⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ °• ☼ CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE GATEWAY TO NOTHING ☾ •°⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

•°•☆•°•

WIND TOUSLED WITH the cloth sails, and the sound of the ship's hull plunging through waves was oddly comforting, sea-salt glistening the air. Nesaela sat cross-legged at the deck, fingers gently rubbing the bruises on her aching skin, and trying to soothe out her jarred ankles. Her lips were cracked and dry, and her eyes rimmed with red, not yet used to the salty breeze. As she tried to use a lamp's heat to fade the purple splotches—a technique her mother had taught her—the wind blew her matted hair in front of her face and she exasperatedly pushed it back. The day had been long and tiring, and though she didn't feel sickened from the rocking of the boat, she'd grown worn not seeing any land on the horizon. She didn't expect to see any anytime soon.

          Only the day before she'd been in a warm palace with sunlit skies and a bedroom full of roses. She'd been writing melancholic poetry in pages the world would never see, and daydreaming of a dragon to carry her away. Now, she was getting used to the feeling of a ship's wooden floor beneath her feet, and the roses that had been in her bedroom would wither and die, and her book of poetry would rot in the salt air. She wet her cracked lips with her tongue and stood, trying to calm her tossing hair.

          Jeran was stationed at the ship's helm, calmly guiding the boat's wheel with absent-minded hands as he watched the rushing black waves. As she approached light-footed, he looked over at her. "How are the bruises, Your Highness?" he asked her, letting his hands stray from the wheel.

          Nessie's hands flitted to the markings around her throat. "Getting better, I hope. The heat seems to have dulled the pain." She rolled the sleeves on her male tunic down again, to cover the rest of the splotches. "How's the sea looking now, Ser?" she asked as she touched her face, skin dry.

          "As fickle as ever," Jeran replied. "And I'm no Ser, Your Highness," he repeated, "only a sea captain."

          She did not respond to his words, eyes set on the rolling waves of the horizon. "I see no storms," she observed. The sky was free of clouds, and the sun they followed was lowering on the horizon. The air was becoming colder where it fleeted along her skin.

          Jeran nodded, following Nesaela's gaze across the curve of the sky. "The Gods have graced us today. Clear weather, and a clear path to our destination, if I'm not mistaken. They're wishing you a safe journey, Your Highness."

          The young girl pressed her lips in a straight line, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Her fingers scratched shards of wood off the bannister separating her from the rushing, swallowing water below. She said nothing, and watched as her fingernail chipped away at the paint.

          The captain noticed her silence and regarded it with knowledgeable weathered eyes. After a moment, he made a noise of remembrance, and pulled a leather-bound book from his jacket's inner pocket. The man held it up to her, so when she tore her gaze away from her work on the bannister, she could read the faded title. It was scribbled with harsh letters that said: 'THE CONTENTS OF THE KNOW WORLDS: AN ACCOUNT OF TRAVELLERS.'

          "Here you are, Your Highness." Jeran handed it to her, which she grasped with aching hands. He flipped it open to a page that read 'ULTHOS - EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD'. The page was preceded with a scrawling sketch of a temple intertwined with large vines as thick as a man. "This is where I'm taking you. Keep it, you're going to need it."

          Nesaela's bright eyes scanned across the page momentarily. Beneath the sketch lay the first lines about the lands which she was going to.

'Little is known to the world about Ulthos - it remains an unknown continent as much. Its size nor vastness is recorded, and its inhabitants are a mystery to most. It is a land of black cliffs, twisting forests and sucking swamps, surrounded on all sides by the deep sea.'

          The young girl turned her gaze to Jeran, silver-white hair falling across her face. "Thank you, Ser," Nesaela said, and held the thick book against her chest.

          "That's alright," he told her, eyes turned to the seas ahead. "You read that now. Ulthos is the farthest place from the Seven Kingdoms anyone can get. I hear it's a savage place, but the Lannisters nor the Baratheons won't come looking for you there." He turned his hands to steer the oar. The faded sail of a three headed dragon whipped in the wind, dulled from the salt and wind of the sea. "And by the Seven, if there's anyone who can survive a place like that, it's you, Your Highness."

          A smile quirked her lips, and she looked downwards bashfully. He thought she was strong. She didn't think anyone had ever thought she was strong before. Nesaela tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and turned the book to the next page, each one filled with haunting, blotched illustrations of creatures which sent shivers down her spine. They seemed to move on the pages the longer she stared at them.

'First to be greeted by the traveller is vast cliffs of black rock that reach towards the sky. Almost impossible to scale save for a secret path, they bar the immediate entry of any ship. Curiously, the cliffsides span all the records of the Western-most side of the island, and no man has made it past the coastline.'

          The boat cut through the water like a blade through droplets of rain. It was a large enough ship to be manned by a crew of five, yet it was only them aboard, and they had to make do.

          "I'm sorry, Your Highness," Jeran had told her that evening, "but the boat is large. I'm afraid you'll need to help me sail it. A captain can't be the only crew handling his ship." He looked shamed at the proclamation, turning his face to stare at the sun, so he wouldn't have to look at her highborn eyes and be reminded of how this degraded her.

          "It's no issue," said Nessie, who thought she would be dead soon anyway—what god would want her to live?—and perhaps this would rid her of grief for a brief while, "I'm happy to help." She tied her hair back with cloth, up high so it hung away from her face in gentle curls: a style that was certainly not royal. She looked like a peasant girl, with sunburned skin and strange white hair. "Let me assist you."

'It is said that the inhabitants of Ulthos have positioned what are called the "Red Men" in this area, to scare off intruders from what lies beyond. The Red Men are named so, not for the colour of their skin, though it is said to be dark as coals, but rather their affinity for blood, which they coat themselves in, so it cakes their bodies. They are by NO MEANS to be interacted with.'

          She was a girl not made for harsh work in the sun: pale and pink and delicate, fingers only knowing the feel of bows and pens and sewing needles cradled by them. She had no calling for the pulling of ropes, or carrying planks of wood, or steering a wheel, and the music of their grace was lost on her.

          She'd ripped open her hands and burned her feet, and cut her fingertips on cooking knives, and whipped her eyes with salty sea water, and twisted her ankle jumping from mast-to-mast. She was like an infant—sheltered and untrained until suddenly she'd been tossed into the vast angry ocean. But no matter how many times her blood was spilled or tears were shed, Jeran was there to bandage her skin or hand her a handkerchief to mop them away.

          He taught Nessie how to raise the sails and climb up towards the crows' nest, or balance on the railing of the ship with the sea-spray in her face. She no longer burned her hands on ropes, but scrambled to throw nets to the fish when they paused in the rolling ocean, and scampered up masts like the squirrels she'd seen in the forest, to master the sails. Her hands and feet were calloused and worn, her face more speckled with sun and her hair paler than they had ever been before. If not for her silver hair and lilac eyes, she might have been mistaken for a commoner girl.

          She had gone from being a delicate princess to someone her father would have despised, had he not had already. Jeran was proud of her, she could tell, the way his eyes brightened whenever she scrambled to fix the sails in high winds without being asked. It warmed her—to receive the pride her father never gave her.

'Whilst the inner sanctums of Ulthos have never been explored, as no one has ever made it out alive, it is presumed they rage with jungle and desert. From what can be seen from the seas, temples and strange cities reign the land, and spikes littered with bodies stave travellers off from the tall cliffs. It is a land, which at its heart is unruly and evil.'

          Sometimes, storms raged and waves tumbled over them, and they were sure they would both drown. But they never did, and it always turned out alright. "The Gods are watching out for you," the captain said one dusk, as the stars began to bloom into the sky.

          "No, they're not," Nessie said, as she tied up the sails. "There are no Gods." Her hair had grown longer, and it was wind-tangled, tied in two tight braids over her shoulders. She'd gotten used to the men's trousers now, and had discovered a better-fitting shirt. The silk gown she'd worn when her family had been massacred had been carefully tucked away in the trunk of the bedroom she'd claimed, along with her only possessions she'd carried with her. She held her dragon's egg every night before she went to sleep: a reminder of the world that had been, and the one that would come. Her fingers would stroke methodically over the monotonous patterns and layers of scales, feeling each groove for its imperfection, and whispering old, lost poetry to it in the night.

          Occasionally Jeran encouraged her to practice archery on the ship's mast, when the weather was clear and there was no land for miles. He sat by the deck to watch her, as she carefully strung her brother's bow, wrapped in cloth to fend away the salt and ocean air. She would use only arrows she made herself—the ones her brother had gifted her were much too special to be lost overboard. Jeran would applaud when she struck centre, and implored her to try again whenever she missed, but always celebrated her nevertheless. She had forgotten what it felt like to have the curve of a bow in her bow-bent hands, and feel an arrow leave her fingertips and cut through the air.

          Partly, she thought it was the only thing which kept her sane.

          Other days, she would write poetry when her work on deck had been done. Often, Jeran asked her to read them to him, and so she did. The delicate language of poetry was lost on him: he never quite understood the winding topics or metaphorical phrases, yet he enjoyed it all the same. Unlike her father had been, he was eager to be shown her secret talents, and happy to get to know her as she truly was. They would sit around a table as they ate meals, discussing adventures and stories: he'd tell her of his thrilling travels across the seas; and she'd tell him the history of the world, and the Dance of Dragons, and Jenny of Oldstones, and the haunting tale of Danny Flint, the girl who pretended to be a boy at the Wall; and they'd laugh and jest together until the candles dimmed and burned to their wicks.

'The people of Ulthos are both few and many: for though little have been ever seen, their diversity is apparent. Some human, every shade beneath the sun, short or standing up to eight feet tall, are the few who have been seen hiding amongst the trees on the cliffs. Some monstrous, as if they had forgetten what it was like to be human, or never were before, with skin like serpents and teeth like a thousand needles, gliding through the sea or the land beyond the cliffside.'

          "Why are you so kind to me?" Nessie asked Jeran one night beneath the star-stretched sky. "Surely it would be much easier to sell me to the Baratheons, or hurt me. I don't understand." Her bruises had healed, and she held a glass lamp to her chest, glowing like it was filled with fireflies. Her hair was loose, flittering around her shoulders softly, and her eyes reflected the lamp's fire.

          He looked sad—his brown, weathered eyes sympathetic and mouth twisted into a frown which carved lines in his face. "Most men have forgotten the act of kindness. I am sorry you cannot understand the warmth of a stranger." He cast his face towards the roaring sea. "The truth is, I am kind because I see no need in being not. I was loyal to your family, to your mother and brothers. Now, I am loyal to you."

          She twisted her fingers in her hands, looking at him with the moonlight on her face. "Thank you, Ser," she said. "You are a good man."

          He smiled lopsidedly at her, somewhat pained, "I'm glad to hear so, Your Highness. There are not so many good men these days."

'Explorers call Ulthos "the Gateway To Nothing", for good reason, as though travellers have tried to circle the continent by the seas, they have never found the end, lest it be barred by fallen towers and cliffs and black rocks which jut from the sea to be the doom of sailors in the night. Men claim they hear sirens and beautiful women calling from the depths and spikes which threaten to run them through; see creatures of no possibility clambering up cliffsides; and hear the savage drumbeats and celebrations of a race undiscovered. The lost land, they call it, of monsters and creatures unknown.'

          "Yes," Nesaela agreed. "It seems many living things have stopped remembering how to be human." She watched the stars rock in changeless estate above them, blinking at her, and she tried to count them. Nessie drew in a soft breath and remembered her wishes of dancing with her mother and brothers in stone courtyards, flowers in the air. She squeezed her eyes shut, then, which were beginning to fill with salty tears, and held her chin high to stop them from falling. Silly children's tears, they will get me nowhere. From ashes I became, from ashes I will return, but right now I am alive, and I must not cry, for all the dead I carry with me.

          She bid away her tears, and clutched the fiery lamp closer to her chest, so she felt the burning heat a dim warmth against her heart.

•°•☆•°•

today's episode of game of thrones has me upset, and i'm actually physically mad at how one of my favourite characters was treated. catch me coming for d&d.

the updates from this book will be mostly random for the next while because my school-life is really busy at the moment, however i won't go long between updates because i LOVE writing this story and characters, and the newest season is inspiring me so much. i can't wait for nessie to get involved in it. 

sorry if there are mistakes, it's very late when i'm editing this.

word count: 2,537

07.05.19.