The only other people about at that hour were the lookout in his nest, the captain — who always stood at the ship’s prow — and another passenger, who paced in shadow on the starboard side of the boat and whom Caleum had never seen at any other hour aboard the craft.
The three men would acknowledge each other from afar with a nod of the head each morning, but never spoke until the third morning out, when all arrived on deck to find the sky too overcast to see the horizon. The captain then stopped both his passengers in conversation, which was a first for Caleum since the day he boarded the ship.
“You are an acquaintance of Rennton’s from Providence then?” he asked.
“Yes,” Caleum answered. “He was a friend to my father.”
“Aye,” the captain said, seeming to want to say something else. “How is it on land lately then?”
“About what it always is, I suppose,” Caleum answered, not entirely certain of the man’s question. “Sir, you would know the answer at least as well as I.”
“Nay. It is a long time since I’ve been ashore.”
“Since how long?” he asked, having never heard of such a thing. “How is that possible?”
“My thirteenth year. The sea is a thing complete and no need ever to leave it, if it’s your element. It is my element.”
“How is it you met Rennton then?”
“We ply the same route on occasion,” the old man answered. “There are not so many sails in some waters that you can’t learn them all.”
Caleum was at an age then when he and the world had begun to make way for each other, or he might otherwise have gone on questioning the man, whom he found fascinating, but the captain was not talkative, so let him speak or remain silent as he chose.
“He is an apt sailor.”
As the two of them stood there in the early fog, the other passenger paced his side until the captain caught his eye and hailed him.
“Morning, Toombley,” the old man called in greeting.
“G’morning, brothers,” the new arrival said to the others. He was very clearly a man of the cloth, being dressed like an old-fashioned monk, and although Caleum did not wish to nose into anyone else’s business, he thought it permissible to ask where the man was headed.
“Down to San Juan,” the other answered him. “I go there to pray.”
“Why there?” Caleum asked. “It is very far.”
“They have a statue there of the Revelator, standing in the ocean at the mouth of their river Alph, which has been said to work miracles.”
“It is a sea altar,” said the captain approvingly. “What miracles has it made?”
“Well, it is told that it caused a sightless man to see all the world, and all it is made of, both the gross things and the extremely fine ones.”
“Was the man blind his whole life before that?” Caleum asked the pilgrim, as the captain nodded in understanding.
“Nay, he was never blind before.”
They were silent a moment then, until the captain, who was not known to be social, invited both of them to share his table later for supper. He also pointed out that they were making good time to their destinations, before withdrawing to his own quarters to amend his log.
“Where is it you’re headed?” Toombley asked Caleum, when they stood alone upon the deck.
“I am going home,” Caleum said to him, all at once much contented with the idea, as he was then beyond the midpoint of their voyage. “To where I belong.”
“Aye. From the war?” Toombley guessed.
“Since four years.”
“They say this is a special time in the eras of history.”
“They do say it.”
“That we are lucky to live in it.”
“Aye, and to die, I suppose.”
The pilgrim nodded at him, and the two men took the rail together, looking out at the gray passing sea. Perhaps it was a special era, Caleum thought, wasn’t that what Stanton had tried to have him believe? Who could not want to be part of such a thing? he asked himself, beginning to reach terms of peace with everything that had happened to him. If it was truly in the service of something besides capital, he told himself, he could embrace that as well — as he had when he was a younger man. His own belief by then was in himself alone, though, and beyond that in Stonehouses, where he was his own lord overseer. For anything farther than its boundaries he would lay even odds only.
He had no other example but what he knew from his own time, and so would follow that, returning to Stonehouses as an army of one, as Jasper Merian had first arrived there, but without the need to start from oblivion, because the place was known to him and waiting to receive him back. If there was one overstructure of rule that permitted it prosperity better than others he would cast a vote in it, but, for faith in structures themselves, he had little stock but in the governance of himself and his lands and would ever be wary of all else, power being a finite thing.
The sea was unusually calm that morning, and the ship made little movement upon the water, so that the only motions seemed to be those of his own mind within him. Looking over the side he thought he could remember his first time upon the ocean, though he suspected it was only false memory of him knowing he had been there before. He tried to remember when he was first at Stonehouses as well, but it was a useless effort, for everything he thought he remembered he knew he was matching to some received tale or present need, and so was hesitant of the tricks he knew one’s mind could play. When he looked out upon the water and saw a great squall coming toward them, however, he knew it was not only his mind’s imagining of the past but a true and present storm. He did not leave the rail but continued to look out, mesmerized, onto the ocean as it began to rise in the distance.
A call rang out from the crow’s nest at the same time Caleum pointed out the swells of water in the distance to Toombley. The other man, being cautious and fearful, went immediately belowdecks, but Caleum, remembering his last journey on these seas, stayed pressed against the rail.
When the winds came in, the ship began to toss violently and the captain called for all sails to be lowered, realizing he would not be able to outrun the squall. He yelled angrily for Caleum to get below, as even his hardiest sailors did not want to be out in that storm. Just as he said this, however, the ship pitched to the side, as a giant wave caught them and swept over the vessel. When the boat righted itself again, the captain saw his passenger was no longer at the railing but snatched away by the ocean.
“Man overboard!” sailors yelled out from each corner of the ship simultaneously, throwing life preservers into the ocean.
In the fierceness of the storm, though, it was impossible for them to see more than a few feet in any direction, and they could not tell where Caleum had fallen, let alone whether he had emerged from the water.
Beneath the waves, Caleum struggled against the current, which felt like a massive hand around his midsection, pulling him down, until he managed to wrench his body free to the surface. The water tried again to submerge him, but he was able to get back to the open quickly and breathe air again. When he did he inhaled very deeply and tried first off to espy the Enki.
He could see nothing but a deep velvet darkness, as if night had fallen over the entire world. When he had finally caught his breath and began to relax, floating on the choppy sea, another wave crashed overhead, pushing him down again. He was just barely able to take in and hold a lungful of air before disappearing back under the waves.
It was as black below the water as above it, and he could not tell which medium he was in as he tried to swim toward what he took to be an island of dry land. It was a mirage, though, and, when he tried to breathe, he inhaled nothing but sharp salty water. He thought he could hear the sound of perfect voices singing clearly then, and their song was very beguiling to him, until he struck out with one of his hands and it was free.