Ship of Magic

Vivacia spoke softly. If he had been standing, he might not have heard the words. But he was sitting, his palms flat to her deck, and so they rang through his soul. “Perhaps men are a trick Sa played on this world. ‘All other things I shall make vast and beautiful and true to themselves,’ perhaps he said. ‘Men alone shall be capable of being petty and vicious and self-destructive. And for my cruelest trick of all, I shall put among them men capable of seeing these things in themselves.’ Do you suppose that is what Sa did?”

“That is blasphemy,” Wintrow said fervently.

“Is it? Then how do you explain it? All the ugliness and viciousness that is the province of humanity, whence comes it?”

“Not from Sa. From ignorance of Sa. From separation from Sa. Time and again I have seen children brought to the monastery, boys and girls with no hint as to why they are there. Angry and afraid, many of them, at being sent forth from their homes at such a tender age. Within weeks, they blossom, they open to Sa's light and glory. In every single child, there is at least a spark of it. Not all stay; some are sent home, not all are suited to a life of service. But all of them are suited to being creations of light and thought and love. All of them.”

“Mm,” the ship mused. “Wintrow, it is good to hear you speak as yourself again.”

He permitted himself a small, bitter smile and rubbed at the knot of white flesh where his finger had been. It had become a habit, a small one that annoyed him whenever he became aware of it. As now. He folded his hands abruptly and asked, “Do I pity myself that much? And is it so obvious to all?”

“I am probably more sensitized to it than anyone else could be. Still. It is nice to jolt you out of it now and then.” Vivacia paused. “Will you be going ashore, do you think?”

“I doubt it.” Wintrow tried to keep the sulkiness from his voice. “I haven't touched shore since I ‘shamed’ my father in Cress.”

“I know,” the ship replied needlessly. “But, Wintrow, if you do go ashore, be careful of yourself.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, exactly. I think it is what your great-great-grandmother would have called a premonition.”

Vivacia sounded so unlike herself that Wintrow stood up and peered over the bow railing at her. She was looking up at him. Every time he thought he had become accustomed to her, there would be a moment like this. The light was unusually clear today, what Wintrow always thought of as an artist's light. Perhaps that accounted for how luminous she appeared to him. The green of her eyes, the rich gloss of her ebony hair, even her fine-grained skin shone with the best aspects of both polished wood and healthy flesh. She flushed pink to have him stare at her so, and in response to that he felt again the sudden collision of his love for her and his total benightedness as to what she truly was. It rocked him, as it always did. How could he feel this . . . passion, if he dared to use that word, for a creation of wood and magic? His love had no logical roots he could find . . . there was no prospect of marriage and children to share, no hunger for physical satiation in one another, there was no long history of shared experiences to account for the warmth and intimacy he felt with her. It made no sense.

“Is it so abhorrent to you?” she asked him in a whisper.

“It isn't you,” he tried to explain. “It is that this feeling is so unnatural. It is like something imposed on me rather than something I truly feel. Like a magic spell,” he added reluctantly. The followers of Sa did not deny the reality of magic. Wintrow had even seen it done, on rare occasions, small spells to cleanse a wound or spark a fire. But those were acts of a trained will coupled with a gift to have a physical effect. This sudden rush of emotion, triggered, as much as he could determine, solely by prolonged association, seemed to him something else entirely. He liked the Vivacia. He knew that, it made sense to him. He had many reasons to like the ship: she was beautiful and kind and sympathetic to him. She had intelligence, and watching her use that intelligence as she built chains of thought was a pleasure. She was like an untrained acolyte, open and willing to any teaching. Who would not like such a being? Logic told him he should like the ship, and he did. But that was separate from the wave of almost painful emotion that would sweep through him at odd moments like this. He would perceive her as more important than home and family, more important than his life at the monastery. At such moments, he could imagine no better end to his life than to fling himself flat upon her decks and be absorbed into her.

But no. The goal of a life lived well was to become one with Sa.

“You fear that I subvert the place of your god in your heart.”