Trip to the beach (Patreon)

Accolon raises his sword. His face is set with resolution, voice unwavering as he says: “The peculiar beast was like nothing seen before. It stood up on half of its hundreds legs, wiggling the others in the air, and was four men tall, with a rippling, bristling crest, fangs as long as stalagmites and claws as sharp as daggers. It towered over, slobbering and puffing, each breath as strong as a gale and stifling as a fire.”

You draw a sharp inhale and shift on the warm sand, utterly captivated. “What then?” you ask in a whisper. You’ve heard the story before, yet you always find it so exhilarating a tale. It conjures such vivid images of lands unknown and strange creatures and adventurous feats the likes you can only hope to achieve too, when you’ll be all grown-up and a knight.

Accolon’s gaze flits from the misty horizon to you, the brave, lofty facade cracked momentarily by a tender smile.

“Our mighty hero does not back down,” he says, thrusting his sword higher, stabbing at the briny air. “Sir Briar keeps their blade pointed at the creature; they are small yet undaunted in the face of such threat.” Accolon, however, hesitates. He glances at the open storybook in his other hand, eyes scanning over the lines. “Yet the beast did not attack. It lowered itself back down on its many, caterpillar-like legs, and slowly slithered closer to our hero, leveling them with all four sets of eyes. Briar tensed up and brandished their sword, but the creature yet did not attack. This puzzled the knight; moving just as carefully, they pointed the keen tip of their blade at the ground and put aside their shield.” Accolon lowered his wooden sword and, in lieu of shield, flipped close the book and set it down atop the blanket. “Gently, they placed their palm atop its head; it felt soft and fuzzy. The beast nudged their hand back, and Briar understood: there was no monster to slay, just a friend to be made. The End.”

You pick up the book and scour the pages with your eyes. The letters and the words they form are odd, indecipherable symbols as foreign to you as magical runes are to Accolon. Yet you don’t need to comprehend the print to say: “This isn’t how the story goes.” At least, that’s not how your mother read it to you.

“No,” Accolon concedes. “I suppose I wasn’t all that fond of the initial ending, so I thought I’d amend it a bit. I hope you don’t mind.”

In the original version, as Morgana read it to you as she tucked you to bed – voice low and hushed yet brimming with an intensity that kept you hooked on every word – Briar fought and killed the beast, spearing it through their enchanted sword. They returned to the Lord who had sent them out on the quest victorious, and were celebrated with lots of gold coins and music and dance.

You smile up at Accolon. “I think I like this ending better.”

“I’m glad.”

You stare back down at the book, flipping the page to find the illustration of Sir Briar standing with their sword unsheathed before the eldritch creature. When your mother got you the book, you showed it to Nimue; she called the beast cute.

“Accolon?” You raise curious eyes to him.“Did you ever fight giant beasts with dagger-sharp talons and fangs like stalgn-stalagnites-”

“Stalagmites,” he kindly offers. “And no, I’ve never seen anything like that, let alone fight, which I can’t complain about. I did, however, see something else. It was deep in the woods – back in Lothia – and it was far smaller.” He pauses and you wait patiently as he gathers the words to describe it to you. “About the size of a butterfly, and very much insect-like in countenance, yet unlike any type of insect I’d seen before. It seemed to glow.” His eyes, too, seem to glow at the memory. “With gossamer wings and a reedy body, and far too many legs.”

An abundance of legs does seem to be an often recurring feature in magic-infused creatures.

“Would you like me to read you something else?” A mischievous smile pulls at the corners of his lips. “I could change the endings again.”

You scrunch up your nose in thought and leaf through the storybook – colorful, lushly rendered illustrations becoming a blur as you do – and shake your head. “I want to go to the water.”

He gets up and takes your little hand in his. “To the water we go.”

The calm waves lap at your feet pleasantly cool. As the morning sun climbs higher in its cradle on the cloudless sky, over the barrier of fog surrounding the Island, the sand is growing warmer, as do the rays on your skin. It’s not uncomfortably blazing yet, but beads of sweat form at the nape of your neck. Either way, Morgana said you should be perfectly safe after she’d slathered her specially concocted cream on you; you just nodded earnestly, despite having no such worries that needed assuaging.

You roam aimlessly up and down the shore for a while, asking Accolon some more questions about his adventures as a knight, but you soon turn your walk into a little searching expedition for seashells.

You plunge your hand into the clear shallows where you caught a glimpse of pink. It’s a seashell, fan-like and bigger than your thumbnail. You hand it to Accolon who slips it in his pouch – it’s starting to bulge.

“Mighty fine collection you’re gathering,” he remarks.

You nod sagely up at him before going back to peering into the waters. “Yes. And I want to do something with it.”

“Oh?”

“I want to make a necklace for Sera. Do you think she’d like that?”

Accolon beams. “She’d love that.”

“I just don’t know how many seashells we need,” you say, tapping a damp finger to your chin. “Her neck’s so big I can’t even wrap my arms around her.”

“Well, let’s look for some more then.”

You look together, judging each seashell carefully, and you ask Accolon that he keeps the secret, since you want it to be a surprise.

“I want to give it to her before you leave back to Lothia,” you add and he smiles, though it’s not one of his usual sunny smiles. While soft, it’s tinged with sadness – a sadness that always bleeds through as his journey to the Continent draws closer, that he tries to conceal around you every time.

To distract him from the sadness – that’s now tugging at your chest, too – you slash further along the shallows and say: “I think we need even more seashells.” Which is true; what you didn’t tell Accolon is that you plan to make a necklace for him too.

Your quest has led you to a group of rocks, sheened and slicked by water and algae, that start off on the sand and slink into the sea. You wade closer; you may not find shells, but there’s always a hubbub of sea life in such places, as your mother and Junia had shown you.

“Careful,” Accolon calls out. “The rocks are slippery.”

You skirt around the rocks, keeping your soles firmly on the sand, but you do squint your eyes to spy for any movement through the gently-undulating waves.

And there, where water gathers in a pool carved out of a crevice in the stone-

“It’s a crab!”

Barely larger than your palm, sand-colored with grayish-green accents, it scuttles sideways and out of view and your movement.

“Indeed,” Accolon says, biting back a smile. He squints up at the sky, then asks: “Do you think we’ve found enough shells?” When you nod, he hefts you up in his arms. “Then let’s go get ready for lunch.”