Logs don't have eyes... Act 63: The Promise of Shaconage
An excerpt from an experimental serial novel published on the digital spaces, The Promise of Shaconage.
Only upon reaching the shore did Timpoochee risk another glance over his shoulder.
The river surface was calm, mostly, disturbed only by the ebbing wake of his own frantic movement.
He turned and looked into the woods which held an eerie silence. To his left he could see smoke rising above the trees from the Yonega settlement’s council house, where he was certain his father must be.
He then remembered seeing Cornstalk standing near this spot on the shore as he dangled from the fat sailor’s fist.
“Cornstalk!” he called loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to disturb whatever spirit was playing about.
“Cornstalk! Are you here?” he called again.
Nothing in reply.
“That would be like Cornstalk to run away from the danger,” Timpoochee thought to himself.
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Only then did he remember the fat sailor must be nearby, too.
He looked again at the river, completely calm now, no sign of the fat sailor.
“He couldn’t have made it to shore ahead of me,” Timpoochee said aloud. “But where did he go?”
He scanned the river and there, near the ship but a little behind it Timpoochee saw what he first thought to be a log.
“But logs don’t have eyes,” he thought. “Red eyes.”
Small puffs of smoky haze drifted above the water, above the log with eyes.
A loud explosion suddenly burst from the ship’s deck, shattering Timpoochee’s ears and reverberating around the river bank and into the woods.
The water reported with tiny splashes all around him.
The echo of the explosion came back to him several times before Timpoochee looked to the deck of the ship to see the skinny Poker hold a long, thin rod with smoke pouring out its end and into the air.