Everville (33 page)

"I came here because you promised me something," Joe said.

"So I did."

"And I'm not going to have you talk me out of it."

"You talked yourself out of it, Joe."

"I didn't agree to anything."

"Do I take it then that the slaves will remain in thrafl?"

"For now," Joe said. "Maybe I'll set them free myself, when I get what I'm due."

"A noble ambition," Noah replied. "Let's hope they survive that long." He wandered over to the starboard side. "Meanwhile," he said, "I have work for them to do." He glanced at Joe, as if expecting some objection. Getting none, he gave a little smile and went back to the stem of the vessel to make his instructions known.

Cursing under his breath, Joe looked over the side to see what the problem was, and found the water clogged in every direction with sinuous weed of some kind. Its fronds were the palest of yellows, and here and there it was knotted up into bundles, the smallest like foothalls, the largest twenty times that size. Plainly the weed was slowing the vessel's progress, but the slaves were already at the bow, clambering over the sides and lowering themselves into the water to solve the problem. Digging their way through the floating thicket they started to hack at the weed, two with machetes, the others with pieces of broken timber. Watching them labor, making no sound of complaint, Joe could not help the shameful thought that perhaps it was better they felt nothing. The task before them was substantial-the weed field stretched at least two hundred yards ahead of the vessel-and would surely exhaust their wounded limbs. But at least the waters beyond the field looked calm and clear. Once the boat reached them the slaves would be able to rest. He might even try bargaining with Noah afresh, and get him to release the weakest of them from bondage, so they could tend themselves.

Meanwhile, he retired to the wheelhouse, stripping off his damp shirt and hanging it on the door before sitting down to ponder his situation.

The air had grown balmier of late, and despite his recent agitation, he felt a kind of languor creep upon him. He let his head drop against the back of the cabin seat, and closed his eyes...

In her lonely bed in Everville, Phoebe had finally drifted to sleep on a pillow damp with her tears, and had begun to dream. Of Joe, of course. At least of his presence if not his flesh and blood. She drifted in a misty place, knowing he was not that far from her, but unable to see him. She tried to call to him, but her voice was smothered by the mist. She tried again, and again, and her efforts were rewarded after a time. The syllable seemed to divide the mist as it went from her, seeking him out in this pale nowhere.

She didn't let up. She kept calling, over and over.

"Joe... Joe... Joe..

Sprawled asleep in the cabin of The Fanacapan, Joe heard somebody calling his name. He almost stirred, thinking the summons was coming from somewhere in the waking world, but as soon as he began to float up out of his slumbers, the call became more remote, so he let the weight of his fatigue carry him back down into dreams.

The voice came again and this time he recognized it.

Phoebe! It was Phoebe. She was trying to find him. He started to reply to her, but before he could do so she called out to him again.

"Where are you, Joe?" she said. "I'm here," he said. "I can hear you. Can you hear me?"

"Oh my God," she gasped, plainly astonished that this was actually happening. "Is that really you?"

"It's really me."

"Where are you?"

"I'm on a ship."

On a ship? she thought. What the hell was he doing on a ship? Had he fled to Portland and hopped the first cargo vessel out?

"You've left me," she said.

"No, I haven't. I swear."

"That's easy to say-" she murmured, her voice thickening with tears,

"I'm on my own, Joe-"

"Don't cry."

"And I'm afraid-"

"Listen to me," he said softly. "Are you dreaming?"

She had to think about this for a moment. "Yes," she said. "I'm dreaming." "Then maybe we're not that far apart," he said. "Maybe we can find each other."

"Where?"

"In the sea. In the dream-sea."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Hold on," he said. "Just hold on to my voice. I'll lead you here."

He didn't dare wake. If he woke, the contact between them would surely be broken, and she'd despair (she was already close to that; he could hear it in her voice) and perhaps give up on ever finding him again. He had to walk a very narrow path; the path that lay between the state of dreaming, which was one of forgetfulness, and the waking world, where he would lose contact with her. He had to somehow find his way across the solid boards of this solid boat without rising from slumber to do so, and plunge into the waters of Quiddity, where perhaps the paradox of dreaming with his eyes open would be countenanced and he could call her to him.

"Joe?" "Just wait for me@'he murmured.

"I can't. I'm going crazy."

"No you're not. It's just that things are stranger than we ever thought."

"I'm afraid-"

"Don't be."

"I'm afraid I'm going to die and I'll never see you again."

"You'll see me. Just hold on, Phoebe. You'll see me."

He felt the cabin door brush against his arm; felt the steps up into the deck beneath his feet. At the top, he stumbled, and his eyes might have flickered open, but that by chance she called to him, and her voice anchored him; kept him in a sweet sleep.

He turned to his right. Walked two, three, four strides until he felt the side of the boat against his shins. Then he threw himself overboard.

The water was cold, the shock of it slapped him into wakefulness. He opened his eyes to see the weeds around him like a swaying thicket, its tangle LIFE with fish, most of them no larger than those he'd swallowed whole on the shore. Cursing his consciousness, he looked up towards the surface, and as he did so heard Phoebe again, calling him.

"Joe-?" she said, her voice no longer despairing, but light; almost excited.

He caught hold of the knotted weed around him, so as not to float to the surface. "I'm here," he thought. "Can you hear me?"

There was no answer at first, and he feared her call had been the remnants of their previous contact. But no. She spoke again, softly.

"I can hear you." It was as though her voice was in the very water around him. The syllables seemed to caress his face.

"Stay where you are," she said.

"I'm not going anywhere," he replied. It seemed he had no need of breath; or rather that the waters were supplying him with air through his skin. He felt no ache in his chest; no panic. Simply exhilaration. He turned himself around in the water, parting the strands of weed to look for her. The fish had no fear of him. they darted around his face, and brushed against his back and belly; they played between his legs. And then, out of the tangle to his right, a form he knew. Not Phoebe, but a Zehrapushu, a spirit pilot, its golden gaze fixed upon him. He gave up turning a moment, in order to let it see him properly. It scooted around him once, clockwise, then reversed its direction and did the same again, always coming to a perfect hovering halt in front of his face.

It knew him. He was certain of it. The way its huge eye tilted in its socket, scanning his face; the way it came close enough to brush his cheek with its tentacles, fearlessly; the way it flirted with his fingers, as though encouraging them to caress it: all were signs of familiarity. And if this was not the same 'shu he'd cradled on the shore (and how many billion to one was that chance?) then he had to assume that for all Noah's misrepresentations, he'd been telling th ' e truth on the subject of 'shu. they had not many minds, but one, and this individual knew him because it had seen him through its brother or sister's eyes.

Suddenly, it darted away. He watched it go, weaving through the thicket of weeds, and as it disappeared from sight, the tangle around him convulsed, and he heard Phoebe say his name again, not remotely this time, but almost like a whisper in his ear. He turned his head to the left, and There he was, just a few feet from her, floating in the forested water, looking at her. Even now, she wasn't sure how she'd got here. One moment she'd been lost in a mist, hearing Joe's voice but unable to reach him; the next she'd been naked and tumbling down the bank of Unger's Creek. The creek was running high and fast, and in the grip of its water she was carried away. She'd been vaguely aware that this was her mind's prosaic creation; its way of supplying pictures to accompany the journey her spirit was taking. But even as she'd grasped that slippery notion, the landscape had receded around her, the sky overhead becoming vast and strange, and Unger's Creek had disappeared, delivering her into far deeper waters.

Down she went, down, down into the dream-sea. And though she felt its currents caress her and saw its shoals part like shimmering veils to let her pass, and so knew she wasn't imagining this, she didn't fear that she'd drown. The laws that bound her body in the world she'd left had no authority here. She moved with exquisite case, passing over a landscape whose mysteries she could not begin to fathom, the most puzzling of which lay waiting for her at the end of the journey in the person of the man she'd last seen hobbling out of a door in Everville.

"It's really you," she said, opening her arms to him.

He swam to meet her, his voice in her head, the way it had been from the beginning of this strange journey. "Yes," he said, "it's really me," and held her tight.

"You said you were on a ship."

He directed her gaze up towards the dark shadow overhead. "That's it," he said.

"Can I go with you?" she asked him, knowing as she spoke what the answer would be. "You're dreaming this," he said. "When you wake up-"

"I'll be back in bed?"

"Yes.

She took fiercer hold of him. "Then I won't wake up," she said, "I'll stay with you until you wake up too."

"It's not as easy as that," he said. "I have a journey I have to take."

"Where to?"

"I don't know."

"Then why are you taking it? Why not just tell me where you're sleeping and I'll go find you?"

"I'm not sleeping, Phoebe."

"What do you mean?"

"This is me." He touched her face. "The real me. You're dreaming but I'm not. I'm here, mind and body."

She started to draw away from him, distressed. "That's not true," she said.

"It is. I walked through a door, and I was in another world."

"What door?" she demanded to know.

"On the mountain," he said.

Her face grew slack. She stared past him into the swaying fronds. "Then it's true," she said. "Quiddity's real."

"How do you know that name?"

"A woman I met... " Phoebe said, her tone and expression distracted.

"What woman?"

"Tesla... Tesia Bombeck. She's downstairs right now. i Lnought she was crazy@'

"Whoever she is," Joe said, "she isn't crazy. Things are weirder than either of us ever guessed, Phoebe."

She put her hands on his face, "I want to be with you," she said. "You are.

"No. Really be with you."

"I'm going to come back," Joe said, "sooner or later." He kissed her face. "Things are going to be all right."

"Tell me about the door, Joe," she said.

Instead, he kissed her again, and again, and now she opened her mouth to let his tongue between her lips, still speaking her thoughts at him.

"The door, Joe-"

"Don't go near it," he said, pressing his face against hers. "Just be here with me now. Be close with me. Oh God, Phoebe, I love you." He kissed her cheek and eyes, running his fingers up through her hair.

"I love you too," she said. "And I want us to be together more than anything. More than anything, Joe."

"We will be. We will be," he said. "I can't live without you, baby. I told you, didn't I?"

"Keep telling me. I need to know."

"I'll do better than tell you." He ran his hands down her shoulders, and round to touch her breasts. "Beautiful," he murmured. His left hand lingered there while his fight slid on down over her belly, between her legs. She raised her knees little. He ran his fingers back and forth over her sex.

She sighed, and leaned forward to kiss him. "I want to stay here," she said. "I want to sleep forever and just stay here with you."

He slid down her body now, kissing her along the way, her neck, her breasts, her belly, until he had his lips where his fingers had been, his tongue darting between. She opened her legs a little wider, and he took the signal of her abandon, pressing his palms against her knees to spread her still wider and burying his face in her groin.

The weeds seemed to sense the passion in their midst, and were excited by it. Their sinuous stems stroked her body with an eagerness all of their own, their silky pods nuzzling her. Four or five of them dallied around her face, like suitors awaiting an invitation to her mouth, while others ran up her spine and down between the cleft of her buttocks.

She started to let out little gasps of bliss, and reached out to left and fight of her to take handfuls of the weed. It responded to her attentions instantly, wrapping lengths of itself around her wrists and elbows to anchor her, and swaying against her body with fresh abandon, its strands, soft though they were, falling on her naked back like gentle whips, rousing her dreamed skin, her spirit skin, to new heights of sensation.

All the while Joe licked and probed below, and with each new wave of sensation that passed through her and over her, and spread out into the forest of weed around her, she felt the limits of her body dissolving, as though she and the waters and the weeds were no longer quite distinct. There was nothing unpleasant or distressing about this. Quite the reverse. The more she spread, the more of her there was to feel pleasure, her sensations flowing out into the stems and the pods and the swaying element in which she floated, then returning in waves to the soft vessel of her body, which in turn spread wider to accommodate the feelings, so that body and feelings kept on growing, each feeding off the other's advancement.