“How did I do this time?” Gele asked, already expecting the answer. He threw the thin stick aside and looked out onto the beach. The map basked in the sun, sliced apart by imaginary rivers and blemished by scribbles of cities. Allecrea laid out before him. He had labeled the purple desert and sprinkled seashells where the mountains slept. Allecros and Mehmaton were black iron balls. Wilkin’s Port was a little wooden bead, as were the rest of the harbors. Glancing at it, he did not need to sink into the spirit’s memories of maps. All he had to do now was refine the scrawled coastlines he messed up the day before. For sixteen straight days, he studied the world inside Sawyer’s past. At first, he made a map of Galu for practice, but now the island would be just a speck, no bigger than the wooden beads. Etched into his head, Gele stepped back as the creator of a continent and once again felt thin twinges of fear wriggle through his skin.
“What about the little colony islands? You keep forgetting Chorrlow too.” Sawyer stepped around where the ocean would have been. Her boots left no footprints as she sat down in the middle of the map. “There’s hundreds of islands, though, so I can’t blame you for forgetting them. But, they would be the first thing we see before hitting the mainland.”
“There’s a belt of islands to the north and to the south, right?”
“To the north and west,” Sawyer reminded him. “Little islands to the west are sparse but quite big. Visiting them myself, they’re each different. The people there would be rightfully mad if you mixed up the names.”
“What about to the south?”
“Another continent,” Sawyer walked down to where the sand met the grass. “It would be around here if the scale was right. I have only been to a few ports there, but I’ve heard stories of gold temples and insect gods. It’s far bigger than Allecrea, but I’ve never had the luxury of seeing any of their maps. Maybe double the size, or triple, if merchants I’ve never trusted are to be believed.”
“What about to the east? That’s where the Harpies and Angels lived, right?”
Sawyer nodded, “but they’re all dead. Killed by Deneve the Barbarian Queen. And in their place, thick jungles grow, so no one knows what lives there now. Maybe chimeras, maybe things like me.” Her face winced. She had shown him her scales and wings over two weeks ago, and he had nightmares about it since—dreams where his skin melted and fire grew in its place. A victim of human sacrifice, he assumed, dreadfully. Each night he awoke in a cold sweat, with Sawyer sitting across the room. Her tired eyes told him it was no conjured terror but something real that she was also reliving. How many little villages on this map were used in disgusting magics? Sawyer could not be the only one squishing life into some corrupted elixir.
Gele looked over the gray Sea of Shrouds. Soon he would leave the beach behind and set out, finally. Just across the sand sat an old canoe, the mast replaced and the sail now a beautiful green cloth. South of Galu, straight ahead, that would bring him to Vall. Even on the cusp of departure, he contemplated why he chose there. It was simply the closest stretch of land and far from where warriors did their trade. Truly, to avoid the gossip of his people, the wilderness of Vall was a perfect place to hide.
“I remember the day I first saw Melaopel sail off,” a distant voice said. Clow walked up to Gele, with Emned trailing a few paces behind. “He told me that the sea is not a wall that separates people. And sometimes, if I were to shout from the shore, the sound would reach him, one way or another. The manta rays would carry on the message. They’re smart fish; compassionate things.”
“Shame for them,” Gele laughed, “I’ll be shouting a lot. Hope they can deliver all I have to say.”
“Sometimes, I think I still hear Melaopel’s voice in the waves. So, his words still come, even after all these years.” Clow wiped her eyes. “Be careful, my son, please, come home one day, even if it’s only a visit.”
“I will, I promise.” Gele embraced his mother and felt the first glint of hesitancy. This may be the last I see of her, my mother. She has watched all her family leave, and maybe she’ll die waiting for them all to come home.
“Your father and Shuran are watching you now, and they’re proud.” Clow stepped back. “It’s a shame, really. They’ll know about your journey long before I do.”
Gele looked up. The Second Sea’s waters were calm today, a green shell that held few shadows and let the sunlight come down unfettered. The spirits, wherever they were, are witnesses to everything. But, in turn, Gele wondered, were they judges? The night I tried to run, would it repeat on a day like this?
“I hope Shuran isn’t mad at me,” Emned said. “Once, maybe fifteen years ago, we nearly took this canoe for ourselves. Our own little voyage to the ends of the earth. Now, Gele, it seems you’re going instead.” She walked over to the canoe. The hull was weathered still, but it was all he had. The inside was piled with leather sacks full of supplies. Emned had procured all of it for him. A forlorn pang glazed over her as she felt the seafoam brush over her feet. She still does not want me to go, Gele thought. But Emned said no such thing. “I still remember the night Shuran said she was finally sailing. I would have gone with her if she asked. Now, I am old and head dancer, two places I never thought I’d be. I have people here I love, my wife, my family—when once all I wanted to do was run across those waters. Gele, come back one day, please. Settling down with someone, it’s peaceful.”
“You are my family. You were there for me during my Beckoning. You are my sister,” Gele said outright. “I will not be gone from Galu forever. This is my home,” he lied. They’ll see me as the one who ran away if I ever went back to Gulw.
“Then here,” Emned reached into the canoe. She threw a small sack to Gele. “These were meant for your sister, but now they’re yours. Do not open it until you’re out on the sea and out of Galu’s shadow.”
“And these are from me.” Clow pulled two brass bracelets from her wrists and placed them in Gele’s palm. The thin metal fit snugly. Recently polished, it was like wearing bands of sunlight. “They’re from Warrl, my homeland. My father used to say that copper was the first metal humans ever used. It, alongside its daughters, bronze and brass, are connected to our souls the same way blood and bones are. A shared history between us and the earth.” She glanced around. “Emned told me about your spirit, but I can’t say that I understand. But, maybe this will help you, I hope.”
Emned glared at Sawyer, whispering to her about promises. Gele hugged his mother again, ignoring them. “Thank you.”
“I love you, Gele,” Clow was crying again, her words coming out as squeaks, “but I will not keep you here any longer.”
“Gele, be careful. Danger comes from close behind and far away, and sometimes both angles at once.” Emned leaned in, “please, I hope your judgment of her is more accurate than mine.” The whisper came sharp, knowing the pirate heard. “Humans have only spoken of chimeras with disdain. Beware her Gele, even if you come to trust her with your life.”
“I know,” Gele said as he hugged her. “I appreciate you, Emned, but I cannot go without her, and even with that, she would not betray my promise of coming back to Galu. I trust Sawyer enough to say that.”
“Then go. I will dance and sing to the spirits, begging them to treat you well.”
“Your gift, whatever it is, is gracious enough,” Gele said as he let go.
“My brother, I will protect you, no matter where you are.”
“Thank you,” Gele took one last look at his family and pushed his canoe into the water. Sawyer came following, floating over the sand. “It’s just like before,” he said to her in his head, “like the night we met.”
“It will be different. This time we are free to go where we wish.” Sawyer stood on the bow, her feet teetering on the edge weightlessly. The breeze passed through her, brushing Gele’s hair as he boarded and grabbed the paddle.
Triumph hit Gele when the oar entered the water. When the first splash of seafoam leaped into the air, he knew he had made it. He found his rhythm instantly, and then he was rowing out to sea. Waves surrendered to him. The great gray field before him seemed to embrace him as a friend. Quickly, Gele reached up and uncoiled the sail. The green canvas stretched out with a silent cheer. Playful, the cloth whipped around as it caught the gales. Then, he was off. Clow and Emned grew smaller as Gele waved goodbye. “Farewell, my family!” He screamed louder than he ever had before. “I’ll come back with so many stories! I promise you!” Under him, stingrays followed him out into the Sea of Shrouds, and seagulls guarded him against the sky.
“See you, red-eyed bitch! I’ll win your trust next time we meet. I’ll wager a lot on that!” Sawyer shouted, sitting at the very front of the boat, her feet resting in the rippling current below. “I’d bet my soul on it, but that’s all I got,” she said a bit quieter.
The canoe was running now. Gele held onto the ropes as the sail pulled him like an eager friend. Overhead, whales with blowholes on their stomachs halfway breached the surface of the Second Sea. Dragging themselves, the pod raced Gele. Crawling Whales, the people below called them. They cut through the sky, moving from one end of the world to the other. Only for a short moment did the two migrations intersect, and soon Gele watched them fly into the east. How did such massive things not fall when they emerged from the Second Sea?
The islands inside the Sea of Shrouds knew they were coming. The migrations of the creatures above were their calendar. Seasons were marked by the arrival of a hundred different animals, as the months were divided by the illumination of the Second Sea. What will be in the sky when I do return home—if I ever do? The question choked Gele as he felt the brass bracelets.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
With the whales’ departure, a swarm of fish and squid took up their space in the Second Sea. Swirling, schools of red groupers created a crimson overcast. The silhouettes of far larger things haunted the fish as they stayed as one great cluster. And below, a forest of purple-pink coral lurked under his boat. Gele spotted eels twisting and snatching crabs with a voracious snap! Hungry, the eels gobbled them down without even crushing the creatures. “Eaten alive,” Sawyer mumbled as she watched.
Hours passed with Gele as the seas’ spectator. Up and down, there was always something moving, even as his boat flew past on its strong green sails. When Gele laid anchor—a hollowed-out iron tied to thick ropes—the sun was dipping into the sky. The rock sank through the gray water, landing in a seaweed grove. Trapping himself in the calm dead waters, Gele surveyed everything surrounding him. Nothing. A wasteland that touched every point on the horizon. Lost in the middle of the ocean, Gele laughed aloud.
“We’re here, to a place I’ve always wanted to be,” he grinned at the pirate. “The spirits did not sink us, and the Anima must still be hungry.”
“I missed this,” Sawyer admitted solemnly, “being out on the sea.”
The words perked up in Gele’s ears as he began chewing on the salted fish Emned had packed. “I can open her gift now,” he remembered, reaching for the small sack. It may be years until I return, he thought to himself as he opened the present. A bundle of blue barkcloth met his eyes. They were meant for Shuran, he remembered Emned saying. There were two lengths of fabric: a scarf and a skirt. A bold cobalt blue, it was like holding water in his hands. Do I deserve them? Gele asked himself until he looked upon what he wore now. The clothes from the initiation still covered him, stained with blood, impossible to wash out. He felt sick looking at himself, even when surrounded by the beautiful open ocean.
He tugged the filthy scarf from his neck and let it fly into the breeze. Then, he unbound the skirt from his waist and surrendered it to the sea. Changing, the deep blue cloth was soft against his skin, comfortable, and did not smell of blood. “Why did she wait so long to give this to me now?” Gele asked as he looked down at himself. His body was scarred by his fight with Nab, where he had been stabbed. He felt his broken nose with his fingers. How crooked it was, even after healing for weeks. But, the blue shined over it. His clothes rippled in the wind, making him a part of the air too. The coarse hair on his chest stood up. “Emned wanted to show Shuran what I did, but only when I went out to sea,” he whispered aloud. The wind brushed his long black hair. Maybe he was correct.
“I never took her for being sentimental,” Sawyer muttered, “but she does have taste, I suppose.” She smiled, “it suits you, that color. You’ll step onto Vall as a bold-looking man, Gele.”
“Thank you,” he said, even though he felt no pride. He watched his old clothes sink into the water. It was like lifting the floating lanterns up into the sky when the full moon woke up the spirits. They were watching, asleep or not. They were always there.
Retrieving his anchor, Gele lifted the sail again. The wind worked with him, pushing him straight south. The water became rough soon. Tall hills of surf caused the canoe to swerve and dive. Gele clutched the ropes and sail as Sawyer shouted commands. Then, the ocean slumped into another lull, and Gele missed the fervor the second it left.
The sun dove into the night before Gele had even noticed, and when night came, so did sudden exhaustion. Anchoring, Gele laid atop the sacks of supplies Emned gave him as he spied on the stars through the screen of water. The smell of salt was comforting, and the sea’s ambiance of hums and whispers accompanied him until he slept.
Morning came quickly, after foggy dreams of larger ships. And with only a bite of taro and yams, Gele was back to hoisting the sail. Sawyer and Gele traded stories back and forth as they coasted over the prairie of seafoam. Gele told her of the dancers and how they would all sneak off into the mountains some days to gather ingredients for Emned’s magic tea. In turn, Sawyer shared rum recipes and the first time she was truly drunk. One long gulp of whiskey was too much for the pirate girl, and lookouts had to be set up, so she did not fall overboard that night.
She told him about the cats she cared for. Scraggly things that loved her, and she loved them. Sawyer claimed that cats were kings of ships, as they kept the rats at bay. Gele asked why, and she told him of the Allecrean Plague. Rats delivered sickness, poxes, and miasmas, which polluted from the inside. Prevention was key since the cure did not come cheap. It was far easier to hire cats than magicians. The most expensive alchemist potions and elixirs could persist against the most nefarious diseases. Recipes locked inside heavy steel vaults had armies guarding their contents. Hundreds of years ago, war waged for possession of the secrets. In the same vein, cats were modern mercenaries. Sawyer said pirates would not have existed if old men did not need mercenaries for their quests for immortality. No life-extending elixir existed, she promised him. Yet, then the spirit looked at herself and laughed.
Then there was a silence for hours, just taking in the brevity the empty sea had in surplus. Gele had to accept it was home now as the sun came down with blaring heat. His own sweat began to blind him, dripping from his forehead into his eyes. At midday, he laid anchor and went swimming over a coral reef. Sawyer joined him, diving in the water where she blended with the bubbles. Together they looked upon a battle between mussels and starfish and danced with tiny yellow sharks. Pufferfish visited them, and Sawyer guarded him against their barbs. An octopus struck at her and fled with a cloud of ink when she struck back. Gele surfaced and laughed. For he had learned something new about spirits, something no one else in the world could ever know.
Cooled off, yet soaked, Gele dried off in the wind as he resumed course for Vall. Sawyer used to do the same with her old crew, jumping off the high ships into the brisk cold water. She told him of the people she lost: Wess and Duncan, plus Maynard, the one who left. Then, a hundred more names she was surprised to remember herself. For an hour, she talked of the children she took in after Chorllow when they were freed from Siren’s sovereignty. Sawyer then named the traitors and their betrayals. Then she listed the few comrades she slept with and once claimed to love. Gele admitted he had no passion for his past partners. He had never thought about it before now, but when in their arms, he could only think of leaving Galu. The love Emned once held for Shuran; he could not replicate it himself. The pirate, though, she understood. Together they agreed that loving home was easier than loving another, and staying with someone was impossible with the sea so close by.
The wind vanished from the sails once nightfall arrived. Lowering the anchor again, Gele noticed something that went absent in his thoughts as the day went by. A blur, that’s what time was out here on the waves. He had not said a word to Sawyer. His thoughts leaped to her and back again. A stroll through her daydreams and a visit to his. No conversation, no thinking, only the natural flow. They were one, melded together out amongst the expanse of nature and nothingness. What would we be at the end of this voyage? Fear trickled in his most private thoughts, and she heard them too. Would there even be a we? What if our thoughts merge for too long, would there still be her and I, or just one body holding a soul the size of two? Then, his eyes met Sawyer’s. Terror took hold like it plunged a knife into her chest. She worried for him and the weight she refused to share. We are not one soul, he assured himself. In the Second Sea, though, what will be then? And Gele shuddered. What would the spirits be if a wizard folded their souls into bent and broken wings?
That night, Gele dreamed of a ritual. Twelve brass rods were embedded in the soil, copper wires strung around each spiked point. Murmurs and screams rattled. Over twenty people were stripped naked and corralled inside the metal fence, forced to sit inside runes drawn with sulfur dust. Their wrists were slit, and the wires inserted into their veins. A nightmare Gele already knew of had commenced. Sawyer Jean stepped forward, a host of pirates and outlaws watching with wide unafraid eyes. A cabin boy who carried a small lion doll vomited. A trusted friend Gele had never met led him away. A wizard with carnal tattoos running down his arm handed Sawyer a bronze hammer and a flagon of a foul-smelling concoction. Pirates carrying kegs came in, pouring the same elixir onto the sacrifices. Sulfur, blood, and the potion mixed in a shallow puddle at the center. Boom! Sawyer slammed the hammer upon the brass rods. The potion bubbled inside her. The brew was something wicked—water from the Second Sea, Sawyer’s own blood, salves of potent and poisonous herbs, flakes of gold, and the ground-up bones of Deneve the Barbarian Queen. The sacrifices, though, their drinks were a mixture of Sawyer’s blood and what they salvaged from the Siren.
Boom! The last brass rod was thrust into the ground, creating the circuit. The smell of sulfur dimmed. Something else replaced the air. Shivers took over Gele as he collapsed, and they seized Sawyer Jean as well. Without stopping her incantation, she crawled into the ring. Digging copper snakes into her skin, she nearly retched, swallowing the drink all over again. Taking a deep breath, Sawyer painted a rune on the hammer with brown-crimson ink, “give me wings.” Then, with all her strength, she raised the bloodied tool up and bashed it against the wire. Sparks flew. A lightning bolt crackled and burst from the impact. A vicious whooshh strangled the winds as they swirled around the ring of old metals. One by one, the sacrifices wailed as spit dribbled down their chins. Their eyes went blank, white as snowfall. Bones snapped as arms contorted, the mind trying to wriggle free as the soul came squirming from in between their lips and out their noses. Speckles of light caught ablaze as the lightning ripped through Sawyer, casting away the hammer and everything else she was. A dome of an intense glow shielded the ritual from the onlookers. Gele, too, he could only watch as feeling he could not describe rippled through him. Even on the night he rescued Sawyer, nothing was as intense as the mixture of all these souls. Boom! Another crackle. Then, Gele saw it. A void of nothingness without color or sound. Floating, he felt something breathe on him as noises coddled him amongst the blind terror. Eyes opened, and he could see. They were shapeless, always morphing, never staying as one thing, trapped in abstract and everythingness. But that tiny glimpse of the world above was all he had before he saw Sawyer Jean sitting on the canoe staring off towards the Second Sea.
Catatonic, the spirit both slept and sat wide awake as she watched glowfish meander along the sky. Gele did not move or attempt to stir her. He just laid there for a moment. His heart was pounding. Does she know what I just saw? It was no secret, but now he was a real witness. Clutching his blue scarf, Gele looked to the Sea of Shrouds. The waves were now a friend, calm and soothing, whispering to and rocking him gently. Chimera, she was a chimera after that. The sacrifice, he tried visiting the memory again. Only twenty people died to birth a monster, so few. The ingredients, Gele quivered, his mind now racing. How often do Sirens come for souls? A more evil sorcerer, if determined, could incite such disgust with a hundredfold victims and turn themselves into something more twisted, Gele assumed. Yet, that guess was nothing compared to the reality that sat just a foot away. Yet, the question of the world she came from haunted him as he closed his eyes. How far away am I from it all?
A splotch of purple emerged over the horizon on the next day. That had shed Gele’s worries of magic for the moment and filled him with sporadic joy. “Land!” Sawyer shouted, the sound booming over the soft murmurs of the surf. The road of seawater gave way and led him straight towards the speck at the bottom of the sky. The wind carried them, and Gele let out a cheer. “Have you ever seen such a sight?” Gele asked, “the gales, they’re blessing us today!”
“Welcome to the world, Gele!” The pirate laughed. “The wind made us lucky and will soon make us adventurers once again!”
Flying, Gele watched the new land close in. The splashes of foam around him sparkled like stars. Like rippling cloth, he blended with the gray tapestry, forming a story as he closed in on Vall. His heart fluttered. He was here. Every second he grew closer. There was something new there, something he had never seen before. To meet it, Gele clutched the ropes tied to his sail. Moving with the mechanisms, he charged forward, catching his breath before the excitement cleared all the air from his lungs. Anticipation rattled. Vall, a luscious patch of trees and brush. He could see it now, a jungle of scarlet canopies and violet grass. Never had he seen such a thing before. What else would there be on this new wonder under the Second Sea?