The Semaphore

It was hard to gauge exactly how fast he was travelling, but if the old man's directions were accurate—that Tecca was five miles up the coast—then Pontis was going fast.

Within a minute he could see the docks. They extended out into the bay like a maze of streets. Brick houses lined the bay's coast, their roofs painted an array of pastel colors, yellow and pink and light blue. Seagulls gathered in colonies along the craggy rock walls hemming the town against the water. Beyond the docks, dozens of boats were moored in the bay. Some had sails while others did not, and Pontis figured they used the same kind of engines from Mondagreen's vehicle and Hummel's house.

'I think you better land somewhere outside of town,' Varia said. 'That last guy seemed a little rattled when you came out of the sky. Better not to cause a stir.'

Pontis veered inland, slowing until he was traveling no faster than a brisk jog. He found a patch of rocky earth about a half mile from the bay, hovered for a moment, and then descended—carefully this time—and landed softly.

'I wonder if anyone here was able to help the girl,' Varia pondered as Pontis walked along a once-paved path leading down a gentle slope, where ahead the brick buildings of Tecca and the sprawl of docks awaited. 'He seemed sure someone could. Though I don't know…'

As he passed the first houses on the outskirts of town, Pontis encountered the sweet scent of the ocean. He had never smelled it before, but something about it was congenitally familiar, built in to his memory. He figured he would have known what the smell was even if he could not see the ocean itself. He paused at the top of a wind-worn staircase, which descended into the heart of the town, just as a cool breeze blew from the water. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

Can you smell? he thought suddenly.

'No,' said Varia, and for a moment Pontis feared she was going to become sad again. 'But I can see the makeup of the air,' she said. 'The salt particles, the sulfur, the organic matter wafting from the sea. I can see it all in a way that tells me it's special. So I'm experiencing it with you. I think that's how I need to start thinking about all of this. I'm very lucky.'

Pontis nodded and started down the stairs. They were steep and slick, and near the bottom he lost his footing. Instead of falling he allowed himself to float, briefly, and landed on the path below. He glanced around. There was no one. He had not been seen.

There were voices up ahead, and Pontis followed them. He passed through the narrow streets of stout brick houses, and emerged into the harbor.

People hurried about. They were all dressed in similar colorful garments to the ones Mondagreen wore, and many had their hair in the same long braid down their backs. Pontis stood at the mouth of harbor watching as they scampered out onto the network of docks. No one paid any attention to him or his green coat.

"They're back!" someone shouted.

"They got one!" cried another.

Pontis followed the proliferating crowd out onto the docks. A group of children rushed past him, leaping over the gaps between the piers. The people gathered on the furthermost dock, far out in the bay, waving and cheering as a large boat chugged slowly toward the coast. Pontis peered over the top of the crowd, tempted simply to fly into the air—something that suddenly felt like second nature to him—in order to get a better view. But there was no need; the crowd parted just enough to afford him a line of sight to the water, where he saw, towed behind the boat and enmeshed in nets, its glistening skin sprouted with crusty patches of barnacles, an enormous whale.

'Look at the size of it,' Varia said. 'It's the biggest animal I've ever seen.'

Pontis of course had never seen a whale in person, but he had seen pictures of them, in textbooks and in the children's books his Ma read to Harper—which she had read to him years before. He knew they were big—that was the whole point of whales—but he had no idea just how big. The creature ensnared in the net behind the boat—which now turned itself parallel to the dock—was larger than most houses, maybe even as tall as the tenement building in which Pontis grew up. Still, it was impossible to get a clear sense of its full size, because only part of it protruded from the surface of the water. Regardless, it was enormous, three times longer than the boat that towed it.

"A boon!" someone cried, which elicited agreement from the crowd.

"We'll eat clear to winter!" someone else proclaimed, and there were cheers.

Pontis watched as the sailors on the boat tossed thick ropes to the crowd on the dock, which they fastened along its edge. The whale floated in the water, the water's current jostling it against the pier. A group of children gathered and knelt beside it, touching its shiny skin through the gaps in the net.

Pontis worked his way forward through the crowd until he stood on the outermost dock, alongside which the whale floated. He knelt beside it. It appeared no more than a massive slab of glistening flesh. Then it rolled slightly—as much as it was able against the snare of the net—and its eye, twice as big as Pontis's head, breached the surface and stared, watery, up at the crowd.

'It looks so scared,' Varia said. 'Trapped in there…'

Pontis also felt sympathy, but he understood that Varia's was greater. She recognized herself in the whale. Part of her also felt trapped.

"Bleed it!" someone yelled from the dock. "'Fore the day gets long!"

There were more cheers, and the people pressed forward to get a better look at the creature, which stared up, it seemed, directly at Pontis.

'I want to try something,' said Varia suddenly. 'Remember before, when you were flying, I mentioned a program called Linga?'

I think so, said Pontis. What is it?

'I'll show you,' said Varia. 'Place your hand on the whale. Softly.'

Pontis knelt alongside the row of kneeling children and placed his palm on the whale's glistening skin. He was surprised at how dry its flesh felt.

'Now listen,' Varia said.

Pontis did. At first all he could hear were the voices of the crowd, the boat's engine whirring, the occasional shriek of a gull. He closed his eyes, trying to figure out what it was that Varia wanted him to hear. He felt the whale's tough, dry skin beneath his palm. He felt it bobbing in the water, the seawater lapping across it…

Then he heard the voice. It was deep—octaves deeper than any human voice—and inflected by a faint musical lilt. It flowed into Pontis's ear same way Varia's voice did, only less crisp, muted and sluggish as if rising from below a hundred feet of water.

'Nooooooooooooooooo…' the voice intoned. 'Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease…'

Pontis opened his eyes. The whale looked up at him, its huge, single pupil reflecting his face.

'Dooooooooooooooon't huuuuuuuuuuurt meeeeeeeeeeeeeee…'

Pontis withdrew and stood abruptly, bumping into a man behind him who swore and told Pontis to pay attention to his surroundings. A group of sailors leapt onto the dock and approached the whale. One of them held a long, dimpled cleaver.

'We have to do something,' Varia said, her voice panicked. 'It's terrified.'

Pontis looked around at the faces of the people of Tecca as they grinned, cheering on the sailors who pushed through the crowd of children and stood over the whale.

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The whale's eye searched, desperate, for compassion. Its wide body struggled, exhausted, against the net.

What do we do? Pontis thought. I don't want to hurt these people.

Varia said nothing for several seconds—the sailor with the cleaver knelt beside the whale—but Pontis felt she was thinking, hard.

'Fly,' she said suddenly. 'Fly over the ship.'

Pontis did not hesitate. He leapt from the edge of the dock and glided into the air. He rose up thirty—forty feet over the water, and then turned toward the crowd. The coat billowed around him in the sea breeze.

No one on the dock noticed him. They were all too busy watching, giddily, as the sailor raised the cleaver high over his head.

"DO NOT HARM THAT ANIMAL!" boomed the coat then. The sound was so loud that the water rippled and the dock shook.

The people looked up, startled, shielding their eyes against the sun.

Pontis outspread his arms. "LET IT RETURN TO ITS HOME!"

For a long moment there was only the sound of the water lapping gently, and the boat's hull clacking against the dock. Even the seagulls, their shrieks filling the air a moment before, grew silent.

The sailor lowered his cleaver slowly, his mouth hanging open. The children who had gathered on the dock's edge retreated into the crowd, hiding behind their parents.

Then someone shouted from the back of the crowd. "The hell are you, buddy?"

Pontis wavered, suddenly self-conscious in front of all these people.

"I AM THE SEMAPHORE!" the coat proclaimed, and then it flared its green light out across the people of Tecca and the bay. Pontis regained his confidence, and rose ten feet higher into the sky.

The people blinked up at him. For a moment they appeared stunned, and it seemed they might fall to their knees and weep.

Then someone threw a shoe, which tumbled just past Pontis's ear.

"Get on outta here!" someone cried.

"You're a fake, you are!" cried another.

"A trickster, that's what!"

"Leave us be!"

There was a cheer of consensus, and then another shoe was launched, followed by what appeared to be a brick, which bounced, harmlessly, off of the coat.

What do we do? Pontis thought.

'Rip the net,' Varia said. 'Rip it from the boat.'

The net? Pontis looked at where the net was fastened to the boat by a thick metal cable, bolted to a rusted pulley half Pontis's size. I can't, he thought. I won't be able to.

'Yes you will,' she insisted. 'Grab it. Now!'

Pontis swooped down onto the deck of the boat. The crowd launched more objects—bottles and rocks and at one point a rake, all of which either missed or were swatted effortlessly away by the coat—and hurled insults and curses.

Pontis grabbed the cable, so thick he could barely get both hands around its circumference.

'Pull!' Varia said.

There's no way, thought Pontis. I ca—

'Pull!!!'

Pontis pulled on the cable. At first it was as he expected: stuck fast to the pulley, so secure it was if he tugged on the base of a mountain. But then he felt his grip tighten—assisted by some unseen force—and the cable began to lift in his hands. He pulled harder—another shoe and a clay bowl whizzing past his head—and the cable strained. Before his eyes, the bolts on the pulley began to pop, one by one, out of the boat's deck. The cable itself began to tear, its individual fibers—each thicker than the rope he and Varia used to descend into the hole in Arborvale—fraying like nothing more than stalks of grass. The most incredible part, he decided, was that he felt as if he was hardly exerting himself at all, as if he was merely picking a flower.

The cable snapped in his hands. There were gasps from the crowd, and briefly the cursing and throwing of objects waned. But it was short lived.

"He's thievin' our boon!" someone cried.

"Somebody stop him!" someone else shouted.

A group of sailors approached him along the boat's deck, all brandishing identical cleavers. Pontis flew upward with the torn cable in his hands. The net at its end and the whale inside of it, rose with him.

"He's the Semaphore, that one!" someone cried from below.

"No he ain't!" someone else rebuffed. "Ain't no such thing!"

"It's a trick's all it is!" yelled a third. "Ain't what it looks!"

Pontis flew higher, lifting the whale over the surface of the water. He was shocked to see the animal's full size—bigger than he could ever have imagined—and shocked further by the fact that he was carrying its entire weight in his hands.

What do we do now? he thought.

'We'll bring it back to its home,' Varia said. 'But first we need to deal with what we came for.'

Pontis descended slightly, so that the whale's body was submerged in the water.

"LISTEN TO ME!" the coat said, cutting through the angry shouts.

There was a restless silence.

"We are here looking for someone," the coat went on. "Lady Mondagreen. He said this was his home, and he has something we need."

A groan passed through the crowd. A man raised an angry fist toward Pontis.

"'Course this asshole's a friend o' Mondagreen's!" he shouted.

"Could've reckoned!" shouted another.

"Mondagreen ain't been here in months!" shouted a smoky voice from the middle of the crowd.

The voice belonged to a woman, who pushed her way forward. Her wild mound of curly hair was tied back with a bit of cloth. A bare leg extended from a slit in her long skirt, revealing a tattoo of a whale on her thigh. Tucked into the crook of her arm, one small hand coiled around a lock of her hair, was a baby.

"And you see him," she yelled, "you tell him Necko's doin' just fine without him!"

Pontis squinted down at the woman and the baby. Is that… Does Mondagreen have a family?

'I don't know,' said Varia. 'He didn't mention anything about it.'

He didn't mention much about anything, Pontis thought. Except his old man.

'Either way, he's not here,' Varia said. 'Maybe he never had any intention of bringing the girl to Tecca. Or maybe something happened to him on the way. Or…'

The crowd had given up throwing things at Pontis on account of his altitude. A group of sailors dived into the water and swam toward the whale.

'Let's get out of here,' said Varia.

Pontis turned away from the harbor. Still clutching the cable, he flew east into the endless ocean. The people cursed at him as he went, their voices dissolving with distance. The whale turned its net, skimming across the surface of the water, the green glow of the coat reflected in its eye like a small flame.

#

A few miles out at sea, Pontis lowered the whale into the water. It flexed against the unyielding net, its long body bent at a sharp angle.

Pontis dropped the fifty feet into the sea. The moment before his head submerged, a transparent film closed around the front of the hood, as thin as a pane of glass. As he sunk down beside the whale he found that the inside of his hood remained dry. He took a tentative breath. He could breathe.

Did you do this? he thought.

'No,' said Varia. 'It has a slew of automatic programs. Like when Hummel tried to draw your blood and it busted Alef's arm. I don't have control over those things. It's set to protect you even if for some reason I can't.'

Why wouldn't you be able to protect me? Pontis thought, swimming alongside the whale, which rolled onto its back and strained against the net.

Varia did not respond.

Pontis set about tearing the net apart. It shredded in his hands, and within seconds he managed to free the whale, and released the net, which drifted downward into the dark ocean, vanishing in the gloom.

The whale rose to the surface, breaching its blowhole and huffing a geyser of water into the air. Then it rotated until one of its massive eyes settled on Pontis.

Pontis placed his hand on the whale's skin, slimy in the water.

'Loooooooooooooooove…' the whale's deep voice swam into Pontis's ears. 'Yooooooouuuuuuuuu…'

Pontis nodded. I love you, too, he thought.

The whale jostled slightly and then drifted gently away, and with a single powerful kick of its massive tail propelled itself downward into the deep, and vanished.

Pontis rose out of the water. The transparent film retracted, and the cool ocean air plated his face. He flew up a hundred feet over the surface and hovered there, looking to the west. On the horizon: a dark discoloration of the town of Tecca.

They're just gonna go out and catch another one, Pontis thought.

'They already are,' said Varia. 'I can see them. The boat is leaving the harbor. Everyone is angry.'

Should we stop them?

'We can't,' said Varia quietly. 'Even with all the power in this thing, there are some things more powerful still. There is nothing we can do without hurting them—and even then it wouldn't change their minds.'

Pontis considered this. Should we go looking for Mondagreen? he thought. Maybe he's still in Arborvale?

'I don't think so,' said Varia. 'But I think that wherever he is, he's taking care of the girl. At least I want to think that.'

But the girl… Pontis thought.

'We'll find her,' Varia said. 'But first we need to get to Osseon. Hobbes Nicole Penate will tell us what happens next.'

Pontis turned to the north. Osseon is on the coast, right? he thought.

'Yes,' said Varia. 'We can just follow the shore.'

The sun drifted halfway between the pinnacle of the sky and the horizon. Pontis flew with the sun and the coast to his left. To the right, the ocean stretched. Pontis wondered if he would ever get to see what lay on its other side.

He tucked his arms and pressed forward. It was that simple to accelerate. Press forward. Will yourself forward. Be lighter than the air. His eyes watered and he glanced down at the rushing water, a wash of blue and gray. When he looked back up, he discovered that the transparent film had closed over the hood, protecting his eyes from the blistering wind.

'Go, lovey-boy!' Varia cheered. 'Go!'

Pontis pressed further. The coat streamlined around him, elongating, as he cut through the air. His heart thudded, dazzled by the immense speed. Pontis's view narrowed into a single focused point in his trajectory. He willed himself to go even faster, his blood coursing through his veins, Varia laughing in his ear.

There was a flash of white—smoke it looked like, though it came and went too fast to be sure—and then, far behind him—perhaps many miles—a clap of thunder from the clear sky.

A tall, dark shape appeared on the coast ahead. Pontis released his forward momentum as the city of Osseon reared, still many miles ahead. It was distinct and unmistakable. Pontis marveled at the sheer height of the single building that rose from its center.

Malory's palace. It was so tall that the clouds caught on its pinnacle, shredding as they hastened across the sky.

The transparent film retracted. It was perfect timing, because the abrupt deceleration suddenly caught up with Pontis, and he keeled forward, his head spinning, and vomited into the sea.

Varia laughed and laughed.