Chapter 1: Just a Bastard Orphan

The water was cold but not freezing as Olaf let go of the buoy and headed back to the island. He started getting concerned when it looked like he would never reach the buoy but he had finally reached it, had a rest and was now headed back to the island.

The swell was higher than usual so for part of the time the island, and the mainland beyond it, were not visible. Just as his arms and legs again started feeling the numbness of the cold water and the exertion, Olaf noticed that he was close to the island but off-target. The small gentle-sloping beach where he started from was some distance off to his left. Right in front of him was the Shelves, huge rocks in the shape of a giant staircase. The Shelves consisted of three huge steps, the lowest one being nearly always submerged and the top step only getting wet during storms.

For a moment Olaf was about to panic; if the waves broke against the face of the Shelves, he would be in trouble. With each rising of the swell he could see the current was pulling him further from the safety of the small sandy beach.

Without doing much, he found himself much closer to the Shelves, uncomfortably close in fact. He tread water and watched the waves for a while. As the swell peaked under him, he noticed the previous wave broke just over the lip of the flat horizontal part of the rock shelve instead of against the sheer vertical side, the place where several fishing boats had met their end over the years.

The next wave broke over the edge of the middle step, to crash against the bottom of the top step. Olaf started swimming as hard as he could against the back-surge so he could try and stay in place. The next moment the wave dropped and him with it. For the first time ever, he looked up at the broken face of the mostly submerged bottom step. A few moments later the next wave picked him up. He felt a sense of excitement as the wave carried him over the lip of the middle step.

When the wave dropped him, he was standing on the middle step of the Shelves with the water trying to wash him back, but he managed to stay standing on the middle shelf. A glance at the top step towering above him made him realize he was not out of trouble yet. The next wave was already lifting over the edge behind him but this one seemed much bigger than the previous wave.

Without breaking, the wave just swelled up, taking Olaf along. With no way to anchor himself, the shelf fell away beneath him with him being carried towards the face of the top shelf. He barely managed to turn his body so his feet were towards the flat craggy rock face. Then the top edge came into view, with the wave just topping the sharp edge of the top shelf, dumping Olaf with a bone-jarring thud on the uneven, rocky surface. As he got to his feet, he noticed the water streaming down the middle shelf. Olaf quickly made his way away from the edge towards the shrub-covered slope behind the top shelf.

“You could have been killed, you idiot!” Wilda screamed at him as she and Aster came storming down at him. Both the girls were looking at him angrily as they came running towards him. Wilda started pummeling his chest with her small fists as Aster grabbed hold of his arm, hugging it to her. Wilda looked really angry, but Aster’s face was tear-streaked as she glared up at him.

“And yet, here I stand, being bullied,” Olaf was still stressed out after exiting the rough sea.

“Yeah? One day we will stand here, throwing flowers into the sea, trying not to forget the idiot who insisted on swimming to the buoy and back every morning,” Wilda said in a slightly calmer voice as she grabbed hold of his free arm.

“Please?!” Aster said in a pleading tone. “Don’t take such chances again. You..., ah, we...,” she glared at him before she let go of his arm and stormed away up the slope to where the fourth member of their little gang stood waiting. Wilf had no expression on his face as he looked down at the three. Wilda kept clinging to his arm as she walked up the steep incline, following Aster. When they got to where Wilf was waiting, Aster picked up a bundle of clothing and threw it at Olaf before she stormed off in a huff, her long colorful skirt billowing out behind her like the sails of a schooner.

“I think she is angry at you,” Wilf commented as he glanced after the running girl, her calve-length dress flapping around her knees.

“It is because you are an idiot!” Wilda said as she gave Olaf another punch against his shoulder without letting go of his hand. Olaf picked up his clothes which he had left on the beach when he set off for his daily swim and got into his pants. He noticed that his still soaked boxer shorts had a few tears where sharp edges of the rock had snagged it. He could even see some red scrape marks on his skin.

“Have you heard from any of the skippers yet?” Olaf asked as they sat down for breakfast a few days later. A week earlier, the four of them had finished the school year.

The fisher-folk, as the mainland people referred to the small sub-group, were fishers and only fishers. That particular island was home to fourteen fishing boats, each with a crew of between ten and twenty fishermen. There were other islands up and down the coast with larger or smaller populations, all making their living from the sea. A year ago the number was sixteen, but one skipper took his boat and family to another island, and the other boat never returned after a storm at sea.

“Nothing yet,” Wilf said with a frown.

“It’s early still” Anna, his mother, said as she poured Olaf and Wilf some more milk. “Picking a new greenhorn to join an established crew is not something that is done lightly.” Olaf could see Wilf was not comforted by his mother’s words. He was glad that he never walked the pier. Walking the pier, effectively hunting for a job, was the age-old way they did it at the end of each year, when the teenagers of that year turned sixteen, finished tenth grade, and started looking for a spot on one of the fishing boats calling that island home.

“What are you going to do?” Aster asked. Of the four women in Olaf’s life, his mother was the most beautiful, closely followed by Aster and Wilda. Anna was Wilda’s mother and not bad looking but the hard life of the widow of a fisherman had taken its toll. All the women had the typical slender figures and dark hair of the fisher-folk. All the men were shorter than Olaf and had darker skin compared to his pale, nearly white, skin tone. The only similarity between Olaf and the islanders was his hair color. His was pitch-black while Wilf and Wilda had dark-brown hair similar to Anna’s. Aster was the odd one with dark-red hair.

“I don’t know,” Olaf said. “I don’t see myself joining a crew.”

“You still have another year before they will take you anyway,” Wilda said. Wilf was the oldest one, having turned sixteen a few months earlier. Wilda was the baby of the group. One sure way to get her angry was to call her the baby. She was only fourteen while Aster and Olaf were both fifteen.

“But you already finished tenth grade,” Aster added. “You will have to do something even if you are only fifteen. At least I still have a year before I start hunting for a husband.”

“Two more years for me, not that I’m eager to get married,” Wilda said. The two social customs that ruled the people of the islands were joining a crew at sixteen for the boys, and getting married at sixteen for the girls. Normally the girls married men who were a few years older and already proven themselves on one of the fishing boats. Wilf would be laughed at if he even tried to flirt with a girl. A girl whose father was a member of a crew, was more likely to find a husband working on the same boat. Girls like Wilda and Aster, both with widowed mothers, were more likely to end up spinsters, unmarried at the age of twenty.

“Olaf, the quarterly payment from the mainland keeps coming,” Anna said softly. “There was also a note with the last payment,” she said as she took a piece of paper off the shelf above the fireplace, handing it to him and then glancing at him expectantly.

Not everyone on the island could read, and those who can tend to have trouble reading the more complex vocabulary used by the mainland people. They all spoke the same language, but the mainland people were better educated, attended school much longer, and specialized in attending university. They became doctors, engineers, and technicians. The note that Anna handed to Olaf had a few multi-syllable words, words which Anna and Wilf would not even try to read. Wilda and Aster might try, since they were Olaf’s friends, and he read anything he could get his hands on, which also explained why he finished tenth grade a year early.

“It says I can enroll in any of the mainland schools and complete twelfth-grade before going on to any university I want.” Olaf said as he scanned the note. “Who sent this?” Anna just shrugged as the others looked at him with huge eyes.

“It came with the latest pension payment,” Anna said.

“Your dream, to study further,” Aster said with a shy smile.

“But what about us?” Wilda asked with a frown on her face. “Are you just going to move to the mainland and forget about us?”

“You and Aster will be married with two babies each by the time I finished my studies,” Olaf said. His comment was met by an eye roll from Anna, and two fiercely shaking heads from the two girls. Then Wilf burst out laughing.

“Get used to it,” he said between bouts of laughter. “They both want to marry you.” That caused Anna to smile as the two girls glared at Wilf.

“He can only marry one of us,” Wilda hissed at her brother before she gave Aster a surprised look, when she realized she had competition.

“On the islands, most men can only afford to have one wife,” Anna said. “On the mainland it is different. There, men have multiple wives. I have heard that there are barons with as many as five concubines.”

“You are going to the mainland, to study, and take many wives,” Wilda said in accusing tone. “You will forget all about us the moment you set foot in that mainland school.”

Olaf was highly amused at the reaction of the two girls. Up till that time he saw them as his best friends, girls, yes, but not as possible wives, even if he and Wilf both started taking notice of how the girls dressed, and looked, and walked, and made food. The two girls had become a lot moodier over the past year as well.

“I can’t believe we are actually going to the city!!” Wilda exclaimed yet again as she jumped up and down from excitement. Aster was more restrained and just gave Olaf a happy smile. They were standing on the fore deck of the boat pulling a barge full of fish destined for the fish market on the main wharf. There were no passenger ferries so they had to hitch a ride on the early morning boat taking the nightly catch to the market. The fish on the barge was destined for the high-class restaurants, while the majority of the catch was headed for the fish factories a bit further down the coast. Some of the fish even got processed for export off-world.

There were no detailed instructions with the note that Anna gave him, and no name to refer to, other than his name, Olaf Ostra. That was something else where he was different from the fisher folk. He had a proper last name, something none of the island people bothered with. If any of the islanders needed another name, to tell where they come from or distinguish between two people with the same name, they used the island’s name, which in their case was the same name as the city across the bay, or else the father’s name. The only other identifying item on the letter was a badge or crest or something printed in black at the top of the note. Olaf and the two very excited girls were on an exploration trip, to find out what schools there were, and what it would take to get enrolled in one of them.

They got off the boat just as the sun came up. The fish market was full of noise and people, all shouting and pointing at the loaded barge as it was being pushed against the side. Olaf had his hands full in keeping the two girls from being jostled and pushed by the crowd. Once they were out of the harbor area and on the streets, everything became quiet, no people shouting at each other.

“Is it maybe a public holiday?” Wilda asked as they walked past shops that were closed. The Fish-folk knew about public holidays but never took a day off from fishing, unless a storm was brewing.

Their worries soon disappeared when more and more people started appearing on the streets. Olaf gave a laughing bark when he noticed some writing on the door of a closed shop. Shop hours 9 am to 6 pm.

“That place with the trees, let’s have breakfast there,” Wilda suggested once they figured out everybody in the city was still sleeping. Olaf led them towards a park in the city center where they sat on a park bench and enjoyed the breakfast the two girls packed for their trip. By the time they were done with breakfast, most of the shops were open and the city was bustling with pedestrians and hovercraft service vehicles making deliveries everywhere.

“How are we going to find the schools?” Aster asked. They were all eyes as they walked around looking at everything. The city was totally new to them. They had never encountered such busy crowds, even if their world out in the bay was within view of the city. Everybody on the island could see the city across the bay every day but few islanders visited went there.

“We need to find the library,” Olaf said. That turned out to be easy. Once they found the central library, which was huge, they didn’t even need to try and look lost, they were lost. They did that so well; they soon had a lady offering to help them.

“You want to enroll in a school?” she asked in surprise. “All three of you?” she asked as she looked the two girls up and down. By that time, they already figured out that most women in the city wore totally different style clothes. The long wide colorful dresses worn by all women on the island stood out and got attention wherever they went. Both Wilda and Aster shook their heads as they pointed at Olaf.

“I want to go to university after finishing school,” Olaf added.

“What grade level are you at now?” the lady asked.

“I finished tenth grade but the school on the island doesn’t teach higher grades.” Olaf explained.

“Do you have a sponsor?” the lady asked as she lifted one eyebrow into a subtly question mark.

“I have this” Olaf said as he handed the lady the note Anna gave him. The eyebrow question mark disappeared but quickly came back as the lady scanned the note.

“Let me check on this,” she said as she walked to a service terminal. She typed some stuff on the keyboard and then waited a few seconds before typing some more. Then she got surprised look on her face. “It is the first time ever I see this,” she muttered to another younger lady who came to see what was going on. Olaf and the two girls were standing close enough to hear them talk. The newcomer’s first reaction was to also look the trio up and down with a puzzled look. “It seems this young man is being sponsored to attend any school of his choice, and to attend the university, by the Ceres State Department. Don’t they usually handle inter-system affairs?”