The Semaphore

Hummel gave Pontis some privacy with his sister.

She lay on her back in the study beneath a thin sheet. Layers of clean gauze concealed the gash on her neck. Her skin was no longer blue, her breath slow and steady. Were it not for the tubes extending from beneath the sheet and disappearing under the table—each delivering some kind of clear liquid into her veins—it might appear that she was merely sleeping peacefully, that she could awake at any moment refreshed and ready to return to her drawings.

Pontis touched her foot softly and bowed his head. His thoughts wandered through images of Harper drawing in her room, or eating breakfast at the kitchen table, or helping their Ma stir batter in bowls twice the size of her head. He smiled sadly, his hand tightening around her little foot. Part of him felt responsible for alerting the eyeless man’s attention to her, for singling her out. But at the same time he knew that had he not arrived when he did, she would be dead. Everyone in Lowood Den would be dead.

‘Pontis.’ Varia spoke gently in his ear. ‘There’s something we need to talk about.’

Pontis's hand slid off of Harper’s foot and he looked up at the quiet study.

What is it? he thought.

‘Before, when you fell asleep on the rocking chair on the porch…’ Varia hesitated for a moment. ‘You had a dream.’

Did I? Pontis thought. I don’t even remember.

‘Yeah. It was about a girl, with long white hair…’

Pontis scrunched his eyes and nodded. Yeah, he thought. I remember. I’ve dreamed about her before… You can see my dreams?

‘I guess so,’ Varia said, sounding somewhat embarrassed. ‘It’s the first time you’ve slept since I’ve been…you know. In here.’

So what about the dream? Pontis thought.

‘Before I ended up here, I had the same dream. Well, not exactly the same. But I dreamed about the same girl. I didn’t remember it until I saw her in your dream, and then it all came back. Her white hair. The string tethered to the sun.’

Pontis considered this, distinctly aware that Varia was considering it along with him. So what do you think it means? he thought.

‘I don’t know,’ said Varia. ‘But I think it’s important somehow. Maybe we can ask this woman in Osseon about it, when we meet her.’

Pontis agreed, and then leaned forward and kissed Harper gently on her forehead. When he left the study he closed the door softly behind him, as if to avoid waking her up.

#

Hummel watched from the shade of the porch.

Pontis, standing fifty yards away in the dry, yellow grass, brought up an image of Lowood Den: the atrium of the tenement, with its saplings and bars of golden light. The coat closed around him, and a moment later it opened, and he was standing at the base of the steps where he’d sat with Ien feeding pigeons just over a week ago. Bars of golden sunlight cast pale shapes along the moss and tufts of grass growing through the atrium’s cracked pavement. The trill of birdsong filled the air.

The first person he saw was Refi Yu, sitting alone at the base of a tree in the plaza, his head in his hands. When he looked up, his eyes bloodshot and sunken, he seemed not to recognize Pontis for a long moment.

“Pontis…” he said finally, his voice hoarse. “I thought I saw you earlier… though I wasn’t sure…” He looked off through the trees. “Is everyone else okay?”

“We’re going to check,” said the coat.

Refi nodded and closed his eyes, oblivious to the fact that a green coat had just spoken to him.

Pontis continued on. There were people scattered throughout the plaza, sitting against trees or standing, dazed, or wandering slowly. They regarded Pontis with confusion, as if some great distance had been dug between their eyes and their minds, as if the entire city were waking from a drunken stupor. Still, whatever had been done to them—this Hemmick invocation—seemed to be waning; they appeared less bewildered now than a few hours before, when Pontis left with Harper.

Pontis passed through the trees shredded from his battle with the eyeless man, many no more than lumps of pulp. Deep trenches scarred the ground where one or the other of them had landed and slid. He found the eyeless man’s knife, stained with dark, dry blood. Large bare footprints led off through the trees.

We need to find him, thought Pontis.

‘Yes,’ said Varia.

They followed the footprints, which essed through the trees in a staggered, confused manner, often looping around onto themselves or shifting direction for no apparent reason. Near the edge of the plaza the footprints elongated, as if the eyeless man was dragging his feet. A little further along the footprints stopped all together, replaced with vaguely foot-shaped mounds of dark soil. The mounds grew larger as they went until Pontis found a lump of dirt smeared across the ground, the length and mass of large man. Beyond were no further footprints.

‘He turned into dirt,’ said Varia.

Pontis eyed the dark soil as if it might suddenly leap up and attack. It smelled like an animal carcass, and Pontis's thoughts turned briefly to the underground fortress and the enormous flindering white door in the marble chamber, and the smell of death beyond.

‘Let’s go make sure everyone else is okay,’ Varia said.

The white tower was gone. Where it had stood was now only flat ground. Looking up into the trees Pontis saw the branches broken in a roughly cylindrical shape, the outline of where the tower had risen.

Pontis found his Ma with Doctor Darian, sitting on a protrusion of rock. They leaned against one another, their eyes half open.

Pontis took his Ma’s hand.

She blinked up at him. Then her eyes widened and tears sprang forth.

“Harper…” she whispered. “Where’s Harper?”

“She’s safe,” said the coat. “With Coden Hummel in Rapidan.”

Pontis's Ma lowered her head. “Pontis,” she said. “What happened to us?”

Pontis squeezed his Ma’s hand. “I don’t have time to explain,” said the coat. “And even if I did, I’m not sure I could. But you’re safe for now. And I need to go stop the ones that did this, so that it never happens again.”

Pontis's Ma peered at her son as if into a dark room. “…Varia?” she asked.

“Yes, Doctor Inoue,” the coat said. “I’m in here. We’re together.”

Pontis's Ma nodded and leaned her head against Doctor Darian’s shoulder. “Just come home…” she said, her exhaustion drawing her eyes closed.

Doctor Darian slept through the entire exchange.

Pontis felt an unfamiliar longing. It felt nearly like homesickness, though he was here, right now, in the only home he had ever known.

Just outside the plaza, where the avenue led into the heart of the city, a large group of people stood together in near total silence. A few of them looked up at Pontis as he walked past, eyeing him blankly or, in some cases, with cursory recognition. Pontis surveyed the group. He saw the Matis family—Brig, Byer and their parents—but not Ien.

And there was someone else conspicuously absent.

I don’t see Laszlo anywhere, Pontis thought.

‘Maybe he’s not back yet,’ said Varia, sounding suddenly aloof.

Do you think he got turned around again? Pontis thought. In the Lowoods?

‘I don’t know,’ said Varia, and the flatness in her voice signaled to Pontis that she was finished talking about Laszlo.

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Pontis found the Longleys standing together just outside the entrance to a market. As he approached they looked up at him sadly.

“Where’s Varia?” Abridel Longley asked, her voice flat.

Pontis waited for the coat to speak.

Varia? Pontis thought.

Varia did not respond.

Varia, say something to them.

She remained silent. Pontis merely stood there, returning the Longleys’ solemn gaze. Finally they turned away and held each other, their eyes cast downward.

Pontis continued along the avenue. He cut through an alleyway in the direction of the suspension bridge when Varia finally spoke.

‘I can’t…’ she said to Pontis. ‘I don’t want them to know what happened to me.’

Pontis slowed to a stop.

‘I’ll tell them,’ she continued. ‘Once we’re back. Once we’ve done what we need to do. It’ll be easier then, I think, being able to say that what happened to me wasn’t for nothing, that it wasn’t in vain.’

Of course it wasn’t, Pontis thought, shocked by the suggestion. You’ve already shown that. Plus, I’m not really sure you died—at least, I’m not sure you’re dead.

‘I don’t know,’ Varia said. ‘And it’s weird. I should be sad. And I am, I guess, in a way. About all of this. But at the same time it feels… less than it should. I don’t feel things the way I used to. I’m changing in here.’

Pontis didn’t like the idea of Varia changing. He didn’t like that she wasn’t feeling things the way she used to. He wanted her to stay the same person she had always been. He wanted to have that life, and for people to get to share in it with her. He wanted her to be alive, in her body.

I love you, he thought, offering Varia something that would never change.

‘I love you too,’ she replied. ‘Now, should we get moving?’

Almost, thought Pontis, continuing down the alley in the direction of the suspension bridge.

#

Ien stood on the shore of the pond, looking out at the water. The sunlight gathered in his hair so that it seemed the light itself flowed from it.

The pond hummed with life: dragonflies hovered from one lily pad to the next; a snapping turtle sunned itself on a rock just off shore; swallows dipped and dived, lunching on the insects skirting the surface; and a pair of robins glided from a tree, traced a figure eight over Ien’s head, and then disappeared toward the enormous old suspension bridge, looming over it all like a mountain.

For a moment it felt like a normal summer afternoon, the heat rising, the sun bearing down. Pontis almost considered shedding his clothes and charging into the water. He and Ien could recreate the last time they swam together—or a hundred others just like it. But it was not that day. The sunlight and the warmth and the dragonflies and swallows were an illusion. The shadow of danger blotted the light, even if it appeared to shine through.

Pontis stood silently behind Ien, watching him. He felt all the usual things he felt when he saw him, but he felt other things too. A new distance. A sense that wherever they had been going together was no longer accessible to them. He wiped his face and told himself that none of that was true. The summer was far from over, and life was only at its outset. Not everything had to change. They just needed to get through this next difficult step.

Don’t speak, Pontis thought. Not right now. I don’t want him to hear anything except the birds and the dragonflies.

‘I won’t,’ said Varia.

Ien turned around suddenly. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, his cheeks flushed. He stared directly at Pontis, though there was no recognition in his face. Then he turned back toward the pond.

“I thought I saw Pontis before,” he said out toward the water. “But Pontis is away, and nobody knows when he’s coming back… or if he’s coming back at all.”

Pontis pulled his voice pad from his pocket, and in doing so three folded pieces of paper tumbled out onto the ground.

“It’s been a full strange day,” Ien went on, his voice flat like everyone else’s. “I woke up so early. I always feel weird when I’m up before the sun, like I’m seeing something I’m not supposed to see…” He shifted his weight. “Oh no,” he said. “I should be watching Harper. I promised I’d put my time to minding her…” But he didn’t move, his eyes fixed on the water.

Pontis picked up the fallen pieces of paper and unfolded them. The three notes he had written while stranded in the tundra, when he thought he was going to die. He could not bring himself to read them now. He looked at Ien, the gentle slope of his neck, the sunlight coruscated in his hair. He thought of his Ma—with her strong hugs and her delicious bread and the smell of her skin, which she washed with lavender and mint—who had gifted Pontis life so that he could appreciate beauty, and appreciate love. He thought about Harper, the ceaseless imagination that coursed through her ever-expanding mind, her little life at its outset, endless potential sprawling ahead. He was not going to leave these people. He wanted to live and live with them for a long time, to share this life with them, to find out where it took them all together.

Besides, there was nothing in these notes that those three didn’t already know.

He crumpled the notes and tossed them into the pond. They floated briefly on its surface, and then sunk below. Pontis felt a lightness—and a determination—that he had not felt before.

‘We need to go,’ Varia said.

Pontis nodded. He took a final moment to appreciate the pond, and the boy on its shore, and then slipped back into the trees.

‘We’ll see him soon,’ Varia said as Pontis made his way along the ravine, north through the Lowoods. ‘We’ll see everyone again soon.’

I know, thought Pontis. I know that for sure.

He paused alongside the ravine, just inside the shadow of the suspension bridge. Can we Fallacy to Tecca?

‘No,’ said Varia. ‘You’ve never been there, so you can’t picture it.’

Pontis sighed. It’s going to take us days, he thought, anticipating the exhaustion that lay ahead.

‘I don’t think it will,’ Varia said, a lilt of excitement in her voice. ‘I have another trick to show you. And I think you’re really gonna like this one.’

#

Pontis stood atop the deck of the suspension bridge, looking down at the city of Lowood Den. He had never been up here before, a surprising fact given how well traveled he was inside the city he’d spent his whole life. Of course it was not easy to access; the bridge’s western abutment had long ago collapsed, leaving a nearly vertical incline of mangled metal and concrete two hundred feet high. But there was a way. The trees around its base grew thirty feet, and above them was rutted concrete and pitted metal which, given the proper motivation, provided adequate footholds.

Pontis had that motivation, despite the fact that Varia refused to tell him why she wanted him on the bridge. It was enough that she said so, and it always would be. He scaled an elm at the bridge’s base and climbed the mangled metal of the bridge’s collapsed abutment, following a route of deep indentations and wide ledges. Perhaps it was the fact that Pontis had not eaten in days, or something to do with the coat itself, but he felt light—as light as air—and climbing the sheer side of the bridge was even easier, he felt, than climbing the staircase from the atrium to his apartment had been his whole life.

From the bridge’s deck he could see from horizon to horizon, where the Lowoods sprawled endlessly. The city appeared miniature: the multi-story tenements gathered on the south end looked like bricks standing among vegetation, and the markets and restaurants and city hall to the north appeared no larger than books. The plaza separated the north half of the city from the south, and from up here Pontis perceived it as what it was: a microcosm of the larger forest, surrounded by the city.

He could also see the pond, no larger than a puddle, and though briefly he thought he saw Ien standing on its shore, he quickly determined it was merely a shrub, and Ien had since left.

The bridge’s span had collapsed many centuries ago, from the middle all the way to the far side of the ravine. Now only a single tower remained on the eastern side, covered in moss and ivy. There was nowhere to go from up here.

Now what? Pontis thought.

‘Go to the edge,’ Varia said. ‘Where the bridge is broken.’

Pontis did as he was told. He peered over the edge down into the ravine, where hundred of years ago the fallen side of the bridge had been swallowed up by ferns and trees and shrubs. He looked up to the east, remembering the map he’d seen in Hummel’s study a week ago that showed the ocean not too far away.

‘Now jump,’ Varia said.

Pontis frowned, thinking he’d misheard. What? he thought.

‘Jump,’ Varia repeated, her voice laced with amusement. ‘As far as you can.’

Pontis looked down. The distance from the bridge’s deck to the bottom of the ravine was nearly four hundred feet. The thorns and knurled trees that grew below appeared like jagged boulders from his vantage. He stepped away from the edge.

You’re full joking, he thought. You don’t want me to jump off this bridge.

‘I do,’ said Varia, her voice teetering on the edge of laughter. ‘That’s exactly what I want you to do.’

But why? Pontis thought.

‘You’ll see,’ she said. ‘It’s how we’re going to get to Tecca.’

Pontis considered climbing back down off the bridge and starting the long walk through the Lowoods, east across Rapidan, finding a way over the ravine further north—walking all the way around it if he had to—and entering Tecca on foot. It made a good deal more sense to him than jumping off this bridge, and though it might take a week, at least he would avoid arriving with every bone in his body broken.

What if it doesn’t work? Pontis thought. What if I fall?

‘I’ll Fallacy you out,’ Varia said. ‘Just think of somewhere—back up here, for example, or the pond—and I’ll bring you right there. But it will work, I know it will.’

Pontis had a flashback to the first four times Varia had attempted—and failed—to Fallacy them out of the tundra. At least in that case the failure only resulted in staying where they already were. If she got it wrong in this case, she wouldn’t have four more chances to get it right.

You’ll Fallacy me to the pond, Pontis thought.

‘Yes,’ said Varia. ‘I don’t want to fall either. What am I going to do if you go and splat all over the bottom of the ravine?’

Despite the gruesome image, Pontis figured it was still a good point.

‘Lovey-boy,’ Varia said. ‘I’m not going to let that happen.’

Pontis looked to the east, where an unexplored expanse of the Lowoods stretched. He glanced down again at the pond, its water reflecting the bleary eye of the sun.

Alright, he thought. I’m going to be thinking about the pond. Just so you know. If whatever you’re trying to do doesn’t work, that’s where we’re going.

‘Gotchya,’ said Varia.

Pontis took a slow breath and faced the edge of the bridge. He pictured himself standing on the shore of the pond, his bare feet in the cool water. He made sure there were dragonflies and swallows, turtles and frogs, even a pair of robins circling overhead.

Alright, he thought. I’m doing it.

‘Go.’

Pontis took another breath, shut his eyes briefly, and ran for the edge.

It took all his concentration not to surrender to the panicked signals his body sent his brain, imploring it to stop at once. He pushed forward, holding the pond front and center in his mind, replaying Varia’s words over and over. I won’t let anything happen to you. I won’t let anything happen to you.

He hurled himself off the edge, his heart fluttering frantically. He shut his eyes and pictured the pond. There was a moment of weightlessness as his body slowed into the acme of his jump, and he braced for the impending plummet, when his stomach would rise into his throat and he would speed down toward the deep ravine, the sharp branches and bitter ground rushing up to break him into a thousand pieces…

But the falling never came.