held out some of the food she’d stolen from the trackers and Meric accepted it without a word. Nis’ own frustrations were running high and she felt awful for how selfish she felt for begrudging the fact that she was once again needing to share her meager supplies with an uninvited companion.

She knew neither of them were in danger of starving. This area, according to her memories from Mel’s life, was full of edible plants and catching fish in the river would be no harder than hanging her baskets over the side of the raft while they floated along. Even knowing all of that, she couldn’t quite shake the anger and frustration that sat heavily in her chest.

To her side, Meric ate in silence, wiping tears from her eyes and not meeting Nis’ eyes, making Nis feel even worse.

“I look angry, don’t I?” Nis asked with rising guilt.

“I’m sorry,” Meric began but Nis cut her off with a wave.

“Tell me about your favorite part of the archives,” Nis said and offered the waterskin to Meric who took it and, after a long drink, finally managed to give Nis a weak smile.

“I loved the maps,” she said. “Every cartographer had their own style but they were all amazing artists.”

“Yeah,” Nis agreed. “I always found it funny how some kings would have their maps redrawn to make their lands seem larger than they were.”

“Ooh, that always made me upset. The whole point of a map is to show where things are, and if you intentionally mess things up…I mean, maps are already hard enough to get right without some king throwing his pride in the way.”

Their conversation flowed on from there, with Nis gradually feeling the knot in her chest loosening. The fact that the trackers had not made an appearance that day probably meant that Meric’s plan had worked. Maybe the lost pack would even prove helpful. If the trackers found it they would be all the more convinced that Nis and Meric had taken Fools Fall.

“I think I’m ready to get some sleep,” Meric said after a long while of them discussing the various archivists while the forest around them grew dark.

“Sleep sounds great,” Nis agreed.

She helped Meric set up a shelter, giving her the best of the available materials. It was dark by the time Nis got to work on her own shelter. She couldn’t do much with the limited light but this side of the mountains was warmer than Duran so it wasn’t as crucial to have as good of a shelter and she settled with a covering of a few branches and leaves. Nis still felt a certain amount of comfort in not sleeping while so exposed. There weren’t any large predators in the Unexplored Wastes, as far as she knew, so that wasn’t really a concern of hers but she still found it easier to sleep in a shelter than without one.