At last he wiped his eyes and straightened. He was preparing to enter the cottage when a horse huffed in the lane. Iliff wheeled, surprised to find a Garott dismounting. Iliff sensed it was the same one who had been to the cottage earlier, who had delivered Ogden’s message to Skye.
“My apologies,” the Garott said, jogging up. “In my haste, I forgot to deliver this.”
He held out a small chest. Upon accepting the chest, Iliff stood there a moment looking it over. It was too delicate to be of Garott craftsmanship, he decided. Something shifted inside.
“What is it?”
“Ogden wanted it delivered to Skye,” the man said. “It belonged to her mother.”
* * *
Iliff turned from the rekindled stove and watched Skye trace the lines in the wood with her finger. The sides of the chest held small panels, each one with a different carved image. The one Skye touched now showed a quiet stream with reeds growing on the near side and mountains rising beyond. She laughed softly and lay her hand over the top of the chest.
“I can feel her essence here,” she said.
“Yes?”
She smiled and nodded. “There was a shelf in her drawing room. It is where this chest used to sit.” She turned the chest slowly and gazed on the other panels. “I cannot believe it was not consumed in the fire. It is barely marked.”
“The old Keep was ransacked, according to the messenger,” Iliff said. “Soldiers made off with whatever they could grab. Ogden sent out word of reward for the return of anything that had once belonged to your father or mother. A former soldier, one in Ogden’s own settlement, in fact, came forward with the chest.”
“I’m afraid to open it,” Skye said.
“Whatever for?”
She lifted her eyes to Iliff’s. “I want so badly to find something inside. Something to show me… I don’t know. Who she was. I was so young, Iliff. I only knew her as a child knows her mother.”
Iliff looked over the chest. “How do you even open it?”
“It’s here,” Skye said, indicating the front panel. “When you press it, the panel comes to. Turn it once round and replace it, and the lid lifts. My mother used to let me do it.”
“Can you show me?”
“You are trying to trick me into opening it.”
Iliff laughed. “If you do not, curiosity will eat me clean through.”
As warmth spread from the stove, Skye looked back on the box. “It’s silly, I know. Trying to savor these final moments before finding that there might not be anything meaningful inside.” She laughed and shook her head. “As though the chest is not enough.”
With that, she pressed her thumbs into the upper corners of the front panel. With a click, the panel separated from the chest. She turned it once around. The click of the panel’s return was louder. A thin shadow appeared beneath the lid of the chest where one had not been.
Skye lifted the lid and pulled her breath in.
From where he sat beside her, Iliff caught a faint glinting. Skye reached into the chest and drew out a silver hand mirror and hairbrush. She looked on the mirror for a moment before setting it aside. She lifted the brush and ran her fingers over the soft bristles.
“Our hair,” she whispered.
Some of the strands in the bristles were strong and silver, others fine and golden. And for a moment, Iliff glimpsed Skye as a girl, seated on a low bench. A handsome woman stood above her, running the brush through Skye’s shining hair. He knew the woman to be the Queen.
“She’s beautiful,” Iliff said.
The image soon dissipated, and Iliff became aware that Skye’s hand was back inside the chest lifting out several sheets of folded parchment. Iliff watched her open them, watched her eyes absorb the written words.
“It is a letter from my mother,” she said.
“A letter to whom?”
For a moment, Skye’s eyes appeared to recall their blue and luster of old. The kitchen around them swam with light. Skye lowered the sheets of parchment and turned toward him.
“To me,” she said.
Chapter 9
Iliff stoked the stove and prepared food for them as Skye read the letter. He worked quietly, all the while watching her from the corner of his eye, waiting to learn what she had discovered. But every time Skye reached the final sheet of parchment, she began again at the first. It was not until they had eaten that she set the letter aside and seemed, at last, to return to the room.
“It is the Legend of the Sun,” she said. “Just as my mother used to tell it to me, almost to the word.”
“Yes?”
“Here,” she said, handing over the parchments. “But the last passage is odd, Iliff. The words become almost a riddle. I do not recall her ever speaking them to me.”
Iliff’s eyes followed the elegant hand of her mother. The first pages told the Legend of the Sun as he had come to know it through Skye: the common origin of Fythe and Garott, the Forgetting, the ancient king who sought to restore their immortality by banishing those with midnight hair and eyes. The stories were vivid and lyrical, carrying Iliff far away. And then there came the story of the Mountain rising above the clouds. The Mountain guarded by something large and fearsome. The same Mountain that climbed to the Sun.
He turned at last to the final passage and read:
Many there go, but none do pass.
For when one goes, it is night, alas.
A seam I seek, but none I’ve seen.
Only sheets of pale and sleep and dream.
“What do you make of it?” Skye asked.
Iliff shook his head as he read again.
“When I see the words,” Skye said, “when I feel them, I am back in Mother’s drawing room, in that place of endless snowfall.”
Iliff read the passage a third time, this time remembering to feel the words as well. Suddenly, the words became more than words. They cohered into an image, indistinct though it was. A confusion of white. Iliff blinked through the image and read the final passage once more.
“She found it,” he said in surprise. “Your mother found it.”
“The Mountain?”
“No, no, the wall. The one Adramina spoke of. Though I don’t suppose your mother was searching for it.”
When Iliff looked up, he saw Skye’s brows pinching in, just as they used to do when she was a girl.
“The one we cannot see with our eyes,” he continued, talking faster. He stood with the parchments. “The one we haven’t been able to feel, though we have felt it, Skye. We just didn’t know it.”
Skye shook her head slightly.
“Look,” he said, placing the parchment before her. “‘Sheets of pale and sleep and dream.’”
Suddenly Skye’s eyes alit with understanding.
“The Sea,” she whispered.
“Yes, yes, the Great Sea,” Iliff said. “The Far Place beyond.”
“‘Many there go, but none do pass,’” Skye recited. “‘For when one goes, it is night, alas.’”
“Exactly! It was not fine snowfall you saw in your mother’s drawing room that morning, but sea mist.”
While Skye read over her mother’s words, Iliff paced the length of the kitchen, his heart bounding inside his chest. All day long, their situation had appeared more hopeless than ever. There had been his failure to feel anything from the bluff, the old woman’s ominous words in the market, the tired, tired lines of Skye’s face upon his return. But now they knew the way.
They knew the way to the Sun.
“We should be careful,” Skye said. The gray cast of her voice made Iliff pause. “She may have found the wall, but she did not find a way through. At least not when she wrote this to me, which was shortly before the attack. She must have had some premonition of her end.”
Iliff stood before the kitchen window where snow continued to fall. “‘A seam I seek, but none I’ve seen,’” he spoke flatly. He walked back to Skye and placed his hands on her shoulders.
“The
Fythe have long believed the Far Place to be our final rest,” she said, holding to one of his hands. “And by our beliefs, it is so. If we are ever to recall our immortality, our true origin, then it makes sense that we would have to penetrate through this belief and discover something beyond.”
“Then there is hope…”
“But how, Iliff? Only the fallen pass to the Far Place. And once fallen, our wills are no longer our own. We surrender to the age-old beliefs of our ancestors. The same beliefs that guide our boats to that distant shore and place us under the hypnotic gaze of Dyothe, where we sleep eternal.”
“But you and I, Skye, we are not fallen. We could go there.”
“The passage is not for the living. It is why Mother, despite her ample powers, never found a way through. The Great Sea is aptly named, Iliff. We would never make the voyage. Indeed, the voyage would doom us.”
* * *
Tradd returned from the shipyard in the late afternoon. Iliff listened to him kick his boots off in the anteroom and shuck his coat. He ducked into the kitchen, his large eyes already seeking the stew he had no doubt begun to smell long before entering the cottage. Like Troll before him, he possessed a discerning nose. Tradd ate beside the stove, his knees pulled in. He did not seem to notice the melting snow that dripped from his hair and made a small riverbed of his brow, so busy was he spooning the stew past his lips.
“So,” Iliff said. “What did you work on today?”
“We’re building a barge,” Tradd answered between slurps.
“Another one?”
Iliff was thankful that Tradd had not mentioned funeral skiffs. There had been enough talk of death that day. Iliff thought now about the township’s three barges, all built since the Great Battle. The first two transported goods between the township and the Garott settlements on the lake’s far shore. The third, a larger, more durable barge, sailed the seacoast twice a month to trade with the settlements farther east. On a few occasions, he and Skye had ridden the barge on official visits.
“Yeah, we’re using the big timbers we felled last week,” Tradd said. “The ones from the swamp.” He swiped a thick finger around the bowl and sucked it clean before setting the bowl beside him. “Filo says they’re the best wood for the rafts because they’re light and don’t take on water.”
“When will it be ready?” Skye asked.
Iliff turned at her voice. She had slept most of the afternoon, and he was pleased to see her in fairer color than when she had gone to rest. The day had been hard on her. He pulled a chair for her at the kitchen table.
“Well, we’ve just finished lashing the raft together,” Tradd said, smiling at Skye’s presence. He did not always get to see her in the evenings. “And the masts are about ready to be put up. I guess all that’s left is the deck and cabins. Well, the steering oar, too.”
“We can’t wait to see it,” Iliff said.
“Yes,” Skye agreed.
Following a third helping of stew, Tradd stretched his legs out in evident contentment, and the three of them remained around the wood stove, talking of small things over warm cups of lenk. Iliff cherished nights as these and wondered how many more he would be allowed. The thought made his heart twinge. He looked at Skye, then past her, where the falling snow continued to pile into small drifts alongside the neighboring cottage.
Finally, when it was too dark to see outside, and the snow could only be felt by its steady raking, Tradd began to nod. Iliff helped Tradd to his bed and returned to find Skye placing the letter back beneath the hand mirror and hairbrush.
“There is still hope,” he said.
She nodded without looking up.
Then she closed the lid to the chest and bade him goodnight. Iliff remained behind to fill the woodstove. Before retiring, he looked around the kitchen one more time, not knowing this would be their final night gathered here.
Chapter 10
Iliff drifted off that night, but never quite fell asleep. He remained instead in an in-between realm where the sounds of snow and Skye’s deepening breaths mingled into images too fleeting to be called dreams. He saw the wood chest, the fine words on the parchment. He saw the mist of the Great Sea, where his and Skye’s awareness had always turned to threads and broken apart. He tried to peer into the lands beyond, the Far Place, but the harder he pushed, the deeper and whiter grew the mist.
Iliff awakened long enough to move nearer to Skye before drifting off again.
This time he saw Depar. But he did not just see him, he felt him. The old man lay quiet in the infirmary, listening to the breaths of snow over the rooftop, unable to sleep. Iliff felt the old man’s frailty, his isolation, for he was alone in the darkness. He was alone in the knowledge that this night would be his final among the living, his final among the Fythe. Depar could do nothing now but lay quiet and recall his sins, his breaches.
His breaches.
Iliff sat upright.
“What is it?” Skye asked, stirring beside him.
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s the answer.”
“What’s the answer?”
“Depar.”
“The answer to what?”
“The seam,” he said.
“The seam,” she repeated.
Iliff felt the space in his chest, the space they shared, begin to stir with understanding.
“Depar is the seam,” she said.
“Yes,” Iliff said, laughing and taking her hands. “It was what I brought up on our walk the other day, this feeling that he had not returned just for himself, but for the benefit of us all. And now it seems clear. Depar is a breacher of walls. He may be able to deliver us there. All the way to the Far Place.”
Iliff and Skye dressed quickly and ran through the snow. The hour was late and the entire township dark. The lantern Iliff carried seemed to throw up walls of snowfall around them. When they reached the infirmary, they were out of breath. Snow crumbled from their cloaks as they shed them and hung them beside the door. The inside of the infirmary was dark, save for the stove that burned in one corner. Iliff lifted the lantern until it cast its light over the bed closest to the stove. It was the lone occupied bed in the long room of them.
He and Skye stood on either side, looking down on the frail figure beneath the piles of covering. Though the lantern light shone full on the old man’s face, he did not stir. The air around him smelled grim. He won’t live through the night, the Garott woman had said. Iliff reached for one of his bony arms, relieved to feel some warmth there.
“Depar,” he whispered, shaking him gently.
The old man gasped in surprise. His eyelids crinkled opened, and pale unseeing pupils shone wide in the light.
“Do not be afraid,” Skye said.
Depar had opened his mouth as if to cry out, but made no sound now, not even to breathe. He seemed to be listening, his eyes moving slowly to either side.
“Do you know who I am?” Skye asked.
The old man’s throat clicked as he swallowed. He nodded slightly.
Skye’s eyes touched on Iliff’s before returning to Depar, the man who had betrayed her father and whose treachery doomed her mother. She appeared to hesitate before placing her hand on his other arm.
“I come on behalf of the Fythe,” she said. “I come to accede to your request. We will grant your Final Passage.”
Depar’s mouth remained opened, his naked gums nearly translucent in the lantern light. Iliff tried to perceive his thoughts, but felt only relief, like water releasing from an opened dike.
“But there is a condition,” Skye said.
Depar’s throat clicked again, but he did not move.
“Just as you weakened your wall for the Garott, now, by your passage, must you weaken the wall that separates the living from the fallen. For should we get beyond this wall in your wake, should we pass through the Far Place, your debt for your treachery will be repaid and repaid many fold. Those once condemned to sleep eternal will awaken. Father and Mother among them.
I know this is what you want. I know this is why you have come.”
Very slowly, Depar nodded his head.
“Can you do this?” Iliff asked.
Another nod.
“Then rest now,” Skye said, and Iliff felt the warmth in her words. She had forgiven him. “Be at peace.”
Depar’s unseeing eyes remained on hers. The breath that escaped his mouth was thin and lingering. When at last he sealed his withered lips, they remained upturned, giving strange life to the rest of his face. But Iliff saw that his eyes had dimmed. Soon the corners of his lips stopped moving as well. Iliff lifted his hand from Depar’s arm and carefully closed his flaccid eyelids.
* * *
The next morning, Skye called an emergency meeting of the Assembly. Once more, she and Iliff hurried the length of the township, but with her mother’s folded letter in hand this time. The snow had stopped falling some hours before, and here and there men bent over shovels, clearing snow from the lanes.
“Stype knows the legends, of course, if only as stories,” Skye said as they walked. “But the others only know the seasonal festivals and ceremonies that have been handed down.” She lifted her mother’s letter. “I am not sure how they will receive this. I am not sure that they will understand. But those who remember my mother will trust her word, and those who do not, will respect her memory. I see no other way to explain what we have done, what we are doing.”
“No, neither do I,” Iliff said.
“Perhaps I should have told them earlier of the Sun,” Skye said. “But then again… Fythe beliefs are limiting, yes, but they give the illusion of constancy. And with this comes a certain comfort. Why challenge the old beliefs, I’ve always thought, unless there is something greater to rise in their stead? Until now, there was no certainty of the Mountain. Still there is not, I suppose. But if it is anywhere, it is beyond the Far Place. I feel it in my heart.”
Final Passage (The Prisoner and the Sun #3) Page 6