Page 2 of Storm and Sea

And for weeks, he withered away. The beast of hunger grew so insistent that he tried to eat the kelp his father was so fond of, only for the vile sea plant to climb back up his throat as he wretched.

When starvation and a lonely death waited at his doorstep, Atreus faced his fear. Braving the human territory, he clambered onto their shore, the air thick with the scent of men. They smelled of oil and earth, instantly identifiable. A scent he’d learned meant danger. Instead of running away, he pushed further into the island until his feet no longer touched the sand but cobbled streets. His cadaverous body shivered as he crept behind a school of land dwellers. They milled about, busy with whatever it was humans did. Atreus ignored them, his focus narrowing to what his body so desperately needed—a stall brimming with fish. Fresh, cleaned, mouthwatering fish.

Atreus watched as humans exchanged what appeared to be shiny rocks for fish, and his heart sank—he didn’t have any shiny rocks. Nerves billowed out of every pore, and Atreus felt the ghostly swish of his tail, even though it wasn’t there.

He had no choice but to take what wasn’t his.

Slinking behind a low wall made of red cube rock, Atreus waited for the school of humans to look away. When the moment finally came, he sprang forward, grabbing three fish at random, their slimy bodies slippery in his arms.

“Excuse me,” a low voice boomed behind him.

Atreus jumped, dropping his loot, ready for a harpoon to pierce his chest. Beetle-black eyes bore into him, and Atreus gasped as the largest human he’d ever seen loomed like a mountain. The man-beast was built like a bull shark, with massive shoulders and tree trunk arms. His face was covered in curled black hair, sparsely tangled with strands of silver.

Atreus was so paralyzed with fear that it took him a moment to register the words the human had spoken. They shared the same language—something his father, despite all his cautionary tales about humans, had never thought to mention.

Of course, this human had no idea what Atreus truly was. Without water on his skin, Atreus appeared perfectly human, which was likely the only reason he was still alive.

“Please… I didn’t mean to…” Atreus pleaded before a fit seized his lungs. His dry throat felt like it would crack from the strain, and he’d soon swallow blood.

The mountainous human picked up the scattered fish and wrapped them in black and white paper, which Atreus would later learn was ‘newspaper,’ before handing him the bundle.

“Come back tomorrow for more,” he said and turned away.

Atreus ran from the square, down the beach, and behind an outcrop of stone before he dared look back. Nobody followed. Tears ran down his cheeks as he crouched, eating the fish raw, confused by the incredible act of mercy.

Memories of the deep white scars along his father’s back and ribs resurfaced. The wounds were cruel. Deliberate. Given to him by humans in seas far to the north. So how had Atreus managed to escape without so much as a scratch? He didn’t ponder too long as his eyelids drooped, his belly full for the first time in months.

Three more days passed before the beast of hunger bared its fangs and gnawed at Atreus’s stomach. He swam to the human town, chased by its insistent pangs. The monstrous man was there, working his stall, conversing with the other humans. Atreus cowered at his booming voice and wondered why the others didn’t run in terror. Instead, they approached him like a friend.

Atreus only dared to leave his hiding place after observing the pleasant exchanges for the better part of the morning.

The hulking man’s eyes found him quickly, and Atreus half expected him to shout, to tell him to get away like the scavenging mongrel he was. He hadn’t expected the terrifying creature to soften. The human’s features relaxed, and the lines at the edges of his mouth and eyes became more prominent as his face contorted into a bushy smile.

“I was worried about you, ragazzo. Glad you decided to return.”

And it was that smile that changed Atreus’s life forever. It was meant for him. There because of him. More than the pangs in his stomach, Atreus realized how starved he’d been for it—for someone to look at him and be glad he existed.

It was that smile that Atreus craved now. After a long winter of isolation, with only a few sparse glimpses of his human home, the hours couldn’t pass quickly enough. He paced, circling his lighthouse home over and over, looping around the dead beacon in the center like a vulture. He needed something to do. Something with his hands.

There wasn’t much for resources on his small patch of land. He could walk around its perimeter in less than two hours. And he had. Probably over a thousand times in his seven winters of isolation. Or was it eight? He wasn’t sure. Atreus wished he’d kept track of time when he was younger, but by the time it occurred to him, the years bled into one another. For that reason, Atreus wasn’t sure how old he was. He figured somewhere between twenty and twenty-two winters.

Surrounded by a crescent-shaped sandbank on one side and a steep cliff on the other, Atreus’s lighthouse stood isolated, cradled by a grove of trees that shielded his solitary refuge.

From his glass-paneled home, he had an unobstructed view stretching for miles in every direction. Yet the sight that captured his attention—the one he’d stared at with longing for months—was much closer: the island of Baia Vita.

“I’ll be there tomorrow," he whispered, breath fogging the pane of glass. “One more day.”

One more day until he would see Giovanni. Until he would laugh with his best friend Leo and hear about all the trouble he’d gotten into over the winter. Just one more day, and he’d be waving to the familiar faces in Saul’s café and Signor Rossi’s gelato shop on the corner.

One more day.

And he’d be home.

Atreus sighed in frustration as he reorganized his dwindling food supplies for the third time. His ear twitched, and a moment later, the sky growled somewhere in the distance. A storm was coming, large and aggressive by the sound of it. He’d have to pull his traps from the water if he didn’t want the violent waves to wash them away.

With bare feet, Atreus made his way down the tight spiral staircase leading to the base of the lighthouse. He tried not to let old memories wander as he walked through the house. Anything worth having was long gone from this place. Stripped bare after decades of abandonment, it was the perfect hiding place for Atreus and his father to live—far away from human dangers and the judgments of his own kind.

Memories of shared meals, nighttime stories, and stupid jokes clung to the walls like seaweed on rocks after high tide. It stank of happier times. After his father left, the stench became unbearable.