Previously: Marie and Valentina headed out by boat towards an island in the middle of the lake, to find the plant that would cure Bahr. They were able to evade the lake’s monster and enter the cave on the lake.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but not as long as I'd thought it might. The walls glowed with fungi that almost looked like flowers, small pink petals dotting every surface. Valentina, a few steps ahead of me, gestured to the cave walls. "Here is your medicine. Take your time to pick nice ones, we may be here a while."
"But Bahr..."
"What good will you do him if you get eaten by a snake?" I nodded, reluctant, and started picking flowers off the wall. My duffel bag had a few pockets; I picked one with little in it and started filling it with the antidote.
Valentina looked over the cave walls, slowly picking a few pieces of the fungi. In between the lines of glowing vegetation were blue finger paintings, shaky lines and hand prints small and large. I supposed that if one went to the effort to get here, you might as well leave your mark.
"How much do I need?"
"As much as you can carry. Your husband won't be the last to use it." I nodded, letting the comment about ‘my husband’ pass by. Now wasn’t the time to bring it up.
"I am sorry, Valentina, if I've made things difficult for your family. I know you don't want to talk about Henrique..." I let the sentence trail off. She finished it with a short, bitter laugh.
"I'd love to talk about him."
"But you said..."
"I said they gossip about him. No one talks.” She glanced back at me, quickly, before turning back to the cave paintings. “What have you heard?"
"Not much. Luciene doesn't talk about it..."
"I've noticed."
"I just know it's his fault that you're all here."
"That's it?" Her back was turned to me and her voice was blank. "Do you know how hard it is to get blue paint here? Obtaining paint of any color is difficult, but blue is the worst; there's only a couple of blue flowers in the region. My father hunted for them, however, because blue is my favorite color. Did Luciene tell you that story?" She turned around, and I had no answer. "I've lived here my whole life. I was born here. I don't remember a betrayal. I don't remember a crash. I remember a dad who invented a paint color for me."
She stared at me as if waiting for a response. "I'm sorry for your loss, Valentina." I hesitated, struggling to think of something else to say besides the platitude. "Did he like blue too?"
She smiled without sarcasm. "No, I think he was indifferent, really. He loved all the plants here though. He was always taking notes, drawing things. Now those notes are shut up somewhere in mother's bedroom. Just in case there's something in there about why he brought us all here. As if they haven't read them a hundred times. As if they haven't talked the whole thing over a hundred times more." The smile left her face, replaced by a frown and scowl. "They'd actually taken a break from their self pity and resentment for the past few years, until you showed up. It's like they forgot his name until you said it again."
"I have something for you." I reached in my bag, praying that the papers had escaped water damage. "I didn't want to give these to anyone, because, well, I was told not to talk about Henrique..."
"By whom?"
"Your sister." Another eye roll. I passed the paper to Valentina. She read it in silence. I was glad it was a short note — she seemed to hold her breath until she got to the end.
"I haven't seen his handwriting in years."
"What does it say? I couldn't read the sections in Portuguese."
"He did bring us here on purpose," Valentina mumbled, saying the whole sentence in one long breath. "There's someone — something — here that was supposed to help us get back. It wasn't supposed to be a crash landing, maybe that's why the person he came to talk to couldn't help..."
"Valentina, do you know how far from Earth we are? The Swan Song ship is a famous disappearance that no one has been able to explain. How could he have known where he was going?"
"That's not explained. Anyway, he said he was going to a guide in the forest, near the base of the mountain. There's instructions on how to get there."
"The guide was mentioned in the English part." Valentina folded the paper carefully and put it in her pocket.
"We'll have to sneak out. I don't want anyone knowing where we're going."
"Excuse me?"
"To talk to the guide. I don't want to reopen old wounds. The two of us will go to find the guide, ask it about my father. You know, I still don't really know how he died. We found out much later that he'd passed in some other village, that they'd buried him. The three of us, mother and Luciene and I, had to cut the tombstone ourselves. Maybe the guide knows what was going on. Maybe he sent my father on some quest, and he died on the way." Valentina blinked and turned away from me. "We should probably get moving. We've collected enough of the medicine."
"I'm not leaving the village until Bahr is better."
"Then you'll go with me?"
"Then I'll go with you."
Valentina started the climb first. "Tell me this, moon girl. Did you come here by accident or on purpose?"
"An accident. The portal I fell through was still under construction. If it had been fully functional, someone would have come for me by now."
25 Years Earlier, Southern Lunar Colonies
Henrique woke up in a cold sweat. The dreams had gotten much clearer since he'd started sleeping in the guest quarters of the castle, as close to the king's study as the building's layout would allow. He'd told the king of the Southern Lunar Colonies that he could only stay there for a few days at a time because his family, his wife and his parents, were back on Earth in Brazil. He'd only been thinking of his schedule when he used that excuse then but he was releaved, in hindsight, that the king had agreed. Each day that he was on the moon, Henrique woke up like he’d been chased from sleep to the waking world.
He got dressed and ran the images over again in his mind. They were the same as always. He saw his own hands piloting a ship. He saw a planet come into view, undocumented by any earthly astronomer or artist. Then, as the ship descended, he was shaken awake by a jolt of adrenaline that did not match the images. Perhaps it was caused merely by the sensation of falling, too similar to childhood nightmares for his sleeping brain to tolerate.
Henrique left the guest room, walked a few steps down the hall, and entered a windowless study. The king did not look up. "Anything new to report?"
Henrique recited the images he'd seen in his visions, knowing he'd given the same speech the morning before, and the morning before that. The king nodded as he spoke. "Do this mean anything to you?" Henrique asked.
"Of course, it's all very important. Thank you for telling me."
Henrique nodded. "I still don't quite understand it. I don't know why I was chosen..."
"Well, I can't go." The king looked up. "I have a country to run, and my health is nothing to write home about. Oswin knows this of course." He looked past Henrique, not at him. "She's so distant, and yet she's accounted for all our needs and customs."
Henrique looked at the king, trying to decide if he looked more tired or older than he had a month ago. Perhaps it was both. "Do you think she's listening to us? She’s the one who told you to put up the bugs around the castle, didn't she? Does she use them?"
"She advised me to put them up, for my own safety. I need to know what's going on in the castle. These are difficult times..." He shook his head. "Do you think Oswin needs wires to perceive us?"
"I suppose not." If she could send visions, why wouldn't she be able to receive them? "It's just difficult to picture her, she doesn't speak to me in any of my visions, like she does for you."
"You've had visions of your journey. I've had visions of Oswin herself. We must believe one another." The king looked to his left, to the windowless wall. "I sense her all the time. The bugs do remind me of her. The clicking. The tapping." He shivered, as if he’d felt a cold breeze. "But I've had no further instructions. All I know is that the next step is yours, not mine. When do you leave?"
"Soon. It's a bit difficult to gather a crew when I can't tell them how important it is."
"Have you told anyone?"
"No."
"Not even you wife?"
"No." Henrique paused. "Not yet. I should tell her before we leave..."
"Don't," the king interrupted. "Oswin has chosen only a few in our history as trustworthy, as far as I can tell. I'll tell you if she tells me to share the news." Henrique glanced over at the king's writing desk, bare and unused. Oswin's image had been cut with a knife into the desk's top, roughly and with no regard for splinters. A family heirloom, locked away in an attic for who knows how long — until the king found it. "They will all understand the importance of the task once it's complete. Once we have access, fully, to Oswin and her wisdom."
"Is that really what we're doing? I've explained my visions to you as best I could, but I'm not sure how..."
"And I've interpreted them, with Oswin's guiding hand. Oswin needs more of a connection to us in order to communicate more clearly. We must go to her. Henrique, the world is only getting larger, and we understand so little of it. The people out there, they are so far beyond us. We need all the help we're offered. A being that understands us humans and is willing to guide us where we want to go?" The king's eyes shone, as they did whenever he said such things about Oswin. It seemed like more than just emotion. Henrique wondered if he was seeing her in the man's eyes. Was she here in the room with them? "A being that crosses language barriers? All that knowledge, at our fingertips? That's almost too good to be true."