Page 216
Story: The Liveship Traders Trilogy
‘H E STOPPED !’ V IVACIA was astonished.
‘No!’ Wintrow shrieked, his voice breaking to a boy’s on the word.
He spun away from the railing and hurled himself from the foredeck to the main.
He crossed it at a run, then raced down the companionway.
Fear of death had been all that had kept the pirate clinging to life.
When Wintrow and Vivacia had persuaded him not to fear it, Kennit had simply let go.
At the door to the captain’s quarters, Wintrow did not knock nor pause.
Etta looked up in astonished anger at his mad entrance.
She had been folding lint bandages. As Wintrow rushed to Kennit’s bedside, she dropped them to the deck and tried to intercept him.
‘Don’t wake him!’ she cautioned him. ‘He’s finally resting.’
‘He’s trying to be dead!’ Wintrow contradicted her as he shouldered past her.
At Kennit’s bedside, he took the pirate’s hand and called his name.
There was no response. He tapped Kennit’s cheek, then slapped it almost sharply.
He pinched the man’s cheek gently, then hard, trying to get a reaction.
There was none. Kennit was not breathing.
He was dead.
Kennit settled into the dark, drifting down gently like a leaf falling to the forest floor.
He felt warm and comfortable. A thin silver thread of pain anchored him to his life.
It attenuated as he fell. Soon it must fade to nothing and then he would be free of his body.
It did not seem worth his attention. Nothing was worth his attention.
He let go of himself and felt his consciousness expand.
Never before had he comprehended how cramped a man’s thoughts were when confined to a mere body.
All those discordant worries and ideas jumbled together like a sailor’s swag in his sea bag.
Now they could spread out and disconnect. Each could assume its own importance.
Abruptly he felt a tug. An insistence he could not resist drew him into itself.
Reluctantly he gave way to it, but once it possessed him, it did not seem to know what to do with him.
He mingled with it confusedly. It was like being plunged into a kettle of simmering fish chowder.
First one thing and then another bobbed to the surface, only to float away a moment later.
He was a woman, combing out her long hair as she stared thoughtfully across the water.
He was Ephron Vestrit, and by Sa, he would bring his cargo through intact and on time, storm or no.
He was a ship, the cold water purring past his bow, shining fish flickering below and stars glittering above him.
Deeper, higher, and wider than all others, encompassing them all but thin as a coat of shellac, there was another awareness, one that spread wide her wings and soared through a summer sky.
That one drew him more strongly than any of the others did and when it drifted away from him, he tried to follow it.
No, someone forbade him, gently but firmly.
No. I do not go there and neither shall you.
Something drew him back and held him together.
He felt like a child, supported in a mother’s arms, protected and cherished.
She loved him. He settled into her embrace.
She was the ship, the lovely, intelligent ship he had won.
The stirring of that memory was like a breath on the ember of his being.
He glowed brighter and almost became aware of who he had been.
That was not what he desired. He rolled over and burrowed into her, merging with her, becoming her.
Lovely, lovely ship, hull to the cupping water, sails in a caressing wind, I am you and you are me.
When I am you, I am wondrous and wise. He sensed her amusement at his flattery, but flattery it was not.
In you, I could be perfect, he told her.
He sought to dissipate himself but she held him intact.
She spoke again, her words intended for someone else. I have him. Here. You must take him and put him back. I do not know how.
A boy’s voice replied. It was uncertain and thin as smoke, coming from a great distance.
Fear was making him jabber. I don’t know what you mean.
How can you have him, how can I take him?
Put him back how? Put him back where? The pleading desperation in the young voice rang against something inside him.
It woke echoes of another boy’s voice, just as desperate, just as pleading.
Please. I can’t do that. I don’t know how, I don’t want to, please, sir, please.
It was the hidden voice, the secret voice, the voice that must never be acknowledged.
No one else must hear it, no one. He flung himself upon it, wrapped himself around it and stilled it.
He absorbed it into himself to conceal it.
The divergence that was the key to him was restored.
A shiver of anger ran over him, that they had forced him to be himself again.
Like that, she said suddenly to the other one. Like that. Find the pieces of him and put them back into one. More softly, she added, There are places where you almost match. Begin with those.
What do you mean, he matches me? How could he match me?
I meant only that in some ways you resemble one another. You share more than you realize. Do not fear him. Take him. Restore him.
He clung to the ship’s being more tightly than ever.
He would not allow himself to be separated from her.
Frantically, he strove to weave himself into her, twining his consciousness into hers as a single rope is woven from multiple strands.
She did not repulse him, but neither did she welcome him in.
Instead, he felt himself gathered back together, and offered in turn to an entity that was both of her and distinct from her.
Here. Take him. Put him back.
The connection between the two was amazingly complex.
They loved one another and yet struggled not to be one another.
Resentments burned like isolated brush fire in the landscape of their relationship.
He could not discern where one left off and the other began, yet each clearly asserted ownership to a greatness of soul that could not be encompassed by a single creature.
The outstretched wings of an ancient creature both sheltered and overshadowed them, yet they were unaware of it.
Blind funny little creatures they were, fumbling in the midst of a love they feared to acknowledge.
To win, all they had to do was surrender but they could not perceive that.
The beauty of what they could have been together made him ache.
It was a love he had been seeking all his life, a love to redeem and perfect him.
That which he most desired, they feared and avoided.
Come back. Please. It was the boy’s voice, pleading. Kennit. Please choose to live.
The name was a magic. It bound and defined him. The boy sensed that. Kennit. He repeated the name coaxingly. Kennit, please. Kennit. Live. At each touch of the word, he became more solid. Memories coagulated around the name, scabbing over the old wound of his life and sealing him into it.
Please, he begged. He groped for his tormentor’s name. Wintrow. Please let me go. Wintrow. He sought to bind the boy as he had been bound, by the use of his name. Instead of bending Wintrow to his will, it only locked him into an awareness of the boy.
Kennit, the boy acknowledged him eagerly. Kennit. Help me. Come back to yourself, become yourself again. Enter your life again.
A curious thing happened then. In Wintrow’s urgent welcome of his self-awareness and Kennit’s sensing of the boy, they mingled.
Memories churned and tumbled free of their owners.
A boy wept silent tears the night before he was sent from his family to a monastery.
A boy yammered in terror as he watched his father beaten unconscious while a man held him and laughed.
A boy struggled and yelped in pain as a seven-pointed star was needled into his hip.
A boy meditated, and saw shapes of dragons in the clouds and images of serpents in swirling water.
A boy struggled with his tormentor, who throttled him into compliance.
A boy sat long and still, transported by a book.
A boy choked and gasped, resisting the tattooing of his face.
A boy spent hours practising the careful formation of letters.
A boy held his hand to the deck and refused to cry out as his infected finger was cut from his hand.
A boy grinned and sweated with joy as a tattoo was seared from his hip.
The ship had been right. There were many conjunctions, many places where they matched. The congruency could not be denied. They overlapped, they were one another, and then they separated again.
Kennit knew himself again. Wintrow cowered at the harshness that had been Kennit’s early years.
In the next instant, a wave of pity and compassion overwhelmed Kennit.
It came from the boy. Wintrow reached out to him.
Ignorantly, he sought to fix the parts that Kennit had deliberately broken away from himself.
This was you. You should keep it, Wintrow kept insisting.
You cannot simply discard parts of yourself because they are painful. Acknowledge them and go on.
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