O Ye of Little Faith
> “Five little bugs came walkin on the water, walkin on the water, walkin on the water. Five little bugs came walkin on water, til that fish came swimming right along. [...] Four little bugs came walkin on the water…”
>
> - from “Water Striders”, children’s counting song
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They sailed through the night. Yan dozed off once or twice, partially out of lack of stimulation, from the waves bobbing them up and down, and partially because of the pain in her head that crested in waves as her medication wore off. She couldn’t completely tell if the unpleasant feeling that came over her had to do with her body's natural reaction to being cut open, or if it was the gradual flushing out of the nanites in her brain. Yan felt nauseous and unable to focus. She tried to drink water, but ended up coughing it up over the side of the boat when she found her throat seized and unable to swallow. Maybe it was just all the swelling from going into her neck. Etta watched her with concern, but Yan managed to force a smile onto her face. It wasn't as though she was dying, just having a bad reaction.
It even hurt to move her mouth in the unconscious talking to herself that she had been doing. If there was one thing that would get her to break that bad habit, it was a sharp pain every time she moved her jaw.
She slept.
She woke.
She felt much better, now. The sun was about a third of the way up the sky, and Etta and her mother were sitting down in the hull of the boat and eating some bread and a spread. Yan didn't know where it had come from. Maybe it had been in the boat all along. Or Etta's mother could have bought food in the city while Yan was passed out during her surgery, and kept it in the boat. It didn't matter. Yan's thoughts, though clearer now, swirled around unimpeded. It was as though a veil had been pulled back from over her eyes. She had been looking at the world through a thick sheet of wax paper, but had gotten used to it. Now everything was sharp again.
Yan stared down at her hands, and her mind zeroed in on all the tiny pale cracks running up and down them, the way her fingers were healing a little crookedly. She looked at them with an intensity she had never felt before. The dappled light from the sunlight off the water bouncing off the sail overhead and back down onto the boat and into her hands and all over her body was like holding a cup of sunshine. It danced and jiggled around as the boat rocked.
Etta noticed Yan awake and paralyzed by all the sensations around her, or at least awake and staring down at her hands, and nudged her a little, jolting Yan back to the 'real world'. Whatever that was anymore. Yan looked at Etta for what felt like the first time, seeing the slack of one side of her face, and the friendly innocence of the other. Etta handed Yan a piece of bread.
Yan ate it. She could feel every crumb of it in her mouth. Had life always been like this? Had things felt like this before? How had she never noticed?
She would have laughed, but that felt like it would have been too much. She would have tried using the power, but she was almost afraid of the intensity of it.
Etta said something to her. Instead of the language feeling like it was a million kilometers away, it felt like if only Yan had time, she could understand it in her bones. She reached out a hand toward Etta. Etta looked confused for a second, then grabbed it, wrapping her fingers in Yan's. Yan grinned, and then did laugh.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you." She could have kept saying it forever, even if her jaw still hurt. She released Etta's hand and leaned over the side of the boat, tilting her whole body to let her look down into the salty water. She dragged one hand through it.
She remembered one other time she had felt this way, when everything was so clear and so full and so much. The first time she had ever gone onto a planet, with her mother, or at least the first time she remembered, and there was the sky, and wind, and animals, and the hot Terlin sun beating down, and the blowing dusky brown sand, and the salty dry taste on her lips, and the little bugs skittering around on the ground, and the people everywhere, talking and yelling and–
The rational part of her brain that wasn't just soaking things in was glad she was having this eye reopening out here on the boat in the middle of nowhere, rather than somewhere particularly dangerous or overwhelming.
The day slid by as she stared out at the sea and just let the warm air, salty water, and every shimmering light wash over her. Etta and her mother sailed along.
This whole planet seemed to be covered in water, with just small islands popping up in chains. Or perhaps Yan was making a faulty assumption based on what she had seen so far. Off on the horizon, they would occasionally see small other boats or a sliver of land, but Etta's mother directed them away from those. How much longer they could sail for without running out of supplies, Yan didn't know. They had a decent supply of bread and nuts that Etta's mother pulled out of a bag and distributed, but they couldn't live on that forever.
Something came over Yan as the sun was sinking low, turning the sky into a firey red terror, and the ocean into its reflection. She wasn't scared, exactly, but she felt something touch her heart, deep inside, and she shivered all over. There was something out there. It didn't seem menacing, but…
Yan, against perhaps her better judgement, reached out with the power. She was relieved to find that she could, and that her brain didn't flare with pain the moment she did. The power, though sluggish from disuse over the period of her imprisonment, stretched out around her in an ever expanding wave, letting her feel beyond the limits of her own skin, until she could go no further out and the power dissolved away into nothingness. Yan took a couple deep breaths, steadying herself. Etta was ignoring her, focused on tying a piece of rope to another part of the boat.
The feeling of the sky reaching out towards her had been fleeting, and Yan wondered if she had imagined it. After all, it wouldn't have been the first thing she had imagined. Luckily, with the world feeling so present in her eyes and ears, Halen and various other ghosts hadn't decided to make an appearance recently. That might change as she got used to the real feeling of the world again, but Yan hoped it wouldn't.
The wind was picking up. It blew Etta's hair around, and rocked the boat from side to side. Etta laughed and turned the sail that had been flapping uselessly into it, sending the boat scooting forward with a new burst of speed and crazy tilt. Her mother yelled something to her, and Etta sighed dramatically and began to lower the larger sail. The setting sun cast its last glow onto the clouds behind them, and though the air cooled, the wind did not abate. They carried on travelling with just the motor for a while, Etta and her mother taking turns at the helm.
After some time, droplets of rain began to pound the little vessel, and it hopped up and down over the water, pitching from side to side. Yan's stomach turned, this time from true seasickness. It was dark. The stars weren't visible through the heavy cloud cover, and Etta's mother was using the only light to point out ahead of the ship. She held onto that while Etta tried to keep the boat going in the right direction. Fighting against the waves was fruitless, though, and the churning of the motor disappeared into the sea behind them. Though Etta and her mother still looked relaxed, if busy, it felt to Yan like all that they could do was just barely keep the little boat out of the water. Considering the amount of water that crashed over the sides and down from the sky, maybe they couldn't even do that.
The excitement she had been feeling about experiencing the world turned into a sick fear. Yan couldn't swim. The deepest she had ever been in an ocean was up to her waist, and that was during a trip with her Academy class. Even then, the relentless tugging of the waves on her legs had made her feel like she was being dragged out to sea by some unstoppable, unresistant force. She had retreated to the comfort of the beach.
Etta saw her, in the little light that there was on the boat, and grinned with half her face and clumsily pushed her salt slicked hair out of her eyes. She yelled something excitedly. Yan just clung on to the side of the boat and closed her eyes.
Feeling the jolts of pitch/roll/yaw with her eyes closed was almost worse, but at least now the water wasn't getting into her eyes. Yan took a couple deep breaths and tried to steady herself. She could focus now. Maybe the old joy of meditation would come back to her. She breathed in every time the boat swung one direction, and out when it swung the other. She cleared her mind. How easy it was, now, for the power to come to her.
Breathe in, breathe out.
That feeling of something reaching for her returned, and Yan let it pass through her unimpeded, without trying to draw it in or push it away.
Breathe in, breathe out.
She thought she heard Halen's voice over the rush and roar of the water, but she pushed it away.
Her breathing grew steadier and more confident. Her mind grew clearer. She felt like she had a clear picture in her head of a bubble of ocean and sky surrounding the little boat, bright as day, detailed as the real thing, but bobbing along in a bottle, safe from all distress. The boat swayed from side to side. Yan breathed.
Then suddenly, Etta was shaking her shoulder. Yan jolted out of her meditation. For a second, Yan saw that for a ten meter radius around the boat, the water was perfectly calm and still, then the moment was lost as the waves regained control and knocked the boat sideways. Yan slammed into the hull, hard, and water sloshed around her feet. Etta babbled excitedly and gestured around as her mother steered the boat.
There was too much going on for her to process. Etta stared at her curiously, while somehow still easily keeping her balance in the ever tumbling ship. Yan was just a soggy mess down at the bottom.
"What do you want?" Yan finally asked. Etta couldn't answer in her own language, but she smiled and pointed at Yan, then the ocean, and then ran her hand in the air from side to side as though she was petting it. Or smoothing it down. Yan shrugged helplessly. She might have used the power to make the ocean calm, but it didn't make a lot of sense to her. Usually, using the power required focus, and real intent on what she was trying to achieve. All Yan had been doing was meditating, and… imagining.
Abruptly, she realized that she would have a big problem on her hands if she started using the power while she was dreaming. She could kill someone, if she had a bad dream. Not like she really needed anything else to worry about. She needed to get her imagination under control.
Etta continued to talk to her as the waves crashed into the boat. It didn't really matter what Etta was saying. Even if they had been speaking the same language, it would have been hard to hear over the wind and the waves and the non stop flapping of the sail and ropes.
Yan stared out over the water. She would keep her eyes open, this time. She could calm the ocean again. Even if Etta and her mother weren’t having problems with the boat, Yan was seasick, and she wanted to get back to the gentle rocking rather than this horrible up and down sway. And she needed the practice. There was probably no better way to get the power back under her conscious control than by using it that way. Right?
What would be the best way to calm the waves? Maybe a variation on the same shield she had used to stop bullets, and space debris. Just a little tweak on it. Yan sent her power out, in a bubble, and she tried to enforce a mass flow rate condition on it. Wind and water weren't solids that were easy to stop and deflect, but if wind was coming at them at 40kph, or whatever the wind was doing, she could make a wall of thicker, soupier air. Denser stuff that was hard for the whipping wind to pass through. It slowed down, and a deafening silence filled the bubble, aside from the slapping of the waves against the side of the boat. The water Yan slowed down with a similar trick.
Now that she was focusing on it, it was a lot harder. It required effort to keep up. Yan's breath whistled through her gritted teeth. Etta looked concerned, and touched Yan's shoulder and said something. Yan didn't want to take her focus off the water to respond. Her eyes felt like they were glazing over.
That presence, whatever it was, reached out again. It felt like the ocean, like Yan was standing with her toes right on the shore, and it was lapping at her, and pulling the sand out from underneath her feet. She clenched her aching jaw and resisted it. She clenched her aching jaw and kept her dry eyes on the placid surface of the water. She clenched her aching jaw and gripped the railing on the side of the boat for dear life as the motor spit up water behind them, and kept them moving on.
The presence didn't relent, though, and the more Yan kept that bubble up, the more it reached for her. It pulled and pulled and pulled. Yan stood up, still holding onto the side of the boat. It wanted her to go, but not in the same direction the boat was. It tugged at her, and took over something inside her brain. The wind swirled around. Yan leaned over the side of the boat. Etta came up next to her as her mother sailed them on through Yan's calm bubble.
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Yan thought for a second, and reached her hand out down to the water's surface. She had to lean far. She pressed on the water with her hand. It was easy to raise the surface tension. It was just like the edge of her bubble. Now this was a thick film; the water felt firm under her hand as she pressed down.
Half of her brain was occupied by using the power, and the other half was listening to the siren call of whatever presence was urging her onward. She had placed herself in such a position that there was only a sliver of her mind left for rational thought. That part of her was telling her to stop, to drop the bubble, to force out the intrusion in her head.
But if there was one thing that Yan had always been weak to, from her first days of using the power, it was joining in with other people using the power. She had always loved meditating as a group. There was, in that space, nothing anyone could do to hurt her, and she was welcomed as she was nowhere else. And so when there came a gentle, probing, pulling, tugging presence that combined with her power pleasingly, and smoothed out the rough thoughts about disobeying in her brain, the already fragile Yan was helpless to resist.
She swung her leg up and out, over the side of the boat. Etta grabbed her arm and shouted something in her ear, but Yan shook her off. She held onto the rail and hoisted her other leg out as well. Etta's fingernails tore at Yan's tunic as she took the short hop down onto the surface of the water.
Buoyed by the power, the water stretched and wobbled, but didn't break. Yan took half a step forward. Distantly, she heard Etta screaming, felt someone tugging her back, but Yan kept going forward. She was being inextricably drawn forward.
Somewhere, in the one crevice of her mind that was free of the influence of this outside power, Yan remembered something the Green King had said, so long ago, after she had tried to take her chip out the first time.
"You'd have a real problem on this planet if you took it out for too long," he whispered mockingly. "You need one to stay sane."
Yan had tucked that information away, because it had felt worth it to get the power back. And she had thought the Green King was probably lying to her.
Something crashed into her back, even as her legs hauled her step by arduous step forward, without her conscious control. It was heavy, wet Etta, hauling on Yan's shoulders. The surface tension under Yan's feet couldn't hold up two bodies, and they crashed down into the water.
Yan's mind snapped back into focus as the water, much colder now that she was submerged, filled her mouth and eyes and ears. She lost control of the power, and immediately the ocean slammed into her at full bore. Etta hauled underneath her armpits, kicking madly to bring them back up to the surface. Yan, who had almost breathed in water in her shock, realized again that she couldn't swim.
Panic, of an entirely new kind, overtook her, and she flailed madly in the few moments before the water dipped down into a trough and their heads poked out above the water. She caught a glimpse of the boat, about five meters distant, tilting to one side as Etta's mother abandoned the wheel to toss out a life preserver on a rope towards them. The bright red of it glittered on the surface of the ocean for an instant, but then another wave crashed over them both and sent Yan choking down into the abyss.
She was, in a way, lucky, that the water was so turbulent, because it forced her back up to the surface again, and Etta pulled on her arm as she swam directly through the waves. Yan kicked, as much as she could. For once, the scant amount of clothing that she had been given was a bonus, as it didn't weigh her down. The life preserver bobbed into view, and Etta dropped Yan's arm for a second in order to grab it. Yan immediately began to sink, and the waves crashed over her head. She struggled fiercely, flailing her arms to get back up. Somehow, Etta forced the life preserver, a long red tube, toward her, and Yan grabbed onto it for dear life. Her mother pulled the rope and drew her in. The buffeting of the waves was less dangerous, now that she had something that would stay on top of them. Etta, a strong swimmer, reached the boat before Yan did, even with Yan kicking and Etta's mother pulling.
Etta hoisted herself up over the side, and then grabbed Yan's arm once again to pull her back into the boat. She crashed onto the bottom of it and lay there, panting and dizzy for a second before she managed to sit up.
Etta was angrier than Yan had ever seen. Her face was beet red, and she was yelling incoherently at Yan. Yan stared back at her, unable to say anything in response.
"I-" Yan started, but, unexpectedly, Etta reached out and slapped her across the face. The noise and the pain cut across the haze of confusion that remained in her brain. Yan reeled backwards. Etta's mother said something harsh, to who, Yan didn't know. Etta scrubbed at her eyes ineffectively with her damp hand. In the wetness from the ocean, and the rain beating down from above, it was impossible to tell if there were tears, but Etta's crumpled face and choked breathing made her look like she was crying.
Yan scooted back against the side of the boat. She was the one who had upset Etta, so she couldn't offer any comfort. Unexpectedly, Etta lunged forward. Yan thought she was going to hit her again, but instead, Etta wrapped her arms around her tightly. The boat rocked, and Etta mumbled something incoherent into Yan's ear. Probably would have been incoherent even if Yan could understand.
Yan patted her on the back awkwardly.
Even though she wasn't using the power, and she was back in control of her brain, Yan could feel the tugging of whatever it was out there. It still wasn't precisely malevolent. What had caused Yan to almost drown wasn't its beckoning, it was Etta diving out after her. It was possessive, though, and it sang with a sweet allure. Now that Yan was actively trying to resist it, it felt like there was someone whispering at her, in words that she could just barely not understand. Or like a cool breeze was ever so slightly drying sweat off her back, but mentally. It was the same crawling feeling.
Etta released her after a moment, even as Yan sat stock still processing everything that was happening. She had done something foolhardy, dangerous, and completely inexplicable. Was it defense enough that her mind had been invaded? Was she able to say with any certainty that she hadn't had control over her own actions?
"I'm sorry," she said, looking up at Etta, who leaned back in a squat, keeping herself steady despite the boat's rocking. "Really. I won't do it again."
Etta just had to look at her suspiciously, or with whatever mix of emotions was there in her eyes. Yan's cheek still burned from Etta's slap (it hadn't been weak at all), despite the rain that trickled down. The rain was less intense, now, and some of the wind seemed to have blown itself out. Perhaps it was a sudden squall that left just as quickly as it came. That wasn't to say that the sea was calm by any measure, just less wild than it had been moments before.
Eventually, Etta had enough of watching Yan, and returned to helping her mother sail the boat. She must have decided that Yan wasn't going to try to get out of the boat again, and if she was, there wasn't much they could do to stop her. It was a wonder that Etta and her mother put up with her at all, Yan thought. After all, she had been nothing but trouble to them, and she was a major source of fear and anxiety just because of who she was, no matter how well she behaved. And Yan was finding that she wasn't able to trust herself to behave well at all.
The adrenaline was still pouring through her system in the aftermath of her little swim. Her heart hadn't quite calmed down, and her throat hurt from half inhaled water. The fear of it all felt like ice in the bones of her arms, and her hands trembled as she looked at them. She had to find some way to be less… Less…
Out of control.
Yan needed to get herself back under control. That meant no more imagining things, no more using the power without meaning to, no more letting anybody else invade her head or control her or force her into a cage or tell her what to do. She clenched her fists, feeling the pain in her left hand. No more.
The niggling feeling at the back of her mind hadn't gone away, even as she was having this stern talking to with herself. It was time to have a stern talking to with… that… as well.
She breathed in and out, keeping her eyes open and her attention fixed on Etta and her mother. There would be no more letting herself get sucked away. Now that she knew it could happen, her one goal was to not let it happen again. The allure was strong, but Yan, at this moment, with the fear of near-drowning still present in her heart, was stronger.
The power twined about her like a snake, and Yan reached out toward it. It tried to pull her in, to make her one with it. She had never felt it so intense and alive like that before, and at such a great distance. She stopped herself, and only touched it on a surface level.
"Yes, I'll go to you," Yan said, half aloud and half through the power. "But my way. My terms. Not yours."
She couldn't say no outright. She didn't want to. That was her rational mind speaking. If this was the greatest force of the power on the planet, it stood to reason that whichever holy person, or persons, who were wielding it could help her. Someone with a power to reach across how many kilometers of ocean to grab at her could have just killed her outright. That wasn't even in question. But they hadn't. So Yan was forced to speculate that they wanted her for purposes other than harm.
What had the Green King said? That the planet would drive her crazy without the chip? She already was crazy, she knew, so letting this happen couldn't be any worse.
And, Yan thought, if she did get to meet up with whoever this was, they could communicate. She wanted to be able to communicate with people again. Not just gesture and pantomime and point at pictures and yell incomprehensibly. She wanted to understand and be understood at the level only another sensitive could reach. That was always what she wanted. Just now it was compounded by being so much more of an outsider than she had ever been.
She forced her intention of self control into its purest thought form, and shoved it towards the presence lurking on the edge of her consciousness. The feeling she received in return, of casual amusement, certainty, and patience wasn't exactly one that inspired confidence in her. The presence offered her something, holding out a sliver of power like a gift. Yan was cautious. It shoved it towards her with a gentle insistence and a deep seated promise that it wouldn't hurt.
Yan took it, circling the little sliver of power and intention. A bright spot appeared in her vision, glowing a pale green against the still dripping black sky. It lurked on the edge of the horizon. Yan turned to the side, and the green dot continued lurking in her peripheral vision. She turned her body all the way around, and, weirdly, the dot somehow lived 'behind' her eye. She could feel it in the back of her brain when she turned around, just as if she were seeing it. It was the same when she looked directly at it and closed her eyes. A navigational beacon, then.
The presence couldn't have given her something more useful, like the knowledge of language, could it have? Yan knew it was possible, based on the way Sylva described her apprenticeship. She sent her mild frustration back, and received more of that casual amusement in turn. And then the presence retreated, leaving nothing but the nagging green dot in her vision.
Yan sighed in relief the moment that it was gone. She kept her guard up, though. There was no way she was going to be caught unaware and pulled back out into the ocean. For a moment, she just lay back against the side of the boat, as she had been doing so often for the past few days.
Then she stood up. That motion, and her clutching on to the side of the boat to keep her balance got Etta's attention once again, out of fear that she would go back into the water, probably. Yan waved at her with her free hand, and inched carefully toward the front of the boat, cloth shoes flopping in the pools of water all around the boat. She could see the green dot in the corner of her vision. At the front of the boat, Etta's mother was holding the wheel. Yan edged up next to her, and put her hand out on the wheel.
The mother looked surprised, and swatted her hand away, hitting Yan's hurt fingers. Yan winced, but firmed her grip. She turned her body halfway and gave Etta a pleading look. While Yan and the mother wrestled gently over the wheel, Etta said something in a confused tone.
Yan pointed out into the dark. She knew where she wanted to go now, at least. Etta's mother pointed fervently at the display in the front of the boat, showing a variety of navigational beacons and the course they were heading. It seemed to have nothing to do with the green dot on Yan's vision. But Yan wanted to go there. While she did trust the two women who had saved her and helped her more than she could have ever expected, she didn't want to walk somewhere else, once again without any foreknowledge of what she was getting herself into. Though the presence that had touched her mind felt overwhelming, and a bit dangerous, it was her best hope of communicating and getting somewhere for real. Yan pointed out across the ocean again, and jerked the wheel a bit.
Etta tugged at the back of her damp tunic to get her to sit down, but Yan wasn't dissuaded.
"I need to go there," she said, gritting her teeth. "I won't get out of the boat, but I need the boat to take me there. Please."
Etta's mother didn't look like she was going to relent. She kept her own grip on the wheel, and her own course across the choppy ocean. Etta pulled Yan back. Yan turned to her and pleaded silently, pointing in the direction that she wanted to go. The dot was behind her, but still floating in her mind. Her arm and pointing finger trailed out behind her like a banner.
"Please, Etta. I need to go." She hoped the tone would get across, even if the meaning didn't.
Etta shook her head no, and turned away, but the moment that she did, Yan saw something written on her face. Wait.
Alright. Yan would wait.
Etta returned to the helm with her mother and Yan returned to the back of the boat, still somewhat reluctantly. She waited there. She couldn't have misinterpreted what Etta was trying to say, right? That look. Patience. That was what she was supposed to have.
Yan sat, and thought, and waited. Eventually, Etta and her mother had a short conversation in which they both kept glancing back at Yan. She stared at them, trying to keep the frustration off her face. It wouldn't be good to make them trust her less. Whatever trust she had, especially from Etta's mother, had probably been eroded by now. She had been on shaky ground to begin with, but jumping out of the boat had certainly done her no favors. Neither, probably, had grabbing the wheel.
Etta came to the back of the boat. She pulled the soggy life preserver over to herself and lay down curled up with it underneath her head. It was long enough that she offered the other side of it to Yan. They lay facing eachother, and the shaking of the boat underneath them sent Etta to sleep quite quickly. Yan was less thrilled with the prospect of sleeping, and stayed awake. She was afraid of losing control in her sleep. That was the new thing she had to be afraid of, right?
Wait.
She was waiting.
The clouds broke apart, and the stars shone down over the choppy water. The air was cool. They sailed, but mainly under power of the little motor.
Yan probably did doze off, and her rest was, for once, relatively free of dreams. She woke to someone gently shaking her shoulder. Etta hovered over her, and put her hand gently but firmly over Yan's mouth. Yan, still in the haze of sleep, licked it as she had done with Sylva so many times. She was probably lucky that she didn't have a more violent reaction, considering. Etta, in the dim light, clearly rolled her eyes. She removed her hand, and pointed slightly down the boat at the sleeping figure of her mother. The boat bobbed in the water.
Etta helped Yan up, and they carefully and silently made their way to the front of the boat. Etta gestured out over the horizon. Yan understood immediately what was going on, and pointed herself, to where the green dot hovered over the edge of her vision. It was unbelievable how much Etta was willing to do to help her. Whatever head injury she had got years ago must have made her really insane, to do all this for Yan.
They sailed on, in the darkness that turned slowly to a barely lightening dawn, and the green dot grew heavy and large in Yan's vision.