Chapter 20
Dearest E.,
Reading your letter was an experience like no other. Have you ever considered, E., that someone ought to write a Fantasy about you? You experience something unprecedented, you venture to the library in search of new knowledge, you discover a mysterious familial connection to said knowledge, and then you write all about it to a most peculiar man who does not deserve your attention – surely that is the very stuff of stories! By the way, it warms my heart to think that you’ve spoken to Elaxand Iyl. He has been very kind to me throughout the years. (And, unfortunately, making an embarrassing comment alluding to depth of his friend’s fondness for someone else in that very someone else’s presence is not entirely out of character for the fellow… but I cannot deny what he alleges!)
At any rate, I did some research of my own while engaging in a rather unique project for the Sagacity. My colleagues Lerin, Emte (that is Scholar Emte Manri Yaum, also from Intertidal, and a seabird specialist), and I have finally been “nominated” to participate in that part of the mission that no one ever wishes to complete – the dreaded “Depth-Craft Vigil.” In brief, the Sagacity possesses a small yet serviceable depth-craft – a model about a decade old, so it’s showing its vintage – that we use once a month or so to survey sea life. Now, you might ask me, “Henerey! You are so fascinated with the Deep House, and the concept of life underwater – what makes this depth-craft experience so dreaded?” (Please indulge me – I do wish we could ask each other questions in real time, as it were. I also acknowledge that any question you might ask me would likely be far more eloquent and engaging than anything I can imagine.)
Well, because the depth-craft is rather outdated, it lacks the proper surveying equipment for our purposes, so we must load it up afresh and refuel its spirulina generator before every journey. It was not meant for true depths – it is a transport craft! – and takes so long to prepare for deep dives that after a launch, those unlucky souls chosen to float within it are not able to return to the comforts of the ship until an entire day has passed.
But when our Captain announced that my time had come, I accepted my fate without protest and told myself that I must embrace any opportunity to view the ocean from a new perspective. And of the Sagacity’s crew, I find Lerin and Emte the most agreeable – and most dazzlingly wise – so I thought this might provide the perfect chance to ask them for advice. Given the sensitive and unusual nature of our inquiry into the Structure and your experience, I used the utmost tact and discretion.
As soon as the hatch closed, I turned to my companions and asked if they knew any recent accounts of Antepelagic technology.
“That is—oddly specific, Scholar Clel,” replied Emte, never taking her eyes off the viewing window. (She wants to witness exactly how the Small-Billed Cormorant manages to prey upon Prolific Squid even though their bills are… well, you can imagine…)
“Surely you now know me well enough to understand that I am nothing if not oddly specific at all times.”
“Actually,” said Lerin, “I disagree. I think you’re being far too general, Henerey. What inspired your vague interest in the Antepelagic?’
I offered a convincing monologue about how my lifelong interest in Fantasies led me to take up a new interest in History, especially those unsolved mysteries of the depths—
“Well, you see,” I relented in the end, “a friend of mine is researching the subject, and I find myself at a loss to give her any suitable references. So I turned to the two most knowledgeable Scholars aboard this depth-craft.”
They both looked at me with great excitement.
“This wouldn’t happen to be the ‘friend’ for whose sake you willingly attended a social gathering, would it?” Lerin asked.
You know, it occurs to me that I should not be transcribing this part for you – let’s skip ahead, shall we? It was all irrelevant ribbing from that point onward! It would have served Emte right if a Cormorant swam by at that very moment and she missed it while they both teased me.
“People have salvaged Antepelagic technology for centuries,” said Lerin so confidently that I could almost see the footnotes hovering off the words. “For the most part, however, it is useless. Scholars haul massive machines to the surface only to find them so overgrown with algae and rust and so forth that they become nothing more than tragically beautiful, historically significant art pieces.”
“Never anything functioning?”
“When I was a child, there was talk of this in the Intertidal Outer Ring,” said Emte thoughtfully. “I’d heard that in my father’s generation, there was an Architect who found a fully intact piece of machinery that he thought would make his fortune. So he went to Campus and fetched a team to inspect it – only to watch it explode just as their ship arrived.”
“That was a Fantasy, I’m sure,” said Lerin. “Someone told me a similar story. Except in my case, it was an avaricious Scholar of the Past who learned that one shouldn’t pin all their ambitions on one project.” This statement was followed by a telling glance at Emte.
“I have many research interests other than the Cormorants, though I appreciate your concern, my friend!” she said. “But I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss these tales as ‘Fantasies’.”
“I can’t argue with you there. We are not exactly living in the most reasonable of times. It takes very little to sow doubt in the most rational human hearts these days when the world is so increasingly incomprehensible.”
“Is it?” I asked, wincing at how childlike I sounded. “I mean, Chancellor Rawsel alone is enough to make anyone wish for more reasonable times, but would you really say that the world as a whole has not always been relatively incomprehensible?”
Lerin suddenly became incredibly fascinated by the lack of sea life outside our porthole.
“O, Lerin, you won’t be able to shake him now,” said Emte. “We are trapped in this vessel for the foreseeable future, after all.”
Lerin sighed and turned back towards me.
“I am an Illustrator, not a Natural Historian, but I must study things to sketch them, and I cannot ignore some of the enigmas I’ve encountered recently. You are from the School of Observation, Henerey. Have you not observed anything especially odd about the rays’ migration in your time aboard the Sagacity?”
“Everything about them is odd!” I cried, letting my Scholarly exasperation from the past few tides finally emerge in full force. “I understood our objective as a simple one – discovering why the direction of the migration shifted. But it’s not just their path that troubles me. Everything about their current actions is absolutely inconsistent with migration behaviours and therefore unclassifiable.”
“A Scholar of Classification’s worst nightmare, I’m sure,” murmured Emte drily.
“Is there any chance that they have supplanted their typical migration activities with actions they usually perform under other circumstances?” asked Lerin. “Breeding, for example. I only guess, of course.”
“As a matter of fact,” I replied, “that is the very thing I’ve noticed. Normally, migrating rays form squadrons of ten to twenty and queue up in a triangular pattern, which helps them move more efficiently over long distances. But at present, this squadron alternates their formation as they travel. They shift and swap places, shuffling from shape to shape. Not exactly practical for a marathon swim. It’s a short-term diversionary tactic that rays often use when they feel threatened by a predator.”
“Which predators tend to set their sights on a squadron of rays?” asked Emte.
“During their migrations, the rays prove almost impossible to catch. A seal might follow behind for a short time, salivating after the stragglers, but none of the rays’ usual assailants possess the speed or stamina to pursue them for long.”
“Perhaps it is not one of their typical predators, but an odd or opportunistic creature with a cultivated taste for rays,” mused Lerin. “An Imposing Toothed Whale? They are awfully fast when they want to be, and enormous to boot.”
“I considered that. Yet if some great predator of substantial size and might has been trailing the Sagacity all this time, how have we not seen it?”
“Because we are too occupied with pleasant conversation to notice?” Emte concluded.
Though she said it with a laugh, I did feel guilty for distracting everyone, and resolved to remain focused on the porthole henceforth. But as I watched the water, I could not help seeking any signs that might suggest the presence of some unprecedented predator, just out of view…
Forgive me; I did not mean to spend so much time blathering on about my rays! I mainly intended to tell you about the earlier conversation, which helped me discover information that I believe complements yours. Based on your most excellent archival research (truly, E., I swoon at the thought of you braving the Reading Room), I now suspect that the Structure’s potentially unstable technology may also explain the references to death and destruction in those poems.
What I am trying to piece together is a possible motive for Darbeni. Let us hypothesise that he knew of these Structures, or types of artefacts, and that he – what? Decided to run a social experiment and see if other people would pass on this legend through poetry? Why not communicate this information in a more Scholarly fashion? I assume he must have been the group’s leader since, as you mention, all the poems borrowed that first line for their titles. And others (including your mother, apparently?) drew inspiration from Darbeni and carried on this tradition? But to what end?
Please tell me everything that you hear from Jeime! I can hardly wait!
Yours,
Henerey
P.S. Thank you very much for the copies of your sketches! You know, some of the earliest accounts of the Antepelagic Era suggest that great plants flourished on the islands in the sky – “trees” like the palms we have on the Atoll, but much larger and diverse in their forms. I never thought such a tree would take the form of kelp, though. Does kelp even possess the structural integrity to stand upright without water? Astonishing. (Even more astonishing is the fact that you were able to make such detailed drawings in the midst of an unknown world after suffering from a surprise seaquake…)
Dear Sophy,
Something extraordinary has happened. Please read this extremely confidential missive that the five of us will presently send to the Chancellors. You simply must see it, too. (Don’t worry, I am well – just astounded!)
Your Niea
Dearest Chancellors, fellow explorers of this world through which we sail proudly in the pursuit of knowledge:
Today I write not as Vincenebras, but as the collective voice of all my colleagues. For the first time in my career, I allow others to dictate the words I put to paper. We worked together to determine the structure of this letter – the phrasing, the pacing, parts to leave out and parts to emphasise – and you can imagine how much five such different Scholars as ourselves argued when deciding how to compose such an important missive.
(If I may speak in my own voice for one moment, I must censure my colleagues for attempting to remove some of my “bombast” and “pomposity” and “inconsistent reliance upon Adjectives” – I protest, of course, but not too heartily, as I know our mission is far more important than maintaining the integrity of my Writerly Tone!)
When you woke up this morning, I suppose you did not think much of this day – this mere first day of the Second Perishing Tide in the Second Quarter of High Waters of 1002, a moment like any other – but I would advise you to circle this date in your daybook so you may point to it, years hence, and tell your grandspawn “Behold: proof that I was there when the world changed forever.”
(Let the record show that a majority of the Scholars present condemned the preceding paragraph as “far too Vincenebras in tone” – but thanks to the kindness of dear Schr Irye Rux, who found it inoffensive, it shall stand as a rhetorical flourish – as long as I promise to stay “on my best behaviour” for the rest of this missive. O, dear Irye, you are truly the most Superlative of Scholars! In days to come, the specifics of our exploits will no doubt be the subject of many fine treatises and literary epics – yet though it truly kills me, I will tamper my raconteurial fervour in favour of providing you, my dearest friends, with the ultimate truth.)
Now we must proceed, though that is easier said than done.
Halfway to the deepest point of the trench, somewhere on an otherwise forgettable, unremarkable ledge, is a crystalline “door” attached to what looks like a ruined entryway. It resembles no known Antepelagic architectural style, but its motifs, surprisingly enough, echo the shape of Protist Plankton known as the Seven-Pointed Diatom (expertly identified in an instant by Scholar Forghe). The door is barely one helmsbreadth by two, outlined with a thin indentation in the rock. It is made from a radiant purple stone, veined with white and flickering with speckles of gold; the only other ornament it features is the aforementioned array of Planktonic forms, overlapping each other at their very tips.
Brevity, yes, brevity! We are breathless at the thought of this mysterious discovery. We also acknowledge that you, our Colleagues and Supporters and Administrators, will require further evidence of this discovery before it may be examined in more detail. In fact, perhaps you now wonder why we have not already entered this door, or enclosed documentation of some kind with this missive. The answer is disappointingly mundane: we did not bring the proper tools. We returned to the Spheres to gather the appropriate equipment.
We also wish to share this exciting discovery with the General Public but will await your approval before doing so.
Until then: let us all delight in the knowledge that the mysteries of the Ridge have been… revealed at last. (I, Vincenebras, am being forced by my colleagues to take full responsibility for that final sentence.)
Ever in pursuit of the unknown,
Schr Irye Rux
Schr Ylaret Tamseln
Schr Eliniea Hayve Forghe
Schr Vincenebras
Schr Tevn Winiver Mawr
Dear Niea,
Though there are many ways in which I do not wish to follow in your friend Tevn’s footsteps, I shall mimic him by writing to you while knowing that by the time this letter arrives, I likely will be at the Spheres myself.
With E. back at the Deep House and seemingly safe and well, I may rest easy and continue my work. (In fact, it was E. who suggested that I return to you.)
I will see you – and what else? What else? – very soon.
Yours,
Sophy
Dearest Henerey!
It seems we are not the only two keeping secrets right now! Sophy’s colleagues discovered something – I know not what, since Sophy could not betray Niea’s trust by telling me (though I think Niea wouldn’t mind – she has a sister too, you know!). Of course, I instantly thought – what if it is another Structure? – but it could equally be an exciting new species of Phytoplankton never before seen. Whatever the discovery, it set Sophy all aflutter, and she began (at my urging) her return journey to the Spheres today. Perhaps her transport vessel will pass by the Sagacity once again as she heads back to the Ridge. And I am at home at last, to my great delight!
Because Sophy is so concerned about my wellbeing, she insisted, in the end, that I spend this first day of her departure in the company of others. I passed a not unpleasant morning with Seliara, who had much to chatter about – I do feel so awfully for her, because my accursed brother is still “away” – and then past midday, when Seliara departed, my second guest arrived.
Jeime Alestarre did not answer the letters (yes, plural) that I sent her after my trip to the Reading Room. I do know, however, that she most certainly read them, because she came to the Deep House bearing an enormous sea-cloth satchel with what looked like an irregular series of crashing waves embroidered around the letters “AC”.
“I never thought you would go to the library,” she said by way of greeting. “If anyone ever felt drawn to open the Darbeni archive, I assumed it would be Sophy. Have you told her?”
I informed Jeime that I had not, indeed, shared any of this with Sophy. That feels quite painfully wrong, but she is so very preoccupied with the Ridge expedition.
Jeime swung up the bag onto the table, undoing its clasp with her careful hands.
“Your mother wanted the three of you to have this,” she said. “But I suppose she would say that you alone may decide when and if you will share it with your siblings.”
“Because I made the discovery on my own, and therefore earned the privilege of learning her secrets?” I asked. “How very like Mother.”
“It is not only that.” Jeime sat down across from me and laid her hand on the table just in front of mine – not quite touching me in a familial way but suggesting the sentiment. “I’m sure that Ami – I mean, your mother—”
“I know she was your friend,” I said. “You can call her by that name, if you prefer.”
Jeime smiled at me. “Ami,” she continued, “knew that you loved the Deep House like she did.”
Well, obviously I do! There is no question of that! But how does that relate to the Structure and the poems? I asked Jeime as much (though I tried to be slightly less smug about my apparent claim to the title of “Most Deep-House-Oriented Sibling”).
“Because Ami built this house for a particular reason,” answered Jeime. “She hoped that something would manifest here. It never appeared during her lifetime, but it has now, and so I bring this to you.”
Then she opened the bag, revealing the following documents:
· A most fascinating map, depicting the entire World-Ocean, with coordinates indicating locations as well as dates (some in the past and others in the future – including hundreds of years hence, Henerey!)
· Yet another copy of Darbeni’s “A Luminous Circumference” in manuscript form, written in a different handwriting that I did not recognise, without Darbeni’s seal
· A letter, signed by Jeime herself, which she pressed into my hand.
“Now I leave you to read,” said Jeime, standing up. “I will keep in touch, E. If this is an Entry, as your mother suspected, and it just experienced its first cycle, then we have approximately two months until it vanishes. You are safe at present. But soon we must hatch plans and make decisions.”
“Do you mean to say that you are not available to ‘talk more’ with me now?” I asked, rather more fiercely than I intended. “I cannot even begin to understand anything you just said!” (Though I do now, of course – more on that in a minute.)
“It is all in the letter,” she said, dismissively. Then she took my hand. “My apologies. I am weak when it comes to emotions, you know. I would rather let you read it, ponder it, read it again, and then we shall speak. That approach seems more in line with your mother’s philosophy, don’t you think? Besides, I know you would likely prefer to be by yourself.”
Now, in reality, I had to walk Jeime back to the airlock and run the departure sequence before she could leave. But let us pretend, for drama’s sake, that the conversation ended there!
In short (because this letter is anything but), I shall enclose a copy of the letter from Jeime for you to peruse. I know it will interest you. I’m sure you will be particularly excited to see that your conversation with Lerin and Emte bore some fruit – you were on the right path. (Though where this path leads, I know not.) So why don’t you skip ahead, read that letter, and then return here to see my final thoughts below?
You’ve done that now, I presume? Wonderful!
Here is what I propose. Sometime – sometime soon, since I worry about when this next “burst” may come, even if Jeime says we have two months – I will swim out and inspect the Structure myself. I am not the most skilful diver. O! And as soon as I have a chance to observe it myself and think more carefully (and have enough proof to convince even my accursed Brain that all this is real), I will go straight to Sophy at last and tell her everything! That thought makes me feel much better.
I will, of course, keep you fully informed. (Do you remember when we were writing to each other about our lives and everyday occurrences and favourite Fantasies? I wouldn’t say that I prefer this genre of communication over the other – as entranced as I am by the Structure, I look forward to the days when we can return to slightly more mundane topics of conversation.)
Yours,
E.
Dear E.,
Let it be known that I do not personally believe in or support any of the ideas that I am about to relay to you.
Or, I suppose, I did not. I am no longer sure.
I have also never had to write an extensive letter detailing “family secrets” that I could not reveal unless it became “necessary”, so I apologise if the format or tone of this letter seems unusual. I write to you now to fulfil a pledge I made to your mother – may she rest soundly in the waves – shortly before she was taken from us. Well, I fear she would have preferred if I continued providing you with mysterious scraps of information instead of offering a fully explanatory note, but even a sickbed promise cannot convince me to do so when the matter is so urgent.
I met your mother almost forty years ago when we were Apprentices at the Academy, assigned to the same dormitory hall. We once climbed up the parapets of the Intertidal Campus Central Tower, sat up there in the sea-salted air, and read poetry to each other for hours until it grew so dark that we could not figure out how to get down. We began courting officially two years after our friendship began, but if I were to trace the genesis of our relationship, I would say that it commenced the very first day we laid eyes on each other. And all was dizzyingly, impossibly wonderful – that is to say, I’m sure it wasn’t, and I’m sure we had many mundane days and silly arguments and poor Assessments, but in my memory, it glitters.
Until she found the Fleet. (Or they found her, as the case would be.)
It was the last year of our Apprenticeship, and we were on the cusp of becoming full Scholars. Ami expressed her remarkable creativity through a rapid-fire series of ambitious Architecture projects, all of which proposed innovative ways of living with the sea rather than simply floating above it. But even though she excelled at and delighted in her work, she loved words more than anything else, and became quite renowned around Campus as an amateur poet. (She even dragged me to a recitation club on a few occasions, which required us to sneak into the misty pockets of the Water Gardens in the dead of night – but I suppose I haven’t time to get into that.)
As her reputation grew, it became very likely that an Arcane Society – those organisations on campus that delight in a somewhat self-parodic secrecy – might take interest in her. But when a most unusual circular envelope arrived in our dormitory, emblazoned with Ami’s name in a colourful gouache that seemed to glow, neither of us knew what to make of it.
And I never would, because the meetings of this Society quickly became the one place to which I dared not follow Ami. They always asked her to go alone – at a different hour and to a different place each time – and when she came home, she constantly wrote or read things that she would not show me. Her assignments suffered, though I tried to help her when I could. Even her Advisor grew concerned. Then, one day, after stumbling in late to a critical presentation, Ami gave the most eloquent and innovative proposal for an underwater habitation module integrated directly into a coral reef. She even identified a specific location and demonstrated how her design would draw upon the water pressure, depth, and light penetration at those exact coordinates. She stunned everyone present. Unanimous Chancellor decree granted Ami funding to produce further designs for what she had deemed the “Deep House”. Ami was only twenty.
After that meeting, I did not storm after her, or beg her to tell me how she had produced so much work in such a short time, or even ask for an explanation about her involvement in this mysterious society. She came to me. She bore me away to her room, papered the walls with the enormous blueprints she’d carried with her to our session, and sat me down beside her.
“I designed this house for us,” she said with delicious secrecy. “There is something very important I must do with my life, Jeime. Though I thought it my calling alone, it occurs to me that I am simply incapable of doing anything without you. So I must tell you the secret of the Fleet.”
I was swept away by the notion that my beloved wanted to share an underwater house with me – we never spoke openly of a future together – and let her continue.
“A hundred years ago,” your future mother said, leaning back into her chair and staring at the ceiling as though letting a well-practised speech wash over her, “a poet had a vision of the world to come. She recorded her vision in a poem and knew she must share it as widely as possible. She wrote more and more. Everyone she knew discouraged and betrayed her. In the end, she decided to lock the poems away – all except those she had already sent out to friends and confidantes. The only reliable one among them was Scholar Kenven Darbeni, and it was he who founded the Fleet – a society of Writers who became Soothsayers and Saviours committed to uncovering the truth that our Poet wrote so long ago.”
That was not at all the explanation I expected. It only went downhill from there.
Ami raved about how this “poet” – and her trusting followers – perceived our floundering society as the remnant of a robust Antepelagic world that vanished a thousand years ago when it fell from its home in the atmosphere but now flourishes somewhere else entirely beyond the bottom of the sea.
If you are even half as fond of historical literature now as you were in your youth, dear E., I imagine you immediately identified the discrepancy in your mother’s version of the past. Surely you are still haunted by first-hand accounts of the Dive and recall how the old poets described the great cities in the clouds raining into the ocean moments after the Survivors fled. Statues shattering. Libraries flooding. Words and art and instruments and engineering becoming nothing more than shipwrecks somewhere in the depths.
Through my conversation with Ami, I learned the Fleet’s core belief. The Antepelagic civilisation was not lost but lives on, and it is up to us to reach it. According to this interpretation, the Dive was no unpredictable calamity, but rather a carefully orchestrated move by the great minds of the Antepelagic world that was intended to protect humanity from something.
Yet our ancestors – the Survivors – were a small group of arrogant Academics who did not believe in whatever danger the rest of their society foresaw. As the Dive occurred, the Survivors split from their people, starting their lives afresh and forsaking the rest of their world.
But the rest of their world did not forsake them.
What remains of the Antepelagic society, Ami claimed, knows that something still threatens us, the descendants of the Survivors who stayed in the seas. To rescue our civilisation, the Antepelagic folk send both “Entries” and “Envoys” to help us find the way back to them. (I paid little attention to her descriptions of these two unknown nouns back then, I must admit, but I now believe that your vexing Structure is an example of a so-called “Entry”.)
She also told me that the Fleet grew quite paranoid in their old age. Most of the members, back then, were far older than Ami. Apparently a young member betrayed the Fleet or something like that – using Fleet research to work against their purposes and destroy the Entries, etc. – so the group stopped recruiting altogether (making one exception for Ami, because of her exceptional talent). Thus it was up to her and her heirs alone to carry on their legacy. (O, and a note about the name – “Fleet” is wordplay, apparently, because not only did they imagine themselves to be as numerous as a great crowd of ships, they aspired to be quick enough to interpret these poems before it was too late and the Danger struck.)
Ami finished her monologue with great excitement, smiling at me so beautifully as she – my wonderful, lovely, logical partner – told me that humanity on this planet only has a chance at a future if we pursue these Entries and Envoys and gain access to the world beyond our world.
It went over about as well as you might expect. I reacted poorly to this revelation. And that’s how your father ended up being your parent and not me.
Not that I hold any resentment. After we ended our relationship – and after Ami married Bron Cidne and I found Min, to whom I hope I may introduce you one day soon – Ami and I rekindled a tentative friendship, just before you were born. She had, funnily enough, neglected to tell her new spouse about her secret society – “I wouldn’t dare scare him off,” she once said to me with a nervous laugh – which put me in the unique position of being the only person outside of her Fleet who knew of all this nonsense.
So I was also the only person she could call upon to preserve her legacy for you.
You were here, you know, on the day when I made my promise to Ami. You did not come out of your quarters to greet me, but I could hear your quiet movements even from your parents’ bedroom as I spoke with your mother. How dark and distant her mood seemed as she shifted the subject to the Fleet once more, mourning that she would never be able to complete the work she believed was her responsibility – unless I helped her.
“You want me to tell your children a secret that you won’t even share with your own husband?” I asked. “Why not speak with them yourself?”
“I do not wish for anyone to simply tell them anything,” your mother replied. “I fear they will not believe a word of it unless they figure matters out for themselves.”
“Have you lost your confidence in the Fleet after all these years?”
“No,” she murmured. “I merely know that the truth can be hard to accept. You helped me understand that.”
I told Ami that I suspected I would not have accepted the Fleet even if she had sent me on a treasure-hunt of independent discovery to seek out my own evidence. That, at least, earned me a smile.
“At any rate, we could not possibly tell them now, because it is likely that some very tangible proof may emerge in the years to come,” Ami continued. “If an Entry—well, I won’t trouble you with that. But Jeime, won’t you please promise me that if I am gone, you will keep the Fleet to yourself until my children come to you first? The last thing I want is for them to learn about it in the wrong way – and, perhaps, think less of me.”
She was very kind not to say, As you did, when I told you.
E., please know that I would not have made such a commitment to Ami if I truly believed that I would ever be called upon to fulfil this pledge. She was so ill, and I had loved her once, and I still didn’t think that anything would ever come of this nonsense. So I swore to keep your mother’s secrets and figured I would carry around this valise of documents forever in the event that I outlived her.
How greatly it grieves me still that I did. If it had been in a depth-craft accident, or a shipwreck, or anything vaguely linked to her interest in this conspiracy, I would have fully cursed the Fleet (or the Fleet’s enemies, or both) for being complicit in her death. I still yearn to blame them for her illness. Alas, I suspect the Fleet are long dead themselves – considering most of them were eighty or older back then.
I hope this explains a bit about the personal connection you have to this situation, dear E. How I ached to tell you everything when I first saw the Structure. How I wished that Ami could tell you – but I knew that she never would, even if she were alive. She would want you to gather evidence, ask questions, and draw your own conclusions, all of which I believe you have now done to her satisfaction. So I shall let the other documents from the Society – just a few things that Ami probably purloined from the Darbeni archives – speak for themselves. Let us speak again soon, especially before two months pass. It is extremely urgent that we keep an eye on that Entry.
Yours fondly,
Jeime Alestarre
Dear New Member,
By the time you read this, I have most certainly perished. But before I fell from this world – just as a singular Mussel, beaten too long by the waves, might one day lose its Grip and slip into the ocean – I wanted to write a letter that would live on long after I stopped doing so.
Five years ago, a woman who preferred to be kept anonymous sent me a most Peculiar Poem, exhorting me above all to believe it.
How does one believe a poem? So I asked myself at the time. But I found it so striking, so unusual, that I had to speak with her further. And when I did, she begged me to spread her word and to encourage others to muse on these visions, to study them, and to write their own poems as we seek the Better World – one to which we must flee if we hope to survive the perils that are to come.
Here are our axioms. You are welcome among our numbers.
We Perfect the Poems.
We Anticipate the Entries.
We Listen for the Envoys and the Ones to Come.
And Fleetly we accomplish what must be Done.
Sincerely,
The likely late Scholar Kenven Darbeni
Year 899 – Entry budded at 15, 3, 23 in the Second Ocean at a depth of 8 fathoms, burst first on the Fifth Day of the First Quarter of High Waters (with Songs detected two days prior), and vanished in its second explosion on the Sixth Day of the Third Quarter of High Waters.
Year 911 – Entry budded at 7, 1, 62 in the Third Ocean at a depth of 6 fathoms, burst on the Third Day of the Second Quarter of Low Waters, and vanished in its second explosion on the First Day of the First Quarter of Mid-Waters. Witnesses also noticed unusual behaviour in local marine life populations in the days after the bud but before the burst. Two Primordial Sharks – not seen at these depths for centuries – engaged in a vicious territorial battle before disappearing as quickly as they’d come.
Year 920 – Entry budded at 5, 3, 2 in the Second Ocean at a depth of 8 fathoms, burst first on the Second Day of the First Quarter of Mid-Waters and vanished in its second explosion on the Second Day of the Third Quarter of Mid-Waters. An unsuspecting Scholar of Sound conducting a dive in the area right after the first burst claims to have experienced a “hallucination” of an island (though none of his colleagues believed him).
Based on rough calculations about the geographical and temporal arrangements of these Entries, we predict that Entries will appear at the following locations:
Year 990 – Entry predicted to bud at 20, 1, 1 at a depth of 6 fathoms
Year 991 – Entry predicted to bud at 7, 33, 1 at a depth of 8 fathoms
Year 1002 – Entry predicted to bud at 22, 3, 2 at a depth of 14 fathoms
Year 1003 – Entry predicted to bud at 1, 34, 2 at a depth of 20 fathoms
Year 1004 – Entry predicted to bud at 6, 2, 22 at a depth of 10 fathoms
I don’t suppose you and I ever discussed “vicious territorial battles” between creatures behaving abnormally, have we, dear Henerey? Nor has a strange correspondent ever shared with you her mysterious trip to an island and a shadowy sea?
(I can’t say I have heard any odd music lately, but at the very least, that explains “Melodious—To Spy—”…)
Most importantly, in case you haven’t guessed, that listing for this very year includes the coordinates for the Deep House!
Mother must have been counting down the days ever since she built it. To think that she lived for this and yet the sickness took her before she could accomplish her goal.
Well, I feel determined to accomplish it for her – no matter what that requires.
E.
Dear Jeime,
Since you abjure Automatic Post and neglected to reply to any of the seven letters I sent over the past few tides, I shall not expect a timely response. However, I do hope you will consider calling upon myself and Niea at the Atoll Campus home of our kind hosts, the Clel family, at your earliest convenience.
There is no need to confirm or send a note beforehand. Simply stop by when you can. I assure you that we will all be eager to discuss how my sister’s disappearance relates to the so-called “Fleet” at any hour of the day (or night) that suits you.
You can rest assured that I have, by this point, completed more hands-on research into this subject than even my mother would have demanded.
Until we meet,
Sophy