Final Passage (The Prisoner and the Sun #3) Page 9

  Maybe the seas will settle, he thought sleepily. Maybe they were through the worst.

  The next wave submerged the entire front of the barge. For a moment, Iliff felt he had no weight. Tremendous aquatic forces pulsed around him, but he was not subject to them. He had become a feather, light and lofty. Then suddenly he was material again, and his arms and legs wrenched in their sockets. Iliff screamed, but water drowned the sound. Round and round he spun. At last he crashed back to the deck, his forehead rapping hard against the planks. The sea filtered away beneath him, but he could not see its foam this time. The deck was black.

  The lantern, he thought. The lantern is out.

  He struggled to sit, but something held his limbs fast. He strained with what little he had, then lay gasping in a pool of salt water. He had become coiled in the ropes, both arms and one leg. He raised his head to where he thought the cabin was and called to Skye. He listened, but heard nothing save the roaring wind. The oar handle was no longer knocking around. Had he tied it down? Or had the oar splintered and been swept away? He closed his eyes and tried to feel for Skye, but the mist returned, washing over him, washing out everything.

  Iliff’s head fell back to the deck.

  Chapter 14

  Iliff listened to the creaking. It was soft and rhythmic, comforting almost, and sounded in slow time with the gentle undulations that lifted and lowered him. He lay there, his body insensate, his eyes closed. When he inhaled, he was surprised to not taste the burn of salt water. No wind moved past him, either. And yet, above the creaking, he could hear the soft flapping of the sail.

  A warm hand touched his cheek and Iliff opened his eyes. Skye smiled down on him.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Skye…”

  He was in the bed he had tucked her into the night before, his body dry and warm. Across the cabin, the stove crackled, and beside it some broken dishware sat in a swept pile. His drying clothes hung from a peg on the wall. He lifted his arm from the covers to touch her. Angry abrasions shone where the ropes had seized him. Those same ropes had likely saved him.

  “You are unharmed?” he asked her. “You are all right?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “The cabin kept me safe.”

  Holding fast to the hand that held his cheek, he pressed his eyes closed. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Whatever for?”

  “For losing Depar’s skiff. Last night… I fell asleep at the steering oar.”

  “Fear not,” she whispered. “The sail is full again, we ride the south winds. When I reach out, I can still feel the lands we left, hazy though they are. We are on the right course, Iliff. We will find Depar’s skiff.”

  When Iliff coughed, his chest ached. “I cannot imagine the skiff did not capsize in the night,” he said, recalling the giant swells that had nearly sunk the barge. “That storm…” He coughed again.

  Skye stood and returned with a bowl of hot tea. Iliff recognized its taste, its healing warmth, and guessed that she had given him some during the night. He was about to ask how she had gotten him off the deck, how she had gotten him inside, when she spoke again.

  “Remember, the sea passage is peaceful for the fallen.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “Long has this been the belief. But we, Iliff, we are the living. The beliefs do not provide for our passage.”

  “It is why I should never have lost Depar’s skiff.”

  He pushed the covers from himself and went to sit up beside her. His body felt bruised through and through.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To man the oar.” He thought for a moment. “Assuming there still is an oar.”

  “Here,” she said. “Let me help you.”

  She fetched dry clothes and helped him dress. They stood together, Skye beneath his arm, and crossed the small cabin. When Skye pushed the door open, Iliff was met by a rush of wind that was surprisingly temperate, not nearly as bitter as when they had set out the morning before. He blocked the sky’s glare with his forearm and peered up at the full sail. The corner that had torn free was now repaired, he saw. The barge sailed over the low swells.

  “How did you…?”

  “We have help now,” Skye said, turning him slowly.

  At the rear of the barge sat a familiar figure, knees drawn in, fist guiding the oar handle. Not trusting his eyes, Iliff began to limp toward him. Beyond the oar, a small boat trailed the barge from a rope.

  When Iliff was almost to him, Tradd raised his head and smiled shyly.

  * * *

  “I set out late yesterday,” Tradd said. “Rowed as hard as I could. They said you’d left in the morning, so I knew I had a long night ahead.”

  “How did you know where to steer?” Iliff asked from the other side of the oar handle. He was bundled in a blanket, Skye beside him. They sat on a long box from the storage cabin.

  “Filo tied a piece of cloth to the pole,” Tradd said, nodding toward the trailing boat. “He said to keep it pointing straight ahead. That way I’d know I was going north. If the cloth started going right or left, that’s where I had to turn to set it straight again.”

  “But what of the seas?” Iliff said.

  “They got rough, didn’t they?” Tradd chortled. “I had to row harder than ever. It was late when I saw your light. It was pitching this way and that. But then it went out. I rowed straight for where I’d seen it last. Rowed right into the back of the barge. Bang!” He smacked his knee with his hand.

  “You were the one who got me off the deck,” Iliff said.

  “Yeah, but I had to steer the barge straight first. It wasn’t easy.”

  “So that was why I couldn’t hear the oar handle knocking anymore.”

  “By the time I got it straight, it was nearly morning and the seas had calmed,” Tradd went on. “You were near the mast, all tangled up. Skye came out and together we carried you inside. You were so cold, Iliff. Your lips were blue. But Skye said you’d be all right. While she tended to you, I got the sail fixed and the supply cabin straightened out. A couple of the food boxes broke, but nothing spoiled.” He looked up bashfully. “I checked to make sure.”

  It now dawned on Iliff that Tradd had not brought any provisions of his own—no food, no water. He had simply jumped into the boat and set out. Iliff frowned and spoke sternly.

  “It was very foolish of you to come after us like you did,” he said. “What if you had capsized? Or gone off course, even by a little? You never would have found us. And with these winds, you never would have made it back to land. You’d still be drifting, farther and farther out.”

  Tradd lowered his head, and for a moment, he could have been Troll.

  “But, that said…” Iliff laughed and reached over. “I’m glad you’ve come.” He tousled Tradd’s hair and squeezed the back of his neck. “I’m very glad you’ve come. The thought of not seeing you again… It pained us greatly.” He turned to Skye, who smiled and nodded her head.

  “I’ll prepare us something to eat,” she said.

  “I’m sorry for running off,” Tradd said, after Skye had gone into the cabin.

  “No, no, the fault is mine. I didn’t explain…”

  “I didn’t want anything to change. I didn’t want you to go.”

  “I know,” Iliff said. “But you stayed away for so long.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” Tradd’s eyes flicked up to Iliff’s, then fell again to the space between his large boots. “I got lost.”

  “We looked for you.”

  “Really?”

  “For several days,” Iliff said, nodding. “We were on your trail for a time, but then it disappeared in the swamp. At last we were wandering aimlessly, and I had to call off the search.”

  “I didn’t know where I was,” Tradd said, looking around, his eyes large. “Everything was so wet and dark. Then I remembered the tinder pouch. I got the driest things I could find. Old branches and thick leaves. I put them in a pile and set the fungus underneath.
I struck the metal to the flint and made a spark. I breathed on the spark and made fire. A white fire.”

  Iliff nodded, recalling the brilliant flames that had consumed Troll.

  “The fire felt so nice that I fell asleep beside it. And in my dream my father rose from the fire and sat next to me. He spoke to me.”

  “Troll? What… what did he say?”

  “He told me to return to you right away. He told me to go with you to the Sun. That you would need me. You and Skye, both.”

  Iliff thought about this.

  “When I awoke, the ashes had blown away from me in a line even though there was no wind. I knew that was the way out of the swamp. I set out right then. It took almost three whole days to get back.”

  * * *

  Iliff rested in the cabin the remainder of the day while Skye alternately cooked and tended to him. With the seas calm and the wind steady, there was little to do but keep the sail full. Iliff had instructed Tradd to call out at the first sight of Depar’s skiff, but no call came. And the few times Iliff went out to stand on deck, the sea and sky were absent anything but the drifting mist that seemed to isolate them from all else.

  By evening, Iliff felt well enough to spell Tradd at the steering oar. They made a pallet for Tradd in the storage cabin, and soon his snores rattled the length of the barge. Skye joined Iliff beside the oar.

  “How are you doing?” he asked. “Your day has been long.”

  She sat close to him. “I will retire soon.”

  “Your weariness,” he said. “I can feel it.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is heavier than last night’s.”

  “It is the journey, Iliff.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed lightly. “The fallen Fythe go this way,” she said, “to their final sleep. The Sea around us, Iliff, it senses that I am Fythe. It is trying to induce the same deep sleep in me.”

  Iliff spun his head toward her.

  “Do not worry,” she said, rubbing his arm. “It can only claim the fallen.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “It is made so by our beliefs.”

  Iliff turned to the sea, now slate-gray with the coming night. He wondered what would happen to them if they did not find Depar’s skiff, if they could not get through the wall that separated the living from the fallen. Would the Great Sea wrap its mist around them, suffocating their waking as it now stifled their ability to feel through it? Or would it simply become shoreless, condemning them to roam its immensity as though in an endless dream?

  “How long is this journey to be?” Iliff asked.

  “Seven days,” Skye said. “Seven days the fallen drift across the Great Sea.”

  “Seven days,” Iliff repeated.

  They sat there for a time, lifting and dipping over the dimming water. At last Skye kissed Iliff and bade him goodnight. As he watched her walk to the cabin, her shoulders drawn, his only thought was that two days were behind them, which meant just five remained.

  Five days to find Depar’s skiff.

  Chapter 15

  The winds returned that night. Iliff and Tradd tied the sail to half-mast, then navigated the rising swells with the steering oar, all the while pointing the barge north. The job was considerably easier with Tradd’s help, who was rejuvenated despite having had only a few hours rest. Iliff guessed that much of Tradd’s vigor came from his joy at their reuniting, at being side-by-side again. Iliff felt the same way. During a lull, he grasped Tradd’s shoulder.

  “We never could have made it this far without you,” he shouted into his ear.

  Tradd turned to him, his face beaming beneath his dripping locks.

  “I mean that,” Iliff said.

  Sometime after midnight, when the winds and seas had calmed, they opened the sail and took the oar in shifts. Iliff’s turn went without incident. He awakened Tradd, who emerged and took the oar handle in his fist as though it were a long spoon.

  Iliff was just drifting off when he felt something bang into the barge, then scrape the timbers beneath them. He turned to Skye, who remained in a deep sleep. Filo had warned them about shoals, even in the farther seas, and Iliff feared they were in danger of running aground. But soon the regular creaks of their movement returned, and Iliff thought maybe he had dreamt it. He was on the verge of drifting off again when Tradd called from outside.

  “What is it?” Iliff said, stepping out and pulling on his coat.

  “I don’t know, I thought I saw something.” Tradd’s yellow-rimmed eyes shone wide in the dark. “It came from there, then it went under the boat. It was really big, whatever it was.”

  Iliff looked around them, but could see nothing in the night and mist.

  “Fish are larger in the deeper waters,” Iliff said. “It could have been a passing school.”

  They had seen many large fish since starting out. Some had great sails on their backs and jumped from the water in rows and rows. One had even jumped over the barge that day. Others were slender and narrow-snouted, flanking the barge for long distances just beneath the water’s surface. Still others swam in giant circles, peeking out at them from time to time, their faces almost human.

  But Tradd’s eyes looked doubtful as they skittered back and forth.

  “Well, here,” Iliff said, taking a seat on the other side of the steering oar. “I won’t leave you out here alone. We’ll watch the waters together until we’re sure that whatever it was is gone.”

  Though the promise appeared to reassure Tradd, for the next hour he flinched at the slightest slosh or splash from the water. For Iliff’s part, he kept a tight hold on the oar. He sensed, too, that whatever had gone beneath the boat had not been a passing school. But nothing appeared to them now. And when Iliff reached out with his awareness, he sensed nothing profound in the sea around them. All he felt was the mist, deep and drifting, and Skye’s sleep.

  “Are there such things as monsters?” Tradd asked.

  “Do you mean large creatures? Yes, there are those.”

  “Ones that would hurt us?”

  Iliff could hear the tremor in Tradd’s throat. “I don’t think so,” he said gently. “You know, the first time I saw your father, I thought he was a monster. Indeed, I feared for my life.”

  “Really?”

  Iliff chuckled, recalling how Troll had scooped him up and over his back while he had kicked and screamed.

  “Of course that was before I knew him.”

  “What was he like?”

  “You’ve heard the stories.”

  Tradd’s large eyes remained on his.

  “Well, he was extraordinary, your father,” Iliff said, looking off into the night. “He began his life a troll. And most trolls, I’m sorry to say, are wretched cave-dwellers, willing to endure all sorts of horrors for a little reward of gold. But your father was different. He wanted to become more than a troll. That was why he left the mines with me, though I know it terrified him.”

  “The light hurt his eyes,” Tradd said.

  “That’s right,” Iliff said. “That’s why we traveled as we did. In early morning and evening. But little by little, his eyes adapted. And little by little, he learned the ways of the forest.”

  “Is that when he joined the hunter?”

  Iliff nodded. “I was upset with him, as you know. But he only wanted to help. He and I were starving, after all. But it was also that Troll was changed. I did not allow myself to accept it at the time, but yes, he was much changed.”

  “How?”

  “He was no longer a brute, Tradd. No longer a troll.”

  “I remember when we used to live in the woods,” Tradd said, the fear gone from his voice. “He taught me how to build a shelter, how to catch fish. He was large and strong, my father, but always very gentle with me.”

  “Yes, he was gentle with me, too.”

  “I wish he hadn’t passed.”

  “I know,” Iliff said. “But his passing was perhaps his most heroic act. H
e could have done so anywhere. He chose the forest. He wanted to redeem our trespasses as well as the trolls who had destroyed the forest ages before. And now his remains give life to that same forest and will for many, many seasons.”

  Tradd appeared to think about this.

  “Is that why Skye wants to go to the Far Place?” he asked. “To help you and her people?”

  At her mention, Iliff felt his wife bundled deep in their bedding. Her reassurances from the day before about the sleep being unable to claim the living, unable to claim her, seemed faraway now.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  * * *

  Iliff took the first shift at the oar the following evening. The wind was constant and cool and the sea as temperate as it had been since they set out. Skye performed a last check of the mast to see that the ropes were secure and the sail holding up. Iliff watched her climb down from the masthead, her steps on the damp rungs slow and measured. He could feel that she sensed his concern. All that day, when not sleeping, she had remained just absorbed enough in her own doings and just distant enough from his to preclude any more talk of her well-being.

  She lit a lantern now and hung it on a pole that projected from the front of the barge.

  “That should help,” she said.

  She walked to where he sat. “Look at your brow,” she said, smoothing it with her hand. “You worry so much. Depar is still before us.”

  “How do we know?”

  “I feel him.”

  “Feel him? But how? He is…”

  “Fallen,” she said. “I know. I feel him when I sleep.”

  “Is he far?”

  “The image is never clear. I know only that he is before us.”