Page 10 of Prima (After the End #8)
Chapter Five
The present
Pain. So much pain.
Water. Sunlight, shining from a single point somewhere above the surface, bounces and refracts. The light drills deep into his head even though he has shut his eyes tight.
He must be dreaming. He can feel the bed underneath him, firm, supportive, resolutely dry.
But his dream self, underwater, is deafened by agony. Strange flickers and flares pulse on the inside of his eyelids, in rhythm with the shredding and scalding of his nerves. He can find no calm center, no point to focus on that isn’t bright, dark, everlasting pain.
I’m sorry I can’t take all your torment. I hope this is enough. Please let this be enough. Please come through.
Who is he talking to—or thinking to? He opens his eyes and sees his mother, her hair swirling against the blinding light from above. His sister too, dress billowing, eyes closed. They are all three in a tight embrace, their foreheads touching. But his mother and his sister look unconscious—drowned.
He tightens his arms around them and, despite his mortal fear of the light above, pulls them up to the surface.
They flail and suck in air. Water cascades; droplets fly.
He screams but manages no sounds. The pain is so much worse under the blaring sun.
He counts—shaking all the while—to ten and submerges everyone once more.
But being underwater again does not lessen the agony this time. This time, it burns and burns and burns.
I wish I were dead. I wish I’d died long ago. No, no, please don’t let me die.
He opens his eyes once more to check on the women. But his mother and his sister are nowhere to be found. Instead he is holding a stranger, his forehead against hers.
He is holding Lady Sun.
* * *
Ren bolts upright, gasping.
Like bioluminescence delineating the internal structure of a deep-sea jellyfish, ghost pain crackles along his nerve endings. It takes him a tense minute to understand that he isn’t in active torment, that he’s only reacting to the overwhelming affliction of the dream.
He forces his muscles to relax and his fingers to unclench from around the sheets.
The sheets.
Enough light drifts in from the porthole for him to see the sweep of fabric fitted perfectly to a…bed. He is in the cabin that he dutifully offered to Lady Sun.
He lay down on the bench in the lounging area—he recalls it clearly. How has he ended up here?
Alarm shrills through him. But no, he’s alone. Alone in the bed, alone in the cabin. The clock next to the bed says twenty minutes past two o’clock—he’s slept a solid five hours.
Next to the alarm clock lie his vambraces, which he made sure not to take off because he remains in mortal peril. He has no difficulty accepting that she is strong enough to carry him, but how did she figure out the intricate release mechanism on the vambraces?
Light seeps in from under the door. He gets up, fastens his vambraces, opens the door, and walks into the lounging area.
Lady Sun is there, reading on the bench.
She wears a simple, almost humble green dress that leaves her arms bare and a hairband that looks like garlands of tiny white and green flowers wrapped around her head.
In her lap she holds a stack of sketchbooks, his sketchbooks.
“You’re up, Prince Nineteen,” she says, not remotely self-conscious to have been caught snooping. “This is exactly what it looks like, by the way: I have chosen to peek into your private creations.”
He should be seething. Instead, an unfamiliar fear tears through him, crowding out any spark of righteous anger.
She has read his story, which he has never shown anyone.
She smiles a little, an expression of great loveliness underpinned by melancholy. “Will you come and sit down, prince?”
He cannot. At least, not right away. He heads to the galley, opens the cold storage, and pours two glasses of guava juice. Only after he sets the glasses on the table does he take a seat at the far end of the bench.
Her dress might be made of common muslin, but it still features what in Dawan would be considered a plunging neckline.
She wears a delicate chain that, due to the weight of an unseen pendant, duplicates the V of her decolletage.
Under different circumstances, he would have trouble looking away from the filament of gold on her gleaming skin, but now he can only focus on his secret creation that she has brought into the open.
She flips a page in the sketchbook at the top of the stack.
The next page, the last, is taken up entirely by a three-masted sailing ship traveling among the stars, accompanied by a whale whose presence in outer space is just as improbable as that of the ship.
A lone figure stands at the helm, peering into the endless distance.
The hull of the ship is a startling blue, the only pop of color in a volume of pencil drawings.
She caresses the edge of the page and reads the caption aloud, “The Wandering Sailor still has not found his wife’s resting place or the treasure that was stolen from him.
But now he has a precious seed from the World Tree, which might someday grow to an entire planet, a place for him to call home again. ”
He feels as if he’s barely holding his balance on a swaying high wire. He does not work on his story all the time, only when he must. Only when his solitude grows too vast.
She looks up. “They are beautiful, your illustrations.”
“They’re…scribbles.”
He’s not being overly modest—his skills are barely adequate for the demands of an illustrated story. But he does unclench slightly. The high wire sways a little less.
“I’ve seen more technically accomplished drawings, but you have a knack for conveying deep emotions via simple imagery.” She closes the sketchbook. “Now where’s volume six? Aha, here it is. I have become very invested in your manga, prince.”
But is her interest merely to probe further into his mental fitness, or does she actually feel the deep emotions she alluded to?
She opens volume six—and glances up two pages in. “What’s this? The Wandering Sailor’s wife might not be dead after all?”
The high wire lurches. “Sometimes the creator needs a plot twist to keep himself involved.”
She laughs. He is once again staring at her dimples. In his dream she looked young, wan, and desperately frail underwater. But in person she is strong and undeniably vibrant.
She reads, her expression intent. But glares at him when the story stops abruptly.
She flips through the blank pages in the rest of the sketchbook, then turns back to the last illustrated page.
It features a tiny raft among the stars; the figure of a woman stands upon it, her skirt streaming, her shoulder-length hair flying.
“In every volume I come across this image, every time he thinks of her or dreams of her.”
The high wire warps and buckles. He is falling from a great height. “Sorry about the monotony.”
He is much better at drawing ships than he is at human figures, and faces present an even greater challenge. His characters are distinguished by their outlines rather than facial features.
“No, I don’t mind the repetition. It moves me.”
He is suspended in midair, unable to speak.
“The whole of your story…” she murmurs. “We never see his face, yet the sorrow the Wandering Sailor carries is dwarfed only by the scale of the setting, the cosmic backdrop itself. In every image I feel his loss.”
She looks up from volume six. “It stirs me that his creator has not lost all hope. There is nothing scrappier or tougher than the hope of those who have endured the most. And I’m glad about the seed from the World Tree, that someday there might be a new home for him among the stars.”
Her eyes are brilliant, ever so brilliant, with unshed tears. He is on the ground again, uneven, possibly dangerous terrain, but solid ground all the same.
She places the volumes in their correct order and slides them along the bench cushion toward him. The motion causes her to lean forward. A pendant slips out from the V-neck of her dress.
The pendant is round, inscribed with a single character from Old Sinoscript, which he had to relearn from scratch, starting with this very character. Moreover, it is written in an exact style—identical brush strokes, identical proportions—that he recognizes.
Sirens blare; bombs explode; his head is a war zone of chaos and confusion.
He grips the stack of sketchbooks she has returned to him. She picks up the glass of guava juice he poured for her earlier and takes a sip.
“This is excellent,” she says.
He stares at her. The two teardrops she shed when she first saw him, her deep and persistent interest in him, her comment of I can tell you something about it on the subject of his Coast Guard service.
Could it be possible? It isn’t shocking that he might not remember having met a member of New Ryukyu’s Secretariat—he has obviously forgotten all kinds of experiences and skills.
But how did that happen without anyone else knowing?
“Who are you?” he asks. And more importantly, “How do we know each other?”