The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

Simon clears his throat, looks at him, looks away again.
    “When we got into the boat, Johan,” he whispers, “you said… You thought…”
    “Isabella. Yes, I know. I remember.” He drops the cloth he’s been holding and puts his head into his hands. He finds he can’t control his breathing.
    Simon touches his arm. “Do you think…?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know. Did you see her?”
    The scribe shakes his head, though Johan knows he would give all his parchment, his best quill and suffer his burns again to tell him what he wants to hear. “I’m sorry. I saw only what I thought might have been a woman, but…”
    “But you’re not sure. I understand. Thank you. I don’t want you to lie to me. But I was so sure it was her. I saw Isabella. I swear it.”
    “Was it… Could it have been a ghost?”
    Johan raises his head from his hands and gazes outwards over the sea. “No. I don’t believe so. Although it felt for a moment as if she wasn’t really there. Or as if I couldn’t reach her. But it could simply have been a trick of the enemy, of course. I must remember that.”
    Standing up, he shakes himself and stretches. Desperate to change the conversation, he makes a sudden decision.
    “Come,” he said. “If you are strong enough for the task, then there are things for you to learn.”

    Simon
    As he slowly gained his sea-balance in the hour-cycles ahead, Simon learned how to let his thoughts lean into the wind to enable the boat to go faster. It felt as if his skin was being pulled upwards and, during those brief times when he could connect with what Johan asked of him, he almost felt as if he might be flying. Or, rather, that he was the boat, surging through the waves, eager to be home to a land he’d never visited. But those times didn’t last long and, more often than not, exhaustion or a rising nausea forced him to stop and rest.
    Every now and again, a strange, dark mass ploughed its way by, and Simon stared at it, torn between curiosity and caution.
    “It is the sea-creatures,” Johan whispered. “But if we are quiet, they will not harm us. We started out when the full night was over.”
    Simon grimaced at yet another example of his ignorance and continued to gaze at the vast shapes of them. Once, a spout of water and steam rose upwards from the front of one of the creatures, and he would have gasped in wonder if Johan hadn’t stopped him.
    As he grew accustomed to the boat, an occasional flash of silver, which was neither bird nor water, caught his eye. But, unlike the sea-creatures, it moved too quickly for him to take in what he saw.
    “What’s that?” he asked Johan when the fifth or sixth apparition had vanished.

    Johan
    Smiling, Johan rises from the bench and comes to sit with Simon at the front of the boat. His absence from his working seat diminishes their speed but does not stop them.
    “It’s a thought-fish,” he says. “You can see them when your mind begins to connect with the boat’s purpose and to work with it. It’s as if something else is created from the energy produced and begins to travel with you, helping you in your efforts. It’s what we call the blessing of the sea. I didn’t think you would see such a blessing so soon, Simon. Your powers must be stronger—or purer—than I had realised. Or perhaps, of all the elements we have travelled through, water is the closest to your heart. That, too, is possible. But I could not tell you for certain as my own heart-element is air.”
    “What was Isabella’s?” his companion asks him and the question knocks Johan’s breath away.
    He swallows.
    “Isabella is fire,” he says.
    After a long moment, Johan turns and makes his way back to the bench. Once seated, he touches the side of the boat and, again, it surges a little faster through the waves.

    Simon
    He leaned back and stared out at the sea. His fingers drifted through the salt water, but it no longer made his burns sting. Johan’s poultice had been an effective one. Once a thought-fish drifted close enough to touch, and it felt warm. Sparkling. He missed it when it had gone. As he waited for his sea-balance to grow steady again, he found himself thinking. And not in the way he’d expected.
    His thoughts turned to Ralph, as a horse turns for home. The instinct had not yet abandoned him then; he was unsure how that should make him feel but he was unable to stop the path his mind was taking. He’d have more success trying to stop a river in