Chapter 579

Chapter 579: The Spreading Influence.

When Duncan heard Agatha’s report, his first reaction was to glance at the bedroom door from the corner of his eye.

Then he drew back his gaze and looked at the former Gatekeeper in the mirror, his expression unusually serious: “You mean its reflection on the sea?”

“Not just its reflection on the sea, but also its projection in the Spirit Realm. Under normal conditions these two ‘shadows’ are deeply linked and affect each other,” Agatha said seriously. “Late last night, I was moving through the mirrors on the ship as usual, checking the whole vessel, when I suddenly found this problem. At the time I thought it was just some ‘special feature’ of the Vanished itself. After all, I know very little about it…”

“The Vanished does not have that kind of feature. At least as far as I know, its ‘shadow’ would not suddenly vanish for no reason,” Duncan shook his head. “When did this happen? How long did it roughly last?”

Agatha nodded at once: “Judging by the time, it happened during the period you mentioned, when the Nameless One’s dream was spreading. It lasted until the first gleam of dawn appeared on the sea horizon.”

Duncan did not speak. He only frowned hard, and a look of deep thought came over his face.

After a brief silence, Agatha went on: “When the Vanished’s shadow disappeared, I happened to be moving through mirrors in the Mortal Realm. Normally, I can use those mirrors to ‘jump’ straight into the Spirit Realm, or step into the Vanished’s reflection on the sea. But last night, those ‘jumping paths’ vanished along with the Vanished’s shadow…”

“But from what I felt… the realm on the ‘other side’ of the mirrors did not truly stop existing. Instead there was some barrier I could not understand, blocking me. It kept me from seeing the path in the mirror or sensing what lay beyond…”

Listening to Agatha’s account, Duncan seemed to think of something: “You mean… you believe the Vanished’s ‘shadow’ did not really vanish, but shifted into a state you could not understand or observe at the time. Or in other words, there was a wall of ‘perception’ that kept you locked on the Mortal Realm side?”

“That is a good way to put it,” Agatha said, looking a bit relieved. “I thought my description would be too abstract, and that it would take a lot of effort to explain it to you…”

“In Pland and Frostholm, I have dealt with all sorts of ‘Veils’,” Duncan said casually. Then he thought for a moment and glanced toward the door. “So, after hearing my talk with Goathead, you became suspicious, because my First Mate did not mention last night’s anomaly at all.”

“I do not know why this happened. In theory… it should be able to sense changes in the Spirit Realm. Its senses in that area might not be as sharp as mine, but it should not be completely unaware,” Agatha said, her tone slightly hesitant. “Especially with what you just mentioned: the existence of another ‘Goathead’, and that one’s strange and suspicious behavior…”

Duncan let out a slow breath and said: “You think Goathead is no longer reliable, because it may be hiding something from me.”

“…I know that as a new crew member, I should not question the ship’s First Mate. That is a serious taboo. But as a former Gatekeeper, I have an instinctive… ‘alertness’ toward things like this,” Agatha chose her words with care and spoke sincerely. “Many irreversible disasters all start from a small feeling that something is ‘not quite right’.”

Duncan listened in silence, neither agreeing nor denying.

After a long time, he finally spoke, still thinking it through: “There may be two explanations. Either Goathead knows what happened but chose not to tell me and is hiding things on purpose, or even it does not know what changed on the Vanished last night.”

Agatha froze for a moment, then quickly reacted: “The second explanation would mean…”

“That some force is affecting this ship. Goathead is also within the range of that influence,” Duncan said sternly. “You were not affected, so you could see the changes that happened to the Vanished during the night.”

…

Humming a cheerful tune whose name she could not even remember, Alice bustled back and forth in the kitchen.

For her, the busy days on the Vanished were always the happiest.

Here she had everything she knew: the familiar deck, the familiar kitchen, the familiar pots and pans, and the familiar barrels, knives, and spatulas.

They were all her Friends. Everything on this ship was her Friend. And most of the time, she felt that dealing with the Friends on the ship was much easier than dealing with people in the city-states.

Going into the cities and dealing with people meant she had to learn too much, remember too much knowledge, and pay attention to a pile of dull “rules” that made her sleepy. Those beings called Humans were always far too fragile. They let countless “threads” float off them with no protection, and if she casually grabbed one, they would break in strange, unfixable ways. They were even more precious and fragile than the ship’s porcelain and glassware.

But the captain cared a lot about those “people”. He did not want her to tug at the “threads” on others at will, and he especially did not want her to break people who were not supposed to be broken.

For Alice, that was a little hard.

It was as hard as putting a cat in a room full of yarn balls and then not letting it touch a single loose end.

So after the novelty of a few trips into the cities wore off, Alice found that she still liked living on the ship best. Because here, she could hardly beat anyone at all.

She just had to be careful not to “touch” the Friends who lived on the ship with her.

She liked it this way. She liked the world around her feeling solid and stable.

She lifted the lid of a barrel of salted fish and leaned in carefully to sniff the smell inside. A satisfied look appeared on Alice’s face.

The captain never quite understood this, and neither did the others on the ship. Why would a doll have a sense of smell?

Alice herself did not know, but she never thought too much about it.

She only felt satisfied with her craft. She picked up a wooden basin from the side, ready to take some salted fish out of the barrel. She reached her hand toward the barrel, but before she could grab anything, a long-handled ladle on the counter suddenly jumped up and smacked her arm with a loud slap.

Alice cried out, quickly pulled her hand back, and protested: “I washed my hands! I just washed them!”

The long-handled ladle wobbled by the rim of the barrel and still refused to move aside.

Alice pouted, a bit unhappy: “You are no fun!”

The ladle slowly floated up. The bowl of the spoon made little gestures in front of the doll.

“…Fine,” Alice finally gave in with a sigh, muttering as she grabbed the handle. “It was just that last time my head fell into the barrel when I bent over to get something. Do you really have to make such a fuss over it…”

She scooped fish out of the barrel and chatted idly with the Friends in the kitchen. Sometimes she talked about what she had seen in the city-states. Sometimes she talked about things related to the captain.

Then she began to check the other containers that held stored food. Since AI could supply the Vanished with fresh ingredients at any time, most of the food stored here was processed things that could be kept for many years. Salted fish was the most popular among them.

There were twelve big barrels used to store salted fish.

Starting from the door, Alice counted along the wall: one, two, three, four… twelve, thirteen.

She suddenly stopped.

The doll girl blinked in confusion, went back to the start, and counted again.

There were still thirteen.

One more barrel had appeared.

Alice stood dazed in front of the row of barrels, her mind working hard. At first she suspected that she had messed up the numbers again. Her math had never been very good. Sometimes she was even worse than Shirley. But soon she felt she could not be that stupid. After all, it was only counting twelve barrels.

She already knew how to add and subtract numbers with more than two digits.

So Alice rubbed her eyes, calmed herself, and counted again.

Twelve.

The extra number from before was gone. Everything was back to normal.

Alice counted the barrels again and again. At last she was sure she had not miscounted anymore, yet her puzzlement did not ease at all. She turned her head and looked at the other things in the kitchen, then could not help asking curiously: “Did you notice? Just now it felt like there was one more barrel!”

But the Friends in the kitchen had no way to answer her for real. Even if they could speak, these things were at most Restless Objects that showed some traits of living beings only because of the Vanished’s special environment. They did not have full minds that could help solve a doll’s confusion.

Alice got no answer, so she turned back again and patted the big barrels lined up along the wall: “Was there one more among you just now?”

The barrels did not answer her either.

…

Sara Mell stared in shock as the “witch of the sea” spoke to her. She did not even notice the food slipping from her hand onto the table.

She no longer cared to complain that this freecoming witch had barged into her home early in the morning and interrupted her breakfast.

“All these unbelievable things… they all happened last night?”

The Elven governor spoke in disbelief. At first she wanted to say, “Are you making fun of me?” but when she thought about this witch’s temper, she decided not to make such a pointless provocation.

“Judging from your reaction, things are just as I expected,” Lucretia sighed. She sat on the chair opposite Sara Mell. The servants, who had been shaking in fear in the dining room, had already been driven out before she started talking “business”. Now only she and the governor were left. “The reach of that ‘dream’… was wider than we thought.”