by Jo Graham
“What does it mean to be without a sail?” I asked.
He looked at me. “It means that there is nothing to do but go where the storm takes us, and hope he can keep us pointed into the waves.”
They were gone.
I leaned back against the door and closed my eyes. I had worn out my entreaties to the Lady of the Sea already, as had everyone else. I closed my eyes. Please, Lady, mercy on Your people, I thought. Mercy.
Night overtook us. One of the rowers came in with a jar of wine and a fresh water skin, with brined fish that did not need cooking to eat. Tia took one look at them and was ill on my feet. Bai ate them. He still had no fever, and I was beginning to hope that he might mend, if we didn’t all drown.
Sometime after midnight it seemed to me that the pounding of the rain was less. The ship still rolled violently, but the roaring of the wind seemed to have abated a little. I climbed over the others and looked out.
The rain was indeed less. It spattered unevenly across the deck now, which was swimming under a hand span of water. Still Dolphin met each wave. Kos was at the tiller.
I made my way aft. The water in the bottom was over my ankles, and the ship was still pitching.
The wind swirled around me as I reached the steps. The stern cabin door opened and Xandros came out. He checked as he saw me, caught my arm as a roll of the ship threw me off balance. “What’s wrong?” he shouted. “Bai?”
I shook my head. “He’s fine,” I shouted back. “I wanted to see what was happening. The rain seemed less.”
Xandros climbed the rope steps. “Kos, you should go below. Your turn.” He untied Kos from the tiller.
Stiffly, Kos tied him in his place. I climbed up the ladder. The wind hit me and I held on to the rail. Two lengths below, the sea churned white with foam, lashing at the ship. Ahead, down Dolphin’s side, I could see a patch of sky between the clouds, the faintest hints of stars.
“That’s where we’re steering,” Xandros shouted. “You should go below. You could be swept overboard.”
I thought of that reeking dark hole, and shook my head. “I’ll stay here a few minutes,” I said.
Xandros shook his head. “You know if your Lady calls, I suppose.”
I held on to the rail. I was not foolhardy.
The wind felt good. The waves seemed more regular somehow. We rose and then fell, leaping forward, without the side to side motion that there had been earlier. I said so to Xandros, leaning close to him to speak into his ear.
He nodded. “These are more like regular rollers. We’re coming out of it. And no real damage to the ship that I can see. We’ve been more than lucky. We’ve been in Her hand.”
We were heading east. I could see the sky lightening a little ahead of us. “I wonder where the others are,” I yelled.
Xandros shook his head. “Scattered all over the sea,” he said. “If they’ve ridden it out.”
An hour or more passed. I held the rail and felt the last rain spatter over me. The stars were ahead, the last tatters of storm cloud flying behind us.
Lady, I thought, thank You for Your mercy on Your people. Mercy, and dawn.
Pink streaked the far horizon. The great green waves lifted us and rocked us.
Xandros cleared his throat. He had untied the rope. “There’s a water skin just there,” he said. His voice was hoarse from shouting, and I could hardly hear him. “I think there’s still some in it.”
I brought it to him and unfastened it. He raised one eyebrow and held it out to me. “Do you want it, Sybil?”
“We can share it,” I said. I took a small sip and gave it to him, watched him drink, his throat moving with each swallow.
Everyone else was below or sleeping. It was like being alone on the vast sea, dawn and flying stars. His sodden hair clung to his shoulders, one perfect drop of water standing on his browned skin. His face was remote, quiet as though silenced by the sudden, unexpected beauty of the morning.
Something touched me, something unfamiliar.
I had not put a name to it when the door below opened and Kos came out. “Xandros? Do you want to set the sail?”
He handed me back the water skin. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s take it halfway up the mast to give us some steerage. We need to figure out where we are.”
I looked out over the waters in the gathering dawn. On the horizon behind us something lay dark on the waves. It looked like another black ship, her sail drawn down. “Xandros, there!”
We kept her in sight while the sail was set, then Xandros maneuvered a little to bring us ahead of her and cross in front of her. Before long we could see that it was indeed one of our ships.
“Is she a hulk?” Kos wondered. “I don’t see anyone moving on her deck.”
“Can you see who she is?” Xandros asked. I noticed that both Kos and I saw things sooner than he did.
The next lift of a wave showed her prow to both of us at the same time. “It’s Cloud!” Kos shouted. Now we could see her tiller engaged, a white streak behind her. There was still someone at the helm at least.
The sun rose red out of the sea.
I stood on the stern deck while Xandros gave the orders to drop the sail and maneuver with oars to come alongside Cloud. As we got closer we saw that she was half awash, and that everyone was bailing. There was a shouted conversation across the water that I caught only half of, but deduced from Xandros’ part that Cloud had taken a rogue wave amidships over the deck. Three rowers had been swept into the sea. Though they had heard them calling and yelling in the sea, they were unable to turn and get them, so they were lost. They had been near Winged Night through the first part of the storm, and she had been riding it well, but they had not seen her since twilight the night before. They had seen two other ships far out, but ours, Achaian, or random merchant traffic they didn’t know.
“We were near Hunter until the worst of it yesterday,” Xandros said. “And late in the day Kos saw something he swears was Seven Sisters ahead of us.”
I thought about the fishing boats in the storm. A dozen men, eight women, and fifteen children. The warships might ride the storm out, but the fishing boats were much smaller.
Full morning came. The sea was still rough, but not heaving as it had. Everyone came out and set about cleaning up and bailing. We rode close by Cloud.
The young boy from my cabin was up on the prow. “Look there!” he cried.
I did. Xandros shaded his eyes and squinted. “Please, Lady, not Neoptolemos.”
Three warships rode together, their sails folded and their oars out.
Kos ran forward to join the boy. “No,” he shouted back, his face split with a grin. “It’s Seven Sisters, Hunter, and Pearl!”
We came up to them and a cheer ran from ship to ship as they recognized us. Aeneas waved from the tiller as we came alongside. “Xandros, you lucky bastard!”
“That would be you,” Xandros yelled back. “The Sea Lady takes care of her own, and we’re glad of it!”
Neas laughed.
We came close enough for ropes to be thrown between all five ships, and pulled us side by side like a giant raft.
Cloud had the worst of it, though Pearl was hurt from the battle. Too close a pass down one of the Achaian ships had broken half the oars on her right side, and she was now running with only five to each side.
Xandros leaped lightly across the gap to Seven Sisters. He reached back for me. I looked at him skeptically. “Prince Aeneas needs his oracle, Lady,” he said.
I took his hands and jumped.
The captains of the other ships had come aboard as well, and we all crowded onto the afterdeck of Seven Sisters. There was also an old man who I realized was Aeneas’ father, Anchises. He looked at me with something between shock and horror.
“My son,” he said. “You cannot have a woman at your council.” Two other men’s faces set in stern lines.
Aeneas looked up with a mild expression. “Father, is it not fitting and proper that I should have
the counsel of Sybil and hear her words?”
“Throughout the ages, kings have taken counsel of Sybil,” Anchises said, “in proper place and at proper time. They have gone apart to her dwellings in deserted places, and asked their questions of her in darkness. And she has replied in such verse and length as the gods use when they veil their mysteries from men. Kings do not invite her to open council, where her words are no more than others and where she may hear politics and policy and openly speak of the strategies of men.”
Aeneas looked annoyed. “Father, do you see a cave where we may go apart? We are on the open sea, storm battered. I would have counsel here and now. And I am not a king.” He turned to me. “Lady, you are the only representative of the gods among us. I would ask you to stay.”
“I will stay if it pleases you, Prince Aeneas,” I said.
Anchises snorted. I could see that not all of the men were pleased. I kept silent, though in truth I had nothing to add. She did not touch me, and I knew little enough of sailing.
The crux of the matter was this: We were five ships in the middle of the ocean. Where the other four warships or the three fishing boats were none of us could say. Two ships had seen Winged Night during the storm, so it seemed certain that she at least had survived. One had seen a ship they thought was Lady’s Eyes, but she was the oldest of the warships and not as sound as she had once been.
“She’s stoutly built,” Xandros put in. “And Jamarados is a good captain. I wouldn’t give her up yet.”
We did not know where we were. In a day and a half with the storm at our backs we could have been blown far. Also, none of the ships had adequate water.
“Our casks are fouled with seawater,” Xandros said. “We have three or four water skins, and the amphorae of wine, but that’s it.”
One of the other captains had not even that, so plans were made to send some wine over to his ship.
“We’ve plenty,” Xandros said. “More than a hundred jars.”
I noted to myself that I had not kept careful watch on him in Pylos at all.
While we were at council, a shout was heard from the prow of Seven Sisters. “Land!”
We all went forward.
It was a smudge on the horizon, a low semicircular island.
Two captains jostled each other, naming islands they thought it might be.
“That’s too far,” one said. “That’s clean up north of Lazba.”
“Well, it’s not Dana,” the other said. “We can’t be as far south as that.”
Anchises gripped his son’s shoulder. “This is our punishment for not pouring a libation to Aphrodite Cythera when the storm ended. That is the Island of the Dead!”
“We cannot be there,” one of the men protested. But it seemed as though we were.
“The Island of the Dead?” I asked Neas.
He nodded. “In my great-grandfather’s boyhood there was an island that had everything that men might want—green pastures and olive trees, a fine town, a strong defensible location on the trade routes, a high mountain that rose out of the sea and could be seen from afar. There was a mighty kingdom there, allies of Krete. They had many ships and sailed all the seas there are. But somehow they angered the gods. The mountain exploded and destroyed it all, groves and pastures, town and fair people.”
His voice was very quiet, his eyes focused on something I could not see, as if he remembered. “The sea rose up in great green waves and drowned the cities all along the coast. A quarter of the people of Krete died on that day, and all the ships that were at sea. Only the palaces and towns on high hills survived. And when the seas calmed, there was nothing left of the island except two crescent beaches low on the sea, which churned with bodies and ruined trees.”
“That was here?” I said. “I have heard the story of the Drowned Land, but I didn’t know where it was.”
“It was here,” Neas said. “Thera That Was, the Island of the Dead.”
“It is accursed,” Anchises said. “We must steer away.”
“If it is Thera,” Hunter’s captain said, “then there is not another island near at hand where we can get water.”
“We must have water,” Cloud’s captain said.
“We cannot set foot on the Island of the Dead,” Anchises said. “Or the curse will come upon us.”
“Is there water there?” I asked.
“We do not know,” Xandros said.
“It’s large enough to have water,” Hunter’s captain, Amynter, said. “All those fair pastures that Neas spoke of must have had some springs.”
Anchises pursed his lips. “That Prince Aeneas spoke of.”
“Father,” Neas said.
“We need water badly,” Cloud’s captain said. “I think we should go ashore and look for a spring.”
One look at Xandros told me he was not the one who wished to go.
“Anyone who sets foot on the Island of the Dead trespasses in Death’s realm,” Anchises said.
“That is not to be taken lightly,” Pearl’s captain, Maris, said. “Danger on the seas is one thing, but the wrath of the gods is another.”
Xandros nodded in agreement.
“I will go,” I said.
Neas whipped around to look at me.
“I am not trespassing in Death’s realm,” I said. “I am Her handmaiden. I have nothing to fear in Her holy places.”
“What will you do, Lady?” he asked.
“I will go and find a spring, if there are any. I will ask Her leave for us to take Her water, and make whatever propitiations are necessary.” Anchises scowled, and I looked straight at him. “To inquire further about Her sacred rites is unseemly.”
There was no answer possible to that, so he held his tongue.
“I will come with you,” Neas said. “I must speak for the People. It is fitting and fair. Besides, there may be snakes.”
IN THE END, Seven Sisters came in close, nearly beaching at the end of the larger of the two semicircular islands. Neas jumped down into the water and reached up for me. The water was cold and the waves still running high, but not dangerously so. We waded in.
“The beach is broad and sandy,” Neas said. “We could bring the ships in if we wanted.”
I nodded. He took my hand to help me to the top of a dune. We looked over at the lagoon between the islands.
The water was as clear as glass, lapping over white sand, turquoise near the shore and then deepening to cerulean quickly, as though there were a very deep place in the midst of the island. On the bottom I could see walls, the foundation of a building, what looked like a dock, all underwater lapped by the waves. I saw a movement, and for a moment I thought it was a woman in a dark cape poised in one of the empty doorways, but then it moved and I saw it was an octopus. It flowed into the darkness.
Neas still held my hand. “This was a mighty city once,” he said.
“And now it sleeps,” I said, “beneath the waves. It is the Sea Lady’s city.”
“It’s not deep,” Neas said. “Three spans or less. Two even. I could dive.”
“And do what?” I asked. “Disturb the dead?” I reached down and picked up something from the sand beneath my feet. It was a piece of broken pottery, worn by the waves, but with still the whorls and border visible. “If you must have something of them, take this.” I pressed it into his hand and led him away from the water, toward higher ground.
He turned it over and over in his hand.
I climbed the rocks, as black as night, new and as sharp as bronze. I was very careful, for I am not sure-footed.
He was looking still at the water. I called him and Neas climbed up to me. There was a look in his eye I had never seen on a man.
“What do you see?” I asked gently.
“A city,” he said. “A ship with an octopus on her prow. Palaces with red columns and painted roofs. A great wave.” His blue eyes were unfocused, the stubble on his chin golden in the sun.
“Things that were,” I said. “In your great-
grandfather’s day.”
“Yes. I cannot remember.”
“We cross the River,” I said. “And dwell in the fields of undying grain under the sun that never sets. And when the time comes, we cross the River that is Memory, Lethe. We return to this changing world, and remember nothing of what came before.”
“Not our loves? Not our dearest companions?”
I turned his hand over, caressed the shard in his broad palm. “Not unless something recalls it to us.”
He looked at me now. “Do you think she has forgotten me, beyond the River?”
“Who?” I asked.
“My wife, Creusa,” he said. “She was lost when the city fell. And my world is darkness without her.” He ducked his head, choking off the last words.
“You can cry, my prince,” I said. “Tears for the honored dead are honorable indeed.”
He sank to his knees on the black rocks, clutching a broken piece of pottery to his chest, his shoulders shaking. I knelt beside him. “Cry, my prince,” I said. “You are carrying us all. You can cry on a deserted island where there is none but me.” I stretched my black sleeves over him like dark wings.
I did not catch any words he said, except “Creusa, my beloved.” I clasped him about with my arms, and held him until he ended. Above, the black-winged gulls whirled on the sea wind. I am Gull, I thought. I am the granddaughter of a boatbuilder in the Lower City. Even were I not Pythia, I could not look so high as Aeneas, the last prince of Wilusa.
At last he moved. “Your pardon, Lady,” he said, and did not meet my eyes.
I touched his face, the warm rough line of his jaw, lifted his eyes to mine. “It is nothing. She is used to the sweet tears shed at the foot of Her throne.”
He nodded sharply. “It is so?”
“It is,” I said, and smiled at him. “All is well, Prince Aeneas.”
“Neas,” he said.
“Yes,” I agreed.
Neas turned over the shard in his hand, then slid it into his belt pouch. He stood. “I’ve been foolish,” he said. “These islands are low and rocky. There is no water here.”
“There is,” I said.
“Why do you say so?”