The cigar-shaped shadow of the airship scudded across fields and rivers like a solitary cloud. Through the curved window, Ophelia scanned the landscape, hoping to see, in the distance, for one last time, the watchtower from which her family were waving scarves. Her head was still spinning. Barely minutes after takeoff, when the airship was negotiating a turn, she’d had to leave the starboard promenade in a panic to find the lavatories. By the time she was back, all she could see of the Valley was a distant stretch of shadow at the foot of the mountain.
She couldn’t have imagined a more disastrous leave-taking.
“A girl of the mountains who’s airsick! Your mother’s right, you never miss a chance to make a spectacle of yourself . . . ”
Ophelia tore her eyes from the viewing window to look around the Map Room, so called due to the planispheres on the wall depicting the fragmented geography of all the arks. At the other end of the room, the bottle-green dress Aunt Rosaline was wearing stood out against the honey-colored plush of the carpets and armchairs. She was studying the cartographic images with a stern eye. It took Ophelia a while to realize that it wasn’t the arks she was scrutinizing like this, but the quality of the printing. An occupational defect: Aunt Rosaline specialized in the restoration of paper.
She came back to Ophelia with wary, mincing steps, sat in the neighboring chair, and nibbled with her horsey teeth at the biscuits they’d been served. Feeling nauseous, Ophelia looked away. The two women were alone in the room. Apart from them, Thorn, and the crew, there were no other passengers on board the airship.
“Did you notice Mr. Thorn’s expression when you started to redistribute your meal all over the airship?”
“I was rather preoccupied right then, dear aunt.”
Ophelia peered at her godmother over the rectangles of her glasses. She was as narrow, dried-up, and jaundiced as her mother was plump, moist, and rubicund. Ophelia didn’t know this aunt, who would be her chaperone for the coming months, very well, and it felt strange to find herself alone with her. Normally, they saw little of each other and hardly spoke. The widow had always lived solely for her old papers, just as Ophelia had always lived solely for her museum. Which hadn’t left them much chance to get close.
“He nearly died of shame,” declared Aunt Rosaline in a harsh voice. “And that, young lady, is a spectacle I never, ever want to witness again. The honor of the family rests on your shoulders.”
Outside, the airship’s shadow was merging into the water of the Great Lakes, which shimmered like mercury. In the Map Room, the late-afternoon light was fading. The honey-colored plush of the furnishings appeared less golden, more beige. All around, the airship’s framework was creaking, its propellers droning. Ophelia absorbed, once and for all, these sounds, this gentle rolling beneath her feet, and felt better. It was just something to get used to.
She pulled a spotty handkerchief out from her sleeve and sneezed once, twice, three times. Her eyes were watering behind her glasses. The nausea had gone, but not the cold. “Poor man,” she said, amused, “if he fears ridicule, he’s not marrying the right person.”
Aunt Rosaline’s skin turned pale yellow. She threw a panicked look over to the small room, trembling at the thought of seeing the bearskin in one of the armchairs. “Ancestors alive, don’t say such things!” she whispered.
“He worries you?” asked Ophelia, amazed. She herself had feared Thorn, yes, but that was before meeting him. Since the stranger had got a face, she was no longer scared of him.
“He sends shivers down my spine,” shuddered her aunt, neatening her tiny bun. “Have you seen his scars? I suspect he tends towards violence when in a bad mood. I’d advise you to keep a low profile after this morning’s little scene. And then try to make a good impression on him—we’re going to be with him, me for the next eight months, you for the rest of your life.”
When Ophelia’s gaze wandered out of the large observation window, what she saw took her breath away. The flaming autumnal forests, gilded by the sun and battered by the wind, had just been replaced by a sheer wall of rock that disappeared into a sea of fog. The airship moved on, and Anima, hanging in the sky, appeared entirely surrounded by a ring of clouds. The further they moved away, the more it looked like a sod of earth and grass that an invisible spade had dug from a garden. So that was it, then, an ark seen from a distance? That little clod lost in the middle of the sky? Who would imagine that lakes, meadows, towns, woods, fields, mountains, and valleys stretched across this ridiculous chunk of world?
With her hand pressed to the glass, Ophelia imprinted this vision on her mind as the ark disappeared, blotted out by the curtain of clouds. She had no idea when she would return there.
“You should have brought a spare pair with you. We look like paupers!”
Ophelia turned back to her aunt, who was looking at her with disapproval. It took her a moment to realize that she was talking about her glasses. “They’ve almost healed up,” Ophelia reassured her. “By tomorrow, nothing will show.” She took them off to puff mist on the lenses. Apart from a little crack in one corner of her vision, she didn’t really have a problem and no longer saw everything in triple.
Outdoors, there was now just endless sky, in which the first stars were starting to twinkle. When the light came on in the room, the windows became mirrors and it was no longer possible to see anything. Ophelia needed to fix her eyes on something. She went over to the wall of maps. They were veritable works of art, created by illustrious geographers. The twenty-one major arks and the one hundred and eighty-six minor arks were all depicted with the most scrupulous attention to detail.
Ophelia could go back in time as easily as others cross a room, but she didn’t know much about cartography. It took her a while to find Anima, and even longer to find the Pole. She compared the one with the other, and was amazed by their difference in size: the Pole was nearly three times as big as Anima. With its interior sea, its springs, and its lakes, it called to mind a large tank full of water.
But nothing fascinated her as much as the central planisphere, which offered a general view of the Core of the World, and the fixed ring of arks surrounding it. The Core of the World was the biggest fragment of the original Earth; it was but a mass of volcanoes, forever struck by lightning, permanently uninhabitable. It was shrouded in the sea of Clouds, a compact mass of vapor the sun never penetrated, but, for clarity’s sake, the map omitted that. It did, on the other hand, trace the wind corridors that allowed airships to travel with ease from one ark to another.
Ophelia closed her eyes and tried to imagine this map in three dimensions, as one might see it from the Moon. Fragments of stone suspended above a great, an immense and eternal storm . . . Come to think of it, this new world was a true miracle.
Bells rang out in the Map Room. “Supper,” guessed Aunt Rosaline with a sigh. “Do you think you’ll be able to sit at table without totally embarrassing us?”
“You mean without vomiting? Depends what’s on the menu.”
When Ophelia and her godmother pushed open the door of the dining room, they thought for a moment they’d made a mistake. The buffets weren’t set up and a shadowy half-light lurked between the paneled walls.
A friendly voice stopped them just as they were about to turn tail: “This way, ladies!” A man—white uniform, red epaulettes, double cuff links—came towards them. “Captain Bartholomew, at your service!” he proclaimed pompously. He broke into a wide smile, in which a few gold teeth glittered, and flicked dust off his stripes. “In fact, I’m just second in command, but let’s not quibble. I hope you’ll forgive us, but we’ve started on the hors d’oeuvres. Come and join us, ladies, a touch of femininity will be most welcome!”
The first mate showed them to the back of the room. Between a long openwork screen and the lovely picture windows, a small table was catching the final glow of the sunset on the starboard promenade. Ophelia spotted immediately the tall, thin figure that she didn’t want to see there. Thorn had his back to them. All she saw of him was an endless spine under his traveling tunic; pale, shaggy hair; and elbows moving to the rhythm of knife and fork, with not a thought of stopping for them.
“But, for goodness sake, what are you doing?” asked a shocked Bartholomew.
Ophelia hadn’t even sat down on the chair beside her aunt before he was grabbing her by the waist, making her dance a couple of steps, and sitting her straight beside the last person she wanted to be near. “At the table, one must always alternate men and women.”
With nose down towards plate, Ophelia felt completely swamped by Thorn’s shadow, higher by two heads as he sat bolt upright in his chair. She buttered her radishes without much appetite. Opposite her, a small man saluted her with a friendly inclination of the head, his smile stretching between salt-and-pepper side whiskers. Within seconds, only the clicking of cutlery filled the silence around the table. Crudités were munched, wine drunk, butter passed from hand to hand. Ophelia tipped over the saltcellar she was handing to her aunt.
The first mate, on whom the silence was clearly weighing, spun like a weather vane towards Ophelia. “How are you feeling, my dear child? Has that nasty sickness gone away?”
Ophelia wiped her mouth with a flick of the napkin. Why was this man talking to her as though she were ten years old? “Yes, thank you.”
“I beg your pardon?” he guffawed. “You have a tiny little voice, miss.”
“Yes, thank you,” articulated Ophelia, stretching her vocal cords.
“Don’t hesitate to let our onboard doctor know about any discomfort. He’s a master in his field.”
The man with the salt-and-pepper side whiskers, opposite her, displayed a polite modesty. It must be him, the doctor.
Another silence fell around the table, which Bartholomew broke by drumming his restless fingers on his cutlery. Ophelia blew her nose to conceal her annoyance. The first mate’s twinkling eyes kept dragging themselves from her up to Thorn, and from Thorn back down to her. How bored he must be to seek entertainment from them.
“Well, I must say, you’re not very chatty!” he said, chuckling. “Yet, if I understand correctly, you’re traveling together, no? Two ladies from Anima and a man from the Pole . . . quite rare, a combination like that!”
Ophelia risked stealing a glance at Thorn’s long, thin hands as he sliced his radishes in silence. So, the crew knew nothing of what had prompted their meeting? She decided to adopt his attitude. She just gave a weak but polite smile, without clearing up the misunderstanding.
Her aunt didn’t see it like that at all. “These young people are going to be married, sir!” she cried, outraged. “So you weren’t aware of that?”
To the right of Ophelia, Thorn’s hands clenched around his cutlery. From where she sat, she could see a vein bulging on his wrist. At the head of the table, Bartholomew’s gold teeth gleamed.
“I’m terribly sorry, madam, but, indeed, I wasn’t aware of that. Come now, Mr. Thorn, you should have told me that this charming child was to be yours! How does it make me look, now?”
Like someone who is relishing the situation, replied Ophelia, to herself.
Bartholomew’s glee didn’t last long, however. His smile faded as soon as he saw Thorn’s countenance. Aunt Rosaline went pale when she, in turn, noticed it. Ophelia, on the other hand, couldn’t see it. She would have had to lean over and unscrew her head from her shoulders to see right up there. In any case, she had no trouble guessing what was going on above her. Eyes as sharp as razors and a hard line instead of a mouth. Thorn didn’t like to make a spectacle of himself—at least they had that in common.
The doctor must have noticed the awkwardness since he hastened to change the subject. “I’m very intrigued by your family’s little talents,” he said, addressing Aunt Rosaline. “Your control over the most banal objects is quite simply fascinating! Please forgive my indiscretion, but might I ask you what your specialty is, madam?”
Aunt Rosaline dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “Paper. I smooth out, I restore, I mend.” She grabbed the wine menu, unceremoniously tore it, and then, with a mere slide of the finger, resealed the edges.
“That’s most interesting,” commented the doctor, twisting the little points of his moustache while a waiter served the soup.
“I should say so,” the aunt said, puffing herself up. “I’ve saved archives of immense historic value from decay. Genealogists, restorers, curators, our branch of the family is at the service of Artemis’s legacy.”
“Is that the case for you, too?” asked Bartholomew, turning his sparkling smile towards Ophelia.
She didn’t get the chance to correct him by saying: “It was the case, sir.” Her aunt took it upon herself to answer for her, between two spoonfuls of soup: “My niece is an excellent reader.”
“A reader?” repeated the perplexed first mate and doctor in unison.
“I ran a museum,” explained Ophelia, succinctly. With her eyes, she beseeched her aunt to let it drop. She didn’t want to talk about what belonged to her former life, especially not in the vicinity of Thorn’s long fingers tightening around the soup spoon. The image of her family waving farewell with scarves from the watchtower haunted her. She wanted to finish her vegetable velouté and go to bed.
Unfortunately, Aunt Rosaline was cut from the same cloth as her mother. They weren’t sisters for nothing. She was keen to impress Thorn. “No, no, no, it’s much more than that, don’t be so modest! Gentlemen, my niece can empathize with objects, go back into their past, and draw up highly reliable evaluations.”
“Sounds like fun!” enthused Bartholomew. “Would you agree to give us a little demonstration, dear child?” He pulled on a chain attached to his fine uniform. Ophelia thought at first that it was a fob watch, but she was wrong. “This gold medal is my lucky charm. The man who gave it to me informed me that it had belonged to an emperor of the old world. I’d so love to know more!”
“I can’t.” Ophelia retrieved a long brown hair from her soup. She could gather as many curls as possible at her nape, using hairpins, ties, and slides, but they still managed to escape.
Bartholomew was put out. “You can’t?”
“Deontology prevents me, sir. It’s not the past of the object that I retrace, it’s that of the owners. I would be violating your private life.”
“It’s the ethical code of readers,” confirmed Aunt Rosaline, revealing her horse’s teeth. “A private reading is only permitted with the consent of the owner.”
Ophelia turned her glasses towards her godmother, but she was determined that, at all costs, her niece should distinguish herself in the eyes of her betrothed. Indeed, the gnarled hands slowly rested the cutlery on the tablecloth and moved no more. Thorn was paying attention. Or then, he was no longer hungry.
“In that case, I grant you that permission!” Bartholomew declared, very predictably. “I want to get to know my emperor!” He handed her his old gold medal, which matched his stripes and his teeth. Ophelia first examined it through her glasses. One thing was certain, this charm didn’t date back to the old world. In a hurry to get it over with, she unbuttoned her gloves. As soon as she closed her fingers around the medal, lightning flashes shot out between her half-open eyelids. Ophelia let herself be immersed, without yet interpreting the stream of sensations flooding into her, from the most recent to the oldest. A reading always proceeded in an anticlockwise direction.
Promises in the air, whispered to a pretty girl in the street. It’s so boring up there, facing the infinite alone. The little wife and the kids are waiting for him at home. They’re far away, they almost don’t exist. Journey follows journey without leaving any trace. As do women. The boredom is stronger than the remorse. Suddenly, there’s a white flash from a black cape. It’s a knife. It’s for Ophelia, this knife, a husband is taking revenge. The blade hits the medal, in the pocket of the uniform, and is thus deflected from its mortal trajectory. Ophelia is still bored. A hand of three kings, surrounded by bursts of anger, is worth a lovely medal to him. Ophelia feels herself getting younger. The teacher summons him to the rostrum with a kind smile. He gives him a present. It shines, it’s pretty.
“Well?” asked the first mate, amused.
Ophelia put her gloves back on and returned his lucky charm to him. “You were duped,” she murmured. “It’s a medal of merit. A simple prize for a child.”
The gold teeth disappeared with Bartholomew’s smile. “Excuse me? You can’t have read carefully, miss.”
“It’s a medallion for a child,” insisted Ophelia. “It isn’t real gold and it isn’t even half a century old. That man you beat at cards, he lied to you.”
Aunt Rosaline coughed nervously; this was not the feat she’d hoped for from her niece. The doctor suddenly developed a passionate interest in the inside of his plate. Thorn’s hand wound up his fob watch with obvious boredom.
Since the first mate seemed crushed by this revelation, Ophelia took pity on him. “It’s no less excellent a lucky charm. That medal still saved you from that jealous husband.”
“Ophelia!” said Rosaline, choking. The rest of the meal continued in silence. When they rose from the table, Thorn was first to leave the room, without even mumbling a polite word.
The following day, Ophelia explored the gondola of the airship, from one end to the other. With nose buried in scarf, she strolled around the port and starboard promenades; took tea in the sitting room; discreetly visited, with Bartholomew’s permission, the command bridge, the navigation cabin, and the radio room. Mostly, she killed time by looking at the view. Sometimes it was just an intensely blue sky as far as the eye could see, in which very few clouds popped up. Sometimes it was a damp fog that spluttered all over the windows. Sometimes it was the steeples of a town, when they were flying over an ark.
Ophelia got used to the tables with no cloths, the cabins with no passengers, the armchairs with no occupants. No one ever came on board. Stops were rare: the airship never touched the ground. But the journey wasn’t shorter for that, as they made various detours to jettison postal packages and mailbags onto the arks.
If Ophelia allowed her scarf to trail all over the place, Thorn never poked the tip of his snout out of his cabin. She saw him neither at breakfast nor at dinner, nor at tea, nor at supper. And that’s how it remained for several days.
When the corridors started to feel chilly and the portholes to deck themselves in frosty lace, Aunt Rosaline declared that it was high time for her niece to have a real conversation with her fiancé. “If you don’t break the ice now, later it will be too late,” she warned her one evening, arms deep in a muff as they walked together on the bridge.
The picture windows were ablaze in the sunset. Outdoors, it was doubtless terribly cold. Fragments of the old world, too small to become arks, were coated in frost and sparkled like a river of diamonds in the middle of the sky.
“What’s it to you, whether Thorn and I like each other or not?” asked Ophelia, sighing and huddling inside her coat. “We’re getting married, isn’t that all that matters?”
“Good grief! In my time, I was a more romantic marriageable girl than you.”
“You’re my chaperone,” Ophelia reminded her. “Your role is to watch that nothing indecent happens to me, not to push me into the arms of that man.”
“Indecent, indecent . . . there’s not too much risk on that score,” muttered Aunt Rosaline. “I hardly got the impression that you ignited uncontrollable desire in Mr. Thorn. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man going to such lengths not to cross a woman’s path.”
Ophelia couldn’t stifle a sideward smile, which, luckily, her aunt didn’t see.
“You’re going to offer him a herbal tea,” her aunt suddenly decreed with a determined look. “A lime-blossom tea. It soothes the nerves, lime blossom.”
“My dear aunt, it’s this man who insisted on marrying me, and not the other way round. I’m hardly going to go after him.”
“I’m not asking you to make advances to him, I just want a bearable atmosphere for us in the days to come. You’re going to just grin and bear it, and be friendly to him!”
Ophelia watched her shadow lengthening, widening and disappearing at her feet as the russet disc of the sun faded into the mist on the other side of the windows. Her darkened glasses adapted to the changing levels of light, gradually becoming paler. They were completely healed now. “I’ll think about it, aunt.”
Rosaline held her by the chin to force her to look at her. Like most of the women in the family, her aunt was taller than her. With her fur hat and too-long teeth, she no longer looked like a horse, but like a marmot. “You must try your hardest, do you hear me?”
Night had fallen behind the promenade windows. Ophelia was cold without and within, despite the scarf that was tightening its grip around her shoulders. Deep down, she knew that her aunt wasn’t wrong. They still knew nothing about the life that awaited them in the Pole.
She would have to put aside the grievances she harbored against Thorn, long enough for a little talk.