Nothing beats the moment between resurrection and realization. The man awakened with his whole self gently rocking to and fro, as if he were lying in some great cosmic cradle. Warm liquid kissed his toes, hissed in his ears, soaked his hair. He hummed to himself in satisfaction.
“No,” said Brother Thorne sadly, just as he remembered being Brother Thorne.
He coughed and sat up, opening his eyes. He was in a berth, a small room decorated in wood panel and white-painted metal with bunk beds set into one wall. Ripples of red were sweeping across the floor. His head swam; his sense of where down was seemed inconsistent. The light from outside suggested no time of day or night that he was familiar with.
He was completely naked, but that at least was expected.
Liquid sloshed against his bare skin. His hand was dripping red. He put it to his nose and inhaled fruit and alcohol. His sense of down shifted again and a rumbling noise made him look toward the door just in time to see a barrel rolling past in the corridor outside, and then he got it. He was on a ship. A wine barrel had broken loose from the hold and burst open. Things were falling into place. Time to move.
He got to his feet and debated looking for something to wear. There was a discarded shirt on the lower bunk and a pair of shorts hanging half-out of a drawer. He considered them, then shook his head. He had been doing this long enough to know that a man wearing another’s clothes is a thief, but a naked man is a spectacle.
Thorne loved spectacle. He was good at it. He started running through his patter as he headed for the door. I have returned from the unseen world to teach you of life beyond life. The barrel nearly bowled him over as he stepped out.
The corridor led to a small hold at one end and up a flight of stairs at the other. He headed for the stairs, his feet slapping against the wet floor as he passed cabins on either side. All of the doors had been left open and were swinging lazily with the motion of the sea. He paused at each one, getting a smile ready, but there was no one inside. Empty beds, discarded clothes, sodden paper, and filthy plates; these were his only audience. The stairs led him up to a door to the outer deck.
The eerie light about him drew his attention first. It was like sunlight filtered through thick fog but without the closeness of fog; more like a smoked glass bowl had been upended over the world. The sun resembled a paper disc stuck to the glass, powerless, a mere observer to events. At what should have been the horizon he could only see murky forms that shifted in shape when he looked away.
A great black void surrounded the ship. Thorne walked to the railing in soft and measured steps, as if sneaking up on some dangerous beast, and looked over the edge. Though the light was dim, he was able to see faint outlines of turbulence around the hull. The blackness was the sea itself.
“Hmm,” said Thorne, utterly mystified. There was nothing else in sight.
The bridge was a small covered cockpit just ahead. He grabbed a towel that had been left on the railing and wrapped it around his waist, then eased himself into the captain’s chair. The throttle was engaged at low speed and the fuel gauge showed the tanks were at 3/7. He turned the wheel a bit to the left, felt the shift of forces, watched the horizon inch past. For a moment he considered turning off the engine to save fuel, but he wasn’t certain he would be able to start it again.
He found the log in a drawer and flipped through the pages. It was written in Phaung, a language common in the Antees, and one he had become fluent in over several lifetimes. The ship’s name was Moon’s Dentist and she was a small passenger carrier two days out from Cyume en route to Antees Minor. The log did not mention her current predicament at all, nothing like oh no, the sea’s gone black or what’s happened to the sun? Thorne reread the last few entries, looking for any clues, but could find nothing relevant. He slipped the log back into the drawer.
There was a radio to one side of the controls. He studied the controls, then tuned in the marine aid frequency and picked up the microphone. “Hello?” he said in Phaung, “I’d like to report a missing ship.”
There was no response. He tried again. “Moon’s Dentist, en route to Cyume, crew and passengers missing, need assistance.” The radio gently hissed back at him. He returned the microphone to its cradle and let himself sag back into the chair.
No one was coming. He couldn’t have explained exactly how he knew, except that it was a blend of observation, experience, and being metaphysically attuned to the beginnings and endings of things.
“Speaking of endings,” he said, idly swinging his foot up and hooking it around the steering wheel.
Was it time to go? He’d just got here, certainly, but there was nothing for him to do here. He could just dive overboard and let the great black sea swallow him. Return to the Forest for a pleasant rest, then back to the world under hopefully better circumstances. There were no needs to minister to, no souls here to save. Unless, of course, he was missing something. He felt that he might be.
He stood and walked to the edge of the deck to address the sun, the smoked glass sky, and the great black sea.
“Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
He waited for a response, peering at the shifting forms in the distance. He waited a little longer.
Brother Thorne hated dying on an empty stomach, and his was not only empty but newly made. It seemed a shame to waste it. He ventured back below decks and located the small cabin beside the hold that had served as the galley. In a cupboard he found some bread and cheese, and in another dried fruit. A bottle of corberry essence sealed the deal. He wiped off a table with the corner of the towel and sat down.
The bread was a little stale but the cheese made up for it. He chewed and sipped and swallowed and let his mind wander.
He couldn’t remember his death, which usually meant it had been a pleasant one. He had been the abbot of a little monastery in the Ganneck Mountains, teaching his peculiar branch of theology to a handful of disciples. Making wine, keeping bees, and tending the gardens as he lectured; as idyllic a life as he could have hoped for. Age had slowed him, wrinkled his skin, and fogged his memory. His former pupils had attended to him at the end, waiting by his bedside as he slipped away. His stay in the Forest had been long and blissful before he was pulled back into the world.
His newly resurrected body was young and strong, and his mind was clear. Not that either one was doing him much good at the moment.
What was this place? He was familiar with the darker corners of the world, but this was a new one. It seemed like an obvious maritime hazard. He had spent a lot of time wandering the Antean Coast, and the only way he would have never heard of a thing like this was if no one had ever survived it.
As he reached for the heel of bread, the ship lurched, throwing his meal to the floor. A sound like crunching filled the cabin, then splintering. Thorne jumped up from the table, grabbing at the towel as it unwound from his waist. He hurried up the steps to the outer deck.
There was a small fishing trawler to starboard. Thorne wasn’t sure where it had come from but was pretty certain where it was going; the hull was listing to one side and sinking as it took on water. He ran to the edge of the deck and leaned over the railing.
“Hey!” he called, whipping his towel at the doomed trawler. “Anyone on board?”
There was no response, no sound, no movement other than the hull slipping under the blackness. It only took a few seconds to disappear completely.
Thorne stared at the still spot where it had been. No one on board meant no one had been steering it. Was the sea itself throwing boats at him, then? He couldn’t discount the possibility. He raised his eyes to the horizon.
Between the black sea and the blurred grey forms on the horizon was a speck of white, the smallest single dot of light. He stared at it, moving his head from side to side, making sure it was not some kind of illusion.
He went to the bridge and eased the throttle up until the ship was purring forward at a comfortable clip, then turned to starboard. Toward the light. Thoughts of diving to his death were forgotten. He had played the martyr and would play it again, but only with purpose. He was sufficiently annoyed now to stay alive.
When the island appeared, Thorne was too occupied with the water to notice it. He had grabbed the bottle of corberry essence and drunk the rest of it, then dunked the bottle under the black water and lifted it out. The water in the bottle was black, which surprised him. He had wondered if the color was the result of some optical trick, or because the water was home to some species of animalcule, or pollution from an underwater volcanic eruption; he leapt from hypothesis to hypothesis without testing any of them and now he held a bottle of black water in his hands. It was no trick of the light and it was not the cloudy black of sediment or suspended particles. It was black because it will be black, he reasoned at last; black being the metaphysical condition of its existence. Anyway, he put the bottle down on the deck to see he could piss into it, and finally managed to notice the island ahead.
He hurried to the bridge and steered toward it, watched it grow. The coast was a quick walk from one edge to the other. A line of spiky growths across the higher ground might have been trees. He could make out boulders around the trunks and a hill behind them. It was not the most inviting place he had ever seen, but at least it was a place. He reached for the map in the drawer under the wheel, then remembered that he didn’t know where he was and that a map wasn’t going to tell him much beyond that.
There was a line of light moving behind the trees. It crept slowly, disappearing behind a trunk then appearing at its other edge, passing through the gap until it met the next trunk, then vanishing once more. It did not reappear.
He eased off the throttle, getting as close as he dared without running aground. A rummage through the forward compartments provided him with a pair of dock lines. He secured one to the fore cleats and the other to the aft, taking the other ends with him as he descended the starboard ladder. Water oozed over his feet like a light syrup. He sloshed to the nearest trunk and secured the lines. They would not hold fast in a storm, but they would do for a quick look around. He stepped through the gap in the trunks, looking for the source of the light.
The figure that stood watching him might have been a statue, unfinished as it was, roughly made as if for practice. She was naked, reddish, hairless, and covered in a viscous slime, as if she had been dredged from the depths of the sea. She tilted her bald head to stare at him and a drop of goop fell from her ear and plopped onto the ground.
“Nice dick,” she said in Phaung. Her accent was rough but understandable.
Thorne blinked in confusion, then glanced down. Ah. He’d left the towel on the ship.
“Thanks,” he said. “This your island?”
“No.”
As he waited for her to elaborate, he couldn’t help noticing what an odd island this was up close. It seemed to lack sand or grasses. The boulders he had noticed from his ship were more like bumps erupting from the island’s surface, and the trees were slick and barkless. Even the pebbles under his bare feet seemed wrong. He tried to shift one with his toe. It moved to one side, revealing a clot of white worms. He stepped back with an involuntary shudder and the pebble sprang back in place.
“I’m trapped here,” the woman said at last.
“Oh.” Thorne was instantly on her side. He jerked a thumb at the ship he’d arrived in. “You can go with me. If you like.”
“No. I can’t.” She didn’t seem distressed or angry or even sad, just stating facts. “Call me Lappat.”
“Oh? Mm-hm.” Eloquence seemed to have completely deserted him. He coughed to cover his own befuddlement. He felt like a novice in the presence of a master. “I’m Brother Thorne.”
“Brother?” The woman stepped to one side, or rather, slipped. Her feet did not leave the ground. “A holy man, then?”
It should have been the signal for him to go into his patter, but instead he only nodded, folding his arms across his chest. I have returned from the world beyond death to teach you to see the unseen. He had no idea what he would say after that. Where did that light go? Were you the one throwing boats at me earlier? He could not read her at all.
“A waste of a man,” she said, and grinned. Little strings of ooze stretched across her lips, drooping as they formed. “Never mind. You smell like a winery. Who do you serve?”
“Serve?” he said, then caught himself. “Oh. No one.”
Lappat shook her head, a simple negation. “We all serve.”
“There are no gods for me to serve.”
Her eyes widened, and the grin returned. “So you’re a little farther ahead than most. Still backward, though.”
“If you say so,” said Thorne. It sounded stiff in his ears, like wounded pride, and he tried to recover by returning to his script. “I have returned from the world beyond death to teach you of life beyond life.”
“Oh?” She turned in place, her feet sliding over the earth as she faced away from him. “I serve the One who made me and rules over all.”
“The One?” He followed her gaze but there was nothing to see there except the black water and the pallid sun and the liquid shapes on the horizon. “Who’s that?”
She did not respond. Her eyes were closed. Perhaps she was praying, communing with the One. To be polite, he closed his own eyes and opened his mind to whatever was out there.
The realization of the presence hit him like falling into blackness. It was exactly as if a mountain had managed to sneak up on him and he’d finally noticed its shadow falling over his own. He opened his eyes and backed away from her, then turned and tried not to run back to the ship.
Once below decks, he located the towel and tied it firmly around his waist. Wine sloshed past his feet as he paced the ruined carpet, planning his next move. There was still fuel in the tanks, and a few days of food left in the pantry. He could cast off and leave and look for survivors. For actual survivors, he corrected himself.
Lappat. Was she the center of all of it? The black sea, the sickened sun, the shipwrecks? What did she believe her service to the One require of her?
He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, slowed his pacing, made each step deliberate.
He was alone. He had no power here, no followers. He didn’t even have a pair of shorts. A dick left dangling in the surf wasn’t going to save anyone. What was going to happen to the next ship caught up in all of this?
He took another deep breath. His deliberate footsteps had become exaggerated, almost comical. He stopped pacing and leaned against the wall. The towel unraveled and dropped to the floor before he could grab it. He let it lay there, soaking.
The worst she could do was kill him. Death was nothing but a change of address. He had no fear of it. The real fear was the unknowing, the sense that his atlas of the theological universe was missing a constellation. It was an intolerable situation for a teacher of the unseen.
He walked into one of the rooms and sat down on the lower bunk, noticed the black shorts hanging out of the drawer. No one would miss them. Sighing, he slipped them on and sat back down.
Now he had a pair of shorts, at least. Things were looking up.
He was suddenly tired. The bed was a little sodden, but he’d slept soundly on worse. He lay down and closed his eyes.
“Come and preach to me, servant of no one! Tell me of the world beyond death!”
His eyes snapped open. He had no sense of time having passed. His mouth tasted the same. He lay still, like a rabbit hoping the wolf will pass.
“Speak to me of broken temples and ruined palaces! Let us revel in the follies of dead gods!”
Maybe she just wanted to talk? He extracted himself from the lower bunk and left the room. Acting on sudden inspiration, he made a detour into the galley.
“Ah,” she said, as he walked out on deck, “you find modesty at last.”
“Hello again, Lappat.”
“I can still see the bulge, so that’s something.”
She was standing on the beach with her hands on her hips, her head slightly to one side, watching him. As he walked up to her, she turned in place, her feet sliding, and shuffled across the sand. The slime oozed from her pores and down the contours of her head, neck, shoulders, back, and legs.
“Would you like something to eat?” he said to her glistening back. He held up a hunk of bread.
“The One nourishes me,” she said, looking over her shoulder, but held out her hand anyway. As he passed it to her, their fingers brushed, leaving a glot of goop across his thumb. He waited for her to turn away before wiping it on his shorts. She slowed, allowing him to fall into step beside her. The reek of brine filled his senses, and that of seaweed left too long in the sun, and under that the scent of something deeper and darker. “You serve no one. What is your theology? What do you preach?”
“That all will be revealed.”
“To those who believe?”
“To myself.”
She snorted at that, spraying crumbs. “And once you have the words, you’ll catch everyone up?”
“The words are everchanging. I’ll speak what I know today. I’ll say more tomorrow.”
“The One,” she said, mumbling around the crust of the bread, “is eternal and unchanging.”
“And what do they want?”
“Offerings.” She belched, without shame or restraint. “That was a good start.”
Disappointment washed over him, though it was tinged with relief. Was she nothing more than a hungry animal that had learned a trick? It made the gap in his knowledge smaller, at least. “Do you preach?”
“To food?” She clearly found the idea amusing. “No.”
“But you have knowledge to share! You know the fates of the gods.”
“The One knew them. The One was there when they fell.”
“Well, there you go,” he said, and let the words hang there for a little while before realizing that he hadn’t actually made a point. “I mean, you know the truth, or something of it. Shouldn’t you spread that around?”
“What for? Dinner conversation?”
They had reached the other side of the island, which looked more or less the same as the rest of it. Something in the distance caught his eye, distinct from the curtain of shifting forms on the horizon. He pointed. “A ship.”
“Yes. They slipped through the veil. I’ve called them to the One.”
“Why?” But he knew why, and it made him suddenly sick. “Send them away.”
“No! We can have a picnic on the beach.” She was trolling him, poking fun at his weaknesses. “Do you have any cheese?”
He stopped and planted his feet in the sand, grabbing at her arm. His fingers slid across her skin. “Please, don’t let this happen.”
“Why? It’ll be a blast. You, me, and the One.”
He released her and ran back to his own ship, ignoring her bemused catcalls. Once up the ladder he hurried to the bridge and thumbed the radio controls. “Attention,” he said into the mike. “To the ship–look, I don’t know all the nautical terms but if you’re hearing my voice you probably need to hear this. Don’t go to the island. You can probably see it by now. You’re heading for it. Just turn around. There’s nothing but death here.”
There was only static in response. He repeated the message with a little more urgency, and watched the other ship draw closer, running at what appeared to be the limit of its engines. Smoke and mist billowed around the craft.
He switched to the alternate emergency frequency. He repeated the message in Cyr, then Belmar, then Hipf. He switched back to the original frequency and started over, desperation clawing at the edges of his voice. The sound of a distant engine grew louder.
“Join us, Brother! Join the feast!”
He did not look, even when he heard the splintering wood and the wet thuds against the beach. He dropped the mike into its cradle and ducked under the control panel, curled up, closed his eyes. His only weapons were words, and words had failed. He waited to see what this bright and terrible new constellation would make of him.
And he waited.
“I have to say,” she called after a long silence, “that I don’t understand you at all.”
He uncurled and peeked around the edge of the panel. Lappat was standing at the waterline, staring at him with obvious irritation. There was no sign of wreckage or bodies, which he was thankful for.
“Did you have a nice lunch?” he said, trying to banter with her, but his heart wasn’t in it. “Forget it. There’s nothing for you to understand here.”
“Refusing food doesn’t make you morally superior,” said Lappat with a smirk. “Idiot.”
“Come up here and say that.”
She rolled her eyes. “The One might have killed you for such disrespect.”
“Go ahead.” He ducked back under the panel.
There was a splash, then another, then a hiss of disgust. “Get down here now.”
“No.”
The radio crackled. “This is Pebbles for Shoes,” came a distorted voice from the speaker, speaking in Cyr. “Calling for assist, Pebbles for Shoes calling for assist.”
Thorne jumped to grab the microphone. “Moon’s Dentist here. What’s your situation?”
“Why risk your life?” said the voice on the other end. “Why deny the One their rightful offerings?”
He tossed the microphone away. “Very funny.”
“It’s a valid question,” she said, speaking once more from the beach.
There was only one suitable response. He grabbed a knife from the drawer, crossed the deck, and sliced through the ropes that bound the ship to the island. They hit the black water and sank out of sight, and the ship began to drift away from the sandbar. Only then did he look up at her.
She appeared more puzzled then angry. “I spared you,” she said, and her voice was flat and lifeless. “I asked that you be spared.”
“It’s just another life.” He was tired, and no longer cared about this particular branch of theology. If he steered away from the island he just might escape this place, even on half a tank, and once able to communicate with the authorities he would warn them of its location. Maybe they would believe him. He grabbed a pole from the deck and pushed off from the sandbar, then started the engine and turned about. When he glanced back at the island, she was nowhere to be seen.
Once you know the trick it’s harder to be fooled by it. He was dozing in the lower bunk when he heard someone knocking on the bulkhead door above. The noise of the engine and the hiss of water against the hull told him the ship was still in motion. Therefore, what he was hearing was probably some sort of hallucination. He dismissed it and turned over in bed.
“Brother?” said a muffled but familiar voice from above. “Are you there?”
That she could cloud his mind was less of a surprise than the fact that she had bothered to do it at all. With a sigh, Thorne rolled out of the bunk, sloshed across the carpet, and trudged up the stairs.
“Can you clear something up for me?” he said, as he stepped out onto the deck. “What did you do to the people who were on this ship?”
Lappat shuffled backward, but her expression was calm. “I called to them. They responded.”
“You mean, they were so eager to answer the call that they jumped off and drowned.”
“Not all. Three were strong swimmers.” The hallucinated Lappat was less slimy and roughly put together than the real one, and she wore the towel he had discarded as an abbreviated sari. “I don’t actually eat them, you know. I just prepare them as offerings. If that’s what concerns you.”
“Why would you care what concerns me?”
“Why would you care,” she said, mocking him, “and so forth. Clearly you’re bothered. Why not tell me about it?” She shuffled to the bridge, tried to sit in the pilot’s chair, but the illusion didn’t quite make sense with her feet stuck firmly to the deck and she got up again. “Come on. Don’t be such a fucking baby.”
“You lure innocent people to their deaths.”
“For a higher purpose! Tell me you haven’t used the same excuse.” She speared his gaze with her own. “Tell me, Brother.”
And there it was, wasn’t it? Being a reformed piece of shit wasn’t the same thing as being innocent. He looked down at the cracks in the deck and said nothing.
Her voice was suddenly and strangely gentle. “Tell me.”
“Don’t act like we’re equally guilty.”
“I could say the same thing.”
“I never killed anyone.”
“Under some interpretations of events, neither have I.” She moved closer. “Look, you must realize that I’m not letting this go. I asked the One to spare you because I could tell you weren’t like them. Not food. An eater. No matter what you call yourself now. So tell me what makes you different.”
What had he said when he had first confronted the black water? Is there anything you’d like to talk about? He’d sensed her too, without realizing it. And his first instinct had been to help. Was that it? Was that what made him different?
You want to help her? Tell her the truth.
“There’s a book about me,” he said at last. “More than one. The most famous one is called The Cathedral of Ego. It tells of how I convinced an entire town that I was the divine herald, preacher to the unseen congregations, speaker of truths to come, prophet, messiah, ruler of land and sea. The One, if you will.”
“I won’t,” she said, but she was nodding. “Keep going.”
“I convinced them to tear their entire town apart–houses, schools, shops, everything–and build a place of worship. A temple dedicated to myself. Yes, really. I was something else in those days. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t think about the consequences to other people.”
“I imagine they were brutal.”
“In many ways. The construction itself cost sixteen lives. Exposure killed a hundred more. Those who survived begged me to bring their loved ones and neighbors back, and I told them to find new ones. They didn’t like that answer, so they burned down the cathedral with me inside it. Wasn’t too painful, fortunately. Smoke inhalation gets you before the flames do.”
She looked skeptical. “And then?”
“I came back,” he said simply. “I always do. It’s all I can do.”
“Resurrection.” She rolled the word around her mouth slowly, as if enjoying the taste. “No wonder you’re not afraid of the One.”
“I was. I really was, for a moment. When I thought they were more than they really are.”
“Oh, fuck you.” She spat on the deck. “What could the One possibly lack?”
“Redemption.”
She spun on her heel and shuffled to the fore of the ship, her back pointedly to him. Ahead was the surging black water and the gloomy veil and nothing else.
“After that,” he said, jumping ahead to the point he really wanted to make, “it was never the same. Trying to play messiah, I was just leading people into a theological void. I couldn’t save them. So I settled for being a teacher of actual truths. The end of the gods. The Forest, and the unseen world. Things I’ve actually seen in the shuffle of life and death. And I use what I know to help people.”
He stopped and waited. There was no response. Her back remained resolutely to him.
“I’m nobody’s moral superior, Lappat. That’s my whole thing.”
She shifted, as if easing herself out of a tight place, and turned. The smile on her face was beautific and she held her arms out to him. He took one tentative step toward her, then another.
“The One has forgiven your sins,” she said, and her look was pure love. “The One absolves you.”
He stumbled through the final step and stopped, disbelief curdling into rage. “Oh, fuc–”
There was a terrible grinding noise, and the deck pitched as the ship crashed into the island that she had been steering him back to the entire time. He flew through the air and collided with darkness.
“I’m glad you’re not dead yet.” The voice came from behind him. He decided not to roll over. The pain was just the right side of tolerable and he didn’t want to try the other side. Fortunately, Lappat was already shuffling around him. She eased herself down into a flat-heeled squat and watched his face. Her expression was almost tender. “We have this moment, at least.”
He tried to speak. “You can’t–” Blunt needles poked at his lungs. “–forgive me.”
“I could see you were hurting. I wanted to lighten your burden. And the One granted my plea.”
“There are–no gods!” He gritted his teeth on the second part.
“No, and there never will be again. But others are coming to the party, and the night is young.” She reached out and brushed his shoulder. “I wish I didn’t have to go.”
“Go?”
She sighed. “The One feels I have been indulged enough.”
The island rumbled around them, like the first stirrings of an avalanche. Thorne felt it deep in his belly and knew at once what it was and how badly he had fooled himself.
“Idiot,” he said, painfully.
“Yeah.” She grinned. “Farewell? Is that what people say? I don’t get around much.”
“Yeah.” Despite himself, despite her, despite everything, he grinned back. “Farewell.”
They were sinking. Black water lapped at his feet, rolling over the beach and filling in the spaces between the pebbles. She made no effort to move as the water sucked at her toes, claiming her feet. Pain coursed through his body as the water tugged at his limbs.
“I don’t make it to the Forest very often,” she said, as he began to float away, “but look me up the next time you get there. We’ll have a real picnic, and blaspheme in the names of the dead ones, and moon their broken altars and dance in ruins of their temples. I can really move when I want to.”
She was still giggling as her face sank below the dark waves. On the horizon, the veil seemed to be fading, and the sun above growing in brilliance. The water began to clear and he could see his hand through it as he paddled toward a floating piece of the broken ship’s hull. Before he reached it, the darkness of the depths parted fully, and he finally perceived the vast form of the leviathan below.
He could not think in terms of measurements, or how many stories of buildings, or the number of trams it would take to cross its width or its length. It was simply the largest thing he had ever seen. Its body extended to a depth that would have crushed a lesser being. The island was a bump on its head, just over the vast mouth that could have swallowed continents. A column of light shone from the bump, sending beams through the water as if searching for prey.
The great Eye rolled toward him, paused as if taking his measure, then closed.
He might have floated for hours or days. Certainly there were periods of darkness, but they might have been something else. Over a long set of lifetimes he had developed ways of coping with pain. Most of them involved self-delusion. He was not on fire, he was pouring pure light from his hands. He was not starving, he was light enough to fly. He was not being beaten, he was being caressed by loving hands.
He was definitely dying, but that he could cope with. At any point he could have relaxed his grip on the broken piece of the hull and sank into the depths and woke up in the Forest, free from pain and the necessities of the physical body, but he would not. As long as there were souls in need, his job was not done.
When he finally heard the noise of the engine over the waves he opened his eyes and looked for its source. There was no boat, no vessel in sight. Groaning, he pulled himself around to face the other side, nearly losing his grip on the broken hull in the process. There was no ship there either. After a moment it occurred to him to look up at the rescue plane flying low over the water. He managed a weak wave, not knowing if he had been spotted or not. He sighed and eased himself back to a more comfortable resting position as the plane rose into the sky and faded into silence.
He tried to think of what to say to them when they picked him up. I have returned from the unseen world to teach you of life beyond life. He was fond of that one. I have returned from the world beyond death to teach you to see the unseen. Another good one. He waited for the engine sounds to return.
Shadows moved across his eyes, and voices sounded in his ears. He could not make them out. The words he wanted to say formed on his lips and died and he had no others.
I’m hurt, he wanted to say, please help me. He waited for the words to return.