She smiled. “That is more than true.” She looked past the boats, eastward into emptiness. “I am sorry I cannot tell you what I found there, Serdic.” She remembered Nossi’s words then, and her fierce smile as she spoke them. “It would be glorious. A tale Told by generations of Alilan.”
Oh, Nossi, it was not that way.
“I do not ask you to tell me,” Serdic said quietly. “It is enough that you are safe, that you have come back.” After a moment he said, “And that you plan to stay.”
She laughed. “Another question that isn’t. And yes—I meant what I said, to you and to Annial.”
They both looked back at the house—tall and pointed, smudged with grime of storms and smoke. “It will need painting,” he said.
“Indeed,” she answered, “and I thank you for offering.”
They painted the house blue: the blue of the sky above Luhr, of Nossi’s eyes. Serdic arrived from the market in time for the evening meal and left long after sundown, which was later every day. At first they ate awkwardly, quickly, eager to retreat to the ladders and the wobbly glimpses of tile and cloud. As the days passed, they lingered in the kitchen; Serdic showed Jaele how to make sourfruit cakes, and she read to him from the books and parchments. They laughed and talked and cooked—and every evening he returned to his grove, and she climbed the winding wooden staircase to her bedroom.
When the painting was done, they sat at the very end of the outer dock with their backs to the darkening sea. “A fine job,” Serdic declared. “It is an entirely different house.”
“Yes,” Jaele agreed, and looked down at her blue-freckled hands with a twinge of sadness. She smiled, though, when she glanced at him.
“What are you smiling at?” he asked, without turning to her.
“You,” she replied. “You’re blue. I think it may suit you.”
He did turn to her then, and they sat very still. Jaele said at last, “Thank you. For your friendship.”
“You make me happy,” he said, and again she felt a shadow, a breath of footsteps that led away.
“I was very angry before,” she said. “About many things.”
“And now?”
“And now I do not know. There has been a change—but I am still not sure. I am still unready, somehow.” “So much unfinished in me,” she had wanted to say to Nossi, so long ago. Still true, though everything else had changed.
Serdic smiled, and she noticed that his skin was golden now, not white: drizzle of sunlight on the market, and on the roof of the blue house. “Jaele,” he said, “were you not listening? You make me happy.”
That night I dreamed of a morning blue and mild, so bright that I had to close my eyes, after I had stepped out the door onto the wharf. I halted, and my vision returned, and he was there. There, so close to me, maybe six paces away. The masts and rigging of the ships were behind his head. I looked up at the sky, around at the scrubby cliffs, back to him. I saw the wind stirring the hair on his arms. I saw myself in his eyes—I must have stepped closer. I saw a tiny cut on his lower lip, and his teeth as he began to smile—I had forgotten.
He was holding me, clutching me, “Jaele Jaele Jaele” warm in my hair. I pressed my mouth to the slope of his neck and cried. His scent was the same. He kissed me, and I could feel his smile, slippery with tears. “Dorin Dorin Dorin,” I sang, and he lifted me, spun us both around on the dock until the water was the sky. He was laughing. There was light everywhere—look at it circling us and the house and the cliffs, and now you—even though it was just the light of dream.
She woke slowly, reaching for him, then lay gazing out at the morning sky. After she had risen and dressed, she pulled a sheaf of parchment from under the bed. A page near the bottom curled away from the rest; there was already writing on it. “I rage when I think of you.” She looked down at the words and they were echoes, only. She had intended to write something—about the house, about Serdic—but in the end she put the papers on the floor beside her bed and laid the writing stick carefully on top.
Jaele walked far that day. She sat beneath the slender falling-star leaves of her tree; against the stone wall in the weavers’ quarter; within the dusty, empty circle of the bridge tower by the docks. Touching her mother’s brooch, she remembered her night wanderings: the dagger in her belt, her eyes keen, fevered with his closeness. Another echo—different, vanishing, dizzying.
She ate the midday meal at an inn she had never noticed before. Its walls and low ceiling and benches were damp, and the smoke from the torches stung her eyes. There was only one other person there: a woman wearing a travel-tattered cloak, a dirty pack beside her. She smiled at Jaele as she rose to leave; Jaele smiled back, although again she felt a sadness, a gentle, twisting pain.
It was evening when she came to the fruit market. Serdic, Tylla, and Annial were in the sourfruit chamber, and Jaele stood looking at them before she entered. Annial was sitting on a cushioned chair behind the other two. Jaele could hear her humming, even from this distance, even over the voices of the customers. Occasionally, Tylla and Serdic turned to her and spoke, and she smiled up at them sweetly as a girl.
“She knows us, and then a moment later she doesn’t,” Tylla murmured to Jaele when she had joined them. “She speaks of Ilario and Hania and Ellrac—or she speaks to them, as if they were beside her. But she seems happy.”
“The last time I was here with you, it was snowing,” Jaele said to Serdic later. She thought, And you were pale and beautiful, and I knew what would happen—but not all. She saw his own remembering in his gaze and did not look away.
Still later he said to her, “You seem quiet. Restless.” The walls were jagged dark against the sky, and there was a star in the south; it would be shimmering in the sea, above an island, through a shifting pall of black dust.
“I am restless,” she said, and was surprised at her own words. “I am—I don’t know why.”
Serdic peeled a sourfruit with a tiny knife and chuckled. “You’d think I wouldn’t be able to eat these any more, but they’re still as delicious as ever.” After a moment he said quietly, “You won’t stay here, Jaele. You can’t. That’s why you’re restless.”
“No,” she said, “I’ve told you I’ll stay, and I will. I love it here—the house, and your grove. And Annial needs me.”
“Look at her,” he said softly, and she did. Annial was whispering, her head turned to the air beside her.
“She may get better,” Jaele said, but as she spoke, she remembered Ilario.
She left them as they packed the unsold sourfruit away. She almost ran through the narrow streets. She sat in the kitchen, which no longer smelled like bread, and later she slept there, curled in a wall niche. She woke in deep night. The fire had burned to a muttering glow. The stairs creaked beneath her bare feet.
In her room, she knelt beside her pouch, which was lying with her belt and bundle by the door. She drew out her shell pendant. The thread shone between her fingers, though the light was dim. The shell was cool against her skin—cool as leaf, as wind, high on a mountainside.
I am certain that it was right, leaving him to follow the Ladhra River. Certain—but there is such longing. Where is he now? What is he doing? Would he know me, in these words I speak to you?
They lean close to her, and she feels their steady breathing as she cries.
It is done. You are here. Think on that: you are here.
Noise from the wharf woke her. She looked out and saw sailors on one of the boats. They shouted and sang; one of them hung upside down from the rigging. She heard the screech of chain and watched the anchor rise, dripping green with weed and harbour slime. Rows of oars dipped and canvas snapped. The ship pulled away from the dock and sailed out beyond the cliffs.
“There were two ships in Fane’s harbour,
They groaned outside my door.
Then there was one, and someday none
And silence will me
bore.”
Jaele smiled at her own murmured words. Echoes, only, and her bruises.
There was no one in the sourfruit grove when she arrived, and no one in the kitchen. She climbed up to sit where once she and Serdic had sat together, talking of vengeance. She leaned her head on the rock and closed her eyes.
“Jaele.” She started. Serdic was sitting beside her.
“I didn’t realize I was asleep,” she mumbled. “I didn’t sleep well last night. And it’s so quiet here. Where are Tylla and Annial?”
“At the market. I came back because it was a slow day, and they wanted to stay. Annial was drifting in and out of sleep—and when she was awake, she was urging Tylla to find a husband. I’m fairly sure she thought she was speaking to our grandmother.” He paused. “Jaele,” he said slowly, “I finally have a question for you. Will you leave?”
She closed her eyes briefly, then looked out once more on the stalactites and the leaves. “Annial spoke the truth when she said, ‘You are a traveller, like all the others.’ Someone else who was very dear to me said almost the same thing once: ‘She is also a traveller.’” She paused. Nossi grinning, Aldreth leaning on the door frame, looking down. “They were right, both of them. But I do love this place.”
“Is it—” Serdic began, and cleared his throat. “Will you leave because of . . . that person you love? Will you try to find him?”
Jaele shook her head, thinking for a moment of her dream: Dorin’s smile, his arms wrapping her tight in sunlight. “No. As another of my friends said, he is not for me. I am not for him.” She drew a deep breath. “I will not be looking for him or anyone else this time. It will just be me. I want this.”
Serdic said, “You are very brave, you know,” and she laughed quietly, without bitterness, and touched the back of his hand with her fingertips.
“Another question. That night when you ate dinner with us and I touched you, I felt something—a scar, I think. At the base of your skull. I’ve wanted to know how you got it but was afraid to ask.”
Jaele said, “And now that I’m leaving. . . .?” and they smiled at each other. She put her hand up under her hair and drew her fingers along the jagged ridge. “I travelled for a time with a tribe called the Alilan. I was with them when they fought the Perona, their ancient enemies. I assume it was a Perona rider who injured me, but I’m not sure. I was watching someone. Listening to someone. I didn’t know the blow was coming.” Her words were smooth and warm, unbound. “When I woke up, I was somewhere else. I’d been carried away from the battlefield by a huge man, nearly a giant. He stitched my wound before I awoke. And I think he also helped to distract me, for a time, from other wounds which neither of us could heal. Much later I left—and he left—and travelled on.”
“And when you leave here, where will you go?” Serdic’s voice was low, but it sprang from the stone and filled the cavern.
"I don’t know. Anywhere. There are so many places—and perhaps it will be good to travel without a destination.”
“I promise that this will be my last question. When will you go?”—and she laughed again, this time wryly.
“When I decide I need to leave, I tend to do so immediately. I will not linger here—I cannot.”
The silence was long. At last Jaele touched his hand again, very lightly, and he stirred. “Well,” he said, “in that case, I will walk with you to the market.”
Their feet sank into the warm earth beneath the trees. They stood at the river door and lingered for a moment, smiling at each other, before it opened on roar and spray.
They walked without speaking. Jaele looked at the stone of tunnels and houses, the peeling paint and crumbling plaster, the coils of ivy, the faces of children. Serdic’s face, turned away from her. His hair curled in the wind, which no longer smelled of spring—now smoke and rotting fish. I tried to remember—to remember before the end—but knew that I could not.
There were no customers in the sourfruit chamber. Tylla glanced from Serdic to Jaele. Before either of them could speak, she said, “I am sorry that you are leaving, Jaele—but glad that you came to say farewell this time.” Then she smiled and held out her arms, and Jaele stooped to hug her. “Will you stay and help us until nightfall?” Tylla asked, and Jaele shook her head.
“No—I can’t, I mustn’t—” and no more words came over the tears in her throat.
Annial’s hands were cool and rough in hers. “Farewell, Annial,” Jaele said, and the old woman’s eyes wandered to her face and stilled.
“Jaele with Hania’s hair,” she said in a voice like singing, “or Hania with Jaele’s,” and she reached out to stroke it with her crooked twig fingers.
“Farewell,” Jaele whispered again, and rose.
Serdic walked with her to the entrance chamber, which was also empty. The wagon was gone, though the marks of its wheels remained, scored deeply into the dirt. The walls stretched into shadow with the steady darkening of the sky; dusk, and this time no star. Their hands met and clasped, very tightly.
“If you ever come back this way,” Serdic said, “and we are not here, follow the road up the coast until you reach the first town. It is beautiful there—as I may have mentioned before.” She lifted one of his hands to her cheek. “If,” he said, and she nodded.
The first tears came as he held her; she felt their dampness on his tunic when she moved her head. Then she was standing apart, wiping her face on her palms; then smiling; then walking alone down the sloping, narrow streets to an empty house by the sea.
She stayed for a few more days in the house, straightening books, sweeping the kitchen floor, cleaning ashes from the fireplaces. She paused often, gazing at a page or a wooden spoon. Once, in deep night, she woke and found Ilario sitting beneath her window. She smiled at him and saw the stars, shining through his skin. His face and form blurred, like Nossi’s and Aldreth’s, like her brother’s, mother’s, father’s—and she felt a pain, now, that had not been in her upon the Eastern Sea, with the first glow of returned memory. Blurring and distance, despite her longing. Ilario beneath her window. You are as faded to me as all the others, my dear.
She filled her sack with the last of the seagreen and some small burnt loaves that she had made with Serdic. Placed Ilario’s journals in her cloak and tied its corners together. For a while, kneeling beside it, she thought she would take the carpet—to have the names at least, the words that she could see. In the end she did not. She arranged the blanket on her bed.
Close the door, down the creaking stairs, seven paces, close the door. Out into the pale summer sun of Fane, to follow the river away from the sea.
Eagerness lances among them, though all but Llana are silent.
Yes! Be strong, your words and thought. You are so near. We are so near—speak and be strong.
Jaele hesitates, then continues.
There is not much more to tell—not really. I travelled slowly, and my path was different than the one I had taken before. It was early summer, and shallow pools spread over the sand, joined by rivulets of water; in the sunlight, from a distance, this looked like the thread and jewels of a necklace. Sometimes it rained, but not enough to cloak the sun. The drops flashed as they fell, and they were warm on my skin. As I watched, tiny flowers curled out of the sand—pink stars, light blue.
At first there were whole days that I did not see. My ocean return and Fane had been a balm, a salve; now, walking and alone, my thoughts spun. I thought of Dorin and my father’s stories and Ilario’s books. The Sea Raider: I remembered him on my beach, in Keeper’s palace, across the shonyn river, then in his own land, lying with his face turned up to the sky. It wounded me again, in a way I could not understand. I unfolded Bienta’s map and gazed at the lines and colours that had been my guides, the desires of my heart, and I yearned for them. Luhr, the silga mountain, the Ladhra River, Fane. Queen Galha’s footsteps, his, mine—but now? Nothing felt rounded or closed. So much unfinished.
I left the desert and found hills, covered in leaves and needles. I walked beneath arches and columns of sun-soaked green. I came upon some towns and cottages after this, and slept by several hearths. The people were friendly; maybe they pitied me. They gave me food and wine, and one woman cut my hair and exclaimed over my scar. Children climbed into my lap while their parents asked me where I had come from and where I was going. I told them I wasn’t sure—and I wasn’t, until I saw your stones.
I dreamed, but not every night: shadows that I strained toward, knowing I would recognize the faces. I always woke on the point of seeing and holding, and lay empty. “This is what I have learned,” I thought. “I cannot truly hold anyone—cannot even see them once they are gone.”
I walked through meadows of tall grass and flowers on swaying stalks. The heat was overwhelming, and there were days when I could not travel except at dusk or dawn. I swam in a lake so wide I could not see the other shore. The water was still and cool and not quite clear, and my feet sank in the ooze at the bottom. Once, I saw a city set in a valley floor. I walked around it, using an animal path that climbed up the mountainside then down again to farmers’ fields. The corn had been harvested, and I threaded my way through its stubble. I realized that the days were a bit cooler and nights almost cold. Autumn had arrived, and I had not noticed.
My feet remembered the lichen and slate before my eyes did. I had been hungry and ill before, and there had been a storm, lightning above the red rocks. This time I saw the barrows in daylight. “Now this part is done”—you said that to me, long ago, and I did not understand. Now I looked at the sun on the stones and knew that I had come to my ending, my circle closed. That night Llana appeared and led me into heavy earth, and you were waiting for me.
They shift, seem to stretch in the black cavern. We were expecting you. We knew you would return. We felt our change beginning when you spoke light to us before. We hoped. We knew.
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