Chapter nine

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What was home?

Once, home had been a house and a family, and a few miles of land around it. For a while, home had been a horse and the things he could carry on it. It had been the small group of people he fought beside in the militia. It had been a ship. After the shipwreck, it had been the memory of a place beyond the ocean. Now, apparently, it was a whole universe.

He was to go back today.

"Why aren't you fighting it?" McKay asked. "Woolsey seems to think he's doing you a favour. He said it was unethical to keep you here. But I know how to handle Woolsey. If you asked to stay, he might let you, no matter what Caldwell says. My little demonstration with the chair was quite powerful, if I do say so myself."

John said nothing. He didn't have anything to pack, so he straightened the blanket on his bed. They'd given him his old clothes back, washed and mended, smelling of strange, alien scents. Even his skin smelled different, washed in pungent soap.

"You said you wanted to change the world," McKay said. "Oh, do stop doing that. They're going to wash all the bedclothes, anyway. Listen, Sheppard, you can't change your old world; it's too far gone. But this one… Don't you understand the implications of what happened in the chair? You can make a difference here."

"It might be too far gone, but it's still mine." John ran his hand across the pillow. "Don't use my own words against me."

"Against you?" McKay spread his hands, clearly not understanding. "All I'm saying--"

"Is that you can't comprehend how anyone might not consider this the best place in the world." John gave a wry smile. "In any world."

He said the words; made the correct facial expressions and gestures. He felt as if part of himself was carefully walled away. He was going back. Home, he corrected himself. He had gone to the world of the Others, and now they were letting him go again.

It was for the best, of course. The only people he had felt any connection with were Ronon and Teyla, and that was because they were outsiders, too. They had stuck together, united merely by what they were not. McKay was different again, of course, but he didn't understand. Both Ronon and Teyla had made it very clear. These people were arrogant, dismissive of anyone who didn't have their advantages. There was no reason at all why John should want to stay.

In the stories, the Others were as cold as ice beneath their smiles.

"Why would you say that?" McKay said now. "We spend most of our time trying to get back to Earth, to our Earth. None of us would be stuck here if we had a choice."

"Then what would happen," John asked, "if I stayed here, and you found your way home, and all left?"

McKay was silent. Home, the city whispered all around him, still with its faint, enchanting voice. But decisions couldn't be made on the basis of enchantment, but only on hard fact. Yeah, like you were acting on reason when you got onto that ship, John.

No, he thought, he'd signed up for the voyage because he thought that the world could be improved. You didn't improve a world by walking away from it.

Footsteps sounded behind him; already John had learnt how to recognise Ronon and Teyla just by the sound of them. "So they're sending you away?" Ronon said.

John nodded. "Yeah. It was nice knowing you, buddy. And you, too, Teyla." Ronon had a pack slung over his shoulder, he saw. "You off, too?"

Ronon nodded. "After you've gone." He looked at McKay, his gaze suddenly challenging. "Thought I'd take a look at Sheppard's world before I go. There's a way back here afterwards?" McKay nodded, his mouth opening and closing without a word. "Then I'll go through with you, Sheppard." He clapped John on the shoulder.

"And I will go, too," Teyla said, standing beside him, the three outsiders standing together in an alien city.

"I'm going, too, of course." McKay said it loudly, almost angrily. "There are important tests to be done on the other side. We're taking a gate ship through. We've got bodies to recover, and… and there might be more Wraith, of course."

"Quite the escort," John said, and it sounded harsher than it should have been.

The gate ship emerged into the dark facility, and Rodney shivered with an unexpected surge of memory. He'd spent terrible nights here, alone with a Wraith, so close to the Gate that he couldn't operate. This was the sort of nightmare you never wanted to revisit ever again, yet somehow here he was, voluntarily coming back to it.

Sheppard was silent in the back of the ship, his new best friends gathered around them. Why on earth had they come? A native and a barbarian… Well, he guessed it made sense for the three of them to bond over their shared ignorance, but you needed more than that for a proper friendship. You needed more than just a few days, too. It was as ridiculous as saying that Rodney and Sheppard were friends just because they'd travelled together for a few days, just because they'd faced death together, just because they'd saved each other's lives, just because Sheppard had listened to Rodney, letting him talk, apparently not remotely angered by Rodney's manner.

"Why did you come?" he couldn't help but ask the woman as he went to pass her.

She looked at him, her gaze steady. "It is better to say farewell to somebody on friendly ground, and to know that they have a home to go to."

Rodney was barely listening. He knew her name. It was on the tip of his tongue… "Teyla!" he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "That's it."

"Indeed," Sheppard said dryly. It was the first thing he had said for a long time, at least in Rodney's hearing. "And he's Ronon. You could have asked before."

"And you could have told me."

Rodney hurried out, and pressed his hands against his face for a moment, remembering the awfulness of his days in this prison. The lights were already on, responding to Sheppard and Major Lorne. It looked more bleak in the light than in the dark, built by Ancients more cold and paranoid even than the ones in Rodney's own universe.

Lorne and the other soldiers were already out of the gate ship, loading bodies into body bags. Rodney saw a set of dog tags in Lorne's hand, and then the bag was zipped up. He couldn't tell whose body it had been; only the dog tags could tell that now.

"The doors are wide enough for the ship to get through." His voice sounded too loud in the echoing silence. "But the whole place was covered with earth. The Wraith dug their way out, but we'll need to widen the tunnel to get a gate ship through it."

No-one answered. He heard Sheppard come up behind him and look down at the dead. My team, Rodney thought, but he felt nothing, only guilt, as if he had failed them. It was supposed to create an unbreakable bond when you went into danger together, wasn't it? Rodney had never felt that. He was passed from team to team, and Carson thought he was the sort of person who would leave someone behind to die.

I don't want to be that person, he thought miserably.

Sheppard stood close to him. "Your team?"

Rodney could only nod, finally understand why he was so keen for Sheppard to stay in Atlantis. Sheppard had accepted him, had voluntarily travelled with him. Rodney had been brave. He'd fought a Wraith and saved Sheppard's life. He'd carried him on horseback for miles. He'd ridden towards danger, following Sheppard's lead.

Stupid, he thought, because the presence of someone else couldn't change you. Only you could do that.

But it made it easier, of course, if they accepted you, without two years of preconceived notions. It was easier to start anew with people who were even newer to a place than you were.

Not that it was worth thinking about, of course, because Sheppard was back on his own world, and Rodney was returning to Atlantis, and everything would be the same as it had always been.

The gate ship flew above the land. "It is beautiful," Teyla breathed. John leant forward, trying to see as much of it as he could. Beautiful, he thought, but even from above, all he could see were ruins.

Two mounds of earth lay on the hillside, doubtless holding the bodies of Sumner and the Wraith. The ship had flown over the village that John had lived in for the last two months, and he had seen the tiny shapes of people working in the fields. Spring was more advanced than when he had last seen it, but no more than was to be expected, given that he had been away from the village for almost two weeks. Time moved in its normal course. He was back in his own world, and he hadn't withered to dust.

Of course you haven't, John, he thought. The last vestiges of story faded. They were returning him willingly to a world no different from the world he had left.

No different…

"You sure they can't see us?" he asked, his voice more steady than he had ever expected it to be.

Major Lorne shook his head. "We're cloaked. Invisible." Another act of magic, but this time John accepted it. He had seen so many marvels that they were losing their power to amaze.

They were looking for Wraith. Words and patterns were written in lights in the air in front of Lorne, and John understood that it was some sort of navigational instrument. Different lights apparently marked the presence of a living thing, with each dot indicating a person. "A Wraith would be a different colour," Lorne explained, "but we aren't seeing any."

Sometimes they flew for minutes at a time without seeing a single dot of any colour at all, going over the ruins of towns that had once been full of people. You could see more from up above than you could on the ground, and John saw the straight lines of iron railings cutting across the land, and old roads that were now so overgrown that they were invisible when you stood on them.

They flew over the coast, circled, and came back to land. The city contained scattered dots, and a cluster together by the docks. "Ford and the others," John said.

Beside him, John saw, Ronon was staring fiercely out of the window. "What is it?" John asked. The view from the window both fascinated and saddened him, and it was good to look away for a moment.

"I went back to Sateda once," Ronon said quietly. "I hadn't gone earlier; didn't want to bring the Wraith there. But I met people, more and more people, who said it had gone. I went back, and it was like this, all ruins."

Teyla touched Ronon's hand. Ronon didn't pull away. "We have ruins on Athos," she said, "but we have never built in stone. I have never been to Sateda, but I have heard tell of its buildings."

It seemed as if all worlds were ruined. But Ronon's world had fallen to ruin only recently, at the hands of the Wraith. The Wraith were still destroying worlds, making them into worlds like this one, with just a handful of humans struggling to live among the wreckage of the past.

They went across the coast again, across the broad river that led to the ocean. "Can I fly?" John found himself asking. Lorne shook his head doubtfully, but John asked again. "Please. You can show me what to do, and take the controls back if I do anything wrong."

Lorne studied him for a while, then slowly nodded. "I don't see how it'll do any harm."

As John studied his every move, Lorne flew them down the coast, explaining what he was doing. "It has a mental component, too, of course," he said. "To a certain extent, it's instinctive, but you need to know the controls, too – this, and this…"

They were almost at the western tip when John was allowed to slide into Lorne's chair. The ship responded instantly, flooding him with light. This was standing on the deck with the wind in his hair. It was standing on a mountain, looking out at the world below. It was leaning into the wind, riding fast on his horse. The air flowed past him and through him, and the whole sky was there above him, and there was no limit to where he could go, no limit at all. There was no part of him that wasn't flying. There was no part of him that the ship didn't reach.

"Which is all very impressive," he faintly heard McKay saying, "but where are you taking us?"

West, his heart said. He left the land behind.

"You can't fly all the way to America," McKay protested.

John shook his head. "Not going to America." They had sailed for weeks across the ocean, and then they had found land. "I told you," John said, and it was hard to talk at first, above the joyful sense of flight, but it became easier with every word. "Sumner sent Holland ashore, and when he didn't come back, we sailed on." He raised his voice, suddenly knowing that Ronon would understand, and that perhaps Lorne and the others would, too. "We were in the militia together for five years. He was under my command. But he didn't come back, and my captain wouldn't let me go back for him. I… argued, but I didn't push things, not the way I should have."

No-one said anything.

"I just need to find out, you know?" John said, as land appeared below him, green and empty. He didn't say the rest of it; couldn't say it out loud. I just need find out if I killed him.

Rodney was breathless and scratched and miserable, trailing behind the others as they pushed their way through tangled undergrowth. But I'm not complaining, he wanted to say to the others. Look how very much not complaining I am. It turned out that he could do tactful and sensitive, too, despite what other people might say. It was obvious that Sheppard wanted to be here, and even Lorne seemed to understand his reasons. "Although we have been away from Atlantis for six hours now," Rodney volunteered quietly. "We're going to be late getting back, and Caldwell won't like that. Just saying."

Sheppard had remembered the appearance of the coast-line perfectly, or so he had claimed. No dots showed on the life-signs detector for a whole area fifty miles square. Sheppard's shoulders had sagged ever so slightly, then stiffened again, as he had looked straight ahead, focusing on flying, or pretending to. Looking for a body would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, and Rodney had almost said so, but had decided not to.

On the third low pass of the coastline, the barbarian, Ronon, had seen something at the base of a cliff.

Rodney was the last to emerge from the undergrowth now, the last to see it. Sheppard was already on his knees by the skeleton, holding a piece of tattered, decaying clothing between his fingers. "I think it's him." His voice was so quiet that Rodney could hardly hear him. His own panting was filling his ears, drowning sound.

Ronon stood over Sheppard, squeezing his shoulder. "The head's bashed in," he said. "There's no sign of a struggle, no sign of a wounded man trying to keep himself alive." He nodded up at the top of the cliff, where the sheered-off rock showed in a paler colour than the rest of the cliff. The skeleton lay on a mound of tumbled stone and earth, half covered by it. "Looks like he walked too near the edge of the cliff, and fell when it gave way." He tightened his grip on Sheppard's shoulder. "It would've been quick."

"And nothing that could have been done for him, even if we had gone back." Sheppard's voice was curiously harsh, as if something had scraped it raw. "Thanks for saying it, buddy."

"Not just saying it," Ronon said. "It's true."

After a long moment, Sheppard stood up and started back for the gate ship without a word.

Lorne flew them back east. John gripped the back of the chair in front of him, staring straight ahead. I didn't kill him, he thought. I didn't.

He hadn't realised how large a part of him had been left behind on that bit of coast, gone with Holland, not coming back.

"We need to get back," Lorne said, the first thing anyone had said for a long time.

John nodded, because he had known it already, of course. This was the right place for him to be. This was his home, his world, even if it was broken. And, because it was broken, he couldn't consider leaving it, because no-one else was able to escape. He had signed up for Sumner's voyage precisely because he had hoped to change the world. It had been a stupid dream, of course. No one person could change the world, not when the world was as broken and fragmented as it was.

Lorne set the ship down on the edge of the dock, in the shadow of a large building. "Well, uh…" John said. "Goodbye, I guess."

No-one said anything. Ronon stood up, and then Teyla. Clearing his throat and flustering with his hands, McKay pushed himself to his feet.

"Nice meeting you," John said. He walked towards the open door at the back. It was already almost evening, and the air outside was cold.

The others came with him, forming up on either side of him, two on one side and one on the other. "Just to say, you know, a proper goodbye." McKay sounded awkward.

"And to make sure that these people have a place for you," Teyla said, but Ronon was quiet, looking up at ruins that he had already said reminded him of his own devastated home.

"Thanks, guys, I guess." John smiled. "I mean it, really. Thanks."

It was surprising how much it helped, having them there with him. But that in itself was a surprise, because he hadn't realised that this was something that he would find difficult. All he was doing was returning home. Atlantis wasn't for him – Ronon and Teyla had said as much. Everyone had to stay where they belonged.

Ford was the first to see them coming. He made a sharp gesture with his arm, and three more men appeared, rifles held warily in their hands. John raised his hand in greeting, and Ford visibly relaxed, signalling to the man to stand down.

"The captain left, sir," he said, when John was within earshot. "We couldn't stop him. He went after you. We've been worried sick that--"

"He's dead," John had to tell him. "He was killed by another Wraith – a creature like the one we fought that night. I tried to stop it, but…" He shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Ford bowed his head for a moment. His voice was thick when he spoke again; no matter what anyone's personal opinion of Sumner had been, he was one of them, one of the dwindling group of people who had set out from the west with such high hopes. "Are you coming back now, sir? We're working on the ship. It might even be seaworthy by early summer."

"Sumner said he'd sent people away because they disagreed with him," John said. "You should track them down, give them a chance to go home, too."

"We will, sir." Ford nodded earnestly. "Are your friends coming, too?"

John shook his head. "They've got their own homes to go to."

Someone shouted something, but John couldn't make out what it was. The wind changed direction, gusting towards him with the smell of food. It smelled of home and childhood, and was subtly different from the food John had eaten for the last six months.

Where was home, John thought. The place you were born to, or the place you had made for yourself? His birth-place had closed its doors to him. At the start of the voyage, he had felt purpose, but that purpose was now revealed to be meaningless. They were packing up their things and sailing back across the ocean again, to a place where life would carry on no differently from how it had always been.

For those few days when he had been hunting the Wraith with McKay, his life had possessed purpose. Sitting in the chair and flying the gate ship, he had felt a spark of purpose, too, fierce and bright. And Ronon's home was in ruins because the Wraith were destroying worlds, not in the far distant past, but now.

"Are you coming, sir?" Ford asked again.

John shook his head, smiling a rueful smile. "No, Ford. No, I'm not." Beside him, McKay gasped, his head snapping up. "I just thought I'd drop in to say goodbye."

"But…" Rodney swallowed, attempting to get his words under control. "But, Sheppard… Where are you going to go?"

His feet crunched on the crumbled stones of old buildings. Ford was still watching them go. Lorne and the others were sitting in the gate ship not far ahead, and Sheppard was supposed to have gone. They were all expecting him to go.

"Atlantis," Sheppard said with a smile. "Why, McKay, don't you want me there any more?"

"No," Rodney said, shaking his head. "I mean, yes. I mean, why change your mind? This is sudden."

Sheppard stopped walking and looked at him seriously. "Not really," he said.

There was, of course, hell to pay when they got back to Atlantis, as McKay had confidently predicted. "But I thought you knew how to handle Woolsey," John said, his face deliberately expressionless, just to watch McKay splutter in outrage.

Woolsey, of course, said it was completely out of the question. John's place was in another universe. What sort of a person, he implied, would want to walk away from his entire world and throw in his lot with strangers?

"With respect, sir," Lorne said, "every single person on Atlantis is here because we signed up for something that took us away from our world. We all knew there was a strong possibility that we would never go back. I don't see why this is so different. Sir," he added belatedly. He stood taller under Caldwell's furious scrutiny. "He's a natural pilot, sir," he said, "and we haven't got enough of those."

"But he isn't…" Woolsey started, then broke off.

"Isn't one of us?" John finished for him. "Is that what you were going to say? Because I'm not like you, and neither are Ronon and Teyla, or any of the people who live in any of the worlds they've told me about, but you still hold their fates in the palm of your hands, just like the Others do. Perhaps it's time you let them have a say in things."

Woolsey frowned. "What nonsense is this?"

McKay was frowning, as if he was desperately struggling to catch up. "No, no, it's true." He waved his hand, thumb and forefinger rubbing together as if he was trying to pin down an idea. "Like I was saying the other day, we haven't found a way back to Earth, and it's looking increasingly unlikely that we'll ever find a way back, but we're persisting in thinking about the expedition is being purely an Earth-based concern. If the expedition is going to survive… and it needs to, I think. I mean, we're… we're doing things here, important things that go way beyond the limits of Atlantis. But to survive, we need to let other people in."

"Sheppard, you mean," Caldwell said dryly.

"Well, yes, of course. I mean, hello? Strongest gene carrier we know? Only person who can operate the chair?"

"Not just me," John said. "Teyla could be an enormous help to you, if you listened to her more. Ronon… I doubt he'll want to stay, but I bet could teach your soldiers a thing or two about fighting the Wraith."

"So not content with disobeying orders," Caldwell said, "the two of you want to rewrite the underlying mission statement of the Atlantis expedition?"

They weren't mysterious Others, John thought; of course they weren't. They were just humans with technological advantages, who were capable of making mistakes.

"Yeah. It seemed like a nice, modest goal." John shrugged, grinning. "So, McKay, what d'you feel like doing tomorrow?"

Rodney found them eventually on the east pier, sitting outside beneath the setting sun. As he approached, Sheppard threw back his head and laughed at something that Ronon had said.

Rodney's steps slowed, then stopped entirely. Then he clenched his fists at his sides, and carried on. "Despite the inappropriate timing of your sudden discovery that you actually have a sense of humour," he said, "you might be pleased to hear that they've decided to let you stay. On probation, that is, and on the proviso that you don't start, well, dying on account of there being another one of you out there somewhere."

"That's good." Sheppard patted the ground beside him. "You gonna join us?"

Rodney sat down gingerly, grimacing at how cold the ground was even in the early hours of evening. "We were quite eloquent between us," he said. "Of course, it probably helped that we were right. We can't go on the way we've been going. Even Caldwell had to admit that. We need new blood. It's just a wrench for them to realise that it has to come from others places other than Earth. Other than our Earth, I mean."

Sheppard looked at him, his expression suddenly cautious. "So Ronon and Teyla…"

"Can stay," Rodney said, "if they want to. Or go. If… if that's what they prefer." He felt almost nervous around them. No, jealous, he realised, as if they'd come along and stolen Rodney's own personal discovery.

And that's what a lot of it had been about, he realised; it was just as Woolsey had said. Rodney wanted the credit for discovering Sheppard. He wanted somebody who owed their presence in Atlantis to Rodney's intervention. He wanted someone who'd feel grateful to him, someone who'd look up to him… someone who would like him.

But of course Sheppard wasn't Rodney's personal property. Sheppard was here by his own choice, and by his choice alone.

"Why did you change your mind?" Rodney asked him now.

Sheppard let out a breath. "Lots of reasons, and… none, really. I can feel the city here." He pressed his hand briefly to his chest, and then to his brow. "I thought it was enchantment, trying to trick me, but maybe… maybe I want to be tricked. I want to make a difference, and I can't, not back there. But here… You got me to sit in that chair, and that's something I can do. I can save lives here, perhaps."

"But not the lives of your own people." Rodney wondered why he was protesting; why he wasn't just nodding and accepting it, when he had fought so hard for it.

"What does that really mean?" Sheppard said quietly. "The way I see it now: home is where you make it. I spent the last two months living with people who, according to your Woolsey, are 'my people' on account of us coming from the same universe. By that definition, you aren't one of my people, but I saved your life. When it was them against you, I saved you."

"I saved your life, too," Rodney pointed out.

Sheppard smiled. "Didn't say you didn't." His smile faded, then came back again. "And, thanks."

"Uh…" Rodney cleared his throat. "Thanks, too, I guess."

Sheppard looked up at the sky, at the setting sun. "There was also the issue of me realising that I'd been listening too much to superstitious native nonsense." He leant back, his hands resting on the ground behind him. "Most of all, though, I think I just wanted the chance to fly a gate ship again. Those ships are cool."

Rodney didn't know if he was joking, or not, and thought it best not to ask. "So what do you hope to do now?"

"Fly," Sheppard said. "Kill Wraith. Be a good boy and get Caldwell and Woolsey to like me. Fly. I was thinking… A group of us flying missions in a gate ship, especially if we had local knowledge and someone who knew how to track down Wraith…"

It sounded casual enough, but suddenly the air felt charged. Sheppard wasn't looking at any of them, but Ronon spoke up suddenly. "Two can kill Wraith better than one."

"And three can do it better than two," Teyla said firmly.

Their smiles were faltering, almost nervous. The breeze blew in from the ocean, wrapping cold around Rodney's body.

"Do you mean what I think you mean?" Rodney said. "They won't let you. There's no way they'd let you go off in a valuable gate ship all by yourself."

"So we'd better have someone from Atlantis with us." His mouth smiled, but his eyes were deadly serious. "Someone gifted at magic, perhaps?"

"It isn't magic," Rodney protested.

"It still feels like magic to me," Sheppard said quietly, but then he smiled. "Science, then. We need someone gifted with science to go with us and help us find the Wraith, and help us understand the mysterious fairy artefacts that we find along the way."

Warmth rushed through him; Rodney could feel it on his cheeks. He covered it in a bluster and a cough. "For the last time, fairies don't exist, but, yes, if you mean me, then, yes, I'll go with you – just once, just to make sure that you don't get yourself killed. Not that Woolsey will ever let you have a gate ship, so there's no point even dreaming."

"I thought you knew how to handle Woolsey." Sheppard's eyes were sparkling. "Come on, McKay – you're the Atlantean around here, and we're just natives. Are you going to take us to dinner?"

"In a minute," Rodney said, watching the sun sink down until it touched the ocean. Atlantis sparkled around him, just as he had dreamed of it when trapped on that other Earth, and how he had yearned for it when he had looked out over that desolate sea. Home was Earth, of course, which was why he had spent two years trying to get back to it. Home is where you make it, Sheppard had said, and here he was, having voluntarily left his own universe to live with strangers.

On the alternate Earth, the only home Rodney had dreamed of was Atlantis. And now, as he headed inside with Sheppard and Ronon and Teyla, for an evening of food and drink and cautious attempts at chat and laughter, he thought that perhaps it was true.

Perhaps, one day soon, home could be Atlantis.

The stars slowly appeared outside the window, sparkling in a black sky.

Home, whispered the city. Safe.

John paused with his drink almost at his lips. No, he told it. Be quiet.

He wasn't here because of enchantment or magic. You couldn't decide to settle in a place just because a mysterious sense told you that it was good. That sense had been there all along, and he had still decided to leave. He had changed his mind for other reasons: because he had purpose here; because he had hope; because perhaps, one day soon, he would have friends.

He had no idea what would happen, he thought, as he looked up at the stars, but this…

This was a beginning.

end of chapter nine

Have I ever told you about a man called John?

He went with an Other into a hill, and he was never seen again. It was a long time ago, when I was no more than a child. The world has changed since then. There are more people than there were, and some of the ruins have been rebuilt. News comes of rebirth in the cities, and of discoveries that echo those of the Time Before.

And some there are who say that the old stories are just lies and superstition, who doubt that the Others exist. But I know they exist, because I saw them. I saw the door that John walked through, and although I passed it by for many a year afterwards, it never opened again. Earth and grass now cover it once more, as is right.

I once knew a man called John, and he went with the Others, and now he is gone.

But I am old now, and it is harder to hate. I hope he was happy as he danced their dance. I hope he was happy before he faded to dust.

And sometimes… Sometimes I think that he was.

END

Note: The title comes from the traditional ballad The Demon Lover (also called The House Carpenter, or John Herries.) After a seven years' absence, a woman's ex-lover returns home with a fleet of ships, and persuades her to leave her husband and son and run away with him. "I'll show you where the white lilies grow on the banks of Italy," he says. However, once out in the middle of the sea on his ship, she starts to regret what she's done. He is furious, and magically calls up a storm. "I'll show you where the white lilies grow on the bottom of the sea," he says, and sinks the ship, taking her with him to Hell.

Thank you for reading!