Thisbos, it seemed, was farther than a morning’s sail, but the men could take us there by dark. Constans shrugged when I questioned his faulty geography.
“I’ve never seen a map of Kandiers. The government doesn’t make maps of many places.”
“Why not?”
He smiled. “No need. No one goes out here, and people on the islands know where they all are, and make their own maps.”
No one else seemed bothered by this, so we sat under a canvas spread over the bow of the boat. Once again Psamathe and Rhodope masqueraded as cargo and I pretended to be a boy, and no one questioned the sex of lanky, short-haired Gnoza Trevion, so their supserstiution of women in boats needed no extra money to overcome it.
“As well,” Constans said, “I’m almost out of funds,”
Gnoza was nearly, as well, to the extent she wavered on whether we shouldn’t walk.
“For all that it will take days,” she grumbled.
“Our enemies will move faster than us,” Constans observed.
“And they’ll have no issue with funds,” said I.
“Coaches, horses, their damned float-aeroplane. The militia itself, maybe. Aye, the boat it is, but we must figure some ways to earn drachms quickly, or else return to Kandiers Town, and for nothing.”
So we boarded the narrow, scarlet-painted little vessel and headed westward, coasting beneath brilliant white limestone cliffs. She rode the warm waves as they traced the coastline, its headlands jutting like sentinels from the dark sea. The fisher-captain, weathered hands gripping the tiller, guided his boat past other boats where men pulled in their dripping nets. Gliding by, we passed a trading ship coming into Kymassi with corn and oil and pilgrims, it seemed, crossing from some other island in white with red ribbons in their hair. Its oars cut the waves, water flashing from them, and the voices of the pilgrims were raised in song.
Along the shore, wild thyme and rosemary cascaded down rocky terraces in purple and silver beards, their fragrance carried from the land to us on soft winds. The olive groves, their trunks twisted by centuries of wind under an alien sun, clung to the land above coves: we glided over clear water above beds of seagrass swaying like underwater meadows. Terran? Iphigenian? Who knew. The water swarmed with both biologies in parallel, a richer, more colorful glittering of ocean confusion I had never seen. I leaned over and stared at the sandy bottom, at the swirling life, the many-colored, many-legged things crawling across the bottom, the slender shapes darting through the grasses. Native? Brought by humanity? It was all alien to me, stranger from a cold world under a red sun.
In these sheltered bays, the only sounds were the gentle lapping of waves against smooth stones and the distant bleating of goats far above. A girl and a boy on a cliff, wrapped in each other’s arms, spared a wave for us.
I raised my hand.
The boat rounded a promontory where marble columns stood, a broken temple open to the sky, now a roost for cormorants, their dark, dripping wings spread to dry. The coastline opened, the hills receding, unfurling a bolt of golden sand backed by tamarisks, their feathery branches shading for the foundations of what might once have been a village overrun by mint and poppies.
I wondered whether terror from the sea, bombardment from the air, or merely slow diminishment over generations had reclaimed it as a waste place on the shore.
In their silent division of labor, Rhodope sat on Constans’ left hand, and Psamathe on my right. To do anything needful as soon as we thought of it, I guess. But there was nothing to do. I watched the waves, and heard gulls, and the grind of whet on Gnoza’s spadona, and the sparkle of water became a dream, and I was on the boat, and the sun was shining ruddier on the foam, my elbow on the rail, the engine chugging.
A bird flapped over me, a white-back. I tried to make sense of it, two pairs of wings, dangling yellow feet…
I was too used to birds with only one pair now.
Uncle Min-soo leaned out. “Hee-young, how do you feel?”
The shore was distant and dark grey; the ice glittered on the mountains, and I huddled in my sweater and windbreaker. “Tired. I haven’t slept in a day.”
“You’re sleeping now, Hee-young-ah.”
“This is the dream.”
“Yes,” he said.
I looked at him, his thin moustache, his weather-squinted eyes, the knit cap pushed on the back of his head. His eyes were steady, and I knew.
“NABI-ah?”
“Yes.”
I heard a clang of a bell far across the water, another of the village fishing fleet at anchor, working. “Where are we? Is this a memory or a dream only?”
“Memory. Dream. Reality. It is all of these things, Hee-young.”
We rolled gently. The birds cried.
“I am so weary. I have been running for days, NABI-ah. This planet is hell. These people are crazy. I thought I found sane ones, then more insane people came to find me.”
“It is not Seoribyeol,” NABI agreed. “But it is your world now. You cannot go back.”
“What about you, NABI-ah? What is going on, up on the ship?”
“Unloading cargo,” NABI said. Uncle Min-soo stopped the motor. “Drop anchor,” his NABI-vocie said.
I got up and threw the lever. The anchor rattled down, the chain clanking, everying plunging deeper and deeper.
“You’ll go back. You’ll leave me behind too.”
“Hee-young, I will never leave this world. They took me off, the aenseobeul and I alike. I am in… what they call the Fortress. They flew me in, and I am sitting in my cognition core.”
“Then how are you here? How am I here?”
“The aenseobuel.”
“I have not had many dreams, NABI. Is it still working?”
“It and I together are, and you are getting closer. So we three are coming together, every hour, every day.”
“I’ll have more dreams again.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps you will learn to control it. Perhaps to become it.”
“I don’t know what that means. Why is it this way?”
“You have become the mathematics,” NABI said. Min-soo put his hand on my shoulder. “Understanding it, being with it, knowing how to use the device, you have learned already to see the universe through it.”
“I don’t want to be the aenseobeul. I want to be me.”
“You become more than what you are every day you live,” NABI said. “From a little child,” and I was small in school, “to a young girl,” and I was at my parents’ funeral, “to a young woman,” I stood on the boat with him, “to whatever you will become,” and I stood in a long white dress on a cliff above a sea, under stars, “each and every moment that passes. You will become what you become, Hee-young-ah. Even I become what I become.”
The sun was pale yellow-orange, and Psamathe held my hand. “Miss?” she said. “Look! We come to a town!”
The sun was in the west, a thin crescent moon hanging above it. Neith. Another town wound along the shore. As evening approached, the setting sun painted the white houses of amber and rose, the shadows slate blue-gray, their flat roofs and narrow windows looking seaward. The local fishing boats, wine-colored with white sails and with gold and green eyes painted on their prows, returned to harbor, their holds silvered with the day's catch.
“Thisbos,” Gnoza said.
And so, we too, came to port on the fragrant wind, and in the silvered distance were the towers of a Fortress.