As soon as they reached the coarse grey sand, moist from the sea whose breath they could feel on their faces, the girl got down and started digging holes at the edge of the waves, and before long she came up with handfuls of thick brownish worms which, despite their horrid appearance, were quite pleasing to the palate – so soon they were all on their knees, frantically digging up more. And once the beast of hunger was finally appeased, they nestled at the foot of a dune and considered their next step.
For there it lay before them: the final threshold to the Hidden Nowhere and the Runes; and yet they might as well lie in another world, for unless they magically grew wings or fins and gills, there seemed no conceivable way of crossing the great wild sea.
And that was not the grimmest thought to darken their souls. Because once hope has been shattered again and again, putting it back together becomes almost impossible, so that hopelessness seems not just invincible but, as the mire of misery drags you down, increasingly tempting: the urge to give up fighting, and peacefully surrender to defeat. For what if Wixelor’s dream was no more than a dream? What if there was no Land of the Sun, and the same inescapable pall of death shrouded Erat Rin in its entirety?
Yet still in their hearts they couldn’t accept such a prospect any more than utter it aloud – and the reason wasn’t so much the dread of their own slow, torturous deaths, but the thought of Yonfi, unable to die, roaming this aptly named Forgotten Sphere in complete and eternal solitude, perpetually hungry and cold, afraid and miserable. They had to keep on hoping and fighting, even if they feared that all was lost.
So they all got to their wobbly feet and began a slow search along the stretch of the beach, looking for wrecks of vessels on which, according to what the girl had heard, many people in straits like their own had tried to sail across the sea; and failed, was the unspoken implication, as befits any myth: try to cheat death, and see what happens.
However, when Wixelor, scanning their surroundings with the advantage of his height, spotted what looked like a heap of broken wood, their spirits where somewhat lifted: at least it wasn’t all a fable: people had actually tried to navigate to the land saved by the Runes, making it – even with their failure, and implied death – seem more real.
Sadly, the wreckage in question had sustained too great damage to be salvaged; the wooden planks were rotten through and through, crumbling at the slightest touch, and the wide fabric lying next to the remains of the boat, stitched together from smaller pieces of cloth – presumably the sail – had been torn to shreds of no possible use.
And then Yonfi – who had instantly perceived the search as a treasure hunt, and dared the girl to a race over and across the next three dunes – gave a cry of triumph that sent them all running after him and to the raft on which he bounced with loud giggles.
Of course, it took them a while to recognize the precise nature and usage of the flat structure, made of thick logs bound together with rope and a black substance. But when the girl called from the other side of the sandy hill, where she stood next to a long, solitary trunk of wood to which was tied another great piece of thickly-woven cloth, Wixelor, unearthing a seaman’s nightmare from his memory, explained to them how one could sail on the flat vessel by raising the fabric on the vertically placed log and letting the wind do the rest. Yet in the process of the raft being tossed and smashed against the shore, the tall trunk – the mast, Wixelor remembered at last – had broken in half.
Disappointment dragged them down once more, aided by their great tiredness, but just as they shuffled listlessly around the severed trunk that seemed a reflection of their own broken spirits, they were roused by the girl’s lively, almost cheerful voice.
“Look!” she said, and turning around they saw that she was holding up the sail – or as much of it as her smallness allowed – between her outstretched arms. “And I bet you’re taller than this tree,” the girl said to Wixelor. “So maybe you can be the –”
Wixelor, intrigued at the thought, took the sail from her hands, and spread it to its full width and length, while holding down the bottom of the fabric with his feet. And just as the girl had guessed, it seemed as though the maker of the sail had made it to fit his height and arm span with perfect precision. They were all looking up hopefully, and then an even more fortuitous thing happened: a gust of wind swept the cleft between the dunes where they stood, filling the sail with its breath and tugging it forth as if Wixelor were indeed the mast of a raft standing tall and strong against the elements of the sea.
But while the children were prancing about, cheering and clapping their hands, Wixelor’s smile faltered and was gone, again in accord with the wind, so that the swollen sail emptied at once, drooping sadly around his feet. “This won’t do, I’m afraid,” he said.
Yonfi had to be hushed by his brother, and then Wixelor explained that which, had any one of them come from a seafaring world or people, should be obvious: namely, that he would never be able to remain standing and holding the sail while the wind and the waves tossed them this way and that. “I’d have to be nailed to the floor of the raft.”
Then they all felt that peculiar, not entirely pleasant quivering of their minds as Gallan’s voice breezed through their thoughts saying, Perhaps I could help. “Although,” he went on as they turned to face him, “I’ll probably need some help myself.”
Yet when he sought Raddia’s thoughts, he realized she wasn’t there.
The Runes of Norien Page 53