Eoin's Eastward Tale
The first thing Torsten did upon learning Eoin's name was try to release him.
Rolly had been dying for months, his decline slow and drawn out. Torsten had spent those months moving about Vardvik in a fog of unhappy anticipation. When he was younger, he had imagined his uncle Leif would recover from his injuries, reclaiming his place as the rightful ruler of Eysa. Torsten would have served beneath him, a prince with no greater burden than learning what it meant to govern. But the world was not so kind.
His parents had been carried off by a winter plague before he was old enough to understand death. His uncle, once hale and strong, had been shattered by a fall that left him both crippled and feebleminded. Leif had no heirs. He would never rule. After Rolly, Eysa itself would settle onto Torsten's shoulders. He had long known the shape of it, looming on the horizon. But seeing was not the same as being ready. Rolly had prepared him, tutoring him with wisdom, lessons in power, and provided glimpses of the kind of king he might need to become. Even knowing this day would come, Torsten had allowed himself the quiet, selfish hope of wishing it wouldn't
A servant of Rolly's, a man he couldn't recall meeting before, had come for him one evening near dusk.
"Your grandfather wishes me to bring you to him." He'd murmured.
And so, accompanied by the servant, Torsten had made his way through the keep's dim corridors to Rolly's chambers. The room smelled of death, of tallow and old linens, of the bitter tinctures meant to dull pain. Rolly lay in the great bed, thin as a crow, his sharp, age-spotted fingers resting atop the coverlet.
A chair had been pulled close to the bedside, and Torsten sat.
"Grandfather," he said, his voice quiet.
Rolly let out a rattling cough, his shoulders shaking with the effort. Then, with a sigh, he settled, turning his sharp, hooded eyes onto Torsten. "Torsten, my boy." His voice was weak but still carried that familiar note of dry amusement. "I'll be leaving on this evening's tide, I think."
"Before I go, I have something for you."
He lifted a bony hand and gestured toward the servant standing in the shadows.
"I'd like you to meet my fetch, Eoin Brocker."
The servant—Eoin—stepped forward, and for the first time, Torsten truly looked at him. Tall and lean, sharp-featured, carrying the quiet wariness of a man who had learned not to expect kindness.
Rolly smiled thinly. "And I'd like you to know him by his true name."
Then he spoke it.
The name spilled from Rolly's tongue like honey, liquid and alien, syllables that did not belong in a human mouth.
Torsten felt it settle into his head like an unbidden thought. A tumbling sensation sent his stomach lurching. The name was inside of him, he owned it now, and in doing so, owned the man standing in front of him. The dawning horror of what the name it meant crawled beneath his skin, leaving behind a sick wrongness—a violation, the theft of another man's soul. He recoiled as if burned.
"No," he whispered. "No." He turned to Eoin, as if he could undo what had just been done, to force the name out of his head and into the void where it belonged. He repeated the name desperately, sickened by the way his lips and tongue spilled out the same rolling syllables his grandfather had used. "I release you! Take back your name!"
The old man cackled. "It doesn't work that way, boy." He gave a dry, ragged chuckle. "You're stuck with him now. He's stuck with you. It's like you're married."
Torsten snapped his mouth shut with an audible click, turning sharply to Eoin, but the sight of him struck the breath from his chest.
Eoin made a choking sound, and sank to the floor, his arms wrapped around his head, his body folded in on itself as if he could somehow unmake what had just happened. "No. No. No. No." The words were soft, hopeless, unraveling into something shattered.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were red-rimmed and wet, reflecting the same horror that gripped Torsten's gut like a fist.
Eoin shook his head. "It doesn't work that way." His voice was hoarse, raw with despair. "I'm bound to you. Until the day you die. You can't release me."
He turned sharply to Rolly, white fury flashing across his face. "It's not like being married!" he snarled. "I never gave him my name! I never agreed! He is as unwilling as I am!"
He rose in one fluid motion, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, his whole body coiled tight with rage.
"You bastard!" he spat, voice rising to a shriek. "You forced this on us both!"
Spittle flew from his lips, his breath coming in ragged bursts, his whole body vibrating with the urge to do something, anything to break the chains now locked around his soul.
Then realization punched through his rage, driving the breath from his lungs. Eoin was bound to Torsten now. He was no longer bound to Rolly.
He took one step forward, past Torsten, toward the bed where the old man lay, his expression shifting—unreadable, dangerous.
"Don't!" Torsten's voice cracked like a whip. "Don't kill him!"
But it was too late. Rolly had already died.
Eoin's hands curled into fists at his sides, nails pressing into the creases of his palms. His heart beat like a drum beneath his ribs, too fast, too sharp, the edges of the world suddenly too loud, too clear. The taste of magic still lingered in the air, thick as iron, bitter as bile, settling into something colder, something final. The old bastard was finally, finally dead.
For a single breath—one exquisite, fleeting moment—Eoin had felt the weight lifting. The binding loosening, unraveling from his bones, letting him feel the full breadth of the world again, the endless reach of the horizon calling to him like the whisper of an old lover. And then, just as swiftly, something else had slammed into its place.
The weight had not disappeared. It had only shifted.
His gaze snapped to the boy across the room—because that was what he was, wasn't he? A man by law, but only just. Too young, too lost, too grief-stricken to even comprehend what had just been handed to him.
Torsten had fallen to his knees, his face buried in his hands, his whole body trembling. Eoin could almost pity him. Instead, all he felt was cold, sick suffocating rage. Ten years. Ten years, he endured and survived on this damned island, biding his time, knowing that one day, his name would come back to him, and he would be able to slip free like fog on the tide. Now, instead of freedom, instead of finally being unshackled—he had been handed off like a trinket to a child. His name had passed from a dying man's lips and fallen into the hands of a grieving, lost boy who had never asked for it and did not understand what he now held.
Eoin's throat burned and his vision blurred at the edges. His pulse thrummed hard against his skull, a heavy, shuddering thing. The weight of it pressed down on him like an ocean above his head, crushing the breath from his lungs. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. He couldn't stay here. He couldn't even breathe here. Eoin turned on his heel and walked out.
Rolly's body slumped in the great wooden bed, mouth half-open, eyes clouded and empty. The blankets had fallen away from his chest, baring the thin, wasted frame of the man who had once ruled Eysa with a bitter heart.
Torsten sat staring at his hands. He ought to move - ring the death bell, close the old man's eyes. Open the door, and call for his uncle. He sucked in a shallow breath. The weight of it all pressed down on him. His grandfather was dead. His uncle was a ruined thing, lost in his broken mind. His parents had long since been consigned to the volcano. Now Eysa, its poverty, its isolation, its uncertain future, rested on his shoulders. As did the burden of owning another man's soul.
He swallowed hard, forcing down the grief that gripped him. He wished longingly that Ingbord was here. He might, he thought, be almost willing to stand up, to move, and act like the king he was expected to be if she was.
He could see her in his mind's eye—the sharp arch of her brow, the deep, knowing pull of her gaze, the way the wind lifted tendrils of her hair wild and unbound. He thought of the way she touched his wrist when she wanted his attention, the way her mouth curved in amusement, the fierce steadiness of her heart. The way her presence filled a space in his world that no one else ever could.
Torsten clenched his fists, as though sheer will could hold him together. He pressed his eyes shut, as if that might ease the hollow ache in his chest. The grief only surged up, unstoppable as the tide.
For the first time since he was a child, he surrendered to it.
The first tear fell hot against his skin. Then another. And another. His breath caught, his shoulders quaking—then, the dam broke. He curled in on himself, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes as if he could force it all back. But there was no stopping it. He was alone. Completely, fathomlessly alone. And all alone, he wept.
In the days and weeks that followed, Torsten waded through the motions of duty like a man walking through water.
There was a funeral. They carried Rolly's body to the cliffs, wrapped in a shroud of undyed wool, The procession wound through Vardvik in silence, the people gathered along the stone streets in grief. At the summit, Torsten stood still as Rolly's body was tipped into the glowing, fiery heart of the volcano. If he spoke any words, he did not remember them.
There was a visit to his uncle. Two days after the funeral Torsten went to see Leif. His uncle was propped up in a chair by an open window, wrapped in furs, staring out to sea. He had sat there for years now, his right hand curled uselessly in his lap, his left twitching now and again. His once-sharp eyes drifted toward Torsen, his head swiveling slowly as he entered. A small, uncertain smile touched his face.
"Torsten," his uncle whispered. "Good to see you, boy. What news?"
Torsten swallowed. "Uncle," he said, kneeling before him. "Rolly is dead. You're king now."
Leif stared at him, the smile fading from his face slowly. With great effort, he laid his shaking left hand on Torsten's. The silence stretched. Then, after a long pause, his uncle's lips parted, his voice dry as wind through dead grass.
"Be good, lad."
Torsten swallowed against the tightness in his throat. He clenched his jaw and nodded, though his uncle had already turned away, his gaze lost again to sea. Torsten stood there a while longer, waiting for something - a word, a blessing, a sign, anything. But there was nothing.
Finally, he turned and left, leaving his uncle to his ghosts.
There was a ceremony to endure. The great hall was packed wall to wall. Every citizen of Eysa that could find standing room had come to see it done.
A heavy silver chain was placed around Torsten's neck. Words were spoken. Oaths were sworn. Torsten repeated them back without hesitation. His back was straight. His hands steady, his face unreadable. The weight of the words and the chain settled on his shoulders. He was regent now, and would be king. It was a mantle he could never shrug off. He was just barely a man, and there was no one left to catch him if he fell.
Later, there was a feast. The hall was too warm and too loud, the air thick with the competing scents of roasted lamb, spiced fish, fresh cheeses, and rich stews. Ale was poured freely, and Torsten was toasted heartily, his name lifted on every tongue.
Torsten ate nothing. He drank little. He smiled when he ought to. He spoke when custom required.
He could feel them watching him. Assessing. Weighing. Without words, a question lingered in every look every gesture and every cup raised in his honour. His grandfather had been a hard, sharp man. A man who had known the weight of a kingdom. Would Torsten be the same? Would he be enough?
He made sure they saw nothing at all. When the moment came, when eyes turned elsewhere and backs turned away, he rose quietly and left the hall.
His chambers were blessedly still and silent when he entered, the heavy door shutting behind him with a reassuring thud.
The silver chain around his neck suddenly felt unbearable. He pulled it over his head and let it drop onto the table. He sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, fingers laced together. His body ached with exhaustion, but he knew sleep would take a long time to find him.
His thoughts drifted, unbidden, across the sea—to a mainland city where Ingbord was studying at magic, learning the ways of levers and pulleys, magnets and lenses. Herbs and tinctures, and honing her talent for Seeking.
Did she think of him? Did she lie awake at night, counting the days as he did?
He stood abruptly and crossed to the wall. With the tip of his knife, he carved another mark into the stone—a tally of days since she had been gone. Then he kicked off his boots, lay back on the bed, and closed his eyes. Tomorrow would come, as it always did. And he would wake, as he always did. And the world would expect him to carry on.
Torsten had not seen Eoin since the night his grandfather died.
At first, he had been too numb to care. Then, too busy. There had been too many things that needed doing—petitions to hear, food stores to account for, flocks to monitor, new vents to approve. Torsten's days weren't filled with grand diplomacy or high politics—just the small, ceaseless, grinding work of keeping Eysa alive. His days and his duties blurred into one another, obligation spilling into obligation, until he barely remembered there was anything else.
He had hardly even thought about Eoin until today. The realization came suddenly, slipping between the cracks of his daily routine. He had signed his name to an account ledger, handed it back to the steward, and then—just like that—he had realized he had no idea where Eoin was. He hadn't seen him. Hadn't heard a word about him.
Which was strange.
Torsten frowned. Whatever Eoin was, he had to spend his days somewhere, doing something. He had to sleep somewhere, didn't he? While Torsten had little idea what it truly meant to have someone bound to him, it stood to reason that he bore some responsibility for the man who had no choice but to remain at his side. A flicker of guilt settled in his chest. With a sigh, he pushed back from his chair and set out into the streets of Vardvik to find the faerie he had, however unintentionally, abandoned.
He found him in the first place he looked.
Stepping into the tavern, he spotted Eoin slumped in a corner, fingers loosely curled around a half-empty tankard, his head pillowed on his other arm. Jorunn, the tavern's matron, caught Torsten's eye, shook her head resignedly, and left him to it.
Torsten hesitated, then crossed the room, sliding onto the bench opposite him.
Eoin did not look up.
A long moment stretched between them. Then, finally, Eoin exhaled a slow, weary breath.
"The little prince graces me with his presence," he murmured, voice thick with drink, though not quite slurred. "To what do I owe the honour?"
Torsten shifted. "I was wondering where you'd gone," he said hesitantly. "I was wondering why I never saw you before Rolly told me your name." When Eoin didn't respond, the words tumbled out before he could stop them. "You can't stay here and drink yourself ito death day after day."
Eoin scratched his ear absently. "Of course I can," he said. He lifted his head, his gaze dry, unreadable. "What else do you expect me to do?"
Torsten stiffened. "You shouldn't just—"
"You shouldn't worry about me, princeling," Eoin interrupted, quieter now. "I am what I am. And you have a whole island to worry about, do you not?"
Torsten didn't know what to say to that.
But he returned the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.
It became a habit before he even realized it—his feet carrying him toward the tavern whenever his duties allowed him a quiet moment.
At first, he told himself he was only going to put coins in Jorunn's hand until she counted herself settled for the inconvenience of having Eoin in her tavern. But then he found himself standing for a few moments before making his presence known. Then he would sit, and try to start a conversation.
"How's the ale?" he had asked once.
Eoin had snorted, barely glancing up from where he traced circles in the condensation of his tankard. "Weak."
Another time, he had tried something else. "You could work, you know," he had suggested lightly. "You could mend nets or thatch roofs, or—"
Eoin had exhaled sharply, lifting his head just enough to pin Torsten with a look of quiet disbelief. "Mend nets?"
Torsten had shrugged. "Why not?"
Eoin had let out a breath, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, and muttered something in his own tongue before taking a slow drink.
Other times, Torsten had let silence stretch between them, waiting to see if Eoin would speak first. He never did.
It wasn't that Eoin refused to engage entirely. There were times—rare, fleeting—when something Torsten said would stir him enough to answer. But more often than not, Eoin seemed content to sit there in silence, as though he had been carved from stone.
One afternoon, Torsten sat down at Eoin's table and studied him.
He looked worse than usual. Unshaven, eyes shadowed, his coat hanging a little looser over his frame. The drinking was taking a toll.
Torsten let out a slow breath and leaned forward. "Eoin."
A flicker of something—annoyance, maybe, or just exhaustion—passed across the fae's face before he lifted his head, just enough to squint at Torsten. "What do you want, little princeling?" His voice was hoarse, like he hadn't spoken much that day.
"I want to understand," Torsten said. "I want to understand what you are." His voice was measured, but there was tension beneath. "I want to know how Rolly came to have your name."
Eoin tilted his head, considering him. For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then, finally—
"Come with me then, princeling," he said. "You'll need to hear this tale where it began."
Eoin led the way out of Vardvik, following a narrow path that wound north along the slopes of the volcano before turning eastward along the cliffs. The town soon disappeared behind them, swallowed by the rise of the land, leaving only wind and sea and the sound of their boots against loose shale.
Torsten followed in silence, placing his feet carefully. The path was treacherous—little more than a suggestion in the rock. Below, the sea churned against the cliffs, deep and endless, a restless thing gnawing at the black shoreline.
Ahead of him, Eoin walked easily, despite his drunkenness.
Torsten narrowed his eyes against the wind. "How much further?"
Eoin didn't answer at first. He only glanced skyward as a pair of puffins wheeled above them. Then, with an absent sort of amusement, he said, "Scared of heights, little prince?"
Torsten set his jaw. "No."
Eoin hummed as if he didn't quite believe him. "Then you'll manage."
The path veered suddenly toward the cliff's edge. Torsten hesitated. It wasn't so much that he feared the height, so much as it was the knowing that a misstep could send a man tumbling down the sheer cliff face without so much as a shout.
Still, he gritted his teeth and stepped forward, following as Eoin slipped through a jagged break in the rock. What had seemed like nothing more than a fissure in the cliff face opened into a small, hidden ledge. And just beyond it, carved into the stone itself, was a tidy little pocket of a cave. A vent near the roof trailed a thin stream of vapour making the air inside warmer than outside.
Torsten turned slowly, taking it in. "You met Rolly here? In a cave? That doesn't make much sense."
He stood at the edge of the cave mouth, resting one hand against the rock, staring down at the black rocks below. The drop was dizzying. The tide surged far below, white foam swallowing the jagged shoreline. From this height, the waves looked almost gentle, rolling in smooth swells before they shattered against the glassy stone.
He whistled softly. "It is rather a long way down," Torsten said craning his neck, to take in the full extent of the vertical drop.
Standing behind him, Eoin tensed.
"If a man fell from here..." He knocked a loose pebble free with his boot, watching as it tumbled in a slow arc down to the sea. "He would surely be dashed to d—"
Eoin moved adder-fast. One sharp motion, and he had Torsten by the belt, yanking him back into the cave.
"Don't," he hissed, tiredly, "tempt me like that."
Torsten staggered slightly, startled, eyes flicking to him.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then, slowly, Eoin ran a hand over his face. He folded his legs and sank cross-legged to floor. He tilted his head back against the wall of the cave, half-closing his eyes as he gazed out at the sea. Then, softly, he began.
"Listen well," he said, "for this is no common tale. It is a story of worlds and waves, of pride and ruin, and of a fool who thought the sea would love him forever.
I was born to another land—a place much like yours in rock and river, in slope and sky. But it is not this world. You call it the faery realm, though it has many names. Its mountains stand where your mountains stand, its cliffs mirror your cliffs, its tides rise and fall as they do here. But the two are sundered, and only where the veil thins can one pass between.
I was a sailor in my world. Free as the wind, I skimmed the water in silver-flecked boats, swift as thought, dancing over waves that lifted me like a favored son. The sea knew me. She held me, carried me home a hundred times and more. My blood was salt and foam, and I was hers.
I had heard whispers, stories and half-forgotten legends of an uncharted island where the veil frayed thin—a place where a man might cross between worlds and return to tell the tale. Eysa, you call it here. A ghost of your world in mine, a twin in stone and current. I thirsted to see it with my own eyes, to lay claim to the impossible.
So, I sailed. The sea was kind. She bore me to the shore of my world's Eysa, unpeopled, wild. I climbed the cliffs. I felt the charge in the air. And then I found it—the cleft in the rock, the narrow place where one world bled into the next.
One step. A single breath. And I was through.
I emerged onto your cliffs in triumph. Below me, Vardvik's harbor curved against the water, the volcano slumbered behind it. And I, a bold and reckless thing, thought myself clever standing atop the world, believing myself a conqueror.
But your world did not welcome me.
The earth trembled. The volcano shuddered in its bed. The rock beneath my feet cracked like a splitting skull. I had no time to shout, no time to curse, before the ledge gave way beneath me.
One moment, I stood victorious. The next, I was falling—
Falling into a sea that did not know me.
I have never met a sea as hungry as yours. It took me in its jaws and shook me. It hurled me against the obsidian teeth of the rocks below. I fought, I clawed, but the waves dragged me under, dashed me against the cliffs again and again, tore my flesh to ribbons, splintered my ribs, choked me with salt until my vision blurred and every breath was fire.
I tried to climb, but the stone was slick with blood and tide, the surf relentless. The tide took me, spun me, pulled me down into the dark. I would die there, broken and unmade, my body scattered into the deep.
I thought for a fleeting moment that I should not fear drowning, for no faerie drowns at sea. But this, this is not my sea, and she does not love me.
Your old king Rolly—bitter, sour, and steeped in old tales—sat in this very cave and watched me. He saw me walk out of the cleft and knew no one had entered. He saw me fall, saw the sea claim me. He climbed down the rock path in time to find me battered nearly to death, my breath rattling in my chest, the life leaking out of my veins. Cunning old crow, he knew what I was and he climbed down from his perch, crouched at the edge of the waves' reach and offered me a choice, 'Tell me your name, faery, and I will save you'.
A faery's name is his soul, princeling. It is the key to our being. To speak it is to surrender it. To give it away is to be bound, wholly and irrevocably.
I was dying. My ribs were broken, my hands were raw to the bone, the waves dragging me deeper with each passing breath. I had a choice—to surrender my life to your sea or my name to your king.
I chose the king.
Make of that what you will, princeling. Rolly's legacy is yours. And I... am no longer the man I was."
They sat in silence. The wind whistled through the cave mouth, and below, the sea boiled and surged against the rock face.
Torsten swallowed. He could see it—Eoin, bloodied and drowning, broken on the shore. And Rolly, swooping down like a carrion bird to snatch him from the rocks.
Torsten frowned. Very cautiously, he craned his neck toward the cave mouth. "If that's where you came through—" He gestured to the point, barely visible between the rocks below where Eoin indicated the cleft was. "Why don't you just go back?"
Eoin let out a dry little breath that might have been a laugh. "Look closer, princeling."
Torsten did. He studied the jumbled collection of rocks below. A chaotic tumble of splintered obsidian rocks formed the foot of the cliff. The point Eoin indicated would be well buried deep beneath the waves at high tide. A madman might risk wading chest-deep and being dragged under and gnashed to ribbons on the rocks at low tide. Except, near as Torsten could tell, there was no spot to wade to.
"There's no way in," Torsten realized. "The earthquake shifted the rocks."
Eoin nodded; his voice quiet. "The only way back is the way I came in. Perhaps, one day—if my binding to you is broken—I could chase another legend and search for another portal. But there's no promise it would lead me home. Just as likely, I would step through and find myself in another mirror-world—one like this—close, but not my own.
Torsten exhaled, slow and soft. After a moment, he said tentatively, "Maybe the volcano will shift the rocks again someday."
Eoin looked past him as if he was gazing at something that had slipped through his fingers long ago, and then was ground to dust while he watched helplessly.
He levered himself to his feet. "Come along, princeling. You'll find these cliffs are no less treacherous in the dark. And I find myself bone-tired and unwillingly sober. I believe you said something about a place of my own for me in your keep, no?"
Torsten simply said that he had been Rolly's man, shipwrecked, with no route home. The people of Vardvik took that to mean "exiled" and "washed up on Eysa's shores with nowhere else to go." And if the young prince wanted to keep the handsome castaway close - especially while his boyhood love was away, before he got around to choosing a wife? Well, it certainly wasn't unheard of, and there was no harm in it really. That Eoin drank too much and was often seen walking the cliffs staring longingly out to sea? Well, what else did you expect an exiled man to do?
Still, Torsten had put him to work. He was good at mending boats and mending nets. Eoin had a knack for finding lost things too. An uncanny knack some said. If you caught him a good mood, he was an engaging story-teller, quick witted, and just as quick with a bit of sleight of hand. Sly? Certainly. Flirtatious? Undoubtedly. But if a matron or two had a special job for him behind closed doors - well. There wasn't really any harm in that either, was there? While the whispers about him weren't entirely savoury, nor were they entirely unfounded, well, he weren’t an entirely bad sort. Not really.