"Look at this little cutie! Look, look!" gushed 'Amr ibn Shajara al-Qunki with delight as he gesticulated at the tiny figure in front of him. "He waddles right up to me as if we are best friends! Look at his little fins! Look at how he has no feathers!" He leaned forward and moued his lips.
"You forgot to put your feathers on, didn't you?" he cooed at the nonplussed avian standing about nine feet in front of him. "Didn't you, precious?"
The three-foot-tall black-and-white avian cocked its head back at him before turning and shuffling away.[1] Ibn Shajara's face fell. But he couldn't hold the disappointment for long.
Not when it waddled like that.
"They're not even that good to eat," shouted one of the crew from down the beach. "Why are you fixated on them?"
"Well, aren't you?" Drawing himself up, Ibn Shajara planted his hands at his hips and looked over his shoulder towards where the landing party had gathered to start a fire. Most of them had bundled up in their blankets, a few in the furs they'd traded with the
al-Garbiyyin for earlier in the week. "They're like nothing we've ever seen before, right?"
Someone by the fire sneezed, then sniffled. Most of the crew hunkered deeper into their warm clothing. The creatures here may have been interesting, but Ibn Shajara could see why they might not appreciate the wonder of the creatures he'd taken to calling the
tamayil, for the way it wobbled when it walked. The weather here was cold - colder than even the depths of winter in the north of Al-Andalus, and far more humid. The chill seemed to sink into the flesh and penetrate down to the bone. The men had complained of lethargy and weariness, and glimpses of the sun seemed somehow rare and inadequate here.
The explorer's ebullience dampened. The weather hadn't done them any favours, and neither had the relative poverty of the
al-Garbiyyin who lived north of here, the land they'd called the Deepest South - Janub al-'Amiq. There was, simply, little for them to trade beyond furs and simple things.
"Whatever," he sighed as he dropped roughly into a seat by the fire, where some manner of fish was roasting. "At least it was better than that hideous seabird."
"The smelly one?" someone scoffed.[2]
"The smelly one." Ibn Shajara curled his lips with distaste. Yet another disaster on this voyage. His plan looked sillier and sillier the harder he looked at it: Try to find the southernmost end of the Gharb al-Aqsa, then cut around it to get to whatever the west of Anawak was like. But the Gharb al-Aqsa had stretched further south than he thought, and there had been no cities to find, and while it seemed that the land had begun to curve back to the north here, the land beyond this point seemed inhospitable, cold and empty.
No place for a tired, annoyed crew. Sullen, red-nosed faces looked back at the captain in various states of exhaustion and frustration, and Ibn Shajara looked back at them, unable to suppress a sniffle as the chill bit at his cheeks too.
"I know this has been harder than we thought," he admitted with a sigh.
"By God's eyeteeth it has," someone snapped.
"Okay. Okay, I deserved that. Thanks." Ibn Shajara hung his head with a grimace. "I will tell you what. When the morning comes, we will get back to the ships. The winds blow east from here. If we follow them and veer north, we should make it to the Zadazir and a friendly port with more money. Make sense?"
The proposal hung in the air for a few seconds before, finally, the crew began to nod various degrees of agreement.
Someone sneezed again. Off in the distance, a
tamayil squawked.
~
The shoreline fog was deep and all-consuming. In the dim light of a cloudy dawn, it felt like it was going to swallow Muhammad ibn Al-Mu'izz az-Zamardi whole. The crunch of the snow under his boots felt unseasonal at this time of year, for he'd never truly walked in it. The blanket he'd brought with him barely seemed adequate to stave the moist cold off. It seeped into the creases in his clothing and clung to his muscles, turning his breath to fog and his spit to crystals.
Wherever they'd found, it was misery. The six men who had come with him were the bravest of his crews from all three ships - ships full of men intent already on pursuing rumours of a land where the most daring fishermen from Lishbuna went to find vast catches of fish.[3] To find actual land was surprising enough. But then, there'd been quite a few discoveries in recent years.
Something about the Farthest West. Ibn Al-Mu'izz could've sworn that was just the Maghurins.
A tap on his shoulder got his attention - Bashir behind him, crossbow in hand. With a frown, Ibn Al-Mu'izz swung past a strange tree - mostly nude of leaves. He paused just long enough to wipe his nose on his sleeve before brushing through a stand of scraggly branches, some kind of bush, before moving towards the distant sound. Something moving in the trees. A person?
He rounded another grove of trees, squinting into the fog to try and spot whatever he could hear. It sounded closer now - possibly even too close. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
"
Isa bin Maryam's beard, what is that?!" one of the crew suddenly shouted in a voice peaking with panic.
"What," Ibn Al-Mu'izz snapped, whirling towards the sound - and he nearly stumbled in wide-eyed shock at the sight of behemoth surging out of the mist. It was taller than any one of them, massive and with an immense, shaggy brow crowned by enormous prongs in the shapes of devilish hands, each big enough around to grasp a strong man and rip his life out. The monstrosity lurched unnaturally and let out a deep, rolling bellow that thundered through the frozen forest like the war cry of some impossible offspring of Iblis.
"
What is that thing?!" one of the crew shrieked. The sound of a crossbow firing rang in Ibn Al-Mu'izz's' ears. There was a woody 'THWOCK' as the bolt smacked into a tree trunk.
"I don't care,
run!" he shouted back at the crew as panic seized him. Whirling, he turned to stagger through the trees, bolting as fast as he could. The crew dashed with him. His leg snagged a stand of shrubbery, and he tumbled, catching himself with effort, throwing a look over his shoulder to try and see if the massive thing was still behind them, or if the mist had swallowed it. He could hear the men with him, shouting "Allahu akbar" as if to vainly defy their own panic. Darting past a tree, he looked behind him again, and turned --
And a pair of hands abruptly snaked out and grabbed him by the biceps. With a yelp, Ibn Al-Mu'izz was pulled towards a larger tree, suddenly finding himself staring into the dark eyes of a broad-faced man of middle years, heavily wrapped in furs, a spear in his hand and a bow slung over his shoulder. His gaze bored into the Andalusian beyond the wear lines in his face. For a moment, the explorer's breath caught in his throat.
Slowly, the stranger raised his hand to his mouth, eyes locked on Ibn Al-Mu'izz's as if to convey something to him. He held the hand over his lips for a moment, then lowered it to whisper something.
"
Moos." The stranger nodded into the forest.[4]
"Is- is that what that is," Ibn Al-Mu'izz managed through his heavy breathing. In the distance, another bellow echoed through the trees. This time the tone of it was a little different.[5]
The stranger peered at him for a moment. "
Tami tleyawin kil," he said, still keeping his voice down.
Ibn Al-Mu'izz just blinked at him.
The man stared into the explorer's face for a moment before, finally, breathing a sigh and letting go of Ibn Al-Mu'izz's shoulders. The Andalusian stepped back and straightened his blanket, grimacing. "...This is going to make for quite the conversation," he managed to mutter through the whirl of emotions, before he had to bring his arm up to sniffle gracelessly into it. As if the
moos wasn't enough.
Wordlessly, the hunter shrugged off one of the heavy fur garments he was wearing. His expression was stoic as he held the garment open towards Ibn Al-Mu'izz, giving it a brisk shake.
Aware of his crew beginning to gather, Ibn Al-Mu'izz ducked his head gratefully and accepted the gift. The fur was warm as the hunter draped it around him. As he did so, the underbrush rustled again, and more hunters began to appear, one of them a younger man carrying two freshly-shot rabbits.
"Thank you," Ibn Al-Mu'izz attempted, folding his hands together and dipping his head as if to somehow convey gratitude with his body language alone. He'd never tried this before - speaking with someone he had no common language with whatsoever. "Thank you. Thank. You."
The strangers - about four of them, all armed and in layers of fur - looked among themselves. Then, all of a sudden, the young man with the rabbits laughed heartily, waving his hand towards the group of Muslims. He said something broadly that Ibn Al-Mu'izz couldn't follow, but he could see the patient smile breaking across the first hunter's face.
The first hunter said something. He gestured with one hand towards the explorers before beginning to step back into the thinning fog.
"W-what do we do?" asked one of the crew.
Ibn Al-Mu'izz blinked twice before pulling the fur cape tighter around himself. "...They want us to come with them. So let's go with them."
"Are you sure that's wise?"
"No." He grimaced. "But I'm sure they're good people."
[1] In which the Andalusians meet a penguin.
[2] Someone made the mistake of shooting a southern giant petrel. No, they didn't eat it. It's called the stinker for a reason.
[3] Not exactly Basque fishermen.
[4] In which the Andalusians meet a moose.
[5] The Mi'kmaq hunt moose through a number of means, including by imitating moose calls. If you haven't guessed, Ibn Shajara found Tierra del Fuego and Ibn Al-Mu'izz found Nova Scotia.
SUMMARY:
1364: The explorer 'Amr ibn Shajara al-Qunki reaches Janub al-'Amiq, the southern tip of the Gharb al-Aqsa.
1365: Muhammad ibn Al-Mu'izz az-Zamardi reaches the lands of the Mi'kmaq people, in the cold northern reaches of the Gharb al-Aqsa. He encounters a moose and then sits down for a meal of rabbit with a group of Mi'kmaq hunters.
