Tradd nodded and lowered himself into the water. He took a large breath, puffed his cheeks, and plunged from sight. Soon Iliff could hear timbers shift and ropes creak in their drawing. A section of the barge lifted. Tradd emerged just long enough to inhale more air, then descended again.
This went on for the rest of the morning, with Iliff looking from the rope that secured Tradd back to the empty sea before them. Bit by bit, the raft corrected. Less water boiled up through the deck. When Tradd emerged for the last time, the barge felt lighter, as though the craft were riding over the sea again instead of plowing against it. He stood beside Iliff now, water streaming from his trousers, puddling around his gray toes. With his chin raised, he looked from side to side.
“Do you think it’ll come back?” he asked. “The monster?”
“It’s impossible to say. But at least we know how to repel it.” Iliff nodded to the sea before them. “Right now it is the skiff I’m most worried about.”
Skye awakened late that day. Though she had slept long, she hardly appeared rested. The lines that creased her eyes seemed only to have deepened. She came and sat beside Iliff at the steering oar.
“He is still before us,” she reassured him.
“You felt him again?”
She nodded her head.
They sat quietly and listened to Tradd slumber. He had spent the rest of the day lashing down provisions and making a crude shelter of the former supply cabin. Whatever he could not salvage of the cabin, Iliff had him throw overboard. They had to lighten the barge as much as possible. Time was short.
“Why do you still frown?” Skye said.
Iliff lifted his eyes to the sail, which billowed out briefly, then flagged again.
“It has been doing that since late day,” he said. “The winds are faltering, the seas falling flat around us. I hoped the lull would be short-lived, but the winds have not picked up again.”
“It could be that we are close,” Skye said.
“Or that we are being denied passage.”
“Depar is our passage.”
She lay her head against his shoulder. After a moment, she spoke again.
“I feel your doubt.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Share it with me.”
“It’s just…” He looked again at the failing sail. “It all seems so fragile.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re but a tiny vessel on a giant sea. The storm might have capsized us that first night. The serpent might have destroyed us…”
“But they did not,” Skye said. “We have made it beyond them. When Adramina spoke of your journey once, she told you, ‘Greater will become the lands and waters out there, but greater too the guardians that keep them.’”
“‘To get beyond them will demand much of you,’” Iliff finished.
“Yes,” she said. “And it is no accident that you journey with companions. I know about doubt. I know about losing hope. It makes you feel small and alone. Indeed, my hope had begun to wither in the town, until I had little left. But you remained steadfast, Iliff. You restored me. So now I am able to take this hope you gave me, that has flowered inside me, and share it with you in your time of uncertainty.”
She lay a warm hand upon his chest.
“You are not alone, Iliff.”
He smiled and leaned his head to hers.
“We will get there, my love,” she whispered. “Together, we will get there.”
* * *
Iliff awakened often that night to listen for the wind rising, the sound of the sail. At last he could no longer lie still. He dressed and emerged from the cabin, though it was not yet time to take his shift. When he looked up, his heart sank to see the open sail trembling without filling.
“No change?” he asked.
Tradd shook his head.
Iliff walked to the front of the barge. He remembered the way the sea had once sprayed and rumbled around them. Now it barely made a sound. Neither did anything shine from the black night before them.
He joined Tradd beside the steering oar.
“No skiff? No light?” he asked.
Again Tradd shook his head. “Just those.”
Iliff looked over the back of the barge. From the black sea, hundreds of tiny lights sparkled. At first Iliff believed the lights to be moving with the barge, matching their slow progress, but he soon realized that the lights were everywhere and the barge was passing over them.
“When did you notice them?” Iliff asked, unable to turn his gaze.
“I don’t know, maybe an hour ago.”
Iliff took over the steering, and Tradd retired to his shelter. As the night deepened, a faint phosphorescence hovered over the sea, merging with the mist. The effect made Iliff feel alienated and strange. More and more often, he found himself peering into the water at his back, where the lights seemed to be proliferating.
Suddenly, he forced the blade as deep as it would go. He watched the sparkles of lights swim beneath the blade, then around it, fluttering into delightful colors. The blade resisted, as though it were pushing through something viscous. The act was foolish, Iliff knew. The improvised oar could break. But he could not seem to stop himself. It was only when the sail announced that they were veering that he blinked and craned his stiff neck. How much time had just passed? he wondered. His head felt light, as though he were awakening from a pleasant dream. He went to lever the oar from the water, but it held fast.
“What’s this?” he asked in alarm.
He stood on the seat and pushed the handle down with both arms, stopping only when he felt that it was on the verge of snapping. At last, he removed the handle from the tholepins and drew up the entire oar. A cluster of lights rose with it. Iliff stared at the lights, forgetting his irritation with himself for the moment. But no sooner had the oar blade broken the surface than the sparkling lights disappeared. In their stead dripped a long black mass. Iliff frowned and shook his head. Seaweed. The oar had become tangled in black seaweed. He sighed as he unraveled the tendrils of weed from the blade and threw them overboard.
He placed the clean oar back between the pins and steered the barge straight, careful not to glance down into the water.
* * *
Shortly before dawn, a different kind of light arrested Iliff’s attention.
He stood and made his way to the front of the barge. With bleary eyes, he looked on the tiny mote that blinked from the far mist, unable to tell whether it came from a lantern above the water or from the water itself.
“We need more speed,” he muttered.
Iliff looked now to the small boat that Tradd had arrived on. It was the same kind of boat the men had used to tow the barge onto the lake. He awakened Tradd and together they lowered the boat into the water, then pulled it to the front of the barge and tied it fast. The sky was gray now. The phosphorescence had slipped back into the sea, where the sparkles no longer showed amid the waving black.
And yet the single light remained ahead of them. As Iliff hurried to step into the small boat, Tradd’s hand clamped onto his arm.
“No, let me.”
“I need you to steer the barge,” Iliff said.
“You steer, I’ll row. I’m a strong rower.”
Iliff looked from the distant light back to Tradd’s determined eyes. He remembered what Skye had told him the night before about having companions to help him, and he nodded. He handed down the oars and Tradd fit them into the oarlocks. From where Iliff stood, Tradd looked like a man in a child’s toy, his knees drawn up, his elbows jutting over the boat’s sides. Tradd smiled up at him and with four tremendous rows, pulled the tether taught. The barge jerked forward.
“It’s working!” Iliff called. “Just keep her straight.”
Tradd leaned into his work, grunting with each pull. Iliff returned to the steering oar and made small adjustments to their direction. The winds hardly moved the sail now. But as day climbed, it was clear that they were catching up t
o the narrow craft that slid in and out of the far mist.
Seven days the fallen drift over the Great Sea.
Iliff counted the days in his head again. They had been out five. Today would be their sixth. He watched Tradd strain against the sea with the small oars. They were gaining on Depar’s skiff, yes. But how long could they keep this up? How long would the Great Sea allow it?
The answer came at midday. All morning Tradd had waved away Iliff’s offers to spell him, but now he was slowing. Every time he pulled the oars, the muscles of his arms leapt and trembled.
“It’s these blasted weeds!” he called up.
When the oar blades surfaced, Iliff saw the same black tendrils wrapping them round as had bound the steering oar the night before. When Tradd stopped to tear and cast them off, the barge drifted up to the small boat and bumped against it. Iliff raised his gaze to Depar’s skiff, which remained in the middle distance.
At length he convinced Tradd to exchange duties with him. “It could be you’re tired,” he said, steadying the boat for Tradd to step out.
But once in the boat himself, Iliff could see how close to the surface the ragged leaves now swarmed. Only by skimming the water could he move the oars at all. In such a way, Iliff was able to draw the tether taut, but he could not push enough sea away to drag the barge. He stopped after a half hour, his arms on fire, and peered over his shoulder.
Though the mist had thinned, the skiff was more difficult to see.
It was leaving them again.
* * *
Skye awakened late in the day and stood with Iliff on the front deck while Tradd resumed his struggle from the small boat. Iliff and Skye probed the extent of the growth with their shared awareness. To Iliff, the seaweed felt just as unyielding as when he had tried rowing through it.
“We are nearly to the center of where it grows,” Skye said. “If we can push on and push through, our passage will become easier.”
Iliff looked to where the skiff had disappeared almost an hour before. How long would it take for them to get through? he wondered. Another day? And then how much longer to catch up to Depar?
“Is there no way around?” he asked.
Skye smiled wearily and shook her head.
“Might we compel it into submission then? Like with the serpent?”
“The way by which it perceives is too diffuse,” she said. “It is more plant than creature. I’m afraid we haven’t the power to subdue it.”
“Where does it come from?”
“Deep below, Iliff. I cannot feel through it.”
“Neither can I,” he said. “When I try, I only hear a sound, like humming.”
“Yes, it is speaking.”
“Speaking? What does it say?”
“It is calling us down to it.”
Iliff looked into the black seaweed again, recalling his enchantment of the night before. Yes, that is how it had felt. Hundreds and hundreds of lights calling him down into the sea, into their glittering midst.
“To what end?” he asked.
Skye shook her head. “I cannot feel its intention. But I would not trust it.”
By day’s end, the seaweed looked thick enough to walk on, and Tradd could no longer wrest the oars from its hold. The entire barge sat a bit lower in the water. When Iliff peeked between the boards of the deck, he saw the tendrils draping over the great timbers of the raft.
At the same hour that Skye retired for the night, the lights reappeared from the sea. They sparkled ever brighter, casting their phosphorescence well above the water. Iliff leaned over the edge of the deck.
“It’s no good,” Tradd said, breathing hard. “I’ve got nothing left.”
Iliff looked up with a mild start. He had not heard Tradd dock the boat and climb onto the barge.
“What are you looking at?” Tradd asked.
“Don’t you see them?”
“What? The lights?”
Iliff nodded distractedly as he turned back to the water.
Come down.
“Did you hear me?” Tradd asked.
Come inside.
“Hm?”
Come to me.
“I asked what else I could try to get the barge moving?”
Iliff stood slowly. “You stay here,” he said, pulling off his tunic, then each one of his boots. His eyes never moved from the lights.
“Where are you going?”
“There,” Iliff said, pointing.
“Into the sea? Well, let’s at least get a rope around you …”
But Iliff had already stepped off the deck.
Chapter 18
Iliff braced himself for a cold shock, but the sea that enveloped him was as warm and soothing as bathwater. The bruises across his body pulsed pleasantly. Soreness eased from his joints. And the sound! What had once felt as distant humming now resonated all around him, and through him, it seemed. But it was no longer the same sound. Woven within many, many tones, the humming was a song.
Resonant and pure.
So pure that Iliff forgot why he had entered the sea—or that he had even entered it at all.
Leafy tendrils, barely felt, stroked his body and coaxed him downward. He tensed once, not meaning to, and wondered at the tremendous weight wrapping him round. When he began to open his eyes, something brushed them closed, and everything became insubstantial again. Beyond his closed lids, he could see the lights. So many lights. And so much warmer inside them.
Come to me.
Yes, thought Iliff. I will go to you.
How far he descended in those first moments, he could not say. Nor did he care. At one point he was aware of being pulled, then turned. Something smooth and cool ran the length of his arm. Something familiar. Iliff’s mind stirred. But then the long fingers around him reached into his hair and rubbed his scalp, all the while guiding him from whatever he had touched.
The humming rose up to envelope him once more.
Come to me.
Iliff smiled as he yielded again. Yes…
The deeper he descended, the more resonant became the sound and the clearer the light beyond his closed lids. He wondered if this was what it would be like to see the… the… to see the…
His forehead tensed.
He could not complete the thought. That seemed unusual. The fingers that arrived to knead the folds of his brow told him that it was not unusual, that he worried needlessly. He was being taken care of now. He was safe. Iliff began to nod his head, to relent once more, when something grazed his foot. Something cool again.
This time Iliff did not react, not even in thought. He let himself be pulled down. A little farther… a littler farther…
The suddenness with which Iliff shot out his arm required all of his strength and concentration. But now he had it. He had the cool smoothness in his grasp. He felt the tendrils swarming over him, trying to force his arm away by their weight. But he held fast.
The humming swelled around him, becoming more seductive, more insistent.
Let it go.
Come to me.
But the words no longer moved Iliff, for now he was shielding his mind from their influence. Like turbid water settling, his thoughts began to resolve into clarity. The cajoling fingers became binding and sodden. He was aware that they had slipped between his lips to enter his mouth, to breathe for him. The water that ran over his palate tasted briny and putrescent.
But the thing he held to remained solid. Solid and familiar.
He opened his eyes. Green, gaseous light illuminated the long strands of seaweed. They were everywhere, their ragged leaves flipping and fluttering in the pale light. Here and there a large bone jutted forth. The one Iliff held to curved from the tangle beside him in a slow, sad arc. A rib, he thought. The rib of a creature long since lured below and consumed.
Upon this thought, Iliff became aware of prickling across his skin, almost too subtle to be felt. The tendrils that wrapped his torso and limbs continued to try to coax him into acquiescence, but
he could feel their appetite, could feel the digestive juices washing around him. He clenched his eyelids and writhed until sea water seeped through the tendrils to dilute the burning.
Be calm.
“No.” Though he thought the word, it was as though he had spoken it aloud.
Why do you struggle?
The tendrils seemed to ease their hold for a moment.
“I did not come here to be consumed,” Iliff said. “I came so that we might speak.”
Speak?
And that was why he had entered the sea. The barge was mired. Tradd could no longer muscle them through the dense tangle. Skye told him that it was too vast to be influenced by her emotive power, but that it could speak; indeed, that it called them down. With Depar’s skiff drifting ever farther from them, Iliff saw no other choice. He had to enter the sea and appeal to whatever reason this entity possessed. Otherwise, they would not make it.
“You must release us,” Iliff said.
The seaweed seemed to grow heavier over him. He steeled his mind as the humming lifted in tenor, probing for a way through his defenses. The lights pulsed beyond his closed lids.
“If it is food you want, we have provisions,” Iliff said. “Cured meats among them. We will throw them down upon our release.”
The humming became words again.
We care not for the dead.
We savor the living.
Iliff twisted his torso and circled his arms to dilute the digestive juices once more. He was about to spit the dank tendrils from his mouth before remembering that they were all that sustained him down here. He tensed in concentration. If not food, what could he possibly offer?
An idea struck him.
“You savor the living?” he asked.
Yes.
The living.
“But the living under your power must always die.”
The seaweed did not answer.
“Is that not the way it is with you? The way it has always been?”
Except for the humming, the seaweed remained silent.
“In exchange for our release, I offer something that will never die,” Iliff said. “Something living that you may savor forever.”
Forever?
“Yes,” Iliff said.
Final Passage (The Prisoner and the Sun #3) Page 11