loading . . . Non Plus Ultra FICTION · ISSUE THREE
By M.A. Carrick
From _Issue Three_ (June 2026)
**16,616 words • 65 minutes**
Content notes: the 1492 Expulsion of Jews from Spain, antisemitism depicted as period-accurate
* * *
In the year of our Lord one thousand four hundred ninety-two, in the searing heat of July, word spread throughout the Spains that Cristóbal Colón had failed.
He had set forth from València at the beginning of that month, amid great pomp, fanfare, and ambition. Armed with the very latest in calculations and theories, his little fleet of three ships had sailed down the Mediterranean coast, hugging close to shore for fear of Barbary pirates. As he neared the strait, the Levante wind had carried in fog from the east, which both those aboard the ships and those observing from Gibraltar took to be a good sign.
But before the month was out, a ship arrived from Canarias, bearing word that Colón’s fleet had put into port there. They tarried a while, mending one vessel’s rudder and waiting for orders. Rumor had it that the reply sent by Their Displeased Majesties consisted of only two words: _Keep sailing_.
“And don’t come back,” Nicolau Mir’s pilot, al-Balansī, added dryly as the shoremen of València shouted and swore, loading the señor de Chipiona’s cargo into the hold of _La Geperudeta_ where she lay alongside the port’s single pier. “Not after disappointing us like that.”
“Have faith,” Mir said. “He may yet find a western route to the Indies instead.”
“I fear that would require a miracle.”
The reply came from behind them, and Mir turned to find the señor de Chipiona tottering toward them one cane-propped step at a time. Even in the flatness of València’s port, the old man was puffing for air as if he’d climbed a mountain. Mir bowed politely, and al-Balansī did the same.
“You think he will fail at that as well, Don Hernán?” Mir asked.
The señor braced himself with his stick, wiped his gleaming brow with one silk sleeve, and said, “I think any man would fail. Marinus of Tyre’s calculations are wrong; The Indies are too far across the Ocean Sea to be reached by a western route. Colón and his men will either limp back into port a few months from now, half-dead of starvation and thirst, or they will never return at all.”
Al-Balansī huffed in satisfaction, as if this had confirmed his interpretation.
Don Hernán de Chipiona Díaz was a man of letters. It was why he was in València: he had come there to advise Colón, on the orders of Isabel de Castilla and Fernando de Aragón. This disappointment was not for lack of effort on Don Hernán’s part. But Colón’s success depended on the wisdom of those who advised him, and in this regard, Don Hernán had singularly failed.
He took it in surprisingly good stride. Although Mir had not known him long—they had met only once before, while arranging the señor’s passage back home—that was enough to establish one surety: that given half a chance, Don Hernán would talk for an hour about learned matters, to the increasing bewilderment of his audience. And if Mir were so unwise as to let that bewilderment show, Don Hernán would hasten to explain, with even more long-winded results.
He could see the old man drawing breath now, no doubt to expand on the matter of geographical calculations, and Mir hurried to forestall it. “What brings you here now, Don Hernán? We will not sail until this afternoon. You should rest until then; this heat and sun are nothing a man of your years and rank should suffer.”
“Well spoken,” Don Hernán said approvingly. “I find sailors are often rather crude men, don’t you, Señor Mir? But you, being ship’s master, are more lettered than most, and eloquent as a consequence. I—”
“Don Hernán, the heat,” Mir said, in mounting desperation.
“Yes, yes, the heat. But I must make sure my cargo is being loaded appropriately.”
Naturally the laborers chose that moment to be careless. A crate, halfway lowered toward the caravel’s hold, lurched dangerously to the diagonal, threatening to slip its shroud of ropes and crash downward to the detriment of both ship and crate. But with many curses blasphemous to Christian and Moor alike, the laborers got it level once more and lowered it the rest of the way without incident.
Mir fought the urge to wipe his own brow with his sleeve. “As you see.”
“Yes,” Don Hernán said, drawing the word out in a way that made it signify quite the reverse. “You realize the contents are irreplaceable, yes? The statue in that crate is from Greek times. A gift from the Conde de Benaventa. One of many relics recently unearthed while constructing his new manor.”
His tone was mild. His meaning was not. “I will see to it that the men take more care, Don Hernán.”
The old man smiled. “Do.”
* * *
Mir sent al-Balansī to harangue the men while he himself chivvied Don Hernán into retiring out of the sun. The pilot was better at it anyway; while Mir himself had Castilian almost to match his native Valencian, al-Balansī also spoke the Arabic tongue and a smattering of others besides—at least to the extent of commands and profanity. That was enough for the purpose.
By the time the señor was dealt with, others had arrived, who had greater concerns on their minds than the heat of the sun. In March, Their Catholic Majesties had decreed that all Jews must leave the Spains or convert before the end of July. By now most had packed up and left or bent their heads to the cross; for the remainder, time was fast running out. Two weeks ago, an elder from a community of Sefardim in eastern Cuenca had come to Mir to bargain for transport on his ship. _La Geperudeta_ was sailing to Lisbon, and many of their co-religionists had fled there to continue in the faith of their fathers. This group would arrive impoverished, for they had between them barely enough money to pay for passage—part of the reason for their hesitation. But that, in the end, was the fate they preferred.
Mir didn’t particularly care one way or another. He’d done business with Jewish merchants before their expulsion; he still did business with one who had chosen to stay and convert, though privately he suspected the man’s new Christian faith was as thin as a layer of dust. The convert still kept his word in deals, and that mattered more to Mir. He only hoped no one would denounce the man to the Inquisition, ever on the hunt for the insincere.
The elder who had approached him before, Astruc Abenvives, swayed cautiously up the plank toward Mir. At the foot of the pier, the rest of the men, women, and children huddled, clutching what possessions they could bring. “Señor Mir,” Abenvives greeted him in Castilian. “Three of our number will be staying behind; they have decided they cannot leave. But the rest are ready to board.”
“Not until we’re done loading the señor de Chipiona’s cargo,” Mir said. “Until then, you’ll only be in the way.”
“Of course. We do not wish to inconvenience you.”
Servile pleasantries over a thrumming line of fear. All it would take was Mir deciding he didn’t want to transport Jews after all—or bowing to the irritation of Don Hernán, who was less than pleased to be sharing a vessel with them—and this little group would be stranded here in València. With only two days left to find a ship, and most of their money already spent provisioning _La Geperudeta_. Their options would be a lifetime of poverty and fear of the Inquisition, or death.
“Soon,” he told Abenvives, trying to gentle his tone. “And it will be more comfortable for you now, with three fewer aboard.” Once at sea, the Sefardim would sleep on the deck like everyone else except for Don Hernán and his bodyservant, in whatever corners they could cram themselves into.
Abenvives’ smile did not reach his sad eyes. “We would have preferred the discomfort.”
Mir would have preferred not to be carrying so many passengers in the first place—normally he transported only cargo, and perhaps a few guests above that—but he wasn’t callous enough to refuse people in desperate straits. Once Abenvives had returned to the shore, Mir blew out a slow breath. A nobleman, twenty-three Jews—one of them pregnant—and a cargo of precious antiquities gifted from the Conde de Benaventa, all stuffed aboard his little caravel.
It was going to be a long voyage to Lisbon.
* * *
Despite everything, they had the ship loaded well in time for their tide. It rode heavy in the water, bearing not only Don Hernán’s precious antiquities but cargo Mir could sell in Lisbon after he deposited the señor in Chipiona. Don Hernán had even promised additional payment if all his treasures arrived intact, and Mir meant to collect that reward.
But he knew better than to think he could guarantee it. Any sailor knew he was at the mercy of wind and weather, and the Ocean Sea could be a very rough beast, compared to the sheltered confines of the Mediterranean.
_La Geperudeta_ had good winds as they sailed south and west toward the strait, though. Al-Balansī was an experienced pilot—good enough for Mir to disregard the man’s infidel faith—well versed in the mysterious language of currents, tides, and shore. And equally knowledgeable about the habits of pirates, though just how he came by that knowledge, Mir had chosen never to inquire.
Don Hernán, however, was miserably sea-sick. “Not your fault, I assure you,” he said weakly when he came out for air, supported by his bodyservant, Pedro. “This has happened ever since I was a boy. I traveled overland to València to avoid this suffering, and found different suffering instead. Perhaps God meant me to remain at home.”
Mir nodded in sympathy, and inwardly prayed to his patron, Sant Nicolau, that the old man would not expire before they reached Chipiona.
They sighted the strait not long after dawn. With a fresh wind on a broad reach, _La Geperudeta_ almost seemed to leap toward that narrow passage, between the imposing face of Gibraltar and the lower headland of Africa. At this hour, al-Balansī assured Mir, the current and wind would conspire to whisk them through with excellent speed.
“So much the better,” Mir muttered. Less time in the strait meant less time for a host of woes: everything from Don Hernán’s sea-sickness to the threat of pirate attack.
The decking planks beneath his feet seemed to hum in reply.
Morning’s light gilded the Rock of Gibraltar, which grew larger at an astonishing pace. The stone rose up forever, impossibly high—
Not the stone. Something else.
A column of gleaming gold, spiraling to the heavens. And to the south, a matching column, its base surely a furlong or more across, planted on the out-thrust shore of the Maghrib.
Fear and awe stole the breath from Mir’s lungs, leaving him none with which to speak the name on his tongue. _The Pillars of Hercules._
The goal Cristóbal Colón had sought and missed, despite the best calculations and theories of men like Don Hernán. A sight glimpsed by precious few, and even fewer who had returned to tell the tale. The gateway out of the mortal world, _non plus ultra_ : beyond which there was nothing men were meant to see.
Distantly, Mir was aware that his sailors were shouting, praying, screaming at him to change their course. They were supposed to sail to Chipiona on the Andalusian shore, and thence to Lisbon. They had not prepared their ship or their souls for this journey. Al-Balansī was kicking away three men trying to rush Mir at the tiller, preferring even a disastrous swerve into Gibraltar’s inhospitable shore to the alternative.
Mir himself stood frozen in indecision. Turn away? Drop sail, hard on the tiller, welcome the stone tearing open _La Geperudeta_ ’s belly and the likely drowning of his passengers and his men, so that at least they would die in mortal waters?
Or hold course, sail through the Pillars, and achieve the laurel Colón had lost—if Mir survived to claim it?
His grip tightened. His mouth opened. He began shouting orders, many of which his men were already following, where their shipmates did not fight to stop them. It was chaos from stem to stern, and perhaps even if he had made up his mind sooner, it would still have been too late.
They were past the Rock of Gibraltar, which would have granted them salvation in death. The radiant gold of the Pillars swept by, and they left the mortal world behind.
* * *
They were not the first to go.
Some had even returned.
Sant Brandà el Navegant had done it nearly a thousand years before, sailing from Ireland into the Sea Beyond and returning safely with tales of wonder, a miracle he attributed to the will of God. The Portuguese who had done it sixty years ago attributed their going to miserably bad luck: first a poniente wind and the treacherous currents of the strait, forcing them eastward into the Mediterranean; then a vicious storm that drove them back the other way and into the Sea Beyond. Their return they attributed to good luck, and the mercy of the same God who had once guided the saint.
In between, they found the island of Antillia, home to seven cities and beaches of sand that, when sifted, yielded a one-third proportion of gold. And avarice, never long asleep, waked once more in the hearts of men.
At the dawn of time, the Watcher angels had sinned with human women, siring the nephilim, from whom came the fae: creatures of enchantment and trickery, soulless and amoral, but capable of wonders. Tiring of their sins, God had sent the Great Flood to sweep them away; ever since then they had dwelt in the Sea Beyond, a realm created for them by the Devil. A realm full of marvels, from apples and waters and herbs of youth, to wondrous beasts, to miraculous cures, spoken of in legend and the writings of the ancients.
But if God permitted men to pass through from time to time, surely He meant for mortals to find and use such things?
For sixty years they had tried. If it were not simply a miracle—and it could not be a miracle; that would mean it was outside men’s control—then the Portuguese must have done _something_ to achieve their passage. Their ship was examined from its keel to the topmost spar, the sailors questioned for years on end. Astrologers charted the skies. The storm must surely be significant, the men of letters reasoned: a sensible argument, which ran aground on the singular failure of anyone else to ride a storm through the strait and wind up in the Sea Beyond. The waters around Gibraltar were littered with the wrecks of those who had paid for their failure.
So, not a storm. Other factors must apply. Men like Don Hernán had studied the question, and Colón had studied their conclusions. Isabel de Castilla and Fernando de Aragón, not content with the year’s harvest of epochal events—the fall of Granada; the expulsion of the Jews—had authorized Colón’s expedition, hoping for even greater conquests to burnish their names.
But he had failed. And now Nicolau Mir, an unimportant ship’s master authorized by no higher authority than València’s Consulate of the Sea, had succeeded.
In going, at least.
At first the Sea Beyond looked a great deal like the seas Mir knew, with two crucial exceptions: the lack of the Spains to the north of him, and the lack of Africa to the south. When he twisted around to look, he saw the Pillars of Hercules towering out of open water, the only thing visible from horizon to horizon. Two spiraling columns, tapering to sharp points: the Horns of Behemoth, some said, thrown here after Sansón slew that great beast ages ago. Metal girded them about, iron and bronze, and between them Mir could see nothing but more sea.
The shouting had died away, clawed down by wonder and fear. The Sefardim clustered together in the center of the ship, men on the outside, women and children protected within. Mir’s sailors clung to the railings like those wooden planks were their only security. Mir’s own hand had gone slack on the tiller as he stared at the blue waters and the sun-bright sky.
He was, as Don Hernán had said, more lettered than most of his kind. Poetry rose to his lips, famous lines penned by a fellow Valencian two generations before. “Sails and winds have fulfilled our desires, making uncertain paths across the sea . . .”
He shouldn’t have broken the silence. Voices rose again, demanding to know how he had done that, where they were, what he was going to do now, more and more frantic with every passing moment. Then a shot rang out and everyone flinched away.
Al-Balansī lowered the arquebus he’d fired across the waves. “Master,” he said with a bow to Mir. “What is your command?”
Before Mir could answer, Don Hernán clutched his arm. “You must turn around,” the man said hoarsely.
The Pillars of Hercules were fast receding behind them. “The wind is not in our favor,” Mir warned Don Hernán. A caravel could sail closer to the wind than a lumbering merchant cog, but not straight into its teeth.
“ _At once,_ ” Don Hernán insisted. “Or we may never see home again. Pray God it is not too late already.”
He spoke like a man who knew things he was not saying, and a thousand questions crowded behind Mir’s teeth. But a wise sailor soon learned there was a time for questions and a time for action, and how to tell them apart.
“Al-Balansī,” he snapped. His pilot had been waiting on no more than that; immediately he began calling out orders. Mir strode forward to push the Sefardim out of the way of the dipping spar as _La Geperudeta_ came about, the sail flapping loose before catching the wind once more.
But it was as he had warned Don Hernán. They could sail near toward the Pillars, but not directly at them; then, tacking again, they attempted to bring themselves back on course. All the while the wind fought them, so that for each tack they gained only scant headway, and sometimes lost what they had gained. The sailors cursed or prayed, according to their inclination; the Sefardim only prayed. And so the hours passed, until at last the wind relented enough for them to creep across the invisible line between the two golden spirals of the Pillars.
A line which left them floating still in the Sea Beyond.
Don Hernán pounded his fist against the ship’s rail, tears leaking from his eyes. “As I feared,” he moaned.
A wise sailor knew when was the time for action, and when was the time for questions. “Don Hernán,” Mir said wearily, “tell me what you know.”
The nobleman wiped his cheeks and sighed wearily. “Of course, Señor Mir. But only you.”
“And al-Balansī.”
Don Hernán lowered his voice. “But he is an infidel, is he not?”
Mir shrugged. “One I trust with my life. As do you, while you are on this ship, for he is its pilot. Without him, we have no hope at all.”
Don Hernán relented, and the three of them went into the low confines of the aftercastle, where the nobleman had his bed. Leaving Llopis in charge outside, Mir closed the door and leaned against it, crossing his arms. “Now talk.”
The pause had given Don Hernán time to regain his composure. Now, in darkness relieved only by a single lamp, he faced al-Balansī. “What do you know of astronomy?”
“As much as any good pilot might; I can use a quadrant and a cross-staff. Ask what you actually wish to know, señor.”
“The movement of the planets,” Don Hernán said.
Al-Balansī’s eyes narrowed. “Retrograde?”
“Yes.”
Mir knew less of the heavens than his pilot did, but he could follow them this far. Planets did not move as stars did; they rose each night in a different place, shifting across the black silk of the sky. But sometimes that progression reversed course, the planets drifting backward, against their usual motion.
“We do not know how to control passage through the Pillars,” Don Hernán said, sinking heavily onto his bed. “But from those transits reliably documented, we have guessed this much: that it can only be achieved during those periods when the planet Mercury is in retrograde movement. Mercury, the planet of the archangel Rafael, governing water and travel . . . it makes sense, of course.”
Al-Balansī hissed an Arabic curse. “That is why you insisted we hurry. Mercury was due to straighten his course.”
“And now, I fear, he has. We shall not have another chance until his path turns back again. On October the thirty-first . . . but here in the Sea Beyond, who can say when that day will come?”
Don Hernán sank his face into his hands. This time, Mir did not break the silence. They all knew the stories: some returned from the Sea Beyond years later, claiming mere days or weeks had passed for them. Others returned almost immediately, their hair and beards now grey with age.
But they could not sit in silence forever. At last Mir said, “So that is why Colón sailed when he did. What was lacking, that he failed to pass through? What do we have, what have we done, that he did not?”
“The Jews,” al-Balansī said at once.
This intellectual puzzle rescued Don Hernán from his despair. “No,” he said, rousing. “There were no Jews aboard the Portuguese ship that went to Antillia. And certainly none accompanying the Irish saint.”
“No Moors either,” al-Balansī said dryly. “So I am not your magic charm.”
Don Hernán’s gaze sharpened. “But the Emirate of Granada traded with the Sea Beyond. And they were not, so far as we can tell, bound to the cycle of Mercury. Their Majesties—” He checked himself, chewed his moustache, then went on. “You did not hear this from me. Their Majesties expected to acquire the secret of it when Boabdil surrendered, but they learned nothing. That is why they sent Colón on his expedition.”
Al-Balansī snorted. “And you think I know something of it, because I’m a Moor? I’m _Valencian_. It’s in my name and everything.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Don Hernán had no room to pace; he rose to his feet and then stood uselessly, wringing his hands. “It could be anything. Well, not anything—not that woman and her unborn child, as such were with neither the Portuguese nor the saint. But some detail of the ship or its cargo, something about one of the passengers beyond their faith, some action we took at precisely the right moment. Even if Mercury were still moving retrograde, we might not succeed in passing back through. We simply don’t _know_.”
Mir pushed himself off the door. “We have more pressing problems than that. _La Geperudeta_ is not provisioned for a long voyage like Colón’s; we expected to refresh our water at Chipiona before continuing on to Lisbon. If we begin rationing now, we can survive at least a week, possibly two . . . but from the sound of it, we may be here far longer than that.”
That produced a new silence. All of them were thinking the same thing:
_The fae_.
There were faeries still in the mortal world, though Mir had never seen any. By all accounts, they were a far cry from their powerful kin in the Sea Beyond, who possessed a myriad of enchantments beyond man’s ken. _La Geperudeta_ was sailing into dangerously unknown waters.
With no alternative but to lower their sails and wait to die of thirst.
Mir opened the door and strode out on the deck, rapping orders to his startled sailors. “We go in search of land!”
* * *
One direction was as good as another, when they had no maps apart from tales that said the islands of the Sea Beyond drifted with the waves. Mir chose a tack that favored _La Geperudeta_ ’s speed, left the ship in al-Balansī’s charge, and closeted himself again in the aftercastle, this time with Astruc Abenvives.
He believed Don Hernán that there had been no Jews aboard earlier voyages, but that didn’t mean his Sefardim passengers had nothing to do with their unexpected transit of the Pillars. “What were you doing when we passed through the strait?” Mir asked bluntly, once the door was closed. “All of your people. Were you praying? Touching something you brought aboard with you? Did you know this was going to happen?”
“No!” Abenvives exclaimed, snatching off his hat and sinking reflexively to his knees. “We knew nothing, we _did_ nothing, I swear!”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Mir said impatiently. “On the contrary. If you have some knowledge of how this was done—even a worthy guess—their Catholic Majesties will reward you. For a prize like that, they might even permit you to stay in the Spains and keep your faith.”
Fear faded to bitterness. “Ah, yes, if we do them great service,” Abenvives said. “Just as our forefathers did them great service, with astronomy, with translation, with medicine, and were rewarded . . . until suddenly our knowledge was no longer needed. Even if they did let us return, Señor Mir, we could not trust it. We will be safer in Lisbon.”
“If we can get there.”
“I put my trust in God,” Abenvives said piously. But his voice wobbled as he said it.
That night Mir eavesdropped shamelessly on the conversations among the Sefardim as they settled down on the deck to take what rest they could. Few could sleep; above them, the stars had a strange configuration, which al-Balansī was earnestly discussing with Don Hernán. The conversations among the Sefardim, though, were as one might expect: fears and uncertain reassurances, fragments of legend picked over in search of guidance. _Shedim_ , the Jews called the fae, the word standing out amid Castilian sentences. A few of the men and one of the women spoke in Hebrew instead, but not in conversation; it had the sound of prayer.
Morning came, and the sea remained empty.
For the time being, everyone accepted the rationing of water without complaint. It was easy now, when even the dullest mind could see the need and thirst was merely a nagging discomfort. It would get worse later, Mir knew. The wind remained strong, _La Geperudeta_ skimming across the waves toward the hope of land . . . yet he could not help thinking that every hour they sailed took them further from the Pillars and home. And back home, would that hour be an hour, or less? Or more?
“If we can even find our way back,” al-Balansī said ominously when they spoke in a quiet murmur at the stern of the ship, standing against the tafferel. “Nothing here behaves as it should—not the sky, not the sea, not the wind. I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise I’ll be able to retrace our course.”
“I have faith in you,” Mir said, putting as much confidence in his voice as he could.
Another night. The sailors tried to cheer each other with stories of the wondrous treasures they might find here. The Sefardim prayed together, ignoring the glares they received, the spittle sent their way. Don Hernán’s servant, Pedro, sang a song whose thin tune only made the endless ocean seem larger.
Another day. And when dawn began to rise, something broke the monotony of the waves: a fog bank, blotting the horizon ahead.
“Land?” Don Hernán asked eagerly.
Al-Balansī scratched his beard, the other hand shielding his eyes. Mir said, “Clouds do form over land sometimes. But that looks too low. It might be the herald of a storm.”
Still they sailed toward it, for lack of any other target. And then, as the sun fully cleared the horizon, the fog began to shred apart.
One of the sailors whispered, “ _Gold._ ”
The gleam was so bright, it seemed it must be false. Yet as the fog dispersed further, Mir saw that it was everywhere: roofs and domes of gold, rising above a green and welcoming shore. The island looked like paradise.
He was wise enough not to trust it.
But Don Hernán staggered forward until he reached the bow rail, stood for a long moment, then staggered back to Mir. A flush had come into his sallow cheeks. “I know where we are. The fog, and do you see that channel, cutting deep into the island? If I am right, it passes all the way through, and this is the island of Hy-Brasil.”
Mir thought he had heard the name before, but that was where his knowledge ended. “And what can we expect here? Monsters? Perilous enchantments? A land of milk, honey, and willing maidens?”
Don Hernán faltered. “I’m . . . not certain. The tales contradict themselves. Some say its people are cursed, and that is why the island is veiled in fog for seven years at a time. But it is certain you can find provisions there; the trees bear fruit in all seasons.”
Mir thought of his passengers, and of the thirst already burning in his throat.
They had to land _somewhere_. And at least this island, Don Hernán knew something of.
“Bring us to an anchorage,” he told al-Balansī. “I will gather what weapons we have.”
* * *
As Don Hernán had foretold, the channel appeared to pass all the way through the island. There the ground sloped down to the water, offering easy disembarkation, and so Mir directed _La Geperudeta_ into the channel, drifting forward on only the smallest scrap of her reefed sail.
To either side gleamed the golden roofs, gracing the hillsides like jewels on the gown of a queen. Fruit trees grew in abundance, and as promised, their branches were heavy with bounty. Even the stones upon the shore glittered with the rich color of gems, and Mir heard more than one fervent, lustful curse from his sailors. If they could bring but a hundredth part of this wealth back with them . . .
But for every wonder in the Sea Beyond, there was a corresponding horror. Mir could not see one here, and that made him nervous.
He could not see anyone, in fact. The buildings and the gardens between them were empty of people. “Has some great pestilence left this place dead?” he murmured, crossing himself.
“Master,” hissed one of his sailors, from up in the bow. “Look ahead!”
There was movement in the channel, not far away. Mir, squinting, saw that it stirred on both banks: people, come together in two crowds, bent to some common task.
A bridge. One built not with hammers and nails, nor yet with stone, but with magic.
It grew from either bank, arching gracefully over the channel, and as it grew two people walked its span, arriving face to face even as the halves of the bridge wove their ends together. Mir’s soft command to drop sail and lower the anchor came just as the two faeries’ hands touched, and his timing could not have been worse: the splash of the anchor into the water broke the tableau, turning all eyes to _La Geperudeta_.
The faeries showed no surprise at the appearance of a mortal vessel. On the contrary, one of the two upon the bridge faced them and spoke in a clear, ringing voice.
In a language Mir understood not at all.
But Don Hernán, standing at his side, made a small noise of surprise. “Her words—I believe they’re ancient Greek! I had heard tell that tongue is remembered here, after the conquests of Alexander the Great, but I hardly expected —”
Through his teeth, Mir asked, “What did she _say_?”
“Oh.” Don Hernán was taken aback. “I didn’t quite catch . . .”
The female faerie spoke again. A queen, to judge by the crown gleaming within her raven-dark hair, and the male faerie at her side wore a matching coronet. Don Hernán said, “I would we were closer, to hear her more clearly. But I believe she addresses us as strangers, and asks if we have word of . . . their daughter?”
Mir felt as if he had plunged into the kind of tale told by the fireside when winter’s storms raged outside. The _middle_ of the tale, without the first notion of what its start might have been. “Who is their daughter?” he asked, baffled.
Don Hernán hemmed and hawed, muttering a few incomprehensible words under his breath, before raising his voice and offering a faltering reply. The male faerie conferred with the female, all their people watching in patient silence, and then he spoke at length in a commanding tone. “We are to come ashore,” Don Hernán said. “I did not understand everything he said, but that much was clear. I do not think they intend to offer us violence; rather, we are guests.”
Certainly no one among the fae seemed to have a weapon—though how much stock Mir could put in that when they had magic enough to create a bridge from nothing was an unanswered question. “Al-Balansī, you remain with the ship,” he said. “Keep the arquebus loaded and ready. Roverino, Destraz, Gil, Ponç, with me. Çapena, Torres, Llopis, Sessé, with al-Balansī. Guard our passengers —”
“With your permission, Señor Mir,” Abenvives said, “I would like to come with you. We have our own legends of the shedim; my knowledge may be of some use.”
Mir weighed it for a long moment. A woman and a man were both clutching at Abenvives’ sleeve, muttering in low voices, but he ignored them both, keeping his attention on Mir. Likely he feared what might become of the ship’s master, out of sight among the fae . . . but in truth, Mir would take any knowledge he could get.
“Anyone with a sword or knife, keep it about you,” Mir said, to Avenvives, to the sailors. “Don Hernán, iron is a bane to the fae, is it not?”
“Yes,” the nobleman confirmed. “It is the most mortal of metals, the blood of Behemoth, while they are the immortal children of Leviathan.”
“But they can be slain.”
“Do you intend to fight them, Señor Mir?”
“No,” Mir said, “but I intend to be ready for whatever may come.”
_La Geperudeta_ lay at anchor slightly closer to the left-hand shore, so Mir, Don Hernán, Abenvives, and the others disembarked to that side. The water was not deep; they waded it easily. The fae on the bank had assembled into two lines, which perhaps was meant to be welcoming . . . but it was hard to feel anything other than apprehension, looking into those inhuman faces. Even those that seemed ordinary enough exuded an ineffable aura of _difference_ , a lightness of being regardless of their bodily size. And some were not ordinary at all: among the crowd Mir saw fae with leaves for hair, fae with eyes too large for their faces, fae with rabbit’s ears. They bowed and gestured him and his sailors onward to where their queen waited.
She was a regal being, taller than Mir, with eyes as grey as the fog that had shrouded the isle. The gown that fell from her shoulders in velvety folds was brighter than mortal dyes could achieve, greens and blues and gold, as if the verdure all around and the sky and the sun had all been captured in its weave. Her voice was musical as she spoke with Don Hernán, still in Greek, but she changed to another language when she issued an order to the rabbit-eared faerie at her side. That one bowed and bounded away; Mir, turning, saw that he scampered across the bridge to speak with the kingly one.
“I believe we have enmeshed ourselves in something here, all unwitting,” Don Hernán murmured to Mir. “It seems she rules this half of the island, and her husband the other half. By choosing to land on her side, we have paid her a great compliment—one I hope the king will not resent.”
“What of provisions?” Mir muttered back. “What of information on how to bring ourselves home again? Have you asked anything of that?”
“Not yet,” Don Hernán admitted. “We must be courteous, Señor Mir. For now they are friendly; that may not remain true, if we turn to rudeness.”
The king arrived then, bowing courteously to his lady, who greeted him with equal decorum. Then, through Don Hernán, the guests were invited to a feast.
Belatedly, Mir thought of something. “Will this feast be safe to eat? What of the stories where eating faerie food enchants the eater? If it traps us in the Sea Beyond . . .”
“The Granadans traded here safely for many years,” Don Hernán said. “At least, as safely as one might hope for, the sea being what it is. For certain if you were to live here and eat their food always, it might in time transform you, even as living in the torrid regions to the south and eating the food there would transform you into an African. But one meal should not hurt . . .”
He trailed off. Mir finished the thought. “Not nearly as much as starvation would.” And that latter was a near certainty, if they could not reprovision in the Sea Beyond.
The queen led them up the slope to her palace, spreading its graceful wings beneath the largest of the golden domes. Either the plan had always been to feast in her hall, or these fae were more capable than mortals of summoning provender from thin air, because they sat to table at once, and did not have to wait for the first of many courses to appear.
Thin-sliced fruit and berries bursting with juice. Salads of green leaves dressed in delicately vinegared sauce. Bowls of nuts, some salted, some honeyed; a paste of crushed seeds in oil, with bread to spread it upon. One delicacy after another, none of them quite recognizable, and the only thing wanting was meat; it seemed these fae ate nothing of animals. Resigning himself to his fate, Mir ate his fill and more.
And over the long hours of the meal, the tale of the king and queen and their daughter came out.
Mir had thought this a celebration, given the bright colors of the garb and the frequent laughter of the king and queen. In fact, Don Hernán informed him, they were in mourning—laughter being how the fae, with their unnatural character, expressed sorrow. Some ages ago, the Goblin Market had come to their island: a phenomenon strange even by the standards of the Sea Beyond, a concatenation of merchants and stalls that appeared without warning and vanished just as abruptly. The goblins of the Market traded all manner of wonders, but they were also notorious for stealing away the children of those they descended upon. And in just such a manner had they stolen the princess of Hy-Brasil.
Ever since then, the king and queen had lived separately, mourning upon their separate halves of their circular isle. They came together only once every seven years, when the fog that hid Hy-Brasil lifted its veil, hoping each time to have word of their missing daughter. Mir and those aboard _La Geperudeta_ , mortal as they were, had seemed like a promise of the answer they finally sought.
Now Mir had the beginning of the tale, and he himself was the middle. But where the ending was concerned . . . “I cannot even give them a plausible lie,” he said to Don Hernán. “I know nothing of this place or their princess. If God—or the Devil, or whatever governs the fates of these creatures—intends for them to find her, it is not through me.”
The ensuing conversation in Greek was lengthy, and Mir chafed at not understanding it. Don Hernán seemed apologetic, then supplicatory, then puzzled, then wary. At last Mir could bear it no longer. “What are they saying?”
Slowly, Don Hernán said, “They believe you _are_ the answer they’ve been waiting for. It seems this Goblin Market has particular enchantments upon it, that no one who has visited it before can find where it will be—they can only chance to be where it chooses to appear. And everyone here went into the market when it came to Hy-Brasil. Therefore, to find the princess, they need someone who has never set foot within its bounds.”
“I did not come here to rescue a kidnapped princess,” Mir said impatiently. “What of my questions? Can they tell me how to return home?”
“That is precisely the point upon which we have been discoursing,” Don Hernán said, dabbing the last of his wine from his lips with a square of cloth provided for the purpose. “They do not know how to traverse the Pillars—as we must expect few or no fae do, or we would have their ships entering the Mediterranean at will. But they say that in the Goblin Market, one can buy _anything_. If you agree to seek their daughter, they will tell you how to find the Market . . . and there, we may gain the treasure we seek.”
Hunger for more than gold now burned in the man’s gaze. Wealth was all well and good, but the secret of what granted passage through the Pillars of Hercules was worth far more than simply a chance to return home. That, after all, was the mission for which Their Catholic Majesties had dispatched Cristóbal Colón—a mission at which he had failed.
But Mir had the chance to succeed . . . or, more to the point, _Don Hernán_ had the chance.
Mir saw in an instant how it would play out. Yes, he was the master of _La Geperudeta_ , but Don Hernán was a nobleman with connections already at court. Moreover, Don Hernán spoke a tongue that allowed him to communicate with these fae. In the end, Mir was little more than his ferryman. He might hope for some token reward, but little beyond that.
_Non plus ultra,_ he thought bitterly. The ancient warning attached to the Pillars of Hercules, warning mankind not to venture beyond them into this Otherworldly sea. It might have meant, _you will gain nothing more than this._
But if they did not gain the secret of passage, he might never return home. He had a wife, two daughters, another child on the way. Mir saw them only sporadically, as his voyages permitted, but the thought of parting with them forever struck deep into his heart. And in that pain, he saw an echo of what this king and queen suffered.
If Nicolau Mir had been a more pious man, he would have trusted in God to lead him home if it were right that he should ever see that shore again. After all, God had led him this far, for some ineffable reason of His own.
But Mir had never been able to muster more than a sailor’s piety. He knew that wind and wave would blow as God willed, and for the rest, it was up to man to do his best.
He said to Don Hernán, “Tell them this: that if they tell me how to find the Goblin Market and bargain for our answer, we will seek their daughter and bring her home, if she still lives.”
* * *
No bargain with the fae came without a twist. In this case, it was that Mir might have had what he wanted without any bargain at all.
Finding the Goblin Market, according to the king and queen, was simply a matter of wishing. The purpose of a goblin was to fulfill desires; therefore, to bring oneself to them, one had only to focus on what one desired.
“It cannot be any simple thing,” Don Hernán cautioned Mir, as the feasted guests returned down the slope to where _La Geperudeta_ lay at anchor. “It must be your heart’s desire. We must all, Señor Mir, focus on our wish to learn how the Pillars may be traversed.”
“So you have told me,” Mir said impatiently. “But would we not have done that regardless, without making any promises to find their lost princess?”
Don Hernán fell silent, which was answer enough.
As ship’s master, Mir had the authority to jettison cargo. Out of consideration to the señor de Chipiona, he left the antiquities in place—some of them, like the statue, were too heavy to easily shift regardless—but everything he had intended to sell in Lisbon went unceremoniously overboard. In its place he put casks of fresh water and sacks of the fruit that abounded on Hy-Brasil, which were of far greater value to them right now. But they would not return as beggars: the fae of the island made no objection when al-Balansī led a quartet of men to harvest the largest and finest stones they could easily find. For the rocks upon Hy-Brasil did not merely have the color of gems; they were indeed sapphires and emeralds, rubies and topaz. Mir quailed briefly at tossing these into the bottom of his hold, replacing the ordinary rocks used there as ballast, but not for long.
Soon after that, _La Geperudeta_ set sail to the music of a fanfare, played in unison from opposite banks, with the king and queen wishing them swift sailing and swifter success. Only as the island receded behind their stern did a thought come to Mir. “Don Hernán,” he said. “You told me Hy-Brasil is shrouded in fog for seven years at a time. But how long does it remain welcoming to visitors?”
The señor de Chipiona paled. Casting a stricken look over his shoulder, he stammered, “I—that, I do not know.”
Mir sighed heavily and set his gaze toward the horizon. “Then pray to God we may fulfill our promise in less than seven years.”
* * *
Al-Balansī hated piloting through the Sea Beyond.
“Nothing here behaves as it should!” he ranted, pounding one hand on the railing. “Not the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars in the sky—I cannot even be certain I have found Mercury, much less that it will move as it does over our seas! My compass wheels about as it’s as drunk as a lord. And without it? We set off at one bearing; well and good, and so we keep that until the sun sets off our port beam. The stars tell me we have not deviated from our course. But when dawn comes the next day, does the sun appear on the starboard side of the ship? No, it does not!”
“We must think of the Goblin Market, and our passage back through the Pillars,” Mir said wearily. “Until we have the knowledge we seek, it hardly matters whether we sail in a straight line or in circles—it seems to be all the same, here in these cursed waters.”
He did not use that word merely out of frustration. Not long after they left Hy-Brasil, al-Balansī had steered a course well clear of some rocks, between which the sea thrashed like a beast . . . or rather, he had tried to. At first they thought a current was driving _La Geperudeta_ sideways, contrary to the wind and the set of her sails. Then one of the Sefardim, a keen-eyed maiden, had shouted that the rocks were changing position, darting between one another, sometimes coming together with a horrible, grinding crash. Soon it became apparent that the ship was not drifting toward the rocks; instead, the rocks were pursuing the ship. Mir ordered the sails hoisted to their utmost, a reckless amount of canvas in the strong wind, and _La Geperudeta_ heeled nearly to tipping, but at last the rocks gave up the chase.
“The Planctae, perhaps,” Don Hernán said once they returned to a more even keel. He had been wretchedly sick over the rail for the whole escape; now his face was grey and slack with exhaustion. Yet even so, his mind remained active. “The sorceress Circe warned Ulysses about them. God grant we do not encounter them again.”
Their next sighting was of an island with a less welcoming aspect than Hy-Brasil, but no obvious signs of peril. Standing offshore, Mir studied it for a long time, the Jewish girl doing the same. “I see nothing, señor,” she said at last. “If this Goblin Market is there, it must be further in.”
Mir hated the lack of certainty. But this was where their course had brought them, and he had devoted every moment he could to thinking about how to return through the Pillars, instructing al-Balansī to do the same. This might be the place—and if it were not, he still could not afford to pass up any opportunity for water and perhaps some fresh provisions. The fruit was all but gone; he had dried stores yet, but did not want to rely on them. They must remain in reserve for as long as possible, against the possibility that _La Geperudeta_ might sail for weeks without finding another fruitful island, or any island at all. He had not forgotten Don Hernán’s dark prediction about Colón’s chances of reaching the Indies.
“Water first,” he said at last. “Once that is aboard, we will search for the Market.”
He bitterly repented the lack of more than one arquebus, but he’d always relied upon _La Geperudeta_ ’s speed to save them from pirates, rather than fighting them in boarding engagements. The gun he gave to Destraz, the best shot among his sailors; the rest made do with blades and kept wary watch as they filled their casks from a small stream. That done, Mir divided them into pairs to search deeper into the island. “Keep an eye out for anything we might eat as you go,” he said, “but if you find the Market, _do not enter_. Not until we can do so in greater force. And regardless of what you find or don’t, once the sun reaches its zenith, return to the ship.”
He saw no sign of habitation as he and his partner, a younger Jew named Mosse, set out through the forest of unfamiliar trees. If the Goblin Market came here, it would find little in the way of custom—apart from the crew and passengers of _La Geperudeta_ , which he supposed might be enough.
None of Mir’s sailors were hunters, but Mosse had fashioned a sling out of a scrap of leather and some cord. He proved as good a shot as he had boasted, knocking on the head several small, scaled creatures that looked like toads the size of cats and screamed like foxes as they went down. Mir crossed himself at the sight of them, but meat was meat, and no smell rose from it that suggested poison. “This is enough,” he said, after they had collected four. “The sun is nearly at its peak.”
Back at the ship, an argument sprang up among the Jews. Mir had vaguely known that they had rules about their food beyond a refusal to eat pork, but the specifics were a mystery he’d never cared to investigate. Now, it seemed, much hinged on whether these creatures were of the land, where they had been found; of the water, on account of their scales and toads being aquatic creatures on occasion; or something else entirely. The lad with the sling was working the leg of one creature back and forth, declaiming something about locusts, which Mir could not follow in the slightest. The debate went on until Abenvives clapped his hands together, loud, insistent smacks, which finally produced a sullen and argumentative silence.
“Señor Mir,” he said with a bow. “We are grateful to you for permitting Mosse to join your hunt. However, the food of these creatures will go entirely to you and your men, and the señor de Chipiona. We may not eat it.”
“We cannot afford to be delicate,” Mir said. “If we wish to survive in these waters, we must take those gifts God chooses to send us.”
Abenvives bowed deeper. “What God forbids us to eat may be a gift to you, but it is not so to us. And it is not delicacy that forbids us, but holy law.”
“You would rather starve?”
“If it comes to that extremity, then we will eat what is ordinarily forbidden, for the sake of saving a life. Indeed, I will tell Sarra to eat, for she is pregnant and must think of the child. But as for the rest of us, we are not yet there.”
Mir was about to argue further when al-Balansī drew him aside for private speech. “Torres and Sulam haven’t come back yet.”
One glance upward showed that the sun was now well past the crown of the sky. The missing pair might have lost track of time; they might be on their way back now. They might have found the Goblin Market and ignored Mir’s order not to enter. They might be dead.
He voiced all these possibilities to al-Balansī, who said, “You could wait. If they’re simply laggard, they’ll come back without your help. If they aren’t, you risk yourself and whoever goes with you, maybe to no good end.”
Under most circumstances, al-Balansī’s pragmatic character was an asset. Perhaps it was here, too, but it still rankled. “I cannot simply abandon them,” Mir said. Sulam was one of the Sefardim; if he didn’t go in search, he suspected that Abenvives would. And some of the crew were inclined to blame the Jews for anything that went wrong—he’d already had to discipline Ponç for suggesting that keen-eyed girl was a witch who had enchanted the rocks to pursue them, as if the Sea Beyond needed any help with witchery. If Torres and Sulam had indeed gone into the Goblin Market alone, Mir wanted to be there when they were found, to head off any violence.
Delay would only deepen the problem. “I will take three men to scout,” Mir said, “and be back before nightfall.”
Al-Balansī glanced down the length of _La Geperudeta_ , at the Sefardim, the other sailors, Pedro dragging a bucket up over the rail so Don Hernán could peer at its contents with an interested eye. “And if you’re not?”
Mir hesitated. How long should he tell al-Balansī to wait, when he might be dead, and whatever killed him coming for everyone else? And yet, if he lived, he did not want to be abandoned on this isle. “Trust your judgment,” he said at last, and the pilot nodded.
As expected, Abenvives accompanied him to shore this time, as did Mosse. In counterpoint, Destraz, Ponç, and Gil armed themselves as if they expected more threat from those two than they did from the island itself. Then, to Mir’s surprise, he had one more who wished to go: the señor de Chipiona.
“I have read more concerning of the Sea Beyond than likely everyone else on this ship put together,” Don Hernán reasoned, when Mir expressed his doubts. “And I am the only one here who speaks Greek. You have seen no immediate danger; I will trust that for now, and come with you.”
Or, Mir thought, Don Hernán did not want them to find the Goblin Market without him, and perhaps to learn the secret for themselves. But the old man was right; his knowledge might be needed.
So it was as a party of seven that they set out, with all the noise thereby entailed, plus that of a man who relied on a cane. Any wildlife that might have been in the neighborhood fled their approach. But as Gil led them after the traces left by Torres and Sulam, wending deeper into the forest, they heard a startling sound from up ahead: something very much like laughter.
It made them more wary, not less. Gesturing the others back, Mir crept forward with Gil, up a slight rise, until they could look down into the dell below.
Several dozen fae of avian aspect lounged about the grassy sward, laughing uproariously. It was as if someone had just told a tremendous joke—but the laughter went on and on, long after amusement would have palled, becoming more unnerving with every new chortle and hoot. Mir’s gaze, raking the scene, found his wayward pair among them, laughing as hard as the rest.
He did not have to warn Gil not to go down there. The two of them retreated and described what they had found to the pale-faced group awaiting them, and Don Hernán, after a moment’s thought, bent his head. “I am sorry, Señor Mir. I fear you must give those two up for lost.”
He spoke Castilian, which meant that Abenvives, Mosse, and Destraz understood him, but Gil and Ponç had more difficulty. The exclamations of protest that rose, however, transcended any difference of language. Don Hernán grabbed Mosse when the young man would have set off at once. “Listen to me! That is not the Goblin Market. I believe this is the island spoken of in Irish tales, the land of the lamenters—yes, _lamenters_. Have I not told you that fae express their sorrow not with weeping, but with merriment? Anyone who goes among them will be caught by the enchantment, as your missing two have been.”
“But if we were swift —” Mir began.
“You cannot outrun faerie magic, Señor Mir. If you attempt to save them, you will be lost.”
The unnatural laughter continued without pause. Mosse said, “Then we get rope, and try to pull them out.”
It was a good idea, but Mir shook his head. “They’re lying in the grass. There’s nothing to catch hold of, and they show no awareness of their surroundings. Torres looked right at me and gave no sign.”
Destraz was translating for Ponç and Gil, who could not quite pick out enough of the rapid Castilian exchange. Ponç snarled and spoke in Valencian. “I bet that Jew is the one who lured Torres in. You should never have sent one of ours out with a Jew.”
Mir rounded on him. “Torres, who’s spoken more of treasure than any man on board? The fae down there are richly dressed, with ornaments of gold. More likely Torres saw that and thought to rob them.”
Abenvives, it seemed, had learned to pick the word _Jew_ out of Valencian discourse. Or perhaps he merely read Ponç’s manner, and had been around the sailor long enough to guess at his meaning. “Please, I am sure Sulam is blameless,” the old man beseeched Mir. “Do not leave him behind.”
But they had little choice. Mir risked going to the edge of the dell once more and calling out the two men’s names; they did not so much as look his direction. Mosse, unbidden, followed and slung a rock that struck Sulam in the hip, to no effect. And Mir, looking more closely, saw that grass and weeds had grown up around many of the fae, as if they had not moved from their place in far too long.
Fae could survive that, immortal beings that they were. Torres and Sulam could not.
If anyone went to retrieve them, though, it would be three lives lost, not two.
“I am sorry,” Don Hernán said, first in Castilian, then in awkward Valencian. “There is nothing we can do.”
Dusk was stealing through the forest, shrouding the dell in deeper shadow. The laughter continued. What would al-Balansī’s judgment be, if they did not return before nightfall?
“We must consider them lost,” Mir said heavily. “Now let us go, before we are, too.”
* * *
The places where Torres and Sulam had slept were left empty for days after that, the people crowded onto the deck not taking advantage of the newfound room. They were a grimmer lot now, and had not been lighthearted to begin with; Mir feared particularly the hostile looks between his sailors and the Sefardim. Some in each group were inclined to blame the other’s man for the loss of their own.
He hoped to arrive at the Goblin Market and distract everyone from their sorrow and anger, but the Sea Beyond did not oblige. The next island they came to was surrounded by a high bronze wall, so that nothing could be seen except the peak of a mountain behind it; though al-Balansī achieved a great feat of seamanship in circumnavigating it as tightly as possible, they found no way to enter. If the Goblin Market was there, then fate was cruel in giving them no means of reaching it.
The island after that was attainable, but not safe. This time the threat presented itself at once: no sooner did _La Geperudeta_ drop anchor in its shallows than ants the size of men came swarming out of the towering dunes of its beaches, climbing over themselves to assault the ship. The arquebus could not be loaded fast enough to keep up, and so it was desperate work with belaying pins, replacement spars, and even their knives to repel the creatures while they hoisted the anchor and withdrew. Afterward, Mir found a leak belowdecks where the ants had begun to chew through the wood. He went over the side with canvas and tar to repair it, cursing the Sea Beyond and the Watcher Angels for siring such monstrous creatures.
Their third encounter at least made it clear the Goblin Market would not be found on its shores. The island barely deserved the name, being no more than a low swell of ground perhaps three times the length of _La Geperudeta_ , mangy with grasses and small, bushy shrubs; a glance was enough to show there was nothing else. But it offered the chance to get off the ship for a little while and perhaps cook a hot meal if those bushes could be burned, and so Mir gave the order to beach the caravel along its shore.
He had a faint hope that their presence would summon the Goblin Market to them, and their wretched quest would be done at last. He had to settle for the pleasure of finding the bushes were indeed suitable for burning, telling his men to cut and pile them in a sandy spot.
Yet that small joy was taken from him when Abenvives, who had been studying the island from the railing of _La Geperudeta_ , suddenly began to shout.
“Señor! Do not light a fire! Get back on board the ship at once!”
Annoyed cries rose from the men, but Abenvives’ panicked voice cut across them all. “Everyone, leave the island, now! That is not an island! Get to safety, before it sinks and drowns you all!”
Even that might not have convinced the men, had Don Hernán’s eyes not suddenly gone wide. “You mean—dear God. Back to the ship! For your lives and souls, go now!”
Perhaps it was the thunder of their feet, or the irritation of having some of the bushes cut. The men were still swarming back onto _La Geperudeta_ when the island shuddered beneath them and, true to Abenvives’ prediction, began to sink into the waves. Roverino and two of the Sefardim were left floundering in the water, close enough to the ship that they could catch the ropes thrown to them and be hauled aboard.
“Qorha,” Abenvives gasped, when everyone was at last safe and only roiling water marked where the treacherous ground had sunk. “It is mentioned in the Talmud. A great sea creature often mistaken for land.”
“The Greeks called it an aspidochelone,” Don Hernán agreed, meeting Abenvives’ gaze with newfound amity. “To San Brandán, it was Jasconius. Many similar creatures, perhaps, or just one going by different names. God alone knows.”
Mir growled. “Or the Devil. It’s true what they say, that this place is of his making.”
* * *
After all those trials, when they came to another green and peaceable island, no one wanted to trust it.
By then their food was all but gone, dried stores included, and their supply of water held only because a rainstorm at sea had given them a chance to refill their barrels. They could not afford to pass up any opportunity that presented itself. Nevertheless, _La Geperudeta_ stood offshore for a full hour while everyone studied the island with a suspicious eye, trying to detect what perils it might hold.
The worst they found were enormous sheep, nearly the size of the elephant Mir had seen once in Sevilla. Their bulk alone made them dangerous, but they seemed inclined to nothing more energetic than grazing upon a hillside whose grass could not possibly suffice to keep them fed.
“Presuming a single arquebus suffices to bring one down,” he said wearily to Abenvives, “would the mutton of an oversized sheep be something your people can eat?”
“Animals should be killed with a single stroke of a knife, not hunted,” Abenvives said. “But if you permit Davi to do the slaughtering, we would be _very_ glad of a sheep.”
Mir was less than optimistic that a knife would pierce that deep fleece, or do much harm if it did, but they had to try. It proved to be a moot point, however, as he and a group of others, going ashore, found that the sheep had an attendant shepherd.
One who stared blankly at Don Hernán when spoken to in Greek. Having met with such easy success in Hy-Brasil, this setback left the nobleman abashed. “I—I suppose the great Alexander did not sail everywhere before his death . . . or perhaps the Greek tongue has simply been forgotten here.”
Al-Balansī cursed in Arabic. “Then how are we supposed to —”
Before he could finish that sentence, the shepherd spoke. And Mir had heard enough Arabic in his life to recognize the language when he heard it, even through a barbarous faerie accent.
A crack of laughter came from al-Balansī. He answered the faerie in that tongue, and a short discourse ensued.
Mir smacked his pilot on the arm. “What is he saying?”
“That this place is used to trading with the Emirate of Granada,” al-Balansī said. “Those fine white wools the south was known for? They came from here. He thinks we have come to buy some.”
“We’d rather have the meat,” Mir said, with feeling. “As for payment, we have a bilge full of gems from Hy-Brasil, which will do us no good if we starve before returning home to spend them.”
If this island harbored any threats, they were subtle and well-concealed. Its faerie lord was well accustomed to mortals, and he prided himself on his hospitality; he laid out a feast in a fragrant, open-air pavilion that equaled what they had enjoyed on Hy-Brasil. Mir almost felt sorry for those he had left behind to guard _La Geperudeta_ , except that one of them was Ponç, who had become an increasing problem as the days went by. He did, however, dispatch Sessé with food for the guards, so they would not resent those who had gone ashore.
It was a glorious pleasure to bathe in a sun-warmed pool, to rinse out his salt-stiffened clothes, to eat his fill and know he did not have to calculate against future need. He had no illusion that the prince of this land was an altruistic being; al-Balansī made it very clear that this bounty was prelude to hard bargaining. But he was a prince in the old fashion, where liberality marked his greatness, and Mir intended to enjoy that while he could.
He thought, too, that this might be a sign of God or the Devil favoring them at last, bringing them to where the Goblin Market might be. Unfortunately, al-Balansī conveyed that the Market was not currently to be found on these shores, nor did the prince know if it might soon appear. By then Mir was restored enough to himself to be impatient. “We were told that our desires would bring us to the Market! Did the rulers of Hy-Brasil lie?”
“Not that I can tell,” al-Balansī said. “The prince agrees that is the way. But I gather that competing desires can muddy the waters. Too many people wanting different things, pulling in different directions, so that the Sea Beyond doesn’t know which way to lead you.”
Mir scowled. With so many people aboard his ship, there was plenty of opportunity for disagreement. Yet still . . . “Wanting to know the secret of passage and wanting to return home amount to the same thing, surely. The one cannot happen without the other.” Random chance would suffice, he supposed, but he found it hard to credit that anyone’s heart’s desire would be for that over surety.
No, the problem arose from a different quarter—as he discovered on the third day, when he began to bargain with the prince.
The gems from Hy-Brasil held no interest for the faeries of this island. They valued craftsmanship, not materials; their houses and pavilions were intricately carved, their doors painted with elaborate scenes, their clothing embroidered until one could hardly see the fabric beneath. To them, the snow-white fleeces of their sheep were worthless until dyed and worked into a finer form. Gems beautifully set or engraved would have won their favor, but the raw stones they dismissed without a second glance.
“Then what can we trade?” Mir said, in desperation.
The señor de Chipiona laughed. “I will simply have to apologize to the conde de Benaventa for trading away his gifts. Let us break open my crates.”
It proved to be the correct course. At the sight of the artwork wrought by the ancients, the prince of the island brightened enormously. And when he came to the statue that had so nearly fallen to its doom in València, he wept with what Don Hernán assured Mir was in fact great amusement. “What is so humorous about the statue?” Mir asked. “Does he find nakedness a tremendous joke?” For the statue was, after the Greek fashion, carved entirely nude.
Al-Balansī asked, and returned the answer. “No, he is delighted by its subject. This is a statue of Dhu al-Qarnayn—Alexander the Great.”
“I thought it was Hercules,” Don Hernán said, surprised. “The lion pelt, and the club. Though now that you mention it, I recall that Alexander liked to depict himself as Hercules.”
Al-Balansī shrugged. “He takes it for Alexander, and I am not inclined to argue. I believe he intends to buy the statue and piss on the mortal who thought to conquer the Sea Beyond. Or whatever it is these creatures do to express their contempt. Bow down before it, maybe.”
That made it valuable to the prince, which Mir leveraged as strongly as he could despite working through an interpreter. When he attempted to trade it for enough meat to feed his passengers and crew, though, al-Balansī hesitated. “You . . . do not need to worry about your passengers. Only the crew, and Don Hernán and his servant.”
It startled Mir out of his calculations. “What?”
Upon receiving the explanation, he strode off to find Abenvives. All the Sefardim were ashore, quartered in a garden where they had spread their cloaks across some arbors to form a shelter of sorts. Dragging the elder aside, Mir demanded, “You have bargained through my pilot to _stay here_?”
Abenvives answered him with tranquility. “Yes. We discussed it amongst ourselves before we ever came to this island, and again when we arrived here. Sarra is close to giving birth; we need somewhere she can do so in safety. This can be a refuge for us.”
“It’s a heathen land! Not even heathen—a place created by the Devil!”
“So it is described in your scriptures,” Abenvives said. “We take a different view. Of a certainty, this place is not without its perils; we have no illusions about that. But the same was true of the Spains, and the same is true of Portugal. Everywhere our people go, we face hardships and trials. Here is a land where we can settle, with animals that are permissible to eat and a prince who is willing to let us live in peace.”
Mir floundered for words. “You would bend your knee to a _faerie_?”
Abenvives hesitated, but not because of uncertainty. Instead, his next words were blunt in a way he would never have dared before. “We have bent our knees to Christians for centuries, and Moors before that. The lord of this island has sworn an oath to protect us so long as we serve him loyally . . . and faeries, unlike mortals, cannot break their sworn word.”
A welter of emotions rose in Mir, too tangled for any part of it to emerge. Anger at the insult; fear for the safety of these people. Absolute bafflement, that anyone could choose to dwell in this contrary, contradictory place. Horror at the thought of doing the same. Envy, that the Sefardim seemed to have found what they —
“You,” he breathed. “You are the reason we have not found the Goblin Market.”
Abenvives’ eyes were sad. “We have tried not to be. But . . . yes, perhaps. Señor Mir, you wish to return home. Our home has already been taken from us. We wish, with all of our hearts, to find a new one, a place from which we will not be driven on a whim. I thought we might find ourselves at the Market, bargaining with one of the shedim for directions to such a place. Instead we came here. It is as close to Paradise as we are likely to find in life.”
“It is not Paradise. It’s a trap.”
“Then let us be the ones caught by it,” the elder said with a bow. “Sail on, Señor Mir, and find your heart’s desire.”
* * *
* * *
The most damnable part was, it worked.
They left the Sefardim behind, Ponç spitting over the rail to bid them good riddance, sailing onward with a ship that felt all but deserted with twenty-three fewer souls aboard. And not three days later, they found the Goblin Market.
This time there was no mistaking it. The Market had pitched its tents and stalls atop a promontory overlooking the sea; _La Geperudeta_ lay at anchor just below, in the bay that promontory shielded from the waves.
Even from there, they could hear the Market calling. _Come buy, come buy!_
Words spoken in no human tongue, yet every man on board could understand them. All over _La Geperudeta_ men crossed themselves and muttered hasty prayers: they had seen faerie enchantments before, but none whose nature seemed quite so obviously diabolical.
“Are we certain we wish to do this?” Don Hernán said to Mir. All the nobleman’s confidence seemed to have evaporated at the sight of the Goblin Market.
Mir had been among those crossing and praying, but now he set his jaw. “If you know something you have held back, Don Hernán—some detail that might help us learn the trick of passage without the aid of goblins—then now is the time to share it. As you have said many times, you know more about the Sea Beyond than anyone else aboard this ship. Either we get our answer from you, or we get it here.”
“But —” Don Hernán’s protest went no further than one word. He tried twice more, each time catching on the same inexorable fact: if they did not gain the knowledge they sought, likely every man among them would die here in the Sea Beyond. Unshriven, not buried in holy ground. They could seek absolution for making deals with faeries . . . but only if they lived to see a priest again.
Mir cast his gaze across his sailors, weighing their expressions, the fervency of their prayers. Those too deeply afraid, he left with the ship. To the rest, he said, “We go ashore.”
The island itself seemed to be populated entirely by black-skinned Amazons, which prompted a great deal of consternation among the sailors accompanying Mir. On the one hand, they’d been bereft of female company since they left València; on the other hand, these were faeries, and unfriendly ones at that. A cadre of armed women gestured them up toward the promontory at spear-point, making it clear without words that they were displeased to have the Market on their island, bringing in all manner of random strangers.
For Mir and the men aboard _La Geperudeta_ were not the only ones to have arrived at the island. The bay held six other ships—if ships they could be called. One had the form of a mechanical turtle, another was a raft with a hut of woven grass atop, and a third was an oversized rowboat whose owner appeared to be the solitary giantess sitting carefully amid the Market’s tents, so she would not step on anything. The other three were even less ship-like, being an enormous ladle, a porpoise in harness, and something that looked for all the world like an unbreakable soap bubble.
As for the fae in the Market, at first Mir mistook nearly all for customers. He had assumed that goblins would be squat creatures, ugly of aspect, and that the more beauteous fae around him were there to trade with their lesser brethren. But too many of those beauteous ones stood behind the counters or circulated through the lanes, hawking their wares. “Surely these cannot all be goblins,” he said to al-Balansī.
One of the hawkers overheard him and answered. “Goblins are neither kind nor kin, good patron, but a choice! Why, even you might become a goblin. Forswear all home and come with us, and experience everything the Sea Beyond has to offer!”
Mir recoiled: from the suggestion, and from the words themselves, delivered in that same inhuman, yet comprehensible tongue. “How is it that we understand each other?”
The hawker laughed. “How could we trade, if the ten thousand languages of the Sea Beyond divided us? Be you a speaker of salt-talk or Old Foxtongue, leafling or stone growl, you’re granted the speech of goblins while you’re here. The Market’s gift to you, freely given.”
So Mir would need no translator here. Steeling himself, he stepped forward. “Then I have something for which I would trade. Two, in fact, and the first —”
Before he could finish that, the hawker raised one starveling hand. The creature had an uncanny appearance, so thin a strong wind might have snapped . . . him? her? it? Mir could not tell what word ought to apply. “Ah, ah. I am not your goblin, good sir.”
“What do you mean, not my goblin?”
“For every desire, there is a goblin who can meet it. I am not yours, but rather _his_.” The faerie nodded past Mir, to Llopis. “He and I will speak. You should continue on. I suspect your goblin can be found closer to the point, looking out to sea.”
Mir’s protest and questions had not even made it to his lips when the faerie whisked Llopis away, one reedy arm around the man’s shoulders.
Don Hernán crossed himself again. “This place . . .”
The man’s continued vacillations were like grit in Mir’s shoe, and him with miles yet to walk. “If you do not like it, go back to the ship,” Mir snapped, and strode onward.
By the time they made it to the promontory’s point, all his companions save Don Hernán and al-Balansī had been stripped away, drawn aside by one goblin or another, or lured into studying the more ordinary wares on offer—if anything here could be called ordinary. Fruit and jewelry, miniature moons and misshapen skulls. Mir ignored it all, forging ahead with increasingly heavy steps, and wondering the whole time how he was to ever find the kidnapped princess of Hy-Brasil in this chaos.
“Here, good sir,” a melodious voice said. “Your desire sings in my ears, and I am your goblin.”
Mir pivoted as if to face an enemy, and found himself confronted with a face he knew at once.
“You,” he said, stammering with shock. “You—are you not the princess of Hy-Brasil?”
She had the look of her mother too strongly to be anyone else, though Mir supposed that in a place like this, he should not trust anything he saw. But she stood behind a counter of crystal, beneath which gleamed gems like those he’d taken from the shores of that divided island. And when he spoke, she sighed. “I see. Once again, my parents have sent someone to bring me home.”
“ _Once again?_ ” Don Hernán yelped.
The princess’s mouth bit down on impatience. “Every seven years they come, questers sent to ‘rescue’ me.”
“You were not kidnapped,” al-Balansī guessed, nodding at her stall. “You _chose_ to become a goblin.”
“Why should I live my immortal life trapped on an island hidden by fog for seven years at a stretch, when I could have all the Sea Beyond?” She spread her arms wide. Where her mother’s gown had boasted long, sumptuous sleeves, those of the princess were tightly bound, practical. Her hair coiled in a tight knot atop her head, and in place of gems she wore tiny iridescent beetles—beetles which appeared to be alive.
Anger rose in Mir like the tide. “So your parents lied to us.”
She tilted her head from side to side, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “What they told you is the only story they can accept as true. Mine is too bitter for them to swallow. But do not think to return me by force, quester. Those who offer violence in the Market soon regret it.” Her eyes, as blue as the wings of her beetles, gleamed with promise.
Then brightened with a different sort of promise. “But why should we waste time speaking of that? Whatever pledge you made to my parents does not matter; I can tell you are mortal, and your word binds you only as much as you wish it to. Let us speak instead about trade.”
Don Hernán had recollected his composure. Now he stepped forward, planted his cane, and said, “I will trade with you. Tell me—and only me—the secret of how to —”
The tide of anger became an ugly, swamping wave. How dare Don Hernán dismiss him like this, after all that Mir had done? The man might have knowledge, yes, but Mir had a ship, and the knowledge of how to sail it even across an Otherworldly ocean. Without him, Don Hernán would have drowned or starved or been devoured by ants. Yet now he wanted to claim the secret as his sole property?
All that washed over Mir in the time it took his hand to curl into a fist—but the princess was faster. As quick as a thought, she drew one of the gems from her array and popped it into Don Hernán’s mouth like a stopper. “Now, now. I am _his_ goblin, not yours. I do not think you have a goblin here, because you don’t know your heart’s desire.”
Spitting out the stone, Don Hernán said, “Do not tell me what I do and do not know!”
The former princess shrugged. “Very well. I will only tell you, then, that I will not trade with you. You want knowledge; you want nothing to do with us. You want to live at home in familiar old comfort, but the Sea Beyond has awakened the dragon in your heart, and it wants wealth and title and acclaim. Too many things at once, contradicting each other. But _that_ one . . .” She nodded to Mir. “He is fixed on one thing above all, and I am the goblin for it. Come, let us talk.”
Don Hernán tried to reach for her. Al-Balansī caught his arm. The old nobleman struggled, but al-Balansī had held the tiller through the worst storms mortal and faerie seas could throw at him; it was no contest at all. And Mir, apprehension beating in his throat like a captive bird, followed the princess to the very tip of the island’s point, where there was nothing but the stone and the sea and the wind to hear them.
“You know the secret of passing through the Pillars?” he asked. “What will it cost me?”
She shook her head. One of her beetles, caught by a gust, flew away into oblivion. “I don’t have that knowledge myself. What I can sell you, though, is information on how to find it.”
“A goblin deal,” Mir growled. “A _faerie_ deal. Your parents told me how to find the Goblin Market in exchange for my promise, when I might have found it without that. You pledge to sell me information, but how do I know it holds any worth?”
“Because you are mortal and new to this place, I will forgive you that insult. A goblin deal is an honest deal, sir. There is one person in all the Sea Beyond who knows what you wish to know, and I know where he is. Trade with me, and I will tell you how to reach him.”
The air in this place was balmy, yet Mir shivered. “And what will that cost me?”
The goblin princess studied him, eyes narrowing. Then, thoughtfully, she said, “Would you trade your youth for it?”
Solid stone though it was, the ground beneath Mir felt less trustworthy than the pitching deck of _La Geperudeta_. Yes, this was the kind of deal spoken of in stories—the kind that always went wrong. “So I will fall to dust the moment I set foot back in València?” he said harshly.
“No, not at all. I think you will live . . .” She paused, then brushed away any number. “I have little sense of how you mortals count such things. But you will not die, not that day, nor the day after. You will live to see your family again.”
It was something—but not much. Yet buried within her words, Mir heard something else, that awakened a tiny, beating heart of hope. “Then . . . too much time has not passed? I won’t come home to find a century gone, my wife and daughters dead and buried?”
The princess dismissed this with a buzz of her lips. “No. If you follow the directions I give, you will come home in good time.”
His family, alive. Mir himself would not be young—well, he wasn’t young now; he would not see thirty again. An old man, when all was done. But this might be the only way to unlock whatever held closed the passage between the faerie and mortal worlds. A secret known to only one creature in the Sea Beyond.
If he could trust a goblin deal.
He wished, briefly, that Don Hernán _had_ stolen this laurel from him. Let the señor de Chipiona trade with faeries, and reap the blessings and curses that resulted. But fate had chosen someone else.
He prayed to God to forgive this sin, and wondered if God could even hear him in this place.
“We have a deal,” said Mir.
* * *
The directions given by the princess were nonsensical, but al-Balansī followed them to the letter, muttering under his breath in Arabic all the while.
_Follow the flight of a red-winged bird for two days, until you come to a place where the sea grows dark. Put that to your stern and sail back the way you came, three days, always making sure you see the sun under the waves before it rises. When night falls on the third day, drop anchor. In the morning, you will see an island that was not there before, wreathed in dancing lights. With that on your left-hand side, sail until you meet a pod of selkies. Ask them which way lies Antillia—but you will not sail to that island. In the storm that follows, lower your sails and let the wind and waves carry you where they will, until you come to the lone man. He and he alone has the answer you seek._
Absurdity, every bit of it. But also the prize for which Mir had traded his youth, and they had no better option than to do as she instructed.
He was not an old man yet, though every morning he felt his face for signs of wrinkles, fingered his increasingly shaggy hair in search of grey. The princess had skeined _something_ off him, but she said he would not feel the loss of it “until time has had its turn”—whatever that meant.
Upon hearing of his deal, Don Hernán had said nothing, only stormed back to _La Geperudeta_ as well as a frail old man with a cane could storm. Al-Balansī had clapped Mir wordlessly on the shoulder. As for the rest of the sailors, two had not come back at all: Llopis and Ponç were lost to the depths of the Goblin Market.
Mir accepted that loss grimly and sailed on.
Until they came to the lone man, the object of all their questing.
Al-Balansī spotted him first. “Ahead, off the starboard bow—do you see that rock?”
Mir had paid it no mind at first, except to be wary of other hazards that might lurk just below the waves. Now he squinted, and he saw what al-Balansī meant. A rock, and wrapped around it, chains of red orichalcum; and within the chains, a man.
“Take us toward him, carefully,” Mir said. “Have a care we do not tear our bottom out.”
No other rocks lurked in the vicinity; the sounding line spoke of safe depths. Don Hernán had been secluded in the cabin, but hearing the activity of the sailors, he came out just as the ropes they threw caught against the rock. He blasphemed at the sight. “Judas!”
The man ought to have been dead. His rock was barren, nothing more than an outcropping of basalt with scarcely enough room for someone to stand before him; certainly he hung in his chains like a corpse, and his clothes hung upon him in shreds and rags. At Don Hernán’s exclamation, though, his head rose.
“Lay not that name on me,” he croaked. “I have born many names to many people, and all of them are mine; but never have I betrayed a trust. I keep my word, though no magic binds me to do so.”
Mir felt like blaspheming, himself. “No magic binds—do you mean to say you are mortal? But . . . how do you live?”
The man tipped his head back against the rock, sighing. “In punishment for my sin. Long ages ago, I led an innocent lamb to the slaughter; in that sense if no other, the Irish wanderer was right to call me Judas. Since then, I cannot die.”
“The Wandering Jew,” said Don Hernán. “Or Cain.”
“Or Prometheus,” Mir said, gesturing at the chains and the rock.
“None of these, all of these—what does it matter?” the man said wearily. “In the Sea Beyond, all tales are true. Call me Utnapishtim; it is the oldest of my names. Know that I chained myself here of my own will, thinking to thereby avoid repeating my mistakes. But nothing has improved, and I think now that I suffer to no purpose. Torment brings no good into the world. Tell me, travelers, why have you come?”
Before Don Hernán could answer, Mir spoke. “I traded with a princess of the Goblin Market for knowledge of how to pass through the Pillars of Hercules, so that I may return home. She said you were the one person in the Sea Beyond who could answer that question for me.”
The man’s head straightened. Though his face remained young, his beard was white where algae had not stained it green. His long hair had matted into elf-locks; the wind blew it across his eyes, which were as brown as good soil. “The horns of Behemoth,” he murmured. If Mir had not been unconsciously leaning forward, body folding over the rail, he would not have heard.
A long moment passed, in which Utnapishtim seemed to struggle with himself. Then he drew a deep breath, and the tension drained from his bare, ropy shoulders. “Come down and speak with me, stranger.”
The water was cold around Mir’s legs as he splashed down into the surf. He scraped his hands climbing up onto the rock, and his teeth chattered. “Speak.”
This close, the man’s gaze was piercing, not at all rheumy with age. In a soft voice, he said, “Perhaps you will be the means by which two worlds cycle back into balance. Or perhaps not. I think that I must take the risk. Unchain me from this rock, traveler, and I will tell you what I alone know.”
Mir could not draw back in apprehension without putting himself once more into the sea. “And what will you do when freed?”
“Wander,” Utnapishtim said. His laugh creaked like a ship’s planks flexing in the waves. “Do you think I will bring plagues with me? Rain vengeance upon some imagined enemies? You are not loosing a man out of Hell, traveler. Remember that I chained myself here.”
So he claimed. For all Mir knew, once freed, the man might transform into a great beast and devour them all. Yet the princess had made a deal, and she had promised that goblin deals were honest.
His hands numb with cold, Mir reached for the orichalcum chains.
They clattered to the rock and slithered off, lost to the deep. Mir caught Utnapishtim when he sagged, the man grunting as limbs held immobile for untold ages flexed and bore weight once more. “Thank you,” Utnapishtim murmured, gripping Mir’s shoulder for support.
Mir realized he was not breathing and made himself exhale.
At last Utnapishtim stood upright and faced Mir once more. “You sailed through the Horns to this place? Your passage must have occurred when the watery star moved backward through the night sky.”
“Mercury,” Mir said. “But there must be more to it than that.”
“Since the would-be conqueror came to this place, yes. Before Alexander, men could pass through whenever the stars permitted. But he built his gates to hold back the fae, binding the Horns of Behemoth with bronze and iron. It is he, the great Alexander, who locked the way.” Utnapishtim spat the word _great_ like a curse.
Every lock had a key. “What is the key, then?”
Utnapishtim cast his gaze toward _La Geperudeta_ , bobbing in the waves. “You have them aboard your ship, traveler, if you have not sold or lost them. Two coins, such as folk place atop the eyes of the dead, to pay their way into the underworld—or Otherworld. Coins bearing Alexander’s image, as proof that the great king authorizes the traveler’s passage.”
The cold of the water seeped into Mir’s heart. Coins: he had seen them in Don Hernán’s trove of antiquities, gifts from the Conde de Benevanta. They were among the treasures laid out for the prince with whom the Sefardim had stayed . . . but not among those the prince had taken. They were still on board.
He never needed to strike that deal in order to get home. He had only to sail through the Pillars of Hercules at the right time.
But then he would not have known how it was done. And he would not have been able to share that secret with anyone else.
Was his heart’s desire truly to see his family again? No—because if that were it, he would not have traded his youth away, losing years he might have spent in their company. Beneath all else, more than anything, he had wanted the glory and renown of achieving what Don Hernán and Cristóbal Colón had not.
And now he had it. Two coins, bearing the image of Alexander the Great. Such a simple thing—and a treasure beyond price.
Mir swallowed and released Utnapishtim. “Can we sail you to wherever it is you go next?”
The immortal shook his head. “No. My path is my own, and you have a long way to go, Nicolau Mir.”
Before Mir could ask how the man knew his name—how he spoke Valencian—Utnapishtim dove into the waves and was gone.
* * *
In the year of our Lord one thousand four hundred ninety-two, in the chill rains of November, word spread throughout the Spains that Nicolau Mir had returned from the Sea Beyond.
Rumor said his ship came into port with its sails in rags, patched and mended with mats of seaweed and the hides of strange creatures. Rumor said its hold was full of treasures: uncut gems, weapons forged of orichalcum, wondrous herbs and a bird that spoke prophecy. Rumor said the men on board were so old, they fell to dust the moment their feet touched the shore.
Rumor exaggerated . . . but it built upon a kernel of truth.
Nicolau Mir had indeed traded away his youth. In the Sea Beyond it was difficult to track the passage of time, but from Utnapishtim’s rock back to the Pillars of Hercules had been a journey of years. In that time _La Geperudeta_ had come to countless islands, some of them paradises of leisure and beauty, others a nightmare from which they barely escaped. He had lost men: to wounds, to starvation, to the temptations of the Sea Beyond. He had gained a sailor stranded during that Portuguese expedition sixty years ago, the man swearing he’d been there no longer than a season. Don Hernán had long since perished of old age.
But the princess of the Goblin Market had promised that Mir would live to see his family again.
Before he did so, Mir insisted that he would speak to none but the king and queen themselves, presently residing in Segovia. It was a long, exhausting journey there, especially with the winter rains churning the roads to mud, but before Christmas he came before them at last.
He refused to speak the secret in open court, nor did the king and queen wish him to. Isabel de Castilla and Fernando de Aragón closeted themselves away with this strange Valencian sailor, not even permitting their closest advisors to join them. When they came out again, they announced the creation of a new royal council, the Council of the Sea Beyond, to manage all exploration of and trade with that Otherworldly realm—for the kingdoms of the Spains, alone among all the nations of the mortal world, now held the secret of how to reach those waters.
Upon Nicolau Mir they bestowed a dukedom. He went home to València, where his wife and his daughters waited, and the one as yet unborn. He was an old man, and he had been gone a mere three months.
He did not die that day, nor the day after. But sovereigns being so often dilatory in keeping their promises, and these two so occupied with claiming this new realm for their own—along with Colón’s triumphant return from the Indies—Mir’s dukedom and its wealth were still no more than words on paper when he breathed his last, a bare year after his return.
From _Adventitious_ , Issue Three
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### Written By
##### M.A. Carrick
M.A. Carrick is the joint pen name of Marie Brennan (author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent) and Alyc Helms (author of the Adventures of Mr. Mystic). The two met in 2000 on an archaeological dig in Wales and Ireland — including a stint in the town of Carrickmacross — and have built their friendship through two decades of anthropology, writing, and gaming. Previously they collaborated on the Rook and Rose trilogy, beginning with The Mask of Mirrors. They live in the San Francisco Bay Area. https://www.adventitious.net/stories/non-plus-ultra-m-a-carrick/
