Chapter 263
As bright as the Deep ever gets: six towers burning, a white star overhead, and the Lamp-bearers' village loading little boats with lamps for islands going dark. Both crews on the beach, mending, eating, resting.
sitting on the sand, both of them with their tongues poking out in concentration, building a kite out of a stolen Dimmer ledger page, two sticks and some of Jeppson's string.
The kite going up: lopsided, ugly, climbing anyway into the white-star sky, two grown men running along the sand beneath it, laughing so hard they can't breathe.
sitting on an upturned boat, watching them, sharing Roffe's stew.
on the sand, perfectly still, eyes closed, listening to the sea. And Tihi, bouncing up to her, bells jingling, holding out both hands.
Isa and Tihi dancing on the sand: badly, wonderfully, Isa a beat behind every step, Tihi giggling so hard she trips, Isa stopping dead every time Tihi laughs (it breaks something in her stillness), and then, a beat late, laughing too. Not a snort this time. A real one, small and surprised.
from the upturned boat, staring, betrayed.
a little way down the beach, sitting on a rock, not looking at each other.
on the Marka's masthead, bouncing on her toes, scarf streaming, calling down.
at the wheel, the Keeper's Log open, sighting along it at the white star, his eyes wet.
Iskall walking down the sand to the two ships, her clay lamp in her hands, smaller than it was, a week older and looking it. The Lamp-bearer children trailing behind her with baskets.
reaching into her pinafore and pulling out wicks, two, and lighting them, one after another, from her lamp. Holding one out to Vigolas, one to Krydog.
crouching to her height, the little flame in his hands.
padding up the sand to the little girl, sitting down in front of her, and putting his big golden head in her lap. Looking up at her with warm brown eyes.
looking down at the dog, her clay lamp held up beside his face, as she does for everyone. And in the white light, in the reflection in his warm brown eyes, something moving.
Reflected in a golden retriever's brown eyes, huge across both pages, soft and painterly, the warmest colours in the series: a kitchen, long ago. A table, a lump of wet grey clay on it. A little girl, seven, copper braids to her knees, her small hand pressed into the clay. And over her small hand, a woman's hand, closed round it, warm, freckled, guiding her thumb, pressing it deep into the side of the soft clay lamp, together. The thumbprint that's still on it now.
And beyond the hand, just in the corner of the memory, a woman's face, laughing, with seven freckles across her nose.
On the beach below the reflection, a seven-thousand-year-old seven-year-old, staring into a dog's eyes, the clay lamp trembling in her hands.
tears pouring down her freckled face, her thumb finding the thumbprint on the side of her clay lamp, and pressing into it, exactly where it was pressed seven thousand years ago.
her small thumb in it. And over it, for one panel, the ghost of a larger hand.
laughing through the tears, both arms round Mingus's neck.
licking the tears off the little girl's freckles, very thoroughly.
standing up, wiping her face on her too-big sleeve, a child again, a grandmother again, both.
The two ships putting out from Lumen, side by side, the Marka and the Upp Igen, a lit wick hung in each one's rigging. On the beach behind them, a little girl with a clay lamp held high, the Lamp-bearers waving, a lopsided kite still flying over the sand where two men forgot to reel it in.
on the beach, holding her lamp up high, high, as the ships go, calling after them in her big bright voice:
The two ships sailing away from Lumen's six lights into the dark, toward the white fixed star, Drekk steering by it, the silver threads from Fyren trailing faintly behind.
The crew asleep round the fire in a heap. Vigolas awake on the rail, watching them, the wick from Lumen burning small and steady above him in the rigging. His joy, happening.
asleep against Kompis, one ear twitching. Then lifting his head. Then standing, staring down at the deck planks under his paws, hackles slowly rising.
Not the sea. Not the hull creaking. Wood, speaking: a dry, cracking, splintering whisper, coming up through the Marka's own timbers.
Kompis and Drekk coming down the ladder with a lamp. And at the very bottom of the hold, where the keel runs, the bark of the Marka's own keel is splitting, splinters unfolding outward like a flower opening, and stepping out of it, out of the ship's own wood: a small figure, a child's height, built of broken cork-oak shards fitted together like a jagged puzzle. A girl's face carved in splintered wood. A wide mouth full of splinter-teeth.
turning her carved face up toward them in the lantern-light, picking a splinter out of her own gums, her voice dry as a snapped branch.
Flisa.