The story I tell her is true. Well, mostly true. I just flip the perspective a bit. I wasn't the kid. I was the guy doing the stabbing. It was the first time Rose sent me on an assassination mission. It was terrible. And the task of taking another's life like that didn't get any easier the next three times I had to do it.
Yes, I tell Elyse a mostly-true story. And then she presents to me the exact thing I need from her.
The Isthmus of the Sky.
After the words hit the air in the shape of her voice, she gives me a funny look. It takes me a minute to recognize the fact that my mouth is hanging wide open in pure, unbridled shock.
I have to clean up my act here.
"You alright?" she says carefully, narrowing her eyes with a frown.
I blink several times and shake the shock out of me. "Y-yeah. Yeah, it's just . . . I haven't heard that name since I was, like, five years old." I shake my head in actual disbelief. "The Isthmus. . . . I've only ever heard stories. Just myths."
She nods. When I look up at her in the next moment, I see that her gaze has sunken into itself. She's deep in thought, in feelings. Lost in some kind of dream she can't seem to reach.
"Why do you ask?" I say quietly, leaning over to catch her attention.
She blinks. Turns to me. There's a hesitation in her voice when she tells me, "That's where I'm going, Ben. That's where I've always been going."
Her stare bores into me, but it's vacant of her soul. When I look back into those bright eyes of hers, I don't see her inside. She's not in her body at the moment—she's far away, in a place she's never been; a place she's always wanted to be.
At least, that's what it looks like.
"The Isthmus is real?" I ask tenderly, making sure to tread carefully on these waters.
She reappears within her gaze, suddenly snapped back into her body. A small smile forms on her soft expression. "Of course it is."
This is odd. Moments ago, she interacted with me as a stranger. Because that's what we are. Strangers. She spoke to me as if I were something to be investigated, walked beside me as if we had never once met.
But now, she seems to have lost her protective shield, and she can't seem to rediscover it. She looks at the world with a softer view, looks at me with a kind of vulnerability. And all because of her own mention of the Isthmus of the Sky.
I watch as she twists within her own binds, her own limitations of rules and boundaries. Right in front of me, she transforms from Thoughtful Elyse back into Stranger Elyse, and that constant look of submerged pain carves its way through her expression once again. She's lived a life worth telling stories of, but for some reason, she doesn't tell them. Which makes her stories all the more intriguing.
Her eyes have dimmed, and her stare breaks. She looks to something behind me and points to it. But I can't move; I can't possibly turn around when I've just watched Elyse turn into someone she's not used to being—someone she doesn't let herself be.
She leans around me and grabs whatever it was she pointed at. It's a block of cheese wrapped in protective paper. As she sets it in our shopping bin, she says, "Unless you become someone I can't stand, you're coming with us to the Isthmus. And if you have a problem with that, then we can throw you overboard just before we get there, and you'll be stranded on the cusp of the Earth and the endless abyss of outer space."
"O-oh," I gasp, unsure of what it is that just came out of her mouth. Where did Nice, Thoughtful Elyse go? I think I want her back. I only met her for about ten seconds, and I already miss her. "Wait, are you saying you can stand me right now?"
She only raises her eyebrows and walks past me.
I laugh, and this time it's not entirely fake. "You said if I become someone you can't stand . . . which implies that right now, you can, in fact, stand me."
Elyse chuckles as she pulls out her pouch of coins. "You're not so bad."
"I knew you didn't completely despise me," I exclaim, pumping my fist dramatically.
She shakes her head and takes the opportunity to change the subject. "This'll be cutting it close," she says as she fingers through the money.
I lean over to take a peek at the coins and see that there's more than enough to pay for at least two of these supply bins. When she sees me looking, she pulls the pouch quickly closed and keeps it tucked safely in her fist, away from me.
I take a risk and ask a question I probably shouldn't. "What's the rest for, then?"
She glances my way with a suspicious look. "We'll get there when we get there."
Honestly, I didn't expect any better answer from her. Thankfully, though, it doesn't look like I've broken too much of the trust we've built between each other—which isn't much in the first place.
We don't say much else as we pay for the supplies and start heading back to the ship. It's only slightly awkward. I almost bring up the fact that she never traded me her half-story, but I get the feeling that she's not ready to give me anything too personal. Talking about the Isthmus was enough for her.
Like she said, we'll get there when we get there.
I'd just prefer to gain her trust now rather than later. Make it easier for myself when we get to the Isthmus.
Back at the Atlas, Kamal and Leola help us load the supplies into the lower deck. There's some light, surface conversation between the four of us, but nothing too important. Elyse says nothing about the Isthmus.
I wonder, briefly, if she told the rest of her crew anything pertaining to her plans. If she has, I can't tell.
My stomach does flips as the docking bay rises out of the hangar and high into the air. I didn't realize just how high these things go.
"When is it going to stop?" I ask dizzily, leaning over to the Atlas's wraparound window and taking a peek down. I immediately regret it.
Leola rolls her eyes. "Seriously? You do realize what you signed up for, right?"
Beside her, Kamal holds up his hand. "Don't listen to her. It takes some getting used to, but it'll get better. I promise."
I just shake my head. "This isn't even the worst of it, is it?"
"So you don't know what you signed up for, then," Leola scoffs.
I feel myself go red. And it's not fake—not at all. I've never done anything like this. So far, not a fan.
Once Kamal and Leola have each secured the sails in place using the ropes connected through the walls on either side of the ship, we make sure everything is prepped for takeoff.
"Ready?" Elyse says as the dock comes to a jolting stop at least three hundred feet above the hangar. Planted firmly at the helm, she checks over her shoulder, giving each of us a glance of preparation. Her eyes linger on me for a moment longer, though, and I can't seem to do anything else but blink and stare back.
The only thing keeping me from doubling over in both fear and nausea is the fact that I can't afford to be a nuisance to this crew. There's no turning back now, and I definitely don't plan on getting myself stranded in the soul-claiming peaks of Parlem City. So instead of focusing on the inconsistent sway of the ship against the winds of the sky, I take deep breaths and hope with everything in me that we won't crash and die.
"Alright," she breathes, sliding the wheel down toward her. The rest of us stand against the back wall and watch as she slowly maneuvers the helm in slow, precise movements.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Leola turn her head toward me. When I look, she's got giddy excitement spread through her face. Her eyebrows go up and she says, "This is gonna be great."
Before she can even finish speaking the words, the sails catch the wind, and the entire ship jerks into movement. My breath slams out of my lungs with the force of our speed, and as we careen into a turbulent glide, I feel everything in me go into panic mode. My brain does not sync up with the information I'm taking in—I can see, clearly see, that Elyse has everything under control as we swoop down, up, down, and yet my body is electrified with terror and unimaginable stress.
I hear someone yelp in excitement, but I can't tell who it is, and I can barely hear them, anyways. The only thing I can process right now is the fact that the entire ship is shaking in speed and force as we push up into the clouds. I watch in fright as the thin layer of white condensation comes closer, closer. My entire body rattles against the back wall with the turbulence.
And then, suddenly, it stops.
We must be in the Gap.
My breath doesn't come back to me until we've leveled out above the clouds. Eyes wide, lungs immobile, I almost collapse once gravity readjusts. Finally I gasp for the air I so missed for those forty precious seconds, and I drink it in like it's malt cream.
"She really is fast, isn't she?" Kamal heaves, taking deep breaths of his own.
Peeling herself off the wall, Leola laughs and stumbles over to the helm. "Alright, the Atlas is way better than the Millashu."
Elyse is still busy at the wheel, turning and pushing and pulling. To my surprise, though, she glances back to me and says, "How're you doing back there?"
I can't do much more than shake my head in disbelief. "Terrible and amazing."
Kamal comes over to me and pats me on the shoulder with a smile before moving to the window beside me and peeking down at the clouds below. "Sounds about right," he says with a chuckle.
I lean over with him, taking a chance at this whole heights thing. It's jarring at first, seeing the layer of clouds drifting below, especially when I can barely see anything below. But then something glints, and my eyes refocus, and then Culmes is right there, laid out in a broken, divided pattern. From this height, I can see the entire city. The industrial district, the slums, the farms scattered as outliers. I even manage to spot the hangar—it stands as a long rectangle near the edge of town, signaling Culmes's very existence.
But then I see a flash of red. I don't need to think twice to recognize the reflective crimson glow to be the Red Rose. I find myself staring at the distant, miniature rose as we head to the east. Even as the city fades into the rest of the forest-ridden grasslands, I can't take my eyes off the Red Rose. It's just . . . there's just something. Something about Rose, about this mission. Whenever I think about her lately, or what she does, or what she's done, I get this feeling. Like some kind of twist in my stomach; some kind of burn in my throat.
It's almost the same feeling when I think about my mother. How she died with no warning, and how I never got to apologize for all the pain I caused her.
Which is why I try not to think about those things.
I get the sense that someone's watching me. So when I turn and see Kamal eyeing me, I try to crack my Fake Ben smile, but it comes out more as a Real Ben smile, which is something no one deserves the pain of experiencing. A Real Ben smile is, put simply, depressing. No lift in the cheeks, no tilt in the lips—it's just flat, tight, and practically asking to get punched.
He sniffs, giving me some kind of considerate look, then moves away to let me watch Culmes disappear behind us.
"Okay, people," Kamal says, pulling out a folded map. "Only thirteen hours left. We should be in the Parlemity Mountains by four in the morning."
Not Real Ben does not complain about flight times. No, he does not.
"Know where you're going, Cap'n?" he asks, offering Elyse the map.
She just looks up at him with a grin. "Of course I do."
Now all I can do is be the person they need me to be: someone trustworthy, and someone worth taking to the Isthmus.
Really, all that matters now, though, is to not be annoying.