Gern Harbour occupied a deep-water cove between two black-stone headlands. Seen from the sea, it looked like a bowl gouged from the cliff by some giant of the north.
The harbour lay at the bottom of the bowl. Stone houses climbed its walls—the north used no red tile, but roofed its houses in black slate, layer upon layer like scales, heavy enough to withstand eight months of northerly wind each year. The Evening Bell entered at dusk. Smoke rose from every chimney, and the mingled smell of fish broth and peat came across the sea wind and engulfed the ship.
Mick leaned over the rail and drew an emphatic breath through his nose. "Brother, this place smells even more lived-in than Kandelburg."
"The north is cold." Old Bann stood beside him, the throat of a man returning after eleven years drawn tight. "The colder the place, the hotter the fire."
The harbour was large, but more than half its berths stood empty. Morsen registered their port of origin and received a berth halfway across the bay from the three crimson vessels of the Floating Island Theatre. The theatre ships had lain in Gern Harbour for five days. Their ornamental sails were raised again, and the gold lettering on their hulls had been freshly painted, brighter than in Kandelburg:
FINAL CURTAIN SEASON · FIRST PRODUCTION: NEVER HOMEWARD
SPECIAL PRESENTATION: HOME WITH A FULL HOLD
ONE NIGHT ONLY · THE FIFTEENTH OF THIS MONTH
"Home with a Full Hold." Standing at the bow, Sharlo read the title twice.
He had already experienced Never Homeward. These words sounded like its opposite.
The Wall of the Awaited stood at the centre of the harbour, beside the harbour-dues office: an old black-stone wall more than ten feet high and some hundred and fifty feet long.
Sharlo and the others went ashore first of all to accompany Old Bann to that wall.
Brass plaques covered it. Each was the size of a palm. Verdigris mottled the oldest, their lettering nearly worn smooth; the newest shone yellow, the chisel marks still bright. Every plaque bore one name with a smaller line beneath for the vessel and year. By Sharlo's rough count, more than two thousand had been nailed to the wall.
More than two thousand people who had gone to sea and not returned.
Stone troughs at the foot of the wall held extinguished torches. The paving before it had been polished by kneeling. Two shallow furrows extended for the wall's entire length—worn by generation after generation across hundreds of years.
Old Bann found his father's plaque in the western section.
The brass was neither old nor new. It read: BANTSON. FISHING VESSEL GULL. NEW CALENDAR 1318.
The old sailor stood before it for a very long time. He wiped both hands again and again against his trouser seams before reaching out and rubbing his father's name with one fingertip. Then this man who had mended sails in force-ten gales, whose knife-cut wrinkles were filled with salt, dropped heavily into the two furrows, pressed his forehead to the cold foot of the wall, and spoke in a muffled voice.
"Pa, I'm home. I'm late."
The wall was long. Old Bann was not the only person kneeling beneath it.
Yet as Sharlo surveyed the Wall of the Awaited, his heart sank by degrees. Today was the thirteenth. The day after tomorrow was the fifteenth, when, according to Old Bann, the entire harbour should gather beneath the wall to sing The Waiting-for-the-Boat Song and read the names. But half the torch sockets stood empty. Ash lay in the kneeling furrows. On the eastern section, verdigris had blackened upon dozens of plaques; no one had polished them in a long time.
An old woman carrying a fish basket hurried past without so much as looking at the wall.
At the far end of the harbour, by contrast, the Floating Island Theatre seethed with voices.
Someone recognised Old Bann while he still knelt at the wall.
It was a man of about his own age carrying a bundle of nets. He passed, retraced several steps, and squinted a long time before flinging his nets to the ground. "Bann? Bantson's Bann?!"
Old Bann looked around. Two men in their fifties stared at each other beneath the wall, then embraced and pounded each other's backs until they boomed. The other man was Saul, Old Bann's childhood neighbour. Their fathers had sailed on the same ship. When the Gull sank, Saul's father was aboard as well—their two plaques were nailed together upon the wall.
"Eleven years, you wave-cursed bastard!" When Saul finished pounding him, his eyes were scarlet. "First and fifteenth, I've read your father's name! Every time I read mine, I read yours for you—I've twisted my tongue doing it, and you, not even a shadow of you!"
"I had no face to return." Old Bann lowered his head. "Lost Pa to the sea my first year, and I—"
"Bollocks." Saul spat. "The sea takes a man. What's that to do with his son? Two thousand names on this wall—which one is his children's fault?" After the oath, he abruptly lowered his voice, looked around, and drew a grey-and-gold ticket from his coat. "You've come back at the right time. The fifteenth... Have you heard of the great play on the theatre ships?"
Old Bann looked at the ticket but did not take it.
"Every house got one." Saul held the ticket in a hand that had hauled nets all its life. It was trembling. "Bann, I'll speak from the heart. My pa sank eleven years ago, and I've read his name for eleven years. I don't know if he's heard one call of it. But the theatre people say that on the fifteenth, he can come back. He can sit at my table and drink one bowl of broth my wife has made."
"I only want to ask him one thing." Saul's voice had gone hoarse. "One thing. Pa, when the wave came that day, did it hurt? After I ask, if they want this heart of mine that's waited eleven years, they can have it. Isn't waiting a torment too? I've endured eleven years. I've had enough."
Old Bann opened his mouth but found no words.
For inside his coat lay an identical ticket. It had been delivered to the ship on the day after they entered harbour, addressed to him. Inside the folder was a line in an elegant typeface: "For the personal attention of Bantson's son. Your honoured father is on the roll."
Your honoured father is on the roll.
His father too waited upon that production's "roll" to take the stage on the night of the fifteenth.
Viola and Mick spent half a day establishing the facts.
"Home with a Full Hold. Premiere on the fifteenth. One performance only." In the Evening Bell's chart room, Viola opened her register. "Eighteen hundred tickets have been distributed, almost one to every household in the harbour. No price appears. Only one line—"
She placed a ticket on the table. Grey paper, gold lettering:
"Admit one. Reunite with your loved one for one night. When the house clears, only one payment will be collected: the heart with which you have waited for them."
"Unlike Kandelburg, they have printed the price plainly upon the ticket," Viola said. "No concealment."
"Because the merchandise is stronger." Sharlo stared at the line. "In Kandelburg, they sold relief from sorrow. Here, they sell reunion. Relief must be coaxed upon a buyer. Reunion—people fight to buy."
"Three days ago, they held a 'preview,'" Viola said, turning a page. "Only one household was invited. Mrs. Horda of the eastern harbour. Her husband served aboard the Gull with Old Bann's father and sank eleven years ago. After the preview, the story crossed the harbour in one night."
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"What did she see?"
"Her husband." Viola closed the register. "We visited her this afternoon. Hear it from her."
Mrs. Horda's home stood in the third row of the eastern harbour, a little house of black stone. The blue paint upon its wooden door was fresh—three days old, Viola said. Not a speck of dust lay inside. Fish broth simmered on the stove. Three sets of bowls and chopsticks stood upon the table.
Three. Only she and a son employed by the harbour office lived there.
"It was him. Don't try to persuade me. I know what you mean to say. A clerk from the harbour office came and said the same—but I tell you, it was him." Mrs. Horda sat before the stove, a woman in her fifties with eyes frighteningly bright. "A woman shares nineteen years with a man. Let eleven pass, and the moment he enters, she knows him. He stamped his feet first—northern men all stamp when they come inside, but he stamps three times, left foot first. Nineteen years, always the left."
"He sat in this chair." She held the empty chair beside her. Her hand trembled, but her voice held a strange, radiant certainty. "He said, Marta, the broth's too salty. He always complained my broth was salty. He said he'd drifted at sea for eleven years and couldn't come home. Now the theatre company's great ships had a way of salvaging people who'd lost their way. He said the whole harbour could be reunited on the fifteenth—and he said..."
Tears ran down her face, yet she smiled.
"He said, don't wait for me any longer. Lay down the heart that waits and give it to the company to keep. Once you lay it down, I can come home often."
After leaving Mrs. Horda's house, they sat for a quarter hour in the fish-broth tavern by the harbour.
A northern fish-broth tavern was the whole harbour's ear. A cauldron ten feet across simmered day and night; everyone entering, high or low, received one bowl of broth and a piece of black bread and sat at a long table. The room was seven-tenths full, and every conversation concerned the same thing.
"I'm going. My ma died three years ago, and I never saw her at the end. Whatever the price, I'm going."
"The price? Do you know what it means? Give away your waiting—and you no longer wait. Have you seen a person who doesn't wait? Marta Horda used to come to the docks whenever a ship entered, just to look once. Three ships came in yesterday, and she never opened her door."
"She's laid her heart down! Isn't that good? Is torment better?"
"Pah. Laid it down?" A white-bearded old man in the corner thumped his bowl upon the table, and the whole tavern went still for half a beat. Sharlo recognised his clothes—the grey robe of the Stillwater Society, worn by the old deacon of the local Stillwater Society lodge. "I have conducted funerals all my life and recited ferry tickets all my life. I tell you that bit of waiting in the heart is not a torture. It is the line that moors a soul. Cut it loose and the vessel moves lightly—but a light vessel drifts away."
"You think only of having him return for one night." The old deacon looked around the tavern, his voice deepening. "Why not consider this: once you surrender your waiting, who will draw the one at sea home thereafter?"
For a while, the tavern was quiet. Some lowered their heads to drink their broth. Others pressed tickets deeper into their coats.
A young fisherwoman murmured, "But Deacon, none of what you say can be seen or touched. Mrs. Horda truly saw someone aboard the theatre ship..."
The old deacon opened his mouth and found no answer. He sank back onto his bench and raised his bowl, his hand shaking until the broth spilled.
Invisible rules had lost to visible reunion. Three thousand years of reason could not prevail against one incense-stick's time of stamping feet.
Sharlo watched from beginning to end without speaking. On his way out, he paused beside the old deacon's table, laid down several copper tinders, and murmured, "Deacon, do not leave the foot of the wall empty on the fifteenth. Set aside some torches. Someone will come to light them."
The old deacon raised his head and stared blankly at this young man from another town.
No one spoke on the way back to the ship. At the Wall of the Awaited, Sharlo stopped.
"Viola," he said. "You tested her words throughout."
"I did." Viola's voice was flatter than usual, a sign that she held something down. "Not one lie. She truly saw him, truly believed, truly rejoiced. Not a flicker in her." She paused. "But Sharlo, one point is wrong. I checked it three times."
"Every word spoken by the 'husband' she described—the stamping, the salty broth, drifting at sea—corresponded perfectly to her memory." Viola raised her eyes. "Too perfectly. Husband and wife for nineteen years, reunited after eleven: a living man would not speak like that. Living people make mistakes. He would remember one thing wrongly, mention something she did not know, or say one sentence she had not expected. From the instant this 'husband' entered until he left, he did not speak one word that was not already inside her heart."
"He was a mirror," Viola said. "She faced her own memory and enjoyed one incense-stick's reunion."
Sharlo nodded. He remembered the new amber line above Mrs. Horda's head that afternoon, seeming scarcely dry:
【She will wait no longer.】
"The Scarlet Queen's craft," he said softly. "The one love unmakes. Her afterglow excels at precisely this—moulding the love in a human heart into something visible and tangible. I saw it beneath the chandelier at the Golden Iris."
"When Bassoon escaped Kandelburg with that fragment of the crown in his arms—two years. He has fed it inside his theatre company and raised it into a new trick."
"One incense-stick's reunion in payment for a heart that has waited eleven years." Sharlo looked at the black-stone wall thick with brass plaques in the dusk. "No one in Gern Harbour can refuse this bargain. In their place, I could not refuse it either."
"Then how do we break it?" Mick asked softly. "Brother, this time he isn't selling forgetting. He's making their longing come true."
Sharlo did not answer at once.
That night, he went to the stern and related every detail to the Old Boatman.
The old spirit-ferryman heard him out and remained silent for a long time. Blue-green light fell across a face furrowed like a dry riverbed. Not one line moved.
"Young sir," he said at last, "do you know by what road the passengers of a wreck now return home?"
"You saw it yourself—the night boat." The Old Boatman said, "The river seeped into the sea and brought its rules with it. The drowned possess the right of crossing. For the first time in three thousand years, people who die at sea possess a road home. The road has only just opened and the boats only just begun to run. It is crowded with passengers who have drifted for years, for decades."
"What lets them find their homes?" The old spirit-ferryman's voice dropped like water passing over stone. "Remembrance. When someone at home speaks a traveller's name, one stage of his road lights before him. On the first and fifteenth, all Gern Harbour reads names beneath this wall. Did you think that was a ceremony with which the living comforted themselves? Those names are travel warrants for the two thousand passengers. This wall is the brightest lighthouse in the North Sea—it shines not for ships, but for souls."
Cold slowly penetrated Sharlo's back.
"On the fifteenth, the entire harbour enters the theatre, reunites with counterfeits, and surrenders its waiting," he said slowly. "No one remains beneath the wall to sing or read the names. There will be no more gatherings on the first and fifteenth—their hearts have all been laid down."
"The lighthouse goes out," the Old Boatman said. "Two thousand passengers on the road. Their road goes dark."
"That is not the cruellest part." The old spirit-ferryman looked up, and for the first time, fire showed in his clouded eyes. "The cruellest part is the hour. For three thousand years, those passengers possessed no road. That was one thing—the souls who abandoned hope sank to the seabed and knew no suffering. Now the road has just opened. Every household's passenger is travelling. Every one is hurrying home—and midway there, the lamp at home goes out."
"Do you know what becomes of a soul that has travelled eleven years, reaches its own door, and finds no one waiting?"
Sharlo remembered the three settings on Mrs. Horda's table. He remembered the "husband" who even began stamping with his left foot, seated in the true husband's chair, persuading the man's wife to surrender her waiting.
"What becomes of it?" he heard himself ask.
"It becomes fog upon the sea," the Old Boatman said, one word at a time. "Our profession has an old saying—fog is not water vapour. Fog is made of souls that have reached the door of home and cannot get in."
"Now you know why the fog of the North Sea thickens every year."
Early the following morning, before breakfast had been served aboard the Evening Bell, a visitor came up the gangplank.
Manager Vaal, top hat held properly in both hands, satin waistcoat immaculate, with two attendants behind him carrying gift boxes.
"Mr. Vane." He bowed with a pleasant smile. "The troupe master requests your presence. The master says that in Kandelburg, discourtesy was his: he treated you as an opponent. He would not dare do so in this engagement. This time, the master invites you as a connoisseur."
"A connoisseur?"
"The master's own words. I have not dared alter one." Vaal cleared his throat. "'I invite Mr. Vane to attend the performance on the fifteenth. Front row. No designs, no traps, and not one hair taken from the gentleman's head. I ask only that he watch—and when it is done, tell me which one word in Home with a Full Hold he finds false.'"
"'Two years ago at the Golden Iris, he dismantled my play. He was right, and I acknowledge it. He lit the lamps at Kandelburg. He did it well, and I acknowledge that too. In those two engagements, some part of the merchandise I sold was false.'"
Manager Vaal straightened, the respectable smile upon his oiled face unchanged.
"'But this engagement is different. Here, I offer true reunion and collect a price freely paid. One willing to give and one willing to take. Fair dealing to young and old.'"
"'I should like to ask Mr. Curtainbreaker—by what means will he dismantle a bargain that leaves every party happy?'"
For a moment, the deck was silent. Sea wind trembled the tassel of Manager Vaal's hat.
"Tell your troupe master," Sharlo said, "that I accept his ticket and will see the play. Front row it is."
Vaal bowed himself away. When the gangplank rose, Mick could contain himself no longer. "Brother, you're really going? He's certain you can't dismantle it—everyone happy, both parties willing, and even Sister Viola couldn't find one lie..."
"He is not wrong. There is no false word in this play." Sharlo looked across half the harbour at the three crimson ships. Slowly, he said, "But Mick, there is an omission in his claim. He says one willing to give and one willing to take. Only the living have consented to this bargain."
"No one asked the two thousand people making their way home whether they consent."
"He invites me to watch a play." Sharlo turned toward his cabin. "Very well. I shall send an invitation of my own—to several guests who cannot watch a play, but can hear a song."