Chapter 1

Where a man is saved from drowning in toxic honey and becomes hated.

The ocean around the island has always been poisonous. We don't swim in it, we don't drink it. The water for our crops comes from an underground spring. The apocalypse destroyed the ocean just like it destroyed the sun.

The point is this: the water is poisonous. I guess he didn't know that, though. From the looks of it, he tried to go skinny dipping. Good thing he washed up on our shore, though, or he would have been dead instead of just really sick. Good for us too-- it seems that there is some sort of life on the mainland after all. Yes, he's from the mainland; I know I should have mentioned it earlier, but it was pretty stupid of him, being in the water like that...

- - -

It had been a good morning. Night had brightedned to a yellow coloured dawn and the sun lamps had been turned on. The ocean looked like honey and the light from the sunlamps had gilded the tops of the waves gold. Corinna sat on the watch-rock, caring nothing for the strange and beautiful dawn. The horizon was no different to her than at any other time: it was empty, with no returning mother to be seen. Still she sat, watching, as she did every morning. Sometimes dawn was pink, and sometimes green, but every day was the same to her - yesterday, today and tomorrow only meaningless words in endless waiting.

But today was different. There was no boat on the horizon, but farther in, there was... something. Something floating on the toxic, honey coloured waves. Something.... human?

It moved; fear slipped down her spine. Human! And alive- but not for long.

Never before had it been hard for Corinna to get down from the watch-rock; but then again, her hands were shaking from excitement. She slipped and slid, quivering and thankfully unhurt, down to the bottom and the path back home.

"Dad!" she cried, as she made pebbles fly from beneath her feet, "Dad!" She reached the house and burst through the front door, stumbling in the sudden darkness. "Hurry, Dad!" she called.

"Cor'?" her dad asked from where he stood as the top of the stairs, looking sleepy and disheveled.

"The boat- get the boat!" She paused to take a breath, and her dad stared as her, bewildered. "Dad, there's someone in the water- someone not from here!"

He became still. "You think-?"

She did not respond to his unfinished question, afraid of being wrong. "Get the boat."

- - -

Lowering the boat to float on the honey coloured waves was not a long process, but this time it seemed to take eons. Finally, they were in the boat, and her heart was near to bursting with excitement. Its thump-thump, thump-thump seemed to ask the dearest and most secret question of her heart: Mo-ther? Mo-ther? The same question was reflected in her father's searching eyes, and in his hands. Those shadowy hands clutched at the oars with more force than was needed to pull them slowly through murky yellow space.

They had lost sight of the floating body in the quickly rising smog, and both were beginning to panic. Who knoew how long the person (Mo-ther?) had been floating in poison- who knew how long the person (Mo-ther?) had, before-

"There!" her dad shouted, pointing out at a dark patch in the fog, a dark splotch in the water. "Go!" she shouted, "Go!" and in her mind she cried, We're coming! The oars' strokes gained purpose and the boat sliced through the water, gathering speed at an alarming and encouraging rate; until, that is, they reached the dark spot, the body.

The oars dug in and the boat seemed to buck. Corinna was thrown from her seat with a cry, and as she landed on the bottom of the boat he father flew to its side. His hand plunged unflinchingly into the liquid toxin. The wrinkled lids of his eyes were half closed; all his attention was on his hand, frantically probing beneath the water for the person he knew was there. Corinna hedl what breath she had, and everythign was still for one moment, two...

And with a splash that seemed louder than it actually was, her father's hand emerged, dripping toxic honey that ran in rivulets between his bulging veins, from the water. In it he clutched a wrist that was as thin as could be and as black as pitch. He pulled, the boat heaved, and suddenly their quarry lay on the bottom of the boat, completely nude.

His skin was blacker than any on New Atlantis and his hair was lighter than the lightest platinum blonde. His ribs could be counted. All of this Corinna observed dispassionately through the fog of shock that had engulfed her emotions. Someone far away was shouting, It isn't her! Not her! but she refused to pay attention. His face was beautiful in an alien fashion. His eyes and cheeks were sunken. His lips were as balck as the rest of him, except for the inner parts usually protected from any light- those were bright pink. His hair was long and dripping, and yet it still managed to halo his starved yet serene face.

"Cor'!" her dad said, calling her out of her frozen shock. She met his eyes and saw her suppressed disappointment mirrored in them. It rose to the surface in one bright flash that peaked in one simple tear trickling from her left eye. "Cor'," her dad said again, "If you won't help me keep him alive, the least you could do is row us to shore. He needs a doctor."

"Right," muttered Corinna, "right." But as she ttok up the oars she hated the beautiful vitctim that lay in the bottom of their boat. She hated him for the disppointment that now lay on the bottom of her heart. She hated him for needing help, even when he had destryed her hope. She hated him with every stroke of the oars for being other than expected. She hated him.

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