Chapter 238 The Far Shore

Isolde’s light had gone home to her, and she was holding on to Garen as if the barge might tip again.

All over the deck, the lights were finding their way back. Logan watched one sink into Bram’s beard and another into Edda’s shoulder. Two small ones drifted to Vina, and she giggled when they touched her.

Most of the lights did not come to the barge at all.

There were hundreds of them still hanging in the mist. They were the ones the Gleaner had eaten before the family ever came to the Mere, from every crossing it had followed. They did not know where to go.

Logan watched them.

Some drifted back toward the forest and Keepsake. Some rose into the mist and faded there. A few sank slowly through the white water, as if whoever they belonged to were somewhere far below.

’Aldo’s sister,’ he thought. ’Ilse. She crossed here.’

He wondered whether one of these had been hers. He wondered whether it would find her, wherever she was now.

Rishin was watching the sinking ones. He followed them down with his eyes until the white water closed over them.

He did not say anything, and his fist stayed shut.

The mist was thinning.

It lifted off the Mere the way steam lifts off a pot, and the water underneath it lay flat and still. Logan looked down at his chest and his hands, and no new lights were falling.

"Boss," said Billy. "I can see it. I can see the other side."

It was close. It was much closer than Logan had feared. There was a long dark shore not two hundred strokes ahead, and behind it a cliff of black rock that went up into the pale sky.

"Row," said Logan.

They rowed.

Terry had no oar, so he knelt at the bow beside Billy and paddled with his shield. Halden did not tease him about it. Wren sat on the deck beside Helen with her single lantern in her lap.

Helen kept looking at the empty end of the yoke.

"I am sorry," she told the little unit softly. "Your lantern."

Wren shook her head. She touched the remaining lantern, the one of glowing water, and then she touched Helen’s hand.

"One is enough," Wren said. "For now, Mistress."

The barge grounded on dark shingle.

The units went over the sides into the shallow water and dragged it up the shore. Then the family climbed down onto the stones, one pair at a time, and Logan felt the ground firm and dry under his boots.

Daniel took out Hob’s card. Logan and Alice took out the others.

Hob came out onto the shingle and shook himself from horns to tail. Thessaris rose beside him, green and dripping. The Thistlemaw stretched its long bark arms, and Vulkarn and Xairon came out last of all.

Hob went straight to Daniel and pressed his heavy brow to his master’s chest.

"I know," said Daniel. "I know. We made it."

Everybody took out their bark.

Logan unfolded his strip and read it through. He knew every line. He knew why the last one was there, and he heard Alice’s voice under it.

Alice was reading hers with her lips pressed together. When she finished, she folded it again and put it back inside her shirt without showing him.

"What did you write?" he asked.

"Things I did not want to lose." She smiled at him. "I did not lose them."

Garen had both sides of his strip covered in small cramped writing. He read it, then handed it to Isolde, and she read it too. Halfway down she laughed and wiped her eyes.

Vina went to the old man.

He was standing at the edge of the shingle, looking up at the cliff. She slipped her hand into his coat pocket and drew out the strip she had written for him.

"Read it," she said. "Please. I want to know you have it."

"I did not lose anything, little one."

"I know. It was in case." She held it out. "Read it anyway."

Rishin took the strip and unfolded it.

Logan was close enough to see the writing. It was large and crooked, and the charcoal had smudged where Vina’s fist had dragged across it.

THIS IS GRANDPA RISHIN.

HE IS MINE.

I AM VINA. I LOVE HIM. HE LOVES ME.

IF HE FALLS DOWN I FALL DOWN WITH HIM.

The old man read it. He read it a second time.

His face did not change. But he folded the strip slowly along its crease, and he put it back into his pocket and kept his hand over it.

"I have it," he said. "Thank you."

Vina leaned against his side, satisfied.

There was a cave in the foot of the cliff.

It was a tall dark crack in the black rock, a little way along the shore. As the family walked toward it, Logan saw a line cut straight and deep across the stone at its mouth. It was the same mark that had ended every layer they had crossed.

Beyond the line, the cave went down into the dark.

Nobody went near it. They stopped a dozen paces short of the line and stood on the shingle looking at it.

"That is the last one," said Garen. "Is it not?"

"Yes," said Rishin. "That is the Eleventh Layer. That is the bottom."

Logan looked at the old man.

Rishin was standing straight. He had not stood like that since the Ninth Layer. His fist was still closed on the two stones, and he held it against his chest.

"We sleep here," he said. "On this side."

"On the Tenth Layer?" Isolde frowned. "We will lose what we do not tell."

"Then tell each other first." The old man turned round to face them all. "And when you wake, before we cross that line, I will tell you why I came back."

Garen opened his mouth and shut it again.

Alice’s fingers closed hard round Logan’s. He saw his mother’s hand tighten on Daniel’s arm. Garen and Isolde looked at each other, and Bram put his hand on Edda’s shoulder.

Vina looked up at the old man with her mouth open.

"You do not have to," Logan said.

"I do." Rishin met his eyes. "You let it go on the Ninth Layer, boy. I felt it go. You were going to follow me down without knowing, and you were not going to ask."

He looked at Vina, and at the strip in his pocket under his hand.

"That is why I have to," he said. "You should know what you are walking toward with me."

They made camp on the shingle under the cliff.

Martha cooked. Nobody ate much. Afterward they sat in their pairs and told each other everything they could think of, the way they had in Keepsake, and Logan told Alice about the lights going home.

Vina sat with Rishin. For once she did not talk.

She held his closed fist on her knees with both hands, and he sat with his back against the black rock and looked at the cave. Link stood over them with his flame burning dim.

Logan lay awake and watched the old man watch the dark.

[ Time remaining: 314 days ]