A Solitary Journey (41 page)

D
reams came and went. Most of them were incomplete and forgotten when she woke, but some were clear and permanent, and the familiar dream where she stood on a parapet, as an old woman came and went like an old friend. So, too, did the more recent dream that she was flying above a city, gazing down on the people. And she dreamed that she was travelling towards the rising sun to the east where she knew there was an ancient city with a vast library of books that belonged to her. She had two new dreams as well. In one, she stood on a bluff, high above the ocean, the gulls’ screeching mimicking the pain in her heart at the loss of her children and she hated the dream because it portended an event she did not want to have. It mirrored the fear buried in the deepest recesses of her being that, even sailing to the new land, she would not find her children. She hated the dream. In the second she stood hand in hand with a man. She knew without turning who it was, so she did not turn to gaze at him. Like the first new dream, it saddened her.

The ever-present heat and humidity, the dreams, her lapse into memories of Button and Jon and Emma and Sunfire left her in melancholic mood that clung to her
like the sailor’s shirts she’d taken to wearing. Only daily visits from Whisper broke the monotony. The rat would appear from behind a bulkhead in the coxswain’s cabin and settle on Meg’s lap if she was sitting or nuzzle at her ankle if she was standing. ‘Where do you go?’ Meg asked aloud, the first time she could focus her head beyond her nausea when the rat visited. She repeated her question in mind-speak.

Food. Safe,
the rat replied in images.

Thereafter, Meg always kept crumbs from her meals to feed Whisper who never seemed hungry or to lose weight. ‘Who else is feeding you?’ she asked on occasion, but the rat didn’t answer. When Whisper heard anyone at Meg’s door she immediately vanished behind the bulkhead, only emerging when she felt it was safe. She came and went without explanation or hindrance, and Meg half-expected to see her preening on deck when she left the cabin—until she saw a sailor carrying two dead rats by their tails and consigning them to the ocean.

‘Filthy mongrels,’ the sailor growled when he saw Meg staring. ‘They bring bad luck to a ship, they do.’ So she understood why Whisper came and went silently and stayed invisible to everyone except her.

She was taken aback one evening when her door opened without invitation as she was lying on her bunk and A Ahmud Ki stepped in. ‘I thought I kept that locked,’ she said, glaring at him and grabbing a shirt to cover herself. ‘And you should knock.’

A Ahmud Ki bowed his head. ‘I apologise. I tried the handle as I passed and it was unlocked.’

‘Then you can try the handle again and leave,’ she told him. ‘I’ll make sure it
is
locked after you go.’

A Ahmud Ki came forward. ‘Meg, I’ve come to ask your forgiveness,’ he said quietly and looked down at the floor.

‘For what?’ she asked, trying to adjust her shirt for modesty.

He looked up, but the shadows hid her eyes from him. ‘I didn’t mean for your friends to get caught in Westport.’

‘It’s too late to be sorry for that,’ she snapped. ‘Now go.’

‘I can’t.’

His simple refusal stunned her and she glared angrily. ‘I asked you to go.’

He shook his head and sank to his knees. ‘I need you to forgive me,’ he pleaded gently. ‘I’m not leaving until you do.’ He lowered his gaze again.

She stared at the top of his head. The intricate braids that featured in his silvery hair were dishevelled and his shirt was tattered and worn, borrowed, like her garments, from the sailors. ‘I can’t just forgive you,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

He raised his face slowly so that she could read the sadness etched on it. ‘I can’t go on being hated by you,’ he said quietly, the passion carefully measured in his voice. ‘I owe you my life. Twice. I can never repay that debt. Now I owe you for the lives of two of your friends and I don’t know how to repay that debt. Without your forgiveness I am nothing. I am empty.’

‘You don’t owe me anything for your life. I always thought it was you who enticed me into that strange place from the beginning. How else could I have imagined it?’

‘Your power is more than you can ever imagine,’ he said. ‘I didn’t call you there. Your power led you to me.’

‘But why? Why lead me to you?’

He shrugged and shook his head slowly, saying, ‘I wish I knew.’ Then he met her gaze and said, ‘I only know that if it hadn’t happened I would never have met you. I would never have known…’ He left the sentence unfinished, sighing and lowering his head.

She studied his head, his shoulders, his hands pressed against his knees, the elegant fingers splayed across the ragged grey trouser cloth. ‘I forgive you,’ she said softly. When he didn’t move, she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder.

The sudden surge of energy between her fingers and his shoulder made her pull back, but he lifted his head, his cat-like eyes wide and sad, and said, ‘Thank you.’ Then he rose and left the cabin, leaving Meg staring wide-eyed at his back, the energy still tingling along her fingertips.

Thunderstorms crept along the horizon, purple and blue clouds alive with flashes of light, and curtains of rain washed the dark ocean. Meg loved to watch them, riveted by the way the lightning played hide-and-seek through the clouds. The storms intensified the heat and humidity and broke the monotony of days of endless sun and blue sky, reminding her that the world was full of energy and life. The weeks of sickness faded to memories. She ate with Captain Marlin and A Ahmud Ki every evening and they talked of the sea and the lands Marlin had visited in his career. Meg reserved what she could of her past, but she told Marlin why her journey to Andrak was so important to her, and they discussed the value of religion and the Seers in the old Shessian order and what they might do in the new Kerwyn order. ‘There’s no state religion in Andrak,’ Captain Marlin explained. ‘There’s a heap of sects and religious groups, but the government policy is to avoid religious fanatics getting any power.’

‘Sounds wise to me,’ said Meg.

‘Doesn’t work,’ said Marlin with a shake of his head. ‘They get in through the pockets of the elected members of government and by making sure that they have believers elected. Luckily they all disagree on what is right
and what is good and all that so none of them can get any control for long. Religion ruined Andrak a couple of centuries ago. There were pogroms and witch-hunts, all in the name of God of course, and a lot of innocent people were slaughtered to cleanse the world of sin.’

‘Who stopped that?’ A Ahmud Ki asked.

‘Common sense in the end. People started to realise the religious leaders were nutters and kicked them out of government. They weren’t elected in the first place. They claimed to be God’s representatives and put themselves in power, but it blew up in their faces after about fifteen years of their righteous murdering of people. They preached tolerance and butchered those who didn’t agree with their preaching.’

They talked briefly of what was lying in store in Andrak, and they talked of A Ahmud Ki’s background—at least Meg and A Ahmud Ki fabricated what they could to appease Marlin’s curiosity. ‘It’s the general appearance,’ Marlin told them. ‘He looks like one of the fairy folk because of the hair and eyes. You might do something about that when we get to Andrak to avoid unnecessary attention. People are over their superstitions in the main, but there are some who still get tetchy about the old stories and some who still carry their prejudices about strangers openly.’ They learned that Marlin had three wives in three different ports. ‘Probably a dozen or so kids too,’ he admitted with a sly grin. ‘Can’t afford to settle on land. Better to stay afloat, I say.’ And he told them of his three children at home in Andrak. ‘When we reach Port River I’ll be heading ashore for a few days recreation. I haven’t seen Nell in a year, what with commissions and sailing back and forth. It will be good to play with Nada, Denys and Rohan. Rohan’ll be four this coming winter.’

She sat among the bundled sheets watching the pedalling sailors with silent admiration, their faces and torsos running with sweat as their legs drove the shafts connected to pulleys and belts to move the giant cogs turning the windwheel on the stern of the dragon ship.

‘Invention is the magic of Andrak,’ Marlin explained over his favourite wine. ‘Cogs, pulleys, wheels, chains, belts, wire, steam—everything is connected. Men on the Andrak wharves lift weights a hundred times their own with invented devices. We load ships quicker than anywhere else in the world and our ships aren’t dependent on the wind. We travel places faster than anyone.’ She accepted that they were sailing towards a new world, unlike anything she knew, and always she wondered how and where her children were surviving in that world. ‘They use some slaves in factories,’ Marlin told her. ‘Children more often end up at the mines or on the farms where smaller bodies are more useful and loads are lighter. But there were changes underway just before we set sail so it might be different.’ His talk left her wondering as the days and nights passed. Where were Emma and Treasure? What work was being forced from them? What strange new invention did they serve?

She was allowing him closer every day: at the meals with Marlin, quiet evenings leaning against the railing to watch the moon rise over the swollen blue ocean, walking the deck together, laughing at the seabirds searching for fish and roosting on the masts. She dared to let A Ahmud Ki take her hand one day as the sun set over a small island the ship was passing, the western horizon aflame with reds and oranges, reminding her ironically of the Whispering Forest burning under Kerwyn torches. She knew what to expect as his lithe, soft hand enfolded hers and knew that it was inevitable
because of the dream, so the energy coursing between them on contact thrilled her instead of shocking her as it had on earlier occasions. His hands weren’t like Button Tailor’s—broad, work-hardened, calloused, warm and comforting—they were long, elegant, cool and full of energy that was as threatening as it was full of promise. She watched him over the passing days: remembering how the women in the refugee group talked about him with admiration and lust, and how they were jealous of her because they thought that he wanted her alone; remembering his eyes watching her when he didn’t know that she had seen him; remembering his apology in her cabin. Deep inside she feared him—the past he kept hidden; the edge of madness she’d seen in his eyes on the boat leaving Westport; his willingness to sacrifice others to save her and himself—but she also felt the pull towards him as if caught in a whirlpool and fighting against that pull no longer seemed important so far from Shess and the world she’d known. When he pulled her against his side and held her under the white moon, watching lightning play across the distant sky, she sank against him and let the rippling energy flow between them and was glad that circumstances had brought them to this point.

Why
? his eyes asked as he stared in silent hurt. She turned from his attempted kiss, but not for the reason he may have thought. In fact, she was surprised herself why she turned away. She always believed she would betray Button if she fell in love with someone new, but it was Treasure’s face that came to her mind as A Ahmud Ki leaned towards her, and the image caused her to turn because that unexpected memory startled her.

‘I—I apologise,’ A Ahmud Ki offered, as he straightened. ‘I think I misunderstood—’

‘No,’ she blurted, squeezing his hand for reassurance. ‘It’s not you. I—’ She couldn’t find the words necessary to explain why she couldn’t kiss him. The image of Treasure Overbrook—the first man she truly loved so long ago—was suddenly, inexplicably haunting her.
How can I tell him that?
she wondered. ‘I need a little more time,’ she said instead.

‘I understand,’ he replied, but she heard his undertone of disappointment and she was angry at herself for flinching like a child at a ghost. He lifted her hand and pressed his soft lips against the back of it, making her hand and arm and shoulder tingle. ‘This will have to suffice,’ he said, adding with a disarmingly charming smile, ‘for now,’ and the moment passed as they gazed together at the glittering stars clustered low in the eastern horizon.

Later, lying on her bunk, sweating from the humid heat in the gentle swell rocking the ship, she touched the back of her hand where he’d kissed it, rekindling the tingle that echoed not with simple love but with the magical energy that flowed from the Conduit. Whenever they touched the energy surged as it had never surged between her and anyone else, as if they shared a kindred spirit—a common bond or heritage.
If a simple touch can animate the Conduit’s magical energy, what would a kiss do?
she pondered, and she let her imagination flow through all the possibilities a relationship with A Ahmud Ki might create as the ship gently rocked her to sleep.