1276, Age of Song, Early Autumn
“The sea calls to the heart even when one is not near her. And when once the call has gotten deep enough in an Elwen’s heart, she will not ever be able to part from the waves again.”
-Ynara the Golden, a sailor from Velwenlor.
The sun shone.
Her throat hurt.
Slowly, Yllalla stirred, a little surprised that she was still alive to feel such things. When she had closed her eyes for the last time, she had thought she would be waiting before the Starfire Gates when she opened them again. But this was assuredly not the dark place where blue-white fire shone in scintillating colors, making diamonds seem dull.
This was the mortal world, lit by the sun and slapped by the waves and plagued by thirst. Yllalla coughed and rubbed at the salt on her lips. How long had it been since she had had something to drink?
“Too damn long,” she whispered, or tried to. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, as if reluctant to move away into the painful dryness. Yllalla coughed harshly and tried to summon some saliva. If any came out, though, she couldn’t feel it.
For a moment, panic tried to grip her. She might easily die here, all alone in the middle of the sea, hundreds of miles from the shore of Arcadia, even further from the town where they all waited for her. Fadaran, whom she was pledged to wed. Her little sister Carona, all shy eyes and worshipful admiration for her big sister. Her father Almiden, soberly proud of his daughter, even though sometimes he did not seem able to look into her eyes without pain; she looked too much like her dead mother for comfort.
But panic slid off. It simply could not gain purchase when pain and heat and thirst were already fighting for dominance.
Yllalla tried to roll over, and almost slapped into the sea. Half-awake now, she braced her hands on the small raft that cradled her and felt along the rim, trying to judge the size of it.
The answer to that was no more encouraging than anything else. The raft measured perhaps three arm-lengths on one side, and no more than two on the other. She would have to curl herself double to lie upon it. Yllalla folded her legs beneath her, and winced as splinters pricked her skin.
“I should have shelter from the sun,” she said in that croaking desert voice that was all she could muster at the moment. “I should have fresh water to drink. I should get as cool as I can.”
She turned her head and stared out over the dazzling surface of the ocean. None of the waves seemed inclined to turn fresh to please her, and if any other pieces of the ship remained out of which she might have built a shelter, they had been flung in other directions. None of the things she needed were there.
Yllalla thought of stopping her heart, a natural magic of all Elwens, but it seemed like too much work. She once again turned and laid her head on the raft, closing her eyes, certain that she would awaken in front of the Starfire Gates this time.
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But she awoke under the stars, and a rushing wind that at least cooled her brow, though it couldn’t do anything else for her. Yllalla stared up at the glittering sparks of fire that had created her people, unsure what she thought or felt, conscious only of their light. It was the emptiest experience she had ever had.
At last thought returned, and with it a reminder of her predicament. Slowly, not sure where the strength came from to rouse herself, she set her elbows beneath her and turned over, staring out to the north- or what her fever-addled mind told her was the north.
It didn’t matter, in the end, in which direction she looked. The sea heaved and moved, restless and endless, the glittering waves a dark purple touched faintly with the light of the stars. Yllalla stared at them dreamily, and remembered Fadaran’s shining eyes on the night that she asked him to marry her.
“My lady,” he had said, and Yllalla could hear his voice in the rushing wind as clearly as if he were beside her, “I would be honored.”
Yllalla smiled at him and held out her hands to clasp his, raising him from the crouch into which he had fallen. “I should be the honored one,” she said softly. “You look at me as if I shine.”
“You do. You always have.” He bowed his head and softly kissed her cheek.
Yllalla awakened slowly from the memory, staring out over the water, mouth hanging softly open. For a long moment, the silver-touched purple darkness before her remained Fadaran’s eyes.
Then she blinked, and lightly touched her face.
Whose eyes?
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Morning brought clouded sunlight and a restless, blue-gray sea. Yllalla shivered, not sure herself if heat-born fever or a chill consumed her.
Or the longing for water.
There had been water, once, a leaping fount of it, glittering in the sunlight like a rainbow shattered by silver arrows. It had leaped and played in her parents’ courtyard, splashing sometimes on the grass, but mostly in the basin, watering the uncaring stone. Yllalla found herself wanting to cry at the thought of it, the waste of it, the pity of it.
For a moment, she thought she could taste cool water on her lips, and it seemed as though the purity of her dry thirst eased a little.
She curled up and slept, and woke to find rain pelting from the sky, soaking her lips and tongue. She drank, and drank, and drank again until she was sick and vomited over the side of the raft into the sea. She didn’t care. There was more water, sweet and sky-born, to wash the taste of bile away.
Like a fountain in a place she had once been…
But the memory faded even as Yllalla grasped at it.
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When again she woke, she could not have said if it were night or day. The sky gleamed like a pearl, true, but that could mean anything. Gray and white mixed and swirled until she could not tell what their meaning was. She watched them intently, though, thinking there had to be a meaning behind them.
Carona had told her that once, Yllalla suddenly remembered. Her little sister loved clouds, and might one day show a mage-talent in reading them. She would stand beneath the swirling clouds, head tilted back, a faint smile bursting across her lips to widen like a rainbow at times. She clapped her hands and whirled, pointing, calling to her more knowing- or blinder- sister to come and see what she had seen.
“Look, look, Ylli! Look there! A unicorn. That means that we’re going to have an east wind, with early snow.”
“You can’t know that,” Yllalla would say, staring at a cloud that might only be mistaken for a unicorn if one were willing to say that a unicorn’s horn was longer than the rest of its body.
“I do know that,” insisted Carona, lips trembling, and then suddenly flung her arms around Yllalla. “It doesn’t matter, Ylli. You might be able to see them someday.”
Yllalla blinked open her eyes, and gasped as she saw a unicorn in the clouds above her, prancing there so clearly she could not understand why she hadn’t seen it before. Of course, Carona had made a wish that she might someday be able to see such a thing, and so perhaps the wish had come true.
Whoever Carona was.
As she was pondering, the east wind began to blow, and a gleam of gold broke through the clouds, showing her that it was morning, early morning, the time of hopes and fading dreams.
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The sea had turned a deep green, the color of clouded jade, and Yllalla hung over the side watching it, when she first saw the ship.
It sped towards her, guided by the wind beating and singing in its sails. Yllalla shivered as she watched it, without knowing why. It might be an enemy ship, of course, but on the other hand, it was her only hope of rescue even if it was.
Her father had told her that once, as they rode through the forest separating their village from the neighboring one, to conclude an alliance against the raiders that plagued both them and their neighbors. “Once we fought with our neighbors. But when we have enemies that threaten us both, then we become allies. We may not be able to trust each other for long, but a few days is usually long enough.”
“Long enough for what?” Yllalla asked, tilting her head back far enough so that she could see him through a mask of gold and red, like autumn leaves. She was still young enough to be vain of her hair.
“To save our lives.”
Yllalla repeated the words softly, echoing them from her lips and throat as she watched the ship draw nearer, even though in a few moments they didn’t echo in her mind, as Almiden faded from sight and memory.
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The sky and sea were a perfect, shifting sphere of blue and green. Yllalla was encased in them.
Hands lifted her from the raft, and tied her to a rope. She felt herself hauled up the side of the ship, swinging now and then to bang into it. She heard words racing past her ears, though she noted them now in the same way she noted the harsh cries of the gulls who had followed the ship for its garbage. They were sounds, part of her world and yet not part of it. She could hear them, but not understand them.
“Why isn’t she responding?”
“Heat-stroke, most likely.”
“No.” This voice spoke with a gentle authority that Yllalla found attractive, and she turned her head to look into eyes the same difficult blue-green color as the sea. She continued gazing as a pair of long hands took her face and moved it this way and that. There was nothing particularly objectionable in the movement, so she allowed it. “I’ve drawn a few like this from the water before. Watch.”
The owner of the blue-green eyes stood up, and Yllalla was laid gently on the deck. At once she stood, moving forward until she could see the water again through the railings of the ship. Then she stilled, staring. The waves sang to her, and showed her many things.
“Sea-madness?” said another voice.
“No,” said the sea-eyed voice again. “She would be dead, gone to join the waves, were it so. I don’t have a name for this. The sea took something from her, and gave her something back.”
“What could be worth the loss of sanity and memories?”
“I don’t know,” said the sea-eyed voice. “And I don’t think that I can know. If I did, I suspect that I would share the sickness.”
A hand took Yllalla’s arm and tried to lead her away from the railing. She shrugged it off and leaned towards the water again. The song shifted and danced around her, abrupt and restive, never-ending, repeating the same movements in a never-repeating pattern.
“What should we do with her, Captain?”
“Leave her there,” said the sea-eyed voice softly. “I have seen a few healed of this, with time and care, but we cannot do it here. We will take her back to shore. Tend the sails.”
Yllalla leaned forward as the sea surged and then began to slide past under the ship’s keel. Her body swayed with the motion of the ship, her hands spread wide, and she sighed softly as her name slipped from her mind and down into the waters, down and down, past blue-green into forever.
