At first the whole experience – gliding swiftly across the water while a fair wind, like a strong yet gentle hand, pushed the raft ahead – was so utterly novel and pleasant, they had all, even Yodren, given in to a childish exhilaration. Part of it was the speed of their sailing per se, for after endless days of trudging forward they were finally making headway at a pace that didn’t seem like a prelude to death; and death, moreover, seemed for the first time to be a thing of the past, of the barrenness they’d left behind – not that there was the slightest evidence of life in the dull grey waters they tore through, but life is a contagion: the more animated they felt by the wind tousling their hair and stinging their cheeks, the more these things appeared as conscious, and intensely alive.
But what they had all failed to take into account, keen to set off on their journey and thrilled by the fast success of its outset, was the vastness of the sea, and the fact that, once the shore they’d left had receded into nothing, they had no way of knowing which way they were – or should be – heading, being thus wholly at the mercy of the wind and its whims. Unaccustomed as they were to the geography of Erat Rin and the labours of navigation, they had perhaps been expecting that the coastline of No Place would rise in the horizon before long, figuring that if they had crossed the entire island in a matter of days, slowly and on foot, at this rate they might attain their goal within a few hours.
However, it soon became apparent that they had raised their hopes far too high. Yodren and Gallan, who’d been squatting near the bow of the raft, their eyes trained on the distant line of darker grey where the sea and the sky seemed to touch, soon realized that their zealous gazing not only didn’t prompt the Land of the Sun to materialize, but on the contrary made every moment they spent in steadily growing disappointment feel longer and longer. And Yonfi, who had clambered on Wixelor’s back and sat on top of his head so that he might be the first to sight the fabled shores, wad gradually deflated, till he climbed down to seek comfort in Raddia and the girl’s company.
And then, just as they were all huddling in a tight knot around Wixelor’s legs, like sheep in a shelter seeking one another’s warmth, the storm broke out.
Like a beast the wild sea heaved and roared, a beast as massive as a world and suddenly aware of the six specks of foolish life that dared disturb its sleep. Yet even more terrifying than the mountains of churning water rising beneath and around them was the response drawn from the sky. Streams of great black clouds rushed from every corner of the heavens, making the darkness so thick as to feel tangible; then, heralded by bolts of lightning that flashed their fleeting, blinding light upon a scene of utter chaos, and by a chorus of thunders that made every single particle of reality reverberate with their bellowing, the blackness above began to vomit sheet after sheet of rain as cold and hard as ice, that lashed at the wave-tossed raft and its panicked passengers.
To prevent the violence of the sea and the howling wind from tearing him clear off the raft he was part of, and offer what protection his size could afford, Wixelor had knealt down at once, gathering everyone in the crooks of his long arms and beneath the collapsed sail, so that the torrential rain wouldn’t carry them off. But even so they were all beside themselves with terror, grabbing at each other in the brief moments of purple-white blaze shed by the lightnings, while at the same time, and despite the impossibility of their being overheard in such havoc, they kept screaming one another’s names.
But there was one name they couldn’t scream, because they simply didn’t know it – and by the time the storm began to gradually abate, and they could shout and grope in return under the drenched canopy, the girl was gone, swallowed by the sea.
Yonfi was inconsolable. When he first realized the girl’s absence, he tried diving into the sea to retrieve her, and it took all of their combined strength and vocal loving to hold him back. Once again, it was Raddia who finally undid the clasp of the boy’s wrath, releasing the heartbreak within, and as he clung to her bosom, sobbing “Mommy!” over and over, she cried with him – lamenting the girl’s loss, the knowledge that she’d never fill the hole left by the death of Yonfi’s mother, her own motherlessness, and even, with a part of herself so unfamiliar and cruel she barely recognized it, the fact that she’d been resenting the girl’s attraction on Yonfi, whose love she wished lavished on her alone.
Was it the boy’s tears, whose magical effect they had witnessed more than once, that ultimately bid the endless waters to be still? Or was it the sea itself, which, having sensed immortality in the touch of his flesh, had quietened out of respect? Whatever the cause, after a while the last remaining storm clouds dissipated, and the gale died down to an almost gentle breeze that inched the raft onward with small, lapping waves.
And in the arms of Raddia, Yonfi slept the easy sleep of children, that so quickly and enviably transports them to the safe, peaceful darkness of their recent nonexistence. Yet unlike their previous moments of endearment, as she now sat in a contentment akin to the maternal bliss she couldn’t even name for being such a stranger to it, Raddia felt her Substance close around Yonfi’s, like a dullstone with a hidden glowstone within.
For while Gallan, struggling to adapt to a world of loudness and tactility where everything and everyone touched you in one way or another, had remained steadfast in the austerity of his Lurienite past, mind-speaking and –listening and thinking himself vaguely but surely superior, Raddia, from the start, had begun a process of remoulding her habits and convictions in compliance with all the strange, magnificent things that so intrigued her. And as part of this assimilation, perhaps the most important one, she had slowly taught herself to use her mind neither as a sharp and fitful mouth nor as a rudely inquisitive ear, but rather in the manner of the Feeres – that is, as a hermetically sealing refuge for all the thoughts that were meant for no one other than herself. It hadn’t been a smooth transition, and it was still far from complete; Gallan had been alarmed by her abrupt and inexplicable decision to fashion her intellect after primitive minds relying on a host of things – even brutal force – instead of reason to express their needs and urges, and was deeply, perceptibly hurt that she, his other half, should choose to exclude him from the workings of a mind he’d been sharing from the moment of their Surfacing; and Raddia, aside from the guilt over Gallan’s wounded feelings, had to learn how to cope with powerful emotions – such as extreme fear, or sadness – without them bursting out of her head and scattering like flocks of frantic birds to beat their wings and screech and peck at the minds of others. Thus she had reached a point where, as now, she could shut all access to her Substance save for Yonfi’s, embracing his soul as tightly as his body.
And besides the boy’s precious love, what consoled her for leaving Gallan out of her innermost musings was the fact that he had also been, secretly, almost unwittingly, on a similar path of transformation, involving not his mind but his body. Raddia hadn’t yet fully grasped how this had come about, or where it might lead to, but she had sensed the change as surely as if it stemmed from her own flesh. After all, while they were small and stupid and prone to furtive gloveless touching, they had both had chance to observe the differences of their anatomies: Gallan’s member, tiny as a slug yet able to grow and harden at the slightest grazing of her fingers, as opposed to her own peculiar apparatus, a cleft concealed by a pair of petal-like, extremely sensitive folds of silken skin. And as it had been in her nature to keep this aperture protected from intrusion (her whole body recoiling at the thought of it being penetrated, closing in on itself like a budding flower in reverse), so had Gallan’s fleshy protuberance sought, despite the fear of their Makers finding out, the release of being rubbed and squeezed, moistened and caressed.
And though nothing had come of it as yet, – for Gallan would never be able to keep an important event secret from her – it was this aggressiveness of his body that had drawn him to Yodren and his own male flesh with steadily increasing power, till Raddia had felt it as definite
and unmistakable as a pungent new odour: the smell of something close to desire. It was quite reasonable, of course; in many ways, Gallan and Yodren were similar: the loving, protective brothers of siblings who had stunned them by revealing a side, a self, they had never suspected, and in the face of which they felt wary, ill at ease; moreover, neither of them had fulfilled the role that was expected of them in the eyes of their respective worlds. Gallan had been both unable and secretly unwilling to produce offspring by merging Substances with his Mate, while Yodren, cloistered in that dreary tower since he was but a child, had never really matured into a man – whose task, at least from what Raddia understood of the customs of Feerien, included mating with a woman and fathering children, just as his father Yern had done. Furthermore, it appeared that any man who didn’t thus conduct himself, copulating with one or more women once he reached maturity, was in the eyes of Feeres a lesser (if not downright contemptible) man; that was why so many Scribes – whose thoughts, like Yodren’s, Raddia could pick up on instantly, for they were men conditioned to spending most of their lives inside their heads – afforded themselves the company of poor women they paid to be their mates for the hour or the night. And yet Yodren had never partaken of such pleasures, though not for lack of wanting; it was simply a matter of lust confused, even more so when Gallan was near, or in the presence of that other Divinator, whose paleness was so startling he could pass for a Lurienite, and from whose mind Raddia had gleaned the clear, intense desire to shed his clothes and pounce on Yodren like an amorous beast of prey.
All these thoughts coursed through Raddia’s mind as she half-dozed, waking every so often with a start to make sure Yonfi was still safe and snug in her arms – and each time she did so, the thing she felt for next was the petal, clinging still to the soft, wrinkly tip of her finger after having almost miraculously survived the storm. And just as Yonfi’s smallness belied his powers and his equally amazing capacity for love, so did this frail and tiny proof of life contain the sum of Raddia’s hopes and dreams.
Suddenly the raft wobbled, wrenching her back to reality and making Yonfi stir and mumble in his sleep. Luckily, it was only Wixelor, who, waking up under the sail, had tried to stand up, forgetting in his haziness that his right foot was one with the raft. Turning around, Raddia smiled at him and said, quietly so as not to rouse Gallan, Good morning, dearest Wixelor – and once more, thank you for saving us from the wrath of the sea.
The sleepy giant returned her smile and shook his big long head as if to say that it was nothing, but then, as he was scanning the horizon through a thin veil of mist that hovered above the water, his eyes gave a sudden blink and stared at something with such intensity, that for a moment Raddia worried his stare was one of fear.
But then she turned too, and saw the glorious sight just as Wixelor said,
“Nowhere. It really exists. And – we’re there!”