Esphoven Muy is believed to have left Aay at around the same time as Bathurst moved on. She was popularly assumed to have followed him, and that her absence would therefore be short-lived.
Even as early as this in Bathurst’s career, he was renowned not just for his fickle attachments to islands, but also to women. Work at the Academy continued but for the first two or three years after Muy departed the Academy seemed to lose a sense of direction. It was later reorganized when senior members of the academic body created a new managing foundation, and the Academy in its modern form started to take shape.
Muy herself, though, was never seen again on Aay and she had no further contact with the Academy.
She died some fifty years later. Her body was discovered in the tiny cottage in which she had been living, in a remote part of the island of Piqay. The people who lived near her had known her by another name, but when the authorities cleared her house they found many papers and books, and these identified her. She had kept a journal for all the years she lived on Piqay, and although most of the material has never been published the journals themselves are now kept in a closed case within the Academy Library, on Aay.
From the sole published section of her journal, which describes a period of roughly a year in length, a decade after she had arrived on Piqay, and from other papers which were found in the house and are available for inspection in the Academy, as well as certain artefacts discovered in the grounds of her house, it has become possible to gain a glimpse of the life she led in her self-imposed seclusion.
The journal describes her decision to plant trees on the hillside behind her home. For much of the year she writes about she is concentrating on this. Not every kind of tree was suitable to be grown in the Piqay soil, and she chose the hillside site because it was exposed to the wind, and this further restricted her choice of trees. However, the planting went on throughout the period of the journal, and quite clearly for some time afterwards. There is now a whole arboretum, mostly mature, on the Piqay headland where she lived. It has become a protected zone administered by the Piqay Seigniory on behalf of the Academy of the Four Winds.
Muy believed that each different species of tree responded to the pressure of wind in a unique way: the density and grain of the bark, the number of branches and the spread of them, the shape of the leaves on deciduous trees, the resonant qualities of the timber itself, the time of year that buds would appear or leaves would fall, the fineness and length of needles on evergreens, even the kinds of wildlife that might be attracted to inhabit the trees with their nests. All these would have an influence on the way the wind was received and responded to by the tree, and Muy believed she could identify many trees solely from the soughing they made.
She described the sound of a cypress as similar to the mild harmonies of a harp, a tall pine in full finery of needle as an ecstatic clarinet solo, an apple tree in blossom as a frivolous dance of clashing cymbals, an oak as a baritone voice, a narrow poplar bending to a gale as a coloratura.
The yard at the rear of her cottage was also put to use in the strong winds that flew across her headland. She hung one side of the yard with wind-chimes: wooden, glass, crystal, plastic, metal. They were rarely silent. More scientifically, Muy erected a number of wind measurement instruments. Five masts of different heights stood at the upper end of the yard, each bearing different types of anemometers and wind-pressure gauges. She analysed the results on data logging equipment in a specially built cabin, together with the readings from rainfall, humidity and temperature gauges. A tall lightning protector stood above everything.
Although this laboratory has since been dismantled, visitors may experience something of its unique concentration on the winds, because a reconstruction of it is in the Academy Museum in Aay Port. Normal opening hours apply.
Towards the end of the published section of the journals, Muy recorded a declaration that she wished to become a native Piqayean. According to the tradition of the island she said that she intended never to leave it again. She abided by that intent until the end.
In the light of her scientific discoveries the role played by Dryd Bathurst in this long final sequence of Esphoven Muy’s life is now trivial. However, it seems that Muy did fall victim to an enigma of the heart. Although Dryd Bathurst never worked or set up a studio on Piqay, it is known that he arrived there not long after leaving Aay, and left again soon after. No one was believed to be accompanying him at the time, but the dates roughly coincide with Muy’s arrival on the island.
The standard biography of the artist, The Epic Canvas of Dryd Bathurst by Chaster Kammeston, lists an astonishing number of women with whom the artist is known or believed to have had affairs. Esphoven Muy’s name is among them, but Kammeston does not go into details.
Although Muy lived and worked on Piqay for much of her life, it is with Aay that she will always be firmly associated.
A springtime breeze that Muy often noticed during the years she was living and working on Aay, now bears her name. The VENTO MUYO is a light, warm zephyr, scented with the fragrance of the wild flowers that grow on the shallow cliffs to the south of Aay Port.
Aay is regularly served by inter-island ferries, but there is no direct link with the mainland. Standards of cuisine and visitor accommodation throughout the island are reportedly excellent. Seafood is a speciality. Daily guided tours of the Academy are available. Visitors require a visa and all normal inoculations — check with your personal physician before travelling. There are liberal shelterate laws, but property is expensive. Visitors should avoid the weeks of late spring as the föhn wind is most likely to be active then.
Currency: Archipelagian simoleon; Muriseayan thaler.
Annadac
CALM PLACE
One of the remotest islands in the Swirl, ANNADAC is situated close to the tidal anomaly that millions of years ago helped form the Swirl.
For the most part, continental Sudmaieure is an icy, snowbound waste, with only a few coastal strips adjacent to sea that melts for part of the year. There is, however, one peninsula, long and narrow, steep with mountains of volcanic origin, that extends to the north. This is the Qataari Peninsula, in the coldest part of which there are several glaciers, and these calve to the eastern side into the stormy Southern Midway. The turbulent combination of warm salty seawater from the Southern Oscillating Stream and the cold fresh meltwater from the drifting icebergs creates a churning and treacherous stretch of ocean, with a multitude of different currents. These, together with several thousand years of volcanism, threw up the hundreds of small islands that are now known as the Swirl. Annadac is one of these Swirl islands, far to the south and close to the continental mass.
With the coming of spring, a huge tidal bulge of water forms in the sea to the south of Annadac, every day, twice a day. This moves rapidly around the island. Over the centuries the phenomenon has caused serious coastal erosion and unpredictable weather patterns. The Annadacians are legendary for their forbearing and stoical nature.
Perhaps the most celebrated Annadacian of her era was the conceptual and installation artist named JORDENN YO.
From an early age Yo became enthralled by the rock and beach formations that had been created all around her island by tidal movements and gale-force winds. Yo came to believe that the island was in essence a permeable being, that it was alive in some mystical sense, and that it could be moulded to react to the elements. She became fascinated by this idea, latterly obsessed by it.