Chapter 275
Mist on the moss. The peaceful stump with its closed-eyed face. Root foxes curled asleep in the roots. And at the foot of the Great Root, on the moss, something that wasn't there last night: a slab of bark, long as a man, thick, cork-grey, lying where it fell.
crouching beside it, one small hand on it, her knot-eyes wide.
kneeling on the other side of the slab, goggles up, laying his palm flat on the bark, then turning it over and looking at its root end: smooth. Not a tool-mark on it.
looking at him, at the slab, at the Marka moored in the harbour behind them. A long beat. Then pushing the slab an inch toward him with both hands.
Jeppson on his knees at the stern by the water-barrels, by the knot that weeps, easing out the one cut plank (saw-teeth, axe-notch, ORDER STOCK) with a chisel, by hand, slowly, as if pulling a splinter out of a friend.
fitting the new plank, the fallen one, shaped from Ferdinand's gift, into the gap. Perfect. Edge to edge. One tap.
watching from the ladder, arms folded.
standing, tapping the Book of Works.
The Marka careened for one last look: Jeppson and Drekk lying side by side under her keel again, one eye shut each, sighting along her spine.
his palm on Stav's mark, the little hammer under the crooked crown.
crouching at the end of the keel, grinning upside down at the two of them.
open on Jeppson's knee, and Jeppson's pencil writing, slowly, carefully, a line he has never written in his life.
Both ships afloat, side by side, lamps lit, the Lumen wicks burning in their rigging. On the Upp Igen's deck, Levla and Flexsnus running along the rail with a lopsided kite made from a stripper's licence.
Vigolas sitting on the rail with his legs over the side, humming his mother's four notes. Kompis beside him. Mingus between them.
a little too still, his eyes not quite gold, remembering a small warm thread that ended at the foot of the Great Root. Then smiling.
throwing his head back and laughing.
(Mingus, between them, lifts his head and looks at Vigolas for a long time.)
Vigolas walking alone across the root forest toward the Great Root, carrying something long under one arm, wrapped in sailcloth. Flisa stepping out of a root beside him, falling into step, saying nothing.
unwrapping it as he walks: the cut plank. Saw-teeth. Axe-notch. BARK-YARD · GLASHEIM · ORDER STOCK. The knot that weeps.
The old cliff of cork-oak, and low on it, near the sea, the oldest scar of all: the first strip, a long pale wound grown over at the edges for a thousand years and never closed. Flisa stopping beside it.
The Great Root of the Splinterlands at dusk, vast and old and scarred, the white star coming out above it. At its foot, small against the oldest wound in the world, a pirate in a long coat, holding out a plank of his own ship to the tree it was cut from. A small jagged girl beside him, watching. A golden dog sitting behind them both.
And as the plank touches the scar, the tree's bark reaching for it, slowly, gently, fold by fold, the way a hand closes round a gift.
the bark closing over the plank, taking it in, the oldest wound on the Great Root a little smaller than it was. A gold glint in the new bark.
looking up at Vigolas. Her knot-eyes wet with sap.
(Behind them, Mingus's tail thumps the moss once.)
Both ships ready to sail, sails loosed, the roots round the harbour lifting them gently back out toward open water like two hands setting down two paper boats. Flisa standing on the highest root, Kvist on her shoulder.
stepping onto the Marka's deck for one moment as she passes, and laying her palm flat on the rail. Leaving one splinter: a gold glint in the grain.
A gold glint in it. And a tiny face.
back on her root, a metre of cork-oak, sitting down with her ear to the wood, listening. Frowning.
The Marka and the Upp Igen sailing out of the Splinterlands side by side, under the last great arch of root, into the open Deep. The fixed star ahead. Tihi on the Upp Igen's rail, waving both arms, finally bursting:
at the wheel, feeling the Marka lean very slightly left in the crosswind as they clear the arch. Smiling, for once, right up to his eyes.
Black sea. And ahead, filling the horizon from sea to sky, a wall of storm: black cloud, lightning crawling, rain like a curtain. And in the storm, sails. Dozens of them. Sails made of thunderhead, with the shapes of captains at their wheels.
In front of the storm-wall, alone on the black water, a small old fishing boat, patched, weathered, its name worn half off its bow. An old man sitting in it with a pipe and a line in the water, who looks up at the two ships as if he's been waiting a long time.
Njord.