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Chapter thirty-five.
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This is Samuel Greys.
Seventh day since we saw the sun. The eighty-second day of summer.
Mr. Reyes once told me that if I do not know what to write, then I should write that I do not know what to write.
Then, I do not know what to write. I do not have the thing called log-lust.
Last night, Mr. Reyes' fever worsened. He asked me to sit by him. He was shivering, so I draped another layer of bedding over him, and that seemed to do a little better.
He told me never to let him go back to Deep Sky, and I told him I wouldn't.
He asked me if I remembered Shanda's song. I told him I did. Then he asked me to sing it for him. I was embarrassed, but I tried for Mr. Reyes' sake. I'd never tried singing before. I'd never had occasion to. My ear is not trained in music. I don't know how good or bad I sounded. But he seemed to take comfort in it. It seemed to calm him down.
He said he would never forget the tune for as long as he lived, and that I should not forget it either, because there was no other way he knew to record it. He made me promise never to forget. So I promised him.
I hummed the song for him until he fell asleep.
He died in the night.
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He told me to finish.
I—don't know what to write.
He said I should just keep writing. Until Elena gets the book, he said. I should record everything that happens.
We still sail northeast. There are perhaps two days until we reach Valua.
I just don't know. He told me it would be all right, that I could put down whatever came to me, but I just don't know. What am I doing?
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I have read over those parts he wrote that I had not yet searched. I am glad he did not continue to hide what happened between him and Mr. Haley. I had been worried from my first reading of his log. But he is stronger than I knew. He was stronger. In many ways.
He is—sorely missed. He was the last of my shipmates. Moons help me, I tried. I tried to help them all.
Now I am alone again.
Only Sr. Perez understands me here. And only a very little. It is difficult. But I have made it known to him, and he to Capitán Alvarez, that the body is to be buried on land. Two days to port or two hundred, Mr. Reyes will not go back to Deep Sky.
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And I do not know what else to write.