She turned back to him in surprise, quickly checking that it was not a cruel joke before smiling shyly. 'It seems that for all I know you, I do not know you.'
'We've both got a lot to learn about each other.'
'May we try to be friends?'
'Of course. But don't think about anything more than that. I don't know you, I don't really know myself any more, everything's in such upheaval. It would be wrong to expect anything to happen.'
'I understand,' she said seriously. 'But to be friends-' Her smile lit up her face.
'It's all right to lose your heart, but never lose your head.' The words popped into his head, from a lifetime away, a happier time, but oddly, he didn't feel despondent. Niamh looked at him curiously. 'Just a line from an old song,' he explained. 'I'm glad we're going to get on fine. This could be a difficult journey for all of us.' He took a long draught of the water, which tasted like no water he had ever had before: vibrant, refreshing, infused with complex tastes. He savoured it for a moment, then said, 'Tell me, the Golden Ones have a strange relationship with time. The past, the future… you don't see it how we see it. How are things going to work out? Not for me-I don't want to know thatbut for the world, my world? Is all this for nothing?'
'Nothing is ever for nothing.' The words had an odd resonance in her mouth. 'There is meaning in even the most mundane act.'
'The fall of a sparrow.'
'Yes. The slightest act. A pebble dropped in water. Ripples run out, bounce back, and then out again. You might not be able to see the results from your perspective, but if your actions are taken with good heart, they will be magnified.'
'I'm getting the feeling you're not going to answer my question.'
'You Fragile Creatures have a limited view of the turning of the Great Plan. Until your abilities advance it would be unwise to provide you with a glimpse of our vista.'
'That's patronising. You're saying we're not up to it.'
'That is correct. You are not ready. It is the arrogance of all emerging species that they have an understanding of everything. True wisdom comes from accepting that nothing can be understood. All existence has a framework, but it is not clockwork, although at first glance it may look so. Consider this: from the clouds the coastline is a simple unbroken line. As you fall, you see the twists and turns, the tiny inlets, the craggy outcroppings that comprise its complex shape. You fall to the beach and you see a billion, billion grains of sand, and suddenly there is no shape at all, simply chaos making an illusion of a complex pattern.'
'And so it continues. Yes, I understand that-'
'But the chaos is ordered.' She smiled enigmatically. 'You Fragile Creatures think you see the way everything works. You can measure the height and length and breadth of it, and in your arrogance-'
'Okay, okay, I get your point. We're just kids who haven't learnt how to draw pictures with perspective. So we have to learn to see before we can be shown the view. But-'
She shook her head.
He sighed. 'I can see where Tom got it all from. Everything's just too complex to sum up with words.'
'Yes,' she said. 'It is.'
'So I just do my best, and be damned.'
'Or not.' She took his hand briefly, then pulled away, as if she had overstepped some invisible boundary. 'Everything we need to know is encoded within. Everything. But you have to be strong to trust yourself. It is easier to be a child and let others tell you this and that. That is the key to all wisdom: listen to no one. Trust what your heart tells you.'
For the next ten minutes they sat in silence while Church mulled over her words. She had made exactly the same point as Ruth. It might have been coincidence, but Tom had told him so many times that what he thought was coincidence was the universe contacting him. But what was he supposed to take from it?
High overhead the owl soared on the thermals rising from the waves. It had moved along effortlessly when the ship had slipped between the worlds, though now it looked bigger than Ruth recalled, and she was sure she could see its eyes glinting golden in the sun; more than an owl. But then it always had been. In Otherworld it was simply one step closer to its true nature, Ruth imagined. She shivered, despite the heat, recalling all the things it had whispered to her in the miserable dark when she had been a prisoner of the Fomorii: secret knowledge that had transformed her into something else, while at the same time terrifying her. She was afraid she was losing part of herself in the process; her innocence, certainly. Sometimes she even feared for her sanity.
As she crossed the deck, the whispering began in the back of her head, the secret code words that shaped existence bursting continuously in her mind like bubbles on a stagnant pond: the price she had to pay for her secret knowledge.
She ignored the sly glances from the crew that followed her and slipped through the door beneath deck. As she progressed along the oppressive corridor system she became convinced the layout had changed, although it was impossible to tell for sure. Confusion reigned everywhere on that vessel. Eventually she reached her room, but the moment with Church before Niamh had arrived had left her out-of-sorts and she didn't really feel like resting. Exploring was a good way to take her mind off things, so she ploughed on past her door into the heart of the ship.
She walked for what felt like an hour or more, until her legs ached and her throat was dry. From the seafront, the ship looked like it could have been traversed in ten minutes, but she had gone at least two or three miles and there was no sign of the boat ending.
The maze of claustrophobic corridors had soon changed in form. There were passages where the roof was lost to shadows high overhead and where a jumble of beams protruded at incongruous angles like an Escher sketch, or which were as wide as a Parisian boulevard, with carved stone columns and arches where gargoyles peered down ominously. Chambers led off, some as vast as banqueting halls, while others were as cramped as her own cabin. At one point she found what appeared to be a tree growing upwards through the floor and ceiling, its roots lost somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Strange scents floated everywhere, whisked on by phantom breezes: cinnamon and onions, candle smoke, something that had the tangy bite of fresh blood, the acrid odour of hot coals, fresh lemon and cooking fish. Disconcerting symbols appeared intermittently on the walls, as if they were sigils to ward off unquiet spirits; Ruth found she couldn't look at some of them.
The immensity of the vessel made no sense to her. After a while she became convinced that however much she walked, she would never reach the end of it. The surroundings, too, were growing more chaotic and unnerving and she was afraid of what she would find if she carried on. It felt like a good time to head back.
But when she turned, the corridor wasn't how she remembered. A brief spark of panic flared within her. She glanced back the way she had been going and saw faint lights dancing in the gloom. They dipped and dived in complex patterns, reminding Ruth of the tiny, gossamer-winged figures that could occasionally be glimpsed amongst the trees of an evening. Those creatures, which had inspired the dreams of generations in times past, represented much of the good that had swept in with the chaos that had descended on the land. The corridor behind had changed layout once again. She considered her options, then headed towards the phantom lights.
However fast she walked, she never managed to catch up with them, although she couldn't tell if they were fluttering beyond her reach, or if it were some trick of the warped perspectives in Wave Sweeper. After a while the dancing lights became almost hypnotic and she had the odd sensation she was being dragged along instead of pursuing of her own will.
It might have been minutes or an hour later when she became aware she was in an area devoid of torches; the gloom was so intense she was overwhelmed by the feeling of floating in space. Uneasily, she clutched on to a wall before her troubled senses made her pitch forward. She cursed herself for following the lights, unable to recall what had prompted her to do so in the first place.
When she had calmed, she noticed an odd animal smell, thick and musky; it rankled. She leaned against a wall, trying to decide what to do next, afraid she could be wandering for days, perhaps forever. Hoping for a sound to guide her, she listened intently. At first, she could make out only the distant womb-echoes of the waves against the ship, but then another noise drifted up to her like a stranger on padded feet. Sounding dimly like an anxious rumble a cat makes deep in its throat, it filled her with inexplicable dread. She pressed her back hard against the wall and began to slide away from the approaching noise. It could be nothing, she knew, but every fibre of her being told her it was a threat.
What's down there? she wondered.
