Chapter 268
The Marka and the Upp Igen moored side by side in black water between two great roots. Both crews asleep on deck. And in both hulls, through every plank, a faint gold light, as if each ship had swallowed a sky.
Flisa standing at the new keel, both palms flat on the wood. Over her heart, where a sin-mark would be on anyone else, a burl: a swollen knot in her bark, glowing sap-gold, brighter and brighter.
blazing. Her heart beating once, and the beat splitting: drawn as one big ba-DUM shattering into thousands of tiny dums flying off in every direction like sparks.
In every plank, every rib, every rail and spar of both ships, the same thing: a gold glint swelling, a splinter thickening, the wood round it cracking outward.
The crew waking in a heap as the deck heaves under them, every plank bowing up, seams opening, the mast groaning. Drekk lunging for a wheel that's cracking in his hands.
Krydog on his feet, staring down at his own ship: the eleven thousand fallen-bark scraps of her mosaic sheathing lifting, every one, like scales on a fish about to be gutted.
eyes gold, reading it: every thread in both ships pulled tight as wire, every splinter half-swollen, waiting.
The bark cube with her squashed face in it shaking and glowing, a splinter trying to swell and folded too tight to do it.
asleep by the Marka's stem with Mingus across his feet, waking to the sound of the wood. One eye opening. And understanding all of it, in one look.
landing on the Marka's deck beside him in one jump from the other ship, grabbing his shoulders.
kneeling on the bowing deck, eyes shut, his forearms coming up, the violet ruler-ticks along them, wrist to elbow, starting to glow, one numeral after another.
The Book of Works, oilcloth cover open, pages tearing loose and whirling round him in a storm: ENTRY 1 · BIRDHOUSE. ENTRY 611 · UPP IGEN. ENTRY 802 · ROFFE'S LONG TABLE. ENTRY 1,049 · MARKA (REBUILT). A thousand pages, each one separate, each one its own thing.
A thin crack of violet light opening over his heart. His heart trying to count a thousand things in one beat, and overflowing.
skidding across the bowing deck on her knees, chalk out, ash staff down, drawing a circle round him in one sweep.
held: not closing, not opening, the violet light trembling behind Emma's circle.
kneeling in the circle, his bandaged hands on either side of Jeppson's chalky head, forehead to forehead. Not shouting. Very calm, the calmest he's ever been.
Inside his head: the whirling pages slamming back into the Book of Works, all of them, a thousand and forty-nine, and the oilcloth cover shutting: one book, one picture.
And outside, the same moment: both ships, the Marka and the Upp Igen, side by side in the root-harbour, every plank, every rib, every scrap and rail and spar blazing with violet ruler-ticks along every edge, as if a giant had measured them all at once. Rigid. Locked. Every half-swollen splinter in them stopped, crushed flat in the grain, the wood holding round it like a fist.
And in the middle of it, in a chalk circle on the deck, a wiry man with his forearms blazing violet to the elbow, and a big man holding his head.
Flisa's second heartbeat landing: the Swell finishing in ten thousand splinters at once, and breaking against wood that won't give. Gold light shattering off violet ticks. Flisa thrown backward off the keel by her own pulse, slamming into the bilge.
Everything he ever made, locking:
On Glasheim's lowest terrace, an old birdhouse, rain-grey, every joint blazing violet for one beat. A sparrow inside it blinking.
On the Upp Igen, Roffe's Long Table, rigid as iron under Roffe's sleeping head.
A dog-bed, empty on the Upp Igen's deck, glowing.
A small chalk-white stair, somewhere at the Examination Docks, nobody on it.
The violet ticks fading off both ships like breath off glass. And every plank, every rib, whole. Not a crack. Not a split. Two ships floating quietly in black water, exactly as they were.
at the wheel, his hands on spokes that aren't cracked any more, staring.
in Emma's circle, the crack over his heart closed, breathing hard, his forearms dark again. And his hands locked: two fists, white-knuckled, clenched shut so hard they tremble, that won't open.
sitting back on his heels, laughing, wiping his eyes with a bandaged wrist.
Vigolas, Kompis and Mingus coming down the ladder with a lantern. And in the bilge at the bottom, against the whole, unbroken keel, Flisa, sitting in the water with her knees up. Smaller. A fingernail's height smaller than she was this morning, the jagged edges of her bark chipped, sap running out of the cracks like amber blood.
staring at the keel she couldn't break. Her splinter-teeth chattering.
crouching at the bottom of the ladder, not coming closer. The bark cube in his sash quiet now.
walking straight past Vigolas through the bilge-water, and lying down beside her against the keel. As he did for two sagas. Not looking at her. Just there.
(She doesn't move away.)
Jeppson coming down it awkwardly, one rung at a time, using his wrists and elbows, his fists locked shut against his chest. Krydog behind him, steadying him.
sitting down heavily in the bilge on Flisa's other side, his back against the keel, his locked fists in his lap. Looking at her, one eye shut, measuring.
laying one locked fist against the first plank of the keel, at the stem, the way a doctor lays a hand on a chest. Eyes shut. Listening to the wood the way she does.
The long lines of cork-oak grain running along it, and at the end of it, where the bark once met the tree, a smooth, ragged edge with no tool-mark on it at all.