Year One (2)
Chester stood before the mirror.
“Hmm. I’ve grown quite a bit.”
He had neglected it for so long that his beard had become as dense and overgrown as the trees of a thick jungle that blotted out the sky and turned even midday into night.
Stroking his beard with one hand, Chester pulled a cloth from the pot of water he had heated. He wrapped it snugly around his face, waiting for the warm moisture and heat to soften the whiskers. While he waited, he drew his knife and checked its edge.
The blade, carefully honed on a whetstone, was so clean it shone like a mirror, reflecting Chester’s eyes with perfect clarity. Muttering that a proper whetstone really was better than just any rock, he slid the knife back into its sheath and turned his attention to his hair.
Maybe I should trim this a little too.
It had grown long—long enough that his bangs looked ready to poke him in the eyes.
If he was going to cut it, how should he style it? The old Chester would simply have cropped it neat and out of the way, but now Monia’s opinion mattered. He wanted to look a little sharper for her.
The last time I grew my hair out was back in my butler days… but then I just slicked it all back with oil no matter how long it got, so that’s no help as a reference.
The next image that came to mind was the prince—Jordy. Jordy had fussed over his appearance every single day as if to prove he was royalty. Or rather, the people around him had forced him to fuss.
Up at dawn for a bath, scented oils, careful attention to skin, nails, hair, eyebrows, and beard. Even his clothes changed from morning to noon to evening, and if he ever got so much as a scratch on his face the entire academy would erupt in chaos.
Yeah, that’s not it either.
The mere thought of himself with a Jordy-style haircut made Chester’s face twist. Revolting. He had no desire for hair that looked greasy and plastered down.
I’ll just cut it however my hand feels like going.
Knowing full well he had no sense for this sort of thing, Chester unwrapped the cloth from his face and brought the knife to the now-softened beard.
He stretched the skin taut, then carefully set the edge—sharp enough to slice through thick rope—against his face. With a smooth, gliding motion he began to shave.
The slightest slip would have opened his skin, yet Chester moved the knife without hesitation.
Once he had gone with the grain, he reversed direction and shaved against it, clearing the stubble right down to the roots.
“Hmm.”
After checking that the beard was cleanly gone, Chester splashed water from the bucket over his face. The moment the faintly blue-glowing water touched him, the red, irritated patches left by the shave subsided almost instantly.
Satisfied with the smooth, stubble-free skin, he rinsed the knife thoroughly and looked at his hair again.
“Might as well take it short for now.”
He could already picture Monia scolding him for touching his hair without permission, but Chester boldly brought the knife to his locks anyway.
“You absolute idiot!”
A short while later, Monia’s open palm cracked across Chester’s back like a whip.
“…Sorry.”
“What is this mess?! If you’d just sat still I would have cut it for you—why did you touch it?!”
“I… I wanted to try.”
“Ugh! Honestly.”
Monia heaved a deep sigh and set about fixing the disaster that was Chester’s hair.
“We’re going to have to cut almost all of it off.”
He had butchered it so thoroughly that she abandoned any hope of merely tidying it up and began cutting with decisive strokes.
With every pass of the knife, clumps of hair rained down from Chester’s head. And with every pass, Monia delivered another bundle of scolding.
Father.
While Monia lectured him, Chester thought of his father.
He remembered his mother scolding his father whenever the man came home drunk, and the way his usually impressive father would shrink under her tongue-lashing. Chester murmured to himself:
Marriage is hard work, isn’t it?
“All done!”
Monia brushed the loose hair from his shoulders and led him back to the mirror.
“Oh. Looks clean.”
The Chester in the glass no longer had hair long enough to cover eyes and ears. The sides and back were cropped short enough to show the shape of his head, and what remained on top was trimmed to less than a finger’s width.
“I had no choice! No choice at all! Because a certain someone cut it way too short!”
“Still better than what I did.”
“What exactly were you trying to do, Chester?”
“Well… I was thinking of just shaving it all off because it was a hassle.”
“Absolutely not! That is—completely—unacceptable!”
“Isn’t this pretty much the same thing?”
“It is completely different!”
Monia’s sharp palm cracked across his back once more.
After striking him she calmed herself and studied the result.
“Hmm! Even if I do say so myself, I did a good job!”
At first she had been furious that Chester had butchered his hair worse than any slum child would accept, but she had salvaged it beautifully and decided to be satisfied with the outcome.
“From now on, don’t touch your hair without saying a word!”
“Ugh!”
Of course, the scolding was far from over.
The biting cold had retreated noticeably. Cool breezes and gentle sunlight that warmed the body settled fully over the island.
Of course, on an island that simply drifted across the world without ever settling in one place, it was hard to say whether speaking of winter or spring was even proper. Still, spring had arrived in every way that mattered.
The snow that had once weighed heavily on the island was gone except for stubborn patches that clung to dark, cold shadows the sun never reached. The sprouts that had begun pushing up as winter faded had shot upward almost overnight, transforming the entire island into a carpet of green.
Animals that had vanished without a trace reclaimed their places with startling speed, as if they had been hiding somewhere all along, and now they roamed busily to fill the bellies that had gone empty through the long winter.
Matching the island’s fresh new look after the snow’s disappearance, Chester and Monia refreshed themselves as well.
Chester had trimmed his beard and hair; Monia had trimmed her own. They shed the dirty, worn butler’s uniform and dress they had endured the cold in and put on new clothes.
That was not all. While food had still been plentiful and the winter cold not yet severe, they had prepared gear for spring, and now they put it on.
Until now they had simply looped rope around their waists and hung things from it. Now they used a proper sailor’s belt and knife holsters so they could carry a wider variety of tools more securely.
Hanging from the belts were a knife and axe forged from the island’s ore, a knife and telescope taken from the sailors, and a quiver. Monia carried a machete made from island ore; Chester carried the machete he had found by the waterfall. Both machetes rested in leather sheaths.
Their old baskets, woven from bamboo, had been quite sturdy thanks to the plant’s flexibility, yet rough living inevitably shattered the bamboo. Since they had simply cut plenty of bamboo and lashed it together with rope, replacing a broken section was easy enough and never a true crisis.
Still, something that would never break no matter what was better. With the spare sailcloth now in hand, Chester and Monia had made tough, durable new backpacks, doubling the sailcloth for strength.
They had not made new shoes, but the ones they wore now were far superior. Once they had worn crude wooden sandals with straps wound around them; now they wore tall boots that gripped the ankles firmly and had solid soles.
They had also prepared gloves for protecting their hands when fine work was not required, and stowed them in the packs. Though the quality was nothing to boast about, they now possessed a proper bow and even a powerful crossbow.
There was much to do to clean up after the winter.
They had to repair the broken bridge, fix the damaged storehouse, check whether the kiln buried under snow all winter still worked, inspect the water channels, reset fish traps in the river and snares in the forest, and finish the seaside villa they had abandoned mid-construction when the snows came.
The list was long. Yet it was all right.
Chester carved a mark into a tree near the house with his knife.
Ever since they had claimed this spot on the island and made it their home, he had been marking the days.
Sometimes he forgot. Some days they never left the house, so no mark was made. Once the People of the Summit had gotten drunk and smashed the tree he had been using, forcing him to start over on another. Through most of winter they had stayed indoors, lost track of the days, and he no longer even remembered how many had passed.
Even so, to mark a fresh beginning, he cut the notch deeper than usual.
Time had flowed since they came to the Floating Island. Surely more than a year had passed.
How much longer they would remain here, no one could say. What was certain was that they had lived on this island for a year, and through everything that year had thrown at them, both of them were still alive and well.
“Shall we go?”
“Yes!”
— Woof!
With Ant leading the way, Chester and Monia headed into the forest.
Before them stretched woods full of beasts just roused from hibernation and ravenous with hunger.
Even so, it was all right.
They had suffered hunger and thirst, been battered by storms, fought the heat, endured attacks by ant-wolves, defeated a bear, survived on the upper level, and faced an assault by seventy men.
And still, they were alive.