In her lonely bed in Everville, Phoebe had finally drifted to sleep on a pillow damp with her tears, and had begun to dream. Of Joe, of course. At least of his presence if not his flesh and blood. She drifted in a misty place, knowing he was not that far from her, but unable to see him. She tried to call to him, but her voice was smothered by the mist. She tried again, and again, and her efforts were rewarded after a time. The syllable seemed to divide the mist as it went from her, seeking him out in this pale nowhere.
She didn't let up. She kept calling, over and over.
"Joe... Joe... Joe..
Sprawled asleep in the cabin of The Fanacapan, Joe heard somebody calling his name. He almost stirred, thinking the summons was coming from somewhere in the waking world, but as soon as he began to float up out of his slumbers, the call became more remote, so he let the weight of his fatigue carry him back down into dreams.
The voice came again and this time he recognized it.
Phoebe! It was Phoebe. She was trying to find him. He started to reply to her, but before he could do so she called out to him again.
"Where are you, Joe?" she said. "I'm here," he said. "I can hear you. Can you hear me?"
"Oh my God," she gasped, plainly astonished that this was actually happening. "Is that really you?"
"It's really me."
"Where are you?"
"I'm on a ship."
On a ship? she thought. What the hell was he doing on a ship? Had he fled to Portland and hopped the first cargo vessel out?
"You've left me," she said.
"No, I haven't. I swear."
"That's easy to say-" she murmured, her voice thickening with tears,
"I'm on my own, Joe-"
"Don't cry."
"And I'm afraid-"
"Listen to me," he said softly. "Are you dreaming?"
She had to think about this for a moment. "Yes," she said. "I'm dreaming." "Then maybe we're not that far apart," he said. "Maybe we can find each other."
"Where?"
"In the sea. In the dream-sea."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Hold on," he said. "Just hold on to my voice. I'll lead you here."
He didn't dare wake. If he woke, the contact between them would surely be broken, and she'd despair (she was already close to that; he could hear it in her voice) and perhaps give up on ever finding him again. He had to walk a very narrow path; the path that lay between the state of dreaming, which was one of forgetfulness, and the waking world, where he would lose contact with her. He had to somehow find his way across the solid boards of this solid boat without rising from slumber to do so, and plunge into the waters of Quiddity, where perhaps the paradox of dreaming with his eyes open would be countenanced and he could call her to him.
"Joe?" "Just wait for me@'he murmured.
"I can't. I'm going crazy."
"No you're not. It's just that things are stranger than we ever thought."
"I'm afraid-"
"Don't be."
"I'm afraid I'm going to die and I'll never see you again."
"You'll see me. Just hold on, Phoebe. You'll see me."
He felt the cabin door brush against his arm; felt the steps up into the deck beneath his feet. At the top, he stumbled, and his eyes might have flickered open, but that by chance she called to him, and her voice anchored him; kept him in a sweet sleep.
He turned to his right. Walked two, three, four strides until he felt the side of the boat against his shins. Then he threw himself overboard.
The water was cold, the shock of it slapped him into wakefulness. He opened his eyes to see the weeds around him like a swaying thicket, its tangle LIFE with fish, most of them no larger than those he'd swallowed whole on the shore. Cursing his consciousness, he looked up towards the surface, and as he did so heard Phoebe again, calling him.
"Joe-?" she said, her voice no longer despairing, but light; almost excited.
He caught hold of the knotted weed around him, so as not to float to the surface. "I'm here," he thought. "Can you hear me?"
There was no answer at first, and he feared her call had been the remnants of their previous contact. But no. She spoke again, softly.
"I can hear you." It was as though her voice was in the very water around him. The syllables seemed to caress his face.
"Stay where you are," she said.
"I'm not going anywhere," he replied. It seemed he had no need of breath; or rather that the waters were supplying him with air through his skin. He felt no ache in his chest; no panic. Simply exhilaration. He turned himself around in the water, parting the strands of weed to look for her. The fish had no fear of him. they darted around his face, and brushed against his back and belly; they played between his legs. And then, out of the tangle to his right, a form he knew. Not Phoebe, but a Zehrapushu, a spirit pilot, its golden gaze fixed upon him. He gave up turning a moment, in order to let it see him properly. It scooted around him once, clockwise, then reversed its direction and did the same again, always coming to a perfect hovering halt in front of his face.
It knew him. He was certain of it. The way its huge eye tilted in its socket, scanning his face; the way it came close enough to brush his cheek with its tentacles, fearlessly; the way it flirted with his fingers, as though encouraging them to caress it: all were signs of familiarity. And if this was not the same 'shu he'd cradled on the shore (and how many billion to one was that chance?) then he had to assume that for all Noah's misrepresentations, he'd been telling th ' e truth on the subject of 'shu. they had not many minds, but one, and this individual knew him because it had seen him through its brother or sister's eyes.
Suddenly, it darted away. He watched it go, weaving through the thicket of weeds, and as it disappeared from sight, the tangle around him convulsed, and he heard Phoebe say his name again, not remotely this time, but almost like a whisper in his ear. He turned his head to the left, and There he was, just a few feet from her, floating in the forested water, looking at her. Even now, she wasn't sure how she'd got here. One moment she'd been lost in a mist, hearing Joe's voice but unable to reach him; the next she'd been naked and tumbling down the bank of Unger's Creek. The creek was running high and fast, and in the grip of its water she was carried away. She'd been vaguely aware that this was her mind's prosaic creation; its way of supplying pictures to accompany the journey her spirit was taking. But even as she'd grasped that slippery notion, the landscape had receded around her, the sky overhead becoming vast and strange, and Unger's Creek had disappeared, delivering her into far deeper waters.
Down she went, down, down into the dream-sea. And though she felt its currents caress her and saw its shoals part like shimmering veils to let her pass, and so knew she wasn't imagining this, she didn't fear that she'd drown. The laws that bound her body in the world she'd left had no authority here. She moved with exquisite case, passing over a landscape whose mysteries she could not begin to fathom, the most puzzling of which lay waiting for her at the end of the journey in the person of the man she'd last seen hobbling out of a door in Everville.
"It's really you," she said, opening her arms to him.
He swam to meet her, his voice in her head, the way it had been from the beginning of this strange journey. "Yes," he said, "it's really me," and held her tight.
"You said you were on a ship."
He directed her gaze up towards the dark shadow overhead. "That's it," he said.
"Can I go with you?" she asked him, knowing as she spoke what the answer would be. "You're dreaming this," he said. "When you wake up-"