Chapter 299
The pilgrims' line forming again along the branch: new boats coming in to the charcoal wharf, new jars. And along it, small cooking-fires lit in the glowing cracks, a pot on each, steam rising: someone has been up since before dawn lighting them.
in his ragged red-and-gold coat with a cook's apron over it, kneeling at a crack, cupping a little of the Burn's fire in his scarred hands and eating one mouthful of it, carefully, like a man taking medicine. Then lighting the next fire with the rest. Steam off his lips: less than before.
walking down the line toward him with a pot under his arm: small, black, dented, an old one from the Upp Igen's galley. Holding it out.
holding the pot to his chest like the jar Aska keeps on her hip.
Aska on her stump, at work: a jar in her palm, a relit sailor in front of her laughing with his wife for sixty beats. But now behind her stump: a table, one of Jeppson's, redrawn this morning with shaking hands, and on it, set, one bowl, one cup, one spoon. A card propped against the cup: ASKA. EAT FIRST.
Three ex-Everlasting, robes washed of their soot halos, standing in the line with everyone else, a jar each. The old woman among them. Waiting their turn.
Both ships readied: sails loosed, water casks filled from the sea, the Marka's rigging blackened with ash, the Upp Igen's bandaged-fist figurehead singed. The crews saying goodbye to a branch.
at the wharf's edge.
crouching to Mingus, who is lying on one last warm footprint on the wharf, his chin on his paws, not wanting to leave it.
licking her cracked charcoal cheek, once, very thoroughly. It doesn't burn him.
at the Marka's gangplank, the black handprint still burned into his wrist, his palms bandaged from the chains. Aska looking at the handprint.
a long look at him. Then, from her dress of ash, holding out her hand: in it, a single ember, small, glowing, wrapped in a curl of her own smoke.
The two ships pulling away from the charcoal wharf at the foot of the world tree's highest branch. The black continent of the Burn rising behind them into the red-gold sky of Helios, cracked with ember-light, smoking, and on it, all the way up, the pilgrims' line, moving again, little cooking-fires lit along it like a string of lamps. At the crown, a cold grey hill of ash where a pyre used to burn. At the top of the line, a slim figure of charcoal on a stump with her hand raised, and a gaunt man in an apron beside her with a pot, waving it.
On the decks, both crews at the rails, waving back. Tihi on the Upp Igen's bowsprit waving both arms and one leg.
Vigolas at the rail, opening his bandaged hand. The ember Aska gave him glowing in his palm, warm, steady, a curl of smoke round it like a little cloak. Not burning him.
(He puts it in his coat pocket, next to the bottle caps. The pocket glows faintly.)
at the wheel, sniffing the air, turning the wheel to bring her round the branch toward open water.
The ships rounding the curve of the colossal branch, sailing along its underside, the bark rising above them like a black cliff, rough, ancient, cracked, cork-grey here where the fire never reached.
flat on his back on a coil of rope in the Marka's stern, hat over his face, asleep: he slept through the goodbyes. One cheek pressed against the ship's bark rail, which is fallen bark of the same tree they are sailing under.
under Trollmage's cheek. And in the grain, very faint, a silver line lighting. Curving. Joining another. A shape, no bigger than a thumbprint: a rune, glowing silver under his sleeping face.
passing, stopping, staring down at the troll's cheek, his eyes going gold. Seeing, from the rune, a thread: silver, old, older than anything he's seen on this ship, running down through the rail, through the keel, into the sea, and up into the great branch above them.
asleep, his ears twitching. The way they twitch at a horn he claims he never heard.
brightening, and a voice coming up out of the wood. Old. Dry. Patient. Troll-blunt. A woman's voice. Drawn in a balloon with the grain of wood in it.
under the hat, opening.
lifting his head off the rail, very slowly, the hat sliding off, the silver rune still glowing on his cheek where it was pressed into his skin, staring at nothing.
A small troll boy, years ago, asleep on a great root at the edge of a forest near Brygdar, his cheek on the bark, a silver rune glowing under it. And from the wood, a woman's voice, the same one, teaching.
a hand going to the rune on his cheek.
coming up through the rail again, stronger, impatient, fond, exactly as a grandmother speaks to a boy who has slept in too long.
And above the two ships, in the cliff of bark on the underside of the world tree's highest branch, a line of silver light running up the bark, tall as a mast. And another across the top. And another down. The shape of a door.
The door opening: the bark of Ferdinand folding back in two great leaves like the doors of a cathedral, slowly, the cork creaking, and behind it, inside the branch, not dark: a long throat of pale wood, and far down it, deep in, a gold light, warm, beating, slow, like a heart.
at the Marka's bow, ears up, tail going, looking into the open door at the slow gold heartbeat deep inside. And his own heartbeat, for one panel, drawn beside it: the same rhythm.
standing up in the stern, for once in his life fully, completely awake, the silver rune on his cheek, his crooked troll-iron crown on his head, staring up at the open door in the bark of the world tree.
Two small ships on the Current under the enormous branch, and on the stern of one, a troll with a rune on his cheek, and the gold light of the Heartwood falling on his face.