Infinite Farmer

"Hey, old man. Off to sea?"

The young man talking to Tulland's uncle was as perfect a fisherman as could be imagined. He was all muscles without being large anywhere that didn't contribute to his work, a marvel of balance and finely developed reflexes perfectly suited for the work. He was, as far as the island's fishermen were concerned, the hope of the next generation of men who worked on the water to feed the island.

Tulland's uncle tied a knot in a rope and hooked it to the inside of the boat, temporarily keeping the small sail furled and out of the way. His muscles complained with every move. He hadn't been in as good of shape as the boy in front of him even in his youth, and he had decades of wear-and-tear on every joint in his body now. At this point, he had exhausted all the little tricks that the island's healers said might help with the pain.

If anything, he was just happy his body wasn't betraying him by popping and groaning as he worked. In front of the older men, he wouldn't have cared. In front of this boy, he would have somehow been embarrassed.

"Yes," the old man said. "I thought I'd try to bring in some bigger fish. Before the currents change."

"Without any help?" The boy looked the old man up and down, afraid to say something they both knew. Tulland's uncle was getting a little old to bring in the bigger fish by himself. Tulland, bless him, had never noticed the old man's age, somehow. He seemed to not consider the man to have an age at all, or else to completely ignore every practicality related to it. But Tulland's uncle was the much older brother of Tulland's father, and was starting to feel less than young even before he had taken on the responsibility of raising the young orphan years ago. "I could gaff for you, if you want."

Tulland's uncle looked at the long hook in the boy's hand and considered it. Hooking the kind of fish he was going for would be hard enough, and keeping it on the line would be even harder. Having help with each of the tasks would make what he was doing a whole lot easier. He'd get back to his fire a whole lot quicker and a lot less beat up.

Which would ruin the point.

"No, I think I've got it."

"Okay, then. I'm gonna go have a drink." The young man could drink now, or at least could do so without hiding from a single cleric or parent. To Tulland's uncle, that was nonsense. He supposed he must have been that young, once. "You'll be all right?"

The old man nodded, then turned to his boat before the young man could see any of the worry on his face. He might not be all right, after all. If he managed to get what he thought he might on the hook, he'd just as likely spend the night on the bottom of the ocean than in his own bed.

He took the few ropes securing his ship off the pegs that held them to the docks, then shoved off. Near the island, moving a boat was a matter of oars. Sometimes, as he got further away, he could use a sail and still end up where he wanted. Not always, but often enough that he looked forward to the times the currents and winds cooperated to give him a break. For now, he'd be using his cold, aching muscles to do the same work.

He rowed for a half hour. He had seen the fish there the night before, breaching the water in a flash of silver. It was a carnivorous thing, much more a guarder of territory than a normal fish in the ocean might be. It would still be around there, hunting. The old man's first job was to give it something to hunt, something it could sink its teeth into and try to run off with.

He sighed. He hated fishing for bait. Dropping a line and reeling it in should, he felt, have been reserved for a real catch he intended to keep. But a fish like the one he wanted to hunt only bothered to move when it meant a full meal. He needed something big enough to feed it.

It was an hour before he got a hit on his line and reeled in a big, flat-bodied fish. The meat wasn't much good, he knew, at least by human standards. He doubted the bigger fish cared about that kind of thing. Pulling out the heavier of his two fishing poles, he inspected the line and verified that it looked to be in good condition as he fed a larger, more vicious hook into his new bait fish. It would be strong. So would he.

Hours came and went. He saw the big fish breach the ocean twice, both times just a bit further away to really see the bait. He was patient, spending four hours in the cold before he finally gave up. He'd try again tomorrow.

He brought the flat fish home with him. It wouldn't have much good food on it, but it was enough for one old, dying man. Experience more on My Virtual Library Empire

He sat in front of the fire, letting the fish roast on a stick and trying to absorb any heat he could from the blaze. It had been a few weeks since he had felt the cold sinking into his bones, deeper and more vicious than it ever had before. Since then, his strength had been leaving him, bit by bit. In another month, maybe as little as another week, he wouldn't be able to fish anymore at all.

For people who couldn't work, there were three options. They'd be taken care of by their children, they'd be taken care of by the charity of others, or they'd die. The old man didn't feel much like trying out the middle option, and the first option had been stolen from him, somehow. That left the third.

Or it would, unless he could find a fourth.

"To whatever gods can hear me," he whispered the only words he'd say that night to himself, picking meat off the fish carcass as he held off sleep. "I'll try again. I just need that sign."

The next day was colder. The seas were calm enough to row on, but the wind chilled his bones in a moment. Even young men tended to avoid fishing on days like these. Safe or not, it just wasn't worth it. Tulland's uncle decided against joining them in the tavern. There wasn't much for him there in the best of times, and now that his life had reached the near-end of things, he found even less appeal in it. He'd go. The gods liked hardship, they said. Hard women and men who did hard things in pursuit of goals. He could give them that. For a few more days, at least.

He had got up early enough that he was launched and well away from the island before the sun had any effect on the light. He made his way to the same general area and spent the same hour catching bait. Then, shivering and in pain, he dropped his line and waited.

Eventually, the sun warmed up his boat just a bit, not enough to make him comfortable but at least enough that he could hold a hand near his lantern and warm it up, then switch to the other. Besides that, it was just waiting. He chewed on some of yesterday's bread, swallowing it despite an almost complete lack of hunger. That wasn't a good sign, he knew. Men should be hungry when they worked.

Hours came and went. He didn't see the fish breech once. He waited anyway. Around midday, he knew it must have moved on. He sighed and pulled in his bait, which by then had been nibbled away at by enough smaller fish he doubted it was doing much good on the hook anyway. The temptation to go back to shore was strong. He could get warm. He could see a cleric about his pain, and maybe they'd even be able to do something about it.

He ignored the idea, dropped his hook back into the ocean, and caught another fish to use for bait. This one was better than yesterday's and this morning's a healthy, shining fish that would have been a good catch to eat and sell any other day. Tulland's uncle didn't need either thing, anymore. He hooked it and waited, holding out hope that something better on the line might make a difference to the big, carnivorous fish he was hunting.

As he sat, he felt things inside him get worse. This wasn't just being tired or feeling pain, anymore. Things were failing.

"Well, gods, here's your chance." The old man sat back and braced his feet on the seat in front of him. "I don't think we'll get another."

Whether or not the gods heard him, the fish chose then to bite. There was no question about whether it was the right fish or not. Nothing else in these waters could have hit the hook that hard or pulled out the line that fast. The old man had seen enough fish swim through the water over the years that he could imagine every bit of how it must have looked. The fish would have been like an arrow of almost liquid silver speeding through the dark down there.

He put just a bit of resistance on the line, the most he dared to. The line held, and he waited. There was no question of who was stronger. The fish was young, and a massive thing that could have slaughtered him in a fair fight. Tulland's uncle had no reason to be fair. The gods certainly hadn't mentioned he would need to. He used every little dirty trick he had learned in a long life on the water, hurting the fish and letting the fish hurt itself, giving just enough fight to make it have to rest and recovering what line he could during those times.

He was old, and he was weak, but he was also damn good at what he did. He always had been. After just three hours of fight, he felt the pull on the line change in some subtle way he couldn't have described but he knew the meaning of by heart. The fish had given up. He had won the battle.

And now would start the next phase of things. He flexed his hand, found it was stiff from the cold, and whipped the glove off as he held it so close to the lantern that he could smell his own hair burn. Once it was warm, he started to reel, keeping as close to the heat source as he could and ignoring the burns to the back of his hand as the fish pulled at any angle that seemed to offer it a chance at freedom.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Finally, painfully, he brought it to the surface. It was an impossibly huge fish, one he wouldn't have believed if he hadn't seen others like it before. Even so, this one had an edge on the others, he thought. When it had breeched the water days ago, he was convinced that it was the biggest he had ever seen.

That's when the bargain had occurred to him. Tulland had just disappeared. The clerics claimed to know nothing of it, and he believed them to a certain extent. But knowing nothing and not having any guesses were different things. Tulland could, he supposed, have left on a boat, except none were leaving that day. He could have drowned, but he had no interest in the ocean as it was experienced by a fisherman and never went out unless dragged.

That left only a few possibilities, all of which had been exhausted by searchers before Tulland's uncle finally knew the truth of it. That old arch, the one in the church yard, was the subject of a lot of myths and stories, none of them good. It was a portal for demons, or a crossing to the afterlife, they said. The clerics didn't clarify the truth, except to say it really did lead to death and danger of sorts.

The stories he believed the most said that it was a relic of back before the Church had come, when the System still ruled. He didn't know how that could be, but he could see that the clerics didn't like the arch, that the Church was disturbed by it, but was powerless to destroy it, somehow. He couldn't imagine a force smaller than the System that could resist to that degree.

Those stories all said it was a gate, one that went somewhere related to the System. That, at least, he knew was true. For Tulland to have just disappeared one day as he had, as if he had just fallen into a hole to another world, there had to be a hole for him to fall into. The gate was the only thing it could be.

When he saw the fish, he knew somehow that it mattered. An old man couldn't go into a magic gate and find his nephew, but an old man also couldn't catch this fish. None that he had ever heard of, anyway. And if he could catch the fish, it followed that he'd be able to go through the gate and get Tulland too.

It was a fantasy, he knew. There were holes in the logic big enough to row his boat through. But he was an old man with a few days left, at best. If he wanted to entertain himself that way, that was his business. There was nobody around with the authority to tell him to stop.

As the fish rose, the old man reached for his gaffer's hook. He'd likely only get one shot with it, just a second to get the hook into the fish before it sank back down into the water and left him with not enough strength to pull it back up. Putting tension on the line, he locked it in place as best he could and swung the hook.

Even now, when he couldn't feel his hands for the cold, he was quick at it. The hook sank deep into the fish's head, where the fish jerked around it for just a moment before it stopped moving for good.

Somehow, despite all the cold he had endured and all the battle with the fish on the line, the old man knew that the real hard moment was about to happen. He didn't need to kill himself reeling in a fish. That was a finesse game. He certainly didn't need much strength to get them on the hook in the first place. But the act of hooking a huge fish as heavy as some smaller men and rolling it out of the ocean onto a boat was a feat of strength that was hard for young men, let alone an old lonely man on the brink of death from the cold and brokenheartedness.

Conventional wisdom said there was no chance he could do it. If he could, it meant the gods were with him. That they wanted him to chase after his nephew, and save him somehow. That, hopefully, they'd help him beat the odds on the whole dying before he could get any of that done business.

And that seemed worth the gamble, especially considering all he was giving up was a few cold days alone in his house, shivering and wishing he had done a better job keeping an eye on his adoptive son.

He set himself and heaved. The fish didn't move, except bobbing up slightly in the water. He set again, and pulled even harder. His joints clicked distressingly from the effort, and the fish didn't move. It was all he could do, unless he wanted to kill himself in the process.

"Oh well. I suppose I have said I'd like to die on the water." Tulland's uncle set one more time. "No time like the present, I guess."

He pulled so hard the world went red. His hearing was the first thing to cut out, replaced by a loud ringing as his eyes went black and he felt himself tumbling back into the rowboat. He was unable to move after that. After what could have been an hour, his hearing came back. It was hard to tell how long it had been with so little around to hear. His eyesight didn't. There was no way for him, then, to know what was rowing towards him until it got there some time later, though he had some guesses.

"Just like I told you. Not missing. Just hurt." It was the young man's voice. "I knew he went out yesterday. I'm surprised he tried it again, today. He hasn't looked well."

"Get in there." The second voice was probably Bhat, another fisherman older than the boy but still much younger than Tulland's uncle. He was a competent fisherman. "See if he's breathing."

Tulland's uncle tried to shout out that he was fine, and found he couldn't. Instead, he was bundled up like a load of firewood, pushed into their boat, and rowed back by Bhat while the younger fisher followed along with his rowboat and gear.

"All right. Get a cleric. If anyone can help, they can."

"On my way." Tulland's uncle heard his boat collide with the shore. "How did he get that fish out of the water, anyway?"

I did get it, Tulland's uncle thought. I'm glad he told me. I never would have guessed.

"He's a tough old bastard. Always has been. Now get that cleric before it's too late."

—

Things were a little hazy after that. Someone poured a draught of something warming down his throat, which was good until it reached his head and made what little he could still perceive even fuzzier. His vision, it turned out, was not entirely gone. He could see light, and from the shadows could guess that people were passing over him, coming and going, doing things to him that he supposed were meant to keep him alive.

And then, somewhere in the mix, he found himself home, smelling the smells of his own house as it was warmed by a fire much bigger than he would have normally built for himself.

"They woke me up out of a full sleep. Young man, you know that, don't you?" Tulland's uncle woke up to the voice of an even older man, perhaps the only person in town that could call him young with a straight face. "Said you needed a friend, and I was the closest thing you had."

"A sad story." Tulland's uncle found he could speak, even if his tongue still felt like a wooden plank in his mouth. "But true enough."

"Ha! He can speak." The tutor leaned down and touched the old man's forehead. "No fever, at least. How are you otherwise?"

"Bad. I broke something in my chest lifting that fish."

"No wonder. I'm told it's a record. And not just for your age, either." The old man heard the tutor strike a match, then smelled burning leaf as he lit his pipe. "What made you do it? You aren't as old as I am, but I didn't suppose you had much showing off left in you at your age."

"Made a bargain with the gods. About Tulland," Tulland's uncle admitted.

"Oh? Which ones?" the tutor asked.

"Any that might be listening. Never was sure which ones were real, anyway."

The old man audibly puffed on his pipe, then sighed. "And the bargain itself?"

"Just for a sign. That if I could get the fish, I could help him. Somehow."

The tutor didn't say anything. Tulland's uncle was used to that. He wasn't a man that talked much when he wasn't teaching. He had seen too much to be comfortable with most people. But out of everyone else in the town, there wasn't anyone who loved his nephew more than the old tutor. He had been hit just as hard by the disappearance, in his own way.

"The arch?" the tutor asked.

"That's my guess. Something was off with him, that last month or so. He hid it, but…"

"But he was talking to someone. Not you, not me. Not anyone on this island. Just someone. I've been kicking myself every day since for not reporting it." The tutor adjusted his weight in the creaking bedside chair. "I just feared what they'd do to him if I was right."

Tulland's uncle wasn't angry at the man. He had done about the same thing, waiting until it was too late to do anything.

"What's beyond that arch? You'd know." Tulland's uncle coughed. Something in his chest rattled ominously as he did. "If anyone knows, it's you."

"Could be a lot of things. The Church made sure any records of it were beyond even me. But if I had to guess?"

"Yes. Guess."

"This island, Ouros, it was named after a cycle represented by two snakes, one feeding off the other and being fed on in turn. The usual person thinks that's just because the island is round."

"Aren't most?"

"Yes. I think it's for another reason. A long time ago, there was another cycle like that, where one world would be fed by ours, and we'd be fed in turn."

The uncle was surprised to find he knew this story. Someone had told him to it, once, a long time ago.

"The Infinite."

"Yes. There weren't very many portals to it, even back in the System's era. It wouldn't surprise me to know places that had them were named in ways related to that kind of transaction."

Tulland's uncle tried to clear his lungs out with some deeper breaths, and stopped as he felt whatever was broken in him getting worse with the effort. He couldn't even sigh, which was about all he felt like he had in him. There were many places a person could be rescued from. It was like Tulland to pick one of the only ones where that wasn't true.

"So there's not much use going after him," the tutor said. "So the books tell me. You'd be throwing away what's left of your life for nothing. That's the deal."

"Ah." Tulland's uncle coughed again. "I see."

"And the clerics know, by the way. Or have a sense. They've seen people do stupid things before, I think. I'm not just here for company."

"No?"

"No." The tutor laughed and puffed on his pipe. "Who would send me if that was the only reason? I'm supposed to watch you. Keep you from leaving. I told them I wouldn't be strong enough to do that, but that was before I saw you."

"I see." Tulland's uncle's eyes were getting foggier now. What little light he could see before was fading. "So when are we going, then?"

"I just wanted to finish this pipe. Are you going to be able to walk?"

"I'll figure out a way."

—

The tricky part about guarding the arch, the tutor said, was that if it really was a portal to where he thought it was, the Church couldn't make a big deal out of it. If they built high walls around it and set a guard, people would be suspicious of it. Curious. That was doubly true now, with Tulland's uncle and him so clearly motivated to figure out where their young charge had gone.

When the tutor arrived at the arch half-dragging Tulland's uncle along with him, that lack of ability to keep a close eye on things worked to their advantage for once. The way was clear for both of them.

"Do you think we'll end up in the same place?" Tulland's uncle hacked with the effort of speaking. "They tell me you aren't entirely useless in a fight."

"They do? They might have even been right, once. To be honest, I have no way of knowing. We might fall out of this arch anywhere, facing anything. Any books on the subject have long since been burned. There will be danger, at least. And maybe I can help you face it. If there's anything left of you, that is." The tutor looked at his friend one last time. "You really don't look that well, you know."

"Thanks." Tulland's uncle felt something sagging in his chest. He'd need to go in that arch soon, if he went at all. "I'm hoping that message from the gods was real. That they have something planned to help me."

"You think they do?"

"I'm not much of a thinker. You know that. But I figure I'm allowed to hope."

"True," the tutor said. "I suppose we all are."

Taking a deep breath, the tutor lifted his friend up until he was in a mostly upright posture. They nodded at each other and stepped through.