And then came the day of the storm. It had been predicted by the retired mariners along the quayside for some time: a tempest of notable ferocity that would have all manner of deepsea fish rising in shoals from their trenches. For those enterprising fisherman willing to risk their nets, their boats, and very possibly their lives in open waters, a haul of prodigious proportions was predicted.
Phoebe was wanning herself in front of the kitchen fire when the winds started to rise, the children sitting eating stew nearby, their mother kneading bread.
"I hear a window slamming," Jarrieffa said, as the first rain pattered on the kitchen sill, and hurried away to close it.
Phoebe stared into the flames, while the gusts whooped and howled in the chimney. It would be quite a spectacle down by the Dock Road, she suspected. Ships tossing at anchor and the sea throwing itself against the harbor wall. Who knew what a storm like this would drive up onto the shore?
She rose as she formed the thought. Who knew indeed?
"Jarrieffa?" she yelled, as she fetched her coat from the closet.
"Jarrieffa! I'm going out!"
The woman was coming down the stairs now, a look of concern on her face.
"In this weather?" she said.
"Don't worry. I'll be fine."
"Take Enko with you. It's cruel out there."
"No, Jarrieffa, I can stand a little rain. You just stay in the warm and bake your bread."
Still protesting that this was not a wise thing to be doing, Jarrieffa followed Phoebe to the door, and out onto the step.
"Go back inside," Phoebe told her. "I'll be back in a while."
Then she was off, into the deluge. It had cleared the streets as effectively as the lad. She encountered scarcely a soul as she made her way down through the warren of minor streets and back alleys that were by now as familiar to her feet as Main Street and Poppy Lane. The closer she got to the water, the less cover she had to shield her from the fury of the storm. By the time she reached the Dock Road she was leaning into the wind, and more than once had to grip a wall or railing to keep herself from being thrown off her feet.
The quayside and the decks of the ships were a good deal busier than the streets she'd come through, as crews labored to secure sails and lash down cargo. One of the single-masted vessels had slipped its mooring and as Phoebe watched it was dashed against the harbor wall. Its timbers splintered, and a number of its crew jumped into the water, which was frenzied. She didn't wait to see if the vessel sank, but hurried on, past the harbor and through the warehouse district adjacent to it, out onto the shore. The waves were tall and thunderous, the air so thick with spray and rain she could not see more than a dozen yards ahead of her. But the grim fury of the scene suited her mood. She stumbled over the dark, stick rocks, daring the waters to reach high enough to claim her, yelling Joe's name as she went. The gale snatched the syllable from her lips, of course, but she strode on doggedly, her tears mingling with the rain and the spume off the dream-sea.
At last her fatigue and her despair overcame her. She sank down onto the stones, soaked to the skin, her throat too hoarse and lungs too raw to call his name again.
Her extremities were numb with cold, her head throbbing. She raised her hands to her mouth to warm her fingers with her breath, and was thinking that if she didn't move soon she might very well freeze to death when she caught sight of a figure in the mist further along the beach. Somebody was approaching her. A man, his few clothes less than rags, his body a strange compendium of forms and hues. In places he was purplish in color, his skin scaly. In others he had small patches of almost silvery skin. But the core of him-die flesh around his eyes and his mouth, down his neck and across his chest and belly-was black. She started to rise, the name she had been yelling to the wind too much for her astonished lips'
It didn't matter. He had seen her; seen her with the eyes she herself had dreamed into being. He halted now, a few yards from her, a tiny smile on his face.
She could not hear his voice@e waves were too loud-but she knew the shape of her name when he spoke it.
"Phoebe... ?" Tentatively, she approached him, halving the distance between them, but not yet coming within reach of his arms. She was just a little afraid. Perhaps the rumors of murderous intent were true. If not, where had he found the pieces of flesh to finish his body?
"It is you, isn't it?" he said. She was close enough to catch his words now.
"It's me," she said.
"I thought maybe I'd lost my mind. Maybe I'd imagined it all."
"No," she said. "I dreamed you here, Joe."
Now it was he who approached, looking down at his hands. "You certainly put some flesh on me," he said. "But the spirit@' one of those hands went to his chesrt, "what's in here-that's me. The Joe you found out in the weeds."
"I was certain I dreamed you."
"You did. And I heard. And I came. But I'm not some fantasy, Phoebe. This is Joe." "So what happened to you?" she said. "Where did-2' "The rest of me come from?"
"Yes."
Joe turned his gaze towards the water. "Me 'shu. The spirit-pilots." Phoebe remembered Musnakaff s short lesson on that subject well enough: Pieces of the Creator, he'd said, or not. "I threw myself into the water, hoping I'd drown, but they found me. Surrounded me. Dreamed the rest of me into being." He raised his hand for her scrutiny. "As you can see," he said, "I think they put a little of their own nature into me while they were doing it." The limb was more strangely f@hioned than she'd first realized; the fingers webbed, the skin full of subtle ripples. "Does it offend you?"
"Lord, no... " she said. "I'm just grateful to have you back."
Now at last, she opened her arms and went to him. He gathered her to his body, which was warm despite the rain and spray, his embrace as fierce as hers.
"I still can't quite believe you followed me," he murmured.
"What else was I going to do?" she replied.
"You know there's no way back, don't you?"
"Why would we want to go?" she said.
they stayed there on the shore for a long while, talking sometimes, but mostly just cradling one another. they didn't make love. That was for another day. For many days, in fact. Now, just embraces, just kisses, just tenderness, until the storm had exhausted itself.
When they returned along the quay, several hours later, the heavens clearing, the air pristine, scarcely a gaze was turned in their direction. People were too busy. There were damaged hulls to be repaired, torn sails to be mended, scattered cargoes to be gathered up and restowed.
And for those audacious fishermen who'd dared the violence of the storm, and returned unharmed, prayers offered up on the quayside as the boats were unloaded. Prayers of thanks for their survival and for the dream-sea's largesse. The prophets who'd predicted the tempest had been proved correct: The frenzied waters had indeed thrown up an unprecedented catch.
While the lovers wandered unnoticed to the house on the hill (where they would with time, come to a certain notoriety), the contents of the nets were heaped on the dock. Up out of Quiddity, from its unfathomed places, had come creatures strange even to the fisherinen's eyes. they were like things made in the first days of the world, some of them; others like the scrawlings of an infant on a wall. A few were featureless, many more bright with colors that had no name. Some flickered with their own luminescence, even in the daylight. Only the
'shu were thrown back. The rest were sorted, put in baskets, and carried up to the fish-market where a crowd had already gathered in anticipation of this bounty. Even the ugliest, the least of the infant's scrawls, would nourish somebody. Nothing would be wasted; nothing lost.