“Nis,” a familiar voice spoke close to her ear, pulling Nis out from her sleep. “Nis, you need to come see this.”

It took her a few moments to open her eyes and then get her surroundings to come into focus. Meric stood beside Nis’ bed, her face still marred with the large, blotchy bruise, but her expression was excited.

“Come on!” Meric encouraged her, taking a step towards the door and waving for Nis to follow.

“What is it?” Nis finally asked, sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

Waking early had been a normal occurrence for Nis growing up, but even then she tended to have enough time to go over her dreams from the night before and write them down before seeing to her chores. The longer she waited before writing down the details of her dreams, the more those details faded from her memory.

“I need my journal,” Nis said, looking around for her bag at first before remembering she had left it on the raft. “Where’s the raft?”

Meric shrugged.

“Is it that important?” she asked.

Nis closed her eyes, picturing again the positions of the stars in the sky that Mel had been looking at. If Nis could keep the memory fresh she could copy the stars into her journal and then use that to possibly discover the place where Mel and Tique had crashed.

“Nis?” Meric said when Nis didn’t answer her.

“I need to write this down before I forget it,” Nis told her without opening her eyes. “Please, just get me my journal.”

She heard Meric let out a mildly frustrated sigh before leaving the hut. Nis continued going over the positions of the stars as well as that of the moon, calculating as best she could where in the Unexplored Wastes they had been. After a few minutes, Meric returned.

“Found your journal,” she said.

Nis finally opened her eyes. Meric had brought Nis’ entire bag and was holding it out for her to take. Nis pulled the journal from the bag and turned to the first empty page. The ink and pen came next and were set beside her on the bed. Pen in hand, Nis dipped it into the ink and then began dotting the open page, pausing from time to time and closing her eyes so she could compare what she was drawing to what she remembered still from the dream. Last to be added was the path of the moon.

“Twelve…maybe fourteen days before summer solstice,” Nis mumbled as she noted which stars fell in the path taken by the moon. “And six miles north of Patience…seven miles south of the Shards of Patience.”

“What is?” Meric asked, looking with puzzled interest at the stars Nis had drawn.

“It’s where Mel and Tique made camp after they crashed,” Nis said.

Meric nodded her head though she didn’t seem to know what to make of that information. Nis wasn’t surprised. Who were Mel and Tique to Meric, anyway? Just people she’d heard Nis mention a few times, really.

“Do you want to go there?” Meric asked.

“Maybe someday,” Nis replied, “but I doubt there’s anything there now. Not after so many years.”

“Okay, so are you ready to be amazed now?”

Nis had completely forgotten that Meric had awoken her with the explicit intention of showing something to her.

“Yes,” Nis said, closing the ink bottle and stuffing it, her pen, and her journal back into the bag. “Thanks for letting me write that down.”

In response, Meric simply took Nis by the wrist and led her out of the hut. It was much brighter outside than Nis had expected it would be and she was momentarily blinded by the light. Meric didn’t stop pulling her along, however, and Nis had to just trust Meric not to lead her over any uneven ground or into a tree branch. Before too long, however, Nis’ eyes adjusted and she found that Meric was leading her deeper into the forest and away from the river.

They were walking along a smooth boardwalk that the people of First Respite had apparently constructed, giving them an easy path through the forest. The deeper they went, the cooler and muggier it became as the dense canopy above them kept the sun from reaching the ground. Pretty soon, however, the canopy began to thin once more and Nis could see sunlight ahead of them.

That was when she heard it, a low rumble of a sound, making Nis stop in her tracks.

“We’re almost there!” Meric complained.

“I’ve heard that before,” Nis said, cocking her head to try and pick out the noise. “What is that?”

“Come and see!” Meric exclaimed as she literally began tugging Nis along the boardwalk.

The rumble grew louder as they neared the sunlight. Nis stopped resisting Meric and kept pace with her right up until they broke suddenly out of the shadow of the forest and into the light once more. This time, however, it wasn’t the light that gave her pause.

A lake spread out before them. The boardwalk continued out into the lake for a ways before branching into several docks. However, there weren’t any boats moored to the docks. Instead there were air ships, their smooth bellies acting like the hull of a ship. Only, these air ships weren’t like the ones Nis had seen in her dreams. Those had been small, barely large enough to carry a couple of passengers and some supplies. The airships here were much larger, easily twice as tall as the air ships Nis was familiar with and several times longer. It was the rumble of their engines that Nis had heard and recognized. Lesch and a few others stepped out of the nearest air ship and waved for Nis and Meric to join them.

“But…I thought they’d all been destroyed,” Nis said breathlessly.

“Destroyed?” Meric asked without taking her eyes off of the air ships.

Nis was about to explain how her past life after Mel had seen to their destruction but then caught sight of her reflection in the lake and it wasn’t her own face that looked back at her.

“Never mind,” Nis said. “I just, how did they build them?”

There wasn’t time for more discussion between the two of them as they reached Lesch and the others who waited with her.

“Welcome,” Lesch said, giving them a broad smile. “I’m sorry we had to wake you, Nis, but Meric insisted that you wouldn’t mind.”

“How?” Nis managed to say through her shock and confusion.

“Meric has told us how, besides the air ships you dreamed about, that no one has seen or even heard of them in your lands,” Lesch said. “But we have had them for as long as we have been a people here. In fact, I think you will be much surprised by the differences between us and the people of Duran.”

Lesch motioned for Nis to follow and she led the way into the air ship. Where she’d expected to see bare metal floors and walls, Nis saw instead carved wood along the walls and the floor was covered in what appeared to be a single, massive rug. There were several rows of cushioned seats, quite different from the hard seats she was used to seeing in air ships.

“How did you build this?” Nis finally managed to ask.

“These aren’t even their biggest ones,” Meric said. “Lesch said only their smaller air ships can land in the lake. Their bigger ones land on the ground. And watch this,” Meric added before pressing her finger against a small dimple on the ceiling. There was a soft click and light suddenly filled the inside of the air ship.

Nis looked around, noticing the dozen or so sources of the light. They were brighter and less yellow in color than the glow lamps she was used to seeing in Duran.

“How does it activate all of the glow lamps at once?” she asked. “And how did they get them to be so bright?”

“They aren’t glow lamps,” Meric said.

Before Nis could ask more questions, Lesch raised her hand for silence.

“You have many questions,” Lesch said, “but I believe there are others who would be better suited to answering them.”

The door to the air ships swung shut and Lesch motioned for both Nis and Meric to take a seat. Immediately, Nis’ fear of being captured returned and she spun back towards the door and began looking for the mechanism that held it shut.

“No, it’s okay Nis,” Meric said at once. “I meant to tell you but forgot.”

“Tell me what?” Nis demanded, still trying to work the door open.

For her part, Lesch was looking terribly uncomfortable and embarrassed which did help Nis relax somewhat. It didn’t seem as though Lesch had been intending to take her captive.

“They’re going to fly us away from here,”

“Fly us to where?” Nis asked.

“I am sorry,” Lesch said. “I thought Meric had explained it to you before you met with us. We offered to fly you to our capital city. You are, of course, more than welcome to stay here in First Respite or even to continue on with your raft.”

“Last time we spoke you didn’t seem to want to let us leave,” Nis remarked. “What’s changed?”

“We didn’t know you were Mel,” Lesch replied frankly.

“Mel was my past life,” Nis said.

“Our laws do not differentiate between past lives and current lives,” Lesch explained. “We are all of our lives. You are Mel, so you are free to go where you please. The capitol is where your home is located and I assumed that that was why you wanted to continue in that way. But if I am mistaken,” she reached over and pressed on a bar that extended out from the wall beside the door and the door opened.

Nis stepped out of the air ship but only so she wouldn’t feel confined or in danger of being trapped.

“Perhaps,” Lesch said, following Nis out of the air ship, “I should explain some of our history to you.”

“Yes,” Nis agreed.

Lesch nodded and she led the way back down the boardwalk towards First Respite, speaking while they walked. The rumble of the airship cut out as whoever was in the pilot seat turned off the engines.

“How much of Mel’s life has returned to you?” Lesch asked.

“Most of her explorations,” Nis replied, “but only the first few days after Mel and Tique crashed into the forest.”

“That explains much of your confusion,” Lesch said. “You and Tique escaped life capture but –

“Escaped what?” Nis asked but was surprised to see Meric nodding as though she understood what Lesch had meant.

“Life capture?” Lesch asked, looking from Nis to Meric. “You know what life capture is?”

“No,” Nis said.

“Yes,” Meric said.

“I see,” Lesch said with growing concern. “Well, it used to be that a life would be born always near where its past lives had lived. Populations were kept consistent because of that and Duran, among other countries, wanted a way to expand their populations. Our own records aren’t clear on how the people of Duran broke the pattern but they found a way to have the lives of other places begin to be born in Duran in addition to their own people. Specifically, they began to take the lives of those who lived across the northern sea.

“As Duran increased in population, those lives began to remember their true homes. It was Mel who led us, beginning with Tique, back to our native lands and put an end to Duran’s attempt to capture our lives.”

“But you aren’t home,” Nis said. “You’re all living in the Unexplored Wastes.”

“No,” Lesch corrected her. “Though some of us do choose to live here. You see, we are still sometimes born in Duran again. When we remember our true homes, we make our way back here. Mel began the process of finding us and bringing us here to live in one of her safe havens. After she died we continued her work until we were finally able to return back across the sea. That’s why we still associate ourselves with Mel’s safe havens. A few of us maintain them now to help others return but most of us live back across the sea.”

“How many people come through here each year?” Nis asked.

“We see around a dozen each season.”

“That’s so many,” Nis muttered. “How does no one ever notice that many people leaving Duran?”

“From what Meric has told us, it sounds as though your home town is rather small,” Lesch replied. “I wouldn’t be surprised if only one or two of our people were ever born there each year.”

“Duran isn’t a small town,” Nis insisted. “It’s the royal city.”

“Yes, well, when you see our cities you will understand, both why Duran wanted to capture our lives and why it isn’t such a large city to our eyes.”

They reached the village once more and Lesch took them to a different hut than the one they had gone into before. This one was set back a bit farther into the woods than the rest of the village and only had the basic appearance of being a hut, with the thatched roof and log walls. Upon closer inspection, both of those elements were merely cosmetic and a stone structure sat beneath the disguise. Inside there were more of those lights, too bright to be glow lamps, and metal tables and chairs filled the middle of the hut. Along the walls, framed like works of art, were maps, all clearly labeled. There were maps of Duran, maps of the Shards of Patience, and maps of the lands across the sea.

The more Nis looked, the more she found herself in awe. Besides Duran and the lands surrounding it, mostly all places that she knew about, there were lands beyond that she had never heard of, not including the lands beyond the sea. Island nations, sprawling deserts, and mountains. Names in foreign languages and alphabets marked countless places.

“Duran and the lands around it isolated themselves from the rest of the world following their attempt to capture our lives. Most of the people who come to us from there are young and can’t really tell us much beyond their own limited experiences, but we surmise that they have stagnated and, in some ways, regressed, losing much of the technology and learning they once had.”

Fear and anger that were not her own welled up inside of Nis. The more she saw and heard, the more she could feel her past life rising up. Already she could feel herself being pressed back by the other life as it fought to wrest control away from Nis.

“No!” Nis cried out as she clenched her eyes shut and held her hands to her ears in an attempt to block out everything that was so upsetting to her past life.

“Nis?!”

She could just barely hear Meric through her blocked ears. Hands were reaching around, taking hold of her, trying in vain to calm or comfort her.

“Get away from me!” Nis shouted but her eyes were opening of their own accord and her legs were extending, standing herself back up even though Nis was trying with all her might to curl up into a ball.

Just as before, Nis was powerless as she watched her arms move, reaching up and taking hold of the nearest map and tearing it down from the wall.

“What are you doing?” Lesch demanded as she and Meric rushed forward to try and stop her.

“I will not be disobeyed!” Nis’ voice shrieked and she spat in Lesch’s eyes before smacking her face so hard that she was thrown to the floor. “My will is law!”

Meric grabbed Nis around the waist with both arms before Nis could pull the second map from the wall.

“Impudent traitor!”

Nis’ elbow struck Meric in the stomach sending her backward and gasping for air. The second map fell soon after. The third map was almost within reach when Lesch tackled Nis from behind, pinning her to the floor.

“What is wrong?” Lesch asked, her lip bloody where she had been smacked.

Finally, Nis managed to force her way back into control of her body and she stopped resisting Lesch.

“Why did you do this?” Lesch asked, still in shock.

Nis was sobbing. She didn’t remember when she’d begun to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she said through heavy sobs. “I’m sorry. This is why I had to leave Duran. Why I didn’t want you to stop us on the river. She hates when her secrets are spoiled.”

“We haven’t spoiled any secrets,” Lesch insisted. “We’ve only done what Mel told us to do. We even kept the land here as untouched as we could manage.”

“Not Mel’s secrets,” Nis said. “The life after Mel, she…

But Nis couldn’t bring herself to say any more for fear of reawakening her wrath and left both Meric and Lesch to wonder over her outburst.