Stormcallers: Chapter 12

It took two more days, two more greets, before the Prezon at last sighted land. Each day the sailors more angry, and Atamato’s cocky smile became more worried.

The fresh fruit and vegetables spoiled in the ship’s larder. Phalamili Rukiya sometimes watched as the old cook spread powders and spices on her ingredients to hide the foul taste. Hard-crust dipped in weak alcohol soon followed, as did the grumbling and frustration of the crew.

“They don’t mean anything by it,” Goduu told Phalamili. “It’s the same with any journey across the cloud-sea. They’re just being children, angry that they can’t change things as they are. We’ll survive to the end of our journey, at least.”

Phalamili was not convinced. “How much longer will our journey be?” she asked.

Wise Goduu smiled a sorrowful smile, for she knew that Phalamili was destined to be a slave of the Captain, unless he tired of her and sold her to some Herathian soldier, or an Erosean merchant. But she did not tell her this, because she had her own plans, and did not want to risk them for a young woman. “I can’t say for sure how long your journey will be. I only hope for your sake that you end up somewhere different than you started.”

Phalamili was still young, so she thought this a curse, and wondered what she had done to insult Goduu so, that she would wish Phalamili never to return home. Even the Captain had became nervous. His eyes screwed up tightly, and he rarely left his cabin. His brow was furrowed whenever Phalamili saw him, and his usually boisterous tone was subdued whenever he spoke, which became less and less.

But then, at long last, the cry went out from the man atop the fore-mast: “Light-ah!” This is what they called when a lighthouse or guiding lamp was spied through the mists of the cloud-sea. Phalamili ran onto the deck at the cry. Sure enough, a single point of light flared through the clouds off the stach-side of the ship.

The sailors cheered as they began to work, responding to Captain Festan’s energetic orders. “Halt-a-spin!” he cried. “Turn-ta-stach!”

The sailors of the Prezon spun into action, hauling on the ropes and popping up and down from below decks like ants. The stach-fin was collapsed, and the lord-fin opened wide to catch the wind. The high- and mid-catchers were drawn in to reduce the Prezon’s speed towards the distant light. The Captain pulled out a long tube, and placed it to his eye. “A bit low,” he muttered to himself before calling out. “Drop ballast! Half-a-keg!”

Phalamili watched the sailors roll a large wooden barrel onto the deck and open it over the side of the ship. Water emptied out into the cloud-sea, tumbling into the clouds before turning into mist and then vanishing into the air. This was one of the Prezon’s ballasts, and as the water emptied, the Prezon grew lighter. The light dipped lower in the distance, stopping only when the barrel was half empty and the sailors hauled it away from the edge.

As the ship drew nearer to land, the Prezon became light and energetic. The sailors laughed and sang, The Captain laughed, and even Atamato stepped out onto the deck with a smile of satisfaction on his face.

Before long, the distant shape of land pushed through the mists, and Phalamili got her first sight of a truly foreign island.

Of all the islands of Lergos, only Orem and Oleni had the Open Palms, the tall cliffs that faced each other with the cloud-sea flowing between them. For the rest of the islands, the edges tapered to points, becoming flat plains or smooth forests. The thin edges were dangerous and uncertain places.

This foreign land did not taper nor thin. Instead, the edge simply stopped and shot straight up and down like a wall. It was a cliff as tall as any Phalamili Rukiya had ever seen, atop which sat a tall white lighthouse in the middle of an ornate port. The cliffs stretched off to either side, pale white and jagged, for this was the Pale Cliffs of Cast. Fortunate Phalamili, for her first sight of foreign land was such a splendid sight, of shining marble and the many spouts of underground tributaries spilling out into the cloud-sea.

“Damnation!” cried the Captain, for Cast was not their destination. They had reached Norrholt, yes, but Herathia had been Captain Festan’s aim, where they were to deliver the last of a special order of cargo, the very cargo that Kerrom had been hired to guard. “Hard about and open those wind-catchers!” he shouted, and with the same frantic passion that had followed the sight of land, every sailor now set about turning the ship about, for they knew how unkindly the Kingdom of Cast took to smugglers. The Prezon moaned its agony and Phalamili caught herself as the ship turned about, the edge-winds slamming hard against its wooden side. She saw the port as they passed, with large wooden piers sticking out over the cloud-sea from the firm cliff edge. Large stone buildings stretched inland, tall and thin. Their roofs were pointed and conical, the streets narrow and tightly-cobbled. She had never seen such marvels before. In her innocence she thought she was the first person of Lergos to see them.

With a clatter of heavy footfalls, Captain Festan dragged the hapless navigator, Atamato, to the side of the ship, pointing with a furious finger. “There!” he shouted in the boy’s ear. “Does that look like Herathia to you? That’s Cast, you damn fool! We’re on the other side of Norrholt from Herathia entirely! I should have kicked you off my ship when I had the chance.”

Poor Atamato, he was bewildered. He had checked his math, rechecked his charts, and measured his areotlas every day. He knew he had made no mistakes, and yet they had arrived at Cast, not Herathia. Fumbling to salvage his mistakes, he said “It is still Norrholt. If we sail along the island edge, we can circle around Norrholt until we reach the Herathian Empire.”

Now Captain Festan was a skilled sailor, and he did not take kindly to a young boy telling him what he already knew. “Oh, can we?” he sneered. “Perhaps we can find a port city beyond the Autumn Wall? Is that what we can do? I swear, boy, if I were in a fouler mood I’d cut your rations to a sip of water and a kick in the teeth. Get back down to your room, and if I see your nose peeking out of it between now and Herathia, I’ll shoot it off!”

Phalamili watched as the young boy ran back below decks, fear plain on his fresh face. She could not follow everything that had been said, but she knew the insidious nature of the storms. She knew when a soul was in torment, and it is always easier to lose yourself when you do not like who you are.

Brave and Kind Phalamili, she followed Atamato down to his room, intent on saving the foolish boy from himself.

When she entered his room among the cries of the caged quayla, Atamato looked up from his desk. “Have you come to insult me too? Say that I’m a fool and don’t know how to chart a course?”

Phalamili was calmer now, and stronger. His earlier insults were easily forgiven. “No,” she said. “I don’t know how to chart a course either.”

Atamato protested: “I do! It’s all math, and math always works.”

“Sometimes my father’s charms don’t work,” Phalamili admitted. “He ties them too loose or too tight, or they hang in the wrong place.”

Atamato was resolute: “That’s not the same. Science isn’t magic.”

But they looked the same to Phalamili. “Maybe they’re part of the same thing,” she said at last. “A blind man may grip a horse’s tail and call it silk. Another may grab its hoof and call it a sheep’s foot. Another it’s flank and call it a bull. None of them are right, though they are not fooled.”

They’re not the same," Atamato insisted. “Your charms don’t work because magic isn’t real. If you throw a stone in a river, there are always ripples. If you throw a stone, you can chart the path the stone makes through the air. It’s all about levers and force. It’s too complex to explain.” The poor boy sighed, his head hanging again. “I must have made a mistake in my calculations.”

“So when magic doesn’t work, it’s because it’s not real, but when math doesn’t work it’s because you aren’t good at it?” Phalamili crossed her arms. “Why isn’t it the other way around?”

“Because…” Atamato slapped his hand on the table, “because math works more.”

“Maybe magic works more,” Phalamili shot back, “but you don’t know what its trying to do.”

Atamato stamped his foot and clenched his fist. He was so angry at this stubborn and irrational girl who simply wouldn’t listen to the truth of it. “Science and Math describe the world,” he tried. “They explain it. Magic doesn’t explain anything; it’s just stories, and stories aren’t true.”

Poor Atamato, how wrong he was, but neither he nor Phalamili Rukiya knew it yet. Instead, Phalamili decided if the recalcitrant navigator was ever going to find himself again, he needed to feel better about himself and his ‘math.’

“Could you teach me?” she asked.

Atamato looked up, his eyes wide. “I…I don’t know if I could. It takes years of learning algebra, geometry…”

“If you can’t teach it to me,” Phalamili said, “then it can’t describe the world. I have eyes and ears. I see and hear the world. If science truly describes the world, how could I not understand it?”

Atamato threw up his hands in the air. “Fine. I’ll show you. I’ll teach you math, and then you can decide for yourself which is more real.”

Phalamili stepped forward and stared at the charts and papers on his desk. “Is this math?”

Atamato looked and pointed. “This is math. That’s writing. Words. This is a letter, and when put together, letters make words. You know how shops have pictures on their door for what kind of shop is inside? These letters are pictures for sounds, and the sounds make words.”

This confused Phalamili: “How can a picture mean a sound? Sounds don’t look like anything.”

“No,” Atamato shrugged, “I suppose they don’t, but someone decided these are the symbols for the sounds of oman, and that’s an alphabet.”

At hearing this, Phalamili shook her head in despair. Pictures were pictures for everyone. You could look at a bird and recognize it was a bird. This was different. The Eroseans had decided what sounds looked like, and now everyone learned their words. Their sounds. Their way of seeing the world. It was yet one more way the Eroseans ruled over the people of the cloud-sea, and yet no one seemed to notice or care.

But what else could she do, but draw closer to the boy next to her, and pick up a writing stick from the table. “Show me,” she asked of her teacher.

And show her he did.