Jean Genie
Copyright© 2026 by Rachael Jane
Chapter 113: Across the Pacific
Aboard the SS Oceanic, Pacific Ocean, 1890
The ship breathes. Not in the way humans do ... lungs expanding, ribs rising ... but in the slow, tidal rhythm of wood and iron shifting against the sea. I feel it through the deck, through the air, through the pulse that shapes my form. Rebecca stands at the rail, her hair pulled back against the wind, her notebook tucked under one arm. She watches the coastline of California fade into a blue haze.
She is alone. Except for me.
I hover beside her, faint and shimmering, shaped by her heartbeat. Without a wearer, I would be nothing but a whisper. With her, I am almost a person.
Rebecca exhales slowly. “It feels strange,” she murmurs. “Leaving everything behind.”
I listen to the tremor in her voice ... grief, determination, fear. Samuel’s death still sits in her chest like a stone. Her brothers’ faces linger in her memory. The orchard’s scent clings to her clothes.
“You’re not leaving everything,” I say softly. “You’re carrying it with you.”
She smiles faintly. “I hope so.”
The ship groans as it turns toward open water. The wind shifts ... cool, sharp, tinged with salt. I feel the change more deeply than she does. Winds are not just weather to me. They are pathways. Directions. Possibilities. Destinies.
Rebecca rests her hands on the rail. “We should review everything,” she says. “Before we reach Hong Kong.”
I nod. “Yes.”
She opens her notebook, pages fluttering in the wind. I watch the glyphs she has drawn ... curves, spirals, directional symbols, lunar nodes, Venus cycles. She has learned so much about what will free me from the bracelet. More than any wearer before her ... even Ixchel ... although she has benefited from Ixchel’s and Yalitza’s work.
But there is still so much she doesn’t know. So much I don’t know.
Rebecca flips to the first page ... a diagram of the Maya instrument.
Four fragments. Four pieces of a single cosmic mechanism.
I speak softly, reciting what we have learned together.
“The Solar fragment holds the soul,” I say. “Ixchel called it Yohualli‑Nahui. It’s the vessel. The anchor.”
Rebecca touches the sketch of the bracelet. “Your prison.”
I hesitate. “My ... container. I can leave it at any time, but my spirit may simply disappear. Only when the four fragments are aligned at the right celestial moment can I choose a destination.”
She nods, accepting the gentler word.
“The Lunar fragment,” I continue, “listens to the moon’s nodes. When Maristela weaved her magic on the Solar fragment, it was only a partial substitution for the other fragments. In doing so she altered the way the Solar fragment is able to work. By bringing the Solar fragment close to the other fragments, we are resetting the Solar fragment’s mechanism. Eventually the instrument will work as it is intended to do.”
Rebecca traces the crescent‑shaped markings she copied from several sources during her research.
“The Venus fragment,” I say, “times the doorway. It marks the moment when the soul can be released.”
Rebecca flips to her notes on Venus disappearances ... the long cycle, the rare moments when the planet vanishes behind the sun’s glare. “We’ll need to find it,” she murmurs. “Or at least understand its timing.”
“Ixchel said the correct time for the alignment is during a superior conjunction ... when Venus is hidden behind the sun. Something that happens every 584 days,” I add.
“But it also needs to align with a lunar node,”says Rebecca.
“And with the Directional fragment,” I say, “It points the soul toward the correct wind.”
Rebecca looks at me. “The wind you’ll face.”
I feel a tremor in my form ... fear, uncertainty, longing. “Yes.”
She closes the notebook gently. “We’ll find it.”
I hope she is right.
Rebecca sits on a bench near the rail, the ocean stretching endlessly before us. I sit beside her, though I do not need to sit. I mimic her posture because it comforts her.
She opens to the page with the four winds.
I speak the names softly, reverently.
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