Chapter 23
Dear, dear Vy:
My apologies in advance for sneaking out, unnoticed, before sunrise – it was very kind of you to offer to see me off, but since you all seem so happily fast asleep I will leave a written farewell instead! (I also did not have a piece of stationery at hand, so I appropriated this opera invitation (Reiv’s?) from the waste-bin to scribble on its empty verso – I hope you will forgive me, as I rather suspect he did not know that “Someone” disposed of it…)
I could waste an indefinite amount of ink praising your charming family and your generous hospitality, but we both know there are far more pressing matters afoot. I am so pleased with the progress made in just one short visit. (Can you believe it has only been seven days since my wife and I arrived at your lovely home bearing documents and questions? How much we have discovered since then!)
I considered intentionally sleeping in and missing our scheduled transport vessel so we might enjoy more time with you, but I have far too much to do. Now I must journey to the Boundless Navigational Expedition Office. Based on the description we crafted yesterday, I will submit a summons – “Courageous and creatively thinking crew members sought for an expedition unlike no other to a place as yet undisclosed. Some degree of peril can be expected. Endless possibilities for discovery guaranteed. Send experience, references, and any inquires to S.C.” I hope that we will receive good responses, and I look forward to reviewing the candidates. (Of course, if my wildest dreams come true and Irye, Vincenebras, and Ylaret respond positively to the invitations I will soon send them, it is possible we may not need to recruit many new crew members after all. And Niea is off to visit Tevn’s parents!)
Jeime, meanwhile, promised to go to her fiancée and obtain her aid in securing a depth-craft of appropriate size that we can carry aboard your ship. You know, as frustrated as I felt with Jeime’s “scheme” of making me believe in this (unfortunately real) nonsense before revealing it all, I admit I am grateful to have her on our side. She will also peruse both official and less official Boundless Campus archives for any other information about the Fleet and their fears. (I do find that our new understanding of my mother and her “circle” has given me a lovely new sense of dread. “A Predator Awaits”… o, before I forget, would you write to Lerin about those rays and see if they still seem to be migrating so fearfully? And if they have noticed any other species behaving in such unusual ways? How I wish we had Henerey’s scientific journals.)
Based on the Fleet’s prediction of where an Entry may appear in the year 1003 and beyond, I shall begin to draw up a map for us when I complete my other tasks. (Who knows what we shall find out on the seas as we seek the Entries – perhaps we’ll even run into Father!)
It reassures me to know that we did not concoct this plan in secret, and that your family is in accord. I know that Reiv is anxious – as he ought to be – and I know the two of you have much to discuss, just as I do with Niea. (I almost wish I could convince her to stay behind like Reiv and your children – just so I could know she is safe! But I know I would never let her voyage into the unknown without me, so it is hypocritical to ask anything otherwise.)
Yet, Vyerin, I am convinced that together we will plan this mission in a way that minimises risk and maximises the potential of success. Technology has progressed so fantastically in the past year – perhaps, if we recruit the proper Mechanist, we may be able to communicate remotely from this “other place” if we reach it! (The Envoy seemed to suggest that each Entry seeks out a pair to enter it: if that is the case, and only two of us may “travel”, some manner of correspondence will be absolutely necessary. What a wonderful opportunity to experiment with the capabilities of Automated Post.)
All remains to be seen. But I, for one, cannot wait.
Your friend,
Sophy
P.S. As much as I appreciate our dedication to creating a paper trail for posterity, perhaps you might be SO bold as to use your Vocal Echolator to get in touch with me in the future? There is too much at stake for us to wait even for Automated Posts!
Dear Sophy,
My sincerest apologies for not replying to your kind card for my past Birthday.
And the one before that.
And – o, it’s not as though you don’t know how awful I am at staying in touch. I assume (gratefully) that Seliara wrote to thank you for the gifts you and Niea sent for baby Erudition. (Though the name seemed a necessary tribute at the time, I suspect our lost sister would be relieved to know that our daughter prefers the nickname “Eri” these days.) My wife has always been much better at human interaction than I. You would not believe how much Eri has grown – I fear one day soon she will reach that age when a child realises how utterly inept and deplorable her father is.
I know you will roll your eyes at my glibness. It’s possible you may not even read the rest of this letter and will tear it to pieces presently. Don’t worry – I pre-creased the stationery in advance to make such cathartic shredding easier for you. I do not wish to trouble you, Sophy, but I heard from a contact that you plan to hire a crew for “an expedition unlike no other to a place as yet undisclosed”, or so my contact told me.
(All right, I confess – the “contact” also goes by the name of “me browsing through the papers and seeing your announcement”.)
I must beg you not to go on this mission, Sophy. There are much more important things for you to do right now. You see, old girl, though it pains me, I am about to tell you something that I have never revealed to any other soul. But I deserve these pains, for in experiencing them I am doing penance for a transgression that can never be absolved. All that has come to pass with our family in the past year – it is, directly and otherwise, my fault.
(Might I suggest, then, that you avoid destroying this letter until you’ve at least read it all?)
I will set out my crimes for you one by one. It began when I, a young lad, finally abandoned the family home to follow in the footsteps of my younger – yet somehow undoubtedly superior – sister by joining Boundless Campus. For all my young life, I had wanted nothing else but to be—not a Scholar of the School of Inspiration, as I would have been labelled at the time, but a true artist. I did not want to study art – I wanted to live it, to…
I suspect you think this autobiographising is merely an attempt to postpone my actual confession. But I assure you that it is all most relevant. (See, sister, how I have grown?)
I was a lad of twelve when I learned about the Phosphorescent Place. At that age – caught in the twilight of childhood, not yet reaching the resplendent dawn of adulthood – I often experienced vivid dreams that troubled my sleep. Though, as the eldest, I did not wish to ever admit to being scared, I found them more and more terrifying. (I have since learned that my habit of consuming excessive kelp before bed to sate my ever-present adolescent hunger was likely to blame for this experience, but that is neither here nor there.)
One night, I awoke sometime around two bells in the morning in a state of absolute horror. I ran from my room in a panic, still half drowsy, while you slept dutifully and E. read surreptitiously in her chambers. I rapped upon the door to our parents’ quarters until it swung open in protest, revealing Father conducting one of his snoring symphonies. Seeing as he would not be disturbed, and Mother was nowhere to be found, I dashed downstairs to the library, where I discovered her sketching something with her face turned towards the great windows.
So intent was she upon her work that Mother did not notice me approach. Over her shoulder, I spied a graceful drawing – not one of her blueprints, mind, you, but true art – done in the most exquisite hand I had ever seen. The sketch depicted what I could only perceive as some kind of kinetic sculpture, with a lattice of string-like forms that stretched across a perfect bubble of a base. Who among us could not squeal when faced with such splendour?
“Mother!” I exclaimed. “You are a superb draughtswoman! Why did you never say so? O, Mother, I would be most honoured to be your apprentice.”
Upon hearing my voice, our mother immediately arose, causing her chair to fall to the floor with a clatter (as she had been leaning back on it, with the first two legs in the air – the only way to sit, dear Sophy!).
“Arvist, dear,” she said, putting the drawing down. “You should be long asleep. Another nightmare?”
I had not uttered a word to her about my bad dreams – o those wondrous instincts that all parents (except, perhaps, yours truly) possess!
“All has been dispelled by your Art,” I sang. “Might I please have another look? Are you designing something?”
Of course, Mother responded neither affirmatively nor negatively to any of my queries. In her typical fashion, she revealed nothing, and merely stepped out of the way so I could view her creation more closely.
“What does it look like to you?” she asked, neutral as ever in her phrasing.
“Is it a musical instrument? Or a moving statue? Or, perhaps, a funny little underwater home very different from the Deep House?”
When Mother simply smiled at me, I continued examining the drawing to please her. Then I noticed, in the corner of the paper, a smaller sketch done in coloured pencils – a seascape with an island, illuminated in pale green and pink tones that transfixed me.
“But you’ve made two sketches! Is that the place where the sculpture comes from?”
Is it because of hindsight that I now remember how she froze, just for a moment, before her placid expression returned?
“Perhaps you will find out yourself one day,” she said. “That seascape relates to an old story. If I share that tale with you, will you return to bed?”
I nodded eagerly and arrayed myself inelegantly upon the floor.
“Imagine a place like a living spectrum. A place that glows and grows in every colour and texture you know, and perhaps even a few that you do not. I call it ‘The Phosphorescent Place’. This place, Arvist, is the dream of every artist like us.”
I forgot my childish nightmares in an instant as I fell into this beautiful dream. To think that our mother, who detested Fantasies, would tell a story for only me to hear! Even as she continued, spinning tales about a fantastical realm of pure inspiration, nothing charmed me more than that sense of unity – of a shared secret with our mother, one that neither of you two sisters could claim. Every artist like us. And with that kind of motivation, how could I have denied her when she told me not to mention the drawing to you?
“Can’t I ever tell E. and Sophy?” I asked, solely because I did, just a little, wish to brag about the fact that Mother and I had enjoyed a philosophical conversation long past bedtime.
“Perhaps one day they will come upon this drawing themselves, as you have,” she said. “I shall strike you a bargain. If you ever see something like the object or landscape that I drew here, you may tell your sisters and discover its secrets together.”
“Is that place real, then? When will we see it?”
“We may never see it, I fear. But in the meantime, the place is simply ours to dream in, is it not?”
And dream in it I did. In fact, though I knew it was just a fanciful tale, I could not help imagining the Phosphorescent Place even as I grew into a man. I tried every artistic medium to find something that would help me recreate what I remembered about that sketched structure and the glowing world our mother described – and from stagecraft to sculpture, every format failed to capture what I saw in my head. Eventually, I resolved to abandon this odd artistic fixation of mine, joined Boundless Campus, and fell Rapturously in Love with Seliara.
Then the Structure appeared in the undergarden.
Appropriately, I noticed it shortly after Mother’s death, while I sat in the studio in a heap of grief and grime. It started out as just a grid-like form that I spotted below the sand, but as each day passed (as I sat there without bathing), it grew taller and more recognisable. The Structure blossomed out of the seafloor, rising inch by inch to reveal an exact three-dimensional copy of what Mother had sketched so long ago. I remembered her “story” as though she’d whispered it to me in the library just moments ago. So too did I remember her saying that I might share this information with you two if I ever saw something of that nature.
But I wanted to be sure, Sophy, so I said nothing! And, be honest: would you or E. have believed me, back then, if I told you that the strange thing outside our house was some kind of device related to an enchanted world of art that Mother discussed with no one but me? Would my claims not seem as ridiculous to you as the rest of my Artistic ventures so often did?
Thus, I decided to do what I do best: act like an egotistical, lofty-minded artist seeking to use the Structure for my own Great Accomplishments. It’s not as though I had to work very hard to convince you. But I’m afraid that nothing turned out how I expected.
Let us begin with the best-known of my offences. Though none held it against me at the time, it was clear that my initial meddling with the Structure was responsible for E.’s first experience. I do not simply refer to the accident. This might surprise you, Sophy, but something else happened to E. that sent her into such a state. How do I know this? Well, I was in the room when she whispered about it at the Infirmary – just a few scattered words under her breath, like “island” and “ocean” and “luminescence”. She was only practising a difficult conversation in advance as she was wont to do, but it was all my keen ears needed to hear. I was painting to calm myself, naturally, but I was there! I do not know if you ignored her intentionally, or if you simply did not catch her words, but you are far less at fault than I.
Because I said nothing, nothing to support her, even considering that I too experienced a vision I could not explain!
“What vision, dear brother?” you might ask me with great shock. Well, dear sister, I hope you are sitting down, because I have much to tell you.
I will try to use my simple words to paint a brief landscape of my experience for you. When that first seaquake hit, my brain went on a journey for but a short while. In what felt like a great painful snapping of reality, I found myself transported from the sterile comfort of the depth-craft to icy and fathomless waters trying to swallow me whole. All around me were colours and confusion. My eyes blurred the lovely sunset phosphorescence of my dreams into the blinding hues of a nightmare. I only had just enough time to glimpse the foreboding silhouette of some distant island before my vision cut short and the water carried me back. I want to say “it felt like death itself”, except I do not literally mean that – I imagine death is quieter and less overstimulating than this experience. But at the same time – what rapture, what awe, what sheer sublimity to see that which no one else (except our sister, it seems) had seen before!
When I “returned” in the depth-craft I processed my disorientation through a most embarrassing and unpleasant gastrointestinal form of self-expression. Yet I yearned for that place from this inexplicable vision, even though it terrified me. I do not remember how Jeime reacted, and if she saw what I did. But I was thoroughly beyond reason, so it is she whom we must thank for piloting us back to the Deep House to rescue E.
After a cursory examination at the Infirmary and some rest, I found myself capable of carrying on as usual. Or at least putting on an appearance of doing so. That Phosphorescent Place I saw for the briefest of moments consumed my every thought. I could not close my eyes without seeing that glowing world – so different from my childhood imaginings – and it did not exactly spare me in my waking hours, either. When my ability to feign normalcy with my siblings and betrothed reached its natural end, I did what every self-respecting thoughtless, melancholic, and overdramatic young person might do – I threw myself into exile.
(When I chose to leave rather than face an emotionally difficult situation, did you think of Father? I certainly did. I heard his voice in my mind crowing “A true Artist does what he must to preserve his sanity, son!” Imaginary praise from him unsettled me.)
Justifying my departure as some nonsensical “mission of penance”, I begged a depth-craft off a munificent colleague who excelled at discretion. Then I returned to our undergarden, where I spent several days – full tide-cycles? – in a stupor, hoping that exposure to the statue would help me slowly immunise myself to the effects of the Journey. It did not.
When I navigated through the wreckage of the parlour for the first time and saw the recognisable features of my childhood displaced and damaged – here a favourite book tossed in an anemone with its pages nibbled upon by the tiniest of scavengers, there a column from the staircase emerging from the coral like the mast of a long-sunken vessel – I felt utterly destroyed. And among the carnage, perfectly intact and peaceful, was that sinister Structure, its serenity increasing in direct proportion to my frustration and confusion. It injured my Home, it ignited in me this eternal Longing for a place that was most likely not Real – o, how I raged!
I am embarrassed to admit that my very first course of action was to gear my depth-craft into its fastest speed, equip its rock-breaking front arms, and smash into my silent nemesis while screaming incoherently.
Which, of course, caused severe cosmetic damage to my depth-craft.
But as soon as the craft touched the Structure, I found myself struck by the vision again.
Again – the agony! The delight!
I spent the night without sleeping, focusing on recreating my Place – did I write “my Place”? I meant “the Place”, but I suppose it’s all the same – in my head. The colours! The vivacity! Surely what Mother said was true – this was the realm of Art – or, more simply – surely this place was Art in its truest form! And I, cast away from it like a stone into the sea?
After a few hours of emotional catharsis in my solitude, however, my mood changed, and over the course of the unknown number of days or tides I spent down there, I began to take—dare I even say it? You may mock me, I will not mind – a SCIENTIST’S approach to this mystery. I would make contact with the Structure several times each evening, recording (in appropriately embellished prose, obviously – if I must research, I shall do it in style!) my observations. For the most part, they were overwhelmingly consistent. I would press the depth-craft’s most prehensile arm to the statue, prepare for that fleeting encounter with the unknown oceans to overwhelm me, and then return to reality.
In all my Journeys, I never found myself anywhere but in that perilous sea. I was never afforded the privilege of “staying” long enough to swim about, either. My notes suggest that only once more did I spot strange shores in the distance, and even then, they were well out of reach. And sometimes, after I returned, the depth-craft’s hydrophone would pick up the most unusual sounds – dare I call them melodies? – in the distant waters. (Because I know you’ll ask this next – no, they certainly weren’t Whalesongs.)
Though this will sound unforgivably na?ve, given what is to come, I must admit that I enjoyed myself during this period. Survival proved easy enough. When my provisions dwindled, I used the depth-craft’s specimen-gathering appendages to prey upon unwary reef fish that I inexpertly roasted over the internal engine. (I do not recommend this experimental culinary technique under usual circumstances, but it will suffice in a pinch.) Because I feared you or E. or Jeime might return to the Deep House at some point, I spent much of the daylight hours hiding near the drop-off. Each time I approached the Structure at night, I gathered some stray sea urchins and kelp strands and used them to camouflage my depth-craft (quite artfully, if I may say so myself). With my basic human needs attended to thusly, I had ample opportunity for new discoveries.
I always thought I had a keen eye for detail – what artist does not? – but these stretches of self-reflection taught me to see the smallest changes unfolding in the world before me. It reminded me of when I was a boy, with my bed pushed against one of the portholes in my chamber so I could spend the last moments before I fell asleep and the first blinkings of the morning getting to know the denizens of the reef outside my window. I grew to recognise the vibrant nudibranchs and sea-cylinders as they pulsed their way along the floor and knew exactly when a prying octopus might creep out of its coral dwellings. All enchanting to my ignorant eyes.
It was all most fascinating, and while I was an apt student of these newfound observations, I did not have the capacity to draw any conclusions based on them. So I continued my “experiments”, until one night I was interrupted.
I am drawing closer to my darkest confession, Sophy (and E., to whom I am really writing in spirit though she cannot read this) – I am so close, nearly there – and I hope you will forgive me as I hide myself in extraneous language and contextualisation.
I should have pointed out one important discovery paragraphs ago: I determined that the experience I termed “the Journey” seemed, generally, to be separate from that of “the explosion”. Each time I touched the Structure on my own, I travelled to the Realm of Art, but nothing else out of the ordinary took place. This correlated with the fact that during the first incident with Jeime, I touched the Structure, made the Journey, and then several minutes after – I do not remember how many, being rather out of my head – something set the Deep House waters a-trembling. By the time the fateful night in question rolled around, I had become convinced that the first quake happened through utter coincidence – perhaps truly caused by shifting tectonic plates, as Scholars suggested – and marvelled at the ill humour of the universe.
That evening, finishing my nightly rounds, I approached the Structure head-on, turning the back of the depth-craft towards the Deep House. I pressed into the Structure’s side (which glowed as it always did in the evenings), witnessed the intoxicating darkness of that other world, returned to my senses, recorded a few notes in my log, and was about to feast on some unfortunate fish when my depth-craft indicated the presence of another vessel.
Why was my first instinct to flee the scene as fast as I possibly could? I do not know. Perhaps, in that moment, I related to E. more than ever – having been bereft of human company for so long, I found it difficult to imagine interacting with anyone else.
After jetting into the distance with some speed and secreting myself behind a coral archway, I finally felt brave enough to turn my depth-craft around and take a peek at the intruder. It was an old depth-craft of the same make as mine, dull in the vintage grey and ivory colouring of the Boundless Campus. Sitting inside the protection of its great glass window, hand in hand – if you can believe, this, Sophy! – were our sister and a most handsome fellow who I can only assume was Scholar Henerey Clel. I used the periscope to view them more closely, and I could see E. gesticulating in her nervously invigorated way, and Scholar Clel smiling thoughtfully, nodding at intervals, but never interrupting her.
And before I could consider the prospect of approaching them – still burdened by the shame of causing her injuries in the first place – the most unexpected thing happened.
They piloted their craft towards the Structure, carefully rose above it, and docked, as if they were a ship coming home to harbour. Right in the centre of that circular form!
And then the world shook again.
Sophy, I saw the reef rip before my eyes, with chunks of coral swirling through the water as a vicious maelstrom emerged from nowhere. Perhaps fuelled by some involuntary instinct of preservation, I sped as far away as I could while watching our home disappear into the anarchy.
Shaking ceaselessly, I piloted my depth-craft well past the darkness of the drop-off. When I dared to return hours – who knows how long, really – later, the entire reef I knew was replaced with a chasm of unfathomable depth and inscrutable darkness.
And E. and Henerey were gone forever, courtesy of my ineptitude.
I headed into the open ocean with no particular destination in mind. Gone were the blissful days of my “research”. Instead, I starved myself, lived in my own filth, and did not even shave. I might have perished there, had not something tailed me into my far, abandoned corner of the ocean – a depth-craft captained by my wife.
Seliara thought I suffered from a Malady of the Mind, and she begged me to come home so that she might get me the assistance I required. Her generosity and tenacity humbled me. I did not deserve happiness, that was for certain – but making more people I love suffer unduly would certainly not compensate for my mistakes.
So I came home. When I returned, you – having somehow already surveyed the Deep House’s wreckage – had the grim task of informing me of E.’s disappearance and presumed death. I wanted to tell you what I had seen – you, my dear, strong, capable sister – but I could not. Not for the life of me. So I wept true tears for a loss I already mourned.
At the same time, I became a real husband, and more recently, a father. I tried to do my best with each new profession. I wouldn’t say that I’ve succeeded – I’m middling, at best. But now, I want to take up a new profession – adventurer slash decent brother.
I don’t know what you are planning with this mission, Sophy, but now that courage has found me, I beg you to CANCEL it and consider undertaking a new mission with me to find our sister, if she still lives. How? I do not know.
Although I’m sure I will be more of a bother than a brother, I know we can do this together. And if in the end I descend into this Phosphorescent Place only to find her gone forever – well then, I will not rest until I can seek out whatever remains of that Structure in the depths, and ask it what dark vendetta it had against our family to tear us apart in this way?
Dear Arvist,
You know that you could simply call me rather than rely on “the papers” for information about my activities?
Incidentally, I am already planning to find E.
I refuse to respond to the bulk of your confession in this written form. Please come visit me. There is much we need to talk about.
You are a foolish man, and I do foolishly love you.
Until soon,
Sophy
Dear Sophy,
Marvellous! I shall visit you presently. By which I mean in just a few minutes, though I sent this letter ahead because the transport vessel I was going to catch to come and see you has been grievously delayed—
No. No! I have become a Better Man, and I shall lie no longer! The truth is that I missed my intended vessel departure because I was so busy arguing with the sweet-shell vendor at the docks about the quality of the breakfast I purchased.
See you presently,
Arvist
P.S. An idea just occurred to me. Perhaps before we set out to look for E., we might sift through whatever remains of her private correspondence to find out more about what became of her? Perhaps we shall survey E.’s letters as a pair? A daring archival duo? And then perhaps we might publish a book with all the letters we’ve organised together! Just imagine! Perhaps we can start the book with this very letter I’ve written to you just now – you never know who might find it compelling.