(Photo by Ankush Rathi)

Night fell on their first day of rafting. Nis and Meric dropped their anchor into the water and felt the tug as it caught and held them in place. Nis had steered them close enough to the bank that they were able to tie a few ropes from the raft to some nearby trees for added security.

“I’d call that a success,” Nis said. “What do you think of our first day on the river?”

“Not as bad as I thought it would be,” Meric admitted. “I was afraid I’d get sea sick.”

“Sea sick?” Nis asked, unfamiliar with the term. “We’re on a river.”

“It’s just what I’ve heard people call it when someone gets sick on a boat,” Meric explained. “I’ve had a few dreams of being on a boat, and some people would get sick just by being on board.”

“Would they get better after they left the boat?”

“Yeah, usually within a few minutes.”

“Well I’m glad neither of us got sick. Hopefully we never get it.”

Dinner that night was the last of the food stuffs from Nis’ bag. They hadn’t stopped to forage at all that day and it was too dark to try to find anything edible on the riverbank. Meric crawled under the shelter to go to sleep once they finished eating but Nis stayed awake to watch the moon and stars. Most of the sky was obscured by the treetops but there were still plenty of constellations she could see in the bit of sky above the river where no trees blocked her view.

Holding her hand out at arms length, Nis measured the distance from the moon to the various constellations and kept track of which ones the moon passed through. As she’d suspected, her trick for keeping track of the days and months wasn’t going to work as well for her the further away from Duran they traveled. As she moved farther east and north, the stars shifted. Even though she couldn’t see the stars at the horizon, she was willing to bet that there were new stars and new constellations to be discovered. Maybe that was where the unknown constellations from her dream were hidden.

“What are you doing?” Meric asked, surprising Nis who still had her hand outstretched to measure the sky.

“Just looking at the stars,” Nis replied and lowered her hand.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“Why did Mel spend so much time out here?”

“She was mapping it.”

“Right, but why?” Meric pressed, “I mean, no one else has ever come out here. Were people just that curious?”

“No, they were looking for new trade routes.”

“Trade routes?” Meric asked incredulously. “Who is there to trade with out here?”

Nis opened her mouth to answer but then stopped. She’d never actually considered that question before now. In her dreams it was always clear what Mel was doing and why she was doing, but as far as Nis knew, there weren’t any other countries out this way. The Unexplored Wastes were bordered on the east and north by the sea and on the west and south by the mountains.

“I…don’t know,” Nis finally said.

“There’s a lot of stuff like that in your dreams,” Meric told her. “Whenever you told the archivists about something like that they’d spend the next several days muttering to each other about it and trying to find any records that might help explain it.”

“Really?”

“You should have seen them when they read about Mel’s flying ship,” Meric said with a chuckle. “They had a whole list of questions they wanted to ask you about that one.”

“What do you mean?” Nis asked. “How could they not know about airships?”

“Um, have you ever seen one?” Meric asked. 

“No,” Nis admitted, “but I swear I’ve heard of them besides in that dream.”

“The archivists found a few references to them in some of your other dreams,” Meric said, “but other than that no one has any idea what they look like or how they even work.”

“How is that even possible?” Nis asked. “They were still fairly knew in Mel’s time, but they weren’t anything secret, either. Seemed like everyone knew about them.”

“That’s what makes the dreams so strange,” Meric said. “How could something like flying ships be lost and forgotten like that?”

“Yeah,” Nis muttered but was distracted from continuing the conversation as a memory came to her. She was standing in Duran just outside the Royal Palace, except there was no wall running around it. There was a distinct newness to the massive building. Nis was accustomed to the palace and the archives looking monotone and sun-bleached, the structure before her was an earthier tone with the rooftops and windows having bright colors painted onto them.

“Have the lords arrived?” she asked the short attendant who hurried along beside her. He wore robes similar to those of the archivists but instead of the emblem of the archives his robes bore the royal seal

“They have,” the man said.

“Did they cause any trouble?” she asked.

“Only a minor scuffle but there were no witnesses. The lords are below in their cells now and should be ready to sign their lands to you by this evening.”

“Good. See to it that their airships are destroyed along with the others. Once the lords have signed, send word to the outlying lands, notifying them that their lords will not be returning. We are a unified land now and they will submit only to me and my house.”

She waved her hand and the attendant hurried off. It was a true loss, destroying the airships, but the danger they posed was simply too great. The world was safer when people and things moved more slowly. Armies couldn’t advance as aggressively if they had to maintain supply lines on the ground. Explorers had to walk, hike, or travel by boat in order to get anywhere, requiring months if not years to bring back word of their discoveries. And if they happened to find something they weren’t supposed to find, well all it would take was some careful manipulation, and a certain amount of either money or violence, and suddenly that thing or that place they’d found wasn’t actually there at all.

Control. That’s what it all came down to in the end. The world was getting too large and people were moving too fast. She needed to slow everyone down. Needed to make the world a bit smaller again. Her grand archive, she thought as she turned to face the massive structure, was the key to it all.

Someone splashed water in her face. The sudden cold shocked her and she coughed and spluttered, looking around wildly for the person who had dared mistreat their queen in such a manner. But the city was gone. Instead she was lying on a raft on the shore of a river staring up at the night sky.

“Nis, come on,” someone was saying.

She sat up and as she did her memories began to slide back into place. She was Nis, not a queen. She was in the Unexplored Wastes, not Duran.

“Nis, can you hear me?”

It was Meric, of course. She sat beside Nis with a look of deep concern on her face. Nis met her eyes and Meric relaxed.

“I’m here,” Nis said. “Sorry, I just…

She wasn’t sure what she had just done. She’d had memories from past lives come to her outside of her dreams before, but they were usually like any other memory. This was something completely different. It felt as though she was there, back in time reliving that moment.

“You started talking funny,” Meric said. “It didn’t sound like you at all. You asked about some lords, and then said to destroy their airships.”

“It’s my past life,” Nis said with dawning realization. “The one who tried to kill Kyneh. I’ve never dreamed about that life before and I think I know why –

“Don’t tell me!” Meric exclaimed and shied back from Nis as though worried she might get attacked.

“No, it’s alright,” Nis explained. “I’ve never remembered any of that life because she was trying to hide it all, even from her later lives, but now that we’re out here I’m not a threat anymore. That’s why I can remember these things now.”

“How is that possible?” Meric asked. “How can a past life know what you’re doing now? How can they have any sort of influence on you?”

“I don’t know,” Nis said, wringing water from her hair. “How do we remember our past lives? Why do we remember them at all, and why doesn’t everyone else? In my dreams it always feels like everyone back then remembered their past lives, so what changed?”

A heavy boot thudded onto the deck of the raft behind Nis.

“I suggest you don’t resist,” a man said.

Nis turned to see who had spoken just in time for a thick sack to be dropped over her head.

Meric cried out but was silenced almost at once as someone forced something into her mouth, muffling her voice.