48th of Spring, 515
Aboard the trading fluyt Magpie
The Deep Sea, Beyond Abura, in the Outer Ocean
------------------------------------------------------------
There were seven knotholes in the three broad planks above Minnie’s berth. She was inimately familiar with each. She had spent hour after hour examining them, their peculiarities, the way a waver in one resembled a snub-nosed dog, and another looked something like a drunkard’s swollen lip. They were old, varnished naturally with the sweat, oil, and grime of 70 years of sailors sleeping in this berth - it had, before a refit, been a junior officer’s cabin, and it looked it. A case for a sextant still hung on one wall, even. All these things - even the knots - had interested her in the first days, in the way that a new adventure presents all of its accouterments as being pregnant to bursting with possibilities.
But over time, they the possibilities had slowly dwindled. Partly it was the sheer stillness of the sea. Partly it was that she found that while she was not seasick walking the decks, she grew nauseous if she tried to write for too long, and so her work had been somewhat curtailed. Partly it was that she had not curtailed the work enough, and so the attendant nausea had a way of making the world seem empty and sad.
PArtly, it was the sea itself. She’d grown up as a harbor rat, practically, of course, but she was no sailor, and had never, until now, been past the harbor, and even in the harbor, on very little bigger than a rowboat. But now the fluyt, with its chubby hull and snubbed bow rode the great waves of the sea proper, the outer sea, the sea that went nowhere.
“Not nowhere,” she had, in her general solitude, begun finding it easier to talk to herself, “To the stars. Like the ship that Wrenmae would have sailed on at the end of the book.”
And that, again, brought Lanie to mind.
The voice of the sea was a mourning voice, droning and low and whispery-moaning, it was a voice that spoke of ended things, of lost hopes, of faraway love. Lanie came to her mind more and more often here.
“She’s probably never been sailing, I guess. She’d kill the entire crew. I wonder if the wind in the mountains sound like this.”
She’d had no reason to think that Lanie was in the mountains particularly, but once, when she was young, she’d seen a painting of a woman walking alone and forlorn on a track high in the mountains, with no other living soul in sight, and the image had attached itself to her mind, probably in large part because the woman’s face was hidden by a large traveling hat, so Minnie had been able to project the face she knew so intimately into it.
She sighed, and came on deck, and was surprised to realize it was the middle of the night. The captain had respected her desire for quiet and anonymity, perhaps better than she’d wanted, and so meals came, more or less, when Minnie thought to pick something up from the cook, who had gathered enough of her habits to keep something aside each day for her. Cold porridge, pease congealed into a gelatin around a bone of salted mutton. IT did not matter to Minnie, food was food. But it meant that she had no real markers in her days in the sunless cabin.
In truth, she mostly appreciated it. She had, with a winter that lacked much interaction with others, still not quite returned to the diurnal habits of the outside world, with its sense of ‘morning’ and ‘mealtime’ and ‘bedtime’, and for all that her freedom was precious to her, now, more than ever, she still had not quite gotten used to the sheer… bigness of a world outside of walls, with a sun over her head staring at her. She was beginning to enjoy it, but still, sometimes, a tiny cabin where, if she liked, she could let the light out and shut the door and none would mind, was a gentle blessing.
But not now. The thought of Lanie had grown too heavy, and she needed air, now, needed to be in a sky big enough that it could, possibly, reach to whatever strange road Lanie found herself on today.
The dark sky was clear and the stars were heavy to bursting. The wind was rough with salt and the sails were so full of it that they looked like sculptured marble in the star shine. Minnie went to the boat’s gunwales and leaned on them, her feet bare on the rough planks, her hair tied inside a kerchief. Her eyes, in the wind, were terribly conscious of their lack of spectacles, and it gave her a kind of exhibistionist thrill. She slid a finger between the buttons of her shirt, and touched gently the flesh of her belly, tracing the dried ink there with a fingertip: M-A-R-A. It was an absent habit. She was not used to it, yet - Mara had always refused to write her own name. But she was gone now, gone like everyone else, another scar painted onto her skin….
She shook her head, and sighed. The sea went on, and on, and on before her, fading so seamlessly into the horizon that it was disorienting.
“Oh my lost ones….”
A song rose behind her and she closed her eyes listening to it: she thought at first she did not know it, but then she recognized it: a tenor solo from the Cantata on the Valerian:
In the day of of Fire, I woke to a cold clear water,
In the day of Fire , I drank deep.
I filled my belly with the sweetness of an earth,
And my heart pangs came,
Like regret for a world not lost,
Like mourning for the future unknown.
In the day of Fire, I looked out on the sea,
And the sun spread long red raysa cross the surf.
In the day of Fire, the burning began with glory in the sea,
Minnie rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. The fabric was rough linen, a sailor’s coat from an old age, cut to a child’s shape. It fit her imperfectly, for she had not gone to tailor, of course, lest Mrs Shears hear something and recognize her. It mad her bust swell the coat open and her hips flare its tails, so that she was not so different from the ship itself, jutting the nose of a bow forward, and the wide hips of a cargo hull.
In the day of Fire, the sea rose up,
I thought she would devour me,
I though Laviku had grown angry,
In the day of Fire, he pulled me down to the very silt,
To the very sand and stone,
And set the sea above me.
She sang with a creaking whispery voice, and her pitch was terribly imperfect, but she sang it anyway, and her voice wrapped into the rush of the waves. She felt like she sang wit the sea, a weak wave in a great chorus, or with the wind. And the wind, it sang to the whole world, even to the mountains to lonely paths.
And a voice came back to her from the water, then, it was like a rosined bow against her own heart’s string.
Oh, but the sea! The terror of her love!
Oh but the sea! The horror of her sweetness!
She swallowed me because she wished to hold me safe,
And closer, more intimate,
Than merely arms around me,
Like lovers, and like more than lovers.
And Minnie, in the midst of her dreaminess, finally thought to wonder who had been singing. Looking up and behind her in the ratlines, an old sailor rested, now silent and solemn, looking out to the sea, and she knew the first voice had been him. And she followed his eyes into the sea, and there, by the keel, as the ship raced on , she saw a long, silver seal’s-tale, slender pale arms, a thin, muscled body with a band of blue across the chest, and two eyes, deep, deep eyes. They were blue, and filled with the pathos of her song, practically pouring the lover-the-sea from them. IF the moment had been any stiller, Minnie thought, the eyes themselves would have sung.
The face looked back to her and smiled.
“And who art thou, child of the North?” The voice was soft, but it blended so harmoniously into the groan of timbers and the rush of the wake and the pale whisper of wind, that it carried to Minnie’s ears with a clarity that Minnie could not manage in a silent lecture hall.
She thought, of sudden, that she should have been frightened. But she could not manage to be so. Her voice came wild and unhindered by expectation.
“Philomena.” she said, and her voice curled int he wind like a baby’s fine hair, “You are a fair voice, Mussy o’ the Sea.”
She heard the stillness of the sailor behind her, and heard the ghost of smile on the lips of the Akvatari.
“Philomena, Philomena…” and the words themselves were indistinguishable from song. Minnie had, until that day, never really thought her name could be beautiful, but ever after, in her dreams, her name would come to her in sweet moments, with those light, musical trips of tongue. Phi-lo-may-na, “What brings thee to the sorrowing isle, Fair Philomena?”
“Your eyes… remind me of… of…” She started to form the word, the name: Qalaya. But the Akvatari stopped her taking her wings behind her and fluttering a spray of diamond droplets behind her as they wings threw her into the air, and she set a damp finger to Minnie’s lips. Minnie kissed it and the Akvatari smiled.
“Nemgeress, is my name, sister,” and the eyes were broad and still,l just in front of Minnie’s own. She reached a hand to Minnie’s gloved hand then, and very quietly slid the cloth backward, to look at the back of it - the ‘Q' shone on the metallic skin. The woman smiled, and raised an eyebrow, covering it again, “Thou wouldst come with me? I ask it of thee, Philomena.”
Minnie looked at the deep eyes, and her voice fell to a hoarse whisper, “I… I would, but… I ha' oaths for keeping, I have… a work, what She has given me…”
Nemgeress smiled, and her smile carried a sorrow that would have felled a saint. Minnie felt her eyes grow damp.
“Philomena, beloved of thy Mistress... one who weeps alone can take the hour of weeping together, at least? As a balm.”
Minnie said nothing at this, but her heart beat faster, at this. She nodded, mutely, and took the woman’s hand. She was small, and the woman, with some grace still, lowered her into the water of the sea. The saltwater sucked Minnie’s skirt to her legs, and her coat grow leaden and cold around her. The Akvatari wrapped an arm around her, and began, with languorous beats of her strong tail, to swim them out, out, into the endless sea. The undulations of the tail were like an urgent, wonderful stroke against Minnie’s legs. Minnie looked back, and the sailor wept openly in the ratlines. His voice called out with desperation.
“Lady Akvatari! When will ye come for me?”
Nemgeress’s smile was a movement of the entire body, an aching, sorrow-filled song, and Minnie felt it through the water, like a tattoo against her back. It was all the response she gave the sailor.
They swam, and Minnie watched, as the ink on her skin began to dissolve, leaving thin grey trails behind them.
x
Aboard the trading fluyt Magpie
The Deep Sea, Beyond Abura, in the Outer Ocean
------------------------------------------------------------
There were seven knotholes in the three broad planks above Minnie’s berth. She was inimately familiar with each. She had spent hour after hour examining them, their peculiarities, the way a waver in one resembled a snub-nosed dog, and another looked something like a drunkard’s swollen lip. They were old, varnished naturally with the sweat, oil, and grime of 70 years of sailors sleeping in this berth - it had, before a refit, been a junior officer’s cabin, and it looked it. A case for a sextant still hung on one wall, even. All these things - even the knots - had interested her in the first days, in the way that a new adventure presents all of its accouterments as being pregnant to bursting with possibilities.
But over time, they the possibilities had slowly dwindled. Partly it was the sheer stillness of the sea. Partly it was that she found that while she was not seasick walking the decks, she grew nauseous if she tried to write for too long, and so her work had been somewhat curtailed. Partly it was that she had not curtailed the work enough, and so the attendant nausea had a way of making the world seem empty and sad.
PArtly, it was the sea itself. She’d grown up as a harbor rat, practically, of course, but she was no sailor, and had never, until now, been past the harbor, and even in the harbor, on very little bigger than a rowboat. But now the fluyt, with its chubby hull and snubbed bow rode the great waves of the sea proper, the outer sea, the sea that went nowhere.
“Not nowhere,” she had, in her general solitude, begun finding it easier to talk to herself, “To the stars. Like the ship that Wrenmae would have sailed on at the end of the book.”
And that, again, brought Lanie to mind.
The voice of the sea was a mourning voice, droning and low and whispery-moaning, it was a voice that spoke of ended things, of lost hopes, of faraway love. Lanie came to her mind more and more often here.
“She’s probably never been sailing, I guess. She’d kill the entire crew. I wonder if the wind in the mountains sound like this.”
She’d had no reason to think that Lanie was in the mountains particularly, but once, when she was young, she’d seen a painting of a woman walking alone and forlorn on a track high in the mountains, with no other living soul in sight, and the image had attached itself to her mind, probably in large part because the woman’s face was hidden by a large traveling hat, so Minnie had been able to project the face she knew so intimately into it.
She sighed, and came on deck, and was surprised to realize it was the middle of the night. The captain had respected her desire for quiet and anonymity, perhaps better than she’d wanted, and so meals came, more or less, when Minnie thought to pick something up from the cook, who had gathered enough of her habits to keep something aside each day for her. Cold porridge, pease congealed into a gelatin around a bone of salted mutton. IT did not matter to Minnie, food was food. But it meant that she had no real markers in her days in the sunless cabin.
In truth, she mostly appreciated it. She had, with a winter that lacked much interaction with others, still not quite returned to the diurnal habits of the outside world, with its sense of ‘morning’ and ‘mealtime’ and ‘bedtime’, and for all that her freedom was precious to her, now, more than ever, she still had not quite gotten used to the sheer… bigness of a world outside of walls, with a sun over her head staring at her. She was beginning to enjoy it, but still, sometimes, a tiny cabin where, if she liked, she could let the light out and shut the door and none would mind, was a gentle blessing.
But not now. The thought of Lanie had grown too heavy, and she needed air, now, needed to be in a sky big enough that it could, possibly, reach to whatever strange road Lanie found herself on today.
The dark sky was clear and the stars were heavy to bursting. The wind was rough with salt and the sails were so full of it that they looked like sculptured marble in the star shine. Minnie went to the boat’s gunwales and leaned on them, her feet bare on the rough planks, her hair tied inside a kerchief. Her eyes, in the wind, were terribly conscious of their lack of spectacles, and it gave her a kind of exhibistionist thrill. She slid a finger between the buttons of her shirt, and touched gently the flesh of her belly, tracing the dried ink there with a fingertip: M-A-R-A. It was an absent habit. She was not used to it, yet - Mara had always refused to write her own name. But she was gone now, gone like everyone else, another scar painted onto her skin….
She shook her head, and sighed. The sea went on, and on, and on before her, fading so seamlessly into the horizon that it was disorienting.
“Oh my lost ones….”
A song rose behind her and she closed her eyes listening to it: she thought at first she did not know it, but then she recognized it: a tenor solo from the Cantata on the Valerian:
In the day of of Fire, I woke to a cold clear water,
In the day of Fire , I drank deep.
I filled my belly with the sweetness of an earth,
And my heart pangs came,
Like regret for a world not lost,
Like mourning for the future unknown.
In the day of Fire, I looked out on the sea,
And the sun spread long red raysa cross the surf.
In the day of Fire, the burning began with glory in the sea,
Minnie rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. The fabric was rough linen, a sailor’s coat from an old age, cut to a child’s shape. It fit her imperfectly, for she had not gone to tailor, of course, lest Mrs Shears hear something and recognize her. It mad her bust swell the coat open and her hips flare its tails, so that she was not so different from the ship itself, jutting the nose of a bow forward, and the wide hips of a cargo hull.
In the day of Fire, the sea rose up,
I thought she would devour me,
I though Laviku had grown angry,
In the day of Fire, he pulled me down to the very silt,
To the very sand and stone,
And set the sea above me.
She sang with a creaking whispery voice, and her pitch was terribly imperfect, but she sang it anyway, and her voice wrapped into the rush of the waves. She felt like she sang wit the sea, a weak wave in a great chorus, or with the wind. And the wind, it sang to the whole world, even to the mountains to lonely paths.
And a voice came back to her from the water, then, it was like a rosined bow against her own heart’s string.
Oh, but the sea! The terror of her love!
Oh but the sea! The horror of her sweetness!
She swallowed me because she wished to hold me safe,
And closer, more intimate,
Than merely arms around me,
Like lovers, and like more than lovers.
And Minnie, in the midst of her dreaminess, finally thought to wonder who had been singing. Looking up and behind her in the ratlines, an old sailor rested, now silent and solemn, looking out to the sea, and she knew the first voice had been him. And she followed his eyes into the sea, and there, by the keel, as the ship raced on , she saw a long, silver seal’s-tale, slender pale arms, a thin, muscled body with a band of blue across the chest, and two eyes, deep, deep eyes. They were blue, and filled with the pathos of her song, practically pouring the lover-the-sea from them. IF the moment had been any stiller, Minnie thought, the eyes themselves would have sung.
The face looked back to her and smiled.
“And who art thou, child of the North?” The voice was soft, but it blended so harmoniously into the groan of timbers and the rush of the wake and the pale whisper of wind, that it carried to Minnie’s ears with a clarity that Minnie could not manage in a silent lecture hall.
She thought, of sudden, that she should have been frightened. But she could not manage to be so. Her voice came wild and unhindered by expectation.
“Philomena.” she said, and her voice curled int he wind like a baby’s fine hair, “You are a fair voice, Mussy o’ the Sea.”
She heard the stillness of the sailor behind her, and heard the ghost of smile on the lips of the Akvatari.
“Philomena, Philomena…” and the words themselves were indistinguishable from song. Minnie had, until that day, never really thought her name could be beautiful, but ever after, in her dreams, her name would come to her in sweet moments, with those light, musical trips of tongue. Phi-lo-may-na, “What brings thee to the sorrowing isle, Fair Philomena?”
“Your eyes… remind me of… of…” She started to form the word, the name: Qalaya. But the Akvatari stopped her taking her wings behind her and fluttering a spray of diamond droplets behind her as they wings threw her into the air, and she set a damp finger to Minnie’s lips. Minnie kissed it and the Akvatari smiled.
“Nemgeress, is my name, sister,” and the eyes were broad and still,l just in front of Minnie’s own. She reached a hand to Minnie’s gloved hand then, and very quietly slid the cloth backward, to look at the back of it - the ‘Q' shone on the metallic skin. The woman smiled, and raised an eyebrow, covering it again, “Thou wouldst come with me? I ask it of thee, Philomena.”
Minnie looked at the deep eyes, and her voice fell to a hoarse whisper, “I… I would, but… I ha' oaths for keeping, I have… a work, what She has given me…”
Nemgeress smiled, and her smile carried a sorrow that would have felled a saint. Minnie felt her eyes grow damp.
“Philomena, beloved of thy Mistress... one who weeps alone can take the hour of weeping together, at least? As a balm.”
Minnie said nothing at this, but her heart beat faster, at this. She nodded, mutely, and took the woman’s hand. She was small, and the woman, with some grace still, lowered her into the water of the sea. The saltwater sucked Minnie’s skirt to her legs, and her coat grow leaden and cold around her. The Akvatari wrapped an arm around her, and began, with languorous beats of her strong tail, to swim them out, out, into the endless sea. The undulations of the tail were like an urgent, wonderful stroke against Minnie’s legs. Minnie looked back, and the sailor wept openly in the ratlines. His voice called out with desperation.
“Lady Akvatari! When will ye come for me?”
Nemgeress’s smile was a movement of the entire body, an aching, sorrow-filled song, and Minnie felt it through the water, like a tattoo against her back. It was all the response she gave the sailor.
They swam, and Minnie watched, as the ink on her skin began to dissolve, leaving thin grey trails behind them.
x
