Chapter Forty-Eight Hanan
chapter forty-eight
hanan
I have no choice but to row. The last remnants of Paranish slip across the horizon, and there is nothing but open ocean.
Perhaps it has always been this vast blue expanse.
When night falls is when the fear sets in.
The temperature drops, and a haar rolls across the water, obscuring everything around me.
I shiver as I row, almost dropping one of the oars.
That’s when I call it. Raina and I curl up in my cloak and I set the oars beside us.
There is no sleep, only the sloshing of the water against the boat until the cycle continues and the sun brings us warmth.
I stop and portion out how much we can live on for that day.
Eventually I give in to Raina’s cries. I offer her my breast as I did before, but there is nothing for her there, no food nor energy.
I try to keep her warm and dribble fresh water from the skein into her mouth.
I protect Raina like an extension of myself.
I sense nothing; even if there is life, I don’t feel it.
I feel nothing now, just hunger and pain and fatigue.
The sun becomes a blessing but also a curse.
We shiver in the night and bake in the day, with no shade, no shelter.
I become unsure if I’m awake or asleep. The sloshing of my oars in the water begins to sound like fish approaching.
I have no way to catch them. Sometimes I reach out with my hands, but they slip through my fingers, if they were even truly there to begin with.
My body has never seemed so fragile and brittle. My skin feels paper-thin, my bones soft as clay. No wonder the royals wanted more than what plain mortality could give. Is this how the others have always felt?
I begin to see things that aren’t truly there.
I’m following our first waymarker, a formation of rocks in the distance.
Out of the fret comes not stone but a human form.
A woman. Malostra, hovering over the water, arms outstretched.
For a blissful moment I think everything that happened was a night terror.
The warmth spreads over my body, and in my hazy euphoria I distantly understand that hypothermia is setting in.
Malostra disappears into the fog and I have nowhere left as an anchor.
I continue to row blindly until the sun sets in the haze.
I am pulling the oars into the boat for the night when fingers crawl over the lip of the vessel.
Malostra emerges from the water. ‘Come into the water, my love. Swim with me.’
I turn away from the figure and focus on Raina, trying to cradle and shush her.
She has taken water and little else. I keep her little body close to stay warm.
She sleeps so much, I worry soon I won’t be able to wake her.
I feel a cold mist on my skin but I close my eyes until it passes.
The sensation of being hollowed out won’t leave me.
I can’t get warm, and my skin is like ice.
The boat rocks and I come to myself, steadying my hands on the centre thwart. Out of the corner of my eye, the oar, wood like bone, slips into the water. I think I’m drowning, but then I realise I’m crying.
I feel my ribs beneath my fingers. More prominent than they ever were at the Bastion.
We lie in the boat like fish and stare up at the stars.
I must fall asleep under the warm dry blanket as I wake up shivering, my breath like smoke around me.
I jerk awake, startling Raina who cries out in alarm.
Holy Aistra, she’s all right. I blow on her tiny hands and swaddle her tighter.
The sun beats down, but it is a distant thing, and I have never been colder.
An incessant knocking in the background.
I look around for the source. My boat is jutted up against a rock. It hits the side over and over again.
By Paranish, it’s land. I mean, it’s a desolate pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere, but it’s real.
The stone is sharp and rough, cutting my fingers when I test it.
There is no helpful slope, nor smooth approach to berth.
I take the tatty rope and hook it onto a large pillar of a stone.
Heaving myself out of the water and onto the rocks is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I tentatively feel for the vibrating life inside the stone.
There’s a sickening silence. It unnerves me and I slip again, my ankle hitting the rock awkwardly.
It washes over me far too slowly. I can’t feel it.
I can feel nothing of the life around me because I was pulled from the living world.
I feel out the wall, for hand and footholds.
This is an unknown language to me, despite growing up in a stone temple.
My blood marks the places of my endeavours and frustrations.
We get there and I’m more broken skin than whole.
I sit on the rock and kiss the top of Raina’s head.
We are on dry land. We are alive. As if a curtain is being drawn back, a glorious holy rain tips down.
I sit there, enveloped in the storm as the leaves and seaweed swirl around me.
Everything is so loud, the waves crashing urgently.
I cup my hands and drink from the pools of rainwater.
I laugh. At least, I think that’s what the sound is.
It comes from deep within me, an animal mania that consumes me completely.
I feel possessed, the shock of seeing it stilling the anguish in my throat.
Through the sheet of rain I see a shape coming towards me.
I gulp down rainwater as I stumble across the jagged rock.
I blink away the rain and push at my temples, making light spots wink in my periphery.
I try to use the pain to gauge if what I’m seeing is real.
My senses are foreign to me now. Malostra came to haunt me; perhaps my mind now taunts me with the promise of salvation.