Chapter Text
—
in between
The palm trees look like giant ferns. Titan ferns. Their leaves are the same shape — well, slightly different. But similar enough where it matters. Spindly and pointy, with big long leaves that spill out from the centre. They reach up the sky as tall as a 15 metre class, standing impossibly on a tall, thin trunk.
I held one of their leaves that had come off onto the beach. It was more sharp, more stiff than the leaves I know. They come from such a height — the trees are just so goddamn tall. Up close, their stupid spindly trunks look hard and unyielding. The ODM would find it harder to make purchase through their tough skin. On Paradis, the trees had more give, more softness, and far more limbs. These palm trees… I might be able to climb it, if two were right next to each other. But then where would you go? There is no way you can easily prop yourself, or stand. They’re irritating to look at. They’re unbalanced. They just shoot themselves straight upwards — curve outwards with prickly, spiny excuses for leaves — and sway in any kind of breeze that comes to them. I watch them every day, waiting for one to snap and fall on my head.
Gabi has been taking me to the beach each day. I suppose it’s for something to do. They are worried about my mental state, after being held up in tents unable to move or wipe my own ass for weeks, delirious in fever after my flesh tried to rot and kill me, and then moving to the strange in-between place I am now.
I live in a room across from Gabi and her parents. They’ve been feeding me, sending doctors to me. They want to stay here, but Gabi wants to go to Liberio, where the remnants of Marley are reforming, where Falco and Onyankopon went. I don’t know why she would go back to that place. A place she was hated, and probably still is. In any case, nothing’s left there that would be useful to us any longer.
I can’t be bothered to tell her this, as one thing I know is that humans are sentimental, and cling to what they know, particularly when things are completely unknown. I know this, because when I stare at the new trees I think of the forests in Paradis and titans of the same height. That’s what I know; that’s what I dream, remember. I dream of old books and the whisper of a strange, foreign word — the ocean, Levi. Water that stretches on and on, far as the eye can see. I hear that, over the sound of crashing waves. I see them, when I look at the strange trees.
But I don’t say much at all these days anyway. There’s no point to new words; there’s certainly no need for mine anymore. In any case I am now too injured physically to have any sort of utility. Without words, with my new body, I can’t help with rebuilding. And certainly not politics. I never cared for it, the narcissism and distance, distance from reality — to rule over people, to make decisions, you must sever yourself from the ache of hunger in bellies, the pain in muscles and joints degraded from endless decades of labor, from the desperate sadness of grieving families. That is to say, what is real becomes abstract, a small factor in a larger thing.
Anyway. These days the brat has destroyed any vestige of what I knew, even back on the island. This whole world is new and strange to me. I think the only thing I know for certain is that I’m still alive.
Gabi, further down the beach from me, picks up a large white shell and looks towards the ocean. She does this often, the looking. It’s like she’s still waiting for the Rumbling. I know it’s really over, every morning when I wrench out of sleep into the real world with my useless body and go — oh, yes. Then there’s the creeping ache of remembering. The entire make up of being alive, I think, is just a catalogue of more things to remember.
By the sea, I look at these stupid trees and think — how pointless, how strange. Hange perhaps would have understood their function and explained it to me, so that I could at least comprehend their utility. Erwin would have been fascinated by the change in… no, not weather, the other word… Perspective? No, climate. Climate, there are many different climates in the world… Paradis is further north on this sphere called the world in which we all inhabit, so it’s cooler than here, further south… A warmer climate… He wrote pages and pages about the ocean, once he crossed the sea, but I saw nothing but small deaths in his eyes…
Gabi often sings a sad sounding song in a different language, another word I have learnt. I do not know the meaning of the song. It is irritating, but I believe it brings her some comfort. And there are many things I don’t understand yet must accept into my life.
Though I don’t have anything good or useful now to offer to this world, the song oddly reminds me of them all, the Corps, Isabel and Furlan, even Kenny. Just memories now, just stories. It seems mad that on the other side of this vast thing ahead of me, there’s a place that was the centre of the world, a place which won’t ever be forgotten, except perhaps when it too becomes a distant memory, or a myth or a legend, and I will be utterly forgotten, and so too will Eren Jeager, the Corps themselves, the nine who took down the Rumbling, and, even fucking Titans will become nothing, not even a story, maybe just a myth. And perhaps — well, it is better this way.
—
The doctors visit the strange house, where I ended up after it all, and now I apparently live. It’s wide and flat, with no stairs, thankfully, as I have to use a wheelchair now. It’s made of a strange material. No wood: the walls are a flat rough white thing and the floors slippery squares. It’s always too hot, but the house inside is cool and breezy, with floaty curtains and curved archways rather than doors. I feel as though the outside converges with the in. The flowers are bright and big, the leaves on everything a brilliant dark green, and insects hum loud funny songs, even louder than the constant ringing in my ears.
Apparently, we are near the centre of the earth, where it is always hot. Apparently it will soon storm for a whole month on end, torrential rains that barely cease. The wet, the locals call it. Gabi wants to move north before then. Back to Liberio, out of this foreign place. But her parents want to stay. They like their new home; Gabi’s father is learning the new language, her mother going on walks for hours, pinning up the photographs she takes of the new wildlife, the strange plants, the ocean. The wall in the living room is covered by them. And there are fights most evenings about all this.
However, I can’t do anything about any of that. It is not my business to interfere in, firstly, but even if I wished to: I have never been so injured in my life, or taken so long to heal. I suspect why.
So, I must rely on strange doctors. But, the doctors here are good. They visit and one nurse can speak our language, saying things like, ‘Muscles still healing,’ ‘Extensive nerve damage,’ and, my favourite, ‘You are lucky to be alive!’ All with a twisted, sad odd look. Because anyone alive today is lucky, whether you are a soldier or not. And their people are luckiest: they were far enough away from Paradis, and they share what they have with the few of us left alive who made our way here.
I do not take out any frustration on these people: not the curious locals who visit, each of us unable to communicate with one another, not Gabi and her endless whining about Liberio, not her mother Indiria and her fussing, or her father Jack and his quiet anger at dinner. I follow the instructions of the doctors, stretch what limbs I can still move when I can, and try to reach out and touch things. I remember… after Erwin lost his arm, how he had to relearn his whole centre of gravity. Walking was unfathomable for a good while, yet he’d never let it dissuade his resolve. “A new obstacle to overcome,” he would say, then smile at me a little, a grim curve. I think of that each time my muscles scream out or fail or tingle with numbness. In any case, in another life, the missing limbs would grow back. Could. Here, now, they won’t, and mine lost their spark, so they won’t heal right. I am accepting this.
Indiria, Gabi’s mother, brings me food to my bed. I have to rest often. She tells me about the new dishes I’ve never heard of, points to different ingredients with excitement. “This dish has a spice called turmeric in the sauce,” she will say, “that gives it this amazing colour. Try it, Levi!” And I do, and it is strange, but my stomach is empty, so I eat it tentatively.
I remember a time when Hange would stare at me, during my first weeks in the Corps, as I ate my food very quickly so no one would take it from me. They asked me, “why do you eat like it’s your last meal?” I was offended. I glared at them and told them to fuck off. But they just said — “if you eat like that, they’ll think you have no manners.” Kenny’d never bothered with that shit. Furlan and Isabel never cared how I ate. But in the Corps, I learnt very quickly, appearances mattered. So Hange taught me how to eat with proper manners, a knife and fork, good enough for any dignitary.
And now I remember that as I struggle through some flat looking bread, paired with spiced meat and a sort of vegetable stew full of flavours I have never encountered. It’s like nothing on Paradis, but I can’t deny the tastes are well balanced, zesty and full. But my throat burns with the acidity. I grow tired only a quarter of the way through and ask to return to bed. Indiria lies me down, murmuring things like, ‘there, there,’ and, ‘you’ve done well, get some rest now,’ and, ‘would you like the curtain drawn?’
I shake my head, even though that hurts, and manage to rasp, ‘yes,’ to the last question. It rips at my tender throat. My temple is throbbing, right where the eye is gone. It’s sending tingling pain down my neck and in through my shoulder. It feels like the whole inside of my muscle and bone is alight with flames, those being a stinging pain pricking me over and over. I close my good eye in the dark room, and through the foggy blurriness see Erwin’s face rise up, looking at me with a soft lidded gaze, like when he used to open his arms up to me. I try to bear it.
—
letters in the months going forward
Dear Levi,
I’m hoping this reaches you in good spirits. Much of our time together in Fort Salta you were quite unwell, and the Brauns were only too willing to take you with them. It seemed the best thing for you. I once read a book about Iilari, and saw pictures of beautiful oceans, and thought it seemed a fitting place for you to recover. Much better than the tents in the refugee camp.
I just wanted to let you know where you could find me if you ever wished. I returned to my homeland, and it is from there I send you this — and where I will be for the foreseeable future. If you wish to write back you may send it to the address enclosed.
However, Armin Artlert has plans and visions to bring Paradis in line with his vision of peace. Historia is our ally, apparently, but she rules within the confines of that which the emboldened Jeagerists allow. We are all Marley now, us conquered people, Eldians, the few who left Paradis. We are all complicit, and it is not truly safe anywhere on earth; though, for now, I think no place is organised enough to attack. So I think I will be involved in these plans, but from a distance. I must protect my people now, after protecting yours and the Island. I’m sure you understand.
I tell you this to prepare you, not to implicate. You’ve done more than enough, and should rest if that is what you desire. But I hope one day soon we will meet again.
My Best Regards,
Onyankopon.
—
Captain Levi,
I hope your recovery is going well. I’m writing for two reasons, having finally received confirmation of your whereabouts from Onyankopon, and hope not to ask much of you.
Firstly, an explanation on the events leading to now:
Those of us from Paradis were forced to leave Fort Salta quickly, with General Muller, to congregate with the remains of the Marleyan forces. The Jeagerists have militarised and us alongside Kizumi and the remains of the other nations destroyed in the Rumbling are targets. So, if Eren wished this would protect us, I think his abilities could not see too far into the future.
You are officially discharged for injury. Before I left, General Muller had you seen to, operated on. I had his authority you would make a full recovery, and both Onyankopon and Indiria Braun promised you were under their care moving forward. I want to apologise for leaving you behind, Captain, but I suppose there was nothing I or you could do, so you’d probably tell me I’m wasting breath (or paper) so instead I will move to my next point.
I understand you are on the island of Iilari, and are with the Brauns. There are many rumours here in Marley about your survival. To display our new unity between Eldia, Marley, and other nations of the old empire, we will host a remembrance celebration. There will be festivals and markets and also a more formal military awards ceremony. If you and Gabi were to show yourselves, it would be most productive as the most accomplished and longest serving member of the Survey Corps. Without you, Captain, the Rumbling would not have ended and the world would be a desolate place but for our small Island. So, if you are well enough, we would appreciate having you in Liberio. I understand Gabi may want to stay with her parents, but Falco begged me to let you know he wants her there too.
The ceremony will be on the last day of the year, about two months from when this should reach you. It is entirely up to you if you wish to come. The Survey Corps are essentially done, and I do not consider myself your Commander — your choices are your own. I just owed you this explanation, and to ask this selfish favour.
Giving my heart,
Armin Artlert.
—
leaving
A few months later, after the torrential rain has come and gone, I am a little better. My head feels clearer, more certain of where I am, what has happened. I’ve been sorting it out in my mind each day. I sit with Gabi on the patio and we listen to the hum of tropical creatures — insects, frogs. There are spindly flying insects as big as my hand. The ocean rolls on its endless dance in the distance, never too far away not to hear.
My wooden crutch lies beside me. I can move gently around the house now with it, but need the wheelchair for longer journeys, like our walks to the beach. Gabi is reading a book, and I sit and watch the bright green leaves. Palm trees shoot up from a thick foliage of dense jungle. It’s so hot, the earth steams like dying titans.
“Are you talking today?” Gabi asks me carelessly, flicking a page of her book. I turn to her, frowning meaningfully, and wait for her to look up. She meets my gaze coolly. “What?” She demands, rolling her eyes. “I know you hurt yourself, obviously. Doesn’t mean you can’t try to talk.”
Damned teenagers. She’s getting to that age — but I am no longer threatening enough to scare her.
Instead, I pick up the paper on the table beside us, and scribble a message.
Don’t be a bitch. It makes you uglier.
Gabi snatches it out of my hand, reads it in a second; her scoff echoes around the patio. She tosses it aside. The paper flutters to the floor, and slips away far under the seat.
“Says you,” she sneers. We are a miserable pair. Her particularly, and increasingly, since she left Falco and has been stuck here indefinitely. Having me for company is certainly a downgrade. “Your eye is really scary, you know that? And your scars have healed wrong. It’s all — fucked up looking. And you sitting there like a mute, it’s weird, OK? You look like a — you’re just a cripple, now, a scary weird cripple. I hate it when you just — sit there, staring at nothing. What do you even see, huh? What are you looking at?”
I try to say, “Gabi,” to calm her — she gets like this, sometimes, and I know — but it comes out rough and scratchy, like a dying man’s voice. Her big brown eyes are filling with tears.
“You’re not even trying,” she says, more quietly, but her voice is strained. “I hate it here. Can’t you just get better so we can leave?”
I nod, and she sniffs. She buries her head in her book, pretending to read, but keeps crying. I stare out at the jungle ahead, seeing the titan ferns, feeling the prickle of humid heat on my skin. Her sniffs level out.
After a few minutes, I pick up my pad of paper, and struggle upwards, leaning my weight on the crutch. My leg is shaking, and the dead one feels odd and tingly, but this is normal, now. Gabi is ignoring me as I take sharp quick breaths like an invalid. Sweat drips into my eyes. I blink quickly, arrange my limbs slowly, and finally move one leg forward, then the crutch, heading inside.
The wood digs into my armpit, but I keep on shuffling along. The strange tingling in my dead leg rushes painfully as the blood runs through it, but I bear it. The insects — oh, those damned insects — they never seem to get quieter here, no matter if you are inside or out, and the noise buries itself into my head. Incessant, incessant, like this stupid body. Finally, I reach the dining table and slump into a chair, sweating, muscles trembling. I haven’t been this thin since the underground days, and never this unfit. But I give it time, this new body, to catch the lungs up with my breath, the thudding of my heart with the pain in various joints and muscles.
Then I arrange the paper on the table in front of me. I write a note, and don’t give myself more time to think.
Indiria,
Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I don’t know why you didn’t leave me in the tents at Fort Salta after the Rumbling, but I will always be thankful that you didn’t.
I think we should return to Liberio, and soon, now that the rains have passed and I am much better. If you wish to stay, I am happy to escort Gabi. She is desperate to see Falco and my status will protect her in what’s left of Marley. I got a letter the other week from Armin Artlert, asking me to attend an awards ceremony to recognise my efforts in the Rumbling, with an extended invitation to Gabi. I also know it’s not really my place to offer this, and you have endured much suffering in your family and what is most important is enjoying the peace you lived to see. I haven’t told Gabi about this offer, so you can ignore it or tell me to get lost, I don’t mind. But it’s there if you want to take it up.
Levi
I fold it, sit back in the chair, and close my eyes. In another life, Erwin would tell me, maybe, we have to use all we have. Any sort of political power they understand — but no force, no, it will just endanger us. Of course, then, Eren had done the Rumbling anyway, and was killed after Zeke lost the beast to Gabi. Reiner had let himself be blown up by Erwin’s colossal, and the new armoured became unknown. Mikasa watched me kill Eren, and held her blade to my throat, slitting a thin line not deep enough to kill, before running away. Erwin had found me choking in my own blood. Gabi’s beast was a tiger, and… Well, best not to dwell… But it all was a mess. The sky had rained ash. We had gone home, and let them all kill one another, whilst we tried to satisfy the Jeagerists’ momentum against a further war that was becoming inevitable. Well, Erwin had. He wrote and wrote. He went mad with it, whilst he weakened. Hange had offered to take the titan from him. We kept delaying, hoping Commander Erwin would come back from the place he’d retreated to in his mind. It only got worse, not easier. Then he died quietly, and Hange would follow, trying and failing… The world only becoming darker, harder, with less and less to lose…
Yes, best not to dwell. These things did not happen, I think. Though it feels muddier, with the new letters I’ve received. No: I never did hold him one last time. I never got to tell him all those things, those useless soothing things about brighter worlds just on the horizon. He never saw the sea; I never saw the hope utterly extinguished from him. No, he died with his dream. That is what I should take, and cling onto. I should.
—
“Levi.”
Gabi’s mother, Indiria. I turn to her from my position, upright in bed. Since hiding my note in the pocket of one of her blouses I’ve been stowing myself away from the rest of them, trying to avoid any sort of fuss. I’ve arranged through the doctors to leave at the end of this week. But she’s found it— she’s holding my note.
Her eyes are pained. “You ask me to make this choice, this impossible choice.”
I watch her. The floaty white dress she’s taken to wearing drifts in a breeze that runs through the house. Her skin has turned the colour of a walnut, her face less gaunt than when I first met her. She folds her arms across herself, like a hug, as she stares at the floor.
“After everything, Captain?” She says quietly. Her voice strains. “I tell myself, she will understand eventually, why we stay here. She will learn the new ways — the new language, the new people. She will grow to love it. We fell in love with it — out of necessity, yes, I suppose, but here… compared to there… it is Paradise. There is kindness here, so much more kindness, and no sort of — no reminders. No hateful people. No danger! So why won’t she? Why does she want to go backwards?”
I swallow against my rough and broken throat. It’s easy to run away, I suppose. Running away, rather than fight — what any sane person would do, given a choice. But Gabi is young. Youth is good, I think. You remember less, try more.
I try to get my tongue to cooperate with sound. “Left… Be… hin…” It scratches, it burns. I stop.
Indiria stares at me then, and after a pause, responds. “Yes… I suppose so, Levi. Left behind. Yes…”
The parrot birds make their shrieks in the distance. Indiria takes a sharp inhale, then walks over and sinks at the edge of my bed. Her eyes look through the floor. “It will break my heart to send her alone.”
I shake my head, and point to myself. She looks at me desperately.
“And Falco will… He will be there. And she can come back, can’t she?”
I shrug. I can’t lie to her. Indiria takes a shuddery breath, chokes on her terror.
“She will hate me,” she whispers. “Even more than she already does, if I trap her once again.”
I watch her face contort and tremble. I know, though, that she will give her up. She already has once.
“I must,” she whispers, commands herself, but fat tears spill from her eyes, run down her cheeks. “I must. She has to do something right, something good for this damned world. She must be able to make things right. We are cowards, hiding here, aren't we?”
She turns to me, her face aging years as despair pulls at the lines. Her eyes are streaming with thick tears, but her voice is level, only a little wobbly.
“Why will you go?” She asks me sternly, wildly, eyes searching mine. “Is it for Gabi? You two… Going to the beach every day, fighting together… Is it for her? Gods, I don’t — it must be torture, being here… All you do is sit and stare, Levi. There isn’t something else you want? Do you want to go back to it all? You could stay. You can — we can make a new life here, you know? Is there anything I can do for you, anything at all?”
I have to look away from her. The shiny tiled floors are familiar to me now. The breeze is cool, and brings in the scent of incense one of the doctors left at the door earlier this morning. Perfumed, heavy. The sea in the distance.
I shake my head. Indiria chokes, her head buckles, and she finally weeps.
—
I couldn’t dress myself for a long while, so Gabi’s father did. Even now I can do more he still brings me my fresh clothes and stands with his back turned in case I need help with buttons or zips. He’s very good about it, whipping off my briefs with a practiced efficiency after the first week or two, and now intuitive with when I can’t tug the last part of my trousers over my hips or when my leg goes dead and collapses under me, taking me down with it. He never makes it a strange or pitying affair. He just goes on about something inane, which makes my head ache, but gives me something else to focus on other than my complete uselessness. I have grown to liking this time of day. Maybe in a sick way he reminds me of Erwin, taking my clothes off rapidly when we got a spare minute. Maybe it’s just something as desperately human as having another touch you. I don’t linger on that thought too much.
He comes into the room today carefully. “I have a surprise,” he says. He’s holding the clothes behind his back. “They sent it from Marley… Armin did, I believe… I don’t know if you… Well, you can tell me if you want to have it or not. For the journey, and the ceremony. It will be colder, the further north you go.”
He brings his arms forward, and laying in a neat fold across them is a Survey Corps cape. I stare at it. The green is softer than I remember. Not as brilliant as the green here, something earthier to it.
Gabi’s father — Jack, I know his name — holds it up, dropping the length of it down, and the fabric ripples out to show the wings stretched across it. It’s bright and new. It certainly has never had titan guts scrubbed out of it, or the blood of any of the Corps. I blink.
“You don’t…” He starts, then trails off. He begins refolding it. “I suppose —”
I strain my throat to make noise.
“Touch…? It?”
My stupid useless voice. They say it should have healed, that speech therapy would help, that I should practice each day. I try, but every time I speak, it feels like white hot irons are being placed on several points in my throat. This leaves it feeling full of dust and ash, chunks of burned flesh peeling away from itself, closing over — and then it spreads to my lungs, which fill with smoke, steam, air I can’t breathe. So, I suppose, speaking is another thing that belongs to the old Levi. Nothing is as it used to be; I doubt my body can progress much further, so I try to accept where I am at with it all.
Gabi’s father is paused, halfway through apologising. He holds out the cape.
“Of course.”
He comes over and holds out the cape. I strain my hand. It shakes like anything, like the recruits when they first come across a titan, like me after I saw Isabel’s decapitated head and the tuft of Furlan’s hair. I manage to touch it, heavy fabric crisp and new and… familiar. My fist grasps around it, the few fingers still there and the stumps. My heart, it beats quickly like I’m waiting for someone.
Gabi’s father lets the cape fall into my lap, across my knees. I had forgot the weight of it, the heavy, thick material. One thing the Military Police let us spend money on.
Jack moves backwards.
“I forgot,” he says quietly, “I left… My paper, outside.”
He walks out the door and closes it. I don’t know what he sees on my face, but I don’t have the space to acknowledge it — my heart, it’s calling out in the dark, the beast answers, and I am falling very far downwards. My body is too broken for my instincts to mean a thing anymore, so I endure it, the fabric between my remaining fingers, the familiar wings across my deadened leg. I feel like something inside me cleaves in half. In between, I think. I am in between all of this.
—
Gabi and I leave the jungle early one morning. A small woman with a toothy grin picks us up in an odd three-wheeled carriage as the sun leaves brilliant streaks of vivid pinks and oranges fading into grey and then cerulean. I don’t linger on goodbyes, leaving the family to their privacy. I have a small bag that I place beneath my feet on the planked floor. My crutch has to lie diagonally in front of my legs.
Gabi hops in tearfully a few minutes later, and the woman chatters to us in a foreign tongue in what sounds a friendly enough tone, oblivious to our non understanding. I nod my head whilst Gabi sniffles. After a minute, the woman gives up, puts on a strained little smile, and then swiftly hops onto a tiny bench out the front of the carriage and begins pedalling forward. We jolt into movement. The woman’s long dark hair streams out behind her in the breeze, her loose-fitting pants tight around the knees, displaying her strong calves working fiercely. I’m amazed she can carry all our weight, then think — well, there is a young teenaged girl, and me of basically the same weight, these days.
Gabi doesn’t speak as we ride out of the jungle. We rise up a long gradual hill, until we can see over the tops of trees as the road falls away down, down. I see sharp cliffs rising out of the mountains bursting with dense jungle, how it staggers down into a small village. It seems to burst out of the cliffs in vivid bright shades of white, orange, pinks, all the way down to the sea. The houses here are all so brilliant and warm, like the big flowers, the hot sunrises. The colour, bright colours, everywhere. Down by the sea, sailboats rest like tiny white flags against a turquoise blue I didn’t know existed in nature. I suppose that’s where we came in, after leaving Fort Salta, the dusty tents… I barely remember travelling out at sea, only the wooden slats of the bunk above me as I woke in between resting. Gabi had been there. I turn, suddenly, to her, but she’s staring out of the window deep in thought. I leave her to it.
We are steered downhill, the woman singing to herself. I can hear her low, melodic voice through the open slats of the carriage. A strange contraption, I think. But clever, without horses. It’s wide at the back, where we sit, narrowing into a point at the front. A three-wheeled thing that the woman steers efficiently like a bicycle. We gain some speed, jumping around from the small rocks hitting our wheels. I inhale the jungle around us. If I close my eyes, and ignore the foreign smells, I could be outside the walls. Riding home.
—
out at sea
Gabi and I hole up in bunk beds in the barracks of a sailboat. I’ve been told the names of where we’re heading, but they mean nothing to me. Still, we will sail for three weeks. This I know.
Gabi doesn’t speak to me much, but then, I don’t either. We continue our ritual of sitting next to one another and staring outwards at the ocean. Sometimes we see fish, big and small. One day we see enormous grey fish rising from the ocean, and Gabi gasps.
“Look!” She points. “Dolphins, Levi. There’s dolphins!”
I stare at them. They leap smoothly from the water, uttering strange noises. We sail past, and the boatsmen crowd over and call to one another in their strange tongue. I see the distorted grey blue of the animals under the water’s surface, that’s how close we get.
Gabi leans over the rail, dangerously so, and some of them call to her. “No!” They say, the only word they seem to know. One woman rushes forward, placing her hand on Gabi’s shoulder. “You — no,” she shakes her head vehemently. “Fall in water.”
“I won’t,” she says impatiently, shaking her off. The woman falls back with a sigh, looking at me reprovingly, like I’m her damned babysitter. Gabi can do what she likes — fall into the ocean, that’s her choice. But I know she won’t.
She leans further over the rail to stare down in awe. The others have forgotten their worry, congregating by the edge themselves. Gabi twists back to call me over with a joyful wave. “Look, Levi!”
I come up beside her as carefully as I can, gripping at the bar unsteadily. My new legs sure aren’t made for the sea. I look. There’s the endless blue, but beneath it, huge dark shadows rippling at the surface. One breaks, sticking its smooth grey back up past the waves, as though to show off. Its skin looks like smooth, slippery grey stone. Everyone aboard gasps and gestures in approval. Gabi is entranced.
“I’ve never seen one this close, before,” she tells me. I nod in agreement. I remember one of Erwin’s books… But I chase that away, watching the great animals below dance and tumble.
Then we sail past and they become too distant to see. Gabi hovers still even as the rest of the boat disperses. She cranes her neck to the left as their shadows disappear beneath the choppy waves falling over themselves, indiscernible amongst the hundreds, thousands of small crests jumping over one another.
—
landing ashore
The open seas do not agree with me. The last week on the boat I spend either watching the horizon or below the decks trying not to throw up in a bucket when wild stormy winds turned the seas rough. But, finally, we reach land.
Gabi helps me off the boat, crutch digging into my armpit, the salt and brine of the pier assaulting my nostrils. I can barely raise my head through the weakness that’s taken over my body to acclimatise to the new place we’ve arrived at.
“We need to get you a new wheelchair,” she says, softly. I grunt at her, and she helps me onto a bench.
When I gather myself, I look up. This is a place clearly touched by the Rumbling, judging by the destruction to the left of the docks — but to the right, a town on the hill watches down, bursting with military presence and makeshift buildings amongst an old clocktower and a smattering of homes still standing. It seems here the titans were halted here part way through their march. It is stark, life on one side, and nothing on the other. The old clocktower seems to mark its beginning and end.
The dock immediately before us is loud and busy. There are people everywhere, yelling, selling wares, a salty and oppressive stink of fresh fish. People haul nets of them from small boats, one man leads a cow with a rope through the crowd, and alongside the walkway tents host the unmistakable smell of fried food. It all hits my nostrils, turns my stomach.
“Hungry?” Gabi asks me. Not really, I think, so I shrug. She frowns. “You’re too skinny, and you’ve barely eaten this past week. Wait here, I’ll get us something.”
As if I’m going anywhere. I lean back and try to stretch out the dead leg whilst she goes into the mass of people, disappearing deftly into the chaotic swell.
My head spins, and I stare up at the sky, relinquishing the feel of steady earth beneath me. Well, soon to be, once I get off this damned pier. Tonight we will stay here, as will some of the crew who aren’t immediately returning to Iilari. They gave Gabi a map with a place circled, somewhere we could rest our heads, and selfishly I hope for a bed. I think of the one back on the island — in the jungle — how the insects would roar each night, keeping me awake, until it became comforting. I realised this once I was on the seas. I would wake in the night, and remember the boat from before, where I fell in and out of consciousness, into pain firing through my body, into disoriented fragmented remembering. I forgot how my eye can’t see anymore — only a fuzzy, grey blur that gives me migraines — and how chunks of my leg were carved away, so the muscles won’t ever recover. When people tried to speak to me, I could only answer in animalistic noises, my throat ruined from Titan steam and smoke that ripped it raw.
I straighten, not willing to dwell on all that. I’m off the boat, now, and hopefully I won’t ever have to ride a damned thing again.
A new boat has docked, and now a stream of people exit to my left. I turn my head to the side to observe. A woman with a blonde bob leads the charge, followed by a young family, then a few lone travellers. Most look very different to me, or Gabi. In fact everyone on the jungle did too. For once, my height was not an anomaly; everyone there was quite short. That was nice. And my dark hair is not uncommon. Erwin’s blonde would shine out here, amongst a sea of deep browns and blacks.
Soon, Onyankopon will meet us in Marley. As he said — we are all now Marley, in this new world. But first, me and Gabi will continue on. Our silent, sullen pair.
She brings me some fried fish and corn. Suddenly, I am ravenous, and we eat the juicy fish and buttered corn like children, the juices running down our hands and wrists. Gabi slurps hers up without abandon. There’s a brightness to her as she looks around the town, the bustle — life going on.
I take out my handkerchief and wipe my hands. They don't feel clean enough, but I'm tired. I close my eyes against the sun for a moment and listen to the noise; the yelling, calling, hum of chatter between people, the hiss of something cooking, the thuds of boats coming to dock. Strangely, it makes me go very still, like if I were to move it would shatter me into little pieces. But that is a ridiculous thought. Gabi shakes me gently, and I begin to untwine myself, carefully as I now have to, and we go on.
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