As we were heading west, the turn left sent us southward. You might wonder why I bring up something so obvious, but the important point is that heading south sent us farther away from land.
I mentioned it briefly before, but ships that traveled the seas had to map out routes around the territories of monsters large enough to threaten them. Otherwise, those large monsters would sink the ships, along with all of their crew and cargo. Even if the crew escaped on lifeboats, those would simply be attacked by smaller monsters. Effectively, aside from special exceptions like myself, if a ship sank at sea, the entire crew was lost. If they were incredibly lucky, there was a vanishingly small chance survivors could be washed ashore, though.
As such, the captains of seafaring ships kept a careful eye on the territorial claims of these monsters, cooperating with each other to share information about and manage the sea lanes. Sailors stayed up to date on the movements of monsters whenever they made port, while the navies of each nation kept the information they found in strict confidence.
And this is probably obvious too, but the knowledge of these monsters’ territories was better as you got closer to shore. In other words, the farther from land you sailed, the less information you had, and the more dangerous the sea became. Thus, sailors typically preferred to stay as close to land as possible.
There were exceptions of course. For example, the merfolk living near Fusou shared information about the monsters living in the seas even in parts far from land. As long as one had that information, even voyaging far out to sea could be relatively safe. In fact, trade between distant continents was basically impossible without the help of the merfolk.
Anyway, all that is to say that once we turned south, our pursuer immediately gave up the chase. But of course, that didn’t mean we could return to our standard route. If we did that, we would no doubt be caught.
According to the information Captain Suin held, there was only one safe route through the sea to the south, leading to the island nation of Badomode, a place he would otherwise not plan to visit. The island of Badomode had a population of about four thousand humans. I wasn’t sure whether that counted as a large or small population, but either way, it seemed those humans weren’t the rulers of the island. Before we entered port, Suin warned me that Badomode was actually controlled by, of all things, fairies. Yes, the same as that wicked race who lived in the Great Grasslands.
The fairies made their homes at the center of the island, while the people living on the coasts fished and farmed to provide tribute for them, treating them like gods. Occasionally the fairies kidnapped children and merged them into their collective consciousness, but it seemed the humans of the island considered such a fate to be a blessing. It sounded like madness to me, but if that was their faith, I supposed I didn’t have the right to criticize them.
Upon further investigation, I learned that the people of Badomode considered the honey made by and given to them by the fairies to be something of extreme value. This honey was inaccessible to anyone from beyond the island, and it was said that a single taste induced a state of ecstatic euphoria.
Quite long ago, some sailors who had been unable to fight their curiosity stole some and tasted it. While they had been executed for the crime, their faces were all fixed with expressions of bliss until the moment their heads were severed. Some of their comrades had attempted to sneak them out of the island, but the perpetrators had refused to leave. Even knowing of their impending execution, they were unwilling to leave the island and lose access to that honey.
An induced state of euphoria and total dependence...no matter how you looked at it, it wasn’t a good substance. That was the kind of place Badomode was.
The fairies here all lived in well-known places, so exterminating them was likely possible, but I doubted the people who lived there wanted that. There was no place for me to criticize them, nor to act.
So in order to avoid causing trouble for the people in Badomode, for the entire time our ship was in port there, I stayed on the ship. Fairies had much sharper senses than humans did, so if they recognized that a threat like me had encroached on their territory, there was a good chance it would provoke an extreme response.
Captain Suin and his first mate left to gather as much information about the sea around Badomode as possible, while the ship’s paymaster set about feverishly reworking his trade plan to account for their unexpected visit to this port. A port was a facility that drew in wealth from all around. Maintaining such infrastructure was no small amount of work, so once a ship had docked, they couldn’t just leave without engaging in some form of trade. They had to determine their next course, select what goods to sell from their stores to the locals, and find things to fill that newly empty space with. Of course, they would only take on cargo that had some sort of demand associated with it in future ports. Laying out careful plans for trade was no small amount of work. As such, the ship would likely be staying in Badomode for two or three days.
Using a fishing rod borrowed from one of the crew members, I spent my time idly fishing and looking at the sky. The sunlight was strong here, the sky a startlingly deep blue. You would expect as much from an island this far south of the continent, but there were many differences between this place and the ones I was familiar with. Even the spirits in the wind and sea seemed somehow more relaxed.
Speaking of which, I seemed to remember hearing stories somewhere of flying insects like grasshoppers who had been carried by the wind all the way across the sea. I wondered if that was how the fairies made it all the way out to this island. If that was the case, there were a number of interesting mysteries to think about. The fairies were a race who sacrificed their individuality to obtain immortality as a single collective consciousness. It was hard for me to believe that the mental link between the individual members could cross such a great distance. So, my conjecture went, it might have been the case that individual swarms of fairies held their own collective consciousnesses, and they would make contact with other swarms when needed, serving as backups for each other. That would preserve the immortality of the race.
But if I was correct, that meant the fairies in Badomode were outside the immortal structure of the rest of their race. Perhaps it was obvious, but being isolated by the sea like this, traveling back and forth between the mainland and the island was not especially easy. Even if fairies could fly, their bodies were small and light enough that attempting to reach the mainland from this island through the winds over the sea was very much a gamble.
What had driven them to move to such a difficult-to-reach location? I felt these fairies had intentionally moved to a place where they couldn’t receive backup from other swarms...or more likely, they had been exiled here.
Of course, there was no way I could know why that would be the case. Had they done something to get them cut off from the rest of their people? Or had they embraced an idea that fairykind couldn’t accept? Or maybe they had contracted some disease that afflicted only fairies? No matter the reason, this particular swarm could no longer live on the mainland, and so had risked its life to cross the sea and find a new home here. The fact they had succeeded was a stroke of hard-fought luck for them.
As a result, they had ended up developing a cooperative relationship with the humans living here. I thought that was an interesting outcome, even if their methods were ethically questionable.
As I mulled over these thoughts in my head, there was a strong pull on the rod in my hands. A pull this strong must have come from quite a sizable fish. Without rushing or applying undue force, I let the fish lead my line here and there as I waited for it to exhaust itself. In this place where the sun, the sky, and the wind were all so different, what kind of fish would I catch?