Adeline, I thought to myself. A-de-line. Three and a half syllables, and a nice cadence, when she said it. It was a comfortable rhythm, somehow. I could live with it.
The insides of her ship were comfortable, too– jarringly so, for me, after being away from home for so long. The corridors were tight, the ceilings low; as River lead me through the ship, we passed rooms filled with a familiar clutter of bound paper, stacks of boxes and clothes piled precariously but with a pattern in mind. The forest was crowded, dense with life, but this was something else entirely.
Maybe being away from the noise everywhere else was letting me finally calm down, but I actually felt… almost at ease, relatively speaking. I’d cling to whatever I could get if it meant taking my mind off of things for a while.
River lit tiny glass lanterns on the walls every so often as we went, clicking a finger-sized contraption of metal to spark the flame, lighting up the wooden walls in a collage of bright colours. Our shadows danced around us as we passed each one, distorted in the tight space into eerie stripes of light and dark.
She quickly brought us to the room she was looking for, sweeping aside a thick curtain over the doorway to open the way for me, and we stepped inside together. It was small – like every room on the ship was – but unlike many of the others I’d caught glimpses of, the cool night air outside was circulated through slatted windows on the two walls opposite the doorway.
It was a triangular room at the front of the ship; where its hull came together into a sharp point, built for cutting through the sky, I thought. She pulled a cord in one corner and the slats opened wider, allowing us to look out at the dark trees all around us, lit with the flickering lanterns’ glow in long streaks.
Roughly sweeping aside the charts covering the room’s singular table, adding them to the much bigger pile that already covered most of the floor, River loudly slumped down into one of the hard wooden chairs bolted to the floor; after a moment’s hesitation, I sat down in the other, across from her.
She leaned forward to rest her chin on steepled fingers, letting her hair fall around her face. I didn’t know what to do with mine, so after a while of fidgeting I laid my palms flat on the table. She looked down at them, and then back up into my face.
“So,” she said. “Adeline. I think you’ve been prodded with enough questions, for now. You’re lost, and you’re scared. And from the sound of it, you’ve maybe got more than a couple holes in your memory, yeah?”
I tried reorganizing my thoughts, sorting through the flashes I’d been getting since I woke up. “That’s still not it,” I insisted. “I remember lots of things, just not… how I ended up here. And before that… I don’t think I have ever been somewhere else before. It’s been a very long time, and nothing like this has ever happened. That’s just how it’s always been.” I swallowed. “How it always was.”
“Huh. I don’t know what I can tell you about that, but… we gotta start somewhere. Your call,” she said. “What do you wanna know?”
I considered my endless list of questions for only a moment. “Where am I?”
“We’re just a ways inland from the western coast of this region, Casthele. Rural place, pretty far from the heartland. Technically, it’s under the jurisdiction of the Court– that is, Marcel and his buddies, the ones who hang out in the capital. The town we just left, Vermiles, that’s one of the bigger ones ‘round here. It’s not exactly dense out here. Uh, if you want I can try to remember some of these names in some other dialects, but since you seem pretty confident with Lumil anyway… has any of this been ringing any bells?”
“No, it doesn’t ring… I have no idea what I’m supposed to make of that.”
“Alright. Hrrrmmm.” She was lost in thought for a while, before she suddenly knocked her firelighter against the table and said, “Broader, huh? We live on a planet called Alesse. Ever heard that name?”
And as it happened, that was familiar. It was like the name– something on the fringes of my memory, half-forgotten. It might’ve been from one of the stories, or something else, but… digging too deep only brought the headache back, gnashing at my temples. “I recognize it,” I conceded, before adding, “barely.”
River’s brow furrowed, and for a moment I thought that I’d upset her, somehow, but she continued on. “So, you show up on the beach, no idea of where you actually are, but somehow you’ve heard the name of the planet. Like you ended up here by accident, but… what was it like?” she asked. “Where you were before, I mean?”
“The last thing I remember,” I said, measuring out my words, “before I came here, it was home. It’s this city, but there aren’t other people there, and it’s in the middle of the sea but it was even a different sea, somehow. I had a few things, and the library, this collection of all the stories and drawings and everything. And that was it. I never saw land like this before. I didn’t think it existed at all, I thought all that stuff was just… stories.” It still sort of felt that way. “Nothing real.”
“See, that’s weird. Not in a bad way, mind you! It’s just so… mysterious!”
She was practically beaming. I stared down, at a loss. “What is that supposed to mean to me? Why are all of you – even you,” I pointed out – “searching for me?”
“Adeline,” she said earnestly. “This is something special. I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but the thing is, it doesn’t make sense at all. Depending on how you wound up here, where you came from, I think this is something that hasn’t happened in a real long time– we’re talking, like, a thousand years kinds of long. I don’t know how else to put it, except… oh, oh!”
She slammed the firelighter down on the table again and stood up in one motion, nearly startling me out of my seat. “I’ve got an idea!” she announced. “Maybe something that’ll help clear up the dam in that head of yours. Put some things into context, at the very least.”
Her power started to flow as she hopped to the centre of the room and faced me, kicking aside the neglected debris scattered across the floor; the change in pressure was only barely noticeable, just a tug, a gentle push and pull brushing against the fields in the air (my own included). She was keeping a limit on herself. Which was probably a good idea, now that I thought about it.
Thinking about that with too much clarity made me nervous, so I stopped and focused on her instead. Practically bouncing on her heels out of excitement, she said, “Okay, okay, okay. You’re powerful. We both know that. You can feel the auras the electric and magnetic and the ley lines and everything. Like me, right? And not only that, you heal faster and regenerate little wounds like they’re nothing. You can run further, stay awake longer. You don’t need to breathe, or eat, or sleep. You don’t age.”
“I suppose so,” I said softly. “I never thought about it. But you and Marcel, and the other one… you’re all like that, too.”
“Exactly! We’re so similar, you and I, when it comes down to it. And you’re right, most of those people, they aren’t exactly the same. They’re people, y’know, like us, but some of those things you can do, they can’t. Like this.”
She turned her bare palm upward, and instantly I felt the energy in the room shift again– this time, though, with purpose. At her whim. The room cooled sharply as she drew the ambient heat into herself, letting our breath fog and the lanterns dim until it was even colder than the forest outside.
And before my eyes, trickles of clear, icy water started to coalesce in her hand, spilling through her fingers and dripping to the floor below.
It ran down her skin for a few seconds before she stopped pulling it from the air, closing her fist. Again, I felt the telltale pressure in the air, her aura pushing a little further into mine, and then she opened it to show me what she’d done: in place of the water, she held a small, delicate teardrop of ice, perfectly formed.
She crushed it and it shattered into a thousand miniscule slivers, already melting back into water as they cascaded to the floor, reflecting the light in a rainbow of colours. The room started to warm again as our eyes met. She was beaming.
“We're immortals.”
“Ílûmorà,” I muttered. She nodded, cocking her head out to one side.
“But the thing that’s so weird about you, specifically, is that you don’t fit in here like the rest of us. There are a few immortals, like the ones running the Court and some other ancients scattered around the planet, who’ve been around here since before the partition, way back in the day. And every few decades or centuries, a new one is born. That’s me.” She pointed to herself to illustrate, and then to me.
“But nobody comes here from anywhere else; partition makes sure of that. Which raises the question of how you apparently did exactly that. You’re unique. You’re new, sort of, and we’re not exactly known for our newness, y’know? And considering everything I’ve heard about you now… I really can’t stress how wild this is.”
“...Okay, I get it,” I sighed. I sank back in my chair as she sat down again, rubbing the side of my face. “I’m not… meant to be here. That’s why they want me?”
“That’s my best guess, though they so enjoy keeping secrets. In any case, since they’re still clueless about where you’re actually from or anything like that, they probably assume you’re a spy or something from out there.”
“Out where?”
“Fuck if I know,” she said, waving it off. “Someplace on the other side of the partition; but that isn’t something I concern myself with, and neither should you, unless you want to descend into eternally misplaced paranoia like the Court. The point being, they don’t know what your deal is. But you and me– we’re gonna figure it out together, and it’s gonna be great, I promise. And I think we can start… uh, we… can… start…”
She reached into a pocket, digging around for a few uncomfortable seconds before finally finding what she was after. She pulled out a white sphere, holding it up to shimmer in the light, pearlescent. “...With this little thing!” she finished.
It was identical to the one I saw her throw at Marcel back in the city – the one that apparently carried a debilitatingly strong magnetic pulse that I did not want to experience first-hand – but she tossed it around casually. And I was barely keeping up before. “What exactly is it?”
“They call it a pearl.” It made a quiet clink as she rapped its smooth surface with one fingernail. “Court uses ‘em to encode lots of sensitive data, since they happen to be very efficient and even harder to read without a proper interpreter. I’ve got an in, though. I grabbed this one ‘cause my intel told me it would have info on some other weird things that Marcie seems to be covering up, but if they know anything about you, that’s probably on here, too.”
“You and him didn’t really seem to… like each other,” I said, cautiously. “At all.”
“Oh, we definitely do not,” River smirked. “I stole it, natch. A couple weeks back. I don’t make a habit of making friends with power-hungry bastards like them. I’ve been a thorn in their side for a good while now and I got no intention of letting up.”
“I see.”
I didn’t really, obviously, but the Court weren’t around at the moment. I could think about all that later. When there was a later.
“...Anyway, anyway! The mission!” she continued, almost tripping over the words, like she’d just remembered what she’d wanted to say. “This idea is twofold: first things first, we sail south– there’s another town on the strait coast, just far enough from the heartland that I think we’ll be totally safe. From there, we can connect with a friend of mine in the capital itself. She’ll be able to read this pearl, which’ll be a nice place to start, but even if it’s nothing, I think she’ll know how to help you. At the very least she can set us on the right track for wherever we’ve gotta go next. With me?”
“Um. I suppose so? I know you have this idea, River, but I really don’t know anything about any of this. And going even farther away…”
“Em’s okay, trust me. A little tough sometimes, yeah, but she’s good people in the end. It’ll be fine, taken care of, I promise! I just don’t think you’re gonna find anything out here in the backwoods. This is our best bet.”
I knew she was trying to reassure me – she was doing a lot of that – but the whole idea was still… overwhelming. Something changed in her voice. “Hey,” she said, and now she was resting her own palms flat on the table, leaning closer. “You remember when I said that I knew people who’ve helped out folks like you before, right?”
I nodded, though I didn’t look up from my hands on the table. “Well…” she continued, “like I said, yours is a bit of a unique case. But Em has some experience in dealing with lost immortals.” She hesitated. “Like you and me.”
“Like you,” I repeated. “You were like this…? Like I am?”
“Yup. Dunno how long ago it was; it’s not like I still bother keeping count. But back then, when I first met her, I was in… a really bad place,” she said. She was staring past me, somewhere into the distance. “Not literally, but– you know. And Em took me in for a while, ‘til I figured myself out, found my own way. So when the Court started pulling some shady stuff years ago, she asked me to help her fight back however we could… and here I am today, I guess!”
“Helping me.” It was implicit, but I said it aloud anyway. We really were similar, and still, it felt… wrong. There were words she was saying that tweaked the furthest fringes of my memories again, too far to reach. And somehow, there was still some primal sense that was telling me it was all a lie.
A dream I hadn’t yet realized was a dream. I didn’t know how to feel about that.
Without even thinking, I blurted, “Why?”
Her attention came back to me; she seemed almost taken aback, although the easy smile had returned to her face. “Well. Because it doesn’t matter whether you’re supposed to be here or not; you are, right? And you deserve a chance to see that through no matter who you are, without them dragging you into their mess. It sounds kinda stupid when I put it all dramatically like that, but I guess it’s something I feel pretty strongly about,” she said. “And, uh. I guess that’s all there is to say about that!”
She seemed to catch whatever expression on my face was apparently broadcasting my consternation, though. “...Just to be clear, I don’t expect an obligation for you to join up with me and her and the rest of us when this is over and done with,” she added hastily. “I don’t wanna be a hypocrite. But still, whatever happens, I– I really do wanna help you out, here. And I’d like us to be–” Another pause. “Y’know. Allies. Friends.”
Again, there was something else to River’s voice when she said that, something I couldn’t pick out. I found her watching my face intently; her eyes were inscrutable, but they still seemed to glitter emerald in the light, fixed with mine.
We were very, very close, all of a sudden.
I realized that she was probably waiting for an answer, as vague as her weird almost-question had been, so I quickly blurted out, “Yeah. Maybe.”
Her face flushed with heat and the air around her did the same, very suddenly, as she stood up once more, breaking the contact between us. “Sorry, just remembered, I’d better get us in the air!” she announced, much louder than we’d been talking before. But her contagious energy dragged me from my own seat, too. “Who knows how much time we’ve spent out here already!”
“Oh,” I said, stunned. All at once I realized the implications, and although I was sure I’d been aware of it on some level, I hadn’t actually considered what the ship was for. “Wait… in the air. As in flying?”
River just grinned, sweeping her hair back and snapping the band of a pair of dark, tinted goggles around her neck. “You better believe it.”
She briskly closed the shutters over the windows and pulled aside the curtain over the doorway, motioning for me to follow her back out. “Really, though, if it’s alright by you, we oughta bounce,” she said. “Don’t worry, you can just relax. I can take care of the old bird myself just fine.”
“Of course.” I stood up to follow, but in the open doorway I paused, running a hand along the wooden frame. Feeling a grain I’d never felt before.
“It’s strange, probably, but when I first saw that other ship over the town, I thought it seemed more like a dragon, or something.” Somehow, that sounded even more absurd than it did just a short while ago. “A big wooden dragon.”
“Hah.” She stopped a few steps ahead of me, looking over her shoulder and then up, into the distance, considering. “That would be a whole lot cooler, wouldn’t it?”
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