When I woke, it was as dark as the inside of a stone and I felt myself being rocked. It took me a moment to remember I was in a hammock. The ferryman had offered to let us spend the night in his shed, and the kitten and I had drifted off easily, suspended in the air amid the spectacular clutter.
Collecting the kitten, I tipped us out of the hammock and went toward a slit of light that marked a gap between the big sliding doors. I pushed them wider and looked out. The sky, moonless, was salted with stars. The hulking figure of the ferryman appeared on the barge, with his back to us. He wore a dressing gown with long, flowing sleeves. Even in the starlight I could see it was magnificently embroidered. “It’s cold on the water at night,” he said without looking around. “There’s robes by the door.”
I groped in the darkness, touched folds of silk and velvet and fur. Pulling on one of the robes, I stepped over the threshold. The surface of the barge bobbed beneath my feet, not because of us—it was too big for the weight of the kitten and me to make much difference—but because the river itself kept it in constant motion. We went over to the railing.
The ferryman was right: It was much colder on the water than it had been even standing in the doorway. My eyes teared and my nose started to run.
“Why do you stay out here if it’s so cold?”
He drew a breath, and I thought he would mock me for asking a silly question. “It’s nice” is all he said.
Shivering, I clutched the robe tighter around the kitten and me. Bits of starlight leapt from wave to inky wave. I knew the point at which the other side began by the solidity of its darkness. I tried to feel the presence of the Captain and Genoveva, standing on this same floating surface, this very spot. It was Genoveva I was able to conjure more easily now, her shaggy mane, her eyes like damson plums. For a moment I thought I heard her nicker, but it was water lapping against the side of the barge. My teeth began to chatter.
“You don’t feel the cold so much if you let it come right through you,” said the ferryman.
That seemed stupid, but I gave it a try. Loosened my shoulders, stopped clutching the robe at the neck. Drew the icy wind full inside me instead of bracing against it.
He was right. Instantly I felt less cold. Also less distinct, less bounded. Less me. More of a piece with the wind and inky water and star-salted sky.
“What do you do out here at night?”
“Study.”
“Study! What do you study?”
“Them, mostly.” Jutting his chin at the sky.
“The stars?”
“Aye.”
I thought of the sextant back at the Captain’s house, how the caretaker had said it was a sailing thing. How it measures distance using a mirror and a star.
“Do you study them for navigation?”
Now he did give me the silly-question look. Even in the dark I could tell. “You’re asking do I study the stars as a means of finding my way from one side of the river to the other?”
“Well, what do you study them for?”
“Stories.” He said it as if it were obvious. And he began pointing out constellations by name: The fountain. The thief. The staircase. The honeybee. The pipe. The kitten. The basket. The girl.
I began to laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“That’s not how they go. You’re making it up.”
“Everything’s made up.”
“No it’s not.”
“Aye.”
“Not things you really study, actual knowledge things. They’re not made up.”
“Aye.”
“How can you say that?”
“Name me one thing that’s not made up.”
I laughed. “Me, for example! I’m not made up.”
“How do you know?”
His words echoed in me for a long, long time. They are echoing in me still.