Journey to the Water Chapter LXIV: The Gate of Bone

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From the wreckage of a hundred or more ships, I crafted a sturdy canoe, large enough to withstand the crashing waves but small enough that I could hold its sail and its single oar alone. I cut apart the robe that had been given to me at the temple of the dragon, stitching its panels together to craft a sail; the oar was a fortunate find, washed up in a frigid tide pool. Water and weather had split it almost in two, but I tied it together with sinew and rope, and it held well enough. It would get me out to sea. 

All the while, the sun rose lower and set more swiftly with each brief, passing day. I worked by firelight. The pilgrims maintained a bonfire of driftwood and animal dung. We ate from our shared stores and from what little we could gather in the tide pools: tiny shrimp and spiny urchins, as well as kelp and seaweed. I harpooned a seal soon after my arrival, and that fed us well for many days and earned me a place among the pilgrims. 

How they stared at me, day and night, watching me work. They were a strange, pale lot, with sunken eyes and bodies bent from carrying heavy packs and eating little for months at a time. They had walked, they said, for the better part of a year, almost entirely on foot. When the bitter winter ended, they would make their return journey, carrying with them all that they would need.

Still, when a great squid washed up upon the shore, its dead flesh shining like still water and reeking of the deep, they left it alone. One must not eat the flesh of a god, they said. 

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I disagreed, but I left the squid alone, out of respect for my hosts. 

One pilgrim, a man of indiscernible age with a burn across his pale face, came to me at what might have been noon. His cloak wrapped twice around his shoulders and covered his head, and he carried a staff of gnarled wood that he had evidently possessed for a long time: its surface was worn smooth from his hands, and no trees grew in this desolate place. Even in the middle of the day, his shadow lay long and thin upon the frozen ground. 

“You’re building a boat,” he said. 

I was hammering boards together with pegs of wood. A few pieces of wreckage had still carried usable nails, but I had run out some time ago. The hammer I had borrowed from one of the pilgrims, but I had forgotten which, as they all dressed alike. Now that I had a good look at him, this man might have been the one who lent it to me. “I am,” I said. 

“Why?” He sounded younger than he looked. Perhaps he was only twenty, or a little older. A heavy weight settled into my belly at the realization that I now considered that so young. 

I set down the hammer and flexed my frozen fingers. It was cold here, even during the day, and the fire only did so much to chase the frigid wind away. “I’m going through the gate of bone,” I said. “You said it will appear with the final departure of the sun.”

“We have walked all this way to see it,” he replied, bowing his head. A fold of his cloak fell down over his eyes. “We will carry the vision with us back to our homes, if the gods see fit to allow us to survive the return.”

I gathered my own cloak around me, tucking my hands underneath my arms. My fingers prickled as feeling returned to them. “The gods ask much of you,” I said. 

“It is unwise for you to try to sail out to the gate,” the man said, ignoring my remark. He pushed the hood back and looked out across the water. The sun, already setting, shone upon the burn on his face. 

“I know.” I could be accused of many things, here at the edge of the world, but wisdom was not one of them. “You and your companions have shown me great hospitality already. You need not worry about my fate.”

“You’re not one of us,” he continued, speaking as though he hadn’t heard me. “The gods did not give you the task of making this pilgrimage. You have neither learned our histories nor sung them yourself. By all accounts, you should not even know this place exists. Why have you come here?”

“To breach the gate of bone on a day without a sun,” I recited, more to the ocean and the darkening sky than to my interlocutor. 

He sat down on the rocks beside me. “Surely you don’t intend to sail out there in that.“

My boat had taken shape, and though it looked rough, it would hold together on the open water. I could not say if it would weather a storm—whether or not I would weather a storm was yet another matter. Before long, it would be finished. “It will take me out to sea,” I said. “I will concern myself with the return journey if and when I reach it.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” said the man.

And so, I told him why I was here, and why I spent long hours building a craft out of refuse, and why I was so willing to undertake a voyage from which I might not return. I told him of my ill-fated hunt of the lind-worm, of my year spent alone in the mountains; of my chance encounter with Aysulu of the Tribe of Hyrkan Khan and our trek overland to Phyreios; of the Cerean Tournament, the Ascended, and Khalim. 

I told him my story, and he listened with his head resting on one thin, pale hand, and the sun sank below the horizon, bringing on the long, dark night. 

Over the next brief days, I filled all the holes in my hull and raised my sail, so that when the sun set after a day that lasted only a few minutes, I was ready. 

One by one, the pilgrims began to sing. 

The keel of my little boat scraped against the rocky beach. The water took hold of it with grasping hands, shoving it back against me and then drawing it out into the black water, fighting against my grasp. Without a sun, the sea was as cold as winter ice, as cold as death. My feet ached as soon as I waded into the surf, the cold slicing through the leather of my boots. 

I gave the boat one more push and leapt over the rail. The timbers creaked as the sail unfurled, but I trusted my boat. It would carry me to the gate of bone. 

Whether it would carry me back remained to be seen. 

The wind filled my sail, carrying me into the roaring dark. All around me, the wind howled and the waves crashed as the light of the pilgrims’ bonfire receded into a tiny, burning point. Their song followed me for another verse before it, too, disappeared. 

I’d hung a lantern from the prow, and it cast a tiny halo of golden light as the sea tossed it from side to side. Aside from its feeble glow, all was black. The absent sun had taken the moon and stars alike with it when it vanished, and the sky was an impenetrable cloak of darkness drawn over the world. Below me lay the abyss. 

“Nashurru, goddess of the deep,” I shouted over the clamor of the sea. “Forgive my trespass against you. I will pass through the gate of bone, with or without your permission.”

The great fluked goddess did not answer, nor did she rise from the fathoms below to cast me down with an enormous, pale hand. Even here, in the place between the living world and the realm of the gods, I was alone, without either guidance or condemnation. 

I gathered my cloak around my shoulders and crouched beside the mast, one hand on the rope to guide the sail and the other on my oar, placed in the stern as a rudder. With no stars by which to navigate, and no sight of the shore, I could only wait for the wind and waves to carry me to some landmark. 

None appeared. The featureless horizon encircled me like a waiting snare. 

“Am I lost?” I asked the tumbling waves. The boat surged and bucked underneath me, the creaking of the hull taking up a steady rhythm. “Is it my fate to die out here?”

No answer came. I hadn’t expected one. 

I turned back to try to catch a glimpse of the bonfire, or hear a few notes of the pilgrims’ chant, but I was already too far from the shore. A wave broke against my hull, spraying me with water so cold that it was like a rain of needles. By my reckoning, the cold would take me first. 

Once, I had boarded a similar boat, crafted by my own hands, and set out to sea, fearing that I would drift on even after my death. Then, I had arrived half-starved on a strange shore. 

Now, the gate of bone rose from the waters before me. 

I had seen it before, in the vision of the goddess of the deep, but it was far grander and more terrible here. It was stark white, lit from within by an alien moon, dim and blue, illuminating the domes of skulls and ridges of spines. Two columns of sun-bleached white death stood upright in the roiling water. An arch of ribs and femurs stretched between them, shrouded in black clouds. 

I stood, bracing one foot against the mast, and held tight to my rudder. 

I need not have acted. The waves drew me closer and closer to the gate, relentless as a river rushing downhill. Between the pillars of piled bone, the strange moonlight glow blocked out all sight. I released my sail and covered my face with my arm. The light wrapped itself around my boat, and the world turned blank and blue-white. 

The rocking of the boat calmed and stilled. A gentle breeze, cool like the beginning of spring, stirred my hair and tugged at my cloak. 

I uncovered my eyes. A sunless sky, now an eerie green, stretched out overhead. A gray beach lay before me, and beyond it a shadowed forest; my keel scraped against dark sand as my boat came to a stop. 

I had seen this place before, I thought. It felt like a dream. 

Someone stood on the beach—tall, copper-haired, and wearing a fur-lined cloak clasped at the shoulder. I could not see the design of the circular clasp, but I knew what it was: two hounds, facing each other with their teeth bared, the symbol of Fearghus’s clan. 

Fearghus was here. I had crossed over to the realm of spirits. 

I climbed out of the boat and dragged it onto the beach. It moved with reluctance, and my limbs were heavy. The boat and I were physical things, unsuited to this place. I had to remember to breathe.

“Eske,” Fearghus said. “It’s good to see you, but something tells me you’re not here for me.”

He was exactly as I remembered him. I had grown older, in the time since his death, but he remained the same: twenty winters old, freckled and bright-eyed, not quite my height. 

It was true—I was not here for him. He had been my first love, my companion in the stormy, early days of manhood, when I struggled against the heavy burden of my father’s expectations. He had accompanied me on the hunt for the lind-worm without hesitation. He had always said I was the braver of us, or perhaps the more foolhardy, but he had always had more courage than I. 

He had deserved a better life—and a better end to it—than I had given him. He also deserved someone who would have passed through the gate for him, and not for another. 

Guilt and sorrow stilled my tongue. I could not answer him.

Back to Chapter LXIII: The Last, Lonely Harbor

Forward to Interlude Six: The White City

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And so Eske finally crosses over. What dangers await him on the other side?

I’m working on the rewrite! The first chapters need a lot of work, but I’m muddling through. Thanks for reading!