Chapter 4

                                    

                                          
Mercy
                          


                          
"Tell me about your childhood," Mercy said, closing her book. 
                          
It was the only book Mercy had brought for the voyage. With just two people crewing a vessel, even a small sloop, flying was a busy affair. She hadn't expected enough free time to have read it, let alone several times. 
                          
She also hadn't expected to be anchored to a mountain-sized island for two days.
                          
"My childhood?" Vincent asked. He looked up from his drawing and let his pencil float in the air as he closed his sketch pad. Mercy grinned at the sight, impressed at how easily he took to living without the pull. Not everyone takes to the far skies, not when they were born and raised in the grip of the great isles. 
                          
"What did you do for fun? Or what did you learn, besides how to ruin food?" Mercy asked. "Where did you go to school? You must have gone, because you're too well learned to just be some shipwright's wayward son. You don't talk about it much, besides being thrown out."
                          
"It's not my favourite topic," Vincent said warily. He tucked the pencil into the binding rings of his sketchbook and tucked it under his leg. "It was just a childhood. A lot like anyone else's. I went to school, learned letters and numbers, algebra and literature. We learned about the gravity of the great isles and-"
                          
Mercy cut him off with a snap of her finger, pointing at Vincent triumphantly. "See, that's part of why I'm curious about your childhood. Because no one uses the word 'gravity', except for the Academies of Vol Ayre, or Olencia's House of the Conceptual."
                          
"Or the Monastery," Vincent added.
                          
"Or them," Mercy agreed. "Tell me something about your childhood. Like one of the bedtime stories you heard."
                          
"You want a children's tale?" Vincent asked. He reached over to a nearby drawer and tucked his sketchbook away. The fact that he was putting away something that might divide his attention, when asked about his childhood, made Mercy a little wary. 
                          
"You know, like the story about the rabbit racing the turtle," Mercy said with an exasperated sigh. 
                          
"That's a math problem, isn't it? The space between the rabbit and the turtle is infinitely divisible, so how does the rabbit ever catch the turtle?" Vincent asked.
                          
"Of course it is for you," Mercy grumbled. She shifted about and set her hands on her knees. "Look, I'll start with an old Wayfarer legend. Once a year, the Storykeepers from other clans go out and share their clan's most important tales. One year we had Tai'ik, Storykeeper of Whiskeyjack's Roost. And she told us the tale that every Storykeeper keeps closest to their hearts. More a legend than a story."
                          
Mercy took a deep breath, and held out her hands. "Once, ages ago, our way of saying 'everything' wasn't 'The Sky'. There was a time, so long ago that only the sun could have ever seen it, where beneath the sky was only one island."
                          
Vincent had leaned forward as she began the story, his chin resting on his thumbs. He didn't seem to reject the premise, nor did he scoff indignantly. She had expected disbelief from him, had braced herself for it. Vincent was well-learned and proud of his rationality. Strangely, though, he looked like he was surprised to find something familiar in a strange place. 
                          
Mercy put away her own musings and kept telling the tale. "This island was so big, so vast, that the sky had to stretch to surround it. It was so great that no bird could place the entire face of the isle inside its eye, no matter how far up the bird flew."
                          
"So huge was this singular isle, that when it turned its face away from the sun, the sky would seem to disappear without light to make it blue. And during those hours when the sunlight was gone, they could see the stars like the bravest wayfarers can when they ride up to where the air is thin."
                          
"They sailed on lakes so vast they called them seas and oceans, and believed their waters were endless. So wide was the land and the lakes that at any time, all manner of weather could happen. On the same island, at the same time, it could be sunny, cloudy, rainy, and snowing!"
                          
"They had to walk, ride horses, or take trains to get anywhere, because the pull of this isle was so strong that no ship could be made to fly. Birds still could, and insects, but the largest creatures were bound to the ground as much as the trees."
                          
"There were marvels on this lost island. Mountains larger than some small isles, creatures that actually live in water, and breathe it like we breathe air. The isle was so big that it crushed the rocks inside into liquid, and very rarely that running, orange metal would burst out from below the surface."
                          
"The people of that impossibly great isle could navigate by the stars we never see. They could grow every kind of food on the same island, and the measured time by the sun as it appeared and disappeared. They called that isle Earth, since that one island was everything beneath the sky."
                          
Mercy paused, and spread her hands apart, miming something breaking apart. "And a long time ago, that great isle broke apart, and the sky got in between. Eventually, we were left with the endless blue, where the skies have no bounds, and there is no night."
                          
Mercy stopped, surprised to find Vincent's eyes looked wet, and he was leaning forward with his mouth slightly open. 
                          
"Was my storytelling that good?" Mercy asked.
                          
"That story," Vincent murmured, shaking his head. "That is astonishing."
                          
"It's just a children's story. We don't always get Whiskeyjack's Storykeeper to tell it, but every Wayfarer has heard it from someone," Mercy explained. She tried to hide her face under her hat and hair, one of the most irritating things about her scar was if she blushed, it was very obvious. 
                          
To cover her embarrassment, she pointed at Vincent. "You owe me a story, like that one."
                          
"Okay," Vincent agreed. "Just don't expect it to be as good as yours."
                          
"I'll add it to that list of things you're bad at. It's still a short list," Mercy said, and accompanied it with a little laugh. 
                          
Vincent coughed, and held out his hands, as if he were about to apologize. "We didn't have very many stories, and what we did have didn't stick with me. Except for one. The Mote and the Empty."
                          
Mercy waved her hand impatiently. "Well go on, start."
                          
"All right. So before there was anything, anything at all, there was a single Mote, and the Empty. There was no light, no worlds, no stars, no sky, no heat, no time. There was just nothing, and that was the way the Empty liked it," Vincent said.
                          
It was a strange story. Mercy frowned, and listened.
                          
"Except the Mote wasn't happy that everything was empty. It looked around at all the nothing, and said to the Empty, 'I will catch you'. And it was the boldest boast ever made," Vincent said, he smiled, a complicated smile that spoke of recalling happier times. "The Empty laughed at the Mote, of course. The Mote was a speck, smaller than a speck, occupying no time or space. It was nothing, not to the emptiness. But the Mote reached out and tried to tag the emptiness, but grasped nothing. The Empty laughed and asked, 'how can you, speck, catch an infinite nothing?'"
                          
"The Mote reached out again, and grew. It grew and grew, and as it expanded, it became light and matter and chased the dark nothingness. The Empty was surprised, but infinite can't be made smaller. The Empty stayed just beyond the Mote's grasp, even as it gave chase. 'I am infinite, little speck. How long can you possibly chase me?'"
                          
Vincent paused for just a moment before finishing. "'Forever,' the little Mote said. And the Empty was afraid."
                          
Mercy frowned at Vincent, and asked, "That was a children's story? It was strange, but I'm not putting your storytelling in the same list as your cooking."
                          
"I had an odd childhood," Vincent said. He sighed and looked at Mercy long enough that she began to feel uncomfortable.
                          
"What is it?" Mercy asked.
                          
"There's another thing I was taught as a child, and it concerns your story," Vincent admitted. His voice had gone a little quieter, which instinctively made her lean forward a little to listen. 
                          
"You tell the story of the one isle, too?" Mercy asked.
                          
"No," Vincent said solemnly. "What I was taught, is that your story is true."