The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  22

  THE LEAVINGS OF THE SEA

  With my mind cleared of the ghost of Del son of Devon, I was free to dream of other things. I saw myself sailing a bright sea beneath a low wintry sun, the spray at the bow as cold as loss, my hand on the tiller unshaken though my heart pounded. I am awake at last, I thought to myself as darkness fell and the moon rose to its zenith, then swelled to cover half the sky. Under the weight of its new fullness it sank to the horizon before me, and I sailed into the moon.

  I awoke, as I had once before, on the empty beach, alone with the sea. “I must sail,” I said to it, as though I expected it to respond, to roar agreement or debate my resolve. “I have set Berall free; I too should be free now. I must leave here. I have too much to find, and none of it here. Take me away.”

  At that moment, I had no clear idea where to go, though one formed in me as I harangued the insensible waves. At first I only knew that the weight on my soul that had anchored me was lifted. It was a burden painfully lost. “I can live without her,” I confessed to the sea; though my heart bled, though I hated myself for those words, I was too old in the ways of this life to doubt their truth. I had already mourned Hwyn for longer than I'd known her. I had lived with loss before, and I would again, till my heart grew as tough as a plowman's palm. “I can live without her—but not without the gods, as I have since I landed here. I will find them. I will ask them why. Let them answer me or destroy me.”

  I gave Renn only a censored version of this resolution. “I will leave on the eve of the Longest Night and sail north to the Hidden Goddess. Maybe she is the least likely of the four to answer me—she refused once before—but she said she loved me, and there is hope at least in that. Besides, I know where to find her. If she has no answer for me, let her send me to one of her kin.”

  “Let me go with you,” Renn said. “I want to see the Rim of the World. As a priestess, I should seek it. Besides, you'll need help.”

  I shook my head. “You are all kindness. But your people need you now, priestess. And besides, you could not go where I am bound. To reach the North of North you must turn your back on life—and you, dear lass, are as full of life as St. Bridwen's Day in a year of plenty. I could never reach my goal with you aboard.”

  Vokh's offer was more circumspect. “I don't want to slow you down. I'm no sailor, as you well know. Still, to see you go off alone—it seems mad, unnecessary—”

  “It is mad, most likely,” I said, “and therefore necessary. This is just the sort of journey to be taken alone—and not the sort to be taken with any vestige of sanity. Turn your back on life, the goddess said, and sail for the empty space beyond. Last time only the goddess herself was in the boat with me. This time, who knows but she may join me again?”

  “You will return, won't you?” Renn asked.

  “Have I ever deserved that you should care whether I come again?” I mused. “Never mind: you are like the Bright Goddess, and give where there is no deserving. For you, I will try to return with an answer, if I find one. If I don't find it, I will go on seeking, and not bring my despair back to a place that has seen too much sorrow. Not that I have any intention of giving in to despair; one of the four corners of the world must hold an answer.”

  In the end they knew they could not detain me. Besides all the nobler purposes I claimed, I was anxious to be gone before the Feast of the Hidden Goddess stirred memories too painful to be borne. As winter approached, I appointed the best of my apprentices master of the shipyard in my absence and tried to prepare him to continue work without me. I built and provisioned a new craft for my journey, designed for one alone, a single-masted boat with a deep cutwater not easily turned from its course. To its mast I nailed the gilt star from the feast at Larioneth, once a good-luck token, now a token of all I had lost, of the reasons for my anguish and my quest. At last the time came to flee. Before the evening bells announced the first rite of the festival, I was safely out to sea, out of earshot. In the hands of the wild waters I found not precisely solace, but an ache to fill the empty place in my heart. I was content.

  Perhaps for that very reason, I could not reach my destination. I sailed for days, for weeks, marveling that the way that seemed so short when I last traveled it should prove so long. Still, I did not at first doubt that I could succeed. After all, there was no knowing how long my first journey had been, in the Longest of Longest Nights with no sun or moon to mark the time, in the numbness of loss, in the unearthly presence of the Hidden Goddess, and in the unconsciousness that had swallowed much of my journey back. It might have been slower than this. Still, other things seemed wrong: I was astonished to see, three weeks' sail north of Berall, a smoking mountain rising from the sea, far to port. Some days later I saw a snow-covered island to starboard. Surely these were new. There had been nothing north of Lari-oneth in the old days—and I was sure I had traveled long enough and fast enough by then to be north of where Larioneth had been. Still I turned neither west nor east, but kept my prow trained on the northern star, my heart steeled for the darkness beyond it.

  Time passed; my food ran out; still I pressed onward, certain by then that the world was larger than it had been. I caught fish and ate them raw; I caught rain and was grateful even for snow to quench my thirst. But at last came a storm from the north that did more than fill my rain-barrel: it drove me inexorably backward, away from the object of my quest. I lost all my sails battling it, and at last even my rudder broke from the sheer force of the wave against my desperate efforts to choose my own course.

  My boat drifted, aimless, a toy of the waves, for uncounted time, under a storm so thick I could not tell day from night, much less follow the stars. Still some inner compass told me I was drifting southward, ever southward, refused by the North of North. At last the waves cast up my crippled boat on a sandbar. When the rain subsided I could see the shore an easy swim away. It did not look like Berall; it must be another part of the new northern coast. I saw something on the hills above the coast that looked like human habitation. With nothing to lose and not a dry inch of me left to soak, I braced myself against the crushing cold and swam.

  When the shallowness of the water forced me to stand, I looked up the hillside to see a little knot of people descending toward the sea. One of them, seeing me, let up a shout; there was some commotion among them; then after a bit one of them broke from the group and ran toward me. My stomach turned over—I had been welcomed so eagerly from the sea once before, on the bitterest day of my life. Still, there was nothing to be gained by hanging back with my feet in ice-cold water. I continued on out of the ocean's embrace and stood on the shoreline, waiting.

  When the first runner drew so close I could see his face, I too cried out: “Til?”

  “Jereth?” In a matter of moments I was seized roughly and spun about, danced about. “I told them it was you. It had to be you. Who else would come down from the North?” Til crowed, and before I could catch my breath again, Grim was there, and March, all the fishers of Larioneth, with Ash coming after them, a child clinging to each hand. “Jereth the Far-Traveler!” she cried, releasing the children's hands to embrace me. They were all embracing me, and I was clinging to them as to life itself, now that I found I wanted life after all.

  “You're alive. Dear gods, you're still alive,” I babbled, and they sounded as dazed as I.

  “You're alive,” Ash said, as if in echo. “You must come inside. My sister will be so glad.”

  “I knew you were alive,” said Til. “You had to be.”

  “They told me you were drowned,” I said. “They said the whole North Country was sunk in the sea.”

  “Who said so?”

  “The watchman of Berall,” I said.

  “Berall!” scoffed Til. “What did they ever know about us? What did they know about anything?”

  “But I sailed right past you—right over you, it seemed. I thought there was nothing left of Larioneth. I thought you were all drowned in the Longest of Longest Nights, a s
acrifice for the new world to come.”

  “We thought you were the sacrifice,” March said, “given up to the sea for us.”

  “I kept up hope,” Til said. “I kept a lamp burning to guide your ship—at least, till the Feast of the Turning God. Then I gave up. But now you're back.”

  “And he's wet as a flounder,” Ash said, coming to herself enough to start mothering everyone. “Come indoors. I'll heat up some porridge from breakfast, and let you warm up by the hearth.” She broke away to call to her children. “Hros! Hild! Come on back!”

  I turned to see that the two children, with their parents distracted, had run out far from their sheltering gaze, right across the surface of the water. The waves tossed them up and down but did not cover their feet, though they had run far out to sea, nearly halfway to the sandbar. My mouth fell open and stayed that way as Ash herself stepped lightly onto the water's surface to fetch them back.

  March, seeing my consternation, put a steady hand on my shoulder. “Fear not. We are the same friends you left behind— only a little changed.”

  “Are we above the water or under it?” I stammered, when I could speak at all. “Did my boat sink in the storm to bring me here?”

  “You would know best,” Grim said. “You have been elsewhere; we have only been here. All we know is that the Longest of Longest Nights, and the storm that followed it, came and went, and we still live—stronger than before.”

  I was still trying to fathom it when we reached the great hall. There Rand and Taryant, engaged in fixing one of the ancient carved chairs, gasped to see me, and Rand went off calling, “Mother! Mother! Come see!” I hastened after her, eager to see Syrc, who had been a friend to me and Hwyn from the moment she found us. I would not have expected it, but I had enough room left for astonishment to be a bit surprised to find her sitting in the warm kitchen with a child of about a year old asleep in her lap.

  “Daughter of the Longest of Longest Nights,” she explained, when she had gotten over her shock at seeing me alive. “There were four conceived in the night, all born during the Feast of the Turning God—a good omen, we thought. Hauvoc and Dara had one; they're married now.”

  “And you?”

  She shook her head. “I've never lacked helping hands with the children—that is, with my children—as I did with my brothers and sisters. I'll be fine—and the better for seeing you, Jereth the Far-Traveler. Why, you keep looking at the baby as though she were a greater wonder than yourself, just returned from the world's end.”

  It was true; I stared at the child as though I'd never seen one before. “I never thought to see new life here again. I thought you were all dead. I cursed the gods for you—for the children of Lar-ioneth. And you're safe. And your children, even—lives brought forth out of the great darkness.” The sleeping child looked as thoughtlessly graceful as Trenara, her head lolling against Syrc's strong arm. She had a thatch of dark hair like her mother's, but no one's heritage could yet be traced in her features. She might be anyone's daughter. “What do you call her?”

  “I hope you don't mind,” Syrc said. “I've named her Hwyn.” At that I had to wrap my arms around them both and hold them a while.

  Before I knew it we stood in the midst of a council of the Holdouts, convened as speedily as the one that had taken place the day Syrc had discovered us in the snow. As before, Harga was the last to arrive, complaining of her aching bones. Seeing me, she seized me, kissed both my cheeks, and said, “Welcome back, son. The year's treated you hard: you look almost as old as I feel.”

  “You haven't changed,” I said ruefully.

  Without a trace of embarrassment, Harga turned to her people. “All here? Good. Let's begin.”

  I wanted to question the Holdouts, to learn how they had survived, how they had been changed; but they were many and I only one, and they overpowered me. I had to tell my whole tale from the Longest of Longest Nights to that morning before they would tell me anything. They drew all my story from me on a silken cord of warm concern, and I told them more than I had ever told in Berall: all the words of the Hidden Goddess that I could remember; my escapade at the world's rim, trying to hold the sky together; my shock on arriving in Berall; my descent into despair. When I told of my suicide attempt, I asked Syrc and Hart's pardon for breaking my promise to them; they dismissed my failure with comforting words. With their encouragement, I came at last to the present. “I sailed out again looking for the world's end to ask the goddess why—why she demanded your sacrifice; why you all had to die. And now, without reaching my goal, I have found out that it was not so: you were not sacrificed. Except that I see you changed in ways that make me wonder whether I am among the living or the dead, mortals or demigods.”

  “We are mortal enough,” Harga said. “Per died last sum-mer—you will remember him; he was a wise man. The rest of us still have our colds and sprains. But as you say, we are changed.”

  “We thought you had been sacrificed for us,” Syrc said. “You went out, and after a time the sea came in—but it came as a friend, took us by the hand. We are the Sea People now. We thought you had made peace with it for us, died so we might live.”

  “Not I,” I said. “It must have been Hwyn. But I still don't understand. You are the Sea People—what does that mean?”

  “Only this: we cannot drown. The waves bear us up,” Hart said.

  “It's no small boon to a fisherman,” added Grim.

  “I wish you'd been changed with us,” Til said. “In the summer you'll see what fun it is. You will stay to see, won't you? You should stay with us always, now.”

  I smiled ruefully. “I don't know. I'm a shipbuilder; what use am I here?”

  “After all that you have seen and suffered along with us, did you think we would only ask how you could serve?” Til responded.

  “Peace, Til,” said Harga. “A man may not want to be idle, though his friends are willing to keep him thus.”

  “But even we may have some use for boats, in time,” added Hauvoc. “We've never tried a long journey over sea. If able-bodied walkers want a wagon on land, the Sea People may well want ships to travel far.”

  “Why, where would you go?” I asked, startled that any of them might think of leaving Larioneth now, after the storm and the danger were past.

  “Everywhere,” said Syrc.

  “This power must have been given to us for some purpose,” said shy Tresanda, startling me. “It can't be just for us. I'm going to the mainland to see what I can do.”

  “Me too,” Taryant put in.

  “Even I'll go, as soon as the little one is old enough to travel,” Syrc said.

  “I suppose we'll all go for a while and return,” Hart said. “I'll never love another place as much as Larioneth. But I feel the call. I think we all feel it.”

  “For so many years we looked for the Hope from the Sea,” Syrc said. “But we are the Hope from the Sea: hope for others, somewhere out there. It must be true. This power wasn't given just so we could have ocean dances at the midsummer festival.”

  “Ah, you should see it, Jereth,” Til said. “I wouldn't leave till after midsummer. It can't be missed.”

  “I'll stay till then,” I decided. “Afterward, if anyone means to see Berall, they can come with me. I promised two friends there that I would return with answers, when I had them, if I could. And now I have them. What new world could be worth the sacrifice of Larioneth? Larioneth was not sacrificed: it is the new world. And what was born of the Hidden Goddess in the darkest night? New lands and new oceans, as at the start of the world.”

  They lodged me once again in their great hall as their honored guest of whom nothing was required. Their easily given friendship was a joy, as ever; but idleness wore at me, as Harga had guessed. I set my hand to any task I wouldn't spoil—cooking, for one, was swiftly forbidden, but at least I could help with menial tasks, until it shamed my hosts' sense of hospitality to have their guest scrubbing greasy pots. I tried to write the first bits of this saga
, scratching my first formless thoughts on wax tablets. But I worked slowly, still groping with unanswered questions. I might have some answers, but still somehow, the story seemed too unfinished to commit to writing. Would it ever be finished before I died? I set it aside in despair.

  More and more I found myself with Syrc; she did not hunt much now, for little Hwyn could not be carried on a hunt, and protested any separation as though it were the world's end. She worked at little tasks here and there, like me; and like me, often found herself idle, either too well liked or too little trusted outside her usual trade to be given much to do. Sometimes in mild weather we would wander out beyond the city walls on the excuse of digging clams on the beach or finding whiteberries in the wood. We would walk for hours, talking or silent, with little Hwyn toddling beside us or sleeping in a sling that hung from Syrc's shoulders. Toward winter's end, as we strolled over the hills with little Hwyn, asleep, bound securely to her mother's hip, Syrc surprised me by saying, “When you return to Berall, perhaps I should go with you.”

  I wasn't sure what to say to that. “That's kind of you. I—I— Do you mean—”

  “Never fear: I'm not proposing marriage,” Syrc laughed, then grew more solemn. “I think we can understand each other. There was only one man I wanted, and he's been at the bottom of the sea since Rand was a baby. I'm too stubborn to be consoled with another, and if my flesh has demands of its own, it can be satisfied with one Feast of the Hidden Goddess each year. And you—”

  “There was only one woman, and only one Longest Night for me—and that is all,” I said. “But you are a good friend. We do understand each other. I'll be happy to travel with you.”