Finna by Nino Cipri

Author:Nino Cipri
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER SIX

Ava had never been on a submarine before. Her initial assessment: maybe she should look back into being a naval seaman. The hallways were low-ceilinged but wide, with strips of light glowing blue and green and red, jewel-bright and cheerful. Brass dials and instruments littered most of surfaces, and layers of graffiti crowded any empty space. It was certainly better than the fluorescent lights and smooth jazz covers of pop songs that were hallmarks of working retail.

“Welcome aboard the L. V. Anahita, merchant class vessel,” the woman said. “I’m Captain Nouresh.”

She looked them over and they did the same. Captain Nouresh had a thick braid of white hair that hung down one shoulder, and wore black high-waisted pants and a white linen shirt underneath her coat. She looked stunningly similar to the old woman Ava had seen in the photo on the young woman’s phone, though her hair was longer, her face paler, and she had a few extra scars.

“You’re travelers then?” Nouresh asked. “Through the marejii?” At Ava’s blank stare, she amended, “Sorry, what do you call them? The hallways between worlds.”

“Maskhål,” Ava answered.

“Wormholes,” Jules corrected. “Our stupid boss at LitenVärld calls them maskhål, because they’re a Swedish corporation.”

Nouresh looked at them blankly. “I thought I could still speak your language, but maybe I was wrong.”

“Wait, how can you speak our language?” Ava said, wringing out her hair.

“I’m a traveler myself,” Nouresh said, bowing with an ironic flourish. “I spent my youth navigating the marejii. I stayed for some months in a city where they spoke your language. It was called Annapolis.”

Jules and Ava shared a look. “I have no idea where that is.”

“Minnesota?” Ava guessed.

“I think that’s Minneapolis.” Jules looked back at the captain. “Sorry, we haven’t traveled much.”

“No? It’s a beautiful city of bricks, at the crossroads of a river and the sea. I was happy there for a while.”

Jules and Ava said that it sounded very nice, wherever it was. (Maine? Maryland? They’d have to check the LitenVärld directory.) Then Ava gave a performative shiver and asked, “Is there a place we can get some dry clothes?”

“I’ll take you to the market,” Nouresh said. “Follow me.”

They followed the older woman through a series of halls, all of them similarly low-ceilinged, and lit with the same emerald lights that Jules eventually pointed out looked alive. “They are,” Nouresh said. “Tiny creatures that give off light.”

“Bioluminescent plankton!” Jules said. “That’s so cool!”

Nouresh seemed bemused by their outburst, and Ava explained, “They said the same thing about a chair that almost ate them.”

“Oh, the Soft Snare? In Universe 241?”

Captain Nouresh, it seemed, had compiled a taxonomy of the universes she had traveled to in her youth, in service to something called the Cooperative of Nations. She’d taken detailed descriptions, notes on languages, flora and fauna, dominant species and their social structures. Ava could see Jules’s eyes growing wide as she told them of the places and things that she had seen.

Wanderlust. Ava had never really had it. Jules always had.

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